Wikipedia:Editor review/Gary King

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[edit] Gary King

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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Gary King (talk · contribs) I'd like to be reviewed because after running and failing at WP:RFA with Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gary King, I learned that there were several things I was doing incorrectly. I would like to know if I have improved since then or if there is still a long way to go before I become a competent editor. Gary King (talk) 04:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Reviews

I noticed that you were here when I was looking at the other reviewees, so I thought I'd review you.

  • WP:AIV I'm impressed that you've taken it a lot slower, and that you are able to comment on premature reports. This for example and this is what AIV likes to see. Obviously you can't go around blocking people with only two edits. I suggest, when the user has been removed from the list, you give the nominator the {{subst:uw-aiv}} template informing them when it is and is not appropriate to block the user.
  • Maturity concerns A key factor in RfA. I'm very pleased that you now have two featured articles, and that Facebook is well on the way. Premature nominations are a sign that you want it to get featured quick, and also gives the impression that you care more about its effect on an RfA rather than wanting to improve the encyclopedia. Furthermore, support voting at FAC because of an RfA, and blitzing AfD was also a big concern. So in that regard I would say you've dramatically improved.

That said, the behaviour at the RfA was a bit of a concern for me. When people started opposing because of the AIV, you suddenly said that you just weren't going to work there. Instead of responding to criticism it looked as though you were just trying to satisfy the opposers so you could get the tools. However, you've been taking things a lot slower, so I'm sure that won't happen at your next attempt. :)

  • WP:RPP Meh, as always, no concerns!Except for the health of the administrators!!
  • CAT:CSD In general, pretty good. I was a bit concerned by this tagging, so I hope you read the link that was provided about Commons tagging. That said, I've gone through about 3000 of your contributions and all your speedies have redlinks, so I'm impressed!
  • Trust issues Eek. I went on holiday the morning that your request was opened, so I left my support and then left. I was quite surprised to see that it was closed when I came back. The biggest concern for me is the use of an automated bot which you lied about. I know you eventually admitted it but that is a major downfall that will require a long time to mend. I don't know when you're next planning to run at RfA, but I would personally hold off for a few months (in general, anyway, it's not a good idea to re-run for about three months). It's great to see that you're not involved in anything like that now, but a potentially trigger-happy admin is not something that will help an RfA. But you've slowed down now so that's great.

So, really excellent work at GA, FA, FT and FL! Solid article building is definitely something in which you don't need to slow down. From what I've seen of you, and a random look at your contribs from the RfA to today, I see no problems with civility, and you assume good faith which is always a bonus. Anyway, keep up the good work! PeterSymonds | talk 05:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, but the mention about the supposed bot I was running was really scathing. I never 'admitted' that I was running a bot, and still stand by that. It was a script I wrote that made it easier for me to add categories to articles, so it was never an automated bot, and so when you say I lied about it, that is simply untrue. It was my own fault for adding categories too quickly. If it makes anyone feel better, I would be happy to deliver the code I used for that incident, but personally, I wish I could put that behind me. If you check my history on Wikipedia, I did nothing productive until after that event; I would consider the promotion of my first Featured list to be the real beginning of my Wikipedia career. Gary King (talk) 06:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
My big, big mistake, I misread a sentence on the original RfA which led me to believe that he'd admitted to using a bot after denying it. PeterSymonds | talk 06:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do you care what others think? Why must you get feedback on what you're doing? What are you trying to achieve - being an admin? Why? Is there anything on Wikipedia you would do as an admin that you wouldn't or couldn't do in the state you're in now? I see a lot of your articles on the GA nominations page - have you done all that work because you want to be an admin? Is your own interest and passion not the driving force behind the articles you seek to improve? How will achieving being an admin improve your skills in writing and adding content to articles? --Moni3 (talk) 15:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Moonriddengirl

Hi, Gary. :) My primary concern in your RfA was CSD tagging, so that's where I'm focusing. I see you've requested feedback from another editors, and I will leave other concerns to them unless you request otherwise. Most of what I see looks good, but I would like to reinforce my points from your RfA about the speed of tagging, and I also have a question about your tagging of an article as "nonsense".

I see two more cases where you've tagged articles for WP:CSD#A1 within a minute or two of creation within the past couple of weeks. One of these cases, Dani gets Zack sushi, is perhaps not much of a concern. The contents were "Dani gets up and grabs the sushi. He also gets the soy sauce. Zack eats this - maybe not all of it but definitely some of it. www.sushi.com.ca GO LEAFS GO!" I'd have probably still given it some time, in case the editor's next step was to add the lead "Dani gets Zack Sushi was the award-winning 13th episode of Zimbabwe's most popular t.v. series, Dani and Zack", but the odds of that are pretty slim. In the second case, though, Frank Lee Pillar Jr., the contents at time of tagging were "The Backyard Ninjas".

