User talk:219.88.87.197/Sandbox

RfA questions: Answer sandbox
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * Questions for the candidate
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
 * A: Well first off the bat I think the most important task I could undertake would be the task of taking time to learn to utilize the tools so that they were applied correctly and according to applicable policy. I'm a quick learner, but there's no replacement for experience, good things take time after all! That being said, I feel I am a pretty well rounded Wikipedian and envisage I would happily contribute in any area requiring my services, however I do feel at this stage I would be most prolific in the following areas:


 * WP:AIV I spend a lot of my time on Wikipedia dealing with vandalism (I was one of the first ever VandalProof users and am also a VP moderator), and given that I live in New Zealand I am online during Wikipedia's periods of least activity (the period when most of the continental US is asleep; UTC 7:00 - 13:00, is early evening here for example). The unfortunate thing is during this period the number of vandals vs. number of wiki users on vandalism patrol is at its highest, and as such individual occurrences of vandalism seem much more frequent. The major problem during this time however, is that proportionally the number of administrators on hand to assist via the blocking of troublesome users is also much lower. I've made well over 100 posts to the Administrator intervention against vandalism noticeboard and at that time of night it can take an hour or more for a report to be cleared. An unbelievable about of damage can be done by a persistent vandal in an hour when given free reign, trust me! Obviously the ability to deal with these vandals, and stay on top of AIV would be of enormous benefit both for myself and no doubt for other nocturnal Wikipedians :)
 * CAT:CSD When I first started tagging speedys I recall feeling somewhat surprised when my tag was (rightly) removed by an admin - after all advertisement is not speedy deletion criteria! Since then I have learnt the criteria and and as such would envisage assisting in ensuring this category is well serviced. I also believe its very important that those authors of said articles are not only notified but taught why this occurred, as I can imagine having your work almost immediately deleted could be very discouraging, and may even turn off otherwise valuable potential contributors
 * WP:AfD Deletion again is something I will ease into as it is imperative that correct procedure and policy are followed, however I regularly contribute to AfD discussions and see many daily that obviously have clear consensus and could be closed. Again, as per above I believe the author(s) should be notified and shown why this occurred so they are not discouraged.


 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A: My user page has a (very out of date) list of subjects I either wrote exclusively or have put a lot of effort into so without copying like 20 article names here that may be a good place to start. However, answering the question regarding an actual specific article alone is somewhat harder. Recently I began WikiProject Bodybuilding which already a dozen or so users have signed up for, and one of my reasons for doing so was the massive amount articles missing when it came to notable bodybuilding subjects, specifically bodybuilders. Although no longer one myself I've been in the industry one way or another for the last decade so I am very familiar with the subject matter. Consequently I have either started or been the most significant contributor to a whole heap of related articles, from memory; Dan Duchaine, A. Scott Connelly, Bill Phillips (author), Mike Mentzer, Mike Katz, Experimental and Applied Sciences, Met-Rx and Craig Titus come to me off the top of my head, but there are dozens more. Of all the above I guess I am most proud of Dan Duchaine as I wrote the entire article myself, and as he died several years ago reseach on the net was slim (so a lot of paper references were used). Personally, I think at this stage its more important for a potential user to find something on a specific subject, than nothing, and as a result probably spend my time when writing articles working on creating reasonable pages that were otherwise completely missing from the encyclopedia.


