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Philippe

Voice your opinion (talk page) (23/0/1); Scheduled to end 22:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Philippe (talk · contribs) - It is with great pleasure that I offer Philippe to the community to serve as an administrator. Philippe joined the project in December 2006 and has since made over 5,000 valued contributions to the project. He is active at AfD's and has proved himself a good judge of notability whilst commenting. Philippe has participated at RFCN where his commenting always stuck to policy and was well reasoned - this is important when administrators have to explain reasoning for actions. I have always found Philippe to keep a cool head in debates and often calms them down - again, something which is a key still to an administrator whilst dealing with conflicts. Philippe has already been shown to be a trusted member of the community by acting on the board election steering committee for our recent elections - I'm sure you will agree that everyone on it has done a fantastic job organising the elections. All in all, Philippe is a well rounded user, and I hope you can help me give him the tools - he certainly deserves them and will do great work with those buttons. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:41, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Co-nomination: I am pleased to co-nominate Philippe for adminship. He has an excellent and well-rounded record on En-Wiki and I also enjoyed working closely with him on the Elections Committee, where he consistently displayed commitment, dedication, fine people skills, and excellent judgment. I look forward to now working with him as an administrator as well and endorse his candidacy without reservations. Newyorkbrad 02:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept, and my thanks to Ryan and Brad for their very kind and generous words.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am User:Philippe. I have been a registered user since May of 2006 (with an underwhelming two edits), and have been much more active since December, 2006. My activities online tend to include “gnomish” things – spelling corrects, non-controversial moves, and some vandal-thwacking. In addition, I am privileged to serve the community as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Election Steering Committee and took an active role in the design and implementation of the recent election. I continue to work with that committee toward next year’s election, though the official steering committee for next year has not yet been announced.

I appreciate your consideration, and look forward to your feedback.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Misplaced Pages as an administrator. You may wish to answer the following optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

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

A: Like most people, I view the admin tools as logical outgrowths of the editing I do now, and currently I do a fairly decent amount of vandal reverting and new page patrol. As an admin, I will continue to do that, but with the additional ability to act upon the really snarky ones that come across.

But, with additional tools comes additional responsibility – particularly the responsibility to the community to pay attention to and act upon backlogs. Most likely, I’ll stick close to CSD (at least in the beginning) because that tends to be one of the areas that interest me most. I can easily see myself helping out at page protection (after some more time monitoring it) and AIV as well. I also watch AN/I closely, though I rarely comment there; with the additional tools I could probably pitch in and do some housework there as well (in fact, in areas that I *can* help there currently, I do – usually if something is on AN/I, though, it really does need an admin).

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

A: Well, I’m very proud to have served on the election committee that just finished the most recent Wikimedia Foundation election, and I think my contributions to that have had a significant impact on Misplaced Pages (and the other WMF projects).

In addition to that, I’m pleased with my “gnomic” work – I have the odd type of personality that enjoys confronting a list and working my way through it. Lately, I’ve taken on categories like “articles that need copyediting”, and I work my way through them looking for spelling issues, questionable sentence structure, etc. I enjoy the fact that I may be looking at an article that hasn’t gotten much attention and that I have an opportunity to get it in a position where someone else who knows the topic better than I do will be able to work on content without having to worry about misspelled words and sentence fragments! I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from getting all the way through the list.

That’s one of the reasons why I think I’ll enjoy working some backlogs as an administrator, as well.

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: Sure – like most people I’ve had the occasional conflict on Wiki. Through my professional training (and general temperament) I tend to first look for commonalities and use that to defuse the situation. If I can’t find any commonalities, well… proceed to step 2; attempt to defuse the situation. I’m never afraid to admit that I didn’t know something, or that perhaps I didn’t handle a situation in the best way possible.

Early in my on-wiki experience, I nominated an article for speedy deletion and the creator was a little peeved. At one point, the creator was “signing” comments with my name and having a little argument with himself. A couple of other editors were fooled by it and I got a couple of notes to my talk page scolding me for the way “I” (actually the other editor, signing my name) was handling it.

I think the real story here wasn’t how I dealt with the creator, but how I dealt with setting the record straight. I’m pleased to say that I’ve forged a nice association with a couple of the editors who initially were fooled by the creator of that article. Obviously, when I pointed out the history of the article, it was immediately clear what had happened, and I’m proud that I went on to forge a nice friendship with the editors involved.

Optional Q4 From Pedro. Why do you feel your very heavy use of machine tools (i.e. AWB and Twinkle), and your clear lack of sustained article building contribution (as evidenced by the count tool) prepares you for adminship? Bearing in mind that there is a current tendency in RFA for people to oppose on the basis of 1) Machine related edits and 2) Editors who don't add signifiant copy/material. (Please don't see this as malicious - regulars here will know my own position on this but I'd like to know yours.)

