Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Vary

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

[edit] Vary

Final (64/1/1) ending 23:20 March 11, 2006 (UTC)

Vary (talk · contribs) – Vary has been an active contributor to Wikipedia since September 2005. Within six months, she has made more than 4200 contributions across most namespaces. She is an active vandalism fighter and has participated in AfD. Her mop and bucket is long overdue. Jay(Reply) 19:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept. Thank you, Jay! -- Vary | Talk 23:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Support

Support per nom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Axiomm (talk • contribs)
Please note that this voter attempted to manually increase the vote count in [1] this edit. -Colin Kimbrell 16:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  1. Support (HA! even before nominator :P) Well-deserving RC patroller in need of an upgrade of tools. --Obli (Talk)? 00:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  2. Support Looks solid, I say we go for it. Haukur 00:33, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  3. Support This is the first time I've ever voted before the nominator, I'm so proud! DaGizzaChat © 00:48, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support. --Jay(Reply) 01:48, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  5. support: Looks good, especially given that vandal fighting without stirring much retaliation, beyond a mere sixteen user page vandalisms, is an admirable feat. Ombudsman 01:58, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  6. Support good editor, good candidate --rogerd 02:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  7. Support. --tomf688{talk} 02:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  8. Support Moe ε 02:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  9. Support--Jusjih 03:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  10. Support -- Sure Eddie, Sunday March 5, 2006 at 03:16
  11. --Jaranda wat's sup 03:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  12. Support. My personal experience with Vary in dealing with a troublesome editor at Talk:Memphis, Tennessee was that she (1) exhibits fine judgment and (2) has plenty of patience. Both of those qualities are necessary for adminship. - Jersyko·talk 04:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  13. Support. Good editor. Put her to work. No Guru 04:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  14. Support right on. KI 04:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  15. Support, of course. - Mailer Diablo 04:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  16. Support savidan(talk) (e@) 05:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  17. Support --Terence Ong 05:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  18. Strong Support, more than exceeds my expectations. Will you use your powers for good or for awesome? --ZsinjTalk 05:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  19. Support -- Tawker 08:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  20. Weak support I've never come across this user, but all seems in order. Computerjoe 11:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  21. Support This user deserves to be given the mop. --Siva1979Talk to me 14:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  22. Support This user does a good job at patrolling for vandalism. Needs a promotion. --CFIF (talk to me) 15:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  23. Support. Civil and makes good edits. Way to go. - Tangotango 16:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  24. Support Rama's Arrow 17:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  25. Support. —Kirill Lokshin 17:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  26. Support Wow another "Can't believe this user isn't an admin" nomination!! Mike (T C) 17:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  27. Support. — FireFox • T • 21:34, 5 March 2006
  28. Support. I like the fact that Vary has also taken the time to {{welcome}} new users in addition to continuing the usual duties. Three cheers! Isopropyl 23:51, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  29. Support' great user, excellent potential gidonb 01:52, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  30. Support, because she likes bunnies and cowbells. Erm, I mean ... good editor? — Adrian Lamo ·· 02:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  31. Sure ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  32. Support VegaDark 04:51, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  33. Support per above abakharev 04:58, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
    Shoo In --ZsinjTalk 05:07, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
    Vote stricken. An editor may only vote once. Xoloz 00:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
    Haha, whoops. :-P --ZsinjTalk 00:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  34. Support. --Khoikhoi 05:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  35. Support.great job. pschemp | talk 07:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  36. Support --Ugur Basak 10:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  37. Support. PJM 18:45, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  38. Unlikely to abuse admin tools. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:58, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
  39. Support Joe I 00:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  40. Support Sarah Ewart (Talk) 03:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  41. Support. While I'm here, I may as well, since she seems well-qualified. -Colin Kimbrell 04:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  42. Support. Impressive RC vandalism work. A good Wikipedian. Gwernol 06:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  43. Support. Oh yeah. Raven4x4x 06:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  44. Support. utcursch | talk 08:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  45. Support: --Bhadani 15:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  46. Support Congratulations. savidan(talk) (e@) 18:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  47. Support good editor. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 20:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  48. support I like the edit spread and the questions. ... aa:talk 21:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  49. Support Looks like a great editor! Staxringold 22:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  50. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 23:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  51. Support --Myles Long 23:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  52. Support - It's rare to see such well thought out answers for these questions. You have easily what it takes to become an incredible admin, and I wish you luck in the future. --NomaderTalk 05:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  53. Support Solid user who has clearly matured and will continue to do so with responsibility. Deizio 14:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  54. Support. Great answers to questions, lots of edits. And bunnies! --Fang Aili 15:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  55. Support. Looks good, and could be even better with admin tools. └ UkPaolo/talk┐ 16:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  56. Support. Good answers to questions and the editor's experience easily outweigh whatever was raised in opposition so far. Jonathunder 16:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  57. Support no reason not to. Thumbelina 18:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  58. Support good impressions.Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 00:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  59. Support. Looks like she'll do a good job. --Rob from NY 01:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  60. Support, good vandal fighter, appreciate the work she's done so far -- Samir ∙ T C 23:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  61. Support good job, keep up the good work! Prodego talk 23:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  62. Support - Great contributor. Sango123 (e) 23:44, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  63. Support, looks vary interesting. JIP | Talk 17:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
  64. User:Go for it!/Vote Support Keep up the good work. Here's your mop and bucket. --Go for it! 20:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


Oppose

  1. Rob Church (talk) 08:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
So... can you explain why you voted for "oppose". DaGizzaChat © 08:12, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
This user is known for randomly placing votes on RfAs, including opposes of good candidates with no explanation and placing neutrals with no explanation. I think voting neutral with no explanation is even weirder... why vote at all? -- His Imposingness, the Grand Moff Deskana (talk) 10:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
First of all, Deskana; I do not place random votes. I bother to sit and think and consider a lot more than the average "voter" on RfA. As to the issue at hand; I wasn't aware I was obliged to provide reasons. Supporters don't. However, I agree that the user deserves to know that I don't believe we should promote pure vandal "fighters" on sight. Being an administrator rapidly turns into more than just a mass-rollback session, whether you go looking for it or not. Rob Church (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
See Also: User:Robchurch/Admin. --ZsinjTalk 00:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps "random" was an ill choice of words, I apologise for that. But I stand by the fact that explaining oppose votes is critical, and generally good because it allows people to improve. His Imposingness, the Grand Moff Deskana (talk) 15:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Rob's criteria are great in my opinion. I've flipped to them a few times when assessing RfA's -- Samir ∙ T C 23:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Support votes don't need reasoning because they are essentially agreeing with the reasons already given in the nomination. Opposing is disagreeing with those, and really needs an explanation to be fair and helpful to the user and the rest of the community. - Taxman Talk 23:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree with that summary, but fair enough. Rob Church (talk) 07:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

  1. Weak neutral. Good edit summary use, supporters above attest to good vandal-fighting ability, but... a little weak in the project namespace (and I've never heard of her). May change my mind, if it matters. — Mar. 9, '06 [20:45] <freakofnurxture|talk>

Comments

  • Edit summary usage: 99% for major edits and 98% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and 150 minor edits in the article namespace. Mathbot 23:45, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
  • See Vary's edit count and contribution tree with Interiot's tool.

Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
A. I'm sure the mop and bucket would be helpful in recent change patrolling, although not as much as I might have thought when I first started fighting vandalism: the rollback button should speed things up, but I've been pleasantly surprised to learn that issuing warnings actually does work, and I very rarely have to resort to requesting a block on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, so I don't anticipate having to hand out a huge number of blocks. If made an admin, I would probably check the block request page and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion regularly, and work on closing AFD's, as well as continuing to work on RC patrol and other projects.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
A. I can't think of any one contribution that stands out more than any other. I don't really have any particular area of expertise, though I occasionally wander by Wikipedia:WikiProject Theatre to find something theatre-related to work on. I've done some work on Wikipedia:Typo and on disambiguation, and have been involved in some AFD discussions, but most of my work has been on RC patrol, reverting and warning vandals.
I'll also always have a soft spot for for my first article, Largent, West Virginia, which I wrote to fulfill a request I came across when exploring the community portal. It's tiny, but so is the place it's about.
3. 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?
A. I've never been involved in what I would consider a particularly intense conflict, and I don't think anyone on Wikipedia has ever really managed to stress me out much. I'm a theatrical house manager at the moment, and frequently have to deal with people who will become rude or aggressive to put me on the defensive in order to get what they want, so I'm used to keeping calm when someone tries to provoke me. I try to make a point of never escalating a conflict and not getting defensive, because that's never helpful, and because It's way too easy to offend someone without meaning to.
Lately, I've been using my sandbox to create more personalized welcome messages to new users to whom I would otherwise have given a {{test}}, {{nn-warn}}, or similar message. I haven't really followed up on these editors to see if they've started making useful contributions, but it can't do any harm, and it's better than making it seem as if the new user is unwelcome.
Additional question from Rama's Arrow 00:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
4. Hi - what would you say if the concern was expressed that you haven't done much in terms of writing or building articles here, considering that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia? Rama's Arrow 00:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I think the relatively well publicized fact that most vandalism here is removed within 5 minutes probably takes a lot of the fun out of vandalizing. As I've said before, most of the time, it only takes a few quick reversions and progressively less gentle warnings to convince someone to stop vandalizing. I've even come across a handful editors who've managed to vandalize one or several articles 10 or 20 times over 5 minutes or so without getting caught who, once they're warned, stop immediately. This suggests to me that it's not that most vandals only make two or three bad edits before getting bored, but that knowing that someone is watching them, patiently dealing with their vandalism and politely asking them to stop makes most vandals find another way to amuse themselves.
The ever increasing number of high quality wikipedia articles is what attracts users here. (And by the way, whoo-hoo for 1,000,000!) But keeping users coming back is equally important. I think that every time a user comes to wikipedia for useful information and finds 'Penis U R Gay Poooooo!!!' instead, it hurts the 'pedia. A regular would simply remove the vandalism as a matter of course, but a newbie seeing a few edits like that might easily be turned off enough to stop trusting wikipedia's content, or worse, might decide to add some funny jokes him or herself. The same goes for other projects I've worked on, like spellchecking and disambiguation - they improve wikipedia by making it look more professional and making it easier to use. I would contend that improving usability, quickly removing non-content, and making a point of politely requesting that vandals stop what they're doing, are as important as creating new content.

