Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Staecker


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

Staecker
[ Final] (49/5/3); Ended Sun, 15 Apr 2007 05:11:08 (UTC)

- I first met Staecker after a night of working on CSD. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I noticed there were an extremely high ratio of CSD I1 images. The next day, Staecker contacted me and let me know that he was working on a bot to automatically identify and tag CSD I1 candidates. He asked me why I occasionally would delete the other duplicated instead of the one that Staeckerbot tagged. I explained it was because sometimes the licensing information wasn't identical or the uploader provided more details about the image on the untagged image. Staecker ended up adding some code to copy the licensing information to make sure both images had the same information. I feel that giving Staecker the tools would be greatly beneficial to him by allowing him to review why admins sometimes deleted the image that wasn't tagged which would allow him to further refine his bot.

Staecker has also contributed quite a bit to other image related tasks. He has nominated images for being PUIdisputed and has helped users clear up image copyright problems. I am confident in his knowledge of policy, especially image/CSD related. Reading through Staecker's contributions, I have found that he has kept his cool and makes good use of talk pages and edit summaries to explain any possible contentious edits. PS2pcGAMER (talk) 01:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Thanks for the nom, PS2- I hadn't ever seriously considered my being an admin, but I gratefully accept the idea, if others are in favor. I have been editing for 2 years now- I care a lot about WP, and would love to assist in any way that the community deems appropriate.

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 participants:
 * Questions for the candidate
 * 1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with?
 * A: My bot User:Staeckerbot is all about image speedy deletions. A bit of background- Over the past year or so, I used to occasionally page though the Special:Newimages gallery, looking for suspicious images (likely copyvios, duplicates, etc). I was always surprised that nobody else seemed to be patrolling that gallery. A couple of months ago I decided to write a bot to detect duplicate file uploads, and now this bot (still in trial) nominates about 75 duplicates per day.
 * The experience with the bot, and image deletions by hand for many months before, has shown me that we need help in clearing speedy deletions (at least as far as images go). Help first of all in the form of bodies willing to go through the hassle of making the deletions, and second of all in evolving our policies to make it more efficient. I'm sorry to say that I don't have any revolutionary ideas, but I recognize the need and will gladly help however I can.
 * I also have seen horrible problems with image licensing tagging- so many images are improperly tagged, and I've occasionally done what I can to fix them up, but as is I think more needs to be done from a policy/interface standpoint. That's just another half-baked idea in my mind at this point, but it's something I care about, and something that I would love to help repair.
 * I have a fair amount of expertise in the ins and outs of MediaWiki- I run several at the College where I work. This of course doesn't directly impact my editing at Wikipedia, but at least I already know what the "delete" tab looks like and I'm not going to be trigger-happy with it.


 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any with which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A: Certainly my most useful recent contribution to the project as a whole has been my bot, described above.
 * As far as my (manual) edits are concerned, I've done my best to create new articles wherever I see the need, some fairly interesting, some certainly useful, some on the edge of notability (feel free to AFD that last one, if it's not worth keeping- the pic is priceless, at least). I'm also a PhD mathematician, and have contributed a fair amount of material in my research area (Nielsen theory and related topics). My edits to WP often follow my life interests as they come up. I've been contributing quite a bit on the films of Werner Herzog lately.
 * Honestly speaking, my most useful edits over my two years here might have been anti-vandalism. It gives me some sort of cheap thrill to revert silly vandalism (the sillier the better). I go for a month or so reverting fairly high-traffic vandalism pages, until I get fed up and take my business elsewhere. I spent some time keeping the "haters" off of 50 Cent, some time at Jar Jar Binks (the similarities are subtle but many), etc. Most recently I've been watching Kazakh and Nursultan Nazarbayev, which get about one Borat-related vandal each day. My personal favorite page to watch for vandalism: Liar. Why such an obscure page gets vandals, I don't know, but it always gives me a smile to see that one pop up on my watchlist. My nominator has suggested that I should take the time to notify vandals more often when I revert them, and this is, I think, a good suggestion.


 * 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 have had a few run ins- Conflicts with misguided new users have included: A lengthy debate at Talk:Almaty about nomenclature. Receiving the brunt of a disgruntled user over an image at Talk:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (more comments at my talk). Being accused of faith-based censorship (see section at my talk.) These are cases in which I felt that I was clearly in the right, and I've tried to respond to unreasonable or misguided attitudes with grace and patience.
 * One thing that bugs me is pre-emptive semiprotects, which I've encountered twice. See discussions here and here. You be the judge if I handled it appropriately.
 * Of course I don't always feel that I'm clearly right. I had a long-winded debate at Talk:Florence Foster Jenkins about NPOV, and to this day I'm not really sure who was right (I eventually "lost" by giving up- by the way I'd appreciate any commentary on that debate, not to revive it but to clarify my impressions of what NPOV is supposed to mean in a case like that).
 * I also had a (in my opinion) ugly experience at Intelligent design, which is now at Talk:Intelligent_design/Archive29. I made what I thought was a fairly innoccuous suggestion, and ended up with a fairly hostile reaction. My lesson learned from that episode- don't try to jump in, even in a very little way, to mega-controversies without doing a lot of research ahead of time (which I didn't).
 * I hope that anybody who's interested can read over the above incidents and decide for themselves if I acted appropriately. I think that having a clear head and civil tone is absolutely essential. I don't experience stress very publicly in these situations- I do get a little excited in my own mind, but always try to put my emotions aside when contributing. I am always willing to admit when I'm wrong (I hope), and certainly would never use adminship as a trump in disputes in which I was personally involved.


