User:Panyd/ADCO

I'm ready!

Welcome!

Welcome to admin coaching! Over the next few months I'll be quizzing you and hopefully polishing up your contributions. Before we start, please answer these questions:

• Why do you want adminship?

A lot of my work on OTRS involves receiving statements releasing copyright material to Wikipedia. Currently I have to ask sysops to restore the material for me and give my reasons as best as I can. This is especially difficult as many sysops are not part of the OTRS system and can't see the tickets. Other sysops are unfamiliar with the OTRS process and aren't sure how to respond to my request. This takes up an awful lot of time, and I think I've proven that I can be trusted with copyright issues.

I also see a lot of backlogs on Wikipedia. There are backlogs with requests for help, there are backlogs with AfDs and PRODs etc etc etc. I really want to help the people who are looking for help with these issues.

• If appointed as a sysop, what work do you intend to do?

Mainly restoration/deletion of copyright material, but also helping with AfDs, CSDs and vandalism.

• What do you want to achieve with the admin coaching process over the next few months?

I'm hoping to get a clearer understanding of policy. I'm also hoping to get some pointers on where I can go to get a broader understanding of/interaction with the project as many people thought this was a concern during my RfA. I'm hoping to meld these two things together in order to be well prepared for the challenges of the mop

Just as a heads-up, the above questions have been used for multiple admin coachees. Regards, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

A bit more!

Good! Now, answer the following and we'll be good to go (I just want to get an idea of your experience so I know what to focus on during this coaching program).

Have you ever:

• !voted in an RFA?
  • No
• requested a page to be protected at WP:RfPP?
  • Only once
• had an editor review?
  • Yes, I've had one
• used automated tools/.js tools such as Twinkle, AWB, or Huggle?
  • I use Twinkle, AWB and HotCat
• contributed to an XFD?
  • A lot
• answered a question at the help desk?
  • No
• uploaded an image?
  • Yes, a lot
• mediated or otherwise acted as a neutral party in a dispute?
  • A few times, but never in depth
• participated in discussion in WP:AN or WP:ANI?
  • Recently yes
• taken a look at meta philosophies? I'm interested in knowing what philosophies you believe you adhere to.
  • I just took a look at it! Looking through I'd say I feel strongly attached to:
• Moderate eventualism
• Moderate statusquoism
• Communityism
• Communalism
• Rehabilism
• WikiPacifism (To a degree)
• Adminship is an important duty
• Neutrality (in writing at least) is a Basic skill
• Semi-factionalism
• Proceduralism
  • I hope that was what you were after!
• helped out on the Account Creation Toolserver Interface?
  • No
• requested and received/been denied for Rollback?
  • I have rollback
• had a previous RFA?
  • Yes, I had one in January which can be seen [1]
• Written a good article?
  • Unfortunately not
• Created any featured content?
  • No
• Written a DYK?
  • No

I've also copied the above from other admin coaching pages (I promise I'll post more personal stuff after this!) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:59, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Alright. For now I think it would be a good idea to find a new topic, write an article about it, and get it to DYK. If you need help finding a notable topic, let me know. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:42, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I may have shot myself in the foot. I expanded the Lisa McPherson Trust article, but I'm not sure I can find something to put in DYK from there. Can you see anything? If not could I please have a little help with finding topics as WP:Requested articles doesn't seem to be turning up much. Really sorry! I asked ChaseMe for some help but he doesn't really do articles either so he's at a loss. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 19:28, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

If you're having trouble finding a DYK hook in there, here are some topics that remain only partially covered on Wikipedia:

WP:UKRD – Highways in the United Kingdom. You should be able to find a redlink pretty easily after a bit of searching.

If you know a bit about US history, WP:NRHP – thousands of redlinks on historical structures, all of which are probably worthy of articles.

I'm sure there are some mushroom species to write about – Casliber (talk · contribs) or Sasata (talk · contribs) would probably be able to help you here.

WP:LAKES – I've always found writing about water bodies pretty fun. Lists like List of lakes in New York generally have some interesting things to research.

