User:Camaron/Admin coaching/Archive 1

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Archive 1
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Contents

Welcome

Okay, as discussed on your talk page, let me know how, at this moment, you'd answer Q1 of the RFA process, in other words, why do you want to be an administrator and what would you do with the privilege/curse?! The Rambling Man 17:39, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, below is my answer...
1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?
A: If I become an administrator I intend to take part in a variety of maintenance areas of Wikipedia. I intend to continue doing doing work in XfD by closing AfD's, MfD's, expired PROD's, and also dealing with speedy deletion candidates which appear to be a frequent source of backlog at the moment. Also, I hope to deal with block appeals at WP:RFU which are frequently not answered very quickly.
I want to help in dealing with incorrectly uploaded images - I am already often adding fair use rationales to images. I plan to use the tools to also delete images with no copyright tags and those marked as fair use which do not follow the Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria after notification response times have passed.
Finally, I intend to use the tools to help with Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools. There are few admins active in that project at the moment and more would be helpful in dealing with issues that can and have come to attention such as edit wars, school teachers creating role accounts and other things. School articles are frequently vandalised with often vandalism in these articles not been reverted for hours, days and even weeks. I already frequently revert vandalism in such articles and warn users who commit it as necessary; I would use the semi-protection and block tools to help in the fight against school article vandalism further. Camaron1 | Chris 18:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay. So allow me to dissect...

  • Closing XfD's - A lot of RFA !voters get a bit sniffy about this sort of thing, and rightly so. Can you point me at situations where you've contributed to XfD's in detail or have changed the opinion of the consensus? Experience in this area is vital to gain confidence from the community and I can't recommend hanging out at WP:AFD for a few weeks at the very least to gain valuable insight.
  • Speedy backlog - yes, this is almost always the case - you need the AFD experience to be trusted with making rapid and solo decisions on whether an article is in need of speedy deletion.
  • WP:RFU is a good choice, it's something that I guess is overlooked. You'll need to provide very detailed understanding of the policies to make choices to unblock which will doubtless be in conflict

with the blocking admin at the very least. So demonstration of policy knowledge, pertaining to areas such as vandalism, user names, sock puppetry etc essential.

  • Adding fair use criteria - this is good but clearly something anyone can do, not just admins (and I've only found two that you've added FU to, so I wouldn't claim "...often adding fair use rationales..." if I were you). However, handling images is another one of those areas which will be closely scrutinised. Most candidates rather candidly decide to avoid this area unless they're particularly expert, it's a minefield, a copyright swamp.
  • Supporting and the support of a project is great and you should definitely continue in this.

So, briefly, I would advise more active and notable contributions at XFD. That way you can provide diffs that show you're both happy with the process and can be trusted with the tools.

An area your contributions appear a little weak on is contribution to the mainspace. I know you've only been contributing six months, but less than 500 edits here is probably going to be on the low side - people want to see that you understand what it means to contribute to an encyclopaedia - it's at the very heart of why we're all here so trying to get an article to GA or FA is a brilliant way of doing this.

That's a start. Let me know what you think so far. The Rambling Man 16:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Response to suggestions

OK, there is nothing you have said that I paticually disagreee with; so here are my responces to your comments, I hope you don't mind if I quote you as that makes things easier.

Closing XfD's - A lot of RFA !voters get a bit sniffy about this sort of thing, and rightly so. Can you point me at situations where you've contributed to XfD's in detail or have changed the opinion of the consensus? Experience in this area is vital to gain confidence from the community and I can't recommend hanging out at WP:AFD for a few weeks at the very least to gain valuable insight.

I consider closing XfD's one of the least original of ideas in using the admin tools. I have taken quite a bit of time in AfD' s and XfD's - though I agree that I should try and take a bigger role. I cannot honestly say I have any specific changes to consensus in the past, the closest is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SimCity 5 (second nomination) - though that was a long time ago and I can make better arguments now. About 75% of AfD's I take part in are school related - I am trying to reach out into other areas a bit.

Speedy backlog - yes, this is almost always the case - you need the AFD experience to be trusted with making rapid and solo decisions on whether an article is in need of speedy deletion.

True, I have also started taking a bigger part in nominating articles for speedy deletion, which I think will help give me a bigger view into WP:SD.

