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#:::::Have you seen his contributions to the help desk? They are not as long as his replies here. This is an RFA, and it's really all right for the purpose. I trust that Teratornis has the tact to answer at appropriate lengths should he have to. I know he will, because he has at the help desk while addressing other people's questions. '''''[[User:Bibliomaniac15|<font color="black">bibliomaniac</font>]][[User talk:Bibliomaniac15|<font color="red">1</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Bibliomaniac15|<font color="blue">5</font>]]''''' 21:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC) |
#:::::Have you seen his contributions to the help desk? They are not as long as his replies here. This is an RFA, and it's really all right for the purpose. I trust that Teratornis has the tact to answer at appropriate lengths should he have to. I know he will, because he has at the help desk while addressing other people's questions. '''''[[User:Bibliomaniac15|<font color="black">bibliomaniac</font>]][[User talk:Bibliomaniac15|<font color="red">1</font>]][[Special:Contributions/Bibliomaniac15|<font color="blue">5</font>]]''''' 21:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC) |
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#'''Provisional oppose'''. I've never heard of you before and haven't yet looked more thoroughly into you, but on the first thing I do at any RFA, checking the candidates's talkpage, I came across [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Teratornis&oldid=279745321#Civility this thread] in which your responses ''appear'' to embody all the "bad admin" checklist: verbosity, snappiness, "I'm me, I can't possibly be wrong" supreme confidence in your own opinions, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ATeratornis&diff=269611388&oldid=269592252 this doozy], which as a piece of institutionalized ABF takes some beating. I don't see you going berserk and deleting the main page; from what I've seen so far, and from your responses on this RFA, I can quite easily see you either "do you know who I am?"-ing and belittling a good faith newcomer who disagreed with you, or burying people with simple questions in a 20kb avalanche of jargon. The sentiments of [[User:Teratornis/Should editors be logged-in users?|The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to have every article attain featured status. If this should ever happen, would we still need to allow every adolescent to edit anonymously? As the quality of an article increases, the article becomes steadily more difficult to improve further. That means the pool of people qualified to edit the article steadily decreases.]] left me fairly stunned as well – I think most people who've had any dealings with me are aware that my views on the role of minors on Wikipedia and IP editing are somewhat hardline, but "people who aren't regulars have nothing useful to add" – which is the only way I can see to read this – would be considered elitist and arrogant on Citizendium, especially coming from someone with no apparent significant article contributions themselves. – <font style="font-family: Zapfino, Segoe Script"><font color="#E45E05">[[User:Iridescent|iride]]</font><font color="#C1118C">[[User talk:Iridescent|scent]]</font></font> 22:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC) |
#'''Provisional oppose'''. I've never heard of you before and haven't yet looked more thoroughly into you, but on the first thing I do at any RFA, checking the candidates's talkpage, I came across [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Teratornis&oldid=279745321#Civility this thread] in which your responses ''appear'' to embody all the "bad admin" checklist: verbosity, snappiness, "I'm me, I can't possibly be wrong" supreme confidence in your own opinions, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ATeratornis&diff=269611388&oldid=269592252 this doozy], which as a piece of institutionalized ABF takes some beating. I don't see you going berserk and deleting the main page; from what I've seen so far, and from your responses on this RFA, I can quite easily see you either "do you know who I am?"-ing and belittling a good faith newcomer who disagreed with you, or burying people with simple questions in a 20kb avalanche of jargon. The sentiments of [[User:Teratornis/Should editors be logged-in users?|The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to have every article attain featured status. If this should ever happen, would we still need to allow every adolescent to edit anonymously? As the quality of an article increases, the article becomes steadily more difficult to improve further. That means the pool of people qualified to edit the article steadily decreases.]] left me fairly stunned as well – I think most people who've had any dealings with me are aware that my views on the role of minors on Wikipedia and IP editing are somewhat hardline, but "people who aren't regulars have nothing useful to add" – which is the only way I can see to read this – would be considered elitist and arrogant on Citizendium, especially coming from someone with no apparent significant article contributions themselves. – <font style="font-family: Zapfino, Segoe Script"><font color="#E45E05">[[User:Iridescent|iride]]</font><font color="#C1118C">[[User talk:Iridescent|scent]]</font></font> 22:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC) |
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#'''Oppose''' Too many administrators currently. [[User:DougsTech|DougsTech]] ([[User talk:DougsTech|talk]]) 22:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC) |
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Revision as of 22:16, 26 March 2009
Teratornis
Nomination
(talk page) (25/3/5); Scheduled to end 03:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Teratornis (talk · contribs) – I present Teratornis for your consideration as an Administrator. An exceptional participant, in both quality and quantity, in the endless work of aiding people to understand how Wikipedia works. He has been a significant presence at the Wikipedia:Help desk since February 2007. A look at any of the archived pages of the Help desk, or a look at Teratornis's contributions will show gentle, thorough and thoughtful responses to more than a few hundred inquiries. The thorough replies and welcoming point of view of Teratornis has a readership that is significantly larger than the particular individuals inquiring. A variety of tough-to-know-about topics there have been thought over and researched, whether technical, editorial or about Wikipedia culture. Nearly invisible corners of Wikipedia have been made visible, thoughtfully described with insight and often comprehensively. Misdirected questions have been directed, and sometimes answered.
