Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Headbomb 4

Numbering/bot
The bot appears to be broken. I think its an issue with the numbering/indention in the neutral section, but can't seem to find where. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's the Neutral section - it's definitely been working since filelakeshoe added their neutral comment and I see no edits to that section since. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Having said that, I can't see anything wrong with the other sections - but I have removed a couple of blank lines from the Discussion section (though that shouldn't make a difference) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:27, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I removed a leading space, and manually pushed up the tally - lets see if the next update is recorded. — xaosflux  Talk 18:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The reason I think it is the neutral section is that in the past not using # indentation has messed up the bot count even if the number displays correctly on the page. I tried to fix it, but couldn't figure out how to have Boing!'s former !vote not numbered since it was the first one. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you can't not number the first one but still have it as a hash. But I have an idea... Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:49, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I've moved the one neutral to the top and changed the others to all be hash-indented. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Cyberbot I just needs to be rebooted. Alex ShihTalk 19:02, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Paging . — xaosflux  Talk 19:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I see the counter at Requests for adminship is still stuck at an even earlier count, even after purging the page. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Bot's back on now. Alex ShihTalk 19:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not stuck. I just purged the page and it refreshed.— CYBERPOWER  (Around ) 19:13, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Good work team. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Double plus good 👍 Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:38, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Follow up Discussion from Question 8

 *  This section was moved from Question 8. — xaosflux  Talk 02:40, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's enough, Headbomb - this RfA has no chance of passing whatsoever particularly after you wrote that, and I don't want admins who say that sort of thing (at least, publicly). Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  22:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I really don't see how what I just wrote is contentious, or how it's OK to think I'm not interested in doing AE work in secret, but not OK to say I'm uninterested in doing that work in public, but feel free to withdraw your support. I'd rather the RFA run its course though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * , you are expected to use the same tact and grace at RFA that you would in a heated ANI or other admin board discussion. In that respect, you missed the mark.  Being blunt has it's place, and colorful language certainly doesn't offend me, but when you are under the gun at RFA, this is a window into how you would react under the worst of circumstances, and for half the voters, the only chance they have seen you in a stressful situation.  Not that I disagree with a certain amount of disdain for our current Arbitration system, but it is the system we have and RFA is the wrong place to opine on it's shortcomings.  You pretty much blew it, leading me to recommend you withdraw and go back to what you do very well (as per my !vote): editing and advocating.   Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 13:30, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Except of course, that you voted against that. You said he does not have "not have the demeanor for the job" of a Wikipedia editor.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  22:37, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That isn't what Dennis wrote. It's disturbing that you would take the time to twist his actual comment that way. Neil S. Walker (t@lk) 23:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I disagree with people opposing for Q4, but that at least seems rational and defensible. People getting upset about Q8 make no sense, and such opposition can only be explained by either being upset about seeing the words "shit" and "fuck", or thinking that HB should know that there are such tender souls out there, and cater to them while the RFA is running.  What he actually said seems fine, and boils down to "I have no desire to work in this area: I know as much about DS as Floquenbeam knows about editing MediaWiki pages".  Q4 opponents show that the community and I have different perspectives; Q8 opponents show that the community is flawed. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:45, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Well; "tact and grace" have been mentioned...? &mdash; fortuna  velut luna  13:49, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps if "tact and grace" is defined as "no irony, no humor, no words that would shock my grandma". Otherwise, it's a strawman. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:54, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Basically this. No one can fault adults for sometimes speaking frankly like adults, but adults are also expected to know when speaking frankly is and is not appropriate or constructive, and "we're all grown ups" is not leave to confuse the locker room with the workplace, which is what this is supposed to be at the end of the day, a place to get work done.  G M G  talk   13:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Well said! Again!) --Randykitty (talk) 14:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * On this point I have to agree with Floquenbeam. I can only guess that people are drawing parallels between Q4 and Q8, that is, the dispute at philoSOPHIA (specifically the gender-related DS warnings) and Headbombs opinion on DS. I don't see them. I see an editor that is disinterested in DS, not an editor who thinks that all DS is, is a right to sanction admin abuse. It speaks more to what people assume is being said, than what is actually being said. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:58, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * What I was concerned about Q4 is not really entirely about the philoSOPHIA case itself, rather it's the idea of continuing to hold grudges, which was initially implied in Q3 and expressed indirectly in Q4 and Q8. I personally have no problems with profanities at all, but why is it necessary to continue to make this personal, when the candidate said himself the issue was considered "settled"? Alex ShihTalk 14:17, 10 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Just checking people are aware that some of the Q8 opposes were based on the original answer with no words struck, which is from before Ritchie333 shouted at him - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Headbomb_4&oldid=804581977 Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd just like to give my analysis of RfA here which would account for the outrage expressed at the answer given for question 8. RfA has become like a job interview. The only difference is, instead of a fixed number of people, there could be anywhere over 200 people assessing what you are saying. In a job interview, when the inevitable question comes: "What is your biggest weakness?" You are coached not to say: "Well, I'm a real lazy dude who can't wake up on time!" And instead say something which can be like: "Well, I tend to err on the side of caution which was evidenced today by me arriving to the interview over half an hour early." The point I am trying to make is... People here want honesty from the questions but there's too much at stake for any candidate to actually give honest answers. In the end, you get answers that the candidate believes the interviewers want to hear. In this particular case, the candidate has likely given up thinking that their RfA will be viable and has given an answer that could make people uncomfortable. I think if you want the truth, the only way to get it is to dig through their contributions (and this perhaps calls into question the validity of asking particular questions). Thanks. -&#61;Troop&#61;- (talk) 14:18, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * In reply to "editors who have gone a decade without having to deal with the complexities of the discretionary-sanctions rule-sets are more to be envied than censured".  That's probably true.  However, this user hasn't managed to avoid it entirely.  Regardless of whose fault the ANI thread was, he was involved in it; and through touching massive numbers of articles with journal citations, he is likely to be tangentially involved again.  power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 15:40, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

