User:TonyTheTiger/adminessaytemp

Complete archive of first RFA

My wikipedia role is depicted by my editing time allocation. In the top 15 mainspace time expenditures you will see 12 articles that I have created and 3 that I police for vandalism and contribute to as an editor (Donald Trump, Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) and Taekwondo). They cover music/broadcasting, modern art, business biography, business history biography, sports biography, architecture, corporations, regional (Chicago) history, and urban planning. I have enjoyed contributing to the world’s resources when I stumble upon a topic that is not in this encyclopedia. However, I apologize because I edit at 1600x1200 resolution. I often include many images and this often causes malplaced text when viewed at low resolutions such as 800x600. 6 years ago nearly half of the viewers of my personal website had 800x600 resolution and about 5% do now. Therefore, I know that this problem is diminishing. However, if you prefer low resolution viewing, I apologize. I hope my contributions have been valuable nonetheless.

I am pro freedom of speech and expression. Unfortunately, the XfD process affects the hard work of contributors who post informative resources on controversial topics. Generally, people under report their own tax debts, marital infidelities, and masturbatory practices. People also underreport enjoyment/support for erotica resources like Playboy Online. As such I am of the unpopular opinion that Playboy Online has not been adequately represented on wikipedia. Playboy online generates $50 million annually on $8-20/month dues. Revenues are growing about 20-25%/year. It must be popular. However, Playboy Online supporters hesitate to speak up for fear of being viewed as socially depraved, immoral, amoral, and possibly heretical, if not downright looney. Thus, documented support is depressed. I have fought this moral oppression. My only content review involved the controversial Playboy Online and Playboy Cyber Club articles as well as numerous related articles and categories that had been successfully deleted numerous times. The successful article for undeletion resulted in successful conversion of a crufting black eye into a resource. I had Playboy Online, Playboy Cyber Club, Playboy Cyber Girl, and Cyber Girl of the Year restored. In the talk pages I have set a policy that will diminish future controversy. The seemingly unilateral talk pages incorporate previous AfD and undeletion considerations and thus are highly collaborative. I recognize that due to the controversial nature of these pages despite my efforts they could come under attack at any time and that if they do they are vulnerable due to human nature in which people underrepresent support of controversial sociopolitical topics, especially those with morality implications.

As an aside, I have been told that statistics are not available on prior English language wikipedia admin applicant demographics. There have been about 1000 wikipedian administrators from the information I have perused. Does anyone know any of color? If anyone has information on the number of previous English language wikipedia admin applicants that have been Black, of Afro-American heritage or of Latin-American descent, I’d be interested in learning about them.

I have been involved in CfD (mostly CfR), CFDS, AfD, and RM. I attempt to assist in fighting vandalism on a my watchlist. As wikipedia continues its rapid growth in pages and demand for administrative resources, I can contribute as a sysop in several ways. Furthermore, it is logical for me to pursue adminship to increase the efficiency with which I can assist. I anticipate providing greater assistance in XfD, PROD, AIV & CSD backlogs because these are closely related to my experience. Once I have mastered my new tools I will be of great assistance and will get active in the unfortunate task of blocking users. Although I will surely begin by blocking very clear abusive vandals who ignore warnings, I hope to be able to steer users towards good faith contributions. Overall, I will use new tools as respectfully and pragmatically as possible while balancing efficiency with caution. Above all else, I intend to act with the welfare of the encyclopedia as a whole in mind at all times.

