Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/2011 appointments/HJ Mitchell

HJ Mitchell
I consider myself to be an experienced and dedicated editor. By no stretch of the imagination am I the most prolific or the most experienced and certainly not the best, but I've been editing for very nearly two years and I've been serving as an administrator for about 10 months.
 * Nomination statement (250 words max.)

I've always seen my role as an administrator as something of a two-pronged fork: I try to make life (on Wikipedia, at least) easier for the many editors who are here to improve Wikipedia and as hard as possible for those who seek to disrupt the project and I would continue to take this approach on the AUSC. I've encountered everything from petty vandals to the much more sophisticated, coordinated abuse.

The non-arbitrator members of the AUSC have a unique role on Wikipedia in ensuring the accountability of actions which the community cannot review. For obvious reasons, the role requires considerable discretion. I would like to think that I’ve proven myself capable of exercising such discretion, having handled many potentially sensitive situations by email in my capacity as an admin.

The AUSC has had problems in the past with its members being unavailable, hampering its work. I lead a fairly uneventful life and my editing levels have been stable for the best part of a year. It is quite rare that I’m totally unreachable, even if I’m not editing, and absences of more than a few days are rare, so I think I can provide the regular availability that the AUSC needs.

Standard questions for all candidates
Please describe any relevant on-Wiki experience you have for this role.
 * Well, after nearly 11 months as an admin, there's not much that surprises me any more. I spent the first 9 of those months as one of the most active admins on the project. After finding some articles that needed writing, I've rediscovered my passion for writing articles on interesting people and so spent more time in the mainspace, but I've clocked up just over 20,000 admin actions, including about 10,000 deletions; 4,000 blocks (mostly vandals and inappropriate usernames); 4,000 protections (I'm also the third-most prolific admin at WP:RfPP); and a little over 1,000 user rights changes. I've also used RevDel about 500 times, many arising from email requests (I'm in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to handle RevisionDelete requests) and spent time at SPI, mainly poking my head round the door to handle some of the blatant cases when it's backlogged so that clerks and CUs can focus on the more complex cases (on which I comment when I have something pertinent to add). With that in mind, I think I have a pretty good idea if what checkusers and oversighters do and the challenges they face.

Please outline, without breaching your personal privacy, what off-Wiki experience or technical expertise you have for this role.
 * Not much, really, but I do have basic qualification in maths and IT and I can handle the kind of data processing that CU, OS and auditing require, whether it's comparing accounts' editing patterns or compiling statistics on CU and OS use from the private logs for the community.

Do you hold advanced permissions (checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward) on this or other WMF projects? If so, please list them. Also, do you have OTRS permissions? If so, to which queues?
 * No. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Questions for this candidate
I am concerned that RevDel has become "Oversight-lite" – in some cases used excessively, in others when OS would be more appropriate; and that users trusted as SysOp may not have the necessary experience to judge whether specific revisions require RevDel or OS. What is your opinion?  Chzz  ► 04:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Question from HJ Mitchell
 * I'll anticipate this one: Have you ever edited from any other account?
 * I have a handful of alternate accounts used for a variety of purposes, all of which are listed on this page along with known impostors, both for transparency and security. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Question from NuclearWarfare
 * Why do you claim FA credit for your work on Brad Pitt? NW ( Talk ) 01:29, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't. The star is there for sentimental reasons. It's the first FA I had anything to do with and I like to keep the star on my userpage as a way of remembering the collaborative effort that went into getting it to FA. The last thing in the world I would want to do is detract any credit from —if it hadn't been for her amazing dedication, the article would probably be a fancrufty mess and there wouldn't have been anything much to copy edit, which (for the record) was the extent of my involvement with the article, apart from a little babysitting of the FAC. The only reason I have any of those pretty icons there (likewise, the barnstars at the very bottom) is to remember the collaborations I've been involved in and the editors I've worked with. Besides that, what matters is not who gets the star on their userpage, but that Wikipedia has one of (if not the) most comprehensive and neutral biographies of the man on the web. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Question from Chzz
 * When the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? ;) I can see where you're coming from, but, in my experience, the stuff that needs to be suppressed (outing/privacy issues in particular) still is, though it might be RevDel'd and then referred up the line to Oversight. Most admins, and certainly those who use RevDel a lot, are smart enough to work out when something shouldn't be visible even to admins, but there is plenty of stuff (mostly RD2 and RD3) that isn't serious enough for oversight but would benefit from being removed. I find it useful for instances where "old-fashioned" deletion isn't practical, such as for high-traffic pages and those with large edit histories, and especially for edit summaries and log entries. The advantage of RevDel is that it's very easily "policed", because it produces entries in the deletion log and there is a relatively large number of admins and so actions made with it can be scrutinised by the community where appropriate, rather than by ArbCom. I myself probably request oversight probably only slightly less frequently than I did before RevDel was made available to admins—I still kick the really serious stuff like outing, privacy (especially the odd 13-year-old's userpage that contains way too much information), libel etc up to oversight, but now I can handle the less serious stuff (like page moves to offensive titles or nasty edit summaries) myself and it's easier for anyone to see what I've done and what rationale I gave for doing it.

TL;DR? Privacy issues, libel and other really unpleasant stuff is still, in my experienced, referred to Oversight (sometimes having been RevDel'd first, which can be an advantage if all the oversighters seem to be asleep [not that they don't do a great job!]), but some of the less nasty stuff, but which is disruptive and of no value in keeping, can be dealt with and the process for dealing with it is as transparent as it's possible to be. HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   05:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments

 * Comments may also be submitted in confidence to the Arbitration Committee privately by emailing 


 * I have seen HJ Mitchell's work as an admin and it appears that he would work very well in this position. I have never once seen him show partiality towards other users, and his conduct is always fair. His level of clue is very high. He also appears willing to "step on some toes" when it is necessary, and in a job like this, being willing to "step on toes" will be crucial. For these reasons, I believe that HJ Mitchell is a great candidate. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:25, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that my "endorsement" will really mean much to the selection committee, but I thought I'd add my 2¢... In my dealings with HJ Mitchell, I've really been impressed by his good judgement.  I'm also impressed by his insightful and positive comments on the current Dreadstar/Sandstein arbitration case. I think he'd do a great job as a member of the Audit Subcommittee. Mojoworker (talk) 09:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support because I know this contributor doesn't hide behind a silly alias, therefore accepting responsibility for his actions, and expecting to be held accountable. Good on you.   Peter S Strempel Page &#124; Talk 10:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * He has always been fair and neutral in my dealings with him --Guerillero &#124; My Talk   01:22, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * HJ is an even handed and honest administrator, I'm sure he would apply those same qualities to the subcommittee. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)