 * More questions
 * 4. Is your candidacy for adminship endorsed by any WikiProjects, and if so, which ones? -- Cyde Weys  17:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * A: Sorry, it's not. I've been a long time watcher of WikiProject Mathematics, but have made very few contributions there. Staecker 03:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Candidate is endorsed by WikiProject Endorsements. Of course, that project is a bit pointy itself...Pascal.Tesson 13:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Optional question from Naconkantari:
 * 5. When is it appropriate to implicitly invoke WP:IAR? Explicitly?  Are there times when it should not be invoked?  Nacon kantari  17:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * A: Of course there are times when it should not be invoked- i.e. almost always. In the vast majority of our edits, we should play by the rules. That's what the rules are for. If a user finds themselves ignoring a particular rule on a regular basis, then the rule probably needs to be revised.


 * As for when it should be invoked, I'm afraid that I haven't considered this very seriously (I guess I've been ignoring IAR). I haven't to my recollection invoked IAR since I've been editing here, and don't plan to start doing so anytime soon. I suppose that's because I've never felt that existing policies have conflicted with my efforts to improve the encyclopedia. If at some time they did, then I would feel justified in invoking IAR, and believe that this is the spirit of the rule: if a policy prevents you from improving the encyclopedia, then ignore it.


 * As for implicit/explicit, I think that it would always be better to make it explicit, and I would hope to live up to this standard myself. This helps other users to tell the difference between someone who is ignorant of policy and someone who has seriously considered the particular action and has decided that it is in the best interests of the encyclopedia. Staecker 17:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * General comments


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


 * I'd be happy to elaborate on any of the above (or anything else), and look forward to good discussion regardless of the votes. I hope to be as transparent as possible- if you are aware of significant information about me that I'm leaving out, please let me know and I'll try to address it. I also know that I can be a bit longwinded- let me know if I should just shut up about something.
 * Someone pointed me to WP:CANVASS regarding my edit here. I've seen so many people pimping their RfAs and other causes that I thought it was fairly accepted. But now that I've seen the guideline page (it's fairly new, right?) I reverted the above diff. Sorry if anybody thought it was uncool- Staecker 13:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Please keep criticism constructive and polite.

