Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Triona2

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

Contents

[edit] Triona

(40/17/9); Withdrew 14:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm withdrawing my nomination. Triona (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Triona (talk · contribs) - I've been around for quite some time, and work mostly on housekeeping tasks, including tagging articles, vandal patrol, and cleanup. I believe that administrator tools would be helpful for me, and I'd mainly use them to more effectively combat vandalism, but would help out with closing AFD, fixing copy/paste moves, and otherwise clearing admin backlogs from time to time. Triona (talk) 08:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

:Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Self-nomination. Triona (talk) 08:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?
A: As noted above, more effectively combating vandalism via blocks and page protection, as well as occasionally clearing backlogs at AFD, CSD, and elsewhere. I'll probably continue to stay "in the background", just adding some administrator tasks to the housekeeping I do already.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: To be honest, nothing particularly stands out. I've made mostly small contributions, but I've tried to make sure that all of my contributions help to improve Wikipedia. I don't think I could really in good conscience call fixing typos or reverting vandals my "best contribution". Since there seems to be a huge demand for me to show some article writing experience, and there's still not anything that I really thing stands out, I'll instead provide a few examples of contributions other than vandalfightng:
I've started some stubs of decent size, and some that grew into articles. Some of those are:
I've made small expansions to articles:
I've also added images to a couple articles:


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: Not really. Anytime I've been tempted to be drawn into a conflict, I've either been able to reach an agreement, or walked away from it. Fighting is boring anyway. WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF go a long way towards never getting to the point of a conflict.

Optional question from Ouro:

4. Can you explain the enormous gap in your edit pattern, and then the accumulation of half of your edits within one month? --Ouro (blah blah) 12:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
A: Sure. Real-life issues have caused me to take several breaks over the years due to lack of time to contribute. As far as the recently increased number of edits recently goes, a lot of those are from using new vandal fighting tools to aid me in what I've been doing all along and the increased efficiency of using rollback. I was probably close to that active in the past, but I'm working quickly enough now that I'm not hitting as many edit conflicts when trying to revert. (In the past perhaps 2/3 of my revert attempts were reverted by another user first.)
Thank you kindly. I will consider. --Ouro (blah blah) 12:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Question from Pedro

5. You say you intend to work at fixing cut and paste moves. Frankly that's an area I wouldn't touch with a barge pole three miles long, so good on you! However I'm interested as to why you have identified that as an area of interest, and why you feel you may have special skills there. Can you elaborate on your desire to work in this area? Pedro :  Chat  14:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
A. I list this only because I think I have a reasonable understanding of the process - basically delete the "new" article to move over the top of it, move properly, delete again, and restore the revisions so that the history is merged. It's not a difficult process per say, just tedious.

Question from O.Waqfi

6.a small question,If they don't choose you admin here..you will leave wikipedia or what ? --O.waqfi (talk) 18:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
A. Whether I get demotedpromoted to admin, or not, I plan to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Just as adminship is no big deal, being rejected here wouldn't be a big deal either.

Optional question from Keepscases

7.What are the origins of your user name?
How is that question relevant to be coming an administrator? Maxim(talk) 21:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Keepcases regularly poses rather offbeat, apparently meaningless RfA questions that frequently add a bit of levity to the process (and, in fact, on occasion, elicit useful information); although one or two questions were (unnecessarily, IMHO) objected to as untoward, the community has, it is probably fair to say, (rightly, IMHO) permitted the practice, especially since the questions are, of course, optional. Joe 00:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
A. It's a shortened form of an Irish name (I have Irish heritage through my grandmother). I adopted "Triona" as a chat nickname, because it wasn't taken, while "Stephanie" usually is, and I usually use some variant of that anywhere I either don't want to use a real name, or can't.

Questions from Thehelpfulone

8. What is the difference between a ban and a block? --The Helpful One 20:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A. A block is a technical restriction placed by an administrator preventing editing by an IP, range of IPs, or account. A ban is a decision by consensus of editors, arbcom, Jimbo, or the WMF board that restricts editing, and may be enforced by reversion or blocks or other administrator action as appropriate.

