if nominations haven't updated. |
Last updated by cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online at 16:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC) |
Requests for adminship (RfA) is the process by which the Wikipedia community decides who will become administrators (also known as admins or sysops), who are users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance. Users can either submit their own requests for adminship (self-nomination) or may be nominated by other users. Please be familiar with the administrators' reading list, how-to guide, and guide to requests for adminship before submitting your request. Also, consider asking the community about your chances of passing an RfA.
This page also hosts requests for bureaucratship (RfB), where new bureaucrats are selected.
If you are new to participating in a request for adminship, or are not sure how to gauge the candidate, then kindly go through this mini guide for RfA voters before you participate.
About administrators
The additional features granted to administrators are considered to require a high level of trust from the community. While administrative actions are publicly logged and can be reverted by other administrators just as other edits can be, the actions of administrators involve features that can affect the entire site. Among other functions, administrators are responsible for blocking users from editing, controlling page protection, and deleting pages. However, they are not the final arbiters in content disputes and do not have special powers to decide on content matters, except to enforce the community consensus and the Arbitration Commitee rulings by protecting or deleting pages and applying sanctions to users.
About RfA
Candidate | Type | Result | Date of close | Tally | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
S | O | N | % | ||||
Less Unless | RfA | Successful | 23 May 2021 | 160 | 4 | 4 | 98 |
Ashleyyoursmile | RfA | Successful | 22 May 2021 | 224 | 6 | 4 | 97 |
TJMSmith | RfA | Successful | 22 Feb 2021 | 174 | 2 | 2 | 99 |
The community grants administrator access to trusted users, so nominees should have been on Wikipedia long enough for people to determine whether they are trustworthy. Administrators are held to high standards of conduct because other editors often turn to them for help and advice, and because they have access to tools that can have a negative impact on users or content if carelessly applied.
- Nomination standards
- The only formal prerequisite for adminship is having an account on Wikipedia. However, the RfA page is restricted to editing from non extended confirmed users, so editors without an extended confirmed account may have their RfA subpage transcluded by someone who is. This is due to the community deeming that editors without the requisite experience (500 edits and 30 days of experience) are generally unlikely to succeed at gaining adminship.[1] The community looks for a variety of factors in candidates and discussion can be intense. For examples of what the community is looking for, you could review some successful and some unsuccessful RfAs, or start a RfA candidate poll.
- If you are unsure about nominating yourself or another user for adminship, you may first wish to consult a few editors you respect to get an idea of what the community might think of your request. There is also a list of editors willing to consider nominating you. Editors interested in becoming administrators might explore adoption by a more experienced user to gain experience. They may also add themselves to Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls; a list of names and some additional information are automatically maintained at Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls. The RfA guide and the miniguide might be helpful, while Advice for RfA candidates will let you evaluate whether or not you are ready to be an admin.
- Nominations
- To nominate either yourself or another user for adminship, follow these instructions. If you wish to nominate someone else, check with them before making the nomination page. Nominations may only be added by the candidate or after the candidate has signed the acceptance of the nomination.
- Notice of RfA
- Some candidates display the
{{RfX-notice}}
on their userpages. Also, per community consensus, RfAs are to be advertised on MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages and Template:Centralized discussion. The watchlist notice will only be visible to you if your user interface language is set to (plain)en
. - Expressing opinions
- All Wikipedians—including those without an account or not logged in ("anons")—are welcome to comment and ask questions in an RfA but numerical (#) "votes" in the Support, Oppose, and Neutral sections may only be placed by editors while logged in to their account.
If you are relatively new to contributing to Wikipedia, or if you have not yet participated on many RfAs, please consider first reading "Advice for RfA voters". - There is a limit of two questions per editor, with relevant follow-ups permitted. The two-question limit cannot be circumvented by asking questions that require multiple answers (e.g. asking the candidate what they would do in each of five scenarios). The candidate may respond to the comments of others. Certain comments may be discounted if there are suspicions of fraud; these may be the contributions of very new editors, sockpuppets, or meatpuppets. Please explain your opinion by including a short explanation of your reasoning. Your input (positive or negative) will carry more weight if supported by evidence.
- To add a comment, click the "Voice your opinion" link for the candidate. Always be respectful towards others in your comments. Constructive criticism will help the candidate make proper adjustments and possibly fare better in a future RfA attempt. However, bureaucrats have been authorized by the community to clerk at RfA, so they may appropriately deal with comments and/or !votes which they deem to be inappropriate. You may wish to review arguments to avoid in adminship discussions. Irrelevant questions may be removed or ignored, so please stay on topic.
- The RfA process attracts many Wikipedians and some may routinely oppose many or most requests; other editors routinely support many or most requests. Although the community currently endorses the right of every Wikipedian with an account to participate, one-sided approaches to RfA voting have been labeled as "trolling" by some. Before commenting, or responding to comments, in an RfA (especially Oppose comments with uncommon rationales or which feel like "baiting") consider whether others are likely to treat it as influential, and whether RfA is an appropriate forum for your point. Try hard not to fan the fire. Remember, the bureaucrats who close discussions have considerable experience and give more weight to constructive comments than unproductive ones.