 * 3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
 * A: In Real Life I'm 31 and head up two companies with in the realm of 15-20 staff employed for me, and have done so for the last ten years without a single staff member resigning or being fired under bad terms. As such I'm fairly qualified in dealing with people, especially in a position of responsibility and in matters of a serious or sensitive nature. As an employer you also learn civility, as you cannot just blow your top when things aren't going your way (well you could, but you'd have no staff!) I guess this RL experience has served me well when in Wikiworld, as I can honestly say that in 8 or 9 months I've not had a situation cause me any undue stress. I did have an "interesting" experience back in April which was probably the closest I've come to wikistress, with User:Nikitchenko, one of the many sock puppets of indefinitely banned user User:AI. He caused a lot of disruption because myself and other users would not let him insert blatant POV, nor remove anything he perceived as negative in any of the Scientology related articles. When I filed a report to WP:AN/3RR regarding a 3RR violation and he was subsequently blocked he took offence and began (for want of a better word) wikistalking me; filing complaints to Esperanza, the Concordia noticeboard (when it was in operation) and a Mediation Cabal case against myself and a few other editors (which was subsequently tossed out). He was finally blocked when his sockpuppetry was discovered. Probably worth noting is that I do steer away from Scientology related articles now as a result, (in fact the only exception is the boatload of vandalism I have reverted from them) as contributors feel very deeply about the subject, and I do not want to be consider biased. As such in recent months everything has been plain sailing!

Optional questions
 * 1) In your opinion, what attributes make someone a good admin?
 * A:
 * 1) Why do you want to be an admin? (Personally, as opposed to the technical aspects in required question 1)
 * A:
 * 1) You find out that an editor, who's well-known and liked in the community, has been using sockpuppets abusively. What would you do?
 * A:
 * 1) An editor asks you to mediate in a dispute that has gone from being a content dispute to an edit war (but not necessarily a revert war), with hostile language in edit summaries (that are not personal attacks). One involved party welcomes the involvement of an admin, but the other seems to ignore you. They have both rejected WP:RFC as they do not think it would solve anything. Just as you are about to approach the user ignoring you, another admin blocks them both for edit warring and sends the case to WP:RFAR as a third party. Would you respect the other admin's decisions, or would you continue to engage in conversation (over email or IRC) and submit a comment/statement to the RFAR? Let's say the ArbCom rejects the case. What would you do then?
 * A:
 * 1) If you could change any one thing about Wikipedia what would it be?
 * A:
 * 1) Under what circumstances would you indefinitely block a user without any prior direction from Arb Com?
 * A:
 * 1) Suppose you are closing an AfD where it would be keep if one counted certain comments / discussions that you suspect are sockpuppets/meatpuppets and would be delete otherwise. The RCU returns inconclusive, what do you do? Is your answer any different if the two possibilities are between no consensus and delete?
 * A:
 * 1) Do you believe there is a minimum number of people who need to express their opinions in order to reasonably close an AfD? If so, what is that number? What about RfDs and CfDs?
 * A:
 * 1) A considerable number of administrators have experienced, or are close to, burnout due to a mixture of stress and vitriol inherent in a collaborative web site of this nature. Do you feel able to justify yourself under pressure, and to not permit stress to become overwhelming and cause undesirable or confused behaviour?
 * A:
 * 1) Why do you want to be an administrator?
 * A:
 * 1) In your view, do administrators hold a technical or political position?
 * A:
 * 1) You buy a dozen eggs. One of them is broken. Do you:
 * A. Eat eleven eggs,
 * B. Go back to Wal-Mart and pitch a fit about it,
 * C. Locate and kill the chicken, or
 * D. Other (please explain)
 * A:
 * 1) Who is your favorite superhero, comic-book or otherwise, and why?
 * A:
 * 1) What are your views on parenthetical disambiguation?
 * A:
 * 1) We all know that good-faith edits, while not being vandalism per se, sometimes reduce the quality of an article, and should be reverted or amended. In your opinion, however, is it possible for an article to be improved by edits made in bad faith? What course of action would you take if such a scenario arose?
 * A:
 * 1) What part of Wikipedia do you dislike the most or feel most frustrated with in your time here thus far (this can be a user, type of user, policy, restriction etc.)? Have you tried to overcome these and would adminship make life any easier for you?
 * A:
 * 1) Above you can see a number of statistics about your edits. Do you consider any of these important? Which do you consider most important?
 * A:
 * 1) Lastly, do you have any criteria when voting in RFAs? If so please present them, if not then it doesn't matter.
 * A: