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Revision as of 05:05, 15 October 2008

Protonk

Voice your opinion (talk page) (21/1/0); Scheduled to end 00:50, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Protonk (talk · contribs) - Protonk is a very solid editor, who I noticed participating in various AFDs, and admin noticeboards, lately on the discussion regarding TTN. He struck me as a very admin-like user; I thus decided to nominate him. He has been around, and active since April; he has a decent amount of edits, including lots of discussion with other users. He has twothree Good articles to his name: Mathematical economics, Warhammer 40,000 and John Emilius Fauquier, as well as work on many others. While I don't always agree with his comments, he presents his ideas fairly and calmly, and is always willing to listen to others. He frequents AFDs, where, unlike a lot of users, doesn't make "drive-by" votes - he makes a clear and proper explanation for his reasoning. He has already made several non-admin closes, as documented here, and if he was promoted, I can imagine this being his primary area of admin work, before stretching to other areas. So, in conclusion, I do believe Protonk will make a very fair, positive, and hardworking administrator, so I hope you will support him. -- how do you turn this on 16:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

• I accept. thank you. Protonk (talk) 00:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

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

1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: I intend to work with non-controversial admin tasks. I occasionally do new page patrolling, either through huggle or through the watchlist I've build up from project tagging, so I can work to block vandals after the final warning there without having to generate a report to AIV. I do a small amount of work in template space (although I'm no programmer), so I would be able to make non-technical edit-protected requests to headers, templates and other transcluded pages. I can likewise help with Category:Misplaced Pages semi-protected edit requests. I also am interested in closing AfD's, as can be seen from the nomination. When I do so, the types of AfD's I will close will almost never be the types of AfD's I comment in regularly--I feel that my input as a commenter there is more helpful than as a closer. I am an administrator on a local wiki for a prior job and I have created and hosted private media wiki installations, so I feel I have some grasp of the "nuts and bolts" (so to speak) of the tools themselves.

2. What are your best contributions to Misplaced Pages, and why?

A: I'm proud to be a Good Article reviewer. From a look at the edits to WP:GAN, I would guess that I have reviews 20-25 articles (and provided second opinions on others). I'm happy to work there, as it allows me to meet new people and find articles on new subjects and hopefully give helpful peer review to those articles in their way to FA. I am also very proud of User:Protonk/Rescued. If I can find an article at AfD that is there solely because of lack of attention, it makes me happy to spruce it up and save it from deletion. John Emilius Fauquier was one of those articles--I found it at AfD and now it is a Good Article. Warhammer 40,000, now a good article nominee good article, represents a portion of my attempt to bring Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Warhammer 40,000 back from the abyss. I found this project and these articles when a number of the fictional elements of that board game came up for deletion. I felt that there was enough material to build good core articles, but that the project had been focused on quantity, not quality. I revamped the project page and sub-pages, verified the member listing, created userboxes, fixed templates, parented categories, implemented the WP 1.0 quality scale and assessed many of the articles in the project. I was also happy to work on Mathematical economics, which represented a large block of time spent researching journals and books. It is far from complete but I have learned a great deal about Misplaced Pages from just that article.

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: Yes. I have had a few conflicts but the biggest series of them relate to User:B988a4299d07c0f61fbc8378965438f0. He is an inclusionist and I can be labeled a deletionist, so that is the impetus of our disagreements. That difference doesn't explain our disagreement or justify it. We came to loggerheads in May. Being new, I assumed that AN and AN/I were not a place to take our specific disagreement, so I filed a WQA. He changed the title of the WQA so that it would be about both people and I reverted his change. Again, being new, I interpreted his 3 reverts as an edit war and posted a 3RR report. This was declined on the basis that 3 < 4. Still pretty upset about this, I filed an RfC (which the editor who closed the WQA suggested I do). This was dismissed as trivial. I worked with this user for a few weeks, avoiding AfD and collaborating on some minor article work (namely the recreation of Cheshire Cat in popular culture and List of controversial video games. This, for a while, proved to be helpful as he and I seemed to get along on talk pages or article space. When I returned to AfD I grew increasingly frustrated at his behavior and said things I regretted later. Most of those can be found, variously, in my talk page archives (there aren't many). I don't think I handled this series of disputes well. In retrospect, the right answer is distance and time. AfD is, in fact, not the most important thing in the world, and not every AfD out there needed my input. At the time I didn't really fully "get" this. I was still either too upset about his actions or too interested in the disposition of the content. Now I realize that the answer is really to not lose sleep over it. The world won't end if I don't get in a "keep" comment here or a "delete" comment there. Community processes like that work well with one less user or one more user, the process itself is what moves things along. I am happy to answer questions or respond to comments about these disagreements, but in fairness to this user (who was renamed for off wiki reasons) and due to the fact that much of our communication was off wiki, I would prefer to not dwell on things further.