I admire this editor for his clear interest and desire both to find out, and to share knowledge and his thinking about diverse things Wikipedia, and more significant to me, I admire the commitment that his effort reveals. He is also an editor on several other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and an administrator elsewhere on several corporate MediaWiki installations. We would have a surprisingly knowledgeable administrator from the start, if this nomination is accepted. As to the varieties of administrator Wikipedia has and could have: there is a wide range of helpful and useful things an admin can do, and that are desirable to be done. Important in any administrator's activity is rendering help, advice and perspective, and these Teratornis has done in exemplary fashion in a prominent area for two years here. As an admin, I think that the Wikipedia project would benefit from Teratornis's interests, commitment and not least his exemplary presence.
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 04:12, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
- Co-nomination by John Broughton
I'm happy to co-nominate Teratornis. I first encountered him in February 2007, when he started making valuable suggestions for improving what was then a user subpage of mine, and is now the Editor's index to Wikipedia. Later in 2007, he agreed to be a technical reviewer for my book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (now on Wikipedia in an editable version); in that role, he helped considerably to improve the book. Overall, I've been very impressed by his technical abilities, and by his commitment to Wikipedia (as evidenced, for example, by his contributions at the help desk and in creating the Editor's index to Commons). But most of all, I've been impressed by his thinking; he is thoughtful and thorough and open to other viewpoints and always looking for ways to improve things. I think he'd be a great addition to our group of admins. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
- Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:
- I accept. --Teratornis (talk) 03:18, 26 March 2009 (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 administrative work do you intend to take part in?
- A: My largest single area of activity is answering questions on the Help desk; see PrimeHunter's Rfa for some reasons why admin tools are useful there. The Help desk gets a steady stream of questions from confused beginners who don't understand why their articles were deleted, and it's difficult to give a coherent reply when I can't see the articles in question, to determine which conditional branch they are on. Replying with links to long and confusing procedures for the user is not efficient, for example, when a situation might merit userfying a deleted page, and then other Help desk volunteers can assist with improving or transwiki-ing it. Sometimes it's hard for non-administrators to make sense of a user's question, for example when the user isn't even aware of the possibility of deletion and alludes vaguely to something a non-administrator cannot find in the questioner's contributions. Other questions require administrator intervention, such as deleting unwanted images and fixing cut-and-paste moves. The Help desk has some administrators answering questions, but we always need more.
- I've been moving images to Commons in connection with my article editing. The final step in using the CommonsHelper tool is to either delete the original image from the English Wikipedia, or merely to put a {{NowCommons}} template on it. Since I am not an administrator, I can only do the latter, which presumably creates more work for some administrator to do later. I'd prefer to leave no mess for our overworked administrators to clean up.
- I don't expect to do other types of administrative work right away, although I might in the future. I've been gradually learning more about template coding, and I might like the ability to edit protected templates, although I would proceed cautiously of course. I'm less interested in deleting articles than in figuring out ways to properly inform new users of our rules, so they don't waste time starting new articles that don't have a chance.
- 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
- A: My most voluminous work is on the Help desk. While volume is no guarantee of quality, I've had enough in the way of positive feedback to at least not deter me. I enjoy finding the answers to questions I didn't know when I first read them - I have developed a deep appreciation for the size, quality, and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia's instructions. I continue to learn from the answers posted by others. I've tried to help improve the tools for answering questions on the Help desk, such as:
- The Editor's index - where I suggested some features to the primary author, John Broughton, namely: adding {{AlphanumericTOC}} templates to each letter section heading; adding anchors, to allow "See also" links to go directly to the targets, rather than to the top of the section; and adding shortcuts throughout the index to simplify linking to entries from talk pages or the Help desk.
