Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Schutz

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

Contents

[edit] Schutz

(48/1/0); Scheduled to end 21:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC). Nomination successful. --Deskana (banana) 21:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Schutz (talk · contribs) - Long-time user (over 3 years, over 5,800 edits), and bot-master extrordinaire. I've been working with Schutz for a while now in connection with one of the functions of his bot. He has appeared to be level headed and calm in all the dealings that I have had with him. I'll let him express any general reasons that he feels he could make use of the admin powers, but they key one that lead to this nomination has to do with a current expansion of Zorglbot's Shortpages reporting. The expansion is currently in Beta-testing over on the Tools server, and one potential addition would be an editable control page to control certain of it's descisions. As this would control the bot, it would likely be best if the control page was permenently protected to prevent any vandals causing any havok with the bot. But when the bot's owner is not an admin, this complicates things. But if the owner becomes an admin the issue becomes moot. So if nothing else, granting Schutz the admin bit will make this aspect of the Zorglbot expansion much simpler. And I'll leave it to Schutz to explain other reasons that he thinks that he should be entrusted with the mop & bucket. —TexasAndroid 13:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept, thank you ! Schutz 21:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. You may wish to answer the following optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?
A: The first time someone suggested to nominate me, I said no because there was no 'job' I was doing which really required admin tools (and also because I suspect the person partly suggested this as a polite reply because I had just asked him if he would be interested by an adminship nomination :-). In the meantime, as TexasAndroid mentioned, I have spent quite a bit of time working on the list of shortpages both as a programmer and user. TexasAndroid already explained how I could use admin tools as the owner of the tool; on the user/housekeeping side, the work includes some reverting, a bit of listing at WP:RFD and WP:AFD, but mainly, a LOT of tagging for speedy deletion. Along with my other tool that runs on the toolserver and looks for broken redirects (see [1]), I have tagged manually more than 1000 articles for speedy deletion, with only a handful that were not deleted in the end. So obviously, speedy deletions would be the first admin work that I would do — both deleting obvious candidates directly, and trying to reduce the backlog when needed. I am also likely to get into the business of transfering more images to commons and tagging them for deletion, in particular because I just received permission to use under free licence a bunch of images that were previously under fair use (see my answer to question 2). Except for these tasks, I don't have any plan of what else I would want to do in the future — but I have already enough to keep an admin busy full-time :-)
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I have contributed to (and nominated as featured article) article TGV, but since I was not the main contributor, it is not what I would consider "my" best contribution. There are four articles for which I am one of the main contributors that are my favourites at the moment, and this is because all of them have become (to the best of my knowledge) one of the best sources of information available on the topic. The first three (roughly in decreasing order of quality) are TeX, Simpson's paradox and Pie chart. None of them is ready for WP:FA, but I know I can bring them there. For all three articles, I have spent a lot of time making sure that they were well-sourced (after reading most of the references, I believe that we currently have the most important references on all three topics), and I am quite happy with the results ! Pie chart, in particular, has been cited a couple of times on webpages and blogs as a good reference on the topic. But my favourite article is a short one that I don't see becoming FA anytime soon, Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno. Before this article was created, pages Switzerland and Talk:Switzerland would regularly see people asking questions about the motto of Switzerland, swearing that they knew there was none, and/or removing it from the page. I started looking for references, including real-life letter writing, asking permissions for images, etc, etc, and the results was the creation, with User:Lupo, of this article which is well sourced and summarises a topic for which there is no easy-to-obtain reference. Since then, we've only had to point people to the article and had no more comments. To me, this exemplifies the best of Wikipedia: a collaborative work, which summarises the topic adequately, and, last but not least, that people believe not just because the page looks good, but because they can check the sources by themselves. I should probably also mention List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date of election; I was planning to propose this article as a featured list, but did not manage to finish the work because the more recent images were copyrighted. Just today, I received permission to use all the photos under a free licence, and will continue (and hopefully finish) this task very soon.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I don't think I have had any real conflict in the past. Most of the topics I deal with are not really controversial, which probably helps a little bit. Going through my talk page (which I should really archive at some point...), the most "heated" discussion I can find is this one; we were running a bit in circles, but it remained level-headed (and I see another discussion with the same user the next day without any problem). Also, while I said above that I enjoy convincing other people of something using well-referenced sources, it means that I am happy to be convinced that I am wrong if the right sources are found; I remember this discussion, where I did not agree with the other participants, but got convinced after some civilised discussion and the presentation of good sources, while a similar discussion involving different editors was yielding an edit war. Of course, I realise that not all discussions can be solved this way; knowing myself, the first thing to do if I have to deal with such a problem is to leave some distance between my fingers and the keyboard (sometimes easier said than done so, in the worst case, revert what I just wrote, and then leave the computer alone), and come back later — this being Wikipedia, the archived discussion will still be there for me to contribute.
If I may point out, the link to your most heated discussion appears to have been removed/archived and can't be viewed directly. -WarthogDemon 21:44, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Corrected on the talk page, thanks (a double space rendered the link useless). Schutz 21:51, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Question from L