Additional question from Banime:

4. Question borrowed from George the Dragon: Your first contribution after creating your account was to articles for deletion. Did you edit Misplaced Pages under an account before this one, and is that account still active?

A That's a good question and I'm glad it is an early one (as I meant to include it in the "optional statement" but forgot). I did not edit under a different account prior to registering this one. Like I said above, I have installed the mediawiki software and administered installations of media-wiki, so I was somewhat familiar with the formatting and such prior to 2008. I also edited under an IP address for a brief period in march and in April. One of the AfD's I actually noted (or overwrote) the connection but I can't seem to find that contribution now. An earlier version of my userpage has some explanation there. I literally came to wikipedia because of AfD. I never gave the inner workings of the encyclopedia much thought until I read an article about "deletionists" that lead me to Encyclopedia Dramatica and then I read the policy pages, noticeboards and so forth on wikipedia before diving in to AfD. Once I got here I quickly discovered that I liked the place quite a bit and here we are. I hope that answers your question. Protonk (talk) 02:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Additional question from TomStar81:

5. You have admitted to being a deletionist, and to having problems with an inclusionist. I am curious to know what your positions are on the difference between the two philosophies (is one better than the other? are they essetially the same? etc), and whether you feel that as a deletionist you can adhere to the principles AGF and NPOV. This won't effect my ivote either way, I am just interested in your opinion and position on the matters.

A. Well. I admitted to being what could be described as a deletionist. I feel that notability is a means to an end, that end being an informative, discriminate and factually neutral encyclopedia. If we had a better way to reach that end, I would support it. I am active (though not nearly as much as the main editors) at Misplaced Pages:Notability/RFC:compromise where attempts are being made to do exactly that:get the results of the GNG without the unintended consequence of offering a skewed portrayal of fictional subjects (from the framework provided in the fictional universes). I put the "AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD badge on my userpage as kind of a lark, but that is how I feel. Some articles meet the inclusion criteria. Some don't. That isn't inherently a value judgment, though it may feel that way. As far as the inclusionist philosophy, I understand it. Part of wikipedia's charm comes from "in pop culture" sections. It comes from being able to see an article like Back to the Future timeline and think: this is only possible because of the collaborate efforts of people in unison. It makes me a little sad to see that as a redirect now. I can understand the point that "notability" flies in the face of some of the tenets of web 2.0 collaboration in general and the founding principles of wikipedia in particular. So I don't think it is illegitimate or that it is impossible to assume good faith of those who might hold those ideas close to their hearts. I just feel that what we give up in not demanding third party sources is too much.

Additional questions from seresin

5.Given what you said above about an editor (now named A Nobody), how do you plan to act in the future both in using your administrator tools with regards to fiction/notability areas, as well as working with inclusionist editors? Do you plan to close non-obvious AfDs where your personal view of notability would perhaps cause you to wish an article be deleted?

A Well, I'll defer part of the answer to my response to Q1. By and large I don't intend to close AfD's about fictional subjects. In those cases, should I be at AfD, I'll probably do a search for sources and leave some comment on the AfD pursuant to that search. I don't want to flat out promise that I will never close fictional AfD's, because part of the reason you might be supporting me is that you trust me to make judgments. In this case, I hope that you can trust I would recognize my bias in light of notability issues. And, as a tie in to the answer above, I don't think this is about a certain "class" of articles. I don't feel wikipedia should have articles on Napoleon and not on ice cream. I just feel that what we cover should largely be determined by the coverage in secondary sources. That lifts the burden (and bias) off of people like me and you in choosing which articles to keep and which to point toward a specialist wiki.

General comments

• See Protonk's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.

• Links for Protonk: Protonk (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