Why do I think it's a bad idea to tag that for A1 the minute after creation? Well, as set out at WP:CSD, creators do create articles over a series of edits, and new creators are not always aware how swiftly their edits will be scrutinized. The first point here is that we don't want to bite contributors, and we particularly need to usher new contributors into the Wikipedia environment carefully. Some of them are skittish. :) When an article is tagged A1 (or A3) immediately after creation and then is not edited again, we can't know if a contributor who had intended to develop it was instead scared away. Seeing that content, I would myself doubt that it was going anywhere productive (although we can't be sure; the next edit might be "Frank Lee Pillar Jr. is a New York attorney whose efforts to combat violence on youtube have been extensively documented in The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN"), but that leads to my second point: if they are planning to develop the article further, we may miss an opportunity to teach them what they really need to know about contributing. In this case, the author did not return for many hours. When s/he did, he dropped a finished article under a new title, The Backyard Ninjas. This was quite properly deleted by A7. But it seems that what this author really needed to have explained was WP:WEB.

I'd like to encourage you to consider sitting on A1 and A3 for a bit when you run into them. If they've just been created, give the creator a little bit of time to advance the article. (I keep them open in a tab and check back periodically.) It would even be preferable to drop a {{context}} tag on the article to give them a clue rather than tagging for deletion too soon. (Not surprisingly, contributors regard deletion & the application of deletion tags as hostile and scary acts. When you do become an admin, you're probably going to get to hear all about it from them.) There's no rush to clear out incomplete articles. G10 & G12 are our most urgent deletion needs, obviously. I don't advocate letting other types hang out forever (or I wouldn't spend so much time doing speedies!), but giving them an hour or so to develop doesn't hurt anything. :)

Now, this is one where I'd have to ask you what happened: BC^joker. You tagged this as nonsense. Maybe it was. It certainly has some suspicious characteristics in it, but I don't know, because I don't read Russian. If you do, then the tag may have been perfectly appropriate. (It started "Кто такой? BC^joker - IRC bot, сделанный на основе популярной программы mIRC, позволяющей писать интересные программы на языке mIRCScript. Бот создан в ... году одним из основателей игрового клана BlackCrystal, BC^miami." I have to ask because the criterion specifically excludes "material not in English". I suspect, based on the format, that it may have been spam, and the hash that they hand out at freetranslation.com seems to confirm that. If you read Russian and you know that the article was nonsense, then the tag may have been appropriate. If you do not, then you should follow the typical procedure for dealing with non-English articles of tagging them {{notenglish}} and listing them as the steps on that template set out at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation. You can also leave a note for the author, {{UE}}, advising that we can only use English language articles here. So, if it was nonsense, and you know it because you can read it, well done. :) If it wasn't, or you can't, then you may want to re-read some of the criteria, at least the ones you may not be sure how to apply. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by DGG

  • This is on a different topic: article creation. I note that you sometimes quickly create a considerable number of ministub articles without adding material that really shows them to be notable. I am referring to Leonard Development Group . Whitewater Group , Rapid Enterpises Intec Systems, SLR Systems Consumers Software -- all small computer companies, acquired by major companies, in the $1- #20 million dollar range, without any particularly notable products. A number of similar articles you redirected to the acquiring company. I wan tto expand our coverage of corporations also, but I do not seethe point of these. The ones listed are in my opinion valid A7s.
  • with respect to CSDs, I don;'t find enough new material.
  • most problematically, I see very little actual discussion in the WT space except for featured lists. These are the places where one acquires knowledge of policy & demonstrates it.
  • Most of the article work is wikignoming. You need to branch out, and take your time. go slower and do bigger things both in working on articles, and in participating in a major way in discussions . Do less small stuff and learn about the major issues here. And do it for a few months more at least. DGG (talk) 18:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Dlohcierekim

Thanks for the opportunity to review your edits. Looks like you've already received valuable feedback from people I respect greatly.

CSD and new page patrolling I need to echo and add my own bit to what Moonridden girl said about CSD's. The first article I created was deleted speedily because I'd the temerity to create a blank article. (I've been composing texts on computers since like 1986. My practice was to save files on creation. That was bad in the context of Wikipedia, where empty articles are subject to speedy deletion.) The feed back I got felt like a slap in the face. I'm a miserable SOB in real life, so was undeterred. Pissed, but undeterred. I can see where such an experience could run a new editor off.

