Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jerry

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

Jerry

Final (30/1/2); Closed as successful by WjBscribe at 00:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Jerry (talk · contribs) - Jerry has been editing Wikipedia for just over a year, and has made over 8,200 edits, including 3,500 to mainspace. He is experienced in admin related areas, having made contributions to nearly 200 XfD discussions, and over 50 reports to WP:AIV. He has also tagged around 40 articles for speedy deletion, and began recieving Admin Coaching in April 2007. His other work has included creating and developing the articles on McCoy (pottery), John Wesley Emerson and Patricia Racette. Jerry is a friendly and polite user, and would make an excellent admin. Epbr123 (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

I am honored to be nominated and believe that the sysop tools would be useful for me to enhance my contribution to the project. I accept the nomination and am open to the feedback I will receive through this process, regardless of the outcome. JERRY ^talk _contribs 00:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

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: At the start, I would expect to help mostly with the “mop and bucket.” That is, helping out with the various backlogs, such as uncontroversial Images for Deletion, recent changes patrolling, blocking vandals, and protecting pages, etc. I would move cautiously into other areas such as speedy deletions, user blocking, and the like. I would make sure that I fully understood how to use a new tool before 'just trying it'. I realize that there is a wealth of information in the Wikipedia:Administrators' how-to guide and the Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list, which I will take advantage of as needed. I have lots of experience with a mop, (or “swab” as they called it in my Navy days). I have experience with dealing with a variety of people in a civil manner, not only here on wiki, but also as a moderator/ sysop/ admin in other global technologies, ie: Napster, IRC, forums, etc.

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

A: I am very proud of the many pages that I salvaged from the chopping block. I disapprove of articles being nominated for deletion solely because they are poorly written. I have many times taken on an article as a personal project, even though I initially had no knowledge or interest in the subject, and got them sourced, wikified, and made useful to the reader, including adding appropriate free images, and received many compliments for doing so (many from the actual deletionist nominators!) I am also proud of the many less-than-stub articles that I have improved. I have not persued getting any to GA or FA, I tend to go for a large volume of article improvements, rather than concentrating on one article for months or weeks. But perhaps my best contribution to wikipedia has been my antivandalism efforts. I believe that I am very thorough in my patrols, and maximize the detection and repair of articles, and alert admins to vandals via AIV. A mop would enhance this effort.

Q - Follow-up What are the various ways of dealing with very short articles? When should they be nominated for speedy? DGG (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

A As I alluded-to in my answer above, I do not approve of deleting articles just because their current state is poor quality. Spelling errors, typo's, mis-capitalizations, grammar errors, incomplete or confusing explanations are all reasons to hit the edit button, not to nominate for deletion or !vote for deletion of an article. Your question is obviously relating to my recent CSD nomination of an article under the criteria that is 'is very small and unlikley to be expanded'. I did not do a good job of explaining what I meant in the freeform CSD template Template:db-reason that I used. I should have explicitly stated that the article has 'little or no content and no context (A1/A3)'. My belief is that the entire content of this article would be a better fit as a single sentence in another article, which I did describe on the article talk page. I do agree with the way you handled it, as I described in my reply on your talk page. What I have learned from this is that it would be better to use the more standard CSD templates rather than the one I used, as they are more easily dispositioned. Thanks. JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

We are discussing Angry black man syndrome. could you explain why it fits into A1? into A3? DGG (talk) 04:59, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

At the time I tagged it, the article provided just a pseudo-definition of the term, which was contrary to WP:NOT#DICT and WP:NOR, and a weasely statement of who uses this term and postulated why they use it, which was also totally unsourced, contrary to WP:NOR. It did give two convincing third-party sources which show comtemporary use of the term, which do appear to be valid sources. I did not see anything in the article that asserted any context for further expansion, and what was there (which did not need to be removed for the reasons above) seemed like it would be more appropriate as a single sentence addition to Racism in the United States, as I described on the talk page. I would like to point out that the main contributor and myself had a very civil exchange discussing these issues prior to your decision to deny the CSD, and it was near the point where I would have removed the nomination since the editor seemed really intent on adding to the article and convinced me that further context and content was coming, citing ghits, etc. JERRY ^talk _contribs 05:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