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

Discussion

Support

1. Nominator support. -- how do you turn this on 00:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
2. Support - level-headed editor with a good grasp of possible. Generally more patient with other editors than I am; sets a good example for editors in content disputes :-). Makes responsible edits with helpful edit summary and talk-page follow-up, and in general is someone whom I'd trust to mind the shop when no one else is around. --EEMIV (talk) 00:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
3. Support - I've seen this guy around a lot at WP:RSN where he is always handing well reasoned, useful advise. I kinda had assumed he already was an admin. Yilloslime (t) 01:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
4. Strong Support. Probably would have co-nommed even. Great editor on fairly technical subjects. We need more admins who can deal with complex topics, and Protonk has the rare ability to do this with economics content. Has been very helpful in raising Tulip mania to FA and Panic of 1907 to FAC, for example. As someone tending toward the inclusionist end of the spectrum, I'd attest that User:B988a4299d07c0f61fbc8378965438f0 was a frustrating user, and that although Protonk may feel he crossed the line he 1) is clearly aware of this and upfront about it, per his answer to the third question, 2) anyone with flesh and blood would have gotten frustrated, and 3) he made a good faith and concerted push to work constructively with the editor in question. Approachable, smart, exactly the sort of admin we want, in my opinion. --JayHenry (talk) 01:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
5. Support I offered to nominate this user myself about a month back; (s)he was a great user back then and from what I have glanced over recently that has not changed. I have always been impressed by his/her thoughtful statements on a wide variety of issues. Icewedge (talk) 01:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
6. No reservations. Early congratulations on your successful request. Avruch 01:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
7. Complete support. I've hoped this would happen for awhile; we need more like you. Good luck, Lazulilasher (talk) 01:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
8. Support. Reality stinks a lot of the time. I wouldn't get my hopes up this early if I were you, Avruch. bibliomaniac15 01:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
9. Support - glad to provide early support for this productive, knowledgeable editor.  Frank  |  talk  01:20, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
10. Hello, I'm the Road Runner and I would like to file a restraining order against Wile E. Coyote...oh, wrong queue. But while I am here: Support for one of our finer editors. (Does Richard A. Houghten know you're going for adminship?) Ecoleetage (talk) 01:24, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
11. Everyme 01:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
12. HiDrNick! 01:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
13. Support - Clueful editor with the necessary experience to excel as an admin. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 01:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
14. Strongest possible support, I've seen this guy around and honestly thought he was an admin (ignoring the cliché/ROFLZ value that statement normally brings). Ironholds (talk) 02:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
15. Support Thought he was an admin already... LittleMountain5 02:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
16. Strong support – cool-headed, excellent user. Absolutely no qualms in supporting him. Will be a superb administrator. Probably would have offered a co-nom if I had heard about this earlier ;-) — sephiroth bcr 02:34, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
17. Support - A very productive and insightful editor who works constructively with others. Good judgment, good attitude. Flexible in his approach. —Mattisse (Talk) 02:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
18. Oppose for calling us a nest of vipers. Support for all of his other edits. I've been reviewing Protonk for about 2 hours now... while I don't always agree with him, and there are a few concerns that I have, I haven't seen anything that really makes me say, "No." One of the things I really liked was how people came to him seeking help... he is seen by many as an admin, which makes him one by fiat if not by RfA---Balloonman 03:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
19. Strong Support. I've seen this user frequently in AFDs making articulate arguments that show a good mix of knowledge on policy and common sense. He is polite and respectful when engaging other editors, and goes the extra mile to explain his rationales thoroughly. Doctorfluffy (robe and wizard hat) 03:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
20. Support I've frequently disagreed with Protonk in AfD, but he's a well-reasoned contributor and I have no doubt that he will make an excellent administrator. And I'll specifically note that the Oppose does not concern me a single iota; I've seen Protonk manage conflicts in other circumstances, and dude handles disagreement well. Townlake (talk) 03:46, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
21. Support I see nothing that causes me not to trust this user with the colloquial mop. Fraud 04:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
22. Support Extremely active in AfD and policy pages, thoughtful contributions, and understands the difference between personal opinion and consensus. Easy +sysop.

Oppose

1. Oppose because the candidate came here with bad intentions (how do we know we’re still not being had?), does not seem to understand how admin boards work and venue shopped/escalated tensions during a dispute (see User_talk:Protonk/Archive_1#Suggestion, User_talk:Protonk/Archive_1#Title_and_3RR, and User_talk:Protonk/Archive_1#RFCs), is too quick to fly off the handle/lose temper for a prospective admin (User_talk:Protonk/Archive_3#Rescue_tag_on_Ultramarines) and while claiming there that he wanted nothing to do with his opponent followed him around anyway as seen in Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/User:Stormie/DRV notes and apparently was in no hurry even after that to let things be, has been warned for vandalism, and has engaged in edit warring. Also, look at the earliest edits here. His immediately jumping into AfDs is also somewhat unusual for a “new” user.--A Nobody 02:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

   FYI to curious readers - this editor, A Nobody, is the 3rd name of the editor that Protonk referenced above in his answer to question 3 (conflicts). They have a history of disputes, albeit under the original name of the editor above. You should have no difficulty figuring out his previous names, but he was renamed because of stalking issues (according to him) so I won't say it outright. Avruch 02:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

   Yes, please don't as the concerns do remain to some degree. In any event, I do not wish to renew our past conflicts and hope that we will never have any negative future interactions. I am saying here what I feel I need to say after everything and will say no more. I have no wish to pile on or reignite things. Actually, I don't think that's really likely at this point anyway, as I'm not apt to be around much and I definitely don't have time for the areas in which we had run into past conflict any more. I really do not trust him as an admin due to our past experiences, although I always hold out hope that anyone can surprise me, and I have no desire to feel any animosity beyond that. I have said my peace and that is all. --A Nobody 02:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Neutral