User:Yellowdesk/rfa

I nominate and present Teratornis for your consideration as an Administrator. An exceptional participant, in both quality and quantity, in the endless work of aiding people to understand how Wikipedia works. He has been a |significant presence at the Help desk since February 2007. A look at any of the archived pages of the Help desk, or a look at Teratornis's contributions will show gentle, thorough and thoughtful responses to more than a few hundred inquiries. The thorough replies and welcoming point of view of Teratornis has a readership that is significantly larger than the particular individuals inquiring. A variety of tough-to-know-about topics there have been thought over and researched, whether technical, editorial or about Wikipedia culture. Nearly invisible corners of Wikipedia have been made visible, thoughtfully described with insight, often comprehensively. Misdirected questions have been directed, and sometimes answered. In general a welcoming presence.

I admire this editor for his clear interest and desire both to find out and to share knowledge of his thinking about diverse things Wikipedia, and more significant to me, I admire the commitment that his effort reveals. He is also an editor on several other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and an administrator elsewhere on several corporate MediaWiki installations. We would have a surprisingly knowledgeable administrator from the start, if this nomination is accepted. As to the varieties of administrator wikipedia has and could have: there is a wide range of helpful and useful things an admin can do, and desirable to be done. Important in any administrator's activity is rendering help, advice and perspective, and these Teratornis has done in exemplary fashion for two years here. As an admin, I think that the Wikipedia project would benefit from Teratornis's interests, commitment and as an exemplary presence. -- Yellowdesk (talk)

I'm happy to co-nominate Teratornis. I first encountered him in February 2007, when he started making valuable suggestions for improving what was then a user subpage of mine, and is now the Editor's index to Wikipedia. Later in 2007, he agreed to be a technical reviewer for my book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (now on Wikipedia in an editable version); in that role, he helped considerably to improve the book. Overall, I've been very impressed by his technical abilities, and by his commitment to Wikipedia (as evidenced, for example, by his contributions at the help desk and in creating the Editor's index to Commons). But most of all, I've been impressed by his thinking; he is thoughtful and thorough and open to other viewpoints and always looking for ways to improve things. I think he'd be a great addition to our group of admins. -- John Broughton