So I try to make my first edit to a new users talk page a {{{subst:welcomeg}}}. If a deletion notice or edit warning is also coming, it takes some of the sting out. I know this because I received a {{{welcome}}} with a {{{test2}}} when I was very new. Welcoming is important because it gives excessively Bold editors one more opportunity to read the policies and guidelines. It also buys time.

I don't need to tell you about the feeling of pressure to check new articles quickly. Do it too quickly though, and you're tagging articles for "hasty deletion" and/or biting newbies. I go through the new articles on RCPatrol and lay a welcome on the creators. I do about 15 - 20 of these at a time. Only then do I look at their contribs. By this time, they've had a few minutes to improve their articles. Others may have checked and tagged the articles ahead of me. That's the opportunity to see if I agree with any tagging or editing that's been done.

Don't know if your already doing this, but I go ahead and apply stub and category tags as needed, as well as appropriate wikiproject templates on the talk pages. This helps bring the article to the attention of the editors having an interest in the article's genre. I also apply any needed maintenance tags.

I'm always glad to see speedy deletion notices on user talk pages. Communication is very important. I'd like to see more. I am pleased that I don't see a declined speedies. That suggests you have a good understanding of the CSD criteria. Some of us are using "nonsense" as a shortcut for articles we believe will snow close as delete. It is better to PROD, and hope for improvement. I also Google search for the subject and keywords to try to find sources and identify the subject. Don't know if you are already doing this. That's how I found that Eunice is a genus of worm, and that the article was not an attack page. Also, if you find a foreign language article that you can read and can tell it meets CSD criteria, be sure to mention that in the edit summary. Also, mangled translations are an opportunity to improve an article. It is better to improve than to tag for CSD.

AfD Be careful of "Google count" based rationales like "very few websites that mention the term". It is the quality rather than the number of hits that is important. "Unable to locate reliable sources," is right on the money, though. The argument to keep "laptop sleeve" would have been stronger with Google news hits. I'm happy to say I did not see any real problems with your AfD's, but you should seek feedback from someone else on that.

Article building I see where you added a lot of {{{clear}}} tags to articles. I see where you have a number of Good and Featured articles on your user page. Be sure that as many edits as possible are substantial. I share some of DGG's concerns about article creation and editing. I'm not much of a major editor myself-- more a stub creator. A stub should contain a lead that explains how the subject is notable and should contain verifiable, reliable sources. It should have all of the categories that are appropriate and have a correct stub tag. Talk pages should have Wikiproject templates so that other editors can find and improve new articles. I know how hard it can be to find subjects and sources. As an alternative to creating new articles, you can tackle the backlogs an articles for cleanup and articles in need of sources. There are many stubs in need of expansion.

AIV Peter Symonds said you are better with AIV. Always remember that sufficient warnings can achieve our goal of stopping vandals. Blocking should only be a last resort used after an editor has clearly indicated an intent to harm the project.

Dispute resolution Admin activities inevitably lead one into conflict. Even if one has so far been able to avoid conflict, one should have a thorough knowledge of what to do. On your prior RfA, you showed that you'd used good judgment by seeking help from an admin in dealing with an unresponsive editor. You may wind up being the admin called in to help. You need to be able to articulate understanding of the dispute resolution process.

Many of the answers on your last RfA showed a good knowledge of policy. Hopefully, you can apply the advice here to improve even more. Thanks again for asking me to review your edits. I hope this has been helpful. Cheers, and happy editing. Dlohcierekim 03:35, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it was indeed a very helpful review and I will take all of it to heart. Everyone seems to be bringing up my CSDs a lot, when in fact I've slowed down a lot in WP:NPP recently because I prefer to work on well-established articles, which is also where I end up finding vandals and therefore making visits to WP:AIV and WP:RPP. Gary King (talk) 04:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

Comments

Questions

  1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
    I am pleased with all of my article contributions, which can be found at User:Gary King#Successful nominations. I am especially pleased with my two Featured Topics, two Featured Articles, ten Featured Lists, 28 Good Articles, and 337 articles that I created. I also help out at WP:AIV and WP:RPP; at AIV, I comment on submissions that have been submitted incorrectly, such as users who have not been warned sufficiently or users who are not actually performing vandalism. At WP:RPP, I have submitted several articles for temporary semi-protection requests. I have also spent time working on several templates because of my background as a computer programmer and I do a lot of wikignoming, which is when I usually format references and other minor issues with articles that I enjoy reading but do not have time to improve to GA or FA.
Besides the monotony of FTs, FAs, FLs, and GAs, I have also restarted WikiProject Economics and yesterday spearheaded an effort to create the first Featured Article generated from the project (the project was just an assessment machine that assessed articles under the project's scope since its existence), at Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive. Gary King (talk) 04:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  1. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
    I rarely am involved in a conflict with another editor because of what I would consider a calm demeanor to any situation that I am involved in. Most, if not all, of the conflicts that have been involved in were eventually defused because they started off as misunderstandings or minor disagreements. Gary King (talk) 04:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Pascal.Tesson

