Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/The Thing That Should Not Be 2

Username:	The Thing That Should Not Be User groups:	reviewer, rollbacker First edit:	Aug 05, 2007 23:49:53 Unique pages edited:	104,914 Average edits per page:	1.58 Live edits:	161,824 Deleted edits:	3,650 Total edits (including deleted):	165,474

Namespace Totals

Article	80927	50.01% Talk	512	0.32% User	2153	1.33% User talk	71594	44.24% Wikipedia	6213	3.84% Wikipedia talk	133	0.08% File	99	0.06% File talk	11	0.01% MediaWiki talk	2	0.00% Template	130	0.08% Template talk	5	0.00% Help	6	0.00% Help talk	1	0.00% Category	21	0.01% Category talk	3	0.00% Portal	14	0.01%

Month counts

2007/08	45	2007/09	25	2007/10	2	2007/11	0	2007/12	3	2008/01	12	2008/02	0	2008/03	5	2008/04	3	2008/05	6	2008/06	0	2008/07	1	2008/08	700	2008/09	2285	2008/10	913	2008/11	2691	2008/12	2948	2009/01	6773	2009/02	664	2009/03	7099	2009/04	8280	2009/05	9005	2009/06	10932	2009/07	7211	2009/08	5040	2009/09	11796	2009/10	12349	2009/11	7420	2009/12	3662	2010/01	7485	2010/02	9245	2010/03	11455	2010/04	4321	2010/05	5502	2010/06	3840	2010/07	1659	2010/08	3180	2010/09	8137	2010/10	7130

Hounding of supports/opposes/neutrals
Should comments like these be encouraged? Fairly or not, they're just going to hurt the candidate even more, not help. StrPby (talk) 08:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * some of the repeated questioning of supporters by those who strongly oppose are also so excessive as to be counterproductive, and in my opinion much more out of line that this. (I think I have the right to say this,  because I myself oppose the candidate, but I am want to say that I completely dissociate myself from their approach to it; I can understand the ed. who, though skeptical about the candidate, voted support to counter some of the oppose arguments).    DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * DGG, I couldn't agree more. I'm also in the 'oppose' camp, though not for some off-wiki misstep (which I neither know nor care about)--and it's from 'my' camp that the real (and highly distasteful) hounding comes. Drmies (talk) 05:27, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * And some of the opposers are doing this based on misinterpretation of a few comments. It's pretty obvious that the reporting of NW to AIV was either a glitch or a simple mistake. Access Denied  [FATAL ERROR] 19:53, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I must admit I really don't like the way this RFA is going and I'm tempted to strike my oppose. I do think the candidate would be useful as an admin if he only blocked vandals, but I'm nervous about giving the delete button to someone who has never added referenced information to the pedia.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well if I were given the tools, I intend to start out slow, doing only antivandalism at first, then branching out into other areas which I have experience when I get a good, firm hang of things. Oh, and I have added referenced information to articles before:  (if I find anything more, I'll append this post, I know I've added more than those 2 examples)   The Thing  //  Talk  //  Contribs  00:11, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I also have several media-related contributions, which are used as examples in severe weather warning articles. See these: 1 2 3 4 5 6 The Thing  //  Talk  //  Contribs  14:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's enough for me to switch to support. I'm afraid the proportion of your contributions that are vandalism reversion makes these hard to spot, so you need to mention them in your nomination or the questions. I think you were too modest in your answer to Q7. I took your response there as meaning that you hadn't added referenced information to the pedia, and clearly from these examples you have.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:35, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I thought he had mean just writing articles in general. In addition, he was asking about what I planned to do in the future, not about what I had done in the past. I've also added the list to the comments section of the RfA, but I'm not sure if people are taking notice. The Thing  //  Talk  //  Contribs  12:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately it may be too late for this RFA, though you could expand your answer to q7 to include some of that, I'm sure I'm not the only one here who wants to see some evidence of content building, whether its taking photos or creating those ogg files. There is a small minority who want to see audited content as opposed to taking RFA as an opportunity to check your contributions themselves. But there is a significant group at RFA who expect admins to have demonstrated that they can contribute to the pedia as well as defend it, and I think you are currently doing yourself a disservice by not mentioning the above examples in your answer to q7 - even if you currently have no plans to contribute more content. If this doesn't succeed, and if you ever run again I think it would be worth bringing this sort of thing out at the start of the RFA either in your nom or elsewhere, unfortunately I think some of the opposes had like me assumed you only do vandalism reversion. Of course you'd do better still if you spent a few hours bringing an article to GA, or picking a WikiProject that interests you and referencing their unreferenced BLPs.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  13:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Mmmm. We need a training room for RfA participants. [Better yet, we need to abolish RfA, unbundle the admin functions, and distribute them in a different manner, but no one else agrees with this so...]. &bull; Ling.Nut 01:57, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. But no, no-one else agrees.  The usual reason given is that it would be impossible to stop someone using the block button in other areas.  Well, how about "If you use this to block anything but vandals, it will be taken off you, and you will be hit with a wet sock until you surrender." Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it is more like (as you are about to discover ;)) that having one button often requires the use of others. A block flag would be fine, until a page is being vandalised faster than you can block.  Then you need the protect flag.  Or you need to G3 a creation while you're blocking, or even worse, need to see something that was deleted to know if you should block or not!  An isolated block flag sounds good on talk pages, but I'm not sure it would work well in practice. Courcelles 11:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I see your point. What I was thinking about was areas of work, rather than unbundling the tools - you can use the tools in the vandalism area, to block vandals, protect pages and delete vandalism articles. You may (inserts the word 'not' here several hours later.  Festina lente, Elen.  Festina lente) do anything else - delete for any other reason including other speedy tags (A7, A10 etc), protect articles during non vandal edit wars, or block for any other reason. The question was asked, how would you stop them, hence the answer above. Some areas (eg deleting images) you'd need to show you had a specific competence in the area before being let loose. It was an idea prompted by seeing admins from other wikis asking for the tools to do a particular job only.  It's just a thought, anyway.  Can't see it happening. Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * StrPby: The example sits in the least visible area of the vote (not in the voting sections), and is borderline TLDR. I wouldn't take it too seriously; a single edit summary from 2008 can have more influence than this edit. As for the "bagder wars" and "groupies" engaged in it, yes, they hurt the candidate and help the process. They reveal the not-so-obvious relationships between the candidates and their supporters: "tell me who your friends are... and I will vote against you". East of Borschov 06:47, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow...

 * AN/I: 123,998 bytes
 * This RfA: 224,866 bytes
 * Wow... Access Denied  [FATAL ERROR]


 * That's not a record, I seen worse highly heated RFAs DMO comes to mind. Secret account 00:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Herostratus' recall fiasco does as well; that was my rude introduction to Wikipolitics. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 04:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If I kept going with my RFA, it would have been like that, something which I couldn't handle. Secret account 04:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem with Herostratus' was that there were some particularly vicious accusations; I can't believe he's still here after that. No one deserves that sort of thing; and by the way, looking over your RfA, had I noticed it I'd probably have supported you (I was one of Herostratus' big proponents through his whole mess), for what it's worth.  The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 04:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

25 questions
25 questions for a candidate is too much. What's the point? Geschichte (talk) 18:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * RFA closed over a week ago. 25 questions is commonplace, but if anywhere, it should be discussed at the main RFA talk page. AD 18:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)