All said and done, I'm a pragmatic chap, and as far as I can see it, Headbomb needs about 100 or so more supports for the RfA to pass. You might think it's okay to say "fuck my old boots, this article looks like a pissed up asshole wrote it with their dick", but the hard fact is some people don't, and those people are allowed to voice their opinion at RfA. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  19:00, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Response to
, I will respond here, although your invitation was specifically addressed to male editors. (As a matter of principle, I don't give out any personal information, including my gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, and whatnot and responding here doesn't constitute an admission or denial of me being male). Of course editing an article on a feminist journal can be gender-related. Please note the use of the word can. Up till the posting of the DS warning templates, gender did not enter into the discussion. Neither did "feminist", for that matter. We were discussing an article on an academic journal, something that Headbomb and I have each poured hundreds or even thousands of hours of work into. We were discussing the need or lack thereof of including a complete listing of the editorial board, Whether that concerned men or women was not the topic. And subsequent events have shown that community consensus was with Headbomb and me, that DS did not apply to this article or to the discussion. The whole issue of posting those DS templates was a heavy-handed attempt to gain the upper hand in what should have been a rational discussion. It was that posting that escalated the situation, not Headbomb's complaint at ANI. --Randykitty (talk) 14:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I got hit by a DS alert some time ago as well. It was about the cold fusion page, and someone was warning me that it comes under pseudoscience which in turn is under DS. I was angry for a bit - from my point of view I was hardly promoting pseudoscience, I was only adding what the source clearly stated. But then I saw the DS alert includes this line: "It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date." That's crucial. Looking at the DS alert on this matter, what was happening is that some people were clearly interpreting the dispute in a gender-coloured manner. You and Headbomb might not be thinking in that way, but they were. It's not very different from someone telling you that something you said can potentially be interpreted as insulting / racist / etc. Reacting the way Headbomb did was in my opinion not defensible. Banedon (talk) 20:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * PS: Also, WP:AGF ought to apply. Assuming that Sarah was threatening to implement sanctions to "gain the upper hand in what should have been a rational discussion" is not assuming good faith. Banedon (talk) 23:29, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi . Hope you're well. Was the cold fusion page under DS? Yes. What if it had not been under DS and yet an administrator decided to leave such a notice on your talk page? How would you feel? I'm not trying to justify Headbomb's reaction. I'm trying to place the right perspective here.  Lourdes  03:26, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * As I said, Sarah was clearly interpreting the dispute in a gender-coloured manner, in which case she would also think it's under DS. If Headbomb had said in the ANI case something like "Sarah left me a DS alert on this article but I don't think it's applicable, any uninvolved opinions?" that'd be something; since he didn't, I maintain my opinion that what Headbomb did was not defensible. Banedon (talk) 04:10, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * For the record, the Cold Fusion page was under DS at the time, but is no longer.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  05:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The situation here is a little more complicated than just receiving a neutral notice from someone uninvolved, and flipping out because of that. It's getting slapped with DS notice (fine on its own) by an admin who's involved in a dispute (much less fine, poor judgment, but not again that big of a deal), and [apparently] putting the article under discretionary sanctions by fiat after a repeated failure to convince people of the merit of her arguments (THAT was the dealbreaker for me). The article being under sanctions turned out to not have been the case in actuality, despite that very admin saying it was, and despite the DS template on the article saying it was under sanction, but that certainly wasn't clear at the time, and that was the drop that made the vase overflow. By the time I made that AN thread, that admin had already been told by myself (initially) and then by multiple third parties parties (Randykitty, DGG) that WP:JWG had widespread consensus amongst editors, and had being invited to create an RFC if she disagreed with it (WP:CCC after all). Together, myself Randikitty and DGG are probably the top three experts on Academic Journals on Wikipedia. Yet, we were accused of being sexists ("This kind of behaviour is one of the reasons experts (and women) don't edit Wikipedia.", "high-quality philosophy journal of interest to women (if you knew anything about women in philosophy, you would understand why this journal might matter to some people)" [because men obviously cannot be interested in feminist journals/feminist though], of not having a genuine interests in academic journals ("... at an article neither of you has any interest in or knowledge of", "What's depressing is that the three of you don't know anything about this journal or about philosophy."), that leaving notices at WP:JOURNALS was WP:CANVASSING, and then invoking Gamergate on us, pretty much equating us with a bunch of troglodytes. And that is the reason for my strong language in that AN thread. Keep in mind absolutely none of this language ever seeped in Talk:PhiloSOPHIA, no one was ever personally attacked, everything had been completely civil until then, and remained so even after the AN report and being harassed off-wiki/at work. And to be clear, I'm not accusing SV of being the source of this harassment, it likely originated from readers of GenderDesk, see comments / stalking / body shaming, etc., all very similar to the shit I dealt with at work after this clusterfuck. And that didn't stop me from working with the exact same people I had a dispute with at Hypatia either. Content matters more than grudges, and while I'm still fuming about it, I'm not going to let that get in the way of building the encyclopedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:44, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, for this clear and dispassionate description of what happened at philoSOPHIA (I wouldn't be able to do that, this thing still has me foaming at the mouth). I don't recall seeing that Genderdesk posting at the time (but it's the kind of thing I easily forget, I don't have much patience with trolls), but it gives a good idea of the situation and outrageous accusations that we were facing. That this issue has been used to badger you on your RFA is heaping injury upon insult. --Randykitty (talk) 03:24, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * , if you could've gone back and done things differently, would you have done so? Banedon (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd have reverted the DS notice on the article myself, since that was apparently allowed, and issue SV the strongest possible warnings to respect WP:AGF/WP:NPA and to stop weaponizing discretionary sanctions as a means to win content disputes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:59, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * , and how would it feel to nudge the then opponent to answer the very same question? Purgy (talk) 06:41, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Sure., if you could've gone back and done things differently, would you have done so? Banedon (talk) 08:14, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Q8 update
I feel what I was trying to say got lost in the flowery language. Please see clarification in Q8, because there seems to be a great disconnect between what I think I said/meant to say, and what people seems to think I've said.