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 wish I could say that I have never inadvertantly irritated anyone else on wikipedia, and that I could further say that nobody has ever irritated me. But this would not be very realistic. I have had my user page vandalized, my constructive edits summarily reverted, and been called names. I try to react by being calm and polite, and when I find I am feeling irritated, I try to end the conversation under acceptable terms, and/ or take a break. Rarely I have had to ask for help from an admin to deal with somebody, unless they were really causing trouble and disrupting the project.

Optional Question From Spawn Man (talk):

4 Since May this year you've shown a decline in edit contributions (From over 1K each month to barely a couple of hundred each month). Is there any reason for this? Spawn Man ^{Review Me!} 03:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

A: I hesitated to answer this question, at first, for a couple of reasons. I'd like to first explain these reasons before answering the question, if you don't mind. First, I do not want my answer to be interpreted in a fashion that would tend to seek pity or to create an atmosphere where granting me admin provileges would appear to be 'good for me' under my life circumstances. Secondly, I would not want my life circumstances to be interpreted as preventing me from being able to contribute to the project, as would be expected of an admin. Now for the explanation...

In March of this year I went on a business trip and had some symptoms of blood in my urine. There was no pain intitially, so I did not know what to think, so I completed my trip and came home as planned. A few days later I had to leave work in the early morning to go to the emergency room with bad bleeding and extreme pain. Initially it seemed likely that I had some kind of infection, but my very dedicated and excellent doctors decided to do some follow-up tests in the several days after this. These tests revealed that I actually had cancer. My cancer required immediate surgery and follow-up care (including drugs) that really tapped my energy and ability to concentrate. This gradually improved over the course of several months, however I no longer can spend 5-6 hours a night on Wikipedia, as I had prviously. This is mostly because I have taken a look at my values in life, and realize that I must make time for some of the people in my life who I had been neglecting somewhat before. As you can see, I still spend several hours several days a week, and some activity most everyday. I do expect this will continue to be my level of contribution going forward. Thank you for the consideration and opportunity to answer your question. I should also point out that it was at this same time that I stopped using semi-automated programs to edit wikipedia. I used to use vandalproof and youcanlinkit alot. I have found that I can make more interesting and beneficial contributions by editing the manual way. So since my participation was going to be lower, I chose to go that route. For me, it is not all about the numbers, but the results. JERRY ^talk _contribs 21:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Optional Question From DGG (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

5A. I see from your user contributions you have a decided view on the use of semi-protection and other tags, for example [1] , [2],[3] Could you explain your reasoning, and the extent to which it is supported by existing policy? (I am not saying I necessarily disagree with you--I'd like to see it discussed). DGG (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A: I do have a definate opinion about large maintenance templates, protection templates and other banners at the top of our articles. To summarize my opinion on the matter, it would be best to just say that User:Shanes/Why tags are evil says it best. To give an example, I once saw an article that was tagged for speedy deletion. The article had a 'stack' of templates on it; so many that I had to use my browser vertical scroll bar to see tham, (at 1024x768 resolution). After scrolling past all these banners, the actual article was only about 2 inches tall, as a single paragraph. I looked at the templates, and realized that it had both a csd and a prod, as well as 'an editor has expressed concern' 'this article lacks sources' 'the quality of this article may not meet' and 'wikify'. It seemed like an all out attack on the poor editor who made the low-quality article, and really quite unnecessary. Fortunately, that does not happen all that often, but we do tend to have a lot of articles that bear big huge protection templates. I really dislike the ones that say "due to recent vandalism..." these seem to reward the vandals (or 'feed the trolls'). I am sure that the jerk who vandalized the article would take great pleasure seeing the protection banner, and realizing the disruption they caused is announced to the world.

