Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Lethe


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

Lethe
Final (54/1/1) ended 08:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

has been contributing to Wikipedia since October 2003, and has 3899 edits. Lethe created and is an active contributor at Reference desk/Mathematics, and is also active at WikiProject Mathematics and Articles for deletion. He is an all-around nice guy who always solves any disagreements on the talk page. I believe Lethe will make a great administrator. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept. -lethe talk 07:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Support
 * 1) Support.  Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. Great guy to have around. Dmharvey 06:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Support. Always polite. Will make a great admin. Fropuff 08:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Support --Terence Ong 09:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Support Astrotrain 10:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Support Proto t c 10:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) Support seems good.  Grue   10:23, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Support, why not? fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 10:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 9) Support. From experience. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 10) Support --NaconKantari (話)|(郵便) 13:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 11) support - definitely - William M. Connolley 13:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 12) Support. —Kirill Lok s hin 14:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 13) Support, I like him. - Phædriel ♥ tell me - 14:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 14) Support, everything looks good to me. - Bobet 14:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 15) Support our maths experts, on whom I rely to make numbers make sense. Xoloz 16:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 16) Support, of course. Fredrik Johansson - talk - contribs 17:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 17) Support. What I've seen from him in my short time here leaves me with nothing but good impression. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 18) Support - solid, diplomatic. --- --- Charles Stewart(talk) 19:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 19) Support. Seen this user around, a good impression. enochlau (talk) 22:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 20) Support. No reason to expect any misuse of the extra buttons. Zocky | picture popups 23:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 21) Support Good contributor, no evidence of problem behavior. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 00:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 22) Support. Took a good look and found nothing in his edit history to indicate he wouldn't be a responsible admin.-- Dakota ~  ε  01:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 23) Support--Ugur Basak 03:07, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 24) Support, clearly an excellent editor. Chick Bowen 05:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 25) &#8212;Charles P. (Mirv) 17:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 26) Support &mdash; Paul August &#9742; 22:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 27) Support, but I forgot why. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 22:41, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This is an odd support vote. What does it mean?  Maybe it means you recognize the name, but don't recall from where.  I can say the same thing about the name Radiant, I think. -lethe talk 23:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Lol. Have you forgotten the meaning of your own username? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 23:34, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, duh! I guess I did.  -lethe talk 23:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For people who don't know what these two are talking about, see here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Support per all of above, pettiness of opposition, and excellent choice of username :) . Ncsaint 00:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) King of All the Franks 02:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Support. Pschemp | Talk 13:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Support. linas 14:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Support, of course. - Mailer Diablo 17:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Support has sufficient experience └ UkPaolo/talk┐ 19:35, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) Support absolutely --rogerd 03:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Support --Bling-chav 13:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 9)  ε  γκυκλοπ  αίδεια  *  14:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 10) Support. Mushroom 10:57, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 11) Support: --Bhadani 15:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 12) Support, unlikely to abuse admin tools. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:28, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 13) Support, a good editor. Ashibaka tock 01:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 14) Support, good editor. &mdash;Quarl (talk) 2006-01-29 01:57Z 
 * 15) Support. Seems like he will use the tools wisely. -- DS1953 talk 02:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 16) Support - This Wikipedian knows what "being bold" means, and consistently steers clear of "being reckless". Wonderful person to work with. --HappyCamper 17:06, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 17) Support. I'm around less, but my vote still counts.--CSTAR 18:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 18) Support –Joke 02:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 19) Support Expensivehat 02:18, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 20) Support Exemplary RFA candidate. --Madchester 03:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 21) Support based not on edit count but rather on contributions, answers to questions below, and the faith that other users I trust place in him as shown above above.   &hArr;    | | &oplus; &perp; (t-c-e) 07:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 22) Support - Very impressive editor and very thoughtful answers to questions, like what I've seen of his work, and I do not think all admins need to be AfD voters on every case. ++Lar: t/c 23:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 23) Moral support, mostly to get to be the 50th vote, but also because of the user's history of intelligent, reasoned edits. :) Matt Yeager ♫ ( Talk? ) 23:48, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 24) Support most definitely. &mdash; Laura Scudder &#9742; 02:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 25) Just-under-the-buzzer-Support as a very knowledgeable editor, and one who won't abuse the tools. I've seen his helpful edits all over the place at the math reference desk. --P e ruvianLlama(spit) 07:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 26) Support No problems here. -- S iva1979 Talk to me  07:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 27) Support Joanofanarchy 08:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose


 * 1) Oppose due to misleading information on nomination - 5 edits out of the last 500 hardly qualifies as 'active' Afd participation in my book. He would make a great admin, but someone who considers 2 dozen votes in two years as 'active' deletion vote participation doesn't have the same sense of judgment as I do Cynical
 * If you page back a bit further, you'll see more. On 22 Sep 2005 he participated in 10 different AfDs. --- --- Charles Stewart(talk) 19:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I am the nominator, and I will say that Charles Stewart got it right. I wote above "Lethe is active in Articles for deletion", and that is true is you take a look with Interiot's tool, see here. I did not say "Lethe lives and breathes deletion debates", which would not be a healthy attitude anyway. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We'll have to agree to disagree on that one - even on the page you linked to I only see about two dozen deletion vote participations (don't have time to count the exact number, but its around 2 dozen) which hardly qualifies as 'active' for the length of time the candidate has been on Wikipedia. Now that I know this was deliberate rather than a mistake, my vote is no longer reluctant Cynical 11:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * There's no doubt about it. I only vote at AfD sporadically.  When articles go through the Wikiproject Mathematics AfD machine, then I vote, but that doesn't happen much.  So let me save you the trouble of counting, it ain't there. -lethe talk 11:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Neutral
 * 1) looks like a great editor. doesn't seem to have an particular use for adminship though, per first question. no reason to oppose at all, but also no real purpose for adminship here. Derex 22:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) * Surely if you trust the user with admin tools, they should be granted it. Whether they will use it or not is none of our business. enochlau (talk) 22:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) **of course not :) if i were always right, that would be the case.  but, sometimes i'm mistaken.  if i hand out an adminship, i am taking a risk. perhaps small, but a risk nonetheless. in order to accept that cost, i need the prospect of an off-setting benefit. i see no real benefit of admining someone who gives no real affirmative reason.  can't help it, it's my job to think that way. Derex 23:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe Lethe gave an excellent answer to that in Question 1 below. Some people are administrators first and editors second, if that's how they are more productive. Some people are editors first and administrators second, and that should be perfectly acceptable. I am the second kind, and I had found that administrator priveleges are very helpful in my editing, and the more time goes on after I got my admin privileges, the more I venture into administative business. That is to say, it does not make sense to require that only people who do almost exclusively speedy deletions and vandal patrol be given admin privileges. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments


 * Edit summary usage: 85% for major edits and 71% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and 150 minor edits outside the Wikipedia, User, Image, and all Talk namespaces. Mathbot 07:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * See information about Lethe's edits with Interiot's edit count tool or Interiot's edit history tool.



Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
 * A. I don't expect that I would change my habits very much, which means I would continue to revert vandalism as I see it, but more easily. I would continue to occasionally troll recent changes.  I would spend some time at AfD and see if they have a use for me.  But mostly I would just want to continue being an editor, and use admin responsibilities only should the need arise, rather than looking for places to use them. -lethe talk 07:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A. My favorite article is almost complex manifold. It was one of the first major writing projects I ever undertook on Wikipedia.  I wrote the initial page almost 2 years ago.  Writing that page was what prompted me to stop being just a wikipedia reader (with occasional minor edits) and start being a wikipedia editor, writing full articles.  I spent a lot of work on that article.  More recently, I completely rewrote locally convex topological vector space.  That took me all day.  It still needs a lot of work, but it provides a recent example of my work. -lethe talk 07:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * 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 how will you deal with it in the future?
 * A. Sure I have. Would you like to see examples?  Let's see.  I'll make a list.
 * Quantum electrochemistry. there was an anonymous editor (presumably Zurab Urushadze from Georgia) once upon a time who insisted on listing his advisor next to Dirac in the article quantum mechanics and adding a whole bunch of mostly irrelevant stuff about his field of quantum electrochemistry.  He would revert the article something like 10 times a day, if I recall.  Anyway, I waded into that revert war.  I think I took care never to break the 3 revert rule, though I don't recall exactly.  I didn't need to, lot's of others got in on the reverting.  Eventually, I took upon myself to spearhead the process of getting the Wikipedia community process rolling, taking it to RfC and such, organizing votes and polls and I think in the end was a catalyst in ending the war (in our favor, of course).  See Talk:Quantum mechanics/Archive2
 * Then there was the Caroline Thompson issue. She was (is?) on a crusade to educate the world that quantum mechanics is wrong.  She represents a very small fringe view of the scientific community, which has been sure of quantum mechanics for almost a century.  CSTAR was the main defender of the faith in that battle, but I like to think I played a role as well.  Um, there are probably 10 different articles across which that battle spread, some of which are since deleted.  See Talk:EPR paradox if you have an urge to wade through oceans of circular arguments.
 * I was in a revert war with Reddi about adding anti-relativity propaganda to the Dayton Miller and Robert S. Shankland articles. Reddi's been in arbitration for this sort of thing twice since then.
 * I got into a childish argument with StuRat over at Talk:XNOR. It was pretty stupid, but I remember getting a bit uppity at the time.
 * Just a couple of days ago, I got into a very short revert war (just one or two reversions) over at Jack Sarfatti against Jimbo himself! It was a losing battle though.  It's true, I don't have any publications that prove that Sarfatti does bad things to his critics, just word of mouth.  I let that one go.  I'm not too interested in that sort of thing anyway.