- Discussion, decision, and closing procedures
- Most nominations will remain active for a minimum of seven days from the time the nomination is posted on this page, during which users give their opinions, ask questions, and make comments. This discussion process is not a vote (it is sometimes referred to as a !vote, using the computer science negation symbol). At the end of the discussion period, a bureaucrat will review the discussion to see whether there is a consensus for promotion.
- Consensus at RfA is not determined by surpassing a numerical threshold, but by the strength of rationales presented. In practice, most RfAs above 75% support pass. In December 2015 the community determined that in general, RfAs that finish between 65 and 75% support are subject to the discretion of bureaucrats (so, therefore, almost all RfAs below 65% will fail). However, it must be noted that a request for adminship is first and foremost, a consensus-building process.[2] In calculating an RfA's percentage, only numbered Support and Oppose comments are considered. Neutral comments are ignored for calculating an RfA's percentage, but they (and other relevant information) are considered for determining consensus by the closing bureaucrat. In nominations where consensus is unclear, detailed explanations behind Support or Oppose comments will have more impact than positions with no explanations or simple comments such as "yep" and "no way".[3]
- A nomination may be closed as successful only by bureaucrats. In exceptional circumstances, bureaucrats may extend RfAs beyond seven days or restart the nomination to make consensus clearer. They may also close nominations early if success is unlikely and leaving the application open has no likely benefit, and the candidate may withdraw their application at any time for any reason. If uncontroversial, any user in good standing can close a request that has no chance of passing in accordance with WP:SNOW and/or WP:NOTNOW. RfAs with not even the slightest chance to pass per WP:NOTNOW can be tagged and deleted under WP:CSD#G6. Do not close any requests that you have taken part in, or those that have even a slim chance of passing, unless you are the candidate and you are withdrawing your application. In the case of vandalism, improper formatting, or a declined or withdrawn nomination, non-bureaucrats may also delist a nomination. A list of procedures to close an RfA may be found at WP:Bureaucrats.
- If your nomination fails, then please wait for a reasonable period of time before renominating yourself or accepting another nomination. Some candidates have tried again and succeeded within three months, but many editors prefer to wait considerably longer before reapplying.
Footnotes
- ^ Special:PermanentLink/811541490#Extended confirmed?
- ^ The community determined this in a May 2019 RfC.
- ^ Historically, there has not been the same obligation on supporters to explain their reasons for supporting (assumed to be "per nom" or a confirmation that the candidate is regarded as fully qualified) as there has been on opposers.
Current nominations for adminship
if nominations have not updated.
Trialpears
(talk page) (140/0/0); Scheduled to end 14:43, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
Nomination
Trialpears (talk · contribs) – Today it's my pleasure to present Trialpears for consideration. Trialpears has distinguished themselves as a highly competent technical editor, running a bot and with numerous contributions to project templates. You can see they also know how to create content that is useful for our readers with their work at List of countries by Human Development Index. As good as all that is, what has stood out to me the most is their ability to keep a cool head even during contentious discussions and their willingness to be helpful to new and experienced editors. All of this combines into someone who is ready to help close and implement discussions at the understaffed Wikipedia:Templates for discussion and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. I hope you will join me in supporting them. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:57, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
- Co-nomination by Primefac
I came across Trialpears through the WP:TFD process, where they steadily built up a reputation as someone who knows how to read consensus of a discussion. They are also technically proficient, from implementing complex template mergers to writing and running PearBOT for more automated processes. As indicated by Barkeep49, I will often see Trialpears as a calm voice in the storm of TFD, giving well-thought-out opinions about the suitability (or lack thereof) of a template that has been nominated for deletion. This also indicates a solid ability to recognize the times when it is more important to join in the conversation with your opinion than it is to "push the buttons" and perform administrative tasks (i.e. I see them joining discussions just as often as closing them). As someone who gained the mop working in the more back-water areas like TFD and bot requests, I am happy to see another editor rise up and show interest and skill in these areas. Primefac (talk) 11:02, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
- Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Thank you Barkeep and Primefac! I accept. I have never edited for pay and I have only used alternative accounts for bots and testing purposes as declared on my user page. --Trialpears (talk) 14:43, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:
- 1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?
- A: I have long been a regular at templates for discussion and expect much of my administrative work to be in this area. Apart from the obvious task of closing discussions, this also includes implementing TfD decisions. That may involve deletion, updating transclusions on fully protected pages, and protecting high-risk templates. I also help out with other technical work. Sometimes more niche parts of the toolset can come in handy then, such as moving pages using AutoWikiBrowser, noratelimit, and editing the MediaWiki namespace.
- Another task that I hope to get more involved in is closing categories for discussions. This is something I already do from time to time when the backlog gets really bad. However, since non-admins don't have access to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working and the associated bot, the process is a lot slower and more cumbersome than if I were an admin. With the bit, I would be able to focus on the part I find enjoyable: Determining consensus and not menial bot work.
- I also intend to help out with other technical requests (e.g. history merging) but I have no idea what are things I will enjoy doing regularly and what I will just try once or twice.
- 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
- A: My featured list candidate List of countries by Human Development Index is the thing I'm the proudest of. Giving lots of people an accurate, well-developed, and well-presented article on such an important topic is something I take a lot of pride in.
