User:Vaoverland/Administrator role

Please click here to leave a new message on my Talk page. This page covers the philosophy of Wikipedian Vaoverland as one of the English Wikipedia administrators :

As of February 2009, there were over 8.9 million registered user accounts on the English Wikipedia. There were 1,624 administrators. Of these, even less, only 968 of us, were considered active.

To quote Wikipedia policy, being an administrator "is oriented to communal trust and confidence, rather than checklists and edit counts."

I was one of the earlier people to band together to help create and build Wikipedia. I have been pro-Wikipedia and believe that I have interacted with other uses in ways that should be good for Wikipedia, including sensitive and nurturing interaction with newbies and encouraging anonymous IP contributors to register.

As a Wikipedia administrator, in addition to my own work and projects, I enjoy helping others and expediting certain functions. As a fairly-experienced editor and with some additional tools available to administrators, I am always glad to assist with tasks such as page moves, renaming articles, etc. However, I feel any requests for mediation of occasional conflicts between Wikipedians, such as edit wars, and other areas of controversy are best presented to other administrators and bureaucrats.

As a part of my housekeeping duties with Wikipedia, I currently monitor via my watch list about 3,500 articles for accuracy and quality, actively maintaining some of them with periodic additions. I try to check over any changes in any of them, and regarding inappropriate changes, these can be flagged for cleanup, improvement, or undone when they are entirely vandalism or foolishness, and not in good faith.

Despite administrator responsibilities, I much prefer to work on content and not to be involved in controversial activities and conflicts between WP users, which occur occasionally as I suppose they do with all multi-person endeavors. On a more positive note, I have found that collaboration is one of the best things about Wikipedia. I try to be helpful to other contributors, and appreciate comments and communications which should be left on my Talk page (User Talk:Vaoverland).

Six key points
Briefly, here are six of the key points I feel pertinent to my role as an administrator for WP:

1. Setting an example - Over the past few years, we have been raising the bar for credibility of Wikipedia content, and I am embracing that. I feel that I need to set an example, while continuing to try to improve the quality and volume of my work. My activities include helping and sometimes leading efforts in specific projects and articles and making sure we have quality, verifiability, and timely results.

2. Assisting, mentoring - I have occasionally been contacted by other Wikipedians for advice, and I find such request flattering, since I feel I am still learning myself. If I can help, I am glad to do so, or direct the request to another Wikipedian who can. I have met some fine folks in this manner.

3. Mediation and assistance - I try to be very evenhanded in assisting other and mediating disputes. I strive for moderate and reasonable actions, and I will mediate conflicts and respond to communications with a willingness to say "I am sorry" and/or "You were right" as well as gently try to make any points or criticisms (hopefully constructive) necessary. I am thankful others take responsibility for more complicated matters of dispute, since I would rather work on content than conflicts, However, I realize that each is part of maintaining and improving Wikipedia.

4. User politics - Having retired from heading a business with a peak of 200 employees, I am not into power games. I do understand that, especially with volunteer organizations, participants who contribute their efforts tend to feel they have made an investment in the organization. In urging a user to "back down" in a conflict with another, perhaps we should always remind all parties that, while the rights and feelings of individuals within it do matter, the good and integrity of the overall organization must always be our highest priority.

5. Maintaining and watching articles - On my watch list are several thousand articles, and for a far lesser number, I am flagged on the talk pages of many as a user who actively maintains the article. Those activities help me have some communications with other editors seeking to improve an article, etc.

6. My Way and Ownership - From my contributions list, one may quickly see that I work in a wide area of many articles. In doing so, my contact with contributors has been similarly very diverse. Whatever our professional or amateur credentials may be, I feel strongly that the the spirit of WP:collaboration under which we ALL should be operating must be kept in mind. All editors need to take care to avoid what I describe as "ownership" and "my way" behaviors. When you have worked hard and hopefully done a good job with an article, these may be natural impulses; I, for one, will admit feeling them at times. However, a major aspect of Wikipedia is our many and diverse, joint efforts, so we must consider and interact respectfully with other editors. When we see "ownership" and "my way" behaviors creating problems, especially when conflicts or hurt feelings arise, I feel that we need to try to diplomatically enlighten the editor and enlist his/her support of this multi-contributor spirit of Wikipedia.

Housekeeping duties
I currently monitor via my watchlist over 3,500 articles for quality and I actively maintain some of them with frequent additions. I try to check over any changes in any of them, and watch for vandalism. I very seldom get involved in other WP activities, such as deleting pages, categories, and templates.

Vandalism
I am very reluctant to edit or delete the work of others, but will revert vandalism whenever I see it, especially on pages on my WP watchlist. Much like many other Wikipedians, I find entries from anonymous IP addresses to be red flags for possible vandalism. You don't have to do much to get a WP user account and the cost is free. I find most edits by registered users are sincere.

EXAMPLE: If you edit the article on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to add something stupid or mean-spirited (not to mention violating WP:NPOV) such as "Lincoln was a tall idiot", it won't last long if I see it. On the other hand, if you were to type "Lincoln's Gettysburg address was 421 East Main Street", should I doubt the accuracy of that edit, I would want to research whether old Abe ever lived in Pennsylvania, and if so, where, before tampering with your edit.

Links to my other user pages

 * My Main User Page
 * About Me
 * My Contributions
 * Did You Know?
 * My Talk page

Summary
I am enjoying the Wikipedia writing, and welcome suggestions. Please leave any messages at User talk:Vaoverland.


 * Thanks to all,
 * Mark Fisher
 * Williamsburg, Virginia

Vaoverland (talk) 08:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)