- Search templates: {{Google custom}}, {{Google help desk}}, {{Google wikipedia}}, and {{Help desk searches}}, which link to various Google custom search forms that are useful for searching various collections of documentation relevant to editing on Wikipedia. I've assisted other editors with using these templates to set up search links on various archive collections such as the Signpost and the Village pump (although recent improvements to Wikipedia's built-in search feature have since corrected some of the deficiencies these templates filled). I also created {{Google scholar cite}}, a template wrapper for the Universal Reference Formatter by User:Smith609, a tool for generating automatic citations with {{Cite journal}}.
- Contributions to the Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer page.
- I have some article edits, mostly in topics relating to energy, cycling, military history, and science and engineering in general. I like to create navigation templates.
- A: My most voluminous work is on the Help desk. While volume is no guarantee of quality, I've had enough in the way of positive feedback to at least not deter me. I enjoy finding the answers to questions I didn't know when I first read them - I have developed a deep appreciation for the size, quality, and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia's instructions. I continue to learn from the answers posted by others. I've tried to help improve the tools for answering questions on the Help desk, such as:
- 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 involved in online activity since the pre-Web days of Usenet. I find Wikipedia to be remarkably placid and congenial compared to many other online venues I have frequented (and continue to frequent). Over the years of watching people waste their lives flaming each other to no effect, I've concluded the only productive way to approach online disagreement is to cultivate sangfroid and critical thinking. It helps to have a solid grasp of all the facts relevant to a situation, and to honestly admit when I don't. Being familiar with fallacies and cognitive biases is vital for keeping disagreements reasonable rather than emotional. Probably the closest I came to getting sucked into a content dispute was on Talk:Nadine Gordimer. I did not actually edit the Nadine Gordimer article, but I was merely commenting on an ongoing dispute, which involved many editors and expanded to fill several archive pages. It soon became clear that the opponents were not really speaking a language I understand, so I left to work on other things. I don't associate debate with "stress" - I suspect failing to enjoy debate is a result of trying to argue for things for which there is no conclusive evidence. If someone needs me to explain why I believe something, that's an activity I enjoy, although it can get tedious when I'm dealing with someone who is deeply uninformed yet strongly opinionated, and/or who arbitrarily exempts some beliefs from the need for evidence. However, such people tend not to last very long on the parts of Wikipedia I frequent. Wikipedia is as close to being a playground for reasonable people as I expect to find. I might add that wikitext markup is the richest language I have found for discussing complex ideas, thanks to the ease of linking, so I don't have to recite all the background while efficiently addressing people at all levels of knowledge on a topic.
Optional Questions from Townlake
- 4. Looking back on it now, after several days, do you believe your contribution here was helpful?
- A. Thanks for taking the detailed look at my editing record. I appreciate the scrutiny. I hope the community isn't going to let me waltz right in without some tough questions, and I hope I stand up better than Sarah Palin did to Katie Couric. (By the way, do people gamble on these RfAs?) As to whether my reply helped the questioner, unfortunately we cannot readily know, and as I stated above, I try hard not to form beliefs in the absence of evidence. The only person who can tell us whether my reply was helpful is the person who asked for help, and since the questioner posted under an I.P. address, we have no straightforward way to get useful feedback. I can report from my own experience that reading multiple points of view has always helped me, and I'm pretty sure it will help anyone else who is brave enough to try it. Lots of people self-report as having been greatly helped by reading the book whose Wikipedia article I linked to (if that book is not worth reading, why would we have an article about it?), and even readers who aren't convinced by Richard Dawkins' polemic need to know their enemy. Why wouldn't religious believers be as open to criticism as I am being open to criticism right now? I welcome criticism, even from people who try to exempt their own beliefs from questioning. In light of my lengthier discussion on my user talk page, I later realized that I might have pointed out to the questioner (who stated concern over his or her salvation based on the writings of Finis Jennings Dake) that Dake's writings are controversial even within the boundaries of his own Premillennial Dispensationalist sect. Thus one hardly needs to swing the heavy hammer of Dawkins to call Dake's views into question; the lighter touch of a Cyrus Scofield would suffice to broaden one's mind, and soothe the fear of eternal damnation one might