As far as policy is concerned, this is really not addressed in policy, per se. There has been a lot of discussion, but nothing has reached concensus. Obviously there are folks who like the banners, and those who do not. Still others are ambivalent about them. The wikilinks in my first paragraph of this answer were essays, not policy. The relevant policy for blocking template use seems to be WP:PPOL, which merely states: "The following templates can be added at the top of an article to indicate that it is protected". It lists both the large ones (including my dreaded "due to recent vandalism" one, as well as my preferred small padlock icon version). I hope this was the kind of discussion you were looking for. JERRY ^talk _contribs 00:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

5B. Probably on a different issue, why were you subjected to an attack of fraudulent requests to have your password reset, eg. [4]. DGG (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A: The short answer to this question is: I do not know. I also don't know how common (or not) these password reset request emails are for other users. I seem to get at least one a month, sometimes several in a day. One possibility I have thought of, is that the person who initially setup the user account for this username may just be trying to login, and thinks he forgot the password. Since I acquired this username via WP:USURP, this seems a viable possibility. Another possibility is that some miscreant vandal wants to log on as me and create a mess. Either way, thankfully, the wikimedia software does not tell them the password, it just emails it to me. JERRY ^talk _contribs 22:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

6. Have you used, or do you currently use any alternate accounts to edit Wikipedia? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

A. Thanks for this excellent question. As you probably know, alternate account usage is required to be disclosed by an RFA candidate, per WP:RFA, in their nomination acceptance statement. As I described in question #5b above, I had used a previous user account name initially, which was changed by userpation. This was not 'disclosed' in my acceptance statement, because the account was merged by the crat who approved the userpation, and all of my previous edits appear in my current contributions history, and my unique account number did not change. The old user account name was User:Jerry_Lavoie. I did create several doppelganger acounts (versions of my old user name with 1's instead of the "l", 0's instead of the "O", etc. to prevent spoof editing by vandals for this user name, but these have never been used to edit article or project namespace pages. Other than that, on a very small number of occasions (about a dozen or so) I made an edit here or there while inadvertantly not logged-in. These appear as anonymous IP edits, and are all in article namespace, never in !voting situations. Generally if I recognize that this has happened, I immediately make another edit to put my username in the article history and in my contributions with some edit summary like "previous edit was by me while not logged-in". So the short answer to your question would be "no." JERRY ^talk _contribs 14:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

