Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Yandman: Difference between revisions

Yandman

Voice your opinion (25/0/0); Scheduled to end 13:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yandman (talk · contribs) - In the half year that Yandman has been with us, he has quickly established himself as an excellent Wikipedian. He is a good article editor, firmly committed to article quality and NPOV. He has amassed an impressive 4000 edits, well balanced across all namespaces. He has participated in a lot of admin-related areas recently, on the admin noticeboards, in dealing with vandalism, and on AfD and similar discussions. Whenever I've seen him around, his contributions have struck me as exemplary of what we need in an admin: sound of judgment, mature in interaction, precise in argumentation, always strongly anchored in Wikipedia policies and principles. I have seen him in controversial AfDs and other hot debates, and every time (even when one might not always have agreed with his opinions) I've found the things he said well reasoned, rational, and beneficiary to a resolution. This guy seems responsible and trustworthy.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I do. yandman 13:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Optional Statement

I've tried to be as honest as I can, if you don't think I (deserve/need/can be trusted with) the mop, please feel free to be verbose in letting me know why (or just tell me which of the errors I mention below is too serious). If you want me to answer your oppositions, be sure to tell me. Oh, and I'd like to thank Fut.Perf for his deeply flattering nomination. yandman 13:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

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:

1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog and Category:Administrative backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.

A: The backlog at CSD can be rather horrendous when our friends from across the Atlantic are still asleep, and I'd like to be able to avoid having to keep re-tagging playground ("Bob Jones smells, cos he has no life", "Ollie is simply the coolest guy at St. James") and blatant spam pages until an admin comes along. The same applies for AIV: reverting linkspammers and serial vandals is a tedious business, so the quicker they're offline, the easier it is for everyone. I participate a lot in AfD's, and think I've got what it takes to close most of the cases slowly fermenting in the backlogs. I also do quite a bit of welcoming and congratulating (if you're a new editor, there's nothing nicer than a "jolly good work, old chap", it helps to know that someone out there has noticed your work), sifting through the red links at RC and seeing if they're "doing good", so I often get requests for uncontroversial things that I then have to pass on to admins. I'm a regular contributor to AN and ANI, and I often see requests for administrative help that go unheeded for too long which I can't do anything about. Basically, I want to save my, and others', time.

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any with which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A: Well, I have no problem admitting I've been more of a handyman than a builder, my mainspace edits being mainly popup-based, but I've written a few stubs here and there (a film, a dead Hamas leader and a numerical analysis method), I've cleaned many articles up, GA reviewed a few, and I'm quite chuffed over my total rewrite of Day trading. I've helped save more than a few articles from deletion, especially since I discovered how hard it is to write a decent article... I'd like to think I've played a part in bringing quite a few controversial articles up to standard, mainly by acting as a buffer between the various factions involved. This type of contribution is where I spend most of my time: I'm sure you've noticed that my article/user talk page edits are disproportionately high. In my opinion, the only way we can get these types (Religions, Wars, Countries etc) of articles up to the standard is by making sure everyone is in the same team, however long it takes. If a new user finds people from his own "clan" (country, faith, whatever) agreeing with the others, he's much less likely to start brawling.

My main pride and joy is helping keep this project free from advertisers, spammers and the like. I created the "advert" series of templates (for cases that aren't covered by the "spam"s), and I do quite a bit of linktrimming and advert-paragraphs removal.

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: Of course. As long as you stay neutral and civil, avoiding controversial subjects for fear of being disliked by some is a very bad idea. I recently nominated an ex-esperanza page after this discussion at ANI, hoping that the users of the page in question wouldn't see it as an attack on their conception of the wikipedia community (an MfD which stayed remarkably civil, I must say). I've been present in quite a few of the rumpuses between Turks/Armenians/Greeks/Kurds, trying to calm things down, and I've also been watching the GWOT/Israel related articles (a good troll-spawning zone) for quite a while, as well as the Scientology pages. Apart from that, there's the usual death threats and other assorted sillyness from various socktrolls, as well as a fair number of unethical SMB marketing directors that would like to see me hang (my watchlist has far too much red in it). However, I've stayed away from edit warring, and as an admin, I'll have to be even more careful when debating so as not to give the impression that I'm arguing from wiki-authority. If you're looking for skeletons, here's my closet:

• The first time I came across Wikipedia (before that, I thought h2g2 was the ultimate online reference) was when a good friend told me to look up "Xenu". I was interested, and read through every page on the template, and then started looking at the histories, which is when I came across Terryeo. Fascinated, I looked through the various talk pages, and not being a regular internet user, I thought that sternly telling him what I thought of his way of acting would help things. How innocent of me... I quickly came to realise the best thing was to not feed the troll, and I've stayed civil with other scientologists (and anyone I disagree with).
• In a dispute I had with a user over some inflammatory userboxes on his userpage (which I originally wanted to blank completely), some editors said they didn't agree with wiki-censorship, so I was bold and pushed a solution wherein he could keep the userboxes as long as he put the "not an article" disclaimer up. An admin came across, and the user in question told him I'd given "permission" to have the userboxes, which put me in a rather awkward position.
• I sometimes bite promotional article writers, especially when they've recreated their article for the third time, because I think it's hard to assume good faith from someone who is, basically, being paid to break the rules. I've calmed down since I realised that there's a (very slim) chance even they could be coaxed into editing.
• Being blissfully unaware of "The History", I got slightly annoyed with MONGO at one point, and told him so, because I felt he was being very uncivil with administrators who were less trigger happy than him, but then I saw the ED page, and softened my tone somewhat.
• This edit was a slight mistake, I thought the policy was slightly more lenient than it is. Images aren't my speciality, and I doubt I'll do much administrative work concerning them, but I've carefully read through the relevant pages so as not to be caught out again. However, I still don't think putting hidden tags into articles is the right way to do things.

General comments

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

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Discussion

Support

1. Beat the nom support. Have seen this candidate around a lot and have no doubts that he is knowleable of policy and sufficiently trustworthy for the mop. WJBscribe ^{-WJB talk-} 13:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
2. Beat the nom? No, please don't beat me! ... Ah, okay, I'm supposed to list my support here too, am I? Okay, so: support as per my nomination, obviously. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
3. Support --Majorly (talk) 13:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
4. Support - very good responses, especially Q3. Has good experience in the project. Insanephantom (my Editor Review) 14:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
5. Support I've seen nothing but good work from this user.--Húsönd 14:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
6. Strong support Smart, civil, with a firm grasp of both policy and community standards. An ideal admin candidate in my opinion. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
7. Support Charming answers, especially the skeletons in cupboard section. This user fills me with confidence that when he makes mistakes, he'll clear 'em up with humility and not repeat them. --Dweller 15:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
8. Support for many, many reasons. A shoo-in. Guy (Help!) 15:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
9. Support Admire the openness of the candidate. Seems, above all, approachable. Bubba hotep 15:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
10. Support Looks good with constructive edits in all of the main areas. (aeropagitica) 15:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
11. Support. Seems reasonable, don't see why not. Coemgenus 15:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
12. Support - Comes across as a reasonable person — Lost^(talk) 16:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
13. Support good contribution and good answers to the questions. PeaceNT 16:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
14. Support definitely trustworthy. I like the answers. ← ANAS ^Talk? 16:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
15. Support. Has my trust. - Tragic Baboon (banana receptacle) 16:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
16. Support as a very constructive editor, and seems very trustworthy. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 17:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
17. Support - an excellent candidate for the mop... Addhoc 17:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
18. Support. Good answers, the right attitude, and a solid track record. No worries at all. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
19. Support Solid contributor. --A.Garnet 19:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
20. Support per above :). Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
21. I'm Mailer Diablo and I approve this message! - 20:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
22. Sure. Kusma (討論) 21:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
23. Support per above --HIZKIAH (User • Talk) 22:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
24. Support. Michael 22:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
25. I looked at some of the AfDs were a part of or nominated. If you can keep a cool head in THOSE crazy ones (The kurdish one looked insane from the third I read), then there's no way you'll be a problem. Support.

Oppose

Neutral