Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Amalas

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for adminship. Please do not modify it.

[edit] Amalas

Final (46/1/2) Ended 02:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Amalas (talk • contribs) – It's my pleasure to nominate this user for adminship. Amalas has been contributing since the begining of April this year, has made over 18,000 edits, and in addition to the proverbial metric truckload of stub-sorting work, has helped out immensely on the 'janitorial' side of Wikipedia:Wikiproject stub sorting and Wikipedia:stub types for deletion, doing non-admin closures, and an enormous amount of archiving and general cleaning up after other people's messes. WP:SFD doesn't have a lot of admins active in closing discussions, and what's more, those that are, are often also those arguing on one or other side of the debate: so further such assistance is very welcome. Furthermore, I've noticed on a couple of occasions discussions closed by Amalas (on a perfectly reasonable basis) but awaiting admin completion, have been reverted by users unhappy with the outcome; so I think it would make simply sense for someone already doing the work, to have the tools to complete the task. (In some cases such actions also needlessly clog the job queue if repeatedly done and undone.) Let me confess to a degree of unoriginality here: Crzrussian offered to nominate, but as he's now on wikibreak, I thought it was better not to leave the (pre-)nominee hanging; and besides which, it prompted me to recall my own intentions to do so. At the risk of straying into "beans" territory, I imagine that this user's profile may be a little 'low key' for the taste of some, but I submit that by the criterion of risk:benefit, this user's enmopment ought to be a sure thing: it would be useful to the functioning of at least one small corner of Wikipedia (and likely to grow over time), and Amalas' exemplary record of helpful and uncontentious behaviour argues for extreme unlikelihood of misuse of the tools. Alai 01:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Crzrussian was going to co-nominate with me (hence the cryptic messages we've been sending back and forth), and was going to let me know when this was up and running - which he didn't, because in the end, he didn't do the nominating. I even had some comments written out ready. So therefore: Amalas has done a considerable amount of work on the stub-sorting wikiproject and has shown herself to be a conscientious, diligent, and above all friendly Wikipedian. Many of the tasks she has performed would have been eased by the admin tools. She interacts well with other editors as a glance at her talk page shows, and those of you with editcountitis might like to note that her 18000 edits include around 1000 spread between article talk and user talk spaces. I am very happy to co-nominate her for adminship. Grutness...wha? 04:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 02:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Candidate statement

I would like to go ahead and say this ahead of time, but I do not have the so-called requirement of 1 FA. In fact, I don't even have a GA. I will admit that I do not contribute much written material to the encyclopedia, but I feel that I improve the overall experience by cleaning up existing articles and make processes easier for other Wikipedians.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog and Category:Administrative backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.

A: Like Alai said, I will mainly be doing a lot of SFD closures. I would also like to get involved more in the AFD process, since it is very similar to SFD. When I first started on Wikipedia, I put a lot of {{prod}} tags on articles, so I have a fairly good idea of what should stay and what should go.

I have been closing discussions on SFD for a few months now, and I would like to take those skills over to AFD as well to assist in any backlogs that can and will occur there. Most of the time it is very obvious whether a stub (or an article) needs to be kept or deleted, and I would like to be able to deal with the "delete" closures as quickly as possible to reduce backlog.

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any with which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A: I am most please with the templates I have created to aid in the closure process of the Stub Sorting Proposals and Discoveries pages: {{sfp create}}, {{sfp nocreate}}, {{sfdisc sfd}}, {{sfdisc list}}, etc. I dislike large backlogs on these pages and I felt that by creating color coded templates, it would make things easier for people to know what to do with a discussion once it had been completed.

As I said in my statement, I don't contribute a lot of material, but I feel that my process improvements have really benefited others. I've cleared out a ton of backlog from the discoveries page, but I have balked on clearing out more, because most of it needs to be sent to SFD. I am hesitant to put a ton of things on SFD, knowing that they will sit there, waiting for someone to delete them. Having the tools to do this myself would reduce the time things sit on SFD in addition to clearing out more backlog from the Discoveries page.

3. 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?

A: In my early days, before I found WP:WSS, I dabbled a bit in the Mediation Cabal and 3rd Opinion. I ended up getting too drawn into the cases and I didn't end up helping that much. Now, I try to stay away from controversial debates and instead focus my energies on things that are simple, but just aren't getting done.

I think what I am trying to say here is that mediation is not one of my stronger skills. When closing SFDs, I will always try to determine consensus (most of the time it's a clear runaway), and if I can't determine consensus, I will usually leave the SFD alone. I'd rather deal with a clear-cut consensus quickly, getting it out of the way and taken care of. I don't feel that any users have caused me stress lately, but if it happens, I usually step away from WP for a couple hours and come back to the situation with a clear head.

