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Michaelbusch

Voice your opinion (talk page) (25/17/1); Scheduled to end 04:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Michaelbusch (talk · contribs) - After due consideration, I am nominating myself Michaelbusch 04:45, 30 October 2007 (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 admin work do you intend to take part in?

A: I expect that the dominant form of admin work I would do would be the various forms of fighting vandalism - there are very obviously too few admins for the task. Uses of admin powers here are, in decreasing order: removing speedy-deletion-tagged pages, blocking accounts that continue to vandalize past warnings, checking for evidence of sockpuppetry, and protecting pages from repeated vandalism. Beyond this, I also expect to be involved with 3RR violations - through the experience of breaking that particular rule, I think I now understand its importance.

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

A: I've been active on Misplaced Pages in three major areas: astronomy, physics, and planetary science, where I have some knowledge and have been able to improve or at least maintain the quality of the relevant articles; removing pseudoscience - although my editing has at times been disputed, I think I have helped the content of Crop circle and What the Bleep Do We Know!?, among others; and removing vandalism. In the last, I have slowly learned the limits of acceptable behavior and the appropriate action against violations. I also was pleasantly surprised to receive a barnstar for edits to Gold standard, after what I thought was routine condensation to remove inappropriate material.

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

A: I'm afraid I have. As I mentioned above, I have had several run-ins with WP:3RR, where I became too certain that my version of relatively minor points was correct. I did not take the first time with good grace (in fact, I would say I acted like an ass), but I think that by now I have learned the reasons for 3RR, when it applies, and what I should do in cases of violations.

I have also been involved in various editing disputes, many associated with removing different forms of pseudoscience. At times, this led to me reaching the limits of my patience. I have learned that eventually I reach a point when I must declare that I am done with discussion, and exclude myself from further deliberations. The alternative is a risk of me becoming annoyed, which impairs my neutrality. I think I have now reached a point where I can judge myself well enough that I will exclude myself before abusing admin authority.

Thank you. Michaelbusch 05:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

4. Optional question from User:GlassCobra: You had a pretty long absence over the summer, from June to August. If you don't mind me asking, what happened? Do you think it might happen again in the future? This question is very optional, feel free to leave it unanswered. GlassCobra 07:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I was getting rather too involved in editing, and decided I needed a long break to regain perspective. Regarding future long breaks: aside from further episodes of self-imposed Wiki-withdrawl, I'm currently working on my thesis. I suspect that a break of similar or longer length will happen in a year or so, when it reaches crunch-time. Michaelbusch 07:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

5. optional question from User:Carlossuarez46: You've been blocked 3 times for 3RR violations - what do you think you learned from the third time that was not learned from either of the prior two? Carlossuarez46 19:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

A: With the Topics in ufology dispute, I finally learned the importance of patience and not letting myself become annoyed, which applies to editing by not rampantly reverting text, even if it is inappropriate. I should have learned this lesson earlier, but at times I am too stubborn for my own good. Michaelbusch 19:34, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

6. Optional Question from User:Tiptoety You spend much of your time tagging pages for speedy deletion. What is your philosophy regarding deleting and article opposed to improving and expanding it? Tiptoety 22:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

A: In the vast majority of cases where I've tagged articles for speedy, they are pretty obviously inappropriate (the usual attack pages, pure nonsense, self-promotional posts, etc.). In marginal cases, when I speedy a page or nominate it for deletion, it is because I feel that either the subject matter is not notable, or the page would need to be completely scrapped and re-written to be acceptable on Misplaced Pages - I think it is better that a page not be there at all than it join the mass of marginal articles. Perhaps I make somewhat less use of the cleanup tags than I should.

I also have different standards of notability than some editors - for example, I fail to understand why every footballer who has ever played in a professional game apparently deserves a Misplaced Pages article. This does occasionally lead to me flagging pages for speedy that another editor might not. Michaelbusch 22:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Q: Does that also mean you would have different standards for deleting pages than other administrators? for example, would you delete such pagers on footballers? 17:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It means that I still have much to assimilate about what is generally considered notable and what enough editors consider notable that deletion is not recommended, so as to avoid deletion flags that many editors would object to. If I am granted admin powers, it will mean that I need to exercise slightly more restraint in removing deleting pages than I have in flagging them. Based on the statements below, roughly 5-10% of pages I've flagged for deletion are contentious. I must exercise enough restraint to only deal with the other ~90%. Michaelbusch 17:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Question from Carnildo

