Wikipedia:Editor review/White Shadows (3)

White Shadows
Well this is now my third editor review. (I was renamed from "Coldplay Expert" a few weeks ago so my last two were under that name) I hade one back in December I belive and another one back in september/october if I am correct. Some peolpe who take a look at my userpage for the first time would be astonished to hear about my wiki-past. To put this bluntly at best, I was definitely not the productive editor that I am today. I'm here to lay everything on the table. I was once a myspaceing, immature and annoying admin wannabe from September until January when I got my act together after I was block in a dispute that User:Malleus Fatuorum and I slugging it out over whether or not I was a myspaceing editor. Sadly that was my second block, (My first one was in September and involved me useing my friend's account to ask for an unblock in his name.) I began to get on the right track in January after that block and I started to edit articles dealing with German U-boats. I got my first DYK (SM U-118) in that subject on February 1. Since then I have gotten a further 11 DYK's all dealing with German WWI and WWII U-boats and U-boat types as well as U-boat bases. As for Good Articles, I recived credit for my First GA back in February as well when I got SM U-11 (Austria-Hungary) to GA status. Since then I have promoted 6 more GA's and written 2 of them from scratch. I have also left my myspaceing habbits behind as of January 21 and I belive that I am now a useful and productive asset to this project and in particular, Wikiproject Ships. As for my "desire" to become an admin, well I would not mind haveing the extra tools to help fight vandals (of which I am also a major contributor to) but I do not think that adminship is my main goal here anymore, writeing an encyclopedia is. (NOTE:You'll notice that I make alot of spelling mistakes. Please don't tell me that I need a spell checker, I have been told several times before.) White Shadows  you're breaking up 22:35, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

 Questions


 * 1) What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?
 * My primary contributions to Wikipedia are my numerous articles on German U-boats that I have created or expanded. Some examples of my GA's include German submarine U-47 (1938), German submarine U-162 (1941) and German submarine U-2336. However, I consider my greatest achivement of all to be my 4 month struggle to get World War II (one of the most viewd article on the site) to GA class. I finaly achived it last month and I now have over 140 edits to the article.
 * 1) Have you been in any disputes 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?
 * Anyome who knows me knows that I have gotten into a heap ot trouble with other editors in the past. There are a few editors who just cannot stand me and we have crossed paths before. However, I now follow a policy of WP:DGAF and I usually try to ignore any insults and whatnot that is thrown at me. If I need to, I'll take the issue up with an admin in order to calm the situation down before we both get blocked for PA's. I think that the last occurance of this was back in early February though. This meant that I have been "drama free" for only about 2 months but hey, you have to start somewhere.
 * Optional questions from User:Taelus
 * Optional questions from User:Taelus
 * Optional questions from User:Taelus


 * 1) Is there anything specific you wish to gain in terms of feedback from this editor review? If yes, please specify to help poke reviewers in the right direction.
 * Well yes. I'd liek an outside opinion about how much I have improved since the begining of this year. Am I doing anything wrong? What do I need to work on? and What issues do I still have (that need to fix)?-- White Shadows  you're breaking up 00:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Whilst adminship is indeed not a goal, but a way to aid the project, would you plan to apply in either the short term or long term? (As above, the answer to this may help poke reviewers in the direction of which the most beneficial feedback lies.)
 * Well I have stated before that I would never apply myself. It is my opinion that you truely know that you are ready once a few people come up to you and ask if they can nominate you or if you will go up for an RFA. I had been asked about the idea about running a few weeks ago and I turned it down ont he grounds that I am not ready and there were still issues that I had to work out even though several people were in support of me doing it. Now with thoses statements in mind, I would apply(with the support of several other people)/accept a nomination by June/July (pretty much my one year wikibirthday) at the very earliest if I felt that I was ready and I had the support of enough people to give me the confidence that being a sysop would actually be beneficial to the project. I don't really know if thats long term or short term but that would be the earliest date IMO. I hope this answers your question.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 00:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I have stated before that I would never apply myself. It is my opinion that you truely know that you are ready once a few people come up to you and ask if they can nominate you or if you will go up for an RFA. I had been asked about the idea about running a few weeks ago and I turned it down ont he grounds that I am not ready and there were still issues that I had to work out even though several people were in support of me doing it. Now with thoses statements in mind, I would apply(with the support of several other people)/accept a nomination by June/July (pretty much my one year wikibirthday) at the very earliest if I felt that I was ready and I had the support of enough people to give me the confidence that being a sysop would actually be beneficial to the project. I don't really know if thats long term or short term but that would be the earliest date IMO. I hope this answers your question.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 00:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Optional questions from Doc Quintana


 * 1) If you had it to do over again with MF, what would you have done differently? (excluding what you said intitially about the changing from Myspacing, etc.)
 * I'm sorry Doc can you rephrase the question as I don't really get what you are exactly trying to say. Thanks.
 * If you had it to do over again with MF, or someone like him, what would your strategy be on approaching the situation?