Optional Question from Yanksox

4. Can you state specifically how you will use the sysop tools? In other words: Can you elaborate on what tools you will mainly use? Can you also expand on how and why you would use them, also taking into account your understanding of the tools. Sorry if the question is wrapped up in itself.

A: The tool I would use most often is simply the ability to delete pages. I will spend most of my time cleaning up after WP:SFD, but I will probably also branch out to WP:AFD, WP:TFD, WP:MFD, etc. Right now, I already close SFD discussions that have clear consensus, so as an admin, I will be able to go that extra step to actually delete the things that were decided to be deleted.

Questions from Avriette:

5. Could you elaborate on how you would have been a more effective stub-sorter, archivist, etc.?

A: Like I said before, I already close almost all the discussions on SFD. I also orphan stubs that will need to be deleted. The next step before archiving the discussion is to actually deleting the template/category. That's the only thing I can't do. Instead of bugging an admin to do it for me and waiting for them to do it, I could complete the process (of which I am already doing most of) by myself.

6. You said

I would like to be able to deal with the "delete" closures as quickly as possible to reduce backlog

Do you feel that administrative processes need to move as quickly as possible? If so, why? If not, why?

A: I personally do not like large amounts of items left in the "old business" section of a page. If it's old, then deal with it. I feel that once a decision has been made, the solution should be executed right away, not the next day or the next week, etc.

7a. What are your largest areas of interest in the main namespace?

A: My interests are kind of over the place: Buffy/Angel, sociology, gaming, movies.

7b. If you were to instantiate a featured article today, what do you suppose it might be?

A: I would probably finally kick the Killobyte article into decent shape. It's been on the back burner for a long time, but I haven't gotten around to it.

General comments

• See Amalas's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.

Discussion

Support

1. Support Per nom, but could you please expand your answers a little bit more --Agεθ020 (ΔT • ФC) 02:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

   I have expanded my answers a bit. Let me know if you need any more information about something in particular. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 02:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

2. Yes, please, with a cherry on top. I missed my chance - but Alai is a better nominator, anyway. Excellent candidate. Thoughtful and uncontroversial. She has a wealth of experience and a narrow but well-defined needs for admin tools. No exposure to vandal-fighting etc. carries zero concern with this person because she is know for her good demeanor and there is no risk of misuse of tools whatsoever. - crz crztalk 02:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
3. Strong support as nominator. Alai 02:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
4. Support per nom. Amalas has done great work on WP:WSS, where she has always been both a competent and friendly editor. It has also seemed "unnatural" to me that she couldn't close debates completely which is a real problem since the admins normally closing debates also participate in many of them. The workload at WP:WSS is often pretty big and more active admins there will be very welcome. I see no reason at all not to trust her with the mop. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 02:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
5. Support Hard worker and friendly, per nom. Wiki Warfare to Infinity 02:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
6. I'm Mailer Diablo and I approve this message! - 03:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
7. Support Have seen this candidate around and am always impressed. Clearly defined need for tools. Good luck! riana_dzasta 03:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
8. Support rawr.--Húsönd 03:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
9. Support --Terence Ong 04:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
10. Strong support as eventual co-nominator. The problems when someone goes on wikibreak half-way through these things... Grutness...wha? 04:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
11. Support Very industrious editor. I don't see the process-oriented admin tasks as too much of a challenge. (aeropagitica) 05:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
12. Support per others. No concerns here, and I particularly like the process improvement work! -- Renesis (talk) 06:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
13. Hard work on stub sorting is appreciated. Good luck with the mop. (Radiant) 09:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
14. OMG, this user definitely has a great WP experience, and 18K+ of useful edits is no less valuable contribution than 1FA. MaxSem 10:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
15. SupportDolive21 10:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
16. Support - plenty of experience, a good Wikipedian and hard worker. Amalas was actually one of the first Wikipedians I saw at work; she kind of cleaned up after me by sorting the first stubs I made! --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 11:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

    Ahem. "She" ;) ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 13:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

    I'm sorry. --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 19:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

