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John254

Voice your opinion (talk page) (1/0/0); Scheduled to end 18:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

John254 (talk · contribs) - A contributor for over 18 months with over 28,000 edits, I have participated extensively in the creation of encyclopedic content, the creation of policy, and vandalism-control efforts. I would be happy to serve Misplaced Pages as an administrator by blocking vandals, speedily deleting pages that meet the appropriate criteria, and performing other administrative tasks. John254 18:39, 19 January 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 admin work do you intend to take part in?

A: RC-patrol is often a time-critical task. Many acts of vandalism could be prevented if I were able to block vandals myself, rather than reporting them on WP:AIV, and if I were able to respond to reports on WP:AIV at times when the page currently receives little administrative attention. I would also delete pages meeting the criteria for speedy deletion encountered in newpage patrol, and assist with the removal of the backlog in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Due to potential destruction of encyclopedic content caused by an excessively broad interpretation of the criteria for speedy deletion, I would apply the criteria narrowly, and only in obvious cases. This would not imply a strict commitment to a literal construction of the wording -- for instance, an article concerning someone's pet hamster without notability asserted would merit speedy deletion, though not within the letter of CSD A7. However, I would not speedily delete any article that non-frivolously asserted the notability of its subject, or was meaningfully outside of purpose of the criterion. It's also important to describe the purposes for which I would not use administrative tools: though I have sometimes strongly disagreed with speedy deletions and deletions as a result of AFD closures, I would not unilaterally reverse such deletions, but would raise the issue at deletion review, just as I have previously. Also, recognizing that controversial blocks can create significant disruption, I would not unilaterally block any user if I believed that many administrators would disagree with block. Potentially controversial blocks should be discussed at WP:AN or WP:ANI; if there is no consensus there as to the correct course of action, the matter should be referred to the Arbitration Committee for adjustment, rather than having an individual administrator take a provocative action that might start a block war. John254 19:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

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

A: The article I created, Use of biotechnology in pharmaceutical manufacturing, represents excellent research. I have created several commonly used warning templates, such as Template:Blp0 and Template:Spam4im. The explanation of circumstances under which significant content removals are not considered to be vandalism which I added to Misplaced Pages:Vandalism has greatly enhanced the clarity of this portion of the policy. I also wrote the "United States Supreme Court Jurisprudence" section of Anti-pornography movement, much of the "Criticisms" section in Sex-positive (not including the POV claim in the last sentence), as well as adding an explanation of the treatment of human sexuality in many societies predating Christian influence to Sex-positive. I have been involved extensively in vandalism control efforts, as well as newpage patrol. I wrote the responding to disruptive canvassing section in the canvassing guideline, and created what may be the first non-stub, WP:BLP-compliant version of Rachel Marsden. John254 19:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

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: After I initially added the responding to disruptive canvassing section in the canvassing guideline, it was removed due to concerns relating to the first sentence in the paragraph. After reading the comments by the editor who removed the paragraph, I restored the portion of the paragraph to which no objection had been raised, then revised the first sentence to address the concern that the original formulation encouraged administrators to block users for disruptive canvassing without warning, after further discussion of the matter on the talk page. The issue to which this question actually seems to relate is how I would respond to the reversal of my own administrative action(s), or to actions by other administrators with which I strongly disagree. Since administrative actions are binary -- a page is either intact or deleted; a user is either blocked or unblocked -- reversals of one's administrative actions do not permit a nuanced response to the concerns that prompted the reversal (re-blocking a user for a shorter period of time is not an acceptable remedy for the reversal one's block). Therefore, if granted adminship, I would adhere to the following principles concerning the reversals of administrative actions:

(a) I would not unilaterally reverse administrative actions, unless they were blatantly inappropriate (for example, deletion of the Main Page, or blocking of Jimbo Wales)

(b) I would discuss any concerns relating to administrative actions with the administrators who implemented them and/or via appropriate fora, such as WP:AN, WP:ANI, or deletion review.

(c) If there were no consensus in a discussion relating to the question of whether a user should be blocked or unblocked, I would refer the matter to the Arbitration Committee for adjustment if a block of a significant length were in dispute, or simply leave the user blocked or unblocked, if the block in question was of a short duration. John254 19:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

General comments

• See John254's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.

• Requests for adminship/John254
• Requests for adminship/John254 2

• Links for John254: John254 (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/John254 before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. You seem dedicated, I've seen you before, and you've improved greatly since the last RFA. So why not? Good luck. Rudget. 20:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
2. Sorry to be the first with the cliché but - you're not one already? Orderinchaos 20:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
3. Qst 20:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
4. Support - Support for your massive amounts of experience and your excellent answers to the questions. Floaterfluss 20:34, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
5. Support Plenty of experience. Spencer 20:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose This user first came to my notice following his bizarre closure of an AfD with only two "keep" comments, one of which was from the article's sole editor, for which he was then hammered at DRV and AN. Since this incident brought him to my attention, all I seem to see of him is multiple posts to DRV and AFD arguing what seems to me to be an ultra-extreme "keep everything" approach (1, 2 in the last couple of days, for example). On a browse through his contribution history, I can't see him ever believing that an article should be deleted. Given that his mainspace history seems to consist entirely of reversions (I went through the last 4000 mainspace contributions and there's not a single edit other than reversions and AFD closures), and his user talk history consists entirely of boilerplate warnings, there are no quality article-space contributions or thoughtful talkpage discussions to counterbalance my feeling that this is an editor who just doesn't understand what the purpose of Misplaced Pages is. I'm also very put off by "I would also delete pages meeting the criteria for speedy deletion encountered in newpage patrol" - while I appreciate that a lot of admins do things that way, deleting things without a second opinion, except in th most clearcut cases, seems dubious to me, especially from a new admin. As he says he intends to work in AFD & CSDs, I can't support, given that admins working in those areas have to be able to make controversial decisions and defend them. — iridescent 20:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Neutral