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Voice your opinion (talk page) (5/0/0); Scheduled to end 03:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
- Nomination by Daniel
Dihydrogen Monoxide, or Alex, has been on Wikimedia since August 15, 2006—approaching two years now. Upon reflection, there can be no doubt that there have been ups and downs during this period. I ask not that you fixate yourself on the very distant past, but rather consider the most important question: has the development of this user since their last RfA, and in recent periods generally, demonstrated that this user has a sufficient level of understanding, experience, and cluefullness, to be a good administrator?
I would like to give this statement some depth, because of how critical I feel it is. Excluding his first RfA when he was very new, Alex's last three RfA's have all been unsuccessful due to concerns other than inexperience. It may surprise you to learn that I was neutral leaning oppose in two of these. I do not think Alex would have made a good administrator a year-or-so ago. I do not think he would have made a good administrator seven months. However, this is not the most important factor in participation in this discussion. We all make mistakes. Some of us learn from our mistakes; some don't. The former are given a chance at RfA, the latter aren't. Many Wikipedians do some questionable things when they're new here; some never stop, but some mature before our eyes and turn out to be fantastic Wikipedians. I certainly did my fair share of silly things, but I hope that I came out the other end of the pipe in reasonable shape. The reason why juvenile criminal records are sealed (in the real world) is because people new to society make mistakes, and we don't want to ruin their lives; I cannot understand why such a principle would not extend onto Misplaced Pages, albeit in the most general of forms.
Formerly Giggy, now Dihydrogen Monoxide, I have followed Alex's development on Misplaced Pages with great interest. He is a surprisingly-well rounded contributor, who has demonstrated experience in many areas of Misplaced Pages. He has been a substantial contributor to 10 
Featured Articles, 25 
Good Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Portal, 2 
Featured Topics, and 11 
DYK's. He maintains a list of his contributions at User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Articles, which may be of interest. That's not a half-bad effort by any standard. What's more important, though, is in the creation of these articles, lists and portals, Alex frequently collaborated and interacted with others (myself included). He addressed concerns about the articles, sought input on improving them, and then sought to articulate his viewpoints in traversing the featured article process—not an easy thing to do—and has come out as successful ten times. His very positive Good Article reviews are only an extension of this skill he has developed.
"So what? He writes articles", you say. "That doesn't make him qualified for adminship by itself". True—although administrators should have experience in mainspace to be able to deal with content disputes effectively (I saw a good analogy to how a department is generally a former department employee, simply because they understand how the department work)—they also need to be well-versed in policy, have a positive history of interaction with Wikipedians outside of a content venue, and have overall good judgement and experience. Alex has all three, as any cursory check of his contributions will show you. He is friendly, welcoming, happy to assist new users with questions, and best of all, he does everything with a laugh and isn’t overly-serious about anything, yet knows the time and place for being respectful and reserved. The latter has been the most stark improvement—there were certainly concerns about his judgement and questionable acts of non-seriousness earlier in his time at Misplaced Pages, but I'm confident that Alex has learnt from what was said about them by others, has taken the criticism to heart, and is a better Wikipedian for it.
So, what experience does Alex have in such tasks? Well, probably most impressive is the fact that he is an administrator and bureaucrat at the Wikimedia Commons. His userpage can be seen here; he is one of only nine total bureaucrats, of whom seven are active (both at the time of writing). He is also a recently-appointed member of the Bots Approval Group, and has in many respects been offering a "non-bot-operator" opinion that was so craved by the community. He has, to date, performed both his Commons and BAG roles with distinction, and I see no reason why both that won't continue, and why he wouldn't do similarily well with English Misplaced Pages adminship. He has had rollback rights since January 10, and has not once been approached due to misuse of it—not something which is very common these days. Furthermore, Alex was a driving member of the narrowly-unsuccessful Brisbane 2009 Wikimania bid, and I was honoured to be his proxy vote in his absence at the recent Wikimedia Australia meeting.
