Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Icestorm815


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

Icestorm815
[ Final] (talk page) (2/10/7); Ended 23:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

- This is a self-nomination. I have been a part of Wikipedia for two months. Some may say that that is a short amount of time, but I feel that I grasp the knowledge of the Wikipedia core policies and procedures that would make me a good admin. Although, I have to admit that I don't know everything! There are certain areas of Wikipedia that I'm not a master at (ie:specifics about image licenses), however, I'm not afraid to ask for help! I am an active fighter of vandalism and report new pages that don't belong in Wikipedia. I'm an optimistic person that tries best to assume good faith. Overall, I just like to help out, and I think that becoming an admin is another way of helping out even more.
 * I am withdrawing my nomination. I thank you all for giving me great feedback. Hopefully I will become an admin later, when the time is right. Icestorm815 22:28, 28 October 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: If I do become an admin, a major part that I would help with is WP:UAA and WP:AIV. I would also like to assist in other areas like WP:RFPP and WP:SPEEDY/CAT:CSD. Eventually, I would like to be involved with WP:AFD. I will most likely begin to help out by closing and deleting/keeping articles with blatant consensus, and then proceed to assist with articles that aren't so obvious. There have been plenty of times where I wished I had admin powers to clear up certain issues quicker. For example, I believe one time I had a post up for two hours at WP:AIV and had to track their user contributions to revert vandalism. Blocking this user would have allowed my to prevent their vandalism and contribute elsewhere. Another simple case is dealing with with user who make multiple vandal edits to a page. It would have been easier to do a rollback instead of manually fixing each edit. Finally, I ran into a case where an article had faced vandalism by multiple anons and needed page protection. I posted it and it took about three hours before the backlog was cleared and the page was semi-protected. (I would just like to say that these examples are not inclusive to how I would help out Wikipedia, just some ideas to show why admin abilities would aid me in making Wikipedia better. Also, I'm not, by any means, trying to make current admins look bad. I just want to help them out with the load of work they got!)


 * 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
 * A: I feel that my best contributions to Wikipedia are my constant efforts to keep Wikipedia good looking. I like to help with vandal fighting, do some Wikignoming, and contribute some music samples to articles here and there. Mostly, I do some helping out here and there on articles. In my opinion, I think that vandal fighting and wikignoming is a process that usually goes unnoticed. However, it can be considered a very important part of this wonderful place we call Wikipedia. Think of it like a restaurant, our writers as the chefs and people similar to myself are the Maître d' and the waiting staff. Although a chef would provide a wonderful meal for their guests, it is the responsibility of the staff to ensure that the guests' meals are presented in an acceptable manner and are capable of preventing any issues (formating pages and removing vandalism). Most people return to a restaurant (and Wikipedia) based on their food and, equally as much, their overall quality of service.  As they say, most people eat with their eyes first, and then with there mouth.


 * 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: Yes, I have been in a conflict with one editor so far. It was concerning an Afd over a school article that was up for deletion. I felt that a user posted a statement that showed some bias, and to make a long story short, we had an argument on the discussion page. At one point I felt that it was going too far and posted the discussion at Editor assistance. I believe that the issue was resolved quit quickly. I posted an apology to the editor on his talk page and he accepted it, and we were able to move on and edit in peace. I did however, take precautionary actions to ensure that this never happened again. I read over WP:CIVIL, WP:FAITH, WP:DISENGAGE, WP:Wikiquette, and in the end I knew what I should have done was just leave the comment as it was, and let an admin who would close the discussion take into account the credibility of the statement and not create a debate.


 * 4. (Self-posed Question) Hey, I was checking out your edit summary and saw that your article writing is a bit low, what gives?
 * Good Question! As an admin, I believe what you truly need to focus on is actual admin related activities, like WP:AIV, WP:UAA, WP:RFA, etc. These areas show the community how you would handle the buttons as an admin. I think that knowing how to use the mop, and demonstrating that you won't abuse it,  is more important than proving you have powerful prose by writing articles. Some may say that writing articles shows the community how you would interact and communicate with other users. That is certainly true, but it isn't the only way. Discussing your reasoning on talk pages and asking questions can prove that your not hot-headed and can be capable of editing with other users just fine. Essentially, it is important to know what and why the user is saying something, and address why they might be write or wrong. After my incident described above, I make a conscious effort to proofread my statements so no user may see them as offensive or confusing. Here is a few links for some examples of how I interacted with users so you can see my approach to talking to a user.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Icestorm815


 * 3 Optional questions by User:Mr.Z-man - Answer as if you were an admin.
 * 5. A request is made at WP:RFPP for semi protection of an article for the reason "IP vandalism." You are unfamiliar with the article's subject. You look at the history and see that one anonymous user has been removing a significant amount of text and 1 registered user has been reverting it as vandalism. This has been going on for a couple days. The only talk page discussion is the registered user giving vandalism template warnings on the anon's talk page. What do you do and why?
 * A. First off, I would not protect the page. Since the article is being vandalized by only one IP address, there is no need to protect the page. The first thing that I would do is to check and make sure that the actual reverts are vandalism, and not a disagreement on content. If it was a disagreement on content, I would give a 3RR warning to both users and ask them to discuss the problem on the talk page. If they continue after the warning they will get a block for violating 3RR. I wouldn't issue a block immediately because they may not be aware of what they're doing wrong or the existence of WP:3RR. If it was a case of vandalism, then the registered user would not be blocked or issued a warning at all because reverting vandalism is an exception to 3RR. I would however, inform the person that they should have reported the claim to WP:AIV instead of WP:RFPP. I would issue a block to the IP, given that a final warning was issued for removing content.


 * 6. What are some situations where you would block a new user without a warning, besides username issues?
 * A. Some situations where I would block a new user is if they were, with given evidence, a sock-puppet/meat-puppet, if they were an account that was created to evade a block, or I would block them if they were an open proxy.


