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Revision as of 18:18, 2 July 2006

Simetrical

Discuss here (71/5/1) ending 23:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Simetrical (talk · contribs) – Today I found out about a considerable issue with Misplaced Pages. This issue was preventing Misplaced Pages from functioning at its full potential. The issue? Simetrical is not an administrator. This guy has been around since late 2004, working consistently since then, particularly in the last six months. For the editcounters, he has over 5000 edits, a surely satisfactory count. He's got 1000 edits in project namespace, and has consistent participation in project pages such as Articles for Deletion and the Village Pump. He knows what he's doing, he's sane, and he's going to be of considerable use to the project. Werdna (talk) 23:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: See also my previous nomination, of about six months ago. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Support

1. As nominator. Werdna (talk) 00:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
2. robchurch | talk 00:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
3. Jaranda 00:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
4. Support Rama's Arrow 00:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
5. Support. Good question answers. Mangojuice 00:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
6. Support.--Kungfu Adam 01:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
7. Hrm, thought he was already an admin Support hoopydink 00:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
8. Support. DarthVader 00:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
9. Support I see nothing wrong, good user, will be an excellent admin. Yanksox 00:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
10. Strong support - I've interacted with this user: very polite; would be great with the admin tools. —Mets501 (talk) 02:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
11. Support per nom. Roy A.A. 02:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
12. Support As the nominator said, Simetrical has a significant number of great contributions to project-space. joturner 03:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
13. Support - Draeco 03:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
14. Firm Support. Was pleasant to speak with you on IRC regarding the fair use issue, thank you. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
15. How-come-I-don't-know-you-yet-? Support - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
16. Support - Experienced editor with needs of admin tools. --WinHunter 05:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
17. Support Why is this guy not an admin yet? Agent 86 06:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
18. Support so that Misplaced Pages can function at its full potential. Yamaguchi先生 06:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
19. Support Our paths have crossed in the past, and I confident he will be an asset. -- Avi 07:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
20. Support per WP:1Portal, just kidding. But seriously, no need for more edit stats, I already am confident in this user without stats.Voice-of-All 08:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
21. Support --Terence Ong _{(Chat | Contribs)} 09:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
22. Hrm, thought he was already an admin Support --mboverload@ 09:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
23. Support Absolutely :-). Anonymous__Anonymous 09:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
24. Support. Yes, why not? Stifle (talk) 10:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
25. Support. Satisfies my requirements to be an admin. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 12:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
26. Support. Good, trustworthy editor will make a great admin --Peripitus (Talk) 12:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
27. Support. Good and responsible contributor. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
28. Support great editor, moved to support per the response below.--Andeh 12:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
29. Support with a Hrm as above. -- Omniplex 13:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
30. Definite support. RandyWang (/_rants) 13:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
31. support duh. --W.marsh 14:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
32. support anything less would be criminal --Vengeful Cynic 14:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
33. Support Joe I 14:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
34. Support older ≠ wiser 14:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
35. Support We need more users like him! --Siva1979 18:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
36. Support Just what I am looking for in an administrator. I know he will do well. --WillMak050389 19:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
37. Support per nom, good answers to questions, and insightful essay on adminship on his user page. --Elkman 19:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
38. Support with pleasure. Everything below (and lots more on your user page) convinces me you'd make a fine admin. Also, I don't think you need to necessarily recuse yourself from AFD just because of your opinions. It would be one thing if you used your admin powers to close AFDs against consensus, but you seem too fair to do such a thing, and assuming you become an admin, the community will have placed its trust in you to be fair in such situations. If you feel you couldn't be unbiased in that case, though, and do avoid them because of that, then that just further convinces me of your honesty. Great candidate, whatever you may use the tools for. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 20:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    I would hope I'd be able to judge AFDs fairly, yes. However, with such an ample supply of less radical volunteers, it's best for admins with more extreme views to step aside, for form's sake at least. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

39. Highway 20:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
40. digital_me 20:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    Support. Dragons flight 21:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC) changed to Neutral.