9. What is your opinion on administrator recall? Would you add yourself to that category if you became an administrator? Why or why not? --The Helpful One 20:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A. While I think administrator recall was a good idea at face value, the myriad of different incarnations of it make it a problematic approach to deadminsip that is ripe with oppertunities for trolling. If we want a community approach to deadminship beyond peer presure, then we should try to find a consensus for that which affects all administrators, rather than relying on some administrators to volunteer to be recalled or reconfirmed. I personally think that the existing mechinisms are sufficient, albiet not as quick to react as some would like. Even when following consensus, administrators do have jobs to do on the project that may make them unpopular, such as enforcing image copyright policies, page protection, and blocking, and it's important for the integrity of our process that we don't punish administrators for reasonable actions in support of a consensus decision, or in support of a policy derived from community consensus.
So, to answer the second part, I don't think I would list myself as open to recall, but, peer presure and/or consensus would weigh heavily in a decision to resign or seek a reconfirmation vote. I hesitate to make an absolute promise that I"d resign under any particular circumstances, but I do respect the community and our traditions of solving such issues through the wiki processes of consensus and compromise. A case before the arbitratior committee is also an avenue of last resort, although, I think the community would see my resignation long before it ever got so far as to be facing deadminning by arbcom.
Added - While I don't plan to list myself as open to recall, if the ultimate finding of a dispute resolution process is that I've abused my admin tools, I'll consider as part of that resolution a request for reconfirmation that has consensus - and will either resign, seek reconfirmation or continue dispute resolution until the matter is resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Triona (talk) 10:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


10. What would your personal standards be on granting and removing rollback, if any? --The Helpful One 20:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

If a user's productively using other methods of reversion, and stays out of the block log, I see no problem with them having a more efficient way to do something they do already. I think the current situation is that rollback is meant to be given liberally to all who can show a need for it, and the more people that are making effective use of it, the better. On the other hand, if the user has a history of blocks for editwarring or 3RR, they'd have to convince me that something's actually changed from the last tme they were blocked. I don't believe in a hard cutoff for number of edits/length of service, but we I think we need enough edit history to discorage vandals, POV warriors, sockpuppets and single-purpose accounts from getting rollback tool, while remembering that if someone does manage to use rollback in bad faith, it can be taken away almost as easily as it's given.

[edit] General comments

RfAs for this user:
Requests for adminship/Triona Requests for adminship/Triona2

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Triona before commenting.