get by taking Dake's eschatological charts as if they bear some relation to reality. If someone expresses a fear of leprechauns on the Help desk, I would answer similarly - first let's make sure leprechauns really exist, and then we can fear them. In any case, I do admit to being human and occasionally poking a bit of fun, so when people stumble into the Help desk, don't read the instructions at the top of the page, and ask wildly off-topic questions, it gets hard to stay in character. I might get a little Sam Kinison now and then, but I try to restrain myself when I start typing. Let's be honest here - when someone can't read and follow a few lines of simple instructions on the Help desk, what are the odds of that person going on to write featured articles? We all make mistakes, but come on. There are schoolchildren who can easily figure out, on their own, what belongs on the Help desk. To master Wikipedia requires the ability to read and digest hundreds of pages of dense, mind-numbing instructions. If someone can't grasp the first four lines pretty quickly, they might have a very long and bumpy road ahead of them here. Even so, with enough determination, they might succeed - and a determined person cannot possibly be bothered by some occasional very mild ribbing. --Teratornis (talk) 07:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- 5. With respect to 4., you went on at length in responding to a concern about the above edit raised at your Talk page. Looking through your current Talk page, it seems like you are often highly detailed in your replies to user questions. Do you agree with this over-simplified description of your communication style, and do you believe the style is beneficial in your interactions with new users? (I get the same way sometimes, and this isn't meant to be derogatory toward the way you interact - it's an honest question.)
- A. (I take no offense at the question even if it is meant to be derogatory. I support everyone's freedom to criticize anything they want, even my American English spelling. If I can't take some heat, I shouldn't be an administrator. And you're asking good questions.) I enjoy writing and thus I write a lot. As Mark Twain said, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one - not that I expect my inferior brand of hypergraphia to earn me similar immortality. As far as what I believe about whether my style will be beneficial to strangers I know nothing about, I try not to have such beliefs ahead of the evidence. Instead I pay attention to feedback I obtain about whether my writing did help. Some users report that I helped them; a few say otherwise; and most say nothing. If my first bold guess at what they want missed the mark, I'm often willing to try again after they clarify their question to me. I do believe that my interactions are easily worth what I'm charging for them. If someone wants to complain about help they are getting for free, they probably don't have the right attitude to last long on Wikipedia - a sense of entitlement tends to get trampled pretty soundly here. In the course of answering several thousand Help desk questions, occasionally I do make a factual mistake, which I always correct when I become aware of it - and I try to remember to thank the person who corrects me. I can confidently state that I have never knowingly lied to anyone in my interactions on Wikipedia, and I cannot recall anyone accusing me of writing untruthful things. If I write something that can be attacked on factual grounds, then by all means I want people to attack it. If they can't attack what I write on factual grounds, yet they still object, then they must be objecting to seeing some truths in writing. If we try to run Wikipedia on that principle, the project would seem doomed, because with 47,552,798 registered users and a similar number of unregistered users, There is no common sense. We can never get everyone to agree on which truths shall not be mentioned. If I have to choose between being honest vs. being liked, I will choose honesty. (I might make an exception if I'm talking to a supermodel, in which case I will say whatever it takes to keep her talking, and hopefully laughing.) I've read psychologists who find that the most popular people are often the best liars, and my life experience certainly supports this by counterexample. However, on Wikipedia the desire to hear comforting untruths doesn't really work, in light of how all our edits are subject to merciless editing by other people. It's hard to keep pretending when we see our articles getting deleted. Thus I think Wikipedia attracts - and favors - the kind of person who craves truth, even of the mildly discomforting variety. I treat new users as if they are truth-seekers, because I don't want to mislead them about what they are in for if they choose to stick around. I try to make my approach reflect, as accurately as possible, what Wikipedia is all about. It's all about what I'm experiencing right now - having large numbers of clever strangers taking my measure, judging my work, and telling it to me straight. --Teratornis (talk) 07:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
General comments
- Links for Teratornis: Teratornis (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
- Edit summary usage for Teratornis can be found here.
Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Teratornis before commenting.