4. Looking at you on wannbe-kate, I noticed that you have a tendency to edit much more some months than others. Why is this, and would you be open to having your adminship withdrawn if you fell into an editing lull again, or left the project for a month or longer? In addition, what are your opinions on adminship renewal/removal proposals, such as listed in WP:RFDA?
I do not think its fair to ask the candidate to make a campaign promise like this, even if indirectly. Navou banter 03:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
This is the place for the candidate's opinion, not your own. Though adminship isn't fair either- you do a bunch of extra work, get treated much worse, and don't get any real benefits for it. If fairness is an issue, the mop isn't for you --Lucid
Well, this is Wikipedia, and since we have to withhold our two cents in the main namespace, it's nearly impossible to keep it out of the project space.  ;) Anyway, I'm not sure if the question is really a question, per se; as Navou pointed out, it's sort of a request for a promise. There's the (sort of) established voluntary process for admin recall, which maybe Schutz would be accepting of, but asking a nominee to accept an "involuntary withdraw" condition on their adminship seems odd and unnecessary (if not cruel and unusual). user:j 05:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Why is this is easy: real life. This can mean either not much free time, or simply travelling and being away from a computer. There is not much one can do about it; I keep a growing TODO list while I am away and work on it when I come back... In general, I don't think a short editing gap should be a reason for withdrawing adminship, and definitively not after only one month (take 2 weeks of holidays, add one week before with little free time because you have to finish things, one week after because you have to catch up on your work, and that's one month without much time for Wikipedia !). A very long editing gap (e.g. one during which policies have time to change) would be another question, and in particular if the user cannot be contacted — in this case, I would agree about discussing a withdrawing of adminship (even temporarily), but the gap should be at least a few months long. Even when I don't have time to edit, I usually read Wikipedia and will read (and reply to) messages on my talk page (this is particularly important given that I manage a bot), so I am still connected. If I am unable to do this, I will mention it on my user page (and even in this case, I managed to find a cybercafe in the middle of nowhere and reply to messages on my talk page :-); in both cases, my goal is to make clear that I have not "left the project", as you write, but only that I am less available, and will come back soon.
Concerning your other question, I am not a big fan of adminship renewal — too much red tape, and too much wasted time. Or, to write it a bit differently: I don't think the admin (and the bureaucrats) should be required to spend time for the renewal (they can probably use it for more useful tasks), as long as there has been no complaint about his work, but if other people want to spend the time going through the admin's contributions, and then discuss any skeleton found in the closet, this is fine with me. In case of big problems, it is clear that we need a way to desysop people, and I think the Arbitration Committee is a good avenue for this, and it seems to be working ok so far. Schutz 07:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Question from User:Ryan4314

5. You'll be using your new admin powers for your own bot work, but as an admin will you be prepared to enter into petty edit disputes etc? You also mentioned you've not really had any particulary nasty disputes, will you be comfortable handling the stigma admins get, when intervening in said disputes in the future?
First, I am glad that you mention the word "bot", because I forgot to mention one important point that (surprisingly) noone has raised so far: the fact that I currently have a bot running under my own username. So, as of today/tomorrow, this bot runs under the identity User:Zorglbot, to make it clear that there is no prospect of having a bot running with admin powers.
Now to your actual questions. I'm not currently trying to stay away from disputes; as I wrote above, until now, the areas I have worked on were not really controversial, but I would be ready to enter into edit disputes if needed. In practice, I would not really be using admin powers for direct bot work (except for the access to the protected page, as mentioned by TexasAndroid); the bot is just my entry point for housekeeping tasks, pointing me to pages (in any area) that need some work; if the work implies entering a dispute, then so be it — it just hasn't really happenend so far, but I'd be ready. As for being comfortable handling the stigma, knowing myself in real life, I believe that I would, but of course, I cannot really say more until it happens... Schutz 07:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General comments

Please keep criticism constructive and polite. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Schutz before commenting.

