User talk:Vaoverland/archive1

vaoverland archive 1

Congratulations!
Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Hope your admin duties won't slow you down on your transportation editing! :) Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 19:51, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To those fellow Wikipedians who commented in support
Thank you for supporting my appointment as an administrator. I appreciate the pat on the back this represents means more to me. It felt nice to read the comments during the voting. Please let me know if you see something I should be doing as admin, as I intend to be fairly passive unless it is clear I should do otherwise. Thanks. Mark in Richmond. Vaoverland 20:06, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Vaoverland
final (30/0/0) ending 06:16 6 March 2005 (UTC)

Just hit 7300 edits in ~1 year, recently averaging 120+ per day. His user page speaks for itself: 2 featured articles, 11 WikiProject memberships, hundreds of articles contributed to. They should create an expedited adminship request for people like this. His own statements regarding adminship nomination:


 * I am honored by your offer. I would embrace those responsibilities, and I believe I could do a good job. Aside from vandalism, which almost always seems to come from mysterious IP addresses, I try to be very respectful and nurturing of the work of other editors. I would be cautious in exercising the additional power. I am retired from having a business with a peak of 200 employees, so I am not into power games. I have been enjoying working with you also, and appreciate your accuracy, focus, and the battleboxes. Thanks. Mark in Richmond.

brian0918   06:16, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I accept. To avoid misleading anyone, I need to note that I like to save edits while working on an article, so the high number is due to not working offline on a Word Processor. It helps me to see how the article is coming along, but that tends to increase edit volume a lot. I do try to stick to articles I know something about, and have good access to reference material. Vaoverland 07:12, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Support
 * 1)  brian0918    06:31, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Shanes 08:40, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Meets my new admin criterion,jguk 14:31, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Rje 17:27, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Wow.  Just... wow. Andrew Lenahan - St ar bli nd  18:43, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Niteowlneils 19:00, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC). As an editor, Mark goes for quality of articles over quantity, is detail-oriented, and very collaborative. All these traits seem to be valuable in an admin.
 * 7) Antandrus 20:01, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC) Very impressed. In addition to his excellent contributions, I like his comment about not being into power games.
 * 8) Jonathunder 22:50, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)
 * 9) He can't be human! --Slowking Man 07:49, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Great user! -- Darwinek 14:16, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Cool. JuntungWu 16:40, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) Go for it ugen 64 23:30, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) His talk page is a wonderful example of collaboration. Add in all the other positive traits that are so clear from his contributions and this is an easy Support vote.  SWAdair | Talk  11:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) R yan!  |  Talk  12:25, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Of course I support! Mgm|(talk) 14:02, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) Support. PedanticallySpeaking 16:11, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Support. --Lst27 ( t a l k )  21:46, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) Jordi·✆ 02:21, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Support -- Chris 73 Talk 02:52, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) jni 09:28, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) Everyking 11:24, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 22) His help with WikiProject Trains has been instrumental in moving more rail transport articles to Featured status.  slambo 18:07, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * 23) Absolutely support. - Lucky 6.9 22:49, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 24) of course. dab (ᛏ) 13:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 25) Duk 14:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC). Great work, and lots of it.
 * 26) How much clearer does it get? Smoddy (t) (e) 19:23, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 27) What's not to support? Excellent user. Bishonen | Talk 02:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 28) Oh dear oh lor' yes indeedy. And a train-buff too! Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]] 10:42, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 29) Appears to be an excellent editor. Jayjg (talk) 14:55, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 30) Not that he really needs more support ;) Carrp | Talk 14:57, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

Comments

Questions for the candidate

A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)
 * A. I am willing to help in any of the capacities needed. For example, I have seen several situations where temporarily protecting pages may have been wise. I have a problem with censorship in general, and of course, the concept of protecting pages (or images) is in conflict with basic WP philosophy of anyone can edit. I check WP at least daily, and often much more often, so I could be "on-call" to check for requests for help, etc.
 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A. I was very proud of the 2 FA successful nominations I contributed heavily to. One was Battle of Hampton Roads in particular, because it linked to many other WP articles which I and (and others) did additional work on. The other major contributor was strong in images, boxes, etc., where I tend to do more on content, so I thought the informal collaboration worked out nicely for the end result.
 * I recently have had a lot of fun creating Lost Counties, Cities and Towns of Virginia which I am hoping will stimulate some new contributions from others. I also have done some good work (I think) contributing to someone else's creation, Pioneer Zephyr, another article which naturally leads to more articles, and should catch and stimulate our readers (and future writers).
 * 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 will deal with it in the future?
 * A. Only once. On a talk page, another user from my hometown accused me of making up a fact he/she had never heard of, with a choice of wording I was particularly offended by. I snapped back with a reply which was also a little less diplomatic than I wished I had said on reflection. We communicated some more and cleared up my hurt feelings (unintended by the other party, who just should have questioned the factual basis with a bit more tact) and we got together on the substance of the concern, and resolved it. Had I cited my sources to begin with, the issue probably wouldn't have come up at all. We both collaborate on that article since then, and it is gradually getting better and had had a couple of new contributors helping on it as well.


 * I have never had an editing battle, reversion battle, etc. Lots of other contributors correct my spelling, and add to or change what I have written, and add or correct my cats, which is OK with me. I cannot recall feeling I was right and they were wrong. Regarding content, I seldom feel strongly that I said it better, etc., and I am very reluctant to change what someone else wrote unless it is factually incorrect, and I have verified that. For example, Cyrus McCormick was not born in Roane County, West Virginia. In that case, I made sure that I had the facts right, and changed and added to other content as well. The page history didn't indicate the contributor, so it was impossible to drop a friendly line, but that would be the best way to go about it. I often add sections to long blocks of text in existing articles, especially if I am adding much content.


 * I missed my WP time a great deal during a power outage earlier this winter, and during the February 21 outage. It made me appreciate WP more, though. My interest to do WP admin work is based on a willingness to help make WP grow and be better yet. Thanks. Vaoverland 07:12, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)