Wikipedia:Editor review/Alan.ca

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[edit] Alan.ca

Alan.ca (talk · contribs) I am considering applying for adminship, any thoughts on my edits would be greatly appreciated. Alan.ca 08:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Reviews

  • Alan has done a lot of good work. Especially in the case of Hamilton, Ontario, he took an article that was generally a mess, and cleaned it up into a worthwhile article. He's also done various work with the mediation cabal, and successfully helped disputants to negotiate a compromise in situations which could have otherwise gone out of control. He's had his past problems, as a quick look at his block log will show, but has learned from the experience, moderated his conduct in those areas, and had no issues since that one with them. He was instrumental in getting WP:CITIES back up and running into a workable project, and has done a ton of gnoming work in helping to clear out backlogs, for that project and others. (And good luck on getting all those pictures released freely!) Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

After you closed the chess openings AFD yesterday and it was reopened, I went ahead and closed it again, and the nominator reopened it again. I guess that makes us friends now. :) User:FrozenPurpleCube censured me for closing out of process, and basically had the same discussion with me as he did with you, although you handled it more judiciously. I see that you've also started closing other AFDs or relisting them in order to help out. There's some gray area regarding how far non-admins can go in closing non-deletion results. When in doubt, explain your reasoning clearly.

I think you're qualified to run for adminship. The community's standards can be exacting, and you may face some criticism for being too involved in AFDs and mediation. That's just the way RFA is: if you've ever been involved in any kind of conflict (vandals not included), somebody's going to say you were wrong and the other guy was right. That's basically what happened on that chess openings AFD. Honestly, it looked like a speedy keep/merge to me (and to you), but it stands as an out-of-process closure, and you may face some criticism for that. I glanced at one of your mediation cases from December. The discussion seemed pedantic at times (User X, you disagree with Y and agree with Z?), but I guess you managed to work out a compromised without anybody throwing pie in each other's faces.

Your work on Hamilton is admirable, and possibly worthy of WP:GA recognition. You've done some other work with a template, a WikiProject, and many other articles, and you check the backlogs. I can't think of a qualitative way for you to improve; it comes to the quantity of how much time you want to spend typing in the edit window.

I wish you good luck. YechielMan 00:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Very common. It's the philosophy of "if it's bad, let's delete them.", which in my opinion is an complete misunderstanding of WP:DP. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 00:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Mine as well; I've seen the same from Alan.ca vis-a-vis Ninjaken and Ninjato, where for several months now he's filed prods and repeated AfDs on various permutations of the article, as well as merging the far better known "ninjato" (over 127,000 Google hits) into the overwhelmingly less known "ninjaken" (fewer than 1000 Google hits). I consider seriously abusive the filing of prods and AfDs WP:V grounds on subjects I know full well are notable, when common sense would suggest taking the five minutes or less it generally requires to come up with such sources. At this point I would certainly oppose any admin nomination without some serious evidence that he has a far firmer grasp of deletion policy than currently seems to be the case. Reading his Mulroney comments, well, that was a stunner.  RGTraynor  14:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments

Questions

  1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
    I have put a great deal of effort into the Hamilton, Ontario article. Initially it was extremely long and lacking references. Snapshot before I started on the article. In experiencing what seemed to be a lack of guidance for improving city articles I made a healthy contribution to Wikiproject Cities by introducing a template that permitted article ratings and identification of work priorities. In addition, I made it a personal goal to summarily review and tag every capital city in the world as a top priority article. While I did not achieve this goal entirely on my own, I made a significant contribution. Through working as a mediator in WP:MEDCAB I have improved my own conflict resolution skills and feel a great deal of accomplishment for those parties whom I have assisted in resolving their disputes. I frequently review the Wikipedia backlog and have merged/cleared a great number of articles from the merge backlog. I have also made an effort to take photographs of local landmarks/people for articles lacking any available image. I am currently working with the legislative assembly of Ontario to get consent from every elected member of provincial parliament in the 2007 election to release their photographs under a free license.
  2. 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 experienced a great deal of conflict surrounding article prod, afd, and speedy delete proposals. At times I feel arguments are not made using policy references and the delays in clearing the backlogs are frustrating. My lesson has been that getting a second opinion and taking a break at a heated moment can go a long way in resolving a dispute. WP:MEDCAB and WP:3O can play a pivotal role in helping a frustrated individual remove the emotion from a dispute. Overall, my greatest improvement has been in finding others to consult during a dispute. Establishing a support group in the wiki community is key for any individual engaged in controversial disputes.