To quickly summarise: 10 FA's, 25 GA's, 11 DYK's, various other content contributions, helpful, calm, intelligent, bureaucrat at Wikimedia Commons, Bot Approvals Group, flawless use of rollback. Over 22,500 edits, around 600 semi-automated, 5,500 (~30%) mainspace, 5,000 (~25%) projectspace, 5,000 (~25%) usertalkspace. Alex will be, in my very humble opinion, a fantastic administrator. His assistance in areas such as image deletion, updating Did You Know, deletion discussions, and general maintenance, will be a clear benefit to Misplaced Pages. So, I respectfully ask that you reflect on the question I posed to you, the reader, at the top of this RfA, and on the following statement by Denis Waitley: Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience. Please, dwell not on the distant past, but reflect on the intermediate time period, and the relative improvement. There is no doubt in my mind that Dihydrogen Monoxide, based on my observations over a period of around a year and a half, has improved to a point where he will be a fantastic administrator, and someone who I feel I can trust with the extra tools to do a good job. I truly hope you agree.
Best of luck, Alex. Daniel (talk) 11:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) - Admin Coaching is more than just learning about policies and procedures, if that were all there was to it, then there is no way that H20 should ever have been my coachee. H20 knows more about policies and guidelines than I ever will. He is instrumental in so many areas that most already think he is an admin and those who don't are wondering why go through coaching? Why would Balloonman, who opposes the notion of using coaching to "polish off resumes" accept H20 as a coachee?
To know the answer you have to look at H20's history. H20 has had four failed RfA's:
- The first one failed primarily due to inexperience.
- The second one failed because of his essay Misplaced Pages:Template the regulars and posting of private conversations.
- The third one died due to the allegation of collusion involving good articles. There were other issues such as changing his name and his views on who should/should not be an admin. But those later points probably would have been overlooked if not for the Good Article fiasco.
- His last one was killed due to an incivilility at an RfB, an editor review and concerns about lack of maturity/poor judgment. It was also hampered by the fact that it was his fourth RfA in less than six months!
In other words, I was dealing with an excellent candidate who knows policies/guidelines, but tended to make stupid mistakes. I preached a mantra to him Civility, Responsibility, and Maturity. I wanted people to see him as somebody they could trust. This, IMHO, is a harder thing to do for an admin coach than getting somebody to write articles or learn policies and procedures. Once a person is labeled as immature with civility problems, it is a difficult to get a person to "grow up" in the eyes of the community. But the fact that he has those labels here is ironic as he is a 'crat over on Misplaced Pages Commons. But to work on his image here, I asked H20 to live by the mantra, Civility, Responsibility, and Maturity. To this end I have treated H20's Coaching as an extended editorial review. On a regular basis I have provided him with direct and immediate feedback on how his action have/have not lived up the mantra I've preached. Throughout his coaching I was impressed with how he grew in these three areas. Yes, he faltered some.
For example, a few months ago he had an off wiki incident that lead to the temporary departure of a wikipedian. He has since resolved the issue an anticipates a strong support from that individual. He's also spoken his mind related to a recent incident that lead to the desysopping of the the_undertow. But both of these incidents were off wikipedia. His on wiki-edits have been admirable. One of the things that I asked him to do was to show he had it in him to be an admin by participating in adminly areas---such as ANI. He's done just that. But not only at ANI, but in a number of editorial areas. People regularly seek him out for his guidance and expertise---this is a sure sign of adminly quality.