7. What is your view of Ignore All Rules?

A: It is a good thing, because it makes it clear that Misplaced Pages is open, but it also requires that editors not be dense. When dealing with vandalism or other occurrences of density, I think I sometimes stray too far towards Wikilawyering - which Ignore All Rules specifically discourages, because I prefer referencing policies than explaining all the rationale behind declaring a particular edit inappropriate. I try to balance that, but not always successfully. Michaelbusch 00:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

8. (Optional question from MONGO)...You see that one administrator has blocked another editor and you disagree with the block. What is the policy about unblocking and do you intend to adhere to it?

A: The policy about unblocking is that it should be used very sparingly, to prevent Admins warring amongst themselves about blocking editors. This is a good policy, and I would follow it: unless a block is very obviously excessive/undeserved, I will not unblock an editor. Michaelbusch 17:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

General comments

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

• Links for Michaelbusch: Michaelbusch (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/Michaelbusch before commenting.

Discussion

I'd like to ask the candidate a question before making a decision. Below I have cited one of the relevant fining from the recent paranormal arbcom.

"Language in the introduction of an article may serve to frame the subject thus defining the epistemological status. Examples include "mythical", "fictional", "a belief", and in the present case "paranormal", "psychic", "new age", "occult", "channeling". or "parapsychological researcher". "UFO", "Bigfoot", "Yeti", "alien abduction", and "crop circle" serve the same function. It should not be necessary in the case of an adequately framed article to add more, for example to describe Jeane Dixon as a psychic who appeared on TV says it all. "Purported psychic" or "self-described psychic" adds nothing."

I'd like to ask the candidate what he takes this to mean, and whether he thinks it is correct?Davkal 22:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I take this to mean that the controversial or pseudoscientific nature of a term should be assumed to be known to the reader - e.g. in the Jeane Dixon example, the reader is assumed to understand the implications of the term 'psychic' in modern language. This is an admirable goal for making clearly-written articles: we avoid constant hedging of words.

I do see potential problems: a reader who is less familiar with the subject might miss the implications of a term. This probably isn't a problem with 'psychic', since that is common knowledge. But for less common terms (say 'cerealogist' if a crop-circle enthusiast is ever so described) we should keep the caveats. We also must make sure that the terms used in framing an article are properly described in their own articles - for example crop circle must contain a description of how they are built by pranksters and publicity-seekers and psychic properly notes the scientific community's general rejection of the idea. Michaelbusch 22:46, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Support

1. First support Looks good to me! S_QL 05:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
2. Support (unfortunately not first): Michael has been very helpful in maintaining NPOV in pseudoscience and other topics. Adminship would be very useful to help deal with the most absurd of persistent crackpots, and also to deal with vandalism. --Philosophus 05:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
3. support for the above reasons Stupid2 05:43, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
4. Support. Back in the middle of May I had a run-in with Michaelbusch on CSD patrol. He has tagged an article for speedy deletion that I felt didn't qualify, and I also thought at the time that he was bitey to the creator. I watchlisted this RFA way back then, knowing that it would soon come; I expected to oppose. Several months later, though, things have definitely improved. I don't see many problems in his recent editing history. I wish he would slow down to distinguish between vandalism and test edits, and respond differently to each. The only big mistake I've noticed in his recent contributions is reporting an editor to WP:AIV over a content dispute (diff) and some related nonconstructive reverting on said editor's talk page (diff). Clearly few candidates are perfect. Still, I'm confident though that Michaelbusch will refrain from doing anything boneheaded like deleting the Main Page, protecting the right version, or blocking an editor he's in a tiff with. The candidate does good work on keeping out some of the cranks and crackpots. (Pffft, thoughtform. You can't win them all.) He's a good faith contributor who should have no trouble learning from his mistakes along the way. ➪HiDrNick! 05:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

   I'm not sure the WP:AIV report was totally necessary, but there has been a problem with the United Nation of Islam article, with two editors edit-warring and no discussion on the matter. There's a current discussion at WP:AN/I about the matter. I haven't even figured out the whole situation yet. --Elkman 16:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