A:Pedro, thank you for the question, and for taking the time to carefully review contributions. Clearly, you take RfA seriously, and I appreciate that. With that said, let me say that based on my usual activities (gnomic spelling corrections, reverting vandalism)that what I have done is not an attempt to build edit count, but rather a studied resource decision. If I want to find the largest volume of spelling corrections, the single fastest way to do that is using an automated tool. Why would I look for them and make the changes manually, when I can use an automated tool to find more changes, more quickly. That doesn't really answer the thrust of your question though: you asked what about the use of those tools qualifies me for adminship, and my answer is this: the use of those automated tools does not prepare me. Other things that I do on wiki do, in fact, prepare me. I work collaboratively with other editors (Brad has attested to that clearly), and I work hard to do those things that interest me. Article writing is not my forte - there are others who do that better than I. My forte is in finding the messes and cleaning them up, freeing up those who write articles well to do exactly that. Thank you for your question, and for taking the time to so closely look at this nomination. - Philippe | Talk 22:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

A question from bainer (talk)

5. Under what circumstances should one ignore a rule?

A. - bainer, you've asked one of the questions that I was frankly hoping someone would. WP:IAR is one of my pet peeves. I see it bandied about by people who are basically saying "I know it's against the rules, but I like it!" IAR is not a blanket justification for anything that someone wants. Rather, it is the "nuclear option" - it's the one that we pull out when we know - know - that something is the right thing to do, but it's in direct contradiction to the stated rules. IAR is the red light that you run on a dark country road on your way to the hospital because your appendix has not burst. It is not to be used casually - indeed, it is diminished when used casually. IAR is a last resort, and anyone that uses it must be prepared to fully defend one's actions. It should be established that you considered all options and in the end IAR was the only policy to be invoked. I feel very strongly about this one. I've seen, in my on-wiki time, (at best) a handful of times when IAR was correctly invoked. It is not a policy to be used lightly, and absolutely not one to be trotted out twice a week. I don't mean to diminish the importance of IAR: it's critical. It's the safety valve from over-aggressive policy-mongering. We must have it, but it should be a last resort. I prefer that we attempt to change the policy that's getting in the way through our normal consensus model prior to using it. If, however, something is so critical and time sensitive that policy change can't be done, then we have IAR as our last resort. - Philippe | Talk 05:11, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

General comments

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

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

Please keep criticism constructive and polite. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Philippe before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Heck yes! Philippe is a fantastic editor and will make a great admin. -- Merope 03:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
2. Support Seen Philippe many times while new page patrolling. His comments have always suggested to me that he understand the policy areas he intends to assist with. Leebo /C 19:35, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
3. Beat the noms support I see nothing to worry about in this users' edit history and the Ryan and Brad co-nom merely confirms my opinion that Philippe will become a good user of the admin tools. (aeropagitica) 19:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
4. support as nom - best of luck. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
5. Support per my co-nomination. Newyorkbrad 19:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
6. Support. Should make a good admin. Flyguy649 _contribs 20:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
7. Support Philippe has done excellent work on Misplaced Pages, and could definitely use the admin tools. Nishkid64 (talk) 20:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
8. Strong support excellent user with excellent nominators. Acalamari 20:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
9. (edit conflict) Support - I have seen him around the wiki, and I'm impressed by his work. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 20:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
10. Support--Agεθ020 (ΔT • ФC) 20:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
11. Support Absolutely. Excellent candidate, answers are great. Good find, Ryan. —Anas 20:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
12. Support good user, no problems - Zeibura 21:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
13. Support. I have nothing but good things to say about this editor. WjBscribe 21:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
14. Support Looks like yet another great candidate! GDonato (talk) 22:01, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
15. Mammoth Support - An excellent editor and has been very proficient in all areas.. I support the nominators for making this great decision..Good Luck..--Cometstyles 22:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
16. Support Appears the tools with be in great hands. the_undertow 22:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
17. Support Your edit summary usage is very high, I see no vandalism on your record, and by your edit history, you it looks like you will be a great admin! You have my trust. Good luck!  Tcrow777  talk  03:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
18. Support. You have a very high edit summary usage. As a fellow "gnome", I think Q4 is a bit out of line. Just because of your use of Twinkle doesn't mean you won't make a fine admin. J-stan 03:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
19. Strong Support As long as you've got a voucher! Seriously, fantastic handling of question 4 and the other reasons mentioned previously. Keegan 05:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
20. Support It is time to give this user the mop. --Siva1979 05:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
21. Support As if this editor's contributions were not already enough, I am extremely impressed by this user's very measured and level-headed responses to questions under pressure. Trusilver 07:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
22. Support Maintenance work is fast becoming more and certainly at least as important as creating articles. The No.1 thing on Misplaced Pages is not creating articles - It's people reading them. This candidate offers to bring extra clarity to the works of others and I applaud him. Best Wishes. Pedro |  Chat  09:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
23. Per Jimbo. Giggy _UP 09:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
24. Support Why not? --Chris 10:07, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
25. Support Yet another guy whom I thought was an admin already. Mop wisely. Blueboy96 11:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
26. Support, good luck! The Rambling Man 12:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
27. Support I want proper attention paid to article writing, because we are, after all, an encyclopedia! But I don't want non-article writers shut out. Article writing is my primary contribution, along with reviewing and attempting to encourage consensus on contenious articles - and I don't want a standard that you should not take the article writers away from writing to give them the mop. I believe we should judge each nomination on it's merits. I don't want to see a wikipedia where non-article writers administer the project over the article writers, and equally, i don't want to minimize the contributions of hard workers like Phillippe, whose talents are more gnomish. On the basis of his attitude, unceasing civility, and hard work, I honestly believe he has earned our trust. old windy bear 12:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
28. I'm Mailer Diablo and I approve this message! - 14:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose the promotion of twinkle kiddies who rack up a few thousand reverts and a few thousand more with AWB. His AfD participation is being praised, and yet to me it seems somewhat hypocritical to sit around discussing whether other's writing is worthy enough, when you haven't lifted a finger to do any writing yourself. Answers to questions are underhwelming, particularly Q4. We need more admins, but not at the expense of promoting people who haven't had to deal with the nuances of policy and the temperament it requires to collaborate with other people on an article. 86.137.57.73 14:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC) (User:KamrynMatika)