Discussion



Support
 * 1) Support as nominator.  --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 01:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Support Seen them around and interacted briefly regarding the bot, very civil. Also familiarity with the tools is always helpful. - cohesion 05:37, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Support I share the nominator's confidence. YechielMan 06:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Support Attitude and experience are all there with the bot-work an additional plus. I imagine that the projectspace and user Talk edits will increase dramatically after the admin tools allow you to patrol the new pages/recent changes pages, etc. (aeropagitica) 09:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Support per good answers and sufficient overall experience. Addhoc 10:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Support - A sensible user who I feel would not abuse admin abilities and who has answered the questions well. Also, seems to have plenty of experience, especially with bots and images. Camaron1 | Chris  11:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Support An excellent candidate, could use the tools when, definitely be trusted. Good luck -  Te ll y a ddi ct  11:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Support seems trustworthy and experienced. Why not? — An as  talk? 12:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Terence 13:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Support You have made contribs in many different areas, you're experienced, and civil. I like that you admit experiences where you learned something important--shows maturity. Nice clear answers to questions. Edit count not a problem for me.  κaτaʟaveno  TC 14:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Support A good candidate for adminship. Captain   panda  14:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) Support - no reasons to oppose. Wal  ton  Vivat Regina!  14:56, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Support Good contribs, active, no reason to oppose.  Gan fon  15:47, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Support I hate editcountis. --Docg 15:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Support —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 20:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Support Looks like good reasons for Adminship to me Homestarmy 01:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Support. Neutralitytalk 03:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 18) Support. I don't see anything to be concerned about - it appears that the editor handles sticky situations well. Obviously needs the tools to just clear the offending images instead of just nominating them. --Mus Musculus 04:15, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Support good experience and no concerns if he handles admin tools. Change to oppose after further examining. WooyiTalk, Editor review 23:15, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Support. RyanGerbil10 (Упражнение В!) 05:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. Clearing backlogs is something we can always use an extra keyboard for. --Hemlock Martinis 06:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) I'm Mailer Diablo and I approve this message! - 11:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Support looks good.-- danntm T C 13:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Support, one of those rare, but nice, cases where someone demonstrates knowledge of policy without a bunch of projectspace contributions. -Amarkov moo! 15:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Support Looks good - oppose comments weak.--Osidge 19:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Support Appears good, useful contribs Kevinwong913 00:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) HELL YES. I noticed Staecker's bot as well, and I thought the same things that PS2 did. We NEED admins for image help. Those opposes are rather weak... If he wants to help with images, I don't see a real need for XfD or policy-discussion experience. If he ever gets involved in closing AfDs, for example, he'll be able to get the needed experience on his own before jumping into it. Grand  master  ka  00:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Support per nom and other supporters.-- Eva  b  d  01:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Support. --  LeCour T:C 01:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Support. Staecker appears experienced enough and has been here for a while. A bit of caution with the new tools should compensate for the lack of edits in project space I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) --dario vet  (talk) 10:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Support, seems capable for the role. M URGH   disc.  13:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Support - Looks good...-- Cometstyles 15:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Support I don't see why not. James086 Talk &#124;  Email 16:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Support Admin shouldn't be a big deal and lack of good reason to oppose is plenty good reason to support. Goodnightmush 02:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Support. In my opinion, he has enough experience. - M s c h e l 03:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 18) Support The guy handles himself well with others, a very important trait. Tony the Marine 04:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 19) Support - Trust him to run a bot, and trust him with the tools. The two are not necessarily related, but strong performance on one is an indicator for the other, I believe.  Philippe 05:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 20) Support Per rationale set out on my user page. Edivorce 16:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 21) Support We have image backlogs, and Staecker said he would help. I don't see anything in the user logs, edits or anything that would tell me that Staecker can't be trusted. If Staecker chooses to work in some space where Staecker does not have the experiance, I trust that Staecker will trend with caution. All admins are not the same, and adminship is not supposed to be a big deal. —— Eagle 101  Need help? 17:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 22) Support per the other supports. Acalamari 18:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 23) Support good candidate. I'm sure you'll take on board the comments below. --Dweller 12:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 24) Support - Trustworthy and understands policy. -- Jreferee 19:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 25) Support not a big mainspace contributor, but knows his way around a mop.AKAF 06:42, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Terence 15:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC) Sorry voted twice. Terence 15:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Tony Sidaway 18:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC) Looks like a good fellow, and as I can't make head or tail of the opposes here  I am.  Give him the mop!
 * 2) Support Garion96 (talk) 21:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Support - looks just fine - Alison ☺ 22:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Support. I don't find the relatively "low" (in quotation marks as everyone has their own standard) number of project edits an issue as it seems you'll be focusing primarily on images, with which you clearly have experience. I commend your honesty in answering #3 (and also on how you handled yourself in the respective controversies) and the bit about "ignoring IAR" was the cherry on top. Cheers, Black Falcon 01:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Support, no problems here.-- Wizardman 04:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Support Whilst there are surely areas with which the candidate is not as familiar as might be the (non-existent) ideal candidate, I think his contribution history here to provide a sufficient basis on which to conclude that he is possessed of good judgment and a cordial and measured temperament, such that one can safely conclude that he should neither abuse nor misuse (even avolitionally, e.g., by acting whereof he does not know) and thus the net effect on the project of his being sysopped should be positive. Joe 04:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose
 * 1) Weak Oppose I really like your demeanor, and we certainly need help with image backlogs. Still, I feel a bit more project-space experience is needed to give you the feel for handling the mop. Xoloz 15:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose per Xoloz. While I don't have issue with his edit count as a whole he has few project space contributions and only 12 in the discussion sections, all in WikiProjects. I like more involvment in the "inner workings" before giving out a backstage pass. With some time in the project space, esp with policy discussion I would see no reason not to support in the future. NeoFreak 01:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Weak oppose per above reasons. From my personal experience I can say that without many project-space edits it is very hard for an editor to comprehend the convoluted policies and rules. WooyiTalk, Editor review 20:00, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose at this stage for similar/same reasons as Wooyi, Xoloz (with added comment by NeoFreak).-- VS talk 09:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose An admin really does need a lot of experience in the Wikipedia: namespace, its talk pages. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 19:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutral
 * 1) Neutral. Your contributions and statements give a very good impression, but your total edit count of 2660 is a bit low, really. I'd be happy to support you some time later. Sandstein 13:56, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Neutral leaning support Like Sandstein says. Looks pretty good, yet a wee bit more experience would be nice. Pascal.Tesson 16:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Neutral. Looks like a good candidate; would support with a WikiProject endorsement. Kelly Martin (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This is bordering on WP:POINT since WikiProjects don't do that and there's no reason to expect that they will given that no single editor or group of editors has authority over a project. Pascal.Tesson 16:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I would very much appreciate it if you would refrain from accusing me of breaching Wikipedia's rules for expressing my opinions on RFAs in this manner. I do not believe that you can show that my neutral votes, cast in the manner I have been casting them, "disrupt Wikipedia".  It is very difficult to assume good faith in comments such as the one above.  Surely casting "neutral" votes on RFAs is not "disruption".  (I would also suggest that this is not the place for this discussion.  If you have a real complaint, kindly discuss it on my talk page, or if you feel the need, a request for comments.)  Kelly Martin (talk) 17:30, 11 April 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.