User:Daniel/Sandbox/1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Nomination by Daniel
Dihydrogen Monoxide, or Alex, has been on Wikimedia since August 15, 2006—approaching two years now. Upon reflection, there can be no doubt that there have been ups and downs during this period. I ask not that you fixate yourself on the very distant past, but rather consider the most important question: has the development of this user since their last RfA, and in recent periods generally, demonstrated that this user has a sufficient level of understanding, experience, and cluefullness, to be a good administrator?
I would like to give this statement some depth, because of how critical I feel it is. Excluding his first RfA when he was very new, Alex's last three RfA's have all been unsuccessful due to concerns other than inexperience. It may surprise you to learn that I was neutral leaning oppose in two of these. I do not think Alex would have made a good administrator a year-or-so ago. I do not think he would have made a good administrator seven months. However, this is not the most important factor in participation in this discussion. We all make mistakes. Some of us learn from our mistakes; some don't. The former are given a chance at RfA, the latter aren't. Many Wikipedians do some questionable things when they're new here; some never stop, but some mature before our eyes and turn out to be fantastic Wikipedians. I certainly did my fair share of silly things, but I hope that I came out the other end of the pipe in reasonable shape. The reason why juvenile criminal records are sealed (in the real world) is because people new to society make mistakes, and we don't want to ruin their lives; I cannot understand why such a principle would not extend onto Wikipedia, albeit in the most general of forms.
Formerly Giggy, now Dihydrogen Monoxide, I have followed Alex's development on Wikipedia with great interest. He is a surprisingly-well rounded contributor, who has demonstrated experience in many areas of Wikipedia. He has been a substantial contributor to 10 
Featured Articles, 25 
Good Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Portal, 2 
Featured Topics, and 11 
DYK's. He maintains a list of his contributions at User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Articles, which may be of interest. That's not a half-bad effort by any standard. What's more important, though, is in the creation of these articles, lists and portals, Alex frequently collaborated and interacted with others (myself included). He addressed concerns about the articles, sought input on improving them, and then sought to articulate his viewpoints in traversing the featured article process—not an easy thing to do—and has come out as successful ten times. His very positive Good Article reviews are only an extension of this skill he has developed.
"So what? He writes articles", you say. "That doesn't make him qualified for adminship by itself". True—although administrators should have experience in mainspace to be able to deal with content disputes effectively (I saw a good analogy to how a department is generally a former department employee, simply because they understand how the department work)—they also need to be well-versed in policy, have a positive history of interaction with Wikipedians outside of a content venue, and have overall good judgement and experience. Alex has all three, as any cursory check of his contributions will show you. He is friendly, welcoming, happy to assist new users with questions, and best of all, he does everything with a laugh and isn’t overly-serious about anything, yet knows the time and place for being respectful and reserved. The latter has been the most stark improvement—there were certainly concerns about his judgement and questionable acts of non-seriousness earlier in his time at Wikipedia, but I'm confident that Alex has learnt from what was said about them by others, has taken the criticism to heart, and is a better Wikipedian for it.
So, what experience does Alex have in such tasks? Well, probably most impressive is the fact that he is an administrator and bureaucrat at the Wikimedia Commons. His userpage can be seen here; he is one of only nine total bureaucrats, of whom seven are active (both at the time of writing). He is also a recently-appointed member of the Bots Approval Group, and has in many respects been offering a "non-bot-operator" opinion that was so craved by the community. He has, to date, performed both his Commons and BAG roles with distinction, and I see no reason why both that won't continue, and why he wouldn't do similarily well with English Wikipedia adminship. He has had rollback rights since January 10, and has not once been approached due to misuse of it—not something which is very common these days. Furthermore, Alex was a driving member of the narrowly-unsuccessful Brisbane 2009 Wikimania bid, and I was honoured to be his proxy vote in his absence at the recent Wikimedia Australia meeting.
To quickly summarise: 10 FA's, 25 GA's, 11 DYK's, various other content contributions, helpful, calm, intelligent, bureaucrat at Wikimedia Commons, Bot Approvals Group, flawless use of rollback. Over 22,500 edits, around 600 semi-automated, 5,500 (~30%) mainspace, 5,000 (~25%) projectspace, 5,000 (~25%) usertalkspace. Alex will be, in my very humble opinion, a fantastic administrator. His assistance in areas such as image deletion, updating Did You Know, deletion discussions, and general maintenance, will be a clear benefit to Wikipedia. So, I respectfully ask that you reflect on the question I posed to you, the reader, at the top of this RfA, and on the following statement by Denis Waitley: Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience. Please, dwell not on the distant past, but reflect on the intermediate time period, and the relative improvement. There is no doubt in my mind that Dihydrogen Monoxide, based on my observations over a period of around a year and a half, has improved to a point where he will be a fantastic administrator, and someone who I feel I can trust with the extra tools to do a good job. I truly hope you agree.