Currently, I am proudest of my recent overhaul of Category:Families, which you can see most easily on the right side of User:TonyTheTiger. I hope my contribution of Families by religion, ancestry & profession become as useful as Families by nationality has been. However, the beauty of wikipedia is that one can continually take pride in new contributions. At first, I was proud to learn wikipedia sufficiently well to create my first page (List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry) a task that took two weeks and 95 edits (and lots of followup by more knowledgeable editors). I continue to be pleased to use my expertise in financial economics to contribute to wikipedia's business and business history articles and templates. Although wikipedia is quite strong in biographical articles of currently newsworthy individuals, their ancestors who put them in the position to be newsworthy have been underrepresented. I have contributed research on several important families as a result. Many of these families are located in the Categories American families and Business dynasties or subcategories thereof. I am also pleased to have been able to use my athletic avocations to contribute numerous sports articles and templates. I have also been able to contribute several valuable illustrative photographs using my digital camera. For example, as of today, all the photos in the Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) article and half the pictures in the gallery are mine. Also, Blackstone Library and Marquette Building (Chicago) both include only my photos. As one who fails to polish most of my work, even my most interesting articles such as the 2 aforementioned ones remain rough. However, my proudest mainspace contributions are my collaborative efforts that enabled me to couple my research skills with my interpersonal skills to set article specific policy. Five-tool player and Okinawan kobudo are articles where my talk page history footprint demonstrate that my thought process is a constructive asset to wikipedia. I had minor controversies related to my inexperience with wikipedia in my first 2000-3000 edits. An example is the back and forth refinement of the Breaking page with JHunterJ. He got me straightened out eventually. My own bio (which I am not suppose to link to any mainspace articles, but that can be accessed in my userspace) served as an early lesson on notability and AfD. I also have gone through a routine AfD of Argo Tea which can be seen here. Aside from these early experiences and the Playboy debate, my most stressful situation started with this edit to my Seymour Knox dab page by Jerzy which lead to a very lengthy series of exchanges debating the notability of works of art in general and Portrait of Seymour H. Knox specifically. The full debate, which is almost summarized in this diff fell outside the parameters of structured administrative processes such as CfD or AfD. As an untrained art student, I was not sure what constituted a significant contribution for paintings. Basically, in order to prove to myself and Jerzy that artwork could be successfully incorporated I created Campbell's Soup Cans and Haystacks (Monet). Having done so I felt confident enough to add the less notable Warhol artwork article, which had been the original subject of artwork notability. The Haystacks article remains horribly incomplete, but a pleasing contribution nonetheless.

Another controversy was my effort to contribute to the encyclopedia of knowledge surrounding what we American sports fans call the four major sports. In the end, I created useful templates for Football, Basketball, Baseball, & Hockey. However, first my efforts to find a way to contribute caused much consternation to a few other hard working editors. Basically, I tried to add to an already existent Basketball template to make it more general. Then, I added it to numerous pages. It was determined not to be useful for these pages. SportsMasterESPN had to revert all my edits to the template and then Mike Selinker had to remove the transclusion commands from the numerous pages I had added them to. I imagine they were both pretty annoyed with me. Since I really wanted to make a contribution to each of the four major sports, I asked the editors whose pages I had disturbed for feedback that helped me to make a template that became a meaningful contribution for basketball that has been transcluded extensively in many pages.

Thank You letter:

I appreciate the feedback that I received during the RfA process. Unfortunately, I withdrew my candidacy. However, your participation is appreciated. I have made my New Years Resolution (effective immediately) to attempt to vote on at least 50 WP:XFD/week (on at least 5 different days), to spend 5 hours/week on WP:NPP, to be active in WikiProjects and to change the emphasis of my watchlist from editorial oversight to vandalism prevention. I have replaced several links that I had on my list to some that I think are more highly vandalized (Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, my congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., my senator Barrack Obama and Jesse Jackson). My first day under my newly turned leaf was about what I hope a typical day to be. I quickly found a vandal, made a few editorial changes to Donald Trump, voted at WP:CFD and WP:AFD, continued attempted revitalization of WikiProject_Chicago and proposed a new stub type as a result of WP:NPP patrol. I hope this will broaden my wikipedia experience in a way that makes me a better administrator candidate. I hope to feel more ready to be an admin in another 3000 or so edits. TonyTheTiger 16:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)