 * So in the interests of full disclosure, I show you the examples of me getting in wikifights I've had. What I can remember off the top of my head, anyway.  Mostly, when I get into fights or edit wars, it's when I'm defending orthodox scientific views against fringe views.  I use the talk page extensively, but I'm not afraid to revert you.  But mostly, I don't go in for that sort of thing.  I like to write math articles.  Not too much occasion for controversy there, unless it's about how much coverage noncontructive maths should get. -lethe talk 07:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

The following are some optional questions. There are no correct answers to these questions and I simply want to know your opinions rather than see a correct answer. Thanks! --Deathphoenix 12:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 4. When would you use &#123;{test4}}, and when would you use &#123;{bv}}?
 * A. I prefer to write my messages to vandals by hand, rather than use templates, but let's say I would leave a message with intent to block on subsequent violation (à la test4) as the third blatant vandalism message left in a short time frame. I would  block on the fourth (and leave another message).  I would also consider doing it on much longer time frames, but obviously the numbers would have to be higher as well.  As for what exactly I consider "blatant vandalism", well you know it when you see it: blanking pages, writing "algebra sucks" in vector space, replacing pictures with dicks, that sort of thing. -lethe talk 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 5. What would you do if a user reverts an article four times in slightly more than 24 hours? (Thus obeying the letter of WP:3RR.)
 * A. If the user is within the letter of the law, I will not do anything. -lethe talk 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 6. In your opinion, when should you speedy delete an article under CSD A7 (unremarkable people or groups) and when should you nominate it for an AFD instead?
 * A. I'm not entirely comfortable with speedying valid good faith articles.  OK, well that's not an answer.  Let's say I was going to speedy delete one.  What would I consider the cutoff of notability for, say, a person?  If the article doesn't assert notability, and the person's notability doesn't appear to be above a household level, then I'll speedy.  Eg, "father of 3, loving husband".  What about notability at a town level?  Eg, "head librarian at the city library"?  I'm not sure.  I'm sensitive to the fact that AfD is flooded, I think I would ask for help on that one.  -lethe talk 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 7. How would you apply NPOV to a controversial article that you are editing?
 * A. Is this a question about my editing technique or about what I imagine my administration technique would be?  It sounds like you're asking about my editing.  So I'll say that I try to edit from as NPOV a standpoint as I can, but no more than I can.  I recognize my POV, and I let the Wikipedia machine (consensus, talk pages, multiple editors) produce the NPOV results.  For example, in science articles, I certainly write from an orthodox POV.  In math and science, I won't be unhappy if it turns out the whole project has a significant bias in that direction.  I do make efforts to be NPOV.  For example by acknowledging constructivism or nonlocal realism.


 * As far as NPOV goes for adminning... I don't think it has much to do with it, right? Admins don't enforce editorial policy, consensus does.  I guess that's why the question was about editing, eh? -lethe talk 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 8. What are your greatest frustrations with Wikipedia?
 * A. Well, first let me preface this by saying I'm completely in love with Wikipedia.  I sometimes get drunk at the bar and rant at people how great wikipedia is.  I also like to fantasize about what it will look like in, say 10 years.  I think it will be awesome indeed.  That said, certainly I think there are areas  where the process shows its weaknesses.  I've been displeased with the way people vote sometimes.  A lot of herd mentality.  A lot of unsound arguments.  And there is a lot of bad writing.  And hey, I'm no saint.  I've made mistakes in my writing, and I don't vote as much as I should.  I think "frustrate" is too strong a word.  The weaknesses of the Wikipedia wheels don't make me feel frustrated, they just make me a bit more realistic.  It's nice to fantasize about what wikipedia will look like, but I know for a fact that an article may go largely unedited and unlooked at for 2 or 3 years.  I'm rambling on here, so let me get to the answer of the question: I don't really get frustrated, but the areas of wikipedia that disappoint me are the same areas that made me fall in love in the first place: open editing, open consensus.  The good certainly outweighs the bad. -lethe talk 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * ''The above 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 article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.