[edit] Discussion

  • i think it is not good or enough resaon that she didn't made over 25 articles,everybody said that we need a mach big contributions and articles..i think all of that don't have any meaning.she must know everything in wikipedia,and how to do anything, & she has that..regards --O.waqfi (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • It should be pointed out that Triona is also a main editor of the Laser tag article. Epbr123 (talk) 14:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • This is sort of a very specific and small question, so I thought I'd put it here instead of up^ there as a formal question
    Triona, can you explain this edit? Why did you undo your own good edit? Timmeh! 23:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Support
  1. Support -Dureo (talk) 09:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  2. Support Good vandal fighter. Though, possibly needs more experience before closing AfDs. Epbr123 (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Concern noted, I'll try to keep that in mind and possibly try to get some mentoring before I make a mess there.. Triona (talk) 09:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  3. Support I saw her contributions and she have a lot of good things..she will help the wikipedia and help us.--O.waqfi (talk) 09:23, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  4. FUCK YES SUPPORT! Yes, I agree. She will make a wonderful admin. Cheers. miranda 10:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  5. Support - Every interaction I've had with Triona has been positive and she's a good vandal fighter. I think she'll make a good admin :) Astral (talk) 11:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  6. Support - of course! - Alison ❤ 12:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  7. A capable editor in their capacity, and reflects the true qualities of what is needed in an administrator. Rudget. 12:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  8. Support, good user. - Zeibura ( talk ) 13:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  9. Support - trustworthy editor. Addhoc (talk) 14:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  10. Support Yeah, a good editor. —αἰτίας •discussion• 14:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  11. Support I do not feel that intermittent editing is any sort of bar to adminship, nor do I feel, per the first Oppose, that there is any requirement for a minimum number of article creations. We are looking for a skilled editor with demonstrable competence in admin-related procedures, and the willingness and eagerness to use these skills for the benefit of the project. Triona is such an editor. --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 15:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  12. Edit conflicted Support, I have had nothing but positive interactions with her, and she has a sensible and cool demeanor. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  13. A good choice. Majorly (talk) 15:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  14. Whoa, thought you were one already. Malinaccier (talk) 16:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  15. Weak Support I have not seen anything that leads me to believe this person will abuse the tools. I do have a problem with her lack of experience though. She has not been in any conflicts, and she only seriously started to edit last month. I have learned from experience the value of experience. However, I do not consider lack of experience a good enough reason to oppose, or go neutral, so I will support her.--SJP (talk) 16:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  16. Wow, of course. RyanGerbil10(Говорить!) 16:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  17. A non-idiot. – Steel 17:50, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  18. Support. Qualified candidate. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  19. Strong support Great user, ready to be a sysop. NHRHS2010 19:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  20. Weak Support Not enough to oppose, but I'd like to see how this user handles pressure. RC-0722 communicator/kills 19:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  21. Support. Knowledgeable and trustable. -- Mentifisto 19:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  22. + I've seen her around a long time, and I trust her judgment. Lack of article writing does not mean the user doesn't know what is and is not policy. Keegantalk 20:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  23. I was thinking about asking Triona if she wanted a nomination in a month or so's time. I'm not worred about her inactivity: there are no shortage of mops to give out, and I'd rather see the tools used rarely and correctly than often and abused. No concerns here. Acalamari 20:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  24. Support Yay! to the vandal fighters. Polly (Parrot) 20:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  25. Support while I'm concerned about lack of article writing skills, my experience with this user cancels that out. Secret account 22:11, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  26. Support No problems here. --Siva1979Talk to me 23:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  27. seresin | wasn't he just...? 01:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  28. Support Vandal fighter and declined earlier RFA where she was nominated by another user as she was not ready shows User is macure and not power hungry.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 03:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  29. Support Great Vandal fighter and very respectable person. Good Luck wit the tools. Thedjatclubrock :) (T/C) 04:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  30. Support. Nice person who understands the project. — CharlotteWebb 13:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  31. Support "To be honest, nothing particularly stands out": Modesty is a bad bad trait to have on RfAs and it has predictably got you a bunch of opposes. And why shouldn't you call typo fixing and vandal fighting your best contributions? They are every bit as essential as article writing. So, good luck. But please note the concern that Casliber brought up. You say you have trouble assuming good faith with mass-removals of content without explanation but I believe that's exactly when you have to assume good faith more often... most beginners wouldn't know about edit summaries and getting to know about the feature through warning messages is discouraging and unwelcoming. - TwoOars 13:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    Perhaps modesty will doom me on this RFA, if it does, then I'm not sure that's a bad thing - I'd rather be doomed by modesty than arrogance. I'm a casual contributor, that doesn't really stand out in any way other than doing a lot of RC patrol related edits when I can. I did add some links to articles I've contributed to though, so we'll see what the community says. Triona (talk) 14:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  32. Support. This user can use the tools, and I don't think the tools will abuse. That's a positive net effect. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  33. Support interactions with the user have been only positive. A good vandalfigher. Snowolf How can I help? 17:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  34. Support - Let's see here...do the opposes have anything at all to do with your ability to perform admin tasks? *quick review of oppose votes* Oh look at that, they don't! Again! Mop up! Gromlakh (talk) 17:31, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  35. Support, can't think of any non-irrelevant problems with this candidate. --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 00:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  36. Support There is simply nothing wrong with having little or no article writing experiance at all, totally irralevent. Administration is a different tast than article writing and it should be treat it as such, and if you are going to judge, there are much more important criterias than article writing, such as, but not limited to, user to user interactions, knowledge of Wikipedia policies, knowing how to effectively deal with vandalism, etc. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 05:20, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    Sorry, but I must disagree. A manager or overseer that has little to no experience with the internal operations of the enterprise he should be running or controlling (be reminded, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a collection of knowledge), is effectively of little use to the enterprise. I am not saying Triona hasn't got what it takes - this is just a response to your statement. There are, as you say, other important criteria, but article writing is the task at hand. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    I think that RfA process is about whether if you can be trusted with the tools or not, and I just don't see that not having article writing experiance fails show how a user cannot be trusted with the tools. Yes, this project is about writing an encyclopedia, but knowing the deletion criteria and mediating disputes are just as important and crucial as writing an encyclopedia itself. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 00:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
    I absolutely see your point - both deletion and meditation processes are important, although the latter is more of a managerial, behind-the-scenes process, while the former pertains to articles proper. Yet still I believe that article writing experience is required, and when somebody passes that point they may move up to admin status, to a more organisational level at the Wikipedia. While I am wary that adminship is not that big a deal, and that admins usually tend to write less and focus on adminning more, still, writing articles is building the encyclopedia. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  37. Support some people just aren't cut out for contributing to the encyclopedia (content-wise), but still wish to help and agree with the founding values of the project. Such users help the best way that suits them. Triona has obviously demonstrated a willingness to help and an excellent track record - give her the mop. Pumpmeup 10:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  38. Support You answers are fine with me, good luck! --The Helpful One 17:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  39. Support Se no problem with her having the mop. Earthbendingmaster 03:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  40. In dubio pro reo, so you have my weak support. User:Dorftrottel 13:28, February 5, 2008
[edit] Oppose
  1. Strong oppose I am not happy with her answer to question no. 2. A person who wants to be an admin must have created or significantly contributed to at least 25 articles. And, those articles must not be stubs. Vandal fighting is OK. However, we are editors first. She made only one edit from May, 2007 to December, 2007[1]. She needs to edit regularly for few months. Sorry Stephanie. Better luck next time. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 14:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Masterpiece, I respect your oppose on grounds of a lack of article contribution from the candidate. But creation / significant development of 25 articles all non-stubs? I find it hard to believe that we need standards as high as that? I'd wager we'd be down to sub 100 admins if that was the minimum criteria. Pedro :  Chat  14:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    I appreciate your concerns, however, I fail to see what writing articles has to do with my ability to do housekeeping jobs. Triona (talk) 14:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    It could be argued that if a candidate is familiar with working with articles, they can perform better when dealing with AFDs, somewhere you have stated you wish to work. Although, 25 is a little high. Rudget. 15:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Err, 25 is too high. But zero is too low. WilyD 13:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    Not sure I would meet this requirement myself. Dlohcierekim Deleted? 18:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Ok. 25 is a little high. However, a candidate must be familiar with building articles. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 03:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    Regarding "we are editors first." Each Wikipedian is an editor in their own way, using their own skills and talents. Fighting vandalism is editing. Those who edit are editors. Kingturtle (talk) 13:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  2. I have a fairly low content threshhold, but admins need to have at least some content editorial experience. Please spend a few weeks contributing to articles and then return and I will likely support.