WP:RFU is a good choice, it's something that I guess is overlooked. You'll need to provide very detailed understanding of the policies to make choices to unblock which will doubtless be in conflict with the blocking admin at the very least. So demonstration of policy knowledge, pertaining to areas such as vandalism, user names, sock puppetry etc essential.

Yes I can see what you mean, I have regularly taken a look at the appeals been presented and making a decision can be very hard. Can you suggest any particular areas I could get involved in to help demonstrate my (potential) knowledge in areas like sock puppetry and user names?

Adding fair use criteria - this is good but clearly something anyone can do, not just admins. However, handling images is another one of those areas which will be closely scrutinised. Most candidates rather candidly decide to avoid this area unless they're particularly expert, it's a minefield, a copyright swamp.

Yes, it is something many voters appear to like to see, though as you said, it is a minefield and I am not an expert in this area. I am finding it more than ever necessary to to get involved with adding fair use rationales - people often upload in game screen shots and logos of there school without thinking of the copyright implications. With a bot going round adding tags to delete images without fair use rationales it is becoming a race against time to stop many school and game articles losing their pictures! After a think and your comments, I am probably not going to get involved with images except to stop them been deleted - or to upload them myself.

(and I've only found two that you've added FU to, so I wouldn't claim "...often adding fair use rationales..." if I were you).

I had a feeling you would say that, it does feel like a lot more than that for some reason. I will be careful not to say such things in an RfA - I recognise you need to be careful.

Supporting and the support of a project is great and you should definitely continue in this.

Thanks, I will; people have asked for an "endorsement of a WikiProject" in RfAs many times.

An area your contributions appear a little weak on is contribution to the mainspace. I know you've only been contributing six months, but less than 500 edits here is probably going to be on the low side - people want to see that you understand what it means to contribute to an encyclopaedia - it's at the very heart of why we're all here so trying to get an article to GA or FA is a brilliant way of doing this.

I thought you would say that; people like to look at numbers on the edit count overview page and main space edit count is often quoted. There is notable number of people at RFA, that despite heavy criticism, will oppose candidates if they do not have at least 500 (sometimes 1000) main space edits and have not helped significantly get one article to GA status at least. I am trying to improve Simtropolis (Start), The Petersfield School (Stub) and SimCity 4 (B) particularly at the moment. Nobody is particularly editing any of these articles much so I have a great opportunity here; I have already requested and received a peer review for SimCity 4 so I am going to start a drive to get that article to GA.

Alright, those are my initial response thoughts. I would love to hear any other ideas you have. Camaron1 | Chris 19:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Response to reponse to suggestions

Hey, good to read your response. Okay, so I think the way ahead is as follows:

  1. Get SimCity 4 to GA. By all means get me involved in advising on issues like WP:MOS and WP:CITE, and I'll even review it for you when you're ready to go to WP:GAC. It'll probably be unwise of me to review formally, but I'll certainly help you get there. This will prove you're here to improve the encycolopaedia and help deter the editcountitis types as you're bound to get your mainspace edits up a bit.
  2. Plug away at the WP:AFD for a bit... see if you can get your !votes in first with good explanations as to why you feel the way you do. This will increase your Wikipedia space edits and will expose you to a number of the people who !vote at RFA.
  3. Get stuck in at new page patrolling. This is another really good way of showing that you understand policy by tagging inappropriate pages with speedy deletion tags so that an admin can come in and clean up the detritus.
  4. Spend some time at WP:RFA carefully considering other applicants. I have it on my watchlist so I can pop by when a new candidate throws his or her hat into the ring. You seem to have a good grip on most of the do's and don't's for the RFA process - my second attempt had a very different outcome from first one, I didn't handle criticism particularly well in that one!

Hope that helps, let me know if I can help more, especially with the GA drive. The Rambling Man 08:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Great, I agree:

  1. I will focus on improving SimCity 4 from now on and start my improvement drive as soon as I can; I will contact you if I need any help.
  2. OK, I will begin getting more involved in AFD, I will keep an eye out for new nominations to get into.
  3. I have joined this project and requested speedy deletion of two articles tonight - I am finding it helpful in learning more about deletion.
  4. I have it on my watch list as well - and I have been in the past a "RfA regular"; I will try and get involved in peoples RfA's, reform and general discussion a bit more again.