Discussion
- Editing stats posted at the talk page. –Juliancolton Talk · Review 03:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Support
- Strong support Wizardman 03:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong support. Extremely helpful. Definitely the type we want as an admin. bibliomaniac15 03:28, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Weak Support I've found Teratornis to be helpful, diligent, and without the inflated ego of some of us more delusional editors. Also, at the time of this writing, Teratornis has exactly 10,000 edits. IT IS A SIGN. FlyingToaster 03:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- I'm changing to weak support. I think Teratornis is a great user and will make a great admin, but I think neuro and others have a very valid point - these huge block-of-text answers to relatively simple questions really aren't helping communication in the project, and they will probably hinder new users. It's something Teratornis can surely work on, but I did want to throw in two cents and say "please don't do that, it's quite important." FlyingToaster 17:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong Support Per FlyingToaster. Also seems to be interested in green energy, which is a plus. :) -download | sign! 03:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Since you mention the subject, I have notes about my interest in clean and dirty energy (guess which kind I buy) at User:Teratornis/Energy, and see my image uploads at Commons:User:Teratornis/Gallery. --Teratornis (talk) 04:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- NuclearWarfare (Talk) 04:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support - Always helpful and will humbly use the tools. --CapitalR (talk) 04:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support No problems here, nice answer to Q3. Good luck! Pastor Theo (talk) 04:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support Why not? - Fastily (talk) 04:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support no reason to oppose fr33kman -s- 04:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support - No concerns. EdJohnston (talk) 04:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support It seems clear that the net effect on the project of the candidate's being sysop(p)ed should be positive. Joe 04:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong support. Oh yes, he is always so accurate and thorough (that's besides the excellent sense of humour). -- Mentifisto 05:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support. More edits to the help desk than I have to the whole project, wow. That's the kind of helpfulness we need in admins. Cool3 (talk) 05:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Support Seems fine.--Caspian blue 06:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)Moved to Oppose because of the candidate's overreaction to the Push the button's criticism.--Caspian blue 15:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support Brilliant user, liked his answers :).— Oli OR Pyfan! 07:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong Support Would absolutely love to see this user as an admin. They seem so helpful and is the type of person I want to see as an admin - Nz26 | Talk | Contribs 09:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support - I'm extremely impressed with this user's contribs, and I'm extremely confident that they'll be a good admin. Xclamation point 10:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support - I have been very impressed with Teratornis' help desk work. I cannot speak for other editors there, but when I see that Teratornis has answered a query, I consider the matter closed. His answers are in-depth, knowledgeable, and have an abundance of helpful links contained with in them. Others may feel that his answers are confusing, I feel that they answer the explicit question as well as the other questions that would arise from the line of inquiry. TNXMan 11:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support; no reason to suggest he wouldn't be a good admin. Ironholds (talk) 15:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support per Xclamation point. Amazing work! LITTLEMOUNTAIN5 review! 15:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Co-nominator support (belatedly). Yes, sometimes he's a bit wordy, but adminship is about trust, not conciseness. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:21, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support justification on why tools are helpful for trusted help desk regulars seems correct; won't misuse the tools; and the opposes really haven't come up with anything convincing. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support No issues. America69 (talk) 18:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support. Immensely helpful user with a great knowledge of Wikipedia's operation and some very smart answers to the questions. Your ability to comprehensively help confused new users is a virtue, I have absolutely no problem with your lengthy answers. ~ mazca t|c 19:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support. I don't have a problem with the candidate's occasional long answers (grin), especially since they're generally such good answers, but they do bring up the issue of whether the candidate has something to prove that's going to interfere with his admin duties. My guess is no, so I'm supporting. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 20:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Support - trustworthy editor. In my humble opinion the concerns raised aren't enough to oppose. PhilKnight (talk) 20:40, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Very helpful presence wherever he goes, Teratornis will do wonders with the mop. :) Master&Expert (Talk) 21:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong support. Just become some are editors and don't like to read long blocks of text is no reason for an oppose at all. Bsimmons666 (talk) 21:48, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Oppose