41. Support Good all-round volunteer; willingness to recuse on AfDs is a good sign of editorial maturity (even if it's unnecessary :) Ziggurat 21:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
42. Merovingian {T C @} 22:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
43. Support, and I don't need to say anything else - sometimes silence is more musical than words. Phædriel ♥ tell me - 22:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
44. Support this user will be a fine admin --rogerd 00:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
45. Support. Thunderbrand 03:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
46. Support Easy support. Plus extra points for great nomination, apply the Simetrical patch. Rx StrangeLove 03:23, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
47. Strongest possible support. I was almost sure Simetrical was admin already. ~Chris (talk/e@) 03:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
48. Support, great user, unlikely to abuse admin powers--TBCTaLk?!? 05:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
49. Support —Quarl 2006-06-29 08:01Z
50. Yes Werdna, Simetrical does look to be the right type. :) --Nearly Headless Nick 09:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
51. Support as nominator. Polonium 18:53, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
52. Support — Vildricianus 21:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
53. Support -Lady Aleena @ 23:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
54. That's hot. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 05:47, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
55. Support Experience in all wikipedian fields and will not abuse the tools. - Patman2648 08:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
56. Support. Lupo 09:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
57. Strong Support - I honestly thought he was already! Remove RfA cliche Tremendously knowledgeable and extremely friendly - especially when it comes to an IRC n00b. And, I honestly did! :) - Glen 11:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
58. Support His June 4, 2006 edit summary was detrimental to both Misplaced Pages and planet Earth at large. Apart from that, everything looks good. --Jay(Reply) 16:21, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
59. Support: --Bhadani 17:19, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
60. Support; --HolyRomanEmperor 20:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
61. Support •Jim62sch• 20:24, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
62. Support Good contributor, always assuming good faith. *~Daniel~* 01:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
63. Support — The King of Kings 02:43 July 01 '06
64. Support good answers below, combined with a Hrm as above. --Zoz (t) 11:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
65. Support. --Randy Johnston (‽) 17:58, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
66. Support Seems ok to me. TruthCrusader 20:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
67. Support - Yes. Iolakana| 23:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
68. Support Yeah. The opposes are weak and bias'ed at best, in my humble opinion.... Looks good, Good luck! --негіднийлють 08:26, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
69. Support Sarah Ewart (Talk) 13:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
70. Support --TonyM 16:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
71. Support. JYolkowski // talk 17:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. .--SB | T 08:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

   I stand by that edit. The edit summary was a bit too flippant, okay, but the content of it I wouldn't have changed. It already passed a CFR with the resolution to keep it where it was, and just moving it anyway was inappropriate. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

2. Per Sean Black - "I've already gotten User:NekoDaemon to ignore this because the top edit isn't an admin, so I may as well actually remove the out-of-process template." Admins do NOT have superiority, and you're not fit to be one. 10:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

   What are you actually saying in this edit summary, Simetrical? I don't get it... - CrazyRussian talk/email 14:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

   Some background is needed there, yeah. What happened was this. The category was put up on CFD to be moved to Category:Disaster films. It was closed by User:Vegaswikian as no consensus. A few days later, with no explanation given, Sean Black added {{categoryredirect}}, implementing the move anyway.

   Now, the way {{categoryredirect}} works is that if the top edit on the category page is an admin, User:NekoDaemon (a bot) eventually gets around to moving all the child pages to the destination category. It's a hacky way to implement category moves/redirects, in other words. So, feeling Sean's actions were out of line, I removed the template, stopping NekoDaemon from moving the edits over. The edit summary was a bit odd, a consequence of whatever was going on in my head at the time, but I stand by my actions.

   Incidentally, the same person tried submitting the same category move to CFR a bit over a week after her previous one failed. was also closed as no consensus, by a different admin. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

   Correct, Alphax. Admins do not have superiority. That's why I reverted Sean's edit. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

   These oppose votes on predicated on a misunderstanding of how category redirection worked. --Cyde↔Weys 20:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

   I don't think Sean Black's was. I'm pretty sure he just disagrees with my notion that process is important, broadly speaking, and so thinks that I might cause trouble or something if I'm admin. (Remember that it was his category-move I reverted.) Alphax's oppose might be due to a misunderstanding, though; certainly I'm not sure how "Admins do NOT have superiority" squares with opposing me for reverting an admin who was using his tools against the outcome of a CFD. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:36, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

3. Oppose I’m not convinced that Simetrical fully understands Misplaced Pages policy and respects community consensus.

   1. Simetrical embraces an overly broad view of fair use compared to Foundation policy. Simetrical’s work on fair use/copyright issues will move Misplaced Pages-EN away from its primary mission.

