User:Ragesoss/RfA

Reflecting on my request for adminship, I have sharpened my thoughts on (some aspects of) what is wrong with RfA. In refusing to answer the questions, I meant no disrespect to any editor, and I have no intention of being an unresponsive admin or flouting process arbitrarily when it doesn't suit me. The main problem I see with the Requests for Adminship process is that participants often base their decisions on a candidate's actions during the RfA, rather than on the edit history or knowledge of the candidate's behavior. The only good means of deciding whether someone will be a trustworthy and level-headed administrator are 1) having interacted with them before, and/or 2) trawling their edit history. When participants instead decide based on behavior within the RfA, they frequently extrapolate from small perceived flaws and inferred attitudes (which would rarely be remarkable in the context of normal editing) to hypothetical tool abuse... a complete breakdown of assuming good faith. That is why I think the tradition of intense questioning and basing RfA decisions mainly on the answers to the questions is harmful.

If you still want to know about the edit conflicts I've been in and how I've dealt with them, I suppose there is nothing more to be gained from refusing to answer the question now that the RfA is over.

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?

When I became a regular contributor to Wikipedia, I entered the fray at Talk:Intelligent Design, pushing for what I considered a more balanced, historicist approach to the topic (in particular, describing the range of motivations and beliefs of ID proponents, rather than a singular, nefarious anti-science movement). I argued civilly, but eventual gave up out of frustration. I gradually learned not to let arguments get to me, and only later did I come to appreciate that the limitations of the ID article were inextricably tied to the dearth of reliable historical or sociological secondary sources on the topic, leading to an article assembled from primary sources by those directly involved with the issue.

Some other editing conflicts include: how to characterize Andrew Dickson White's contributions to the conflict thesis, worked out through dialog and compromise; the legitimacy of the topic Scientific Revolution, which SteveMcCluskey and I debated against the idiosyncratic positions of Logicus. Despite my best efforts to get encourage Logicus to contribute in ways that would be constructive and might lead to compromise, it eventually ended with a request for comment that never proceeded because Logicus disappeared. In general, I have learned not to let Wikipedia conflicts cause me much stress. It should go without saying that as an admin, I will be expected to hold to the highest standards of civility and level-headedness during stressful situations, but in case it doesn't, I'll state it for the record: I will deal with conflicts in a calm and civil manner.--ragesoss 07:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)