- I'm also quite fond of the hundreds of thousands of short descriptions I've generated (using bots and templates) for biographies, schools, drugs, awards, and many other topics. This is a not-insignificant fraction of all our articles which is quite insane to think about.
- The thing I've spent the most time and effort with, though, is helping TfD run smoothly by closing hundreds of discussions and implementing many of our larger decisions. One worth mentioning would be the {{Aircraft specs}} mergers which required a gargantuan multi-year effort, but it was well worth it since it added proper unit conversions, fixed broken parameters, and made the specifications follow our manual of style. For a few hundred articles, it even involved complete rewrites, data verification, or unhiding of incorrectly formatted specifications. I've also been a driving force for simplifying and improving our archiving procedures with it now, for example, being possible to get a great archive box by just putting {{Archives}} on a talk page without configuration by automatically choosing parameters based on various factors.
- 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: As for everyone involved in as many discussions as I've been, there have been lots of fierce debates, but almost always these have been about a single template or technical detail with no stress or conflict involved.
- There have however been a couple of times where editing has gotten stressful. The one that immediately comes to mind was back in 2019 where I had many unpleasant interactions with a good faith IP editor involving {{Infobox settlement}} wrappers.
- In cases like that, I take a step back, remember that there are no angry mastodons, and give any reply a few hours consideration time before publishing it. That usually results in a well-formulated response that deescalates the situation. I also try to focus on the substance of any comments instead of incivilities or off-topic matters. In the case of a not-so-civil TfD comment, a reply may look something like: "I didn't consider that case, thanks for bringing it up! I would handle that as follows: ..." I think that's a lot more likely to result in fruitful discussion than a quick quip.
- I also find it useful to remember that we all are working towards a common goal of improving the encyclopedia. If someone donates lots of their free time I can be fairly certain they have their heart in the right place, even if I may not agree with them or they express their thoughts in an aggressive way.
You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions disguised as one question, with the intention of evading the limit, are disallowed. Follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked are allowed.
- Optional question from CycloneFootball71
- 4. Are there any aspects of WP:ADMINCOND, WP:ADMINACCT and generally WP:ADMIN in which you disagree with and why?
- A: I believe that administrators should be able to cooperate well with other users and think that WP:ADMINCOND and WP:ADMINACCT sets good standards for doing so. Not following any of the points laid out in these sections (as well as WP:INVOLVED) would betray the community's trust and open up for severe issues such as poor actions going unchallenged/unresolved or a group of admins having undue influence over an area with concerns not being addressed or met with incivilities. --Trialpears (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from ScrapheapNinjaShuriken77
- 5. How would you deal with personal attacks, vandalism or disruptive editing
- A: I expect to only rarely deal with this kind of issues and only in a portion of cases actually use any admin buttons as I'm not especially experienced dealing with personal attacks, vandalism or disruptive editing.
- If the issue is very serious and unambiguous such as porn-image vandalism, major ongoing vandalism sprees or other zero tolerance behavior I would issue a block with a suitable duration considering possible collateral and IP changes for IP blocks. For other vandalism I may issue a block after making sure they were properly warned. In not so clear cut cases I would not issue blocks. Instead I would try to communicate with or warn the editor and then, if it's clear that doesn't resolve the issue, report the editor to a relevant noticeboard such as AIV, ANI or AN3 depending on issue.
- Blocks, warnings and discussion is of course not the only tools for dealing with disruption with page protection, edit filters and blacklists also being good choices in certain situations. If the case for protection is particularly clear I may implement a conservative page protection, but in many cases I would probably hand it over to our experienced admins at RFPP. Same goes with other areas I am not familiar with.
- It is also important not to act when involved which probably is most often relevant for personal attacks. If I were the subject of a personal attack I would deal with the situation as I outlined in question 3.
- My response may of course change with time and experience, but that is how I would handle it currently. --Trialpears (talk) 19:33, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional questions from Elli
- 6. As a technical editor, would you consider helping to implement fully-protected edit requests, particularly on high-use templates?
- A: I would, implementing template-protected edit requests is already something I do at times and I expect I would do the same for fully-protected edit requests at technical pages. There are two main things that should be ensured before any such edit is made: That the change is technically sound (usually using testcases) and that there is consensus for the change. In many cases this may involve waiting to allow for additional input or advertising the discussion at relevant discussion pages. --Trialpears (talk) 19:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- 7. A template editor makes a change to a template-protected template with tens of thousands of transclusions. You disagree with the change, and believe it needs discussion, so you revert it. The template editor reinstates it without discussing. What do you do? (you believe said change is misguided enough that it remaining on thousands of pages is a serious problem - but it's not vandalism)
- A: Given that I reverted it I would need to have had a good cause for it per WP:TPEDISPUTE, presumably something like the change breaking a significant number of transclusions or otherwise having a large impact on pages. The first thing I would do in this situation is making sure they haven't tried communicating through edit summaries, on another talk pages or something else. Seeing a template editor behave like this would be very out of the norm with it being one of the most vetted user rights. Assuming they haven't made any attempt at communication I would write a message on the talk page (with a ping) explaining why I believed this edit to be harmful and that they had violated WP:TPEDISPUTE since
When a template editor's edit is reversed by a peer, the edit (or a similar one) must not be reinstated by the original or another template editor without clear discussion leading to a consensus decision
which isn't the case here. I would also explain that if they reinstate again without any discussion I would take away the template editor bit for the time being citing WP:TPEREVOKE criteria 1 as a second edit would makea pattern of performing obviously controversial edits to protected templates without first determining consensus.