--Docg 19:09, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    25 articles? Holy crap. Is this the latest inflation for RfA? OhanaUnitedTalk page 19:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  3. Oppose More than half of the editing has come within the last month, and while that is not the complete issue at hand, a LOT has changed around here (at least for myself) since I started regularly editing. I can't really base a support decision off of just one month's editing. Jmlk17 22:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. I'm not really one to oppose for lack of mainspace editing, but the answer to question 2 frankly gives me little confidence. bibliomaniac15 22:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  5. Oppose on acct of a lack of substantial mainspace editing experience. One should not be granted the exercise of the admin functions without an evidence of editing experience. -- Iterator12n Talk 02:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  6. Oppose sorry - some people whose opinions I trust are supporting, yet this note [2] for this IPs edit [3] veers into WP:BITE territory. This alone I'd overlook if there was a substantive contribution history, say, a GA or two at minimum. This [4] was jumping the gun a bit too though kudos for communicating afterwards. Anyway, I'll feel more comfortable with some mainspace contribs. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    Noted. Effective vandal-fighting is very much about preserving a balance of effort that works in our favor - it must be many times easier for us to stop vandals than it is for vandals to vandalize. There's a fine line between WP:BITE and effectively combating vandalism. If you veer too far on the side of caution, you let vandals have more opportunities to vandalize than they should, if you are too aggressive, you alienate newcomers. In trying to keep that balance, I try to stay as close to that line as I possibly can without biting the newcomers. I'm not perfect, nor would I claim to be, and I do make mistakes - and when I'm made aware of them, I try to make them right. However, I also think to a large extent that's why we have the current progressive structure of user warnings. The first level tries to be nonthreatening, and if edits further are abusive, these warnings progress to an outright promise to block a contributor. When used responsibly, this process means that an accidentally issued warning has little effect, unless the user already had many contributions which bordered on vandalism. I'll freely admit also that I tend to be more aggressive about changes that amount to an unexplained mass-removal of content - I have trouble assuming good faith when someone doesn't try to explain this type of action - and I've generally found that warning them about it elicits an explanation (and an edit summary) if it's really a good faith edit. Triona (talk) 10:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    I wonder whether you are or are not admitting to having made a mistake in this note for an IPs edit which Casliber mentions above. I don't see any apology from you to the user on the user talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    I hadn't done so yet, although User:Jeepday did a much better job than I did of handling the situation. That particular edit was a misunderstanding - I responded to Jeepday admitting my error here when he pointed it out to me. I obviously (well, obvious now) read more into it than I should (my interpretation at the time was that it was subtle defacement related to an ethnic conflict, because we have a lot of that going on). I just struck the warning message on the user's talk page, although I thought User:Jeepday's message to the user had settled the matter. Triona (talk) 16:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    True - Jeepday came in afterwards and wrote something more constructive. I realise it is obviously softer than some other issues which have come up here, it's just that we have to go on fairly limited impressions here. I feel that mainspace contributions are critical into (a) showing how one negotiates and (b) getting a grasp of work and effort involved into making content. I am also not happy with the idea of a split between 'editors' and 'admins' as it were. The primary purpose is still 'pedia building.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  7. Oppose - I'm not a great copywriter or anything, but an editor who can't point to anything they've written as being good is simply not what we need. Until you've written a good bit of content, you can't be a guide to the process. WilyD 13:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  8. Per Q2, sorry. Create an article or improve one significantly and I'll support next time. CordeliaHenrietta ↔ Talk 13:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  9. Oppose. Insufficient evidence of encyclopedia building. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  10. Weak oppose.
    The candidate has apparently done a lot of careful reverting of vandalism, which is a valuable contribution to the project. The opinion has been expressed that people who just revert vandalism and don't participate in other activities in the project tend to develop a habit of jumping to conclusions that people are committing vandalism even sometimes when they're not, rather than a habit of establishing positive communication with new users. I see several things that lead to slight concern that this may be the case with this candidate.
    On the positive side, the candidate uses the various levels of templates well and uses a template that says "appears to be unconstructive" when it appears that the edit may be a good-faith one; I like this informative message re British spelling when an apparently good-faith edit had to be reverted; and here the candidate removes a warning she had placed which she then decided was inappropriate, showing an ability to catch her own mistakes and correct them (it's difficult to tell whether the edit in question was vandalism).
    However, looking over quite a few edits reverting vandalism I didn't see the candidate place any "welcome" templates on user pages. This message re this reversion would have been a good place for at least a welcome message. As far as I know, it looks as if the user may have gone to some effort to write several paragraphs of prose. These were then reverted by the candidate with only a standard template as explanation: no welcome template, no explanation of why the addition was considered "unconstructive", no education that one isn't supposed to place text on category pages, no personalized message or indication that the candidate had taken any time to appreciate the user's work. The only other edit by the same user (again, a long addition of text) had been reverted without explanation by someone else. That's not the way to welcome new contributors.
    There is also this uninformative message re blanking of a page containing an AfD template and authored by the user. The user had not received a welcome message. Perhaps a more appropriate action would have been to speedy-delete the page, since the user was the only substantial contributor and had blanked it, and there were no "keep" votes in the AfD. But that is not my concern: my concern is the lack of positive, friendly communication with the new user. Instead of cooperation in deleting the page, the user got a warning message at a time when the user was no doubt already experiencing disappointment about the page's lack of success. The warning message did not explain anything about how the AfD process works, why the edit was considered unconstructive or why the page which the user had authored and then blanked was being restored. Perhaps the candidate's speed of editing (about 4 to 8 edits a minute at the time) didn't allow time to stop and explain things to new users.
    I find the following remarks by the candidate on this page worrisome: "it must be many times easier for us to stop vandals than it is for vandals to vandalize" and "I try to stay as close to that line as I possibly can without biting the newcomers." If the candidate's goal is to encourage those making unconstructive edits to leave the project as quickly as possible while the candidate takes up as little of her own time as possible to accomplish this, she may be nearing that goal with the two situations I just mentioned; but in my view that is not the whole purpose of interaction with new users. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    Regarding welcome messages, Wikipedia:Vandalism#Warnings states, "if you are confident that a user is aware of the disruption he is causing, you may start with a stronger warning such as subst:uw-test2 or subst:uw-test3." Perhaps it's that intruction that's at fault, not Triona. Epbr123 (talk) 09:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    Coppertwig: thanks for your very well written comment in opposition, you raise a good point. While I've placed some welcome templates, I, and most other vandalfighters are too busy looking for the next edit to revert&warn to welcome new users. Part of that's being overwhelmed, but I think also part of that is getting so far into an "us vs them" mindset that we temporarily forget that good contributors exist. It's why I said finding the right balance between WP:BITE and WP:VAND is important. As I've freely admitted, and has been pointed out by others, I'm not perfect by any stretch, and, out of a couple thousand reversions, there are a handful of errors made that could easily be construed as biting the newcomers. As there's a need to be both careful (to keep from chasing off good-faith editors), and fast (to keep up with the rate of edits coming in via recent changes), it's hard to be perfect when RC patrolling. Clearly, we all need to do better, and I try. Following recent changes, and looking at random contributions and talk pages as part of that, I see the type of situations described above happen frequently enough to be worrisome. As you noted above, I have a pattern of trying to catch myself and correct it - the reason this happens is that when I'm not 100% sure, but fairly confident, I'll revert, then I'll investigate. If I'm right, I leave things as they are and get back up to speed. If I find I was wrong, I try to make it right. I'm constantly second guessing myself in this way, because it's as important to "get it right" as it is to get rid of vandalism quickly.
    Regarding Epbr123's comment - I do think that we have a broken system right now, and we need to figure out how to improve it. Since "anyone can edit" is an important, and non-negotiable part of Wikipedia's philosophy, we can never be rid of vandalism, so our only option is to deal with it when it happens. I don't think "anyone can edit" is fundamentally broken - many good contributions are made by casual contributors that probably wouldn't bother if they had to sign up for an account, and many fine editors start out as these casual contributors. Still, we've got to do better at fighting vandalism, without chasing off our future base of new editors. Better tools, flagged revisions, and other things in the works will help with that, but for the foreseeable future, it's going to be human and robot RC patrollers against the vandals, and mistakes are going to happen, so we have to build tolerance for them into the process. Triona (talk) 11:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    I have no problem with most of what you say but I don't agree that there's a pressing need to be "fast (to keep up with the rate of edits coming in via recent changes)"... I think it's better overall if each reversion is given careful consideration to make sure it's properly done rather than trying to catch all vandalism single-handedly. I believe there are more than enough vandal fighters around to prevent any vandalism to slip through. I often see vandal fighters complaining that someone else "beat" them to it by reverting... which could mean that a lot of redundant effort is being put into vandal fighting. Now I'm not saying that the effort should be put somewhere else, it's something the volunteer has to choose for themselves; just saying that the whole vandal fighting business is running under a false sense of urgency, primarily because of it's race/game-like nature of competing with other "fighters". - TwoOars 13:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    Sure, there's friendly competition and ribbing about "beating" other vandalfighters. I think you underscored part of the problem though - the problem of RC patrol is that changes pile up so fast. We don't have a coordinated system to check each one, so that does mean a lot of duplicated effort - the nature of the beast is that we do a lot of chasing our tails, yet, previous