[edit] Discussion

Support

  1. Support, beat the nom, good user. - Zeibura (Talk) 21:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  2. Strong support - After finding no problems with civility I've realized that my paranoia is just that: paranoia, and that I had no idea what I was talking about. Support even though that means I'd have beaten User:Zeibura to the punch grumble grumble :) -WarthogDemon 21:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  3. Giggy Talk 22:31, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  4. Support Hard working, calm, and encyclopedia-minded editor who wastes no one's time. Whenever Schutz's name pops up on my watchlist, I'd only check it to learn about another improvement to the encyclopedia. Schutz is asking for the tools, Schutz should receive the tools. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  5. Support Edits are without POV bias .Good Editor and impartial Harlowraman 23:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  6. Support As nominator, delayed by other things. :) - TexasAndroid 23:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  7. Support Great editor, and admin-to-be if this works out. -Lemonflash(chat) 23:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  8. Support No concerns. --Hirohisat Talk 00:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  9. Support as an excellent, consistent, level-headed editor. Bearian 00:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  10. Support. A great user with plenty of experience. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  11. Support seems good. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 01:52, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  12. Support Good editor, time for the mop. Politics rule 02:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  13. Support You know what? Yes. Yes, I like what I see, and I think we will be able to trust the editor. Jmlk17 02:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  14. Support It is time to give him the mop. --Siva1979Talk to me 03:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  15. Love Zorgl. -- Y not? 05:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  16. Support. A great asset to our project; I've enjoyed working with Schutz whenever we came across each other. Sandstein 05:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  17. Proven dedication, judgement seems to be fine. Daniel→♦ 06:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  18. Support Editor's responses to my question makes me feel comfortable enough that if policy changes while they aren't watching, they have no problems temporarily surrendering their mop until they return. Couple of concerns about their answer, but nothing major enough to cause me to want to oppose. --Lucid 07:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  19. Support an experience editor that shows good judgment ▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡Talk 09:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  20. I'm Mailer Diablo and I approve this message! - 12:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  21. Support looks good. Melsaran 12:39, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  22. Support, yup yup yup yup. Neil ム 14:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  23. Support: able to keep civil and has experience of everything to do with wikipedia - Pheonix 17:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  24. Support --Agεθ020 (ΔT • ФC) 20:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  25. Support - I'm not going to lose any sleep giving this user the tools. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (tαlk) 21:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
  26. Support - Great answers. Lara♥Love 03:07, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  27. Looking forward to seeing this user helping out in all areas :) –sebi 11:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  28. Support ~ Wikihermit 16:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  29. Looks good, good answers too. umdrums supports the applicant. 18:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  30. Support there is nothing wrong with this user. Acalamari 18:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  31. Support Will put the mop to excellent use --Bennyboyz3000 22:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  32. Support will be a great admin and someone who cares about geography to boot. Carlossuarez46 23:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  33. Support Seems cool to me. Ryan4314 00:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  34. Support Nothing to suggest will abuse the tools. Davewild 07:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  35. Support No evidence tools will be misused.--MONGO 17:04, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  36. Support. Experienced, level-headed contributor. Lupo 17:06, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  37. Support - lots of experience in Wikipedia space (1,000 + contribs) and also in the mainspace (articles) which I believe is vital when newbies are asking admins for assistance. Great candidate. Lradrama 18:13, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  38. Support. I've heard of him! :P. Generally friendly g(uy/al) :). Regards, —Celestianpower háblame 18:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  39. Support Good editor. •Malinaccier• T/C 19:08, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  40. Support. All discussion that I've seen so far from this user has been well-reasoned and civil, and he seems to have a firm grasp on Wikipedia policies and process. — TKD::Talk 16:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  41. Support, just to stay cool. Croat Canuck Say hello or just talk 22:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  42. Support --Aminz 01:36, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
    Support per all votes above. --84.45.219.185 14:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
    Please log in to comment in this section. —AldeBaer 14:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  43. Support looks good.-- danntm T C 17:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  44. Support Agathoclea 20:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  45. Support. Zaxem 00:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  46. Support Why not? New England Review Me! 00:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  47. Support I've seen good things from Schutz. Pascal.Tesson 02:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  48. Support Looks good to me. Dureo 07:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Very strong oppose Far too irregular to gain adminship status. Shows no sense of loyalty or responsibility- traits i consider imperative in an admin! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattbroon (talk • contribs)
    Note: This account was created August 15th [2].


Neutral

Neutral leaning towards support - A good positive attitude is always a good thing and I like this user's edits. However, I'm holding just a bit back because his conflicts do not seem heated to me. Adminship will mostlikely bring on really heated issues or conflicts, and call me paranoid but the "in the worst case, revert what I just wrote" just rubs me the wrong way. However my paranoia isn't sufficient enough for me to issue an oppose, so I keep my stance neutral leaning towards support. Changed to support. -WarthogDemon 21:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
#Neutral Just untill I find out the answers to mine and L's question. Seems like a text book wikipedian though. Ryan4314 02:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Libertarian biased, anti-American, god-hating teenager? Who's book are we going by here? :) --Lucid 02:55, 9 August 2007 (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.