General comments

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

• Links for Jerry: Jerry (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/Jerry before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Support as nom. Epbr123 (talk) 00:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
2. From what I see, this is a good editor who is prepared to take the tools and put them to good use. -JodyB _talk 00:51, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
3. Support. This user has made great anti-vandalism efforts, and general article editing. Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 01:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
4. Support A good user. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 03:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
5. Support Excellent contributions and answers to questions. Well rounded, too! Master of Puppets ^{Care to share?} 05:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
6. Good answers to questions, good contributor. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
7. As above. Support — Rudget _speak.work 12:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
8. Support - good editor, good answers: relatively low number of edits recently isn't too much of a concern to me. EJF (talk) 14:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
9. Support No concerns. Seems trustworthy, mature, and civil enough for adminship. ♠TomasBat 22:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
10. Looks like another good candidate from Epbr123. Acalamari 00:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
11. Support - Jerry impressed me earlier this year with the calm, rational way he handled a heated content dispute with Theriac. In light of that experience and his ability to stay calm under fire, I feel that he would be extremely unlikely to abuse the tools. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
12. Support based on answers to questions + Kralizec!'s comment. As for 50 to 250 edits/month: I'm happy to take as many or as few as you can give us. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
13. Support - Thanks for your rather thorough medical history, but "I've been sick" would have been just as good. ;) I now have no real concerns and hope you're going well. I did like the rationale Kralizec! gave above and I feel that the way you handled that incident was admin-worthy. I have no problem now supporting. :) Cheers, Spawn Man ^{Review Me!} 03:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
14. Support Well I am not expecting 5-6 hrs of editing everyday, but quality and consistent edits work out just fine with me. --WriterListener (talk) 07:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
15. Support Jmlk17 08:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
16. Strong Support For your amazing perspective displayed in question four. Icestorm815 (talk) 07:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
17. Support. bibliomaniac15 00:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
18. Support - No danger signals. He'll do fine. The Transhumanist 00:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
19. Support - don't see any problems here, good luck. BLACKKITE 01:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
20. Support He will make an excellent administrator. JW..[ T..C ] 02:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
21. Support Deli nk (talk) 20:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
22. Support, per the nom and backlogs. Cirt (talk) 03:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC).
23. Support - No problems seen.--Sandahl 21:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
24. Support should be a good admin. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
25. Support - excellent candidate should have received more support votes. - Jehochman ^Talk 17:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
26. Support There is much to be said for proactive admins.--Bedivere (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
27. Support as we need more mature admins and Jerry seems to fit the bill (thank your contrib to Ssbohio's talk page for this). Thanks, SqueakBox 01:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)::Thanks, I have copied that discussion below Ssbohio's 'neutral' !vote, below. JERRY ^talk _contribs 02:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
28. Support.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
29. Support A decent editor, I like the answers you gave. RMHED (talk) 02:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
30. Support My concerns are allayed. No objection to granting him the tools. --Ssbohio (talk) 04:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose per 5A, which shows a lack of understanding of how and why articles are tagged. Tags for poor quality will often be followed by {{prod}} and {{csd}}, because another editor has decided that the article is not only bad, but should be gotten rid of to clear the ground for a better one. They should not replace the flaw tags; if the article is deleted, it doesn't matter what tags it had; if the article is kept (and even justified prods are often removed), the flaw tags should remain, as if the deletion requests were never made. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Neutral

Neutral - Until my question is answered. :) Cheers, Spawn Man ^{Review Me!} 03:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Changed to Support↑ Spawn Man ^{Review Me!} 03:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Neutral - I'm concerned (based on the answer to #1 above) that this editor sees adminship as containing something beyond "mop & bucket" work. I've seen too many admins who seem to believe that their mops double as flaming swords of Truth. Admins are, above all, editors, albeit with extra buttons. THe mop & the bucket are the admin tools, by & large. --Ssbohio (talk) 03:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank-you for your honest and constructive comments at my RFA. I do appreciate your concern, and recognize that it is a real problem when certain members of the community feel like they have authority or superior clout. Being a user-contributed resource, Wikipedia needs a constant stream of fresh perspective and energy. If we allow an atmosphere where new users feel like there is a hierarchy of authority obstructing their participation, we will squelch the creativity and growth of the project. I hope you can see from my reply that I do not see adminship as a shiny sherriff's badge or aristocratic symbol. I really do just want a mop to clean up the messes. JERRY talk contribs 21:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the opportunity to further explain my answer to RFA question #1, in the hope that it will be less offensive to you. My answer was intending to contrast the typical mop and bucket tools from those that require greater understanding and practice. So I was talking about two subsets of mop-and-bucket tasks, not 'the mop-and-bucket tasks from all the other administrative tasks. As I understand it, there are essentially 11 administrative tasks:

• Deleting pages and images
  • Performing Speedy deletion
  • Closing XfD and performing associated deletion per concensus
  • Ending Prod and deleting as appropriate
• Undeleting pages and images
• Merging page histories
• Performing requested moves
• Protecting or unprotecting pages and images
• Editing a protected page
• Protecting a non-existent page
• Editing the interface
• Block a user, IP or range of IPs
• Unblock a user, IP or range
• Using admin revert (rollback)

Some of these functions are really straight forward, and were in the group I was wanting to call "typical mop and bucket" functions. These are functions where as an inexperienced administrator, I would be highly unlikely to cause a worse mess by making a mistake. Yet others are likley to get messed-up, and still others have political ramifications, and generally require community concensus before taking the action. My answer was intending to say that I would forge into the former right away and wait until I fully understood the procedures and pitfalls of the latter.

