Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Grey Wanderer

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for adminship that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

(talk page) Final (10/16/7); Ended (candidate withdrew) 20:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Grey Wanderer (talk · contribs) - I’m happy to present Grey Wanderer as a candidate for adminship. I first became aware of Grey Wanderer as a potential administrator when I saw that he had added a request for admin coaching. Curious as to how far he had to go to an RfA, I “wannabekated him” and liked what I saw. In his ‘’year and a half of active editing’’, he has racked up a good 8,300+ edits with over 4,000 in the mainspace. Grey Wanderer has three good articles to his name (Fifth Down Game (1990), Columbia, Missouri, and Slackers CDs and Games), along with many other articles he has written (they can be viewed here).

Don’t get me wrong, Grey Wanderer is not a mainspace-only type of guy. He has a little less than a dozen reports to AIV, and a wealth of experience in deletion discussions. Perhaps his greatest contribution outside of his projectspace work is his work in the speedy deletion area. Grey Wanderer has over 300 deleted edits and will be extremely helpful if given the “delete button.”

I was also glad to see that Grey Wanderer is an active participant in several wikiprojects that he started such as WikiProject Mizzou, Wikipedia:WikiProject St. Louis and WikiProject Columbia. He also helps coordinate multiple aspects of WikiProject Missouri. This is one editor who can greatly benefit the project by becoming an admin, and I thank you for taking the time to review him. Malinaccier (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept, thank you. I withdraw my nomination. you're welcome to see why. Grey Wanderer (talk) 18:49, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

A: My most immediate and likely task would be continuing my work at WP:NPP, and taking part tagging and resolving articles in Category:Speedy deletion. Being able to view deleted articles histories would be very helpful there and it is there that I have most often wished I was able to help. I've been involved in many deletion discussions, but they where mostly on articles or topics that caught my eye. With admin capabilities I would be much more inclined to approach WP:AFD methodically and provide closure. I also plan to make myself available to the WikiProjects I work on; there is something to be said for developing a relationship with an administrator much like you would with a doctor. I keep a short list in my mind of admins I can ask to deal with vandals and page protection and would be glad be on the other side for a change. I would make use of page protection, not to cease vandalism, but more often to stop the edit wars I run across. I watch over a thousand articles and deal with repetitive vandals daily. The block feature is one I would use very selectively, as my nomination says, I have only a dozen reports to WP:AIV, because more often than not I try to turn vandalspotential contributers into Wikipedians.

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

A: My best contributions are really my work with WikiProject Missouri and its subprojects, three of which I helped found. I enjoy the collaboration I've had with other users particularly User:Americasroof, User:Me5000, User:Millbrooky, and User:DaronDierkes. Providing guidance to less experienced users and learning from those with more is probably the most helpful thing for the culture of Wikipedia as a whole. The single best content I've givien Wikipedia is probably the good article Columbia, Missouri. Getting a large article up to GA-status (hopefully FA soon!) is a lot tedious formatting and reference finding, but it has taught me the most about Wiki's mechanics.

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've been in many many conflicts, and I wasn't always right. That said, I'm particularly good at keeping cool in hot situations. Probably the single biggest conflict I've been in involved with was a naming issue with the University of Missouri, see this if you want to open that can of worms. However silly the arguments on both sides became, I tried to remain calm and logical. The only way to respond to personal attacks is with lots of Wikilove and on certain occasions a gentle link to Wikipedia:Civility. Forming consensus at the end of a long and bitter argument can make you feel affinity for you enemies. I've awarded more than one barnstar to people who I've had strong disagreements with. In the future I'll deal with stress as I always have: if I'm feeling stress I'll take a wikibreak and come back until I can behave in a calm and open minded way.

Additional question from Malinaccier

4. When patrolling speedy deletion nominations, I find that many articles are tagged incorrectly for speedy deletion. Below are copies of some actual articles. Has each article been tagged correctly? If not, please explain how you would handle it. (The names and titles may have been changed for BLP concerns.) (Also, this question was stolen directly from TravisTX)

a. Sam Jones

A: The G1 tag is obviously not appropriate, the prose is understandable even grammatically improper. A much better choice would be A7 people because there are no reasonable assertions of notability, examples of unreasonable assertions present are "because he is awesome" and "_is the greatest kid of all time."

b. Rob smith

A: Here the G1 tag is not appropriate. The article is not nonsense, but more likely vandalism, especially because it appears disparage the subject. A G3 tag would be better.

c. Aliens on earth

A: The G1 tag is appropriate. The article jumps from aliens to paleoseismology, and long term forecasting of earthquakes, staying on not topic for more than a few sentences. Some of the content appears meaningful but after closer examination no reasonable person should b expected to make any sense of it. (per Wikipedia:Patent nonsense)

Optional question from Keepscases

5. Assume you come across an editor who seems somewhat mentally disabled. He or she repeatedly adds nonsense to articles and breaks copyright laws and Wikipedia policies...but all signs point to no malicious intent whatsoever, just a seeming inability to make constructive edits. As an administrator, how would you recommend that this situation be handled?

A. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Keepscases (talk • contribs) 15:20, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the editor continued added nonsense to articles after being warned more more than four times, I would find it hard to not construct that as malicious intent. However if, as you say all signs point to no malicious intent, I would watch his talk page, and review his edits trying to offer guidance on how to improve his editing and reverting inappropriate edits. I would never recommend blocking somebody I don't think has malicious intent.

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

• Links for Grey Wanderer: Grey Wanderer (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

---

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

1. Support. As nominator. Malinaccier (talk) 03:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2. Weak Support. Indeed you have made a few mistakes in tagging articles for speedy deletion, but nobody is perfect. You have been around for a long time and have done quite a bit of mainspace work. I'd prefer to see some more experience in the Wikipedia namespace, your AFD contributions look like this or this, so they're not the best. So, I'd prefer a bit more experience in admin-related areas, but I trust making you an admin would be a net positive. Useight (talk) 03:20, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
3. Support I am particularly impressed by the quantity and quality of articles that you created. Ecoleetage (talk) 04:01, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
4. Weak Support I see no issues, but as Useight said, I would like to see more Wikpedia mainspace. America69 (talk) 04:19, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
5. Support The user is a great asset to WP. A read over of his talk page shows a general pattern of civility and he seems to know his way around at least. The users in the oppose section do bring up valid points but a few CSD tags declined out of 135+ is not that bad and while the user does show some inexperience with the A7 criteria RFA is a great learning experience and I expect the user will have the correct use of A7 hammered into his head by the end of this RFA. (something I would like to add to the opposer's however is just because an article is later deleted at AFD does not mean a SD tag was correct as this seems to indicate you believe). In short per useight. -IcewedgЁ (*bleet*) 05:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
6. Support. I'd reccomend that you review WP:CSD a bit more before being given the delete button, however. Still, the pros outweigh the cons immensely, and I cannot oppose for this; just make sure you know fully what you're doing before you do it. :-) --Mizu onna sango15/^Discuss 05:58, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
7. Support.Great candidate indeed. I like his work with good articles, very good with AIV, has an understanding for adminship, racked up a amazing amount of edits in his short time here(and there not just any old edits, these are vey good edits), a great candidate who I whod like to see as a admin.Gears Of War 14:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
8. Support Though in light of the concerns raised in the oppose section, I would reccomend being a little more cautious with the delete button; I'd like to not see many issues raised at DRV in regards to this candidate. CrazyChemGuy (talk · contribs) 17:43, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
9. Support Although CSD's seem to be a problem, and I have the same problem, everything else looks good to me. Leonard^(Bloom) 01:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
10. Support. Your edit of Columbia, Missouri from average Wikipedia quality to printed-encyclopædia quality is nicely done. As for speedies: when in doubt, I recommend using {{prod}} instead. Bwrs (talk) 18:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. Weak Oppose - If only for [1] and [2]. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 03:09, 26 June 2008 (UTC)Changing to Strong Oppose based on these special contributions. You seem to be extremely trigger happy with CSD tagging, and those articles that ultimately were not deleted were just plainly tagged wrong. I'm sorry, but I don't trust this user to work at CSD. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 07:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

   Yes, I had some doubt about that one, the deciding factor for me was that I couldn't find anything on google, is wasn't sourced, and it was created by friend of the articles subject, according to this edit summary. Grey Wanderer (talk) 03:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

   In theory A7 should have nothing to do with what you find on Google or COI; it is always good to check Google to see if the article can be expanded so it does not meet the criterion but A7 is based solely on whether the article has an assertion of notability not on what outside sources say about the notability, because lack of notability is not a CSD. -IcewedgЁ (*bleet*) 04:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

2. Oppose When considering whether or not to support someone I look for three things. I look to see if they will actively use the tools, if they will misuse the tools often, and I look to see if there attitude is fit for the role. Out of these three the most important is the second one. After quickly looking at your contributions I noticed you tagged 16 articles for speedy deletion. Out of these 16 times you made 4 mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, and the issue isn't that you have made a mistake, but making a mistake 1/4 of the time is a little bit to much for an admin. BTW, I really wish I could support you, and I hope you become an admin someday, but I don't feel comfortable supporting someone who may make a mistake with the tools 1/4 of the time.--SJP (talk) 04:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

   Actually, I found 135 deleted articles/pages/images that had been tagged for speedy deletion, so candidate is clearly on the way. Just needs more experience. Dlohcierekim 05:17, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

   I'm just talking about articles he has tagged as violating WP:CSD during his last 1000 edits:-) Also, I agree he has potential, but is ready for the tools yet. I don't like opposing good faith editors, but I just can't this user to appropriately use the tools enough of the time. Grey Wanderer, please try again in 4 months if you have addressed the issues brought up here:-)--SJP (talk) 07:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