   2. Simetrical posted a link on Misplaced Pages that revealed KateFan0’s identity. Simetrical's response concerns me because it shows a lack of awareness of a key policy that has been repeatedly discussed for weeks. User talk:Simetrical#Your evidence

   3. Against community consensus and at risk of disrupting the project AGAIN, Simetrical argues that Blu Aardvark should be completely unblocked and allowed to edit Misplaced Pages for the duration of the arbitration case. Not limited to editing the arbitration pages-the entire site. This statement was made after Blu was unblocked and reblocked twice after a large segment of the community objected to unblocking him; and after several arbitrators stated that a ban was appropriate and after Dmcdevit stated his intention to make an injunction blocking Blu during the arb case. .

   4. Insists that Misplaced Pages use the higher legal standards of libel, harassment, and stalking when deciding on bans instead of usual Misplaced Pages standard such as disruptive behavior.

   Will consider changing my mind if nom can reassure me about these concerns. FloNight 11:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

   Three of these four cited reasons are personal opinions; only one seems to have merit - and this was a good-faith error. Besides #3; this opposition amounts to "He disagrees with the 'right' viewpoint, therefore he is bad."; Surely I needn't remind you that everybody makes mistakes, and that wikipedians should not be afraid to hold a view that is against the majority viewpoint, so long as they represent it appropriately, as Simetrical evidently has. Werdna (talk) 12:57, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

   Werdna, Misplaced Pages policy and community consensus can not be replaced by a biased point of view. Simetrical comments indicate he has a problem grasping this point. As for Simetrical revealing personal information, to be fair remember that the RFA process regularly rejects editors for far less significant errors! FloNight 13:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

   I think disagreeing with someone is a perfectly valid reason to oppose their adminship, provided the disagreement is actually relevant to adminship. Point one, at least, certainly is, and given that admins routinely make decisions of whether to block users without consulting others, three and four are arguably somewhat relevant as well. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

   For number one: I don't think my view of fair use is overly broad in any way, shape, or form. I believe we should stay well within the bounds of the law, and that the Foundation should exercise due prudence in avoiding lawsuits even when we're probably in the right. I remain unconvinced of any loss of freeness in Misplaced Pages due to this, unless you measure freeness by counting out what percentage of content is reusable rather than how much content is reusable. Using additional fair-use images will not reduce the amount of stuff a non-US redistributor or repurposer would find useful; it will only add to the amount of stuff a US (or similar) redistributor can redistribute.

   Two: I made a mistake. That is my fault. As soon as it was pointed out, I asked Raul to oversight away the revisions (although I think he may have ended up just deleting them instead). As for the severity of my error, the cat was already out of the bag, and I find it hard to believe that Katefan0 or anyone else was put to even the slightest iota of additional stress or harm because of my slipup.

   Three: Arguing against community consensus is very, very different from acting against it. I do the former routinely; the latter I don't think I've ever knowingly done. I advocated that the ArbCom follow a course of action that you, apparently, find distressing. As far the merits of said course of action, I still think it would probably have been best. I laid out my reasoning in substantial detail.

   Finally, while I have not examined Selina's on-wiki behavior and can't judge her on that, I retain the opinion that only fairly extraordinary off-wiki circumstances should merit an on-wiki ban, and I don't think Selnia qualifies.

   Ultimately, as with Sean Black, I respect your reasoning for opposing my adminship but do not accept it. I realize you feel very strongly about Blu Aardvark/MSK's brief unbanning, but nevertheless I disagree with your feelings on that matter in the main (while not, by the way, necessarily believing that either should actually be unbanned). I don't think there would be great productivity gained, at this juncture, by our attempting to debate the issue; I very much doubt that either of us will convince the other. So, let us agree to disagree. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

   Yes, nevermind the fact that the arbcomm upheld the actions of those opposed to unblocking BA while dismissing the reasoning Simetrical touts here: Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Blu_Aardvark#Remedies. This, and his tendentious agumentation here of all places is why I oppose Simetrical's RFA. FeloniousMonk 17:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

4. Oppose Per evidence from FloNight. Simetrical's aggressive behavior and bad-tempered comments toward others in the BluAardvark debacle, along with his unfortunate habit of rushing to the aid of the attacker, raises concerns that he'll put the personal feelings before those of the community's and unfits him for any position with authority in my opinion. FeloniousMonk 17:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
5. Per FloNight, FeloniousMonk, and these posts . KillerChihuahua 17:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose per FloNight, et al. and past incivility. I was neutral leaning towards oppose on the basis of my past interactions, but based on what is presented above I have moved from "not going to vote" to Oppose. Guettarda 18:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
7. No. — Dunc|☺ 18:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