 * I understand what you have siad now so here's my reply. I would have just walked away had I know what would have happened to me in the minutes after posting my reply. However I may have never taken MF seriously and as a result I may have never gotten out of my Myspacey hole that I was in at the time. But in short I would have just walked away from the situation and prove him wrong though my actions not my words.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 22:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

 Reviews 

Review by Taelus

 * Ok then, here goes a review. Right off the bat to answer one of your questions, you have indeed significantly improved in the recent months as you have made a good attempt at avoiding drama, and have thrown yourself into some excellent content creation to help yourself refocus on the heart of what Wikipedia is about. Whilst you did have an issue or two with copyright, you happily cleared that up and learned from your experience which is a good quality to have.
 * Moving onto some statistical things, you have a good spread of contributions across the namespaces, with significant contributions to the mainspace, and user talk, but not without a good number of edits to article talk and project pages too. Your usage of edit summaries is high, although in some scenarios they could be a little more clear. (For example, what does "move" mean? What are you moving, and to where? What does "more" mean? What did you add?). This is a minor point though as the diffs are clear enough, but more clarity can never hurt.
 * You have indeed managed to avoid drama, but in some scenarios you could still improve further. One example would be the WikiCup incident, if you have a grudge with a fellow editor, constantly saying "we have a grudge - But I won't engage them" or "Lets make a truce" is actually going to have the opposite effect. I believe that you have already taken this on board though as I gave you a poke during the time, but do remember that the best way to avoid drama with users you know won't get along with you is to simply not get involved in scenarios with them. This doesn't mean you should avoid them completely, but you should consider carefully wording comments and avoiding arguments.
 * Additionally, to continue from the above, in scenarios where drama already exists and you are not involved, consider simply avoiding the scenario and not fuelling it unless your comments would benefit the debate. This is again a minor point, but it is worth taking into account as you frequent ANI and have some edits to WQA and many edits to user talk pages. I am not suggesting you are problematic here, this is simply advice I would offer to anyone including myself who venture into such areas.
 * Whilst you did specifically ask for no comments about spelling, I cannot help but want to raise the point slightly. Whilst no one is expecting perfect flowing prose with beautiful grammar here, improving spelling would benefit you. Whilst it is not your intention to offend at all, I would like to point out that some people may see your spelling errors as a sign that you rushed through a scenario and comment, and thus may assume you didn't give full attention to it, or your too busy for it. Good spelling creates the impression of a user taking their time and putting effort into their replies, and as we are cursed on Wikipedia to discuss via text, impressions are everything, text can easily be misinterpreted or read in different ways.
 * Finally, I am glad your views on adminship and such have changed. To tell you the truth, I have seen you around the project for quite a while, and I was originally concerned that you saw positions such as rollback, autoreviewer, admin, crat etc as "Badges of Honour". I am glad you have come to see that they are not. Your anti-vandalism work is encouraging. Take your time, build up experience, and use the time to prove you have gained experience and have learned from previous problems, then I am sure many would happily support you in the future.
 * Anyway, I don't want any of my comments to discourage you, but I think that feedback is important in an editor review. Keep up the good work, feel free to ask me anything on my talk page. I would encourage you to expand into more areas such as XfD, Requested Moves, and such if you feel you could benefit such areas, or to stick with what you feel your good at. Happy editing, --Taelus (talk) 12:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Review by Diannaa
In our passing encounters working on war-related articles I have found you to be easy to work with. I remember reading about your drama days (I often engage in some Schadenfreude by perusing WP:ANI when tired of editing, but I was never directly involved). You at present are an asset to the project and I am glad to have you as a fellow editor  Diannaa  TALK 00:20, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Diannaa. It's a pleasure to work with you as well. It's very rare to have such a new editor be so prolific in copy-editing as you are :)-- White Shadows you're breaking up 00:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks XD. I will get busy on your copy-edit request today or tomorrow.  Regards,  Diannaa  TALK 01:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 01:49, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Review by December21st2012Freak
Décembër21st2012Freâk  Talk at 23:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) I like all your DYK's that you made, keep it up.
 * 2) You might need a little more experience in the Wikipedia namespace, as your Wikipedia namespace editcount is only 10.18%.
 * 3) No more typing fast, as that creates spelling mistakes, and might make vandals to say that you spell like a third-grader.
