Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sam Hocevar

Sam Hocevar
Closed (57/6/11) 03:35, September 1, 2005 (UTC) - Sam has been contributing to the English Wikipedia since May 2004. In addition to his content contributions, he has fixed a very large number of spelling and grammatical errors in articles, amassing a total of 23,874 edits in article space. He seems a pleasant person with a good sense of humour to me, and obviously dedicated to this project. Furthermore, he already is an administrator in the French Wikipedia. I think we should make him administrator in the English Wikipedia too. --Sietse 18:08, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Thanks, I accept your nomination. Sam Hocevar 23:31, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Support
 * 1) Support, reasons: see above. Sietse 18:11, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Support--Duk 18:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Support A fine wikipedian. It should also be noted that he has made scripts which are used by many people.  -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 21:03, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Support. An old hand. Should have been etc etc. JFW |  T@lk  23:26, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Andre ( talk ) 23:46, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Support. Sam clearly knows the rules and should be a good admin, as he is on fr. Rje 00:06, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) Yusss. Grutness...  wha?  02:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Support, does good work. K1Bond007 02:17, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 9) Support. The cliche holds. -- BD2412 talk 04:37, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Support. And so on and so forth -- Ryan Norton T 05:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Thought he was one. --Merovingian (t) (c) 06:06, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 07:12, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) Support. I'm embarrassed at how many of my spelling mistakes that Sam has corrected. It must be in the hundreds. Sam is one of our most productive editors, and I'm sure that every tool we can give him will be well-used. -Willmcw 07:37, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) Support. I've only seen good edits from him. --Dave2 08:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Support. We need people such as Sam. - Darwinek 09:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) Support - obvious choice. Proto t c 10:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Support Antoinou2958 11:20, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) Support Agree with Carbonite on that one ;-) . This said, I am not sure I am even allowed to vote for him. Well, if not, I'll just vouch for his magnificent work on the French Wikipedia. notafish }<';> 11:41, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Support =Nichalp «Talk»=  11:49, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) Support. utcursch | talk 12:50, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) Support, no doubts here. Intelligent, diligent, reasonable, and strange; good combination. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 15:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 22) Cool. JuntungWu 15:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 23) Support. --NormanEinstein
 * 24) Support. Also has a funny userpage! (You're the second Wikipedian to make me laugh because of it. ;)) --Andylkl (talk) 15:38, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * 25) Support obviously. - ulayiti (talk)  17:31, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 26) Support Jisha C J 19:08, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 27) Support can't support anymore, that's just too close a connection. I've never seen anything but good editing from you, but your response re GNAA is troubling. For someone with the best interests of the project in mind, what could you possibly find enjoyable about their actions? Feel free to answer in comments instead of here. - Taxman Talk 22:33, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * I answered in the comments section. Sam Hocevar 17:52, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Support A man's word is his bond. 'nuff said. Hamster Sandwich 22:50, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. Initially I hesitated to vote in this RFA, but have to admire the way in which Sam has responded to Brian0918's objections and wish him the best in his endeavor to persuade members of the GNAA to contribute, not vandalise.  Hall Monitor 23:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Support--MONGO 01:27, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Support – Sarge Baldy 02:27, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Support. Excellent contributor. Sjakkalle (Check!)  10:01, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Support. Stewart Adcock 10:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) Support totally.  Grue  11:20, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Support nobs 17:56, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 9) Support - so long as xe's aware of community concern with the GNAA, and mindful of dealing with it, there should be no problem at all. An exemplary record, IMHO.  Slac  speak up!  21:24, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Support. I see Sam on my watchlist now and again, and he's always fixing something. His ties to the GNAA don't bother me in the least, nor should they bother anyone else, really. Mackensen (talk) 21:25, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Support - Fred-Chess 11:47, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) Support. Don't let him get away!! Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 14:57, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) Support. Are you serious?--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91  ($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|)  15:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) SUPPPORT and yes, I spelled it with three p's again. D. J. Bracey (talk) [[Image:Flag of California.svg|25px]] 15:54, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) El_C 17:46, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) Support. His tons of edits show that he's very dedicated to this project.  Regarding the RfC - it was last year.  He's made over 24,000 edits; don't judge him based on one thing that he did almost a year ago. --Idont Havaname 20:16, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Support this character. Denelson83 20:44, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) Support. --Mattb90 00:08, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Strong Support I've seen him around, fixing the spelling in my articles. Tony the Marine 02:02, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) Strong Support&mdash; I think that he would make a very good administrator.  Journalist C./ Holla @ me! 
