Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/RobertMfromLI

RobertMfromLI

Voice your opinion on this candidate (talk page) (7/4/1); Scheduled to end 03:10, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Nomination

RobertMfromLI (talk · contribs) – I am happy to present RobertMfromLI for consideration as an admin. Robert has been editing Wikipedia for almost two years and has racked up about 4200 edits. While this might be considered a bit low, the reason I'm nominating him is that he tends to have a calming presence in disputes. The first time I ran into him was when he was making edits to Star Trek: Phase II (fan series), prior to which he disclosed his involvement with the series on his user page. When I reminded him of our COI policies, he accepted with good grace that it was an attempt to avoid future issues, rather than an accusation of current issues. He has continued to assume good faith when working with other editors, and I think that's a characteristic we need more of in the admin corps. He has mentored other editors, and helped get an article to GA status. He even tried to mediate between Doncram and Blueboar, and was doing a decent job keeping them on track before external events overtook them.SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I hereby accept this nomination, with thanks. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 03:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

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

A: I would hope to be able to assist with the administrative backlog, help at AN/ANi, continue helping with vandalism, and assist in pointing new or inexperienced users in the correct direction when they make silly mistakes that might otherwise put them in situations where they get scared away. Yes, the last two do not require a mop (and I enjoy doing both), but I think it doubly important (especially the last one) for an admin.

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

A: I've help successfully mentor a few adoptees, one of which[1] I helped rescue from his third[2] run-in at ANi and still communicate with to this day.[3]. I have also helped assist other mentors with such adoptees[4]. I think (though of course the community should be the judge of it) that I have (in numerous topics) been very good at separating any COI or biases I may or may not have from my editing and comments. One example is here[5] where I made the content match the sources (even though I knew the figures were wrong, and I could simply have updated the sources or disseminated the info to other sources - but it's verifiability>truth). I believe I also do a good job in defusing what sometimes are hostile or tense situations.

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 cannot say I've gotten into any real conflicts over editing. To date, Wikipedia has not stressed me out, nor do I expect it to - I manage a very diverse team of cast and crew for Star Trek Phase II (sometimes upwards of 150 people); if that doesn't stress me out, I suspect Wikipedia won't either. ;-)

Additional question from RobertMfromLI

4. How do you think your lack of article creation or extensive edits will affect you carrying out the duties of being an admin?

A: Since I know this will probably come up, I figured I would ask and answer it. While I have not created any article on Wikipedia, and haven't done extensive work on any, I am very experienced with such (I've written about 50% of the content and copy edited about 80% here[6][7]). But, on the other hand, I am also very slow at it. So, on Wikipedia, I would rather concentrate on what I can bring to the table, instead of concentrating in areas that other editors are better qualified at (being both excellent writers and far quicker than me). Thus, my knowledge and understanding of content creation isn't lacking... I simply realize that this isn't a competition and there are people better suited to such a task.

Additional question from Salvio giuliano

4. As an admin, what would you do if you stumbled upon the following articles: [8], [9] and [10]?

A: Hi, thanks for the question. #1 I would PROD, and not tag as A7 (though it might not meet Wikipedia's standards for notability, a credible claim of notability has been made). #2 I would tag A10 for speedy (duplicates an existing article). #3 would also get an A10. Under the assumption that neither #2 or #3 had dupes existing, I would place maintenance tags on them, check the creator's history/contributions and account age, and if a new account, I would welcome them using an appropriate message or template that provided them links to tips and help to get a better handle on how to make and improve a Wikipedia article. Something like this[11].

General comments

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

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

Discussion

• Normally we don't begin discussion or even transclude the request before the candidate has answered the standard questions. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• RobertMfromLI's editing stats are now on the talk page. Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 03:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Support

1. Support, obviously. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 03:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
2. Support, in-obviously. jorgenev 04:34, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
3. Per nom; I have a great deal of respect for Sarek and implicitly trust this candidate. --John (talk) 04:38, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
4. I first came across Rob in the AJona situation, which I thought he handled fairly well despite his adoptee being very stubborn initially. His mentorship seems to have been invaluable in turning AJona into a useful editor. Rob will benefit from the tools. StrPby (talk) 05:05, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
5. Support Yes please. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 06:12, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
6. Support. I had a few doubts regarding your CSD tagging (due to the following articles: [12], [13] and [14] — though this was one was deleted —), but I like your answer to my question, so I'm supporting. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 08:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
7. Support See no reason to oppose - give the man a mop! Brookie :) - he's in the building somewhere! ^(Whisper...) 08:34, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

