Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Amire80


 * The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for adminship. Please do not modify it .

Amire80
Final: (25/4/1); ended 18:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

- I've been on Wikipedia since early 2005. I edit articles on several topics - Linguistics (I am studying Linguistics in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), Israel, Russia, other countries. I do backlog work: disambiguate links, fix red links, close merge discussions. I add sources when I can; I am particularly proud about the case of Bryansk (see the talk page). I nominated several pages for deletion, so I am familiar with the deletion discussion process and I also consider the deletion policies of the English Wikipedia very logical and fair. I revert vandalism and warn vandals, although I do my best to assume good faith. I have experience as a sysop in a public Wiki - the wiki of Jerusalem Perl Mongers. Amir E. Aharoni 18:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:
 * 1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?
 * A: First of all, blocking users who are performing blatant vandalism. I usually don't have a lot of time to monitor Recent changes, but I often see that vandals are warned by users and it takes many minutes until an admin actually blocks him and in the meantime he does more harm; so intend to help with that when I see it. I also think that I shall be more efficient doing backlog work with administrator rights - merging pages, moving pages to redirects with history, etc. I also intend to respond to requests at Wikipedia:Requests for administrator attention - good, non-controversial requests should be carried out quickly and sometimes there is a lag.


 * 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
 * A: In terms of encyclopedic content - I created several articles about Israel, including Eviatar Banai, Giv'at Ye'arim and Matte Yehuda Regional Council. I sorted and cleaned up List of Romance languages according to reliable sources, and other related articles and categories. I contributed to many other articles - added sources, removed dubious information or marked it as "citation needed". I adopted the disambiguation pages Belarusian and Progressive and I keep the list of links to it empty most of the time. I am slowly, but surely, emptying the list of red links. I also made many contributions to the Hebrew Wikipedia: I created many articles and I essentially lead a project that aims to have as few as possible pages without interwiki links.


 * 3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
 * A: I didn't have any significant cases of stress in the English Wikipedia. The worst case of stress that I had was on the Hebrew Wikipedia, where I got into an argument about the article on Scientology with a user who was overly critical of the organization. It happened in late 2005. In that case I learned how to handle a revert war gracefully. I was also involved in a somewhat heated argument about the deletion of one article (deletion review here). In that case I did my best to remain fair and assume good faith, and in the same time stick to the policy of verifiability. My most controversial action was probably the involvement in the Siberian Wikipedia project, which is frowned upon by many Russian editors. I was curious about it as a linguist, so I helped set it up and I still have administrator rights there, however I am disappointed about its non-constructive direction and I am not active there for a long time. It taught me to be much more careful about the issues of notability and verifiability.

General comments

 * See Amire80's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.


 * Links for Amire80:

''Please keep criticism constructive and polite. Remain civil at all times. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Amire80 before commenting.''