17. Support - Looks like this editor would make a great administrator. Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 13:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
18. Support I'm not particullary wild about the response to my question, but I believe there will be no harm done by this. Yanksox 14:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
19. Support She is a hard worker and the tools will only help her in benefiting this project. ← ANAS ^Talk? 14:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
20. Support good contributor.-- danntm ^T _C 14:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
21. Support - dedicated user, doing work that needs to be done but most of us wouldn't get around to, no issues or concerns. Newyorkbrad 19:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
22. Support seems to be an excellent contributor who could use the mop. Canadian-Bacon 20:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
23. Support Bucketsofg 21:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
24. Support. Looks like a quality, process-focused candidate. Not all admins need to interact with users on a constant basis and leave messages all over talk pages. She has a knack for doing (in my view) some pretty tedious stuff; let's give her some tools to help her out. Kafziel ^Talk 21:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
25. Support - I don't normally do these and I hope I'm in good enough standing to comment, but I've seen her work at WP:WSS and she's one of the people I always assumed *was* an administrator already. Plenty of good contributions - in particular, it may seem small but the color-coded templates are great, helped clean up a very cumbersome page. Crystallina 21:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
26. Support Your stub sorting work is much appreciated. cøøkiə Ξ _(talk) 23:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
27. Support. Axl 01:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
28. Support I love editors who do boring stuff. IronDuke 04:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
29. Support per same reason as IronDuke. -Angelbo 18:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
30. Support Defintely meets requirments to beoome an administrator, and I think this user would make a terrific one. Hello32020
31. Support We need more admis willing to focus on specific areas. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 21:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
32. Support John254 01:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
33. Support. Great work! yandman 11:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
34. Support. I've seen her around at WP:WSS, and she's always making useful edits. I'm sure she will be a good admin, too. NauticaShades 23:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
35. Support A very hard-working contributor to this project. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 04:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
36. Support per above. Sharkface217 04:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
37. Support sounds like a good contributer and it would be useful to allow her to delete things rather than just closing XfD's and needing someone else to do the dirty work, especially since she is willing to do the work. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 07:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
38. good luck ;)) --dario vet ^_^ (talk) 13:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Support Bucketsofg 01:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    One per customer por favor. - crz crztalk 02:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

39. Support We need more admins. And everything looks A-OK. With > 18k edits, Give-er-the-mop^TM JungleCat Shiny!/Oohhh! 02:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
40. Support.--Madhyako Pradesh lo 12:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
41. --Rudjek 12:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
42. Support — Williamborg (Bill) 15:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
43. troppuS. thank you for answering my questions. it's my feeling that you're much more useful doing what you've been doing, rather than the too-common admin descent into LARTing users. but, i of course can't compel you to do anything. i look forward to seeing more work from you. ... aa:talk 09:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
44. Support could always use more qualified help with AfD closings... but it is a tad different than SFD in that different policies are important and you might catch a bit more flak. You don't exactly see SFD closings on DRV every day :-) But nevertheless, candidate seems fine and if this nominator trusts him, that's a good sign. --W.marsh 17:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    I think the pronoun you are looking for is "her". ;) ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 17:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Er, my bad. Further evidence that the devs need to hurry up and impliment the "Requests for CheckGender" feature we came up with on IRC. --18:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Not entirely a bad idea... =) I do mention my gender on my user page under "Amalas the person". I don't usually care about such things, but often people react differently and have different preconceived ideas depending on gender, so I try to make things as clear as possible. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 19:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

45. Support per nom. Michael 04:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

    Support per nom --Agεθ020 (ΔT • ФC) 04:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC) Oops

    Uhh, you were already the first support position. One !vote per person, please. —Doug Bell ^talk 05:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

46. Support Great user with high-quality edits. — Seadog (Talk) 13:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. oppose - lack of experience with images[1] [2] --T-rex 05:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

   And experience in working with images is absolutely essential because...? Alai 14:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

   ...because I believe that admins should have a good understanding of the second most important namespace. --T-rex 16:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

   And "understanding of" means "lots of edits in"? The only real reasons to accumulate a large number of such edits are either doing lots of image uploads, or dealing with image copyright issues; which while important, are hardly vital things for every admin to be involved in. Alai 06:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   Ok, I'll bite. Besides edits, how else is heshe to show that the has an understanding? --T-rex 16:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   "She" ;) Also, I don't see how knowledge in the Image namespace is relevant to what I would mostly be doing as an admin. As I've said, I'm most interested in the *fD processes (specifically SFD), so I wouldn't necessarily need high knowledge of images. If something were to come up involving images, I would ask another admin more familiar with that area to help out. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 17:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   (ec)It would be more useful if you were to clarify what you meant by "a good understanding" of images, and why this should be required, since you're the person to introduce this concept into the discussion, rather than me trying to second-guess you. Personally, I don't think it's required that admins have any involvement with images, because I think it's pretty much inherently unhelpful to write a "profile" for the sort of work people "ought" to be doing, if they're in fact doing useful work of some other sort. The majority of most editors' interaction with the image namespace will be using same, not editing images directly; similarly it's pretty fundamental that editors have some idea of how to use categories, but it's hardly required the admin candidates have some magic number of category namespace edits. Are you planning to oppose every RFA where the nom has less than N image edits? Have you a value in mind for N? Alai 18:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   I don't think my standards are that hard to meet. If it makes you feel any better this is nowhere near the first RfA I've opposed because of image experience --T-rex 19:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   That's hard to verify, as you haven't said what your standards are. More than 10 image edits? More than 100? More than 1000? And on the contrary, it makes me feel much worse: one oppose probably won't do Amalas any harm (touch wood), but the more diverent criteria we get on RFAs in general (opposition on the basis of lack of FA, of lack of total edits, of lack of talk pages edits, or whatever else a particular editor decides on), the more spuriously difficult it becomes to get good candidates passed who're evidently doing good work in other areas. Eventually, we end up with the net effect of "all admins have to be exhausted generalist saints" (until there's a corresponding backlash and things get easier again for a while). Alai 21:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