Just a few random things that are fairly easy to write about. If you'd rather skip article writing for the moment I'd be happy to move onward with admin coaching. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I'll dive right into that. Seeing as the article writing is going to take up a lot of time (especially if I'm going to get a DYK or good article), would it be ok if I kept that as a goal and worked on it while we did admin coaching too? If not I'll just get back to you when I've done it. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 17:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Certainly. Whatever you're comfortable with is fine. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 18:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Admin role

Here you'll find a brief essay outlining my interpretation of the admin role and its evolution over the past decade. While I'm not asking you to either agree or disagree with it, what is your response to that essay? Do you feel it's accurate, and if not, what would you change? Also, how would you summarize the admin role in one sentence? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 18:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok firstly wow. I hadn't ever seen requests for administrator status that were that old. That actually worries me slightly. Are these people still sysops? Are they ok? 'I've been here a month, make me a sysop' is...scary. And he got it too!

But incredulity aside I agree with the essay for the most part. I would actually go a little further in the third paragraph and say that administrators can be seen by outsiders and newcomers as the public face of Wikipedia (a quick look at ANI over the course of a week seems to prove this). Anyone can edit, but an administrator has been trusted with tools, which to anyone not familiar with Wikipedia may give off the impression that they are in charge. Any technical damage an administrator could do with the tools could be undone in a couple of minutes, but the damage they can do to the career/enthusiasm of a potential editor is much greater and has a larger impact on the project as a whole.

To that end I do agree that the current RfA process is as stringent as it should be, and the extra questions from users are essential for sorting out the wheat from the chaff. If it were not for the questions I received at RfA I would not realize which areas I needed to work on in order to improve myself as an editor, let alone as an admin.

However, I personally had many negative votes cast against me at RfA for having a disability, rather than because of the deficits in my knowledge of the project. A few people mentioned that they had nothing against me personally, but they feared that I would present a weak-front to vandals due to the 'chink' in my armor. I am still not sure how to respond to this sort of thinking, and what it says about how editors view administrators and their position in the community, but I think it is something which will need to be addressed.

If I were to sum up administration in a sentence it would be: 'I carry a bucket and mop; if I spill anything, please yell at me.' That might be a bit too metaphorical....maybe 'I am a tool box, let me assist you'. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 20:14, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Most of the folks promoted pre-2003 still are admins, although only a portion still edit actively as far as I'm aware. Adminship was truly no big deal in the old days.

That's a very reasonable response overall. Your summary of the role is also quite good. :) With regard to your RfA, I agree that people should be judged based on their contributions to the project only, and their real life left well enough alone. However, the best thing for you to do is prove that despite your disability cited in your RfA, you can edit just as well as anybody (which I firmly believe and is what I've observed thus far). I'll post some practices in the next day or so. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Admin functions

It seems you have a pretty solid understanding of the admin role in general. Now we'll go over the three major admin functions: deletion, page protection, and blocking. There are dozens of others—even hundreds if you use your imagination a bit—but those are the most commonly used ones. For now, we'll start with deletion...

Deletion

Deletion is a feature made available to sysops for the purpose of hiding a particular page from public view. It's not really "deleted" from the servers; in fact, an admin can go back at any time and view or undelete the article in question. This tool is probably the most widely used of all the admin buttons, and is instrumental in keeping the project tidy. From vandalism and spam to copyright violations, the delete button has an essentially endless number of uses, although as you know, there are a few policies that describe the most common ones. WP:CSD lists around 45 reasons an article (or image, portal, category, userpage, etc.) may be deleted for. All of them have been thoroughly discussed, and are (in theory) universally accepted as reasonable rationales to cite when deleting a page.

However, it often isn't as simple as pressing a button. New users will wonder why their article was deleted without warning, and their only possible explanation laden with incomprehensibly jargon. As an admin, you should be as welcoming as possible to confused and new editors, even if their first edits are less than productive. You should always be willing and able to explain your actions and revisit them if necessary. You'll probably get some requests to restore deleted articles, and that's the tricky part. You don't want to offend, aggravate or further confuse new users whose articles you deleted, but you know they're not acceptable encyclopedic articles. Here is an entirely hypothetical example of a new user inquiring with you on a recently deleted page:

Hello Panyd. My name is John Doe. I have recently discovered that you deleted my Wikipedia entry on a local music group. I do not understand your reason for doing so, and request you reinstate the article as soon as possible. Thank you. --John Doe 14:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is that the editor is without a doubt acting in good-faith, but unfortunately does not appear to understand Wikipedia's core content policies. How would you respond to the above message? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello there! Firstly, let me say welcome to Wikipedia. As a newcomer you may want to read the five pillars of Wikipedia, to give you an idea of what to expect from the project and its community.