5. Support - as above --wj32 06:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
6. Support, can't see any evidence of being a mental. Neil ☎ 09:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
7. Support good uder, unlikely to abuse the tools. Would havve liked a longer nom though--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 12:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
8. Support. He promptly helped me disguising a troll (and sockpuppeteer): when I asked Michaelbusch for help , user Michaelbusch promptly reacted by providing me necessary data . Kubura 13:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
9. Support: I agree with Philosophus.--MyMii 14:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

   Moved this comment to where I think it should have gone... S_QL 20:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

10. Support Everything above looks good. I also went through your deleted contributions and think that you have demonstrated a solid judgement in regards to WP:CSD, and this is a service wherein we will require many admins to be focused on when the anon page creation starts back up. Good luck! Hiberniantears 14:31, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
11. Support per nom--Angel David 14:53, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
12. Support - judging from some of his actions I find him reasonable and he is aslo a reasonable content contributor. `'Míkka 16:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
13. Support. Trust him with the tools. --Kbdank71 17:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
14. Support - absolutely! Michael has been around long enough and has proven as a very helpful contributer. I doubt any questionable issues will pop up.¤~Persian Poet Gal 17:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
15. Give him the mop There's no way I could oppose a fellow CSD-tagger. No potential to abuse the tools. Just a great user all around. My only caveat is that the use of the summary box could be a bit better. NF24_{Editor review)} 21:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
16. Support thoughtful answer to my question and has learned from prior mistakes. Carlossuarez46 22:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
17. Yes, give him the mop. Supporting per NASCAR Fan24. NHRHS2010 talk 22:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
18. Support We need more admins with a clear understanding of editing habits in areas of pseudoscience. I can't think of a better endorsement than MartinPhi's opposition, recorded below. Skinwalker 00:21, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
19. Conditional Support so long as you're especially careful around deletion and ask for a 2nd admin opinion when in doubt --Pumpmeup 00:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
20. Support I am confident that this user will not abuse the admin tools given to him. A fine contributer as well to this project. --Siva1979 07:39, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
21. Support, here here, per Philosophus (talk · contribs)' wise words, above. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 08:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC).
22. Support Though normally three blocks for 3RR would lead me to instantly oppose, this candidate has strongly and eloquently demonstrated that they learned from their mistakes and clearly understand both the letter and spirit of policy now. Surely to be trusted. VanTucky 17:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
23. Support We need more editors like Michaelbusch, and if he wants to take on the thankless role of administrator, more power to him. ScienceApologist 22:55, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
24. Support Michaelbusch provides yeoman's service in vetting astronomy and planetary science articles. I wish I had more time to do the same. Looking over the objections, I only can say that it has been my experience that Michaelbusch attracts the attention of some of the more difficult Wikipedians and has had some trouble interpreting policy in those cases. I presume he's learned from the experience. Isentropiclift 17:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
25. --U.S.A.U.S.A.U.S.A. 23:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
26. Candidate has indicated that they will deal with the speedy deletion backlog. Someone has to – Gurch 06:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. weak oppose - I think that this user has wonderful contributions to wikipedia, but these diffs are a concern, these are requests for CSD that Michaelbusch has recently requested and were turned down by administrators. Every user (including myself) makes CSD nom mistakes, but these are 4 mistakes all within days/hours of each other, which makes me a bit nervous and makes me question this users knowledge of CSD policy. As sated above this user beleives that the WP:BIO policy is not "strong" enough, but as an admin your personal views can not play a role in deciding what passes BIO and what doesn't as that is decided by policy. .Tiptoety 19:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

   Here are more examples: . Here are some AFD's that also concern me: , and . Another thing that concerns me is the 3 times this user has been blocked for 3RR. I can see once, but 3 times shows that this user has not learned from the first 2. Also i do not know how this can be considered a vandalism revert . I feel that the use of the word "vandalism" while reverting should not be used lightly as it can scare away new users and hurt others feelings that were trying to make good edits (WP:BITE), and this revert looks like it could be a good faith edit that was reverted as vandalism by Mike . Tiptoety 21:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

   While I am a severe anti-deletionist, I have to notice that of many notabity issues, the bios are among the most controversial subjects, where wikipedians are, like, 50:50. So I would not see this as a problem with her. The cases are borderline indeed. `'Míkka 22:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