Neutral couldn't find any RC patrolling in the last 1500 edits, no signs of user having any knowledge with tackling vandalism. Obviously a great editor but I believe all admins need to know how to tackle vandalism.--Andeh 01:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I have done some vandalism reversion in the past, although I typically haven't spent a lot of time actively RC patrolling. I mostly revert vandalism when I see it, e.g. . I have also done some light RC patrolling once or twice in the past, see here. It isn't, however, a major occupation of mine here; I expect to use rollback occasionally, but not too frequently. If adminship were solely about RC patrolling, I'd certainly deserve a pass, but then, I wouldn't have accepted the nomination if adminship were solely about RC patrolling. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Moved to Support per users response.--Andeh 12:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

1. Neutral. I am bothered by FloNight's evidenced, and retracting my support. Dragons flight 06:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• See Simetrical's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool.
• Edit count:

Username	Simetrical
Total edits	5054
Distinct pages edited	2705
Average edits/page	1.868
First edit	19:21, 27 December 2004
--------------------------------------
(main)		2079
Talk		423
User		273
User talk	441
Image		53
Image talk	22
MediaWiki talk	22
Template	214
Template talk	61
Category	136
Category talk	21
Misplaced Pages	974
Misplaced Pages talk	334
Portal		1

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Misplaced Pages 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:Misplaced Pages backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.

A: For the forseeable future, I would hope to be able to help eliminate the backlog at WP:PUI. While I'm a layman, unfortunately, we have to make do with what we have in matters of copyright, and I think I have a fairly good working knowledge of both U.S. copyright law and Misplaced Pages copyright policy. Many of my project(-talk) contributions are to Misplaced Pages talk:Copyrights, Misplaced Pages talk:Fair use, Misplaced Pages talk:Image copyright tags, Misplaced Pages:Media copyright questions, and so on. I wouldn't call myself paranoid with regard to copyright, but I certainly respect the rights of authors, and hope to enforce Misplaced Pages policy to that effect. I'll also likely help out with some other admin backlogs now and then.

One thing I will not do is participate on the admin side of AFD or MFD (except perhaps to close as a delete). I'm well aware that my views on article inclusion (particularly notability) are very extreme, and I don't think it's appropriate for someone with that kind of dispute with consensus to have to gauge that same consensus. I also will not undelete articles or miscellanea just because I feel they were deleted out of process. If, at some point in the future, I feel the need to change the terms of my adminship, I'll renominate myself for adminship under those different terms. (Note that I may still participate in things such as TFD or CFD, which I don't think I have such strong views on at all.)

2. Of your articles or contributions to Misplaced Pages, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A: Well, I'm more prone to tweaks than to large-scale rewrites. Helping people out at the Village Pumps and copyright pages are probably the most significant things I do now. I did, as noted in my previous nomination, also contribute significantly to Rome: Total War (my largest contribution here, also some other edits since then) and Forum moderator (rewrote the page), and some more minor things as well.

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'll just quote my answer from last time:The only real conflict I've had was at Talk:2004, a few months ago. The primary dispute (over page protection, incidentally) ended up being at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Ta bu shi da yu, after a long, low-key dispute over the actual content of the 2004 page. —Simetrical (talk) 00:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC) I can't think of any conflicts I've been in since then, to be honest, and I wasn't exactly part of that dispute either before the RFC (I mainly lurked in the sidelines). I certainly don't ever edit-war, and as Mathbot's stats will show, my edits tend to be spread out rather than being ongoing contributions to a limited number of articles. It's hard to get into disputes with people over a page you only ever edit once.

Optional question for the candidate:

4. How would you characterize your opinion on the use of Fair Use images, given the current controversy surrounding them? ~Kylu (u|t) 04:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I am in favor of using fair-use images whenever a) they enhance encyclopedic value in some way, however modest, and b) we have a good case for their use. I remain unconvinced by the arguments that having more fair-use images diminishes the freeness of the encyclopedia; once we include fair use images altogether, we're automatically not copiable by anyone in a country that doesn't have similar fair-use laws, and still copiable by anyone in a country that does. Since it doesn't reduce our redistributability or modifiability, I can't see how it would affect our freeness, unless you believe in free content as some sort of Platonic ideal that's tarnished by exposure to anything the least bit unfree rather than as something adopted essentially because it helps people out.

My opinion is, of course, subject to change. I'm currently discussing the matter with Gmaxwell at Misplaced Pages talk:Fair use#what is critical commentary? what is transformative use? Wiki qualifies, as a matter of fact. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt reply! :) ~Kylu (u|t) 04:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)