Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Shimgray


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

Shimgray
[ Vote here]  (33/0/0) ending 20:32 3 November 2005 (UTC)

– Shimgray indicated that he was thinking about asking for adminship in order to help edit stuff on the main page. He's gotten quite a few articles on the "Did you know?" section, and I think we could always use more people keeping the "In the news" section current. Since he seems to be calm, intelligent, and generally familiar with how Wikipedia works, I decided I would go ahead and nominate him. --Michael Snow 20:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept. Thanks. If anyone has additional questions, I may well be travelling this weekend, so please forgive any delays. Shimgray | talk | 21:44, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Support
 * 1) Michael Snow 20:33, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Support, seems sensible, level-headed, and able to resolve disagreements peacefully. Friday (talk) 21:55, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Good editor. Martin  21:59, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Supppppport. N (t/c) 22:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Support! Surprised he wasn't one.--Sean Black | Talk 23:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Support; concur with nominator. (Indeed, I hadn't realized he wasn't one until the comment about not being able to edit the Main Page.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:20, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) Support good editor --Rogerd 00:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Support -Greg Asche (talk) 03:09, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 9) Support. El_C 04:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Support - Guettarda 04:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Support per above; also, I trust Michael's judgment. Remember to use edit summaries, though.  Ral315 (talk) 05:24, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) Support. Very fine contributor. Sjakkalle (Check!)  06:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) Support Proto t c 09:22, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) Merovingian (t) (c) ( e ) 11:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Support Good editing, knowledge of WP. Thanks for answering the questions in detail. Turnstep 13:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) Support because there's an aeroplane on the runway. CambridgeBayWeather 16:22, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Support Privat  e   Butcher  18:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) Support, per nominator. JoanneB 06:40, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Strong Support. Great guy, has my trust (Yes, I've been watching from afar). R  e  dwolf24  (talk) 08:10, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) Support  Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk  12:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) Support GraemeL (talk) 12:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 22) Support. -- Essjay ·   Talk 13:24, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 23)  Or an   e    (t)   (c)   (@)  14:21, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 24) JYolkowski // talk 17:24, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 25) Support. He could use a rollback button to help with his mass RvV's. - Kookykman (talk • contribs)
 * 26) Support fine candidate. Alf melmac 18:18, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 27) Support. Admin tools would help vandal fighting, see no reasons for concern. Jayjg (talk) 18:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 28) Support: Lots of time on project, consistent in his work to understand policy and to follow it. Geogre 20:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 29) Support - You mean they're not an admin already? Thryduulf 22:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 30) --JAranda'' | watz sup 01:39, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 31) Support. -- DS1953 talk 00:04, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 32) Oh yeah, like a Twix commercial. (That means support.) – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 02:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 33) Support.  +sj  +  03:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 34) Support. Cheers. &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 15:57, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

Comments
 * Regardless of the outcome of this RFA, please improve your use of edit summaries. Last 500 edits, 56% usage, 67% over last 5,000 edits. --Durin 22:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I am rather atrocious at remembering edit summaries, I confess... every now and again I kick myself to try and improve, but it slips. In mitigation, a lot more of the article space edits are summarised than the overall figure, which is where it's more critical. I will try and keep it in mind, though; thanks for the reminder. Shimgray | talk | 22:32, 27 October 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. Michael mentioned above that I had commented about editing the main page; this was a throwaway comment, but it is something I'd find very useful. I'm an inveterate copyeditor and text-fiddler, and I'd like to think I could help keep these high-profile sections presentable - as it is, having to go via someone else is a hassle for all parties. (Especially when you see the change up, and you realise it would really look better with the comma there, so you go back, and... um, yes.)
 * There've been a few vandals & spammers I've chased up at length in the past - none recently, I confess - and the ability to slap the persistent ones with a day-long block would simplify matters greatly. As it is, by the time I figure out how to ask someone, they've ususally done a few more and got blocked... never hurts to be faster. I've done Recent Changes patrolling a few times, but it's a bit inefficient without rollback, and extra productivity is A Good Thing.
 * I closely watch WP:RD and WP:HD; there's a lot of "help, fix this little niggling problem" calls on there, which it's often useful to have admin powers to deal with - redirects getting piled on top of each other, notes of persistent attacks on pages, can someone check what X speedied page was - and I'd like to be able to shorten the turnaround time there for problems. (I also monitor WP:AN (& /I), but there's no shortage of admins there...)
 * I suspect there's a few admin tasks I haven't considered I'd be happy to set to, but understandably I can't say much about those. Working on copyright issues, something we keep needing to tighten up, would probably be rewarding. I've seen at first hand the problems due to people there being vastly overworked, and lessening the backlog would help.


 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A. My article contributions are mostly here. Many of them are short and obscure, but they're the most interesting things - there's some rather endearing biographies in there. I do rather like stars named after people, which is mostly comprehensive and something I've never seen elsewhere. General Council of the Valleys arose from a one-line speedy-delete candidate I saw on recent changes and salvaged, and it was a pleasure - and an education! - to research and write. (Anyone want an intriguing project? Go fill a redlink from the list of national legislatures)
 * I expect to be rather pleased with freedom of information legislation - I have a lot of very useful information to hand, having just finished what I believe to be the most current comprehensive survey of FOI laws - but I've only got around to getting to grips with it today and fear I may suffer burnout on that particular subject, after a summer of researching!
 * Oh, and a few months back I embarked on trying to purge ASIN codes - nasty proprietary things with no bibliographic use - from Wikipedia; a bit contentious, but a lot of them got done, and the next wave is really waiting for me to get around to running some database queries on a recent dump and thus having a "hitlist" to work on. I estimate I removed at least half, with the help of a couple of other users. Not a very obvious help to the project, but I feel it's one of the better things I've done - there is a big hole in the wikien-l archives from 8th to 14th August, so I can't point to most of the comments there, but some of it still makes me rather pleased.


 * 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 got on WP:VIP once... I mentioned above that my removal of ASINs was contentious, and Kaldari poked me sharply about it and flagged me on VIP. I stopped, put up a discussion page about it (here), poked around for a day or three to determine consensus here (and on the mailing list, though they were pretty strongly in favour). I think I did everything possible to defuse the situation - not that I needed to, Kaldari was a lot less aggrieved than I originally feared! - and reach a suitable consensus. I think the discussion page is evidence enough for this; it's where most of the debate went.
 * That's certainly the most contentious thing I can think of; a couple of moments of heated tempers when someone was Clearly Not Getting It, but I do try to avoid those and we're only human. There's a chap who keeps posting semi-nonsense questions to WP:RD/M who gets me (and others!) wound up - he knows he's messing around, since he's deleted old, answered questions and then re-added them - but since he keeps changing IP, we can't contact him... stress, that one, rather than conflict. Readers of that page no doubt know who I mean...


 * 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.