2. Oppose. I know this user from the Crop circle article, in which my involvement has been very limited. He was blocked for 3RR in an edit war in which I unfortunately participated. In that dispute, he was unwilling to compromise on the issue of hand, which was a non-neutral and inadequately sourced sentence in the lead. His 4th revert, if I recall, was to remove citation requests. If as mikkalai says he has actually been blocked 3 times, I think that as an admin he would need a much cooler head. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

   I think, that you're leaving out, that the incident you're referring to, was almost 8 months ago. HTH. SQL 10:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

   Actually, the last of his three blocks was 20 April 2007 for 3RR. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 00:10, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   Yes, the last block was almost 7 months ago, but, the one you were referring to, was almost 8 months ago. He seems to have learned why that sort of behavior is undesirable. SQL 09:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

3. Oppose. Too many concerns here. In addition to other issues already mentioned, this edit where material with a ref was removed that's about a month old concerns me. I am not convinced he's ready. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

   So I can save Mike the need to respond to this, his edit summary says it all: rv. claims unsubstiantied and at least partially inaccurate. The reference provided is nothing more than a list of papers published by that author (actually, even that is not specified, papers published by people with his last name and initials), and so removal was completely appropriate. Someguy1221 10:15, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

   Still too many other issues for me, even if I concurred. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

4. Oppose. Sorry, but your answer to Question 6 and the diffs cited by User:Tiptoety suggest a lack of understanding of the speedy deletion policy. I have some sympathy with your view on including every single professional footballer in the encyclopaedia, but your own opinions on notability shouldn't come into it; speedy is for uncontroversial cases which make no claim whatsoever of notability - not for subjects which you personally think don't belong. Here's a recent example which I find particularly worrying - not only does the subject clearly pass WP:BIO as it now stands, but it makes further claims of importance well beyond the bare minimum of playing professionally (he won international recognition). You're a bit too quick to tag things for speedy - I fear that you would be equally quick to delete them. Iain99 13:11, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
5. Oppose per Iain99. Candidate clearly misunderstands speedy deletion criteria, could cause much wasted effort for others if given the mop at this time. Xoloz 15:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
6. Oppose per Tiptoety et al., and per this: whereby the editor deleted first, then asked questions about notability of a section that had cites. While it is clear from United Nations and other such articles, the editor has made many useful contributions, the actions as noted give me much to worry about. Sorry. Bearian 15:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
7. I'm going to have to oppose this one based on those bizarre CSDs. east.718 at 17:25, 10/31/2007
8. weak oppose - this is too recent. Otherwise a good candidate. Addhoc 17:40, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
9. Oppose — I view self-noms as prima facie evidence of power hunger. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

   If that is your only reason for opposing, you should know that I specifically told him (off-wiki) to self-nom instead of nominating him myself. There was at least one other editor who offered to nominate him a few months ago, and he opted to decline that in favor of waiting a few months. --Philosophus 02:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   I do agree with Philosophus in the fact that that is very poor reason to oppose, as many very good admins have self nominated them selves. Tiptoety 02:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

10. Oppose due to concerns about understanding of deletion policy. Stifle (talk) 23:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
11. Strong oppose I tend to take the opposite side to Stifle in deletion discussions, but I am equally as concerned as he with your approach to deletion policy. I am not the least convinced he would follow consensus. The last thing we need on the project is someone who has trouble suppressing his personal views on such matters. Come back in 6 months and show by your work that you are willing to follow the usual standards. I disagree with some of them, but I deal by arguing for a change in policy, not going my own way regardless. You say you'll do better in the future, but you still defend what you've done up to now, and that's the only way we can judge. DGG (talk) 02:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
12. Oppose many little things add up, edit warring blocks, lack of AGF in AfD discussions especially with pseudoscience articles and under the circumstances I'd like to see the restraint in deletion exercised over an extended period rather than just the seeing the words "I need to exercise slightly more restraint in removing deleting pages than I have in flagging them"(Q6 answer). Gnangarra 03:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
13. Oppose as I do not think candidate understands the speedy deletion policy well enough to actually delete pages. A recent example of a blatantly improper tagging is this, which applies an article-only criteria to an image. This, to me, indicates more than just a slight over-application of the policy. It seems to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of CSD, what it's for, and how it's applied, which is worrisome as this is the admin task the user lists first. Natalie 13:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