I will keep you informed as necessary. Camaron1 | Chris 20:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Dispute resolution

There is one thing we have not discussed yet, and that the dispute resolution side of adminship. I am bringing this up as I am getting into a dispute with 209.244.42.97 (talk · contribs) over Template:Sim series and SimCity Societies. Read this users talk page, the Template:Sim series and SimCity Societies pages edit history and talk page and you will get the idea. I am in particular getting allegations of vandalism from this user. The only direct action I have taken is to ask the user to stop making such threatening comments. I am trying to deal with the issue as calmly as I can - I am aware of been able to handle disputes is a part of adminship. This user has been warned by several users and I am considering if this dispute escalates further to take it to WP:AN/I (though this is not part of dispute resolution, so is it appropriate?), rather than get into an endless circle of edit warring - though for now I am just going to quietly ignore this users conduct. As you are an admin yourself, do you have any suggestions on what I should do about this dispute? Camaron1 | Chris 10:15, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Morning. Yes, this type of editor is by far the most problematic. It's clear from his talk page that he's not just winding you up, he's been borderline for blocking on a number of occasions. I've been fortunate that I've not been involved in too much dispute like this, but you're right, admins need to be able to assess these situations and act accordingly. I've never raised an issue at WP:AN/I, I usually do my best to discuss the issue with the editor I'm in conflict with.
So, in this case, my advice is to seek consensus on your own edits so that there's no dispute that you have the backing of the community for your edits. Indeed, if you don't get the backing, perhaps it's a sign that you should back down. However, I'm certain this isn't the case. It is difficult sometimes to achieve such a consensus so, if I was dealing with this as a non-admin, I'd probably find a friendly admin to discuss the situation with and bring someone on board who is capable of backing up the warning templates with a block if required. I'd like you to tell me exactly what you're trying to do with the template and the SimCity Societies article and exactly what the IP objects to. As an admin, you'd be expected to mediate over the differing opinions and provide a calm, outside perspective.
Let's discuss exactly what you want and what he wants and move forward from there... The Rambling Man 10:44, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply. Yes, I would rather discuss this with the user (and others) directly rather than take it to WP:AN/I. A problem is there are few others editing the template or the article - and no admins as far as I know. Another problem is that this user is not very interested in communicating - the only communication I have received from this user is edit summaries and this comment [1], of which I simply replied with [2]. Finally, this user appears to be quite confident that the administrators are on his side [3].

Dispute overview

An overview of this dispute is as follows:

Template

Dispute is over: Location of SimCity Societies article link.

  • He wants: [4]
  • Reason: Not clear, claims it follows established facts.
  • Consensus?: Not clear, when the SimCity Societies article was originally created a few people preferred the link in this location [5]. No recent edits have been made however that moves the link into this position which are not by this IP user.


  • I want: [6]
  • Reason: 1. The game has the title "SimCity" in it so it is not speculation to call it a SimCity game. 2. All evidence provided by EA suggest that this game is the next game in the SimCity series and although it is going in a direction, it is still a city building game.
  • Consensus?: Not clear, some users clearly preferred it in this position [7] and [8]. No comments have been left on the talk page apart from my own and this IP users which comments on the issue.

Article

Dispute is over: Inclusion and content of "controversy" section in the article SimCity Societies.

  • He wants: [9]
  • Reason: Not clear, says the information given by the controversy section is "necessary info" in previous edit summaries.
  • Consensus?: No, as shown by: [10] and [11].


  • I want: [12]
  • Reason: This version follows WP:NPOV, avoids weasel words, and avoids excessive detail on incidents on individual fan sites.
  • Consensus?: Arguable yes, discussion at [13] supports this - the idea of merging the controversy section was suggested by someone else and I put into practise due to apparent agreement.

Further comments

I hope this makes the dispute clear for you to help establish on what to do next.

Update of 12 August 2007

As things are developing, here is a quick review of current developments and what I am doing currentley:

  • I am getting into new page patrol, recent changes patrol and AFD's as you requested. I have proded and speedied quite a few articles and I am making more against-previous-comments votes in AFD's if I feel they are justified.
  • My next task is to get back into WP:RFA and to start improving my main space contributions with getting SimCity 4 to GA.
  • Simtropolis, an article I was planning a re-write of has had its existing version nominated for deletion. I agreed with the nominator before hand that I might continue a longterm re-write of the article and re-create it at a later date if it addresses concerns. Unfortunately an issues has arisen with TheListUpdater (talk · contribs) canvassing the nomination to Simtropolis itself in a attempt to gain "emergency" keep votes. I have left a note with this user asking him/her to review WP:CANVASS despite the fact it is off-site.
  • 209.244.42.97 (talk · contribs) is continuing to make controversial edits to SimCity Societies - the last attempt was reverted by another user. I have since left a {{uw-3rr}} warning on his user talk page asking him to discuss the issue on the talk page before making more reverts. This user seems to be also making more POV additions to other articles such as Alsace. Something is going to need to be done if this keeps up, not sure what though. Camaron1 | Chris 17:30, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey Chris, sorry I've been out of it a bit, my work on the WP:GAC backlog and trying to get Bobby Robson to at least a WP:GA has somewhat taken over my life. Right, I had a look at the dispute in particular, and, unsurprisingly, believe that your edits seem wholly reasonable and the placement of SimCity Societies within the template is fine too. The 3RR warning you issued was good and might have shaken the user up enough to think twice before engaging in another edit war. I'll have a further look at his edits to Alsace, although it's important not to go wiki-stalking - there will be other editors who will be looking after Alsace in the same way you're keeping an eye on the SimCity pages. Let me know if the IP comes back for more POV edits in the SimCity pages.
Actually, I reverted the changes and suggested he discuss them before overhauling the entire article from his own perspective. We'll see how this pans out! The Rambling Man 08:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Secondly, good to see you're getting into new page patrolling and heading back to WP:RFA. It'd be great if you could focus on getting SimCity 4 up to GA, shouldn't be toooo hard.... Let me know if I can help. The Rambling Man 07:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey, TRM. Glad to see you are happy with what I am doing. Yeah, I am trying not to be a WikiStalker - I have left it to others to revert the changes he makes in other articles, though I can still keep an eye on him! He never responded to the 3rr warning - though he has stopped editing SimCity articles, so it might have worked. I will keep an eye on AFD, new page page and RFA - as well as also start implementing changes to the SimCity 4 article. Camaron1 | Chris 12:02, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Great. Let me know when you think you're done with SimCity 4 and I'll give you the harshest of harsh reviews possible! The Rambling Man 12:07, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Update of 17 August 2007

Thought I would check-in now to keep you updated:

  • I am continuing to do work with PROD, AFD, Recent Changes Patrol and New Pages Patrol - which is going well.
    • Great. I'm always happy to refer myself to the policies which help make decisions here, they do change from time to time so re-reading them is always a good thing. The Rambling Man 22:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I am now watching and commenting on RFA's - though this area has not been quite as busy now than it has been in the past.
    • Yeah, it comes and goes. User:Haemo has had the most controversial RFA for a while, only because of the accusations levelled at him, but that's the way this place works. He's dealt with the considerable stress pretty well. The Rambling Man 22:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 209.244.42.97 (talk · contribs) has stopped editing articles that I am involved in - so I consider this dispute over for now. I plan to make this dispute part of my Q3 answer in an RFA.
    • Good idea to be up front with disputes, prepare diffs where you feel you handled the situations well, and, perhaps, where you didn't. Humanity works well. The Rambling Man 22:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I am starting work to get SimCity 4 to GA; I am getting some help from general users too which is great. (Adding templates can suddenly increase the amounts of users editing an article!) It will take a while to get to GA though.
    • Good news. Before I was promoted I made five featured articles in three months. This is really really important to be able to show that you understand how to make Wikipedia articles not just good but excellent. The Rambling Man 22:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
      • SimCity 4 does have the potential to be an FA article; after GA I will have a good go at getting the article to FA. Some things aimed at the peer review I received was aimed more at getting the article to FA anyway. Camaron1 | Chris 20:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The article Simtropolis, one I have done quite a lot to try and repair, was deleted after an AFD. Though it shouldn't matter my main-space edit count took a battering going from about 500 to 480. I get the impression the article will come back eventually - if it does I can recover these "lost" edits by asking for article history recover at Deletion Review. Camaron1 | Chris 18:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Forget editcountitis. Just keep making good, positive contributions. Admin actions don't contribute either and when I checked it turned out I made about 3000 in two months. Oh well... It's quality that counts. The Rambling Man 22:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
      • People say "Forget editcountitis" all the time at RFA, good advice, but it is still the favored focus of some at RFA. I would probably have to wait at least another year to please everyone in that department! Fortunately to pass RFA I only need to convince the majority. Camaron1 | Chris 20:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)