- Oppose Moved from Support per the candidate's overreaction and sarcastic comment toward pushthebutton' criticism. (It's good to get the first nonfavorable feedback. The early returns seemed a little too good to be true. Even in my wildest fantasies I'm not that good.) In my view, good communication skills and somewhat thick skin toward "healthy criticism" are required for good administrators, but the lengthy rebuttal make me rethink about my vote. --Caspian blue 15:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Strong oppose I feel the user has bad communication skills, here and here. Orange Mike complained that a comment Teratornis made was offensive towards relgious people. Rather than say sorry, Teratornis wrote 854 words justifying his comment and claiming religion is nonsense. Now, making an occasional mistake and insulting somebody is fine, but then attempting to justify that comment and not acknowledge that what you said was insulting when someone complains of feeling offended is awful. Oh, and on your next run basic civility isn't enough. An admin should actually be nice, able to "win friends and influence people", not just be able to avoid fights. I expect drasticically more regard for other people's feelings next time round. Nobody lives more than once and we're all currently dying, so every second someone spends experiencing a negative emotion is a second of their lives wasted. Don't be the one who loses them a second.--Pattont/c 16:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Should people interpret your comment "Nobody lives more than once" as an offense to those who believe in reincarnation? I would expect not, but to simultaneously slam someone for allegedly "claiming religion is nonsense" and offhandedly disregard firmly held religious beliefs of others seems a little like the pot and kettle. IMHO. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- There's a big difference between directly engaging a user over a controversial topic and having comments about another topic overanalysed. I think Orange Mike's and Patton123's critique is valid. FlyingToaster 18:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- You and I disagree, our own Reference desk guidelines page notes: "Responses are not deemed to be inappropriate as long as they are relevant to the question." When someone is asking a religious question and one answerer says ask your spiritual advisor, it is not inappropriate to direct them to an opposing viewpoint. If a person wants to know whether the U.S. government tortures prisoners in Guantanamo it is as appropriate to send them to Amnesty International as it is to the U.S. gov't's website. WP is not censored, and NPOV applies. Whether there is a God (or Gods) or not, and whether God is in accord the Judeo-Christian-Muslim conception or not is obviously not universally agreed-upon -- there are probably some faiths that discourage their members from even reading the translation of the Bible that the questioner mentions, that doesn't mean the questioner deserves no answer or merely a one-sided one. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Read the actual oppose. The issue isn't that he did it (well, the main issue) but that when confronted with something fairly obviously offensive to certain groups he chose to soapbox rather than 'fess up and apologise. Ironholds (talk) 18:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed, however, the other issue is important too. Wikipedia guidelines aside, I also don't think it's right to give a person who is obviously having a spiritual crisis an opposing viewpoint and say "read up." Even on Wikipedia there's a place for good debate and critique about important topics, but when someone is at the point of questioning their salvation, it's not the time to give them Dawkins. Not something I'd oppose over, and thus I didn't, but editors who can handle the real human issues here alongside the guidelines get my kudos. FlyingToaster 18:44, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Again, to quote the same page, "We understand that some responses about very controversial subjects, or any discussion of what some may consider "taboo" subjects, are more likely to offend some people than discussion of other subjects. This is unavoidable. Responses are not deemed to be inappropriate as long as they are relevant to the question. However, we take special care to treat potentially offensive subjects with sensitivity, diligence, and rigor. Further, we never set out deliberately to offend, and we endeavor to quickly remove needlessly offensive material in questions or responses." To oppose on this basis would seem to not WP:AGF, in that it is an accusation that pointing to a viewpoint contrary to the one we assume is the questioner's is meant to offend? If someone is having a sprititual crisis, we shouldn't give them Dawkins? Really? Who is approved? L. Ron Hubbard? Mary Baker Eddy? The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church? The Book of Mormon? Who gets to decide what WP's official response to spiritual crises is? What is WP's official religion? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed, however, the other issue is important too. Wikipedia guidelines aside, I also don't think it's right to give a person who is obviously having a spiritual crisis an opposing viewpoint and say "read up." Even on Wikipedia there's a place for good debate and critique about important topics, but when someone is at the point of questioning their salvation, it's not the time to give them Dawkins. Not something I'd oppose over, and thus I didn't, but editors who can handle the real human issues here alongside the guidelines get my kudos. FlyingToaster 18:44, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Read the actual oppose. The issue isn't that he did it (well, the main issue) but that when confronted with something fairly obviously offensive to certain groups he chose to soapbox rather than 'fess up and apologise. Ironholds (talk) 18:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- You and I disagree, our own Reference desk guidelines page notes: "Responses are not deemed to be inappropriate as long as they are relevant to the question." When someone is asking a religious question and one answerer says ask your spiritual advisor, it is not inappropriate to direct them to an opposing viewpoint. If a person wants to know whether the U.S. government tortures prisoners in Guantanamo it is as appropriate to send them to Amnesty International as it is to the U.S. gov't's website. WP is not censored, and NPOV applies. Whether there is a God (or Gods) or not, and whether God is in accord the Judeo-Christian-Muslim conception or not is obviously not universally agreed-upon -- there are probably some faiths that discourage their members from even reading the translation of the Bible that the questioner mentions, that doesn't mean the questioner deserves no answer or merely a one-sided one. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- There's a big difference between directly engaging a user over a controversial topic and having comments about another topic overanalysed. I think Orange Mike's and Patton123's critique is valid. FlyingToaster 18:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Should people interpret your comment "Nobody lives more than once" as an offense to those who believe in reincarnation? I would expect not, but to simultaneously slam someone for allegedly "claiming religion is nonsense" and offhandedly disregard firmly held religious beliefs of others seems a little like the pot and kettle. IMHO. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose Conciseness is mandatory in an admin. Life is too short for such prolixity. I'm open to changing this if Teratornis makes a commitment to be terse in any admin-related communications. Looie496 (talk) 17:40, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Either that's meant to be a bit cryptic, I'm stupid or that rationale makes little sense. Help? GARDEN 20:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Lemme see if I can help clear up the point. Per Q1-5. Xclamation point 20:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- His longest response was 23 lines. I understand the concern ... maybe this guy has forgotten that it's not all about him, that we all have busy days. Except ... this time, it is all about him, because it's his RFA and we need enough to judge him by, so a response of that length seems appropriate to me. He spends all day giving shorter answers at the Help Desk. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 20:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- On AN or ANI verbosity like that is deadly. It's okay on the Help Desk where you have one reader, but not for admin communications. Looie496 (talk) 21:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Have you seen his contributions to the help desk? They are not as long as his replies here. This is an RFA, and it's really all right for the purpose. I trust that Teratornis has the tact to answer at appropriate lengths should he have to. I know he will, because he has at the help desk while addressing other people's questions. bibliomaniac15 21:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- On AN or ANI verbosity like that is deadly. It's okay on the Help Desk where you have one reader, but not for admin communications. Looie496 (talk) 21:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- His longest response was 23 lines. I understand the concern ... maybe this guy has forgotten that it's not all about him, that we all have busy days. Except ... this time, it is all about him, because it's his RFA and we need enough to judge him by, so a response of that length seems appropriate to me. He spends all day giving shorter answers at the Help Desk. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 20:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Lemme see if I can help clear up the point. Per Q1-5. Xclamation point 20:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Either that's meant to be a bit cryptic, I'm stupid or that rationale makes little sense. Help? GARDEN 20:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Provisional oppose. I've never heard of you before and haven't yet looked more thoroughly into you, but on the first thing I do at any RFA, checking the candidates's talkpage, I came across this thread in which your responses appear to embody all the "bad admin" checklist: verbosity, snappiness, "I'm me, I can't possibly be wrong" supreme confidence in your own opinions, and this doozy, which as a piece of institutionalized ABF takes some beating. I don't see you going berserk and deleting the main page; from what I've seen so far, and from your responses on this RFA, I can quite easily see you either "do you know who I am?"-ing and belittling a good faith newcomer who disagreed with you, or burying people with simple questions in a 20kb avalanche of jargon. The sentiments of The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to have every article attain featured status. If this should ever happen, would we still need to allow every adolescent to edit anonymously? As the quality of an article increases, the article becomes steadily more difficult to improve further. That means the pool of people qualified to edit the article steadily decreases. left me fairly stunned as well – I think most people who've had any dealings with me are aware that my views on the role of minors on Wikipedia and IP editing are somewhat hardline, but "people who aren't regulars have nothing useful to add" – which is the only way I can see to read this – would be considered elitist and arrogant on Citizendium, especially coming from someone with no apparent significant article contributions themselves. – iridescent 22:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose Too many administrators currently. DougsTech (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Neutral