Discussion


Support
 * 1) Support a very good contributor to WP:RFA and the general reaction to him on his talk page appears to be positive. I am slightly worried about his edit rate fluctuation though. -Icewedge 20:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Support Nothing jumps out at me to raise any concerns. Talented, diversified, and long established editor who interacts well with the community, and has shown excellent dedication to growing the project. Hiberniantears 22:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Experienced editor who clearly won't abuse the tools.  Melsaran  (talk) 23:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Support  Cheers, :) Dloh cierekim  02:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Support per nom. --Yeshivish 05:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Support although you haven't been very active of late, I see no reason to oppose -- Ben chat 05:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Support A very good editor. It is time to give him the mop. -- S iva1979 Talk to me 13:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Support I've only seen good edits from you. Valentinian T / C 21:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) User can be trusted. Acalamari 01:57, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) A keen eye for vandals and devotion to a project. You fit the bill. --iriseyestalk 02:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) There's a bit of AfD there...not excessive, but we don't always need excessive admins. Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 04:57, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) Support, no good reason not to. Neil   ム  08:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Weak Support. A little inexperienced in projectspace, but that isn't enough of a reason to oppose, IMO. WaltonOne 16:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Support &mdash; I see no indication this user will execute the tools in anything but an intelligent and mature fashion. --Haemo 20:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Support Have only seen good things from this editor. Number   5  7  21:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Support Has only done good things for Wikipedia. Nick mallory 04:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Support more inclusionist than the norm, but knows what the policies and should use the tools well. Carlossuarez46 19:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 18) — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 22:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 19) Support. See User:Amire80/Nominated for deletion.  Originally oppose, but Amire proved it through this.  •Malinaccier•  T / C  01:01, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 20) Support On balance should not abuse the tools. Davewild 07:41, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 21) Support looks like a good 'pedia builder. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 22) Support Sumoeagle179 16:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 23) Support As per Nick mallory has nothing wrong.Pharaoh of the Wizards 09:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 24) Support Seems to have the qualifications, background and experience to serve as an admin. Alansohn 14:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 25) Support An admirable editor. How much experience do people want?--Bedivere 16:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose
 * Weak Oppose. I generally like about 500 projectspace edits.  This editor has almost 400, which means that they may not know enough about policy.  If anyone could prove this knowledge of policy, please notify me on my talk page as well as here.  Other than that, I have no other oppositions.  Thanks!  •Malinaccier•  T / C  23:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You measure knowledge of policy via percentages? Why not actually look through his edits? I officially declare this oppose deficient because the user made 7 votes in 25 minutes, at an average of 3.571428 minutes per vote. As we all know, a good vote requires at least 3.714285 minutes of deliberation. Being judged based on a couple of numbers sucks, doesn't it? Picaroon (t) 00:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Picaroon, whilst I understand and indeed agree with your position please can you argue the argument and not the arguer. Malinaccier is entitled to set an arbitary level if he wishes, and his contributions are not the issue of discussion here. Best. Pedro | Chat  07:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Like I said before, I generally won't support an RFA without 500 WP space edits. Just because I didn't take 10 extra seconds per vote, doesn't mean that I didn't get a good idea of whether the editor would make a good administrator.  Plus, less than 500 edits to the WP space not only shows a possible low knowledge of policy, but it also shows that the user hasn't designated enough time to helping the other side of the encyclopedia.  500 WP edits is not an extremely high standard, and I just don't think that people are ready for adminship without them.  Being judged on some numbers does suck, but if we didn't use numbers to help decide, there would be problems.  I guess we should all support a user's RFA when they created their account 13 hours ago and have made 4 edits, but acted in a kind and generous manner.  Those are numbers that nobody would support.  You're also "officially declaring my oppose deficient," based solely on numbers.  I'm sorry, but I don't believe that with 400 WP space edits, that the user is ready for adminship.  It's my opinion, and you should accept it even if I didn't spend 10 seconds looking at a couple more edit summaries that only state "minor spelling fix."   •Malinaccier•  T / C  12:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I was familiar with nearly all of Administrators' reading list long before I nominated myself for adminship. I don't think that without knowing it I would be able to do AFD properly. --Amir E. Aharoni 12:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) Weak Oppose You say you want to help fight vandalism and block, but I don't see any edits at AIV. I like your editing, but I don't see much experience in areas that are admin-task related.  Jmlk  1  7  03:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I am aware of AIV, but I never had to use it. I warned quite a few vandals, but they either disappeared or were blocked before I had to use AIV. Some of them were so blatant, that I would block them on sight and save Wikipedia a few minutes of continuing disruption. I did use a similar page in the Hebrew Wikipedia (he:בקשות ממפעילים), if it makes any difference to you. --Amir E. Aharoni 07:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose due to insufficient mainspace English WP edits, per Malinaccier, and User page (although I'm not sure the image is intentionally silly). Bearian 23:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * What would be a sufficient number of English WP edits?
