Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:54, 28 May 2009

Billinghurst

Voice your opinion on this candidate (talk page) (11/0/1); Scheduled to end 13:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Nomination

Billinghurst (talk · contribs) – This is my first nomination for adminship that will be accepted (unless 76.117.247.55 has a sudden change of heart). And it couldn't be for a finer chap. As a bit of background that many will not know, he had an extensive involvement in RootsWeb for 10 years, being the employee responsible for mailing lists and list administrators, and the spam filters, was known for smacking a few heads together as required, and contributed truckloads of material to that project.

He joined English Misplaced Pages in February 2007, but didn't edit until two days before Christmas. After 49 edits here, he finds his way over to English Wikisource in July 2008 and joins the fledgling s:Wikisource:WikiProject DNB (digitising Dictionary of National Biography).

He now has 14,000 edits over on English Wikisource, has been a sysop there since February of this year (RfA), has patrolled 12,000 revisions, and his bot sDrewthbot has another 10,000 edits doing all sorts of general improvements. Please review his contribs and logs over there to gain an appreciation of his dedication and competency for the role of sysop. For those that are not aware, the majority of the admin corps on English Wikisource are admins here, including four stewards, so he rubs shoulders with experienced Wikimedians on a regular basis, and is familiar with administrative methods.

He has over 7000 edits here on English Misplaced Pages, with over 90% of those being to content. While some may consider that a negative, given his history of administrative involvement in RootsWeb and Wikisource, I consider it to be a positive. See Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/BirgitteSB for a similar RfA, which turned out successful. If you feel the need to oppose due to concerns about his ability to navigate the Misplaced Pages minefield, please ask him questions and bookmark this page. John Vandenberg 11:58, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your confidence in me Jayvdb. Happy to accept the nomination. billinghurst (talk)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Misplaced Pages as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: Continue general tidying, discouraging spamming and vandalism by agreed and accepted means. More work in {{Now Commons}} and transwiki. Thoughtful consideration of issues, and mixing with other admins to jointly advance the project. Find a niche or two where my administration skills can provide benefit, and advance the WP principles, and with the interface of WS and WP, especially where it adds to efficiencies.

2. What are your best contributions to Misplaced Pages, and why?

A: Quietly disambiguating, and bringing old works from WikiSource to Misplaced Pages. Adding crosslinks between WS and WP. Helping to import from WP to WS where the works have been identified. My skills are systems and organisation, while I can and do write, I do not see myself as the composer of A class articles. My contributions are about reflecting on the issues, and what is meant, then thoughtful and qualitative improvements.

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: No edit wars here. Some involvement with early discussions about date delinking, nothing heated.

Stress? Not worth the stress, this is about enjoyment, and advancing the project. My life skills give me the ability to reason and cope. I utilise time and space. If I cannot be civil, then I don't answer in haste. Type it in draft, get away from it, review the words and post later if still happy.

I don't do blame, I look for solutions. Consult if and as necessary. My job gives me oodles more stressful situations than WP will ever approach.

-- billinghurst (talk) 13:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Additional optional questions from S Marshall

4. Please show an edit you have made to a policy or guideline. If you have made no edits to policies or guidelines, please describe an edit you would like to make. If you feel Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines are already perfect, please say so.

A:There is no such thing as a perfect guideline, they cannot cover all situations and circumstances. So it comes to the application of the principle, and the purpose of the guideline. I cannot readily think of one specific edit at WP, though, there will be some at WS. I am consultative and would go via a talk page, and edit based on consensus.

Clarification: Do I understand correctly that you do not support any changes to any policy or guideline whatsoever?—S Marshall /_Cont 15:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

A:Policies and guidelines should be regularly reviewed, and adapted and adopted as circumstance and users require. Change is inevitable, an example is the recent licence review. I was more intimating that guidelines are not absolute and cannot be absolute, they align with the overarching principle.

Further clarification: The answer I'm seeking is, what specific changes to policy or guidelines do you yourself advocate?—S Marshall /_Cont 17:36, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

A:

Optional questions from User:Dlohcierekim that he lifted form User:Benon who got them from Tawker, JoshuaZ, Rob Church, NSLE. (And one of my own.) Nominally 100% optional, but may help myself or other voters decide. Some of these are not specifically related to your areas of interest. If I have already voted please feel free to ignore these questions though other editors might find them to be of use. You can also remove the questions you don't want to touch if you like.

5. An editor asks you to mediate in a dispute that has gone from being a content dispute to an edit war (but not necessarily a revert war), with hostile language in edit summaries (that are not personal attacks). One involved party welcomes the involvement of an admin, but the other seems to ignore you. They have both rejected WP:RFC as they do not think it would solve anything. Just as you are about to approach the user ignoring you, another admin blocks them both for edit warring and sends the case to WP:RFAR as a third party. Would you respect the other admin's decisions, or would you continue to engage in conversation (over email or IRC) and submit a comment/statement to the RFAR? Let's say the ArbCom rejects the case. What would you do then?

A-One needs to respect the decision of another admin. Any dire concern that I have with a person would usually be raised directly and privately, and in terms of understanding their POV.