    If I may ask a question derived from this: is there a CSD criterion specifically for inappropriate images? The criteria listed on WP:CSD cover only copying, copyright-violations, and corrupt data - they seemingly don't apply to images that simply shouldn't be on Misplaced Pages. Thus I use the article speedy tags. Michaelbusch 17:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

    Why shouldn't it be on Misplaced Pages? While the description is a little odd, the image itself is a perfectly good photograph of a dog, which could happily be used to illustrate Bouvier des Flandres, or probably related pages. Dogs don't have to pass a notability test just to be used to illustrate an article about a breed. Iain99 17:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

    In the particular case of the Bouvier, we may disagree on notability and it being a suitable example of the breed. But I ask a general question - there are a lot of cases where images are obviously unsuitable, but I have no specific tag for them. Michaelbusch 17:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

    The answer is no: besides the general criteria (obvious vandalism, recreation of deleted material) and the image criteria (mosly copyright and redundancy-related), there are no criteria for speedy deletion of images; not least because as you can see, there's not much consensus on what's an obviously inappropriate image, and it's usually far from obvious from the image itself whether it will be useful. A sizable percentage of the photos on Misplaced Pages are people's holiday snaps, or pictures of wikipedians' pets; often they're the best available free images to illustrate locations or types of animals. If you think an image can serve no use to the encyclopedia it needs discussion; see Misplaced Pages:Images and media for deletion. Iain99 17:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

    This question has mostly been answered, but I feel rude not saying anything at all (I would have answered sooner, but I've been in class). Iain is not entirely correct - there are speedy deletion criteria for images (WP:CSD#Images_and_media). However, the CSD criteria relating to notability only applies to articles. As to the question of what's appropriate when something you think is inappropriate doesn't fall into a speedy, the answer seems pretty obvious to me - WP:PROD or WP:IFD. Natalie 20:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

14. Oppose With friends like these . . . The tone of the endorsements by the opponents of pseudoscience is frightening (Philosophus's use of "crackpots," seconded by several Supports). I'm amazed by the caustic carelessness and blatant disregard of WP:CIV on a Project page that prizes judicious behavior. I think Misplaced Pages would be well served by reining in this self-righteous contingent rather than ratifying it by giving Admin status to Michaelbusch. HomeJames 14:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC) This template must be substituted.
15. Oppose per Stifle, DGG. And this tagging was strange indeed. --Fang Aili 17:51, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
16. Hasn't showed that he/she can apply the speedy deletion criteria effectively. Daniel 22:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
17. Oppose Does not seem to understand blocking policy. I have seen this candidate regularly post AIV requests, when users have not been sufficiently warned . I feel the candidate will be too trigger happy with the block button. TigerShark 00:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
18. Oppose Michaelbusch shows signs of being largely incapable of admitting a mistake, lacking the maturity of acknowledging an error in judgment. This is dangerous, and he should not (at least at this stage) be made an admin. Two other factors also militate against his adminship. For instance, it appears that the user misunderstands the the (crucial) notion of the public-domain concept (see his response to my posting at ). There, he states that, instead of furnishing a representative picture that is "your own photo," I should try "to find public-domain or fair-use images...". Literally every public-domain photograph is somebody's "own" picture, leading michaelbusch's argument ad absurdum. Moreover, and more importantly, he fails to provide any rationale for his questionable editing selection: he recommends to (and indeed does) delete an arguably representative and more neutral depiction of a dog breed , while leaving untouched an existing, admittedly and undisputedly unrepresentative picture of the same breed -- even after being expressly alerted to the difference. This amounts to random and apparently willfully ad hominem editing behavior that appears illogical and indeed dangerous to the neutrality and the completeness of Misplaced Pages's purported knowledge base. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AndreasWashington (talk • contribs) 18:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
19. I oppose this user because he has shown us signs that he will misuse the tools if he gets them. I see his odd tagging of articles for speedy deletion as a sign he will misuse the tools. I do not believe he will do it on purpose though. As for violating 3RR 3 times, that is old news. He was last blocked in April, big deal. Be more careful, and wait a few months and I will support you. Sorry:(--SJP 20:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
20. Oppose John254 23:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I see that your a strong contributor to WP:AIV, and that's good, but the issues raised about your speedy deletions worry me a little. However, that reason alone isn't enough to oppose you. I'll remain neutral. Icestorm815 02:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)