 * And what is it about my user page that makes you think that I'll be a bad administrator? --Amir E. Aharoni 07:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 3,000 edits, or work on images, is a generally accepted minimum. Take a look at the ambiguously insulting image on the user page. Bearian 15:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I had 3365 edits in the mainspace when the discussion started and I have 3556 now, so I don't see a problem.
 * As for the image - I had this image on my user page for a very long time and you are the very first person that finds anything offensive in it. --Amir E. Aharoni 15:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose - as of yet, Wikipedia-space experience is too low.  Lra drama 08:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose. Because of the way he defended the Siberian Wikipedia in the closure move on it. "I hate it when dialects die". Sorry, but I hate it when people die. I cannot do anything about it. And neither should Wikipedia try to stop dialects from dying. In other words, I am sure this guy has an agenda which I do not like. There were other things said then, about the POV and OR inherent in the Siberian Wikipedia. I gather that he now claims to have learnt his lesson, but he is still an administrator there. There is an expression in Englsih: you cannot have your cake and eat it. Now that the Siberian Wiki, is about to be closed, it is time to reflect on the bot wars (over the filthy link to Siberian Hamlet and the racist link to Siberian Ingria) and the aggravation it caused, all of which could have been better spent at creating articles. Sorry, no AGF in this case. --Pan Gerwazy 08:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I knew that it will come up in the discussion, so I didn't hide it - see the answer to question 3. All I can say is this: It was a mistake and I learned from it. I haven't edited sib-wiki in a long time and my administrator rights there can be revoked for all I care. You are welcome to check the record of the AFD's that I lead since then and you'll see that my agenda is quite different now. --Amir E. Aharoni 09:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * But that could be part of the problem: your crusade against Slovio can be interpreted as an attempt to get rid of a competitor, because some people still want to preserve this Siberian political enterprise as a part of Wikipedia. "for all I care" - Zolotarev may think the same, now that he has found pastures greener, where he can both compete with and parasite on Wikipedia. If (probably better: when) Siberian Wikipedia gets closed, it does not make much difference whether you or he care or not. But you are here. That is your infortune, indeed. Do you really not resent the time you wasted on that project? --Pan Gerwazy 10:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I do resent about the time wasted, but I am also glad about the lessons learned.
 * My "crusade" against Slovio (and İQTElif) is not an effort to get rid of competitors, but an implementation of those lessons. It is an effort to enforce the policies of Verifiability and No Original Research, because now I firmly believe that they are the right policies for a project of this kind.
 * It is not an "infortune" that I am here. It is my choice to do The Right Thing on the right project and not be a part of a fringe community. --Amir E. Aharoni 10:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Good answers, even though you misunderstood "infortune". I meant that you now are taking responsibility, but others are not. However, I still think it may be too early. You know that every contributor to Russian subjects on English Wikipedia voted on that project, and with the notable exception of Petri Krohn (who could have saved Siberian Wikipedia if he had been made sysop there, instead of the guy who threw Verifiability and No Original Research through the window from day one) they voted against it. How are you going to maintain neutrality in a conflict involving one of them? You could of course excuse yourself, but we have very few admins who know the East European scene and who can see through the silly tactics (like false flag and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend) employed there. How will you react when you are asked to settle a dispute between User:Molobo and User:Ghirlandajo, or worse even: between User:Petri Krohn and one of the Romanians who voted against Siberian Wikipedia?--Pan Gerwazy 08:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I see that that unfortunate affair left a very strong impression on you and I can understand why, but my involvement with Zolotaryov's group is a thing of the past.
 * An editor doesn't have to be an administrator to settle disputes. An administrator's work is to delete unneeded pages and to block vandals. So you can rest assured that if I shall see that someone recreated the Siberian language article, I will delete it and when I'll have to block a vandal, my judgment will absolutely not be based on his "votes" in the related discussions. --Amir E. Aharoni 18:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Weak Oppose The candidate's other contributions, and their answers here, are strong. However, you say that your foremost duty as a sysop would be in vandalfighting, but I see no edits to AIV. If you can demonstrate to me that you understand the AIV process, I would be glad to change to support. Van Tucky  Talk 21:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean that I shall fight vandals 24/7 and I am not planning to patrol Recent Changes in search for vandals, as I mostly focus on expanding articles, fixing red links, disambiguating etc. and I think that I can be more efficient doing these things with the permission to delete unneeded pages (I know the deletion policy well).
 * By saying "First of all" I mostly meant this: I often see vandals that go unnoticed for a long time without being blocked or even warned, so stopping them is probably the most immediately important thing that I shall do. I have a pretty large watchlist and I have a good eye for spotting stealth vandalism, so when I shall see them, I'll be glad to have the tools to smack them right on the spot (after warning, of course.)
 * As for AIV - I am very much aware of it, but somehow never used it myself, because either the vandals that I warned didn't continue doing their thing or they were blocked before I had to use it. I almost used it with User talk:Reiccanilam recently, but someone got there first. I will certainly have AIV on my watchlist if I am promoted.
 * If you want to know that I know the procedure - AIV is intended at drawing the administrators' attention to vandals that keep vandalizing after the last warning. Using AIV without warning the alleged vandal first is wrong; blocking a user that was reported on AIV, but not sufficiently warned is wrong. I have a pretty good knowledge of WP:WARN, too. --Amir E. Aharoni 06:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Neutral
 * 1) Neutral O.K. Bearian 21:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.