 * 21) Given my micro-hagiography of him on my user page, I can but strongly support. Alai 16:00, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 22) Strong Support &mdash; he'd make a great admin. Hosterweis (talk) (contribs) 17:35, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 23) Support. I've only seen him make good edits, and I'll support in light of his reasonable responses to the objections listed below.  --Alan Au 08:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 24) Support. Already an admin on fr:, which sort of invalidates most of the gloomy arguments against him; recipient of the Nemo of honour, which hopefully indicates that he is helpful. Rama 09:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 25) Support. I definitely trust the guy for this kind of job and not cause he's also on fr:. (:Julien:) 09:25, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 26) Support. --FoeNyx 10:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 27) Support - based on his track record on enwiki I sincerely believe he would not abuse a position of privilege. silsor 00:21, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * For those taking cracks at me below, this is known as a "conciliatory gesture". silsor 02:50, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * I will politely mantain my position on the matter. --Sn0wflake 11:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) That's hot. Mike H (Talking is hot) 16:06, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. Excellent work, and a cool temper. +sj +  18:06, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Support. Hipocrite 19:03, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Support. *drew 23:26, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Oppose
 * 1) Oppose - Accuse me of stereotyping if you must, but I feel that his links with the GNAA are of some concern. While I almost hate to suggest it; he could be open to peer pressure from the group once he's "in", so to speak. This is not a personal attack; this is me stating that I'm concerned. Even the nicest people can sometimes succumb to peer pressure. Rob Church Talk 03:28, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose Friend of trolls, admits to trolling (I find goatse a lot less shocking than many other subjects; from a purely sociological point of view it's interesting to see reactions) per User:Silsor/Sam Hocevar. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:10, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Silsor's IRC logs, coupled with Sam's longtime insistence on having an unlabeled goatse link on his userpage, do not inspire confidence. &mdash; Dan | Talk 20:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I feel rather uneasy that your trust (or lack thereof) is based on 9-month old, carefully chosen IRC logs by an individual with whom I have been in conflict, who deliberately omitted to quote my attempts at calming down everything, and who has been making personal attacks towards me even since I chose to ignore him. Sam Hocevar 21:30, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose I don't like judging people based on their friends, but for the best of the community, I might have to. How easy it would be for GNAA to peer pressure their admin friend into trolling.  Acetic Acid  ( talk ) 13:53, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose, not big on the GNAA stuff. --fvw *  14:01, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose. I believe this user is too quick to side with blocked users, and after a lengthy and unpleasant experience with another user who became an admin and then unblocked essentially all users blocked based on admin judgement, I feel I must oppose. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:29, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Neutral
 * 1) His relationship with vandals from the GNAA worries me. Even so, I've vowed never to vote oppose, so I'm stuck with neutral. I won't be reading this page, so feel free to spin away. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2005-08-24 21:31
 * Comment: I think I should make my position very clear on this. It is true that have friendly relationships with a few GNAA members, and I do enjoy some of the actions of that group, but I also condemn (and have done so publicly) other actions by them, and that includes Wikipedia vandalism. Trying to convince GNAA members of doing legit contributions to Wikipedia is not an easy task, but I think I am doing a pretty good job (as anyone can witness on their IRC channel). Of course, a few cases are probably hopeless, and I absolutely do not object to their being banned. As for me personally, I hope my involvement so far with Wikipedia and with the Fundation leaves little doubt as to my commitment to the goals of this project. Sam Hocevar 06:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Eh, I'd love to support, but I'm stuck 'cause of GNAA. There's a warning bell going off in a small part of my head, and even though I'm sure there will be no problems, I can't vote support at this time. Bratsche talk  5 pillars 03:22, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Does good work generally, but set up a fake RFC on me with a troll (fake as in appearing real, but really made just to troll me).  I don't know whether he'd abuse it or not, so neutral . silsor 16:02, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * See also User talk:Silsor/Sam Hocevar for Sam's response to this page. Sietse 08:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: the RfC was not a fake. A user was blocked because of the comment shown here and I thought it was unfair. Please see Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute on User:Silsor/Sam_Hocevar/RFC for what happened afterwards. Having been ignored so rudely for such a long time, I did not know what to do, and I was told on the Village Pump that an RfC was the way to resolve the issue. Also note that at that time (it was ten months ago) I was mostly familiar with the procedure on fr</tt> and I did not know much about RfCs on <tt>en</tt>.