 * 4) Finally, try to avoid drama, and increase your article space to as much as 40% with creating and expanding articles to qualify for DYK.
 * Thanks. Will do on all accounts :)-- White Shadows you're breaking up 23:33, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Dylan620
I'm not even sure if we need to continue adoption anymore (it's been ages since the last lesson anyway). As others have said, your maturity has indeed increased, but I personally think that your greatest improvement lies in your article work. Especially for a user with such a MySpacey start, you've really become a formidable force in article writing. To be honest, I envy you in that regard – I couldn't even begin to muster the focus necessary to write 15 GA's and nearly 20 DYK's. Keep up the great work, and good luck in the WikiCup! -- Dylan 620  (contribs, logs) 20:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK. I guess that we don;t need to continue it. Ans the Wikicup is a very fun experience. I cannot belive that I managed to get over 600 points and end up in about 5th in round 2. Thanks for the support Dylan :)-- White Shadows you're breaking up 21:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Review by Wehwalt
Your maturity level has increased and you are not as much minded to be resentful when things do not come out just as you wanted. Keep it up. I've glanced at your U boat articles, they are technically very good, though in my view your prose could be more engaging to draw the reader in. That sort of thing takes time and experience though, and a lot of reading to see how other writers do things. Keep it up. Also, you are starting to catch (I think) more of your spelling mistakes, or else are making fewer to begin with. Goes to professionalism.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:32, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well thank you very much Wehwalt :) (I do hope that smiles are still ok to use) As for the U-boats, I understand what you are saying but you've got to give me some slack. Not only have I created over a dozen of these things in a short amount of time (2 months) without any prior experience, I've also only got a map of Europe with 5-20 little red dots in the ocean to work with. I literally have to take those dots and turn it into a "story" that will (hopefully) draw the reader in as thesew articles drew me in a few months ago. I'll try to work oin the prose some more. If you take a look at my earliest DYK's compared to my lates ones, you'll see a huge diffrence. Thanks for the spelling comments. (All of those hours of my life wasted spent in English class is begining to catch up with me)-- White Shadows you're breaking up 01:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Like I said, time and experience. And reading.  While your performance in the WikiCup is great, I hope you aren't letting it be an end of itself.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK then. In time I'll hopefully be able to fix those writeing issues. Now what do you mean by: While your performance in the WikiCup is great, I hope you aren't letting it be an end of itself. I did'nt really get that sentence.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 01:59, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In other words, doing well in the Cup is great but your goal should be to write articles. Please spell writing correctly.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:12, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * My bad :) And I do think that my goal is to write articles. You see, I love the wikicup and I even handle some of the behind the sceens issues there (with the lack of active judges and all) but the main reason that I have not withdrawn from the cup is that I gives me further motivation to keep on writeing articles. I use the cup to keep me from slowing down in article writeing to some extent.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 04:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Soap
Just a word of advice, since you've said you plan on running an RfA someday. I notice you getting involved a lot on ANI in conflicts between other users, often ones which don't directly involve you, and I just want to warn you that a lot of people see that as a negative, even if your role in the conflict is transparently positive. I think they feel that such people are the type who would be overly aggressive, vengeful administrators, whether or not this is true in reality. So even in the cases where you can be sure that your participation in an ANI thread will only help others and do no harm, it may be a wise idea to hold back and let someone else help out.  — Soap  —  12:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to do that lately. Let others dig the hole and not fill it in :) thanks.-- White Shadows you're breaking up 22:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Juliancolton
I think you've made vast improvement since your early days in terms of refocusing your efforts. I don't have much to add to the above statements, but I would like to emphasize that everybody, yourself included, should generally stay out of issues not involving them. Whenever you get the urge to jump into a dispute... go review a GAN instead! Juliancolton (talk) 12:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That actually seems like a good idea. I've only reviewed one GA and I had to fail it. You are correct that I need to keep my head out of trouble that does not involve me and foucus on other things that are in dire need to attention here. Some examples could include DYK and GAN. (I've been a bit inactive over at DYK recently and I hope to get back to work there) Thanks for that "unhelpful comment" Julian.-- White Shadows stood on the edge 21:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)