attempts to created a system to check all edits have pretty much fallen apart or been derailed before they started. Right now, for vandalism to be caught, it has to be noticed - and the best tool we have to notice it - the RC feed - goes by so quickly that we're just as much fighting to keep up with the feed as we are fighting vandals. Vandal patrol does suck down too much time from good editors, but, until we have a better solution, we're stuck with what we have. Also, even without the urgency of having to catch the changes from the RC feed, there's still the urgency of getting harmful edits reverted - it looks really bad on the whole project when an article on "Chemistry' suddenly turns into an article on "penis". Triona (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC) #:::::Thank you, Triona, for accepting my criticisms graciously. The majority of your RC patrol edits are unexceptionable. I think you've shown us by your posts on this page that you have perfectly good, even above average, communication skills. But what I'm not seeing enough of is you using those communication skills with the people you interact with on RC patrol.
    I agree with Twooars that your sense of urgency about RC patrolling is false. There is no need for any one person to keep up with the RC feed. If a certain piece of vandalism isn't caught by you within the first few seconds, as you yourself pointed out, two-thirds of the time someone else will catch it within about a minute. Generally the rest will all be found eventually. If some of them end up being reverted by people who have never edited Wikipedia before, that can be a good thing. Too perfect-looking an encyclopedia can people a false impression that they have nothing to contribute. This is not to minimize the value of RC patrolling. Somebody has to revert that vandalism. It's just that you shouldn't allow a sense of urgency to influence you to be careless and bite newcomers.
    While for most RC patrol edits nothing more is required than revert, warn, revert, warn, nevertheless from time to time situations arise where you have opportunities to communicate: to explain, discuss, be helpful, instruct, give links to relevant documentation, praise, show that you understand what the person is trying to do, maybe even apologize. This is what I'm not seeing enough of. Your post about British spelling was good -- it's the kind of thing I'm looking for. But there should be more.
    In the situation described above where Jeepday suggested the use of fact tags, it was not wrong for you to leave it as it was without putting an apology or explanation next to Jeepday's, (maybe I shouldn't have criticized that,) and it was not wrong for you to just strike out your words without putting a single word of apology or explanation on the user's talk page. The edit summary just says "Striking incorrectly issued warning." A new user might not think to look for an edit summary, and that isn't much of an explanation. While what you did was not wrong, you missed an opportunity to communicate using words with one of your RC patrollees, and you missed an opportunity to demonstrate to us here that you're interested in and capable of doing so. I wonder why, if you didn't want to take the time to write any words on the talk page of the user who was affected by your action, you nevertheless found the time to write a line or two of apology/explanation on Jeepday's talk page, and a couple of lines of apology/explanation on this RfA. Aren't such things usually addressed to the person who was affected? Could it be that "us vs. them" mentality?
    That in itself would be OK if I were seeing a bunch of other situations where you're talking to your RC patrollees, but other than the British spelling thing I don't remember seeing a single word of personalized message from you to them in the contribs I looked through, though I did find the situations discussed above where communication would have been helpful. While the majority of RC patrol edits don't normally involve more than revert-warn, situations involving real communication should be coming up more often.
    Maybe an RC patroller has to have some sort of detached attitude to be able to maintain their sanity while reverting all those swear words and things, but a good RC patroller will be able to snap out of that at a moment's notice and start treating an RC patrollee with the same level of courtesy, respect and individualized messages that you're affording to us here.
    In situations of good-faith edits, or edits that might be good-faith, if you're not willing to take the time to write a situation-specific message, in some cases it might be better to just leave the situation alone and do nothing rather than revert and place an impersonal warning template on the user's talk page; or it might be better to just revert, with some sort of half-baked explanation in the edit summary, and not put anything on the user's talk page. I'm not sure that it's necessarily correct to revert a good-faith or possibly good-faith edit with no more explanation than that it "appears to be unconstructive", and I think in some cases that could be rather off-putting to the contributor. These are my own opinions and not everyone necessarily agrees; however, if you could more often establish productive conversations with your RC patrollees I think it would be generally agreed to be an improvement.
    I'd like to suggest, if you can find the time and haven't already, that you look at the case of Ggggggggggggggg12This case has nothing to do with this candidate as an illustration of how overzealous (and in that case incorrect) application of standard procedures can cause a valuable contributor to be lost to the project. In that case, if the newpage patrollers had simply done nothing, the whole situation would have been fine.
    I'd like to humbly suggest that you consider changing your practice as follows: to continue to use templates as you are (or possibly gentler templates or possibly in some cases no warnings at all) but whenever you're placing one of those "appears to be unconstructive" templates, you also place a "welcome" template in addition except when the user has already received one or is clearly a well-established user. You may not be "required" to do this, but the whole point is not just doing things according to rules, but having an attitude of wanting to communicate with and help out the newcomers.
