Wikipedia:Editor review/BigHairRef

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[edit] BigHairRef

BigHairRef (talk ยท contribs) I've been active since early 2006 under an IP and since November of the same year and now it's 18 months down the line since registering I wanted to get some idea of how I'm coming along. I'm under no impression that I'm close to any special status as I do not edit frequently enough to make it possible I just wanted to garner som idea of what I need to improve on generally (other than edit frequency or without gaps which I'm prone to) BigHairRef | Talk 08:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Reviews

[edit] Reviewed by Moonriddengirl

When I take on an editor review for somebody whose contributions I don't already know well, I enter with a bit of dread, since it can be very hard to be consistently tactful if most of what you encounter are problems. It takes very tricky wording, after all, to tell somebody, "You're doing great, aside from being rude and disruptive, labeling good faith constructive edits as vandalism and refusing to use edit summaries." :) When on the contrary I gradually discover that I'm dealing with somebody who is very good at what they're doing, I get very excited, like finding out that the mime who stopped me on the street corner is genuinely really funny. So...thanks for that. :) The downside for you is that my biggest suggestion for where you could improve would be edit frequency...and evidently that's not what you want to hear. Oh, well. I'll try to come up with something more.

Specifically, I poked and prodded at your last 1000 edits. I didn't read everything, but I popped in randomly, and I paid particular attention to your interactions with other editors, including contributions to AfD and talkpage interactions. I see good use of edit summary; have to go back quite a ways to find a missed one. I like the evidence of diligence here. Everything I see in article contributions looks good. I see good warnings for vandalism; you don't always warn when you encounter "stale" vandalism, it seems, but neither do I. It's a judgment call whether the warning for an old action will serve any benefit, given an older single isolated edit from an IP. Your AIV reports seem on.

I'm really deeply impressed with the nature and tone of your communication with other editors. I like the civility and level-headedness of your communications here (by here I mean that note and the one immediately preceding it.) I have a strong desire to applaud you for your civility and perspective in this (and the outcome speaks for itself). I didn't look at responses (since that's not the point), but I found this articulate and very thoughtful.

I don't really quite know what to say about this one, so I'll just note that your initial note was improperly formatted. In order to keep numeration in line for subsequent opposes (had there been any), comments on numbered statements need to include the # before the colons. It turned out not to be an issue, since nobody else opposed, but I have had to repair such malformatted comments on RfA before. :) I know this may have been a singular error, since your next comment was properly formatted.

The reason I don't quite know what to say about that one is because it's not exactly "the thing" to challenge an opposer on a technicality of terms, but, well.... It's not exactly a pattern of yours, and we're talking special circumstances here. I don't think it's "bitchy" behavior, as it was described, but generally it might be better to be more explicit about your response, as you were in your subsequent much longer note, addressing the deeper issue. On the other hand, you did succinctly address the deeper issue in your initial response. In any event, it seems you know it's not typical protocol already, or you wouldn't call for your own trout slapping. :) Unless you were calling for his trout slapping. I still don't really know what to say about it. So I'm moving on.

Here, I can't see that you ever answered this question, though you actively edited as recently as the next day. Not sure if there's a good reason (and there may well be; I didn't spend that much time on this small point), but, if not, then I'll just note that it's good to follow up with people who leave you talk comments and if, for some reason you can't help, to let them know why. But perhaps the issue had already been resolved before you discovered it and so there was nothing really for you to say.

Your AfD participation looks good. I wish you had time for more of it. :) Good and good--show own thought, awareness of community standards. This one was a mess. Having closed AfDs, I have no doubt that your contribution there was helpful. I'm not entirely sure of the relevance of your point here (although I had a look at the deleted history, and it is interesting that SmackBot made a mistake in dating that template, which was placed on August 2nd). For the sake of general clarity, I think it might have benefited that AfD to have expanded a little more how you felt that point was relevant in determining the notability of the article, if a month's difference in the dating of the tag is a point of concern. Also, I think you might reconsider the reasoning in this one. Re-nomination after a week is not standard and might be a misguided use of community energy, given the number of AfDs we process on any given day and the shortage of responsible contributors. In spite of those two tiny points, again, your AfD participation looks good. :)

Looking through your deleted contributions, I see good work there, too. I note in March you placed a WP:CSD#G4 tag on an article that had only previously been speedied, but I presume you know now that those are only for items deleted following XfD. I note you tagged Chinstrap with {{db-a5}}, but I don't see that you gave the creator the recommended warning, {{Db-transwiki-notice}}. Usually you do seem to notify, so I'm not sure if there was a special circumstance here. I'll just note that those warnings are very useful later in letting creators know what happened and helping them avoid subsequent deletions by filling them in on where they went wrong. In this case, the warning is particularly useful as it lets them know where to find the article they've created. As copied and pasted from the applied template, it includes links to possible new locations.

Summarizing here, I see a whole lot of good and only very small points (aside from a plea to do more) where I can make recommendations. In each case where I found something to question, I see nothing to indicate a pattern of problem, and it's quite possible that each of these represents a single instance of mistake such as anyone might inadvertently make (e.g. the formatting error on the AfD) or non-transparent good judgment (again, I don't know why you didn't leave a notice with that CSD. For all I know, the editor had e-mailed you to ask you to tag it). I hope I was able to find something to comment on that might prove useful to you in general. I also hope you find opportunity to do more at AfD as I know we need more of your kind of contribution there. But the amount of time you have on Wiki and where you can best put it is, of course, something you'd know better than I. From what I can see, Wikipedia is the better off for whatever time you have to offer. :) Good work. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Questions

  1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
    I would have to say generally I have been most pleased with actions against vandalism, both using tools and manually when I was less experienced. My contributions are not limited to removing vandalism though, for a while ealrier last year I was pleased with my reviews under WP:GA and edits to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. When the article was going through its (first I think) FAC I felt that I made some material improvements to the article although at the time the atricle had been somewhat abandoned by its regular editors and I was unable to raise the article by myself. SInce then I feel that quite a large portion of the foundations I laid have been sucssefully built upon. I am also pleased with some plot summaries I have helped create. The one that springs to mind most is the original summary for The Shakespeare Code, substantial portions of which still remain (albeit not exactly as initially written).
  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?
    Given the realtively low amount of substantially encyclopedic* edits I have made, I don't feel I have ever been in any conflicts in the past. Others may hold different views and have felt I was in conflict with them, but in such circumstances (as with a couple of possible situations I'm in now) I feel that once I have made my initial point I leave the rest of any matters to regular contributors to articles in the category they're in (generally) or to people who patrol the XfD *Just to clarify by this I mean the majority of my non reversion edits have been copyediting, wikifying, correcting spellings etc. BigHairRef | Talk 08:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)