So, with apologies for the initial lack of clarity, pinging everyone that mentioned Q8, good or bad, in their comments:

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I didn't see anything in Q8 worth opposing over, at least not in and of itself. HJ Mitchell  &#124; Penny for your thoughts?  07:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, but I still cannot support this - if anything because I think it's important for a potential administrator candidate to respond to queries in a civil manner. Patient Zerotalk 12:47, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification Headbomb. Your initial answer did give (to me anyway) the impression that you thought discretionary sanctions are a sort of dictatorial fiat imposed by arbcom (partly because of your own reaction to getting a DS notification). In a way, I guess they are, but they are enacted under community scrutiny and have turned out to be necessary and useful tools for admins in contentious areas because an admin can act immediately without having to seek broader community input (a time consuming process always fraught with unnecessary cant). While I don't disagree with HJMitchell above (and Floq elsewhere) that your response to Q8 was by itself not particularly newsworthy, it was the juxtaposition with your own reaction to getting a DS notice that was concerning. It is hard to be an admin without encountering DS situations and it is a problem if you come in with an a-priori bias against them. Thanks again for the clarification, which I will personally accept at face value. --regentspark (comment) 12:54, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't plan to change my vote, but with the clarification, I don't think your answer is disqualifying on its own anymore. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 14:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's great that you've apologized and clarified. Again, though, there's an important point to consider in your own words. Quoting: "...there seems to be a great disconnect between what I think I said/meant to say, and what people seem to think I've said." ← That is a recurring part of the problem: lack of awareness of how words are likely to be perceived by others (it often looks like you don't even care about how some people will take the words). It's not a tiny minority of special snowflakes getting upset by swear words or whatever. It's a sizable group of people who see the core meaning or the basic tone very differently from what you say on the third or fourth attempt at communicating. And the difference is seen repeatedly, in a way that forms a pattern. You need to think about this, and why it keeps happening. -- Gpc62 (talk) 16:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * But unfortunately how people take it will be coloured by the narrative that is being presented by others. While it is nice to think that it is possible to express oneself clearly and without any chance of people imputing ulterior motives or reading in sentiment that is just not there, this is not  the case, as has been demonstrated countless times on wiki and off. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC).


 * I'll rectify misconceptions if and when they occur, but I'm not going to walk on eggshells out of fear someone somewhere will read meaning that isn't there into words that are there. I'll say here that if I really was the ornery edit-warring angry mastodon people think I am, my block log would be a lot more substantial than 0 in 195000+ edits, and I'd have been reported at AN and elsewhere more than a handful of times over 10+ years. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Would someone please add this to the Support section?
I think this was closed 10 minutes early. Obviously, it won’t affect the outcome, but I’d still like it on the record, if that’s possible.

‘’’Support’’’ per Opabinis regalis and the candidate’s statement, “I intend to focus on technical areas”. —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:46, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * the "scheduled end time" for this was, and the actual end time was  .  It was not closed early. —  xaosflux  Talk 14:58, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah. OK thanks. —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:02, 16 October 2017 (UTC)