. - If it comes to this point the account being compromised wouldn't be out of the question and otherwise the editor had clearly acted in a way that is unacceptable for a template editor. Both possibilities carry a significant risk of disruption to the encyclopedia. I would also report the incident at the administrators noticeboard, both to make sure my behavior was appropriate and to see if other interventions are necessary. I very much hope to never have to do something like this. --Trialpears (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- A: Given that I reverted it I would need to have had a good cause for it per WP:TPEDISPUTE, presumably something like the change breaking a significant number of transclusions or otherwise having a large impact on pages. The first thing I would do in this situation is making sure they haven't tried communicating through edit summaries, on another talk pages or something else. Seeing a template editor behave like this would be very out of the norm with it being one of the most vetted user rights. Assuming they haven't made any attempt at communication I would write a message on the talk page (with a ping) explaining why I believed this edit to be harmful and that they had violated WP:TPEDISPUTE since
- Optional question from EpicPupper
- 8. Which of the 5 pillars would you, in your opinion, remark to me most important?
- A: All 5 pillars have of course been incredibly important for the encyclopedia's success, but I personally have to say pillar 4:
Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility
. If we didn't have a respectful and civil community none of us would want to be here and certainly not want to dedicate the amount of time that we do. By respectfully discussing issues with other editors we can resolve most issues and come to a consensus conclusion which would hopefully reflect our ideals such as verifiability and neutral point of view. --Trialpears (talk) 22:47, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- A: All 5 pillars have of course been incredibly important for the encyclopedia's success, but I personally have to say pillar 4:
- Optional question from HighInBC
- 9. Do you feel that the current RfA system is unfair or excessively harsh on candidates?
- A: I think it's very difficult for anyone to answer such a question with a significant amount of confidence. All RfAs are different with some being intensely stressful and others, mostly back in the day, not being particularly stressful. I don't even know where on the spectrum my RfA will fall, much less how it would feel going through a different system or for a different person to do the same.
- When this is over I do however plan on writing a debriefing as I found previous ones very useful and insightful when considering RfA. --Trialpears (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Hog Farm
- 10. As an editor active on the technical end, what do you think is the appropriate trade-off with proposed template/citation changes that would make things harder for most content editors, but make things easier for those who volunteer with coding/template maintenance?
- A: Ultimately technical editors are here to help build and maintain the encyclopedia. If the only reason for a change is to make it easier for technical editors (say deleting the redirect {{citeweb}} to make regular expressions shorter) and there are no other benefits that would be a poor change. Generally speaking there are other reasons for changes as well even if they aren't immediately obvious. Cleaning up lint errors, for instance, may feel like people imposing certain ways of doing things and adding another thing for content creators to think about, but actually it's ensuring that our pages display properly for all readers regardless of what browser or screen reader they use.
- There are of course a few proposals where there is a tangible (but small) benefit, but it would cause significant annoyance to content creators. Here we would have to consider the trade off in the same way as we make any other potentially controversial decision: Through discussion and consensus. It is of course important to make sure the people who will be impacted by the change are aware of the proposal and it isn't hidden on some abandoned talk page only seen by a small handful of techies. Most of the best technical work (including the {{aircraft specs}} merger from Q2) is done in close collaboration with content creators and other non-technical editors. --Trialpears (talk) 09:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Celestina007
- 11. Thank you for stepping forward, you already have my support, however I do need to ask you, Are you ready to do the arduous and very controversial tasks other sysops would generally shy away from?
- A: I do when I'm experienced in the area and believe I'm qualified to do so. I will almost certainly end up closing a significant amount of contentious TfDs and CfDs for instance. What I will not do is perform controversial actions when I'm not confident it is appropriate or I lack relevant experience. For instance I would not be ready to make difficult blocks as discussed in Q5. --Trialpears (talk) 09:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Iflaq
- 12. What is your weakest area on Wikipedia?
- A: Probably something like username policy. I've learned that I have no talent what so ever in spotting violations with several accounts I've given warnings to receiving a hard username block with my reaction being basically "Huh why?" until I read the block notice and it becomes clear as day what a bad username it is.
- My weakest area that I want to actively work towards improving would probably be MediaWiki changes. I have no experience with PHP, always think the code looks quite cryptic and I barely have a grasp on how MediaWiki is organized behind the hood. I would love to take on some phabricator tasks some day though. --Trialpears (talk) 09:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Willbb234
- 13 Hello there. A look at your edit count shows that your editing varies wildly from month to month. For example, in May 2020, you made 43 edits but the next month you made 1528, then a few months later you made 106. Do you expect this trend to continue or do you plan on editing more consistently?