 * 7. What is your opinion on the plan to re-enable page creation by anonymous users?
 * A. I'd have to say that I'm leaning towards letting anons create articles. It would reinforce the idea that Wikipedia is a place that anyone can edit. There are plenty of anon users that do edit constructively in our present articles, and this allows them to take this a step further. Others may say that this will lead to additional vandalism, but I have to agree with some of the users on the discussion link. It isn't much harder to create an account and vandalize Wikipedia that way. Maybe the programmers of Wikipedia could create an admin feature that prevents those IPs who abuse their ability to be blocked from article creation, much similar to blocks for account creation and blocking the e-mail this user feature from those who abuse that as well. I think between the admins deleting articles and the community listing articles for speedy deletion, it shouldn't be a problem. From my knowledge first hand from patrolling the new pages, it usually only takes about less than a minute for blatant violations of wikipedia's policy to be deleted/listed for speedy deletion.

General comments

 * See Icestorm815's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.


 * Links for Icestorm815:

''Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Icestorm815 before commenting.''

Discussion

 * I see that some users have concerns over the number of edits/length of time contributing to Wikipedia. I would be willing to become part of Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall to assure the community that I would use the admin abilities properly. Icestorm815 03:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not a valid reason. Wikipedia community takes preventive and not punitive measures. The admins listed there have enough experience and it is not necessary to be listed there indeed. Wikipedia has been working w/ and w/o that list. Any admin (listed there or not) is and should be open to recall in fact. --  FayssalF  -  Wiki me up®  22:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Support

 * 1)  PxMa 01:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Support Unlikely to abuse (or even misuse) the tools. He knows enough to get around as an admin, plus, adminshup is no big deal--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 10:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Adminship is no big deal? Then why do we have a consensus on it? :) —  j acĸrм  ( talk ) 20:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Oppose only 1398 edits. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Do we really need to go through the editcountitis stuff again?  O 2 (息 • 吹) 02:47, 28 October 2007 (GMT)
 * No, but this is way below the radar horizon. Let's call it lack of experience instead of too few edits. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose insufficient experience. Please reapply in several months. John254 01:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose Too few edits. You've only been really active since September, and a candidate for adminship ideally needs several months of experience with admin-related fields. Your answers above seem good, but textbook knowledge (as it were) doesn't beat real experience. Continue what you're doing, consider expanding into other admin areas, and come back in a few months. You should breeze though given some more time. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 03:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If you don't mind me asking, what other admin areas would you suggest? Thanks! Icestorm815 03:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose per answer to question 5. This type of dispute is most likely a content dispute. Telling the registered user to report the anon to AIV for blocking is not the best way to go about the situation. At the least you should ask for more details by one or both editors for more info. Mr.  Z- man  05:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Changed to neutral after a more thorough review of the answer.  Mr.  Z- man  17:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The way that I saw it was that he would only tell the user to use AIV  'If it was a case of vandalism' .  Tiddly - Tom  12:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Tom here. The original RFPP request was made because a single IP was vandalizing the page. That's something more appropriate for WP:AIV. Nishkid64 (talk) 16:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose Just not enough overall experience around here... yet. Jmlk  1  7  08:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Inexperience.  Daniel  08:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose Question 5 reeks of "content dispute". Blocking the IP is not the way to resolve a content dispute. Come back in a couple of months and you've got my support vote.  N F 24 (radio me!Editor review) 11:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Struck in light of a comment on my talkpage. Changing to neutral.  N F 24 (radio me!Editor review) 15:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Putting the editcountits and timecountits aside, you have not made any significant contributions to the actual encyclopedia, so I oppose. Please try to drop by WP:RA if only occasionally. Mainspace contribs help you work collaboratively and show knowledge of our content policies, as well as willingness to help us reach our goal. -- Agüeybaná  14:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose per Zman's question and comments above. (Perhaps this one should be WP:SNOWed?) K. Scott Bailey 14:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose A good candidate, however, a few more months will be reccomended and perhaps an WP:ER to identify you strengths and weaknesses.  Marlith  T / C  21:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) September --> October? -- FayssalF  -  Wiki me up®  22:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose Not enough experience.  Pat Politics rule!  22:17, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Neutral

 * 1) Neutral You're active on AIV and UFAA, but you don't have enough experience yet. Wait a few months, then come back here.  N F 24 (radio me!Editor review) 15:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Neutral - I don't think I wish to oppose simply because of the two months thing, but I also don't feel I can support because of it. Please try again later.  Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 02:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC).
 * 3) Neutral per the above statement. I feel that it is too early for you to become an admin. Try again after a few months and you will have my support. -- S iva1979 Talk to me 03:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) NeutralI think that two months is a bit too early to become an admin. Next time around, you'll get my vote. Tristan Uchiha  07:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Neutral - Good work at AIV and UFAA, but I think some more experience would be good. In a few months time, you should not have a problem. Tiddly - Tom  12:06, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Neutral (changed from oppose) The answer to question 5 is okay - It really doesn't say how you would make the determination. Part of the reason I asked that is because you have very few substantial (non-template) user talk edits, I can't tell how you would deal with a totally unknown conflict between 2 users. Also, the answer to question 6, while good, just lists the obvious policy reasons and is missing a key element of WP:BLOCK - Blocks are preventative, if a user is actively disrupting in clear bad faith, the best way to remedy the situation may be to block first, then sort everything out. Mr.  Z- man  17:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Neutral Obviously takes Wikipedia seriously with that amount of edits in such a short space of time, but per all above and per some of the oppose, neutral for now. Maybe in the upcoming future. —  j acĸrм  ( talk ) 20:21, 28 October 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.