- Neutral - I'm sorry, but I don't share the view that all of his help desk answers are actually, well, helpful. Take this one, as an example (not a permanent link). The first answer, from ukexpat (talk · contribs) pretty much answers the OP's question - maybe a little on the brief side, but it's there. Teratornis' answer, however, would just leave a newbie scratching their head saying "WTF? That may be an answer to some question, but not the one I asked". His contributions to the Help Desk are littered with examples like that, and if people want I'll dig out more. They're verbose, frequently obtuse, and as a net result somewhat counter-productive. The Help Desk is not the place for long expositions on what Wikipedia is or isn't, or philosophical tracts on any number of topics - it's for people to get answers to their questions about how to use it. All too often in his longwinded (although well-motivated, I have no doubt) replies, Teratornis forgets that. If that same approach is extrapolated out to administrative actions, and there's nothing to indicate that it wouldn't be, then I cannot see that it is conducive to being a good administrator - clarity and conciseness are two of the attributes that I look for in an administrator and their dealings with others, and I don't believe that Teratornis would display those. pushthebutton | go on... | push it! 08:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- (It's good to get the first nonfavorable feedback. The early returns seemed a little too good to be true. Even in my wildest fantasies I'm not that good.) It's interesting that you contrast my reply with ukexpat's, since he has written favorably about my Help desk work, although he would probably agree I kick the occasional own goal like anyone else. In the example you give, the questioner gave no feedback on whether she found either answer helpful. And yet you are telling us, with quotes, what she "would" think. Your speculation is certainly plausible, probably an accurate projection from what you needed when you were a new user, but other speculations are also plausible. I don't know about you, but strangers have always surprised me; no two have been the same. Judging from the number of wars raging around the world, not to mention my attempts at a social life, it seems that predicting the responses of strangers is difficult for lots of people. As far as whether I addressed the questioner's question, she asked: "Why is it so difficult to add something to Wikipedia???" The first response ignored that question, which is inescapably a philosophical question, and came with three question marks for emphasis. I attempted to answer the question, without repeating what the first response did answer. My response was only a guess, because the questioner did not provide enough detail for us to know exactly what was confusing her. She said she "read all the instructions," but that probably isn't quite true as I haven't managed to read all the instructions in three years. Thus the question, like many questions on the Help desk, does not contain enough information to admit a precise answer. I finished by advising the questioner to read the book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual - do you find that advice obtuse or counter-productive? All the feedback I have read about that book, so far, is positive. Is it your position that there are shortcuts to learning how to create new articles on Wikipedia, from scratch, that don't get deleted? Can someone become a productive article-creator on Wikipedia without somehow absorbing a book-length volume of unguessable instructions? I wasn't just answering the question the questioner asked - I was also answering her next 500 questions, if she sticks around long enough to become productive here. I don't dumb down my Help desk replies, because Wikipedia doesn't dumb itself down for anyone - Wikipedia treats everyone like an expert user. The Wikipedia community expects everyone to know all our rules or we delete their work without mercy. If someone can't understand me, I don't think they will understand Wikipedia. Even my windiest answer on the Help desk is brief compared to our typical help page, of which we have dozens that a competent user must master. In any case, what does this have to do with my potential ability to use the administrative tools responsibly? I can use the tools to assist a new user without necessarily requiring the user to understand everything I am doing. But if anyone does want an explanation, I'll put my explanatory capabilities up against anyone's. I occasionally give one-link answers on the Help desk, although one wouldn't guess by reading my reply here. Ultimately we should have one-link answers to every repetitive question, and I've helped to provide some. --Teratornis (talk) 10:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you for the response -though were it a couple of words longer I may have been tempted to pull out tldr. Anyway, I grant you that the "WTF" is what I suspect the newbie would be left thinking, as I agree, we don't know what the OP thinks of the responses that she received. Her question about "Why is it so difficult..", however, I read as more of a rhetorical rant than an actual question, but you seem to take every part of her question, as with all the questions that you answer, as being absolute literals, when most of the time they're not.
- In any event, it's not just a question of whether you can use the tools responsibly - I don't doubt that you wouldn't run off and delete the main page ten seconds after getting the bits, and if I didn't think you could use them responsibly I'd be in the oppose column, and not the neutral column. In this, as any, RFA, though, the community is being asked if they think someone is liable to make a good administrator - as I said, clarity and conciseness are two of the attributes that I look for, and your response to my neutral !vote only serves to convince me further that they're not attributes that you sport. pushthebutton | go on... | push it! 20:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Neutral leaning oppose - Administrators need to be able to communicate effectively. The response above is a huge overreaction to a small comment, and makes me worry about what may happen if the candidate is promoted and faces more severe criticism (as most admins will at some point). — neuro(talk)(review) 15:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Neutral - Neurolysis hit the proverbial nail on the head; I've nothing more to say beyond his rationale. –Juliancolton Talk · Review 16:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Neutral. Teratornis, I believe you are trustworthy. However, I have issue with your verbose responses and reaction to criticism. I'd change my vote to Support, either at this RfA or a future one, if I were convinced your communication skills had improved. Rosiestep (talk) 20:02, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
- Came here to support, but it seems that you're not as open to criticism as I thought you were. A wonderful Help Desk-er and seems capable, but I really don't want another arrogant admin. GARDEN 20:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)