 * Also, my calling of the whole situation (and not just the RfC) a troll was taken out of context (just like most of the IRC quotes that silsor chose) and was a comment of silsor’s attempts to avoid answering by every possible means. Also, see User talk:Silsor/Sam Hocevar for my answer, and the main page’s history where silsor endlessly removes my comments.
 * I then just chose to avoid situations where I would have to interact with silsor. On Christmas 2004 he unblocked GNAA Popeye with a quite friendly message and I thought everything was forgotten, but he recently publicly accused me of cheating on the Wikipedia chess championship and I have since then lost all hopes of reconciliation without further efforts on his side. Sam Hocevar 09:04, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * "Taken out of context" - I would very much like you to say, for everybody to see, what the correct context for calling the RFC a troll was. I also would like to call you on an untruth in saying that I "chose" the quotes from my logs (I omitted nothing that I observed), a half-truth on saying that I endlessly removed your commentary from my user page (in fact I endlessly moved it to a talk page), and another half-truth in saying I "accused you of cheating" (full truth available at the bottom of this page).  With regards to the original dispute and subsequent RFC/IRC logs, I think the facts speak for themselves. silsor 17:06, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh, please, you are just playing on words. My use of the word "troll" in that context was not very clever, but I really didn’t know how to call the situation. If it was really a "troll", you would have found dozens of occurrences of me using that word. You used it as the sole reason for further ignoring my questions and Paul’s, and made it look like an attack directed towards Wikipedia while it was just a feud between you and me. Also, you did not only "endlessly move it to a talk page", you also reverted all my attempts at adding a notice that the talk page contained my answers. And you have so far not explained which context justifies <tt>&lt;silsor&gt; hah, Hocevar is probably playing you against gnuchess or something</tt>, or insulting me on various talk pages I am not watching. If you really thought I was a threat to Wikipedia you would have taken proper action (you certainly know about blocks, RfCs, an RfArs) to prevent me from doing anything bad; instead of that, you just try to ruin the positive collaborations I am having with people. So please, go away from my personal space. Bug off. I have taken great care not to step on your toes for months, yet you haven’t stopped with the personal attacks. Go spoil someone else’s motivation. Sam Hocevar 17:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Support. Meets my guidelines. Thought he was one until I saw his username atop the list of non-admins with many edits.  Vote changed to Neutral pending an explanation of the events brought up by Silsor. Not that there's a whole lot of difference between Neutral and Abstain, but I'll change my vote anyway. Based on some odd behavior displayed here, I will just sit this one out.  android  79  01:49, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) I have to confess that I am concerned here. Obviously, a lot of great spelling/syntax work, (which, based on edit times, I suspect may be at least partially script-assisted), but Sam's connections to (and perhaps even admiration of) the GNAA seem quite real, and a number of his non-spelling related edits are worrisome, such as where he reverted Natalinasmpf here, and where he had this link to a "furry" image on his user page, (indeed, he has place a number of not-clearly-marked links within pages in his own namespace that don't seem entirely appropriate to me, even if he was demonstrating what he called a "proof of concept"). I also don't see many edits in the Wikipedia namespace, outside of things like Chess championship. In short, I'm not sure that he has what I think of as the appropriate qualifications for adminship on .en. Func( t, c, @,) 17:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Duh, I don’t know why you find my reversion of Natalinasmpf "worrysome": click on my immediate next edit, I removed the foul language as an attempt to clean up the page (the font was rather big but there wasn’t anything really serious with the CSS on my browser). Theresa then told me she’d rather do it the other way, and I didn’t object; finding anything worrysome in my behaviour here would require some explanation, please. As for the "proof of concept", it now links to oralse.cx and though it is indeed quite "furry", there is nothing terribily inappropriate there. Finally, at the time it was linked from my userpage, the hello.jpg image was safe for work (except for silsor, but then I have already stated I wasn’t proud of how I dealt with that specific issue; not that he didn’t have his part of responsibility in the fight).