Questions from NSLE:
The following are hypothetical situations you might find yourself in. I'd like to know how you'd react, as this may sway my vote. There is no need to answer these questions if you don't feel like it, that's fine with me, (especially if I've already supported you ;)).

5.You find out that an editor, who's well-known and liked in the community, has been using sockpuppets abusively. What would you do?
Sock puppetry is hard to prove, but I take it from the way the question is worded that I have pretty conclusive evidence that the user is in fact abusing sockpuppets. I'd probably tag the the accounts as possible socks and would definitely bring up the matter with the user, through email if I've dealt with before him or her before, or on the user's talk page. If the socks were used to sway an AFD or similar discussion, I might add a comment that the accounts have very few edits, without pointing fingers, although this usually happens almost immediately in such discussions and so may have been done already in this case. If they're being used to circumvent the 3RR or something similar to that, I would suggest that the user take a break from editing that article. I know that circumventing the 3RR is grounds for an immediate block, but I probably wouldn't resort to blocking or locking the article unless the user continues the behavior after I've asked him or her to stop, because if an editor has been around long enough to become 'well known' and is generally well behaved enough to be 'well liked', then they would very likely respond well to a warning, and I'd prefer to give the user a chance to step back and stop the problem behavior on his or her own, and take a self-imposed block on the problem article, than risk making an otherwise productive editor feel alienated or ganged up on. Everyone makes mistakes, especially over matters that they feel strongly about.
Incidentally, I'd probably do more or less the same thing for a first offence by a brand-new editor, although I'd probably be a little less optimistic about a polite warning being enough to stop the problem than I would from a longtime contributor in good standing.
6. While speedying articles/clearing a backlog at CAT:CSD, you come across an article that many users agree is patent nonsense. A small minority, of, say, three or four disagree. Upon looking the article over, you side with the minority and feel that the article is salvagable. Another admin then speedies it while you are making your decision. What would you do?
First, kick myself for not adding {{hangon}} while I made my decision. I guess I'd contact the admin who deleted the page, explain my rational behind keeping the article and the improvements I intend to make, and propose that I undelete it, clean it up, and put it on AFD if the deleting admin or anyone else still has concerns.
7. You speedy a few articles. An anon keeps recreating them, and you re-speedy them. After dropping a note on their talk page, they vandalise your user page and make incivil comments. You realise they've been blocked before. What would you do? Would you block them, or respect that you have a conflict of interest?
I'd take a deep breath, and remind myself of my favorite piece of vandalism ever [2]. It makes me laugh, I don't know why. Prior blocks or no, the editor should be warned properly before a block. I'd give the editor another warning and see what s/he does. If s/he stops, problem solved. If my user page gets vandalized again, I'd leave it for a while: my user page usually get reverted by someone else before I get to it, anyway, and having another editor involved at that point would probably be helpful. I've never liked being the only one to warn a user before they're blocked, anyway.
If the editor manages to get all the way up to a 'final' warning from me without attracting anyone else's attention, and I have let the situation get 'personal,' I'd have to enlist another admin's help at the administrator's noticeboard or at admin intervention against vandalism, and let someone else determine if a block is appropriate and what the duration should be. That's really the crucial part, I think - I would clearly be in a position to see that the IP should be blocked, but if the user has actually made me angry at him or her, I shouldn't be the one to decide how long the IP stays blocked.
Additionally, frequently re-created pages that are pure nonsense or otherwise not potentially useful articles can, I think, be deleted and then protected. That might help in getting the editor to quit before a block becomes necessary. If the articles are a notability issue, rather than just patent nonsense, I might, if appropriate, take them to AFD instead of salting the earth. If they're non-notable enough to be speedied, they would probably fail AFD, too, but exposing the editor to Wiki process might be useful. But, of course, if the editor is resorting immediately to attacks and other troublemaking, these hypothetical articles are probably bad-faith recreations and not a case of a user simply not understanding our notability requirements and procedures.


The above 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.