6. If you could change any one thing about Misplaced Pages what would it be?

A-I would wave my magic wand and disambiguate all pages perfectly, everyone cheers and there is no argument about any change. Oh how I wish! :-)

7. Under what circumstances would you indefinitely block a user without any prior direction from Arb Com?

A-A normal user, or an account primarily super-vandal? I generally don't see myself as an account blocker and the terminator, and cannot say that I have seen that behaviour (yet).

8. Suppose you are closing an AfD where it would be keep if one counted certain votes that you suspect are sockpuppets/meatpuppets and would be delete otherwise. The RCU returns inconclusive, what do you do? Is your answer any different if the two possibilities are between no consensus and delete?

A-Closing AfDs isn't my priority at this point. At WS, we do Copyright violations and Possible Deletions, there I am looking for a clear decision, where clarity of the decision is better than a quick decision. If consultation takes longer, or another opinion is needed, so be it.

9. Do you believe there is a minimum number of people who need to express their opinions in order to reasonably close an AfD? If so, what is that number? What about RfDs and CfDs?

A-Hmm. Again not a current personal priority. As a user, I would have said that there is not a clear number, it would depend on links, variety and diversity of opinion, time open, etc. Collaboratively built, collaboratively dismantled.

10. At times, administrators have experienced, or have been close to burnout due to a mixture of stress and conflict inherent in a collaborative web site of this nature. Do you feel able to justify yourself under pressure, and to not permit stress to become overwhelming and cause undesirable or confused behaviour?

A-Most definitely. My career would demonstrate that I manage stress, a most necessary skill. WP and WS is for the personal side and fulfilment, it isn't going to be my life, or domininating it. Not being a blame-monster is always a good starting position. :-)

11.In reviewing new articles, is it better to delete an article that meets WP:CSD on sight, or to search for verifiable information with reliable sourcing that would show the subject to be notable? Does it make a difference as to which criteria the article meets?

A-Generally I would say articles submitted in good faith should be given a chance to breathe. My subjective opinion is just that, it is not the basis for an objective unilateral action. I believe my edit history would demonstrate that tolerance.

12. Is there any set of circumstances in which you would block a user without them having received a full set of warnings?

A-Yes, and have done so on WS. The Ass Pus vandal is a shining example. Created accounts solely to vandalise, and there is no good faith and never an intent for good faith.

Additional (optional) questions from Toddst1:

13.. If you came across an edit that said something to the effect of "I am going to kill myself." what would you do and why?

A:I don't think that the Q.13 or Q.14 are questions specific to this RFA process, they relate to me as a person (admin or general user). As a person, I will have a normal variability in how I would respond, available time, time of day, age of edit, IP or user account, tiredness, ability to respond, possibly even whether it is a high volume page, or my talk page. Weigh up the circumstances and the evidence.

14.. If you came across a statement of intent to commit violence - either self-directed or against or other(s) would you contact law enforcement? Why or why not and if yes, under what circumstances?

A: see A.13

Supplementary Answer: Knowing that there is specific guidance to issues of threats of violence, would have been useful. Now knowing that, I would have no qualms in following the specified direction.

Additional optional questions from Seivad

15. You have stated that you do not see yourself as a Class A composer of articles, but do you have any significant edits to articles, and are you particularly proud of any of these?

16. Other than disambiguation repair, do you do any other MOP related activities on Misplaced Pages on a regular basis, such as RCP or New Page monitoring?

Optional question from Keepscases

17. You are to be given a high-quality jacket with a snapshot of any Misplaced Pages article printed on the back, and you must wear this jacket every day for the next year. Which article do you pick, and why?

A:

General comments

• Links for Billinghurst: Billinghurst (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Billinghurst can be found here.

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Billinghurst before commenting.

Discussion

User:Neurolysis/Counters.js

Support

1. No reservations. None. Billinghurst isn't the most active candidate, but you couldn't ask for a more trustworthy and reliable one. Interactions on the English Wikisource lead me to believe he is a truly great Wikimedian. —Anonymous Dissident 13:34, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
2. Support:Seems dedicated, trustworthy & civil. Dottydotdot (talk) 13:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Support. Fully qualified candidate, no concerns. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
4. Support. Per above. Kablammo (talk) 15:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
5. Support. Contribs on WM projects show reason to trust. Xymmax _{So let it be done} 17:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
6. Support. In my experience he is reliable and I have no concerns about him.--BirgitteSB 17:26, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
7. Per AnonDiss. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 18:01, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
8. SupportCan see no reason not to. Dottydotdot (talk) 18:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
9. Support Antivenin 18:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
10. Support. User does good work, no reason to believe they'd misuse the tools. –Juliancolton |  18:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
11. Support No reason not to! America69 (talk) 18:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

Oppose: Per response to questions 13 and 14. I would expect any administrator to take some kind of action, even if if it was a quick post on ANI about a threat of violence. Toddst1 (talk) 15:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, to do what? To request a checkuser and call the police that IP X is about to commit suicide? I think there is little to nothing we can do in these cases - except reverting it as vandalism. Excirial 17:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

This is not the place to have that debate. Toddst1 (talk) 17:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Neutral: Per revision to answers to questions #13 and 14 (was previously oppose). Toddst1 (talk) 17:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)