Unfortunately your page violated some of Wikipedia's article standards, specifically our standards for the notability for bands. However, this isn't a reflection on you, or your article writing ability. If you wish to work on the article I can move it to a user subpage, where you can work on it without the article being deleted. A good idea would be to read WP:BAND, and try and ensure that your article reflects these standards before reposting it. If you need someone to review the page as you work on it, I would be more than happy to help.

If you're interested in music you may want to join our music project, which is dedicated to updating and improving music-related articles on the project.

If you have any more questions please don't hesitate to ask. And once again welcome! We hope you decide to stay. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

As a side note Lisa McPherson Trust got the go ahead for DYK! Whoo! Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 17:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! A perfect answer as far as I'm concerned; polite, detailed and professional. (And congrats on the DYK!) Now, here's something I ask most of my admin coachees. Can you give a few examples of situations where you would delete an article against, or not explicitly allowed by policy? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

That is a really tricky question. One answer I think would be to say that if community consensus was reached regarding the deletion of an article without arguing using policy, but using common sense, then I would probably delete it. The only other example I can think of is Porn for the Blind. This website is a hoax. You only need to go on it and listen to a couple of the voice clips (I don't recommend it), to know that it is a hoax. Almost every source which talks about it states: 'It may be a hoax'. It was brought up for AfD (by me, so obviously I will never actually do this as I am an involved party) and a lot of users, who obviously thought the website was funny, voted keep. Now this is a website proporting (on Wikipedia) to be a charity to help blind people. It is offensive on many different levels to people who are actually blind. It adds nothing to the encyclopaedia. In fact I believe it damages our reputation to have such utter offensive nonsense on the site. Given that it is provably nonsense, I could argue that it would be better for the project if it was removed. Even though this goes against policy.

Is that the sort of thing you were hoping for or did I miss the mark and show my true cabalist colours? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:25, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If an AfD results in the article being kept, I don't think deleting it unilaterally is a good idea. I was thinking more along the lines of deleting a divisive userbox or the like. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:41, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured that wouldn't be appropriate. I have to say I'd mostly stick with the first example up there, which is that if there is a clear community consensus, arguing against policy using common sense, then I would be willing to consider deletion. I feel that divisive userboxes are covered by the Userbox content guidelines which appear to cover all common-sense and policy violations. I did look into a few debates regarding contentious userboxes. Specifically this one caught my eye, and it seemed to fall nicely under the umbrella of existing policy. What was interesting though was that the general consensus was not to invoke policy but instead say: Does this benefit Wikipedia - No? Then delete it

Of course that doesn't cross over into all situations (Porn for the Blind being an excellent example) but it's a good rule to have for contentious material which is not integral to the encyclopedia as a whole (e.g. userboxes). It's just extremely hard to come up with hypothetical examples due to the nuance of individual situations and how to community views certain areas of the project compared to others.

All of which is a rather lame and long-winded way of saying; I cannot come up with any hypothetical examples, but here is an example from the past which I agree with, and here are the two general principles I would abide by, although I realize their limitations on a broad scale. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. The reason I ask is that IAR really needn't be ever invoked to justify a deletion; we have enough policies and processes to deal with almost any situation. Now we can work on page protection... –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Page protection

Page protection as you know is a technical feature that can be used to prevent editing to a particular page with varying levels of severity. It can be used to deter vandals, stop an edit war in progress, and halt spam, among other things. It's fairly easy to implement – just click the "protect" tab and fill out the interface – but it requires excellent judgment. You need to decide how long the page should be protected, at what level, whether or not move protection is justified, etc. Information you can use to make those decisions includes: how often the article is being disrupted, what the ration of bad edits to good-faith edits is, how long the article has been affected by disruption, whether the offending users are primarily IPs or registered users, and any possible date connection to the article. There is really an endless number of possible combinations, so the only way to familiarize yourself with the standards and unwritten rules of page protection is by 1) hanging around WP:RFPP for a while or 2) passing RfA and hanging around RFPP. Now, what is your experience with protection? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)