Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Velella

Nomination

Velella (talk · contribs · they/them) – I have never applied to be an admin before because I believed that the original process was poorly designed to select the right people for the role. I do hope that this process is more effective, at the very least in reducing stress on the applicants. I have been active on Wikipedia for more than 19 years but did get blocked once in the first few weeks because I misunderstood the rules. Lesson learnt. I enjoy working in logical structures driven by rules and conventions. I enjoy it less when outside of my comfort zone of science and the environment, so I tend not to get involved with social media, manga, soccer (or most sports for that matter). My overriding reason for applying is to provide support for the overall admin effort to allow those with specialist skills to use those skills knowing that others can pick up much of the day-to-day admin tasks. For the record, I am unavailable on 22nd October but will respond to any questions etc. before the deadline of the 24th October.

I have never accepted any payment or any inducement for writing or editing any article or for voting! in any discussion or for any other purpose.

 Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   15:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?

A: To support the overall admin effort. Whenever I see an admin backlog in some routine task, I feel that I could be helping, especially to reduce the stress on the existing individual admins. In common with many aspiring admins, dealing with vandlism and sock-puppetry, and ferreting out undisclosed paid editing would all appeal. I would also be content with closing AfDs or providing input at ANI. However, my expectation is that once familiar with the tool set, and developing and practicing new skills, my efforts might be in unexpected areas.

2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?

A: The quality of Wikipedia articles matters to me, so I have felt most satified when I have been able to correct factual errors by searching out RSs to support a correct answer. I have also been able to author some 200+ articles and substantially add to others, some of which have become GAs and have provided inputs to DYK

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

A: I tend to avoid great dramas on Wikipedia. I try to be clear, polite and succinct in my inputs to talk pages to reduce ambiguity. Stress, however, is I guess inevitable, but I stick to my position if I believe that it is consistent with the rules and policies of Wikipedia. I feel most stressed when other editors substantially re-work articles that have had much time and consensus discussion invested in getting to their current state. It may be that such re-works are an improvement, but it can be hard not to feel bruised. However I don't pursue an editing disagreement simply because my version has been replaced. The strength of Wikipedia lies in the combined wisdom and consensus of all its editors and sometimes I may be wrong.

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You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Discussion

• Links for Velella: Velella (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Velella can be found here.

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.