3. Oppose I'm afraid candidate is not yet ready. Does not demonstrate knowledge/understanding of speedy deletion criteria. Per Wisdom and SJP above. Misapplied CSD A7 tagging. Tagged for speedy deletion despite assertion of notability. Others may disagree, but the title gave sufficient info to identify the subject and determine notability, search for sources. Again, A7 does not apply. There are more, in less than a month's time and less than 1,000 edits. Anyone can have an off moment, or miss an assertion of notability, but I believe that there is a pattern off not readiness.I do think looking on Google before tagging is a plus, though. It's amazing what you can find, and if you can find notability or context or verifiability on Google, you can add it in.. Dlohcierekim 04:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
4. Oppose as the user has recently tagged articles for speedy deletion incorrectly.[3][4] If this user shows he understands WP:CSD however, I will happily change my vote. Anonymous101 (talk) 06:45, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
5. Oppose per User:Dlohcierekim above. While this person has been a positive to the project and I'm sure that they would not maliciously misuse the tools, the rather sloppy misapplications of CSD A7 has me worried. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC).[reply]
6. Weak Oppose per the above. The mainspace contributions are great, but I don't trust you to close deletion discussions, let alone CSDs; the examples raised above seem to suggest you think "It's a bit messy" is a valid deletion reason. – iridescent 14:14, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
7. The trigger-happy deletionism worries me. — CharlotteWebb 15:29, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
8. Oppose You're a good contributor, but there are far too many bluelinks in your CSD tagging contribs. I'm just not comfortable supporting to give you the delete button at this point. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 15:37, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
9. Oppose Per Wisdom and CharlotteWebb. Incompotent when it comes to deletion.--Koji†Dude ^(C) 15:58, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
10. Oppose - user does not meet my criteria, because of incorrectly tagging articles for CSD. I'd be glad to support later on when Grey has a better understanding of the CSD process. --Chetblong (talk) 16:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
11. Oppose: I'm sorry, you're obviously well-intentioned, but your CSD understanding is just slightly below adequate. Come back in a couple of months, demonstrating a better understanding of valid CSD criteria, and I will happily support...... Dendodge .. Talk^Contribs 19:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
12. Oppose. The candidate is an asset to the encyclopedia and may be more ready for adminship after a few more months of experience. — Athaenara ✉ 21:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
13. Oppose. The arguments for opposing above were a concern, but not enough to persuade me to do more than express a neutral opinion. Your answers to Questions 4 & 5 above swung my vote to oppose. In answering number 4, you made numerous typos and grammatical errors. Making typos and grammatical errors are understandable in editing, but become disturbing here, given that you should be striving to make the best impression you can in a request for adminship. The answer to Question 5 is at odds with WP:BLOCK, a policy designed to protect not only editors but the integrity of Wikipedia itself. Persistent copyright violation is a clear reason to block. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:50, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
14. Oppose. I'm afraid candidate is not yet ready. --Kaaveh (talk) 05:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
15. Oppose, low level of Wikipedia-namespace edits and poor answers to questions indicate a likely lack of policy knowledge. Stifle (talk) 08:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
16. Oppose - clearly you intend nothing but good and there are many worthy aspects to your contributions, but the wide-scale dubious CSD tagging combined with the expressed desire to work substantially in that area suggests to me that you need to work on your policy knowledge first. Another RfA in a few months with a lot fewer bluelinked speedy nominations in the history would almost certainly get my support - but right now I think the risk of overzealous speedy deletion isn't worth it. ~ mazca ^{t | c} 14:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral There is really nothing compelling me to Support or Oppose. I will decide after further review. Right now Neutral. America69 (talk) 03:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. Neutral; CSD issues are of some concern but otherwise looks good. --Truman the Tiger — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 07:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2. Neutral trigger happy bad, but article work ameliorates this somewhat. Still, I don't think this will pass. Good luck next time though. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
3. Neutral leaning toward support. I don't see any trust issues with your intentions, and do not expect malicious or self-serving misuse of the tools (my primary criterion). However, the CSD issues have me concerned. That's not enough to oppose, and this is otherwise a support, but for the moment, the trust isn't quite there that you won't overdelete. I reserve the right to change to support depending on how this RfA goes and how you show you grow and learn. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 17:26, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
4. Neutral. CSD tagging seems to be the issue for you, I just removed a tag on an article that had two references for a band. One reference was a feature length article about them (independent of them), the other documented one of the band member's appearance on Oprah. Your tag was an A7 non notable tag. While I think the article may not survive an afd, it is clearly not a speedy. Won't oppose for one tag, and I haven't looked further through your contribs than this. Good luck, Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
5. Neutral, this user seems overall trustworthy but some recent missteps with CSD tagging indicates a little more experience with policies and a bit more polish in terms of admin-type work may be called for before supporting. Shereth 21:59, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
6. I also agree with the CSD problems above, though opposing simply on the ground of CSD issues seems a bit harsh in my opinion. Your other edits to the project are quite nice, but since you stated that you plan to use the tools for CSD purposes, I feel a little uncomfortable with you having the tools now. I believe that once you get a better hang of CSD, you'll become a very useful admin. Please try again later when you have a little more experience. --cremepuff222 (talk) 01:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
7. Neutral Seems like a civil and generally good editor. CSD issues will block this nom, please work on them and try again 3 months. Otherwise, keep up the good work in the mean time.--Finalnight (talk) 02:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.