Neutral

N awaiting opt. Q4 Pedro |  Chat  21:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Pedro, I'm quite disapointed by this question you've just asked. Philippe has edited articles, but he does mainly gnome tasks - if you check the contribs, you'll see. The hardcore article writers don't need the tools - anyway, it would be a shame to lose them from article writing. Philippe has demonstrated he has good judgement in area's related to adminship and a need for the tools. Just because he doesn't create a FA everyweek doesn't mean he'd make a poor administrator. We need editors who are willing to jump in on the labourous tasks that admins have to do, and Philippe has shown he is willing to do that. This candidate is actually the one of the best I've nominated, I'm proud to do so. I respect Philippe a lot and his judgement is one of the best I've seen. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Asking someone to not take your comment as 'malicious' means that while constructing the comment, you realized it was probable it would be taken that way. It's like prefacing a jab with, 'don't take offense, but...' Asking 'why' he feels he is qualified seems to be much more appropriate that a parental 'what makes you think...' I'm very disappointed in the wording of your question. the_undertow 22:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

With respect guys this is a discussion. Yes of course I realised it could be taken the wrong way. What would you have me do Undertow? Not ask the question at all or just leave it looking like an attack? There is no question that article writing and machine edits have been raised as opposition before (indeed see below) - I find it helpful to get a candidates position on how they feel about these positions and I can't get that from his contribution history. Ryan you know I respect your jusgement but I'm very disapointed in your argument whih seems to me a "don't you dare ask a question of a candidate I've nominated" attitude. The point of this is that by providing the excellent answer the candidate has hopefully it will deter oppose / neutral comments based on the "arguments" I presented. Switching, or course, to support for the expectedly good answer. Pedro |  Chat  09:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

1. Neutral Article writing is the most important thing here. Using automate tools doesn't show me you can interact with other users well. The only recent edits on user talk pages don't appear to be too "encyclopedic" related . ~ Wikihermit 00:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a fair comment, and I appreciate your deliberation. While there's absolutely no reason that anyone would know this, I think my history with Meta (which may or may not be allowable) and the foundation-l both show a history of deliberative discussion with other users. You're absolutely within your rights to decide to "disallow" that from your decision, but if you'd like, I very much encourage you to glance at the archives of the list and evaluate there. I care very much about encyclopedic article-writing; that's why I spend a ton of time making sure that the articles are correctly spelled, and that the links, etc, work. In any case, thank you for taking the time to review both my contributions and this RfA. - Philippe | Talk 00:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow, Philippe, you're really level headed about all this criticism towards you. Writing isn't exactly the most important thing, but everything constructive improves Misplaced Pages, and that's what we're all trying to do. Reverting vandalism or doing other things behind the scenes is equally as important. J-stan 03:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)