- A: Not really as I don't anticipate any major changes to my editing patterns. I have to admit that it looks kind of bizarre however. Most of the edits in the high edit count months are from semi-automatic projects through AutoWikiBrowser, usually updating templates as a result of TfDs. Using AWB it isn't all that rare to get 500+ edits in a day which makes the rest of the months look a lot more flat. There are also months were my Wikipedia activity has been largely limited to checking my watchlist once a day and responding to discussions I'm interested in, either because I had a lot to do outside Wikipedia (much of the fall being a prime example of that) and sometimes because of other reasons such as the craziness and uncertainty of the world last spring. --Trialpears (talk) 17:25, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Interstellarity
- 14. I would like to analyze this scenario: On a Wikipedia article, Editor A makes a bold edit which is reverted by Editor B. Editor A make another bold edit which is reverted by editor C. Editor A brings the discussion to the talk page. After Editor A posted the talk page, responses on the article talk page show editors being argumentative at each other and being unproductive. Multiple editors come to your talk page asking you to block Editor A. What would you do in this scenario as an admin?
- A: Alright, in cases like this it's important to consider the context and understand the dispute at hand, which won't be possible without reading the discussion, but I will write out some consideration that may apply and general impressions.
- My first impression here is that editor A is attempting to follow the bold, revert, discuss cycle by first making bold edits (I presume the two edits are decently different as it would just be a revert otherwise), notices the changes are being reverted and starts a talk page discussion. While the discussion appears to be quite heated and not particularly fruitful it doesn't seem like personal attacks and other incivility is rampant either making me doubtful blocks are appropriate here.
- Never the less the reports should be considered and one thing that stands out to me is several editors contacting me specifically. This leads me to believe that I'm somehow connected to this dispute, even if only tangentially. It could be something innocuous such as me dealing with edit requests or vandals at the page or something more substantial such as me having participated in related content disputes previously. In a case like the latter I would be involved and should not act as an administrator.
- The most likely course of action looks like posting something on the talk page. This could involve a lot of different things such as voicing an opinion on the content dispute, suggesting perusing more formal dispute resolution, inviting more input from related articles or WikiProjects, or suggesting some compromise. I've also found questions such as
What do you think about proposal X?
to be very effective at bringing discussion back to the core issue and gives the editor an opportunity to clearly explain the thought process behind their opinions. - There are of course many other factors that could be at play such as sanctions being in place (either for the article or the editors), there being sockpuppetry or external coordination involved when contacting me, the discussion could be a lot worse than I interpreted it as here with severe civility issues. There could be a pattern of issues with some party or I may have had a lot of interactions with some participant. Or any of dozens of other possibilities all of which would have to be handled somewhat differently, but this is in general how I would approach it. --Trialpears (talk) 07:48, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Discussion
- Links for Trialpears: Trialpears (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · rfc · spi)
- Edit summary usage for Trialpears can be found here.
Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.
Support
- Support trusted user, demonstrates a need for the tools. -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 14:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- As nom Barkeep49 (talk) 14:47, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support per noms and my interactions with the candidate. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Excellent candidate and glad to see this request. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, great candidate. Seen them around quite a bit and they definitely can demonstrate a need for the tools. — Berrely • Talk∕Contribs 14:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support was on my list of potential nominees, but already had nominators. I think Trialpears will make good use of the technical tools in areas that need attention. — xaosflux Talk 14:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - honestly surprised they aren't an admin already! Every interaction with them has been positive, also per noms. Remagoxer (talk) 14:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Go ahead; they were a pleasure to work with in discussions such as these, which had/ve an unfortunate habit of regularly descending into trolling. Best of luck TP! ——Serial 14:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, why not. I've seen them around and have only a positive impression from their interactions, and it seems like they do need the tools. Epicgenius (talk) 14:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support another one where I'm not familiar with their work, but not only does the need seem clear, I trust their nominators. SportingFlyer T·C 14:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - not a jerk, has a clue, and technical skills to boot. Will be the kind of behind-the-scenes/techie sysop we need more of. Yes please. firefly ( t · c ) 14:59, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Seems like a great candidate that has a good amount of knowledge, I wish you luck. --Vacant0 (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I know I've run into them somewhere but can't remember. In any case, I've seen their work and their activity indicates they both have a need for the tools and can be trusted with them Nosebagbear (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support per noms and Serial's recommendation. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for volunteering. Levivich 15:08, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I have seen their work and they'll make a good admin. Best, —Nnadigoodluck███ 15:11, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support per noms, great candidate. DanCherek (talk) 15:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- A need for XfD admins presents itself. While not very familiar with their work, clearly a trusted user and will be filling a need. Kingsif (talk) 15:13, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Definitely seems like a great editor that would do well under adminship, plus they are doing great work! 🌀CycloneFootball71🏈 |sandbox 15:14, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- For deft handling and peacemaking combined with technical skills, bringing an end to an old feud. –xenotalk 15:21, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support for meeting my mins and no big deal, no reason to oppose. Ifnord (talk) 15:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Any time I see "cool head" and "calm voice" combined with this kind of competence and cluefulness, I'm in. —valereee (talk) 15:25, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- The content creation isn't quite as strong as I'd like (the Featured List candidacy failed), but it's not frighteningly negligible and adminny work, combined with the noms, bring this over the line. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 15:26, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- John M Wolfson is "Sure, why not" to be said in a Clarence Beaks voice...? ——Serial 15:33, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Impressed by noms, and very impressed by successfully changing many minds on a TFD merge proposal, as Xeno pointed out.Jackattack1597 (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, the mop will be in good hands, Cabayi (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - good candidate. - Ahunt (talk) 15:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Strong support I believe they’ll do a not great, but outstanding and impressive job here. Good choice for a candidate. ScrapheapNinjaShuriken77 15:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, looks like a good candidate. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 15:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: Great work! Stay beautiful. ResPM (T🔈 🎵C) 15:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 16:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Looks like a great candidate. Best of luck! –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:05, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. The high proportion of deleted edits (8.1%) is explained by significant contributions to RfD and other "deletion" projects. The user is clearly reliable, and shows a need for admin privileges. Bibeyjj (talk) 16:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support precisely in line with SportingFlyer's comment; happy days, LindsayHello 16:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: experienced and competent user with a clear need for the tools Vahurzpu (talk) 16:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support net positive.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- * Pppery * it has begun... 16:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Trial has been on my short list since Barkeep asked around offwiki in the second half of 2020 for suggested nominees, for Trial's good work editing and discussing templates. Happy to support. --Izno (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Not a jerk; has a clue. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:35, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Constructive editor, demonstrates a need and desire for the tools, and competence to use them. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 16:38, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I've seen them around and have no concerns. Good luck with the RfA. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 16:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support good editor, --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:05, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Clear need for the tools, no concerns. Pawnkingthree (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, I'm frankly quite surprised Trialpears isn't already an admin. Sungodtemple (talk) 17:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Ready a year ago ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:49, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Never come across them, but a good solid record inspires confidence. Mccapra (talk) 18:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support No doubt they'll make good use of the tools. – SD0001 (talk) 18:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support The more qualified administrators who understand and can wade into the more technical areas of the encyclopedia, the better. Trialpears fits the bill. Also, I was impressed with their thoughtfulness in the recent book namespace RfC at WP:VPR, which I thought demonstrated good judgment and a sound logic of thought around the issue at hand. Go Phightins! 18:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: need for the tools (and very technically competent), lots of attestations to their good temperament. — Bilorv (talk) 18:28, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Can't think of a better candidate for the mop, and the admin corps needs more good editors like this one! P.I. Ellsworth ed. put'r there 18:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, no issues--Ymblanter (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Net positive. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 18:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: Great editor; seems fine to me. Tol | talk | contribs 19:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support – Terasail[✉] 19:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, techy admins are low in supply and high in demand. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:27, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- —Kusma (talk) 19:49, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- — Wug·a·po·des 19:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Sonic screwdriver mop wielder without obvious issues. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support glad to see more technically-inclined editors running for adminship. I haven't interacted with Trialpears too much, but in the times I have they've always been kind and helpful - and their answers to my questions indicate that that will continue. I especially appreciate their willingness to consider TPERs and (in the future) FPERs, as I feel like that is one of the most important areas for users with extended rights to help out. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:11, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support absolutely. No question. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:13, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support looks fine to me. Link20XX (talk) 20:15, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Possesses a skill set that is currently needed in an admin. Such as tech experience and Xfd.--🌀Locomotive207-talk🌀 20:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Skilled editor. 15 (talk) 20:39, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Pahunkat (talk) 20: 45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support haven't seen a clearer need for the tools in some time now. TP has been endlessly helpful towards me specifically, graciously answer questions and guiding me in various technical matters. For a while I actually assumed they were already an admin, based on their general demeanor and practices. The recent book namespace nominations shows that they are willing to be a leader in tackling large issues and initiating fruitful discussion. Exactly what we need in our admins. Aza24 (talk) 21:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, trusted user. NASCARfan0548 ↗ 21:05, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support yes you are ready. Carlosguitar (Yes Executor?) 21:16, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I see no reason to oppose. Scorpions13256 (talk) 21:27, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support mo' admins, less problems? - TNT 💞 21:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I don't recall interacting with them before, but I don't see any obvious reasons to oppose. Guettarda (talk) 21:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Can provide even more help to the project by having the tools. Schazjmd (talk) 22:06, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Good with TfD work and has bot skills. Has always been very helpful. NoahTalk 22:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Not a jerk, need for the tools. TfD work is also wonderful. EpicPupper (talk, contribs) 22:31, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support looks good all around, thanks for volunteering for adminship.--- Possibly (talk) 22:42, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Why not? -FASTILY 22:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support It is hard to imagine a better candidate: technical, diligent, of a temperate disposition, and ever the voice of reason. Trialpears will make an excellent admin. — Goszei (talk) 22:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Trustworthy candidate who will make good use of the mop. Miniapolis 23:17, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Trusted user. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 23:27, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Unfortunately I dont think I have ever crossed path with this editor, but from their last 100 edits, I am okay with what I see. Furthermore their answer to question 3 was brilliant. Lastly, if Barkeep49 and Primefac trusts you, by extension I do too. Celestina007 (talk) 01:05, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Yay for more tech admins. Nardog (talk) 01:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, will be asset. Cavalryman (talk) 02:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC).