 * About the repartition of my edits, you are absolutely right. Well, I cannot (and do not wish to) be everywhere, but I do have edits in the Talk and Wikipedia namespaces, they just look scarce because of what I mostly do. Note however that, as stated below, they are totally compatible with the sysop chores I expect to help with. Sam Hocevar 18:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) I am extremely uncomfortable about supporting the adminship of someone with such a close connection to the GNAA. Additionally, if the examples Silsor cites had been more recent, this would be a strong oppose vote, because trolling is completely unacceptable for someone who represents Wikipedia as a sysop.  However, ten months is a relatively long time (on the internet at least), so I'm neutral. --Scimitar parley 15:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) per abbove. Derktar 15:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC).
 * 3) Neutral, any link to GNAA at all worries me.  ral  315  05:28, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Support. I'd prefer candidates to have 24,000 article space edits, but I guess I can make an exception here. ;) Carbonite | Talk 11:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC) Neutral. I can't support due to the GNAA links. Carbonite | Talk 13:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Swithced to Neutral. It looks like you'll be fine without my support anyway. - Taxman Talk 20:59, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Support, I have been seeing positive contributions from this editor for a long time, and it is of my belief that he will make good use of sysop rights. However, his links to the GNAA do not please me much. I am assuming, though, that this will never come into the way of his judgment, thus I vote Support. --Sn0wflake 18:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC) Abstain, but I will be clear in stating that it has been made clear to all that User:Silsor is the troll himself here. The information he brought to this request for adminship should be ultimately regarded as flamebait. Thus, for all purposes, I abstain not out of trust for Hocevar, whom has been upfront about the issue and has proven to have essentialy positive intentions, but as a partial crictic to his connections to the GNAA. Said group, despite whatever relative merits might have in Hocevar's view, have been known Wikipedia trolls. I hope this nomination passes - as it surely will - and that Hocevar joins the Wikipedia team of admins, as it is only fair. --Sn0wflake 00:40, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments
 * Edit count: see here. Sietse 18:11, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Question: Could you describe what you would take into account when closing a VfD? Hipocrite 13:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That is a complex question, I am afraid I am having trouble answering it. See below for what I think represents consensus. Amongst the other things, I try to give "Merge" votes the attention that I feel they often lack. They mean "get rid of the article, but not of the content" and if consensus is reached when adding them to the "Delete" total, I usually merge. But then, not always. Honestly, my answer can only be vague, because so many VfDs look like special cases. I just try to be reasonable. Sam Hocevar 23:03, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Question I would like to know, what percentage specifically (within 5%) would you consider to be consensus when closing a VfD or related function? Hamster Sandwich 20:36, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I tend to be rather conservative and usually expect a two-thirds majority for a change to happen. Well, at least I consider that to be conservative. Sam Hocevar 22:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Thats the right answer! Give him a cigar! And a mop! Hamster Sandwich 22:50, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Answer to Taxman’s concerns: I find most of their press releases very enjoyable, and a few of them absolutely hilarious (the Debian, Matroska and GNAA/Hard ones, for instance). Parts of the humour reminds me of Adequacy.org, and I cannot help laughing when I read things like Our private beta now loads the system BIOS, then displays "Hello World" in rainbow colors. Our codebase at this point is now roughly 500% more mature than GNU/Hurd." or The Debian project was started in 1993 by Ian Murdock, who was unsatisfied with the level of political bickering and useless hand-wringing found in other projects at the time. Their crusade against Slashdot also amuses me, I have not much compassion for a website that encourages groupthink by automatically blocking users who get modded down. I also liked their P2P hoaxes (getting thousands of people to download gigabytes of Goatse or GNFOS) and a few of their prank calls. As for the things I do not like, that would be most of the threatening phone calls, and the destructive vandalism in general. Sam Hocevar 14:14, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)
 * A. I would probably be doing what I have also been doing on fr for eight months: RC patrolling and dealing with vandalism, but my everyday contributions would probably be mostly janitorial duties (moving images to commons, fixing double redirects). Also, it might be a minor thing, but my searches for spelling mistakes occasionally lead me to protected pages and asking a sysop to do such minor edits is quite a waste of time.
 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A. I am very satisfied with the minor spelling and grammar fixes I am doing here and there, because I feel they improve the overall quality of the articles.
 * 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. I had a very long argument with silsor about a user block that I thought was unfair. I am definitely not happy with how I dealt with it (it became more of a personal fight), but everyone eventually calmed down and the user was unblocked. That was 9 months ago. A similar scenario recently happened with Brian0918, but I just gave up, not wanting to get into another fight, and the user is probably still blocked. From an editor point of view I think I usually try to reach consensus, and I never took part in intense edit wars.