I hope this is a better explanation of my mindset on the role of wikipedia administrators. JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Neutral withdrawn in favor of support. --Ssbohio (talk) 04:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Neutral I hate to oppose this as Jerry is quite a good user. But his level of activity in the last 7 months has ranged from 50-250 edits a month. Too low activity for an admin --WriterListener (talk) 17:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Changed to Support --WriterListener (talk) 06:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason for his low number of edits in recent months is explained at User talk:Jerry/Coaching. Epbr123 (talk) 18:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

1. Neutral I have no problem with low edits per month. I don't see the risk to the project of giving tools to a user who makes 50-250 edits a month. But I was kinda weirded out by the interaction (a long time ago, January) with Gurch on Wikipedia:Editor review/Jerry about notifying all editors who ever made even a trivially small edit to an article when it comes up for an AfD (this Afd, FWIW). Pete.Hurd (talk) 23:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

   I find it a little curiuos that you would bring this up as a concern. One because it was in my third month as a registered user, and second because I think it shows that I really tried to follow the policy as it was written. If you look at the AFD instructions as they existed at the time this diff, you'll notice it did not explain very well how to determine which contributors to notify. Of course, now after having so much more experience, it seems obvious to me that what Gurch was saying was reasonable. I was just taken aback at how he was accusing me of wrongdoing when my effort was at the contrary. You will note that as of this diff, some 6 months later, the policy has been updated to provide clearer guidance. The other ironic part about the incident is that it is actually a very good example of how I respond in a civil fashion when I have been proven wrong. Read the Afd to see what I mean. Anyway, thanks for your participation in my RFA, your constructive comments and concerns are welcome. JERRY ^talk _contribs 00:01, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

   Agreed, your composure and civility over the course of this interaction (and IIRC a separate one I was looking at) were pretty remarkable. That it was both a long time ago and relatively early in your history are both completely valid responses. But I think that this silliness (not all on your part, of course) arose from attempting to applying policy in an exceptionally literal and sticklerish manner. I'm more comfortable with reasonable people who know when to bend, break or ignore the rules, than I am with sticklers who will not waver from policy. Pete.Hurd (talk) 02:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

   I've considered your request on my talk page to reconsider my !vote, and have actually revisited this page a few times and thought it over in the past few days, but the more I think about it, the more I really think you may be fixated more on A) the narrow specifications of the rules than you are on B) understanding the broad theme and spirit of them. I'm really quite strongly of the opinion that WP:IAR is important, and this poses a problem for me in your case. I'm inclined more to "oppose" than "support", but wish you well in your upcoming admin-ness. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

   Thank-you for taking the time to confirm your !vote at my RFA. While I would have preferred to have no neutral !votes, I do understand your point, and if my RFA succeeds, I will work especially hard at ensuring that your concerns are addressed. I agree that the rules are meant as a guide, and that it takes bold editing and yes, sometimes the need to ignore the rules. In fact, I'd like to leave you with a little parable to demostrate your point:

   You find yourself on a sinking ship, and you jump into one of the lifeboats along with a complete stranger wearing a military uniform. As the boat is launched into the water, it hits a piece of debris and now has a small hole in it, and it is taking on water. You yell to the other guy to take off his hat and shove it into the hole. He reponds: "Protocol requires me to wear my hat at all times when in a boat." As your lifeboat sinks you wish you had gotten into a lifeboat with an irreverant rulebreaker, instead of one who blindly follows the rules. JERRY talk contribs 12:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

2. Neutral Very good WP work on detailed articles, but I am not convinced understands the admin role adequately--yet. I like to see a few months of policy/XfD experience. hint: we need more people at the "minor" XfDs, not just AfD. DGG (talk) 04:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

   Thank-you for taking the time to !vote at my RFA. I understand your point, and if my RFA succeeds, I will work especially hard at ensuring that your concerns are addressed. I agree that the minor xfd's also need attention and sometimes go unattended for too long. Your periodic feedback would be welcome and appreciated. Thanks, JERRY talk contribs 12:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

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.