    Thanks for listening. You appear very competent in many ways and I'm sure you wouldn't delete the main page :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 02:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
    (Maybe I shouldn't have made my message so long. Sorry. I don't want to overwhelm you.) --Coppertwig (talk) 13:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
  11. Regretfully, but decidedly, per Coppertwig and Casliber. dihydrogen monoxide (H20) 08:37, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  12. Oppose with same sentiments as Doc G. I don't think admins need substantive editing in 25 articles, but they should have at least one. Cool Hand Luke 17:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  13. I'd like to have seen a bit more content additions from the candidate. She appears to be a nice fellow and a good volunteer, and with some more article work, I'm sure I'll be a bit more supportive in the future gaillimhConas tá tú? 20:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  14. Oppose because of a lack of experience. Random Fixer Of Things (talk) 03:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  15. Oppose Weak responses to the basic three questions. While I don't wish to judge based on edit count, edit count pattern is so unusual, I'd like to see a more consistent contribution history before granting tools. No reason to assign the mop to someone who edits sporadically. No judgment intended here; I'm sure candidate is a fine user. Just no compelling demonstrated need for tools. BusterD (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  16. Oppose I almost never oppose on lack of experience, but I don't think one month of real experience is enough. and I think it shows: no admin can possibly avoid conflict. To say you havent had any and dont expect to is unrealistic if you expect to be an active admin in the areas you want to work on. it is one thing to warn problem users; it is quite another to block them. It is one thing to ask for page protection, where someone else take the responsibility, and another to impose it. If you do the job as it needs to be done, you will be making some rather difficult people rather upset, and you will have to learn how to deal with it. at present you dont seem to know that you will even need to deal with it. DGG (talk) 09:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
  17. Oppose. Triona made almost no edits between November 2006 and January 2008. I'd prefer to see a more consistent pattern of contribs and some content editing. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 13:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Neutral
  1. – Gurch 14:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Why? Malinaccier (talk) 16:09, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Because not showing up at all would be rude – Gurch 16:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Happy you came. Dlohcierekim Deleted? 18:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    Gurch is really funny sometimes. :-p -- Mentifisto 19:41, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  2. Neutral Although in the past month you have made a substantial amount of edits, it has only been one month. I would like to see some more months of edits. A very sporadic editing pattern does not look good. I need a longer span of solid edits to decide whether you'll use the tools effectively and not abuse them. Timmeh! 16:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  3. Neutral leaning to support. Your contributions look pretty good, but the answer to Q2 combined with relatively low project space edits gives me pause. If you could provide an example of work, especially in the project space, that you feel is very good, then I would be happy to switch to support. VanTucky 22:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  4. Neutral Like VanTucky, I'm leaning towards support, good involvement in WP pages but your contributions are spread out over a long period (three years +) but over 80% of those are in two months only and over 60% over the last month.--JForget 00:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  5. Neutrality - Per gurch....--Cometstyles 02:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  6. Per Doc. Administrators will end up having to deal with disputes surrounding articles, and the best administrators in these situations are those who have experience in article-creation and article disputes. Knowing when to intervene and when not to intervene, when to use protection instead of blocking or vise-versa, and how to deal with SPA's, editors with a strong COI, and how talk page discussions work in disputes are essential for administrators. Your answer to Q2 means I can't support. Daniel (talk) 05:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  7. Sitting on the fence. While you seem to be an energetic and good person, and a definite asset to Wikipedia, I cannot give you a support !vote just due to your editing pattern. While I understand that real-life issues can deter one from editing, or facilitate it greatly (as can be seen in my own edit history), I'd like to see you keep up the pace. If this was April and your editing would be consistent, I'd definitely be willing to support though. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 14:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  8. A little more consistent editing, perhaps? I'm leaning 'support', fwiw. ~ Riana ⁂ 13:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  9. Neutral I would like to see more consistent work on Articles during the next months. You are on correct way, good luck. Carlosguitar (ready and willing) 12:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  10. Neutral. I wish you'd waited a couple more months before this RfA, because then I'd have had absolutely no worries. Right now though I see you as an editor with about one month's experience - because your previous edits were so long ago and things here change so fast. I'm not voting against, because I see no evidence of problems. I don't usually bother with neutral votes, but as Gurch says, this time it would have been rude not to show up. There's no rush to adminship: try again in May and I'm certain you'll sail through, if you continue to edit as you are doing. Though of course taking the opportunity to add some article creations in the mean time would not hurt at all. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 13:27, 6 February 2008 (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.