I think it's great that you're a very active editor. But there's a downside to this: you get involved in so many things at such a frenzied pace that many times you don't take the time to do things right. I still believe that the incident of the categorization bot is a strong indication that you're unwilling to patiently fix your mistakes. For an other example, look at your current participation in WP:FAC: you've commented at almost each nomination. In a way this is great: comments are what FAC is about. On the other hand, there's little depth in your comments and no effort made to help fix these problems. Four days ago, you went on a request-for-semi-protection spree. I think you should focus on one thing at a time and make sure you do it right. (I have another minor side comment which I'll email if you're interested because it doesn't really belong on-wiki.) Pascal.Tesson (talk) 17:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Judgesurreal777

Brief thought for you. Decide right now if you want to be an administrator or not, because of you want to be one, be really conciliatory toward everyone, no matter how absurd their behavior, because they will only care about how you behave. Don't yell, argue, or insult people, no matter how badly they behave, and you will be rewarded. On the other hand, if you don't ever want to be, like me, just make sure you never do anything that would get you taken to the arbcom board :) You have much more license to voice your actual mind and tell people if they are being jerks or things like that. It's two different paths, and if you go down the latter path, its probably hard to turn around and become an admin, so think about that. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 17:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Have this

This is a battery of questions I've found useful in exploring admin candidates's knowledge and understanding. Cheers, Dlohcierekim's sock (talk) 04:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Optional questions from User:Dlohcierekim that he lifted form User:Benon who got them from Tawker, JoshuaZ, Rob Church, NSLE. They are 100% optional but may help myself or other voters decide. Some of these are not specifically related to your areas of interest. If I have already voted please feel free to ignore these questions though other editors might find them to be of use. You can also remove the questions you don't want to touch if you like.

4. You find out that an editor, who's well-known and liked in the community, has been using sockpuppets abusively. What would you do?
A-
5. An editor asks you to mediate in a dispute that has gone from being a content dispute to an edit war (but not necessarily a revert war), with hostile language in edit summaries (that are not personal attacks). One involved party welcomes the involvement of an admin, but the other seems to ignore you. They have both rejected WP:RFC as they do not think it would solve anything. Just as you are about to approach the user ignoring you, another admin blocks them both for edit warring and sends the case to WP:RFAR as a third party. Would you respect the other admin's decisions, or would you continue to engage in conversation (over email or IRC) and submit a comment/statement to the RFAR? Let's say the ArbCom rejects the case. What would you do then?
A-
6. If you could change any one thing about Wikipedia what would it be?
A-
7. Under what circumstances would you indefinitely block a user without any prior direction from Arb Com?
A-
8. Suppose you are closing an AfD where it would be keep if one counted certain votes that you suspect are sockpuppets/meatpuppets and would be delete otherwise. The RCU returns inconclusive, what do you do? Is your answer any different if the two possibilities are between no consensus and delete?
A-
9. Do you believe there is a minimum number of people who need to express their opinions in order to reasonably close an AfD? If so, what is that number? What about RfDs and CfDs?
A-
10. At times, administrators have experienced, or have been close to burnout due to a mixture of stress and conflict inherent in a collaborative web site of this nature. Do you feel able to justify yourself under pressure, and to not permit stress to become overwhelming and cause undesirable or confused behaviour?
A-
11. Why do you want to be an administrator?
A
Thanks, I will take a look at these questions. When I find the time, I will provide a proper answer to each one, although if I ever do become an administrator, any administrative actions that I take would be related to content contributions one way or another. Gary King (talk) 06:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Warren

Frankly, I'm concerned by changes like this one to the Microsoft Windows article. First of all, "cl" is not a good edit summary when adding completely new content to the encyclopedia. It just isn't. Any editor with tens of thousands of edits should know that the real purpose of edit summaries is to help other editors understand what the heck it is you're doing, and if necessary, why. Second, the specific content added suggests that Gary King is not particularily interested in building coherent articles. Why would companies that Microsoft has acquired need to be mentioned in the lead section for an article about Microsoft Windows? What's the logical, rational thinking behind this? We already have an article, List of acquisitions by Microsoft to list such things. The two companies mentioned as acquisition targets have no bearing on Windows in and of itself.

It should be made very clear that edits like this damage the quality of the encyclopedia, and are certainly not welcome. -/- Warren 11:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I better close this Editor Review, as it seems that most of the more recent reviews here are just people who encountered a few of my earlier edits and aren't interested in looking at my more recent ones? Gary King (talk) 14:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.