- Support. I regularly interact with Trialpears at TfD and in other technical areas, and I have long been impressed by their competence, insight, and friendliness. They are already an administrator without tools and I look forward to them soon becoming an admin with the tools. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:08, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, Doing good heavy lift work in some specialist technical areas and could do with the tools. Djm-leighpark (talk) 04:20, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, looks good to me. ◢ Ganbaruby! (talk) 05:11, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Pamzeis (talk) 05:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support no concerns. Looks good to me and I have faith in the noms. Let's see how long we can keep the 100% train going . --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, no problems here. Graham87 05:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Unlikely to delete the mainpage. We can always use admin template editors. BusterD (talk) 05:47, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support for sure. This user looks like they will make a great admin. It is good to have technically minded people about to handle the more tricky issues. Good answer to my question. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 05:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support LGTM --DannyS712 (talk) 06:08, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I commonly encounter this editor at TFD and hold them in high esteem both in terms of their words and actions. I am confident they would make a good admin and have need of the tools. Tom (LT) (talk) 06:52, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Experienced editor, good temperament, clear need for the tools. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 07:52, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support More technically competent admins would be welcome - thanks for offering to help. Girth Summit (blether) 07:59, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support–An excellent technical editor who will make good use of the sysop flag. Kurtis (talk) 08:41, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Trusted user. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 09:16, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Seems good to me. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - almost did a nomination statement for them. Seems grand to me. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:24, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support per TonyBallioni. And excellent answers to questions. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I really appreciated how in Question 7 you didn't just say "oh I'd be INVOLVED" (would be my answer) and say you'd refer the matter to another admin. You thought through the question and the implications of having to be in a situation where you have to revert a template editor making really bad edits (possible compromised account that could cause serious disruption) and came up with a thoughtful answer that while based on policy doesn't just repeat policy. Going immediately to AN based on the fact that removing a template editor bit would be especially controversial is the cherry on top. Based on what others have said about their experiences with you it sounds like you have very good conflict resolution skills and that's something I don't believe is valued nearly as much as it should be in a Wikipedia admin given how often they're called upon to resolve such. I hope you don't limit yourself solely to dealing with technical issues. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 10:02, 6 June 2021 (UTC) - Support per Chess. I like the answer to Question 7. They're a good editor who will make excellent use of the tools, a solid and extensive track record of making valuable and helpful edits to the project, and demonstrating that they can be trusted with additional tools. And they've a couple of great nominators in the shape of Barkeep and Primefac, who aren't the most prolific RfA nominators but pick and choose candidates wisely. It's a couple of extra ticks in the column headed trust for Trialpears when they've such good nominators. Nick (talk) 10:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I see nothing to make me believe that the editor in question would misuse the tools. Excellent choice in highly trusted nominators. !ɘM γɿɘυϘ⅃ϘƧ 10:40, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support As with others above, very reassuring response in Q7, seeking peer communication, thinking before acting. More, please. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:14, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Looks fine to me. signed, Iflaq (talk) 12:29, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - excellent technical editor, happy to support. -- LuK3 (Talk) 13:16, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Fine for me. --Minorax (talk) 14:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Looks like this'll go through without a hitch. Uncontroversial editor who has a genuine need for the tools, recognizes their strengths and weaknesses, and as someone who has pretty much negative technical experience, seeing someone who has that kind of know-how with the mop seems A-triple-plus. Kncny11 (shoot) 15:21, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support trusted user, has a clue, has a good need for the toolset. All the best! JavaHurricane 15:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - no concerns here. Anarchyte (talk) 16:21, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support — Trustworthy candidate whose record speaks for itself. — The Most Comfortable Chair 16:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, precious --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:45, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, WP:NOBIGDEAL. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, one of those users that constantly appears in useful technical areas and would clearly be more effective there with admin tools. An obvious choice. ~ mazca talk 17:54, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: Net positive. The few interactions I have had offwiki with them always brought clear and level-headed productive discussions. Will make good use of tools. Sennecaster (What now?) 18:17, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Moneytrees🏝️Talk/CCI guide 18:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support No concerns, a trusted user. AnApple47 (talk) 19:29, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Good work in technical areas, good answers to the questions. Hog Farm Talk 19:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Good luck! Wingwatchers (talk) 19:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - a good editor with a good head on their shoulders, who would help resolve difficult issues on relatively complicated and obscure areas of the project. jp×g 19:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - I honestly thought Trialpears was already an admin. - ZLEA T\C 19:58, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, obviously. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:12, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirbopher2004 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Seen this editor perform a number of edits relating to the technical side of the platform and I honestly think they'd make good use of the tools that come with Adminship. Owen250708 (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Thoroughly impressed with their answers, I don't see any red flags here, Easy support. –Davey2010Talk 21:24, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vexations (talk) 21:51, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Less Unless (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Kind, cool, calm, compassionate, and competent. Yes, please do give them a few more tools to help us out. — Ched (talk) 22:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Sounds ideal. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support easy to support - clearly here, competent, considerate. --Find bruce (talk) 01:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, welcome to the party. BD2412 T 02:53, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support – clear need for the tools; competent; not the kind to cause drama. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:51, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support No concerns, good luck. ~ANM🐁 T·C 03:53, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. User in good standing, lots of good work. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:21, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support No concerns, this editor seems to be well experienced and their answers to the questions appear to be very constructive.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 09:24, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - no concerns. GiantSnowman 10:47, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - I like the answer to my question. I bet Trialpears would make a great admin. Interstellarity (talk) 12:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - clearly competent and able. Cloudbound (talk) 12:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - thought they already were one. the wub "?!" 13:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - No problems. SethWhales talk 14:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I doubt I will be seeing much of Trialpears, given that their stomping grounds barely overlap with mine (I don't believe I've ever touched CfD and TfD). That being said, going through Pears' talk page archives and my (admittedly brief) interactions with them in the delightful realm of short descriptions, they seem like a technically knowledgeable editor who is very willing to help. I am particularly pleased by the insight and nuance shown in the answers to Q10 – it's important to keep in mind that
[m]ost of the best technical work ... is done in close collaboration with content creators and other non-technical editors
– and to Q14. I wish Trialpears all the best and echo Chess's pleas not to limit themself solely to technical matters: I think there are many areas of the encyclopaedia that would benefit from their help. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC) - Support Per excellent answers to questions. I think Trialpears has a good temperament for an admin. ~Awilley (talk) 15:15, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support User is not a jerk, and has plenty of activity in areas where the mop would be useful. Per excellent answers and demonstrated temperament, fairly convinced that Trial is a great candidate. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
Neutral
General comments
- Same question as at the concurrent RfA: HighInBC I'm not sure that's a relevant question for someone currently going through RfA. What exactly are you trying to learn about the candidate? —valereee (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Same answer. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 23:59, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Vami_IV#coercive and pointy, let's discuss (permalink) —valereee (talk) 00:17, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Asking an RFA candidate to comment on the RFA process during their RFA is inappropriate. Levivich 01:46, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- It also doesn't seem helpful. I mean, surely you're not going to endorse (or not) the candidate's suitability for adminship based on whether they are enjoying the RfA experience? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:48, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- The nominee is welcome to answer or not as they see fit. From a 'crat perspective, this is not an automatically-removable question. Primefac (talk) 02:03, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I can verify that the candidate has not been blocked here before according to the log. ScrapheapNinjaShuriken77 09:41, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- It also doesn't seem helpful. I mean, surely you're not going to endorse (or not) the candidate's suitability for adminship based on whether they are enjoying the RfA experience? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:48, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Same answer. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 23:59, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Trialpears: That's an amazing answer to question 7. Bravo and well done. --TheSandDoctor Talk 13:48, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Vami IV
(talk page) (101/14/2); Scheduled to end 16:19, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
Nomination
Vami IV (talk · contribs) – As an editor with over six years of activity across mainspace and the back end alike, Vami IV is long overdue for a nomination for adminship. His content work is prolific: Vami is responsible for creating 242 articles, 164 of which are biographies of women under the auspices of Women In Red. He has expanded numerous others with well-researched and encyclopedic content, particularly stubs for the long-running 50,000 Destubbing Challenge.
On the back end, Vami is a born collaborator who works well with others, an essential skill for any admin. His 229 GA reviews, many nominations of others for Editor of the Week, efforts to educate users interested in helping out at the highly technical contributor copyright investigations area, and work as coordinator of WikiProject Germany all bear witness to this. I hope you'll agree with me that Vami will be a strong addition to the admin corps. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:54, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
- Co-nomination by Lee Vilenski
I am absolutely delighted to introduce Vami IV to the community as a candidate for adminship. Vami has been with us for almost six and a half years, and in that time has produced over 80,000 contributions. They have been continually active since 2016 and are a fantastic contributer, working on articles up to FA class, such as Fort Concho and Ludwigsburg Palace with 25,000 edits to mainspace. Their skills in content creation is exemplified by having a Triple Crown, and won the Editor of the week award in 2019.
However, Vami is much more than just a content creator. They work in WP:CCI, somewhere where the toolset is incredibly helpful, for revision deletion as well as handling blocks. I very much trust Vami with handling themselves with decorum in discussions, and have no qualms with them having the toolset. I hope you’ll agree that Vami IV is a fantastic editor that would benefit from the toolset. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:58, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
- Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept these nominations, and thank their authors for writing them. And the people, admins or otherwise, who convinced me to run for the mop. For five Marches out of the six I've been here, I never treated the idea of being here at RfA seriously. I was of the opinion that I didn't need to be an admin, and that Wikipedia didn't need me as an admin. I still believe I am correct about those things. But in my sixth March I decided to run because, as I said at my ORCP, I believe in this project and want to help maintain it in a greater capacity. So I reaffirm this: I do not see adminship as something owed to experienced editors, but something a suitable, experienced, and motivated editor owes to the project. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 04:45, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
- I have never edited with an account other than this one or an IP address, and I have not and never will engage in paid editing. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 22:30, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:
- 1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?
- 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
- A: The easy answer would be the two Featured Articles, five Good Articles, and Did You Knows that earned me my Triple Crowns. There's also my participation in Women in Red, the contests run by Encyclopaedius, or my GAN reviews. But my answer is the article Hololive Production. I ordinarily wouldn't be proud of a C-class. As experienced editors know, a C-class is a job half done. But I am proud of the story behind it. A handful of editors, and a community of volunteer fan translators built that article from scratch, from Japanese-language media. It still has problems, and has changed a lot since I started pursuing other projects in December 2020, but that collaboration on- and off-wiki – giving readers a new, more collaborative and accurate sense of