1. 800 article edits, 0 articles created. Seems like a class act of a guy, but simply inexperienced with Wikipedia content. Townlake (talk) 05:38, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   Townlake, I thank you for your vote and constructive criticism. While I thought I'd addressed it adequately (including links to examples) in Q4, I do understand that many editors here look for solid content creation on Wikipedia. The only difference I saw in my content creation elsewhere and here is wiki-markup, which I didn't consider an issue; I code (hand code) HTML, PHP, SQL, CSS, etc such as my PHP, CSS and HTML revisions turning this[15] Wordpress template into this[16]. Thus, wiki-markup is quite simple in comparison. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

2. Oppose. Most contributions seems to be in pop culture and not in traditional encyclopedia content, and the editing efforts have not been extensive. Like many other edits, this ANI intervention was not what we want from administrators, in terms of resolving disputes, of helping to focus rather than fracture discussions, and of writing clearly. Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 05:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   Kiefer.Wolfowitz, thanks for the feedback. Alas, my article edit history does not accurately portray my involvement in a large number of very diverse articles (very small number of edits across a lot of articles or consensus building and content suggestions on talk pages). I must admit, I definitely deserve for being trouted for missing a misspelling of Mjolnir, especially since I've even known the proper pronunciation since I was a kid (but, I am far from perfect and do make mistakes, which was one of the earliest things I mentioned when I set up my page). I'll endeavor to have more substantial edits in other areas regardless of this outcome, it is indeed a good point. Thanks, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   (re: your new vote) You are correct, that was not one of my best days, for which I apologize. I definitely could have chosen better wording to get across my point... though I hope my edit history would have proved that was far from the norm. Regardless, the mistake in wording was made, and I accept responsibility for it. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 06:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

3. Oppose It's a shame that I dropped my vote on this side on the RFA nomination, because RfA has been quite inactive within the past couple of days. All qualified administrators need to be calm and have some good judgement, especially when working with vandalism patrol and more importantly, ANI. At the moment, I have seen a couple of cases where you called some edits vandalism when they're actually not. [17] [18] [19] [20]. Also, I was unimpressed to see a comment like this, as part of it has a personal attack some sort of aggressive attitude like "That's reality. Live with it." for example. At the moment, you do have some good content creation under your belt and you are quite an active editor, but running for adminship though is questionable in my case. Minima© (talk) 08:57, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   (edit conflict)Thank you for your vote and comments. On #1 (unexplained content removal (against consensus) and tenditious editing), if you study the talk page archives (or that Omar2788 has been the subject of ANi for just such matters), you will be able to discern why the edit was marked as vandalism (ignored consensus and discussions at ANI). On #2, you may note that the IP (his real account) was blocked already for edits that the community (see article's talk page) deemed as vandalism. Perhaps marking it as vandalism for making the same edits the editor was blocked for, was incorrect? On #34, you will note I first marked it as a good faith edit, even though it was (citation included) a bogus claim that the citation didn't make[21]. It was after the third such edit[22] and multiple warnings that were read and erased that I marked it as vandalism. As for the comment at AN/I, you are correct, as I addressed and admitted to above. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 09:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   The three are either "blanking/illegitimate", "gaming the system" and/or intentionally (after multiple read warnings) introducing incorrect information entirely unsupported by the cites provided by the same editor (and gaming the system by doing so). And on #3, you may wish to review this[23]. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 09:31, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

   On a related note, even if you were correct, three mistakes out of roughly a thousand articles reverted AGF or reverted vandalism isn't the most horrendous of records. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 09:44, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

4. Oppose. User does not appear to be very active. Less than 100 edits in 7 of the past 12 months.--EdwardZhao (talk) 13:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I will not !vote until the general questions are answered (I find it curious that the RfA was transcluded before the questions were answered). Still neutral at this point. Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 03:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)