H2O is committed to this project. He only wants to see it succeed and has it's best interest at heart. He is a solid contributor with more FA/GA's than I have fingers. He knows policy and guidelines better than almost anybody I've ever met. H20 has proven himself to be worthy of the trust demanded to receive the tools.Balloonman (talk) 03:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
I was a strong supporter of Alex from his second RFA on. I dropped my support during the third over the GA review issue—an issue with caused me to lose a lot of trust in him. Since then, he has more than regained my trust. Not only have I watched him mature, but I've been impressed with the great effort he has put into article writing. His skills have consistently improved and I truly view him as a great asset to the project. He has a solid grasp on policy, is knowledgeable in administrative areas and is already familiar with the tools (having been an administrator on Commons for several months now). His success on Commons (having recently been unanimously promoted to Bureaucrat) gives me further confidence in his abilities. His knowledge in the area of image use is, in my opinion, valuable for adminship, as image backlogs at CAT:CSD can get, and currently are, terrible. He has become a thoughtful and courteous editor who clearly keeps the goals of the project in mind. So, for all of those reasons, it is my honor to co-nominate Alex for adminship. Lara❤Love 04:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I'm not perfect, but I try to be my best. Worst comes to worst, this fails and I go write some more articles. With that in mind, I accept. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 05:06, 29 May 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: Most of my time is not spent participating in admin-stuff, though there are times when the tools would come in handy. As part of my work on Commons (admin and 'crat; RfA, RfB), I sometimes come across cases where being able to see deleted image content here would be very useful. The ability to undelete here would also be useful in cases where fair use images are deleted off Commons, as would the ability to delete when images are transferred from here to there (see the backlogs at Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons, which I'd like to help out with). I also come across speedies occasionally, and I have a good knowledge of the CSD, so I could help out with that. I have also helped out at DYK in an administrative capacity (updating T:DYK/N) on occasion, and have closed/participated in XfDs, so there are other areas in which I could lend a hand. The tools would also be useful as part of my work as a bot approvals group member—adding bots on trial to the AWB approvals list, for instance, is an admin-only task that sometimes delays BRFAs, and so the admin tools would make the process here run a bit smoother.
- Primarily, though, I will remain an article editor and reviewer. It's what I do best.
- 2. What are your best contributions to Misplaced Pages, and why?
- A: My best contributions are probably those listed at User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Articles. Of these, I am especially proud of a few things—of my 10 featured articles and 2 featured topics, for instance. I have also done large amounts of content review, and have received the "GAN reviewer of the month barnstar" multiple times.
- I am proud of the work I have done in improving articles, and helping others to do so.
- 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: Having been an active editor for over a year, I have inevitably come into conflict with others before, though I don't actively go out to seek it. It is easy when considering adminship to shut up for 3 months—to hide from tense situations so as to not have disagreements, and not garner potential opposition. (This is partially a fault of the overly political RfA process, but also a fault of candidates.) I didn't intend to be such a candidate, and have continue to give my honest opinions on multiple issues across the project, commenting actively at AN, ANI, and on several requests for arbitration. While doing so, I have done my best to remain calm and civil throughout—staying out of the way of conflict is not commendable, but being a dick isn't either, and I have done my best to fall into neither of these categories.
- Some people with longer memories will recall this incident, raised by Bishonen in one of my prior RfAs. This was quite a blow against the GA process and me, and I have striven since then to regain the respect and trust of those whose reputation, by association with GA, was dented. I will stress again that Digwuren and me did not agree to pass each other's articles or anything like that, and I endorse his year long ban. I apologise again to those whose faith in the GA process was harmed by this incident, it is one of my biggest regrets in my time here.
General comments
RfAs for this user:- Links for Dihydrogen Monoxide: Dihydrogen Monoxide (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/Dihydrogen Monoxide before commenting.
Discussion
Support
- Yes, yes! I am assured that he will be a big help to the project with the tools. Singularity 05:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- . Support. (edit conflict) Let's get this party started then...sure, 'pedia building. We'll hit him repeatedly with a wifflebat or trout if he mucks up in future....Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- Support (ec). I think the nominators put it better than I could but, very briefly, I've reviewed the last two failed RFAs (before I even knew this one was coming) and have measured the comments there against the contributor I've interacted with here. That process has made me completely comfortable with this support. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- (ec) Fine, yes. WODUP 05:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- (ec x2) I have been thoroughly impressed with the way Giggy has handled things, and also impressed at all the good work he has done FOR the project. :) <3 Tinkleheimer TALK!! 05:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)