   Alai (and others), please forgive me for saying this so bluntly, but I have a bad feeling you risk losing that war (although I hope to God I'm wrong). I've never been interested much in RfA debates but I followed some of them a few months back and I did get a few impressions from them (just for the record, I'm not trying to refer to any user(s) in particular here, it is just a few general impressions I got watching a few of these debates). To begin with the conclusion: uniform standards do not seem to apply, with the effect that a potential candidate has next to no chance of actually guessing what yardstick he or she will be measured by. Some editors demand a FA, others demand deep knowledge about a specialized field of policy, others demand posts on the Pump / talk space / project space. Some argue that "Adminship is no big deal" and cite WP:AGF while others argue for saint-like properties plus X,000 edits and/or Y months on the project. Some argue that Adminship is not a "reward" or similar and that an RfA is not a popularity contest. However, sometimes debates did remind me too much of the latter. Feel free to call me old-fashioned, but given that we are actually talking about people using many hours of their spare time doing unpaid volunteer donkey work, isn't the qualifications for adminship approaching a rather tall order? For what it is worth; whenever I feel a need to vote on somebody's nomination, I stick to three questions 1) "do I trust that this person would act fairly if he / she becomes involved in the capacity of admin in a dispute against me?" If I can answer "yes" here (remembering AGF), the same is likely to apply towards other users. 2) "do I believe that the person in question does this project a lot more good than bad?" and 3) "do I think there is a danger in giving this person access to these tools or not?" (again: AGF applies). If I can answer "yes" to the first two questions and "no" to the third then I'm happy. As I see it, the fundamental weakness of the current system is that admin powers are tough to remove since they are not open to automatic recall or renewal. In all other walks of life, if people don't live up to a job, they are removed or replaced. This is very difficult under the current system. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 01:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Neutral Great editor, but I am worried about how she will handle dispute resolution or mediating disputes in the article namespace. Most of her edits are made using AWB or stub-sorting and I don't see that this user has had much discussion regarding articles and such. I was looking at her contributions, and I found that 99.7% (marked by VoA script) of her last 2500 edits have been marked as minor edits, and 1339 of them have been made using AWB. It's just a bit of a pet peeve when I see an excellent user who hasn't dabbed into the wonderful art of article-building. Nishkid64 03:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

   Regarding the minor edits: I am part of WikiProject Stub Sorting, and a lot of the tasks involved hundreds of tedious edits. Most of my recent edits have been updating stub templates after a decision to rename. I could probably get Alaibot to do most of that work for me, but Alai's not always around, so I take it upon myself to get that work done so that the SFD discussion can be closed quickly. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 03:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

2. Comment. I'm neutral for this one too. Basically per Nishkid64, I kind of wonders if this user will be capable of interacting with users on constant basis. 251 User talk edits (41 in own page) is way too low for a admin candidate. The article talk page edit count is not that impressive either. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 03:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

   Over 1000 of Amalas's edits are on various types of talk page - user talk, project talk, article talk - only a small proportion of admins would have that many talk page edits. I don't see any reason she should have problems relating to interaction with other users. Grutness...wha? 04:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

   She has over 850 talk page edits, with the last one being made on August 30, 2006 (3 months ago). Also, almost all of her talk page edits are as a result of tagging {{WikiProject Missouri}} on the page. Just look at [3]. Nishkid64 15:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

   Not that it makes much difference, but 858 article talk + 263 user talk + 4 template talk + 59 Wikispace talk + 50 image talk + 23 category talk = 1257 edits on the various types of talk page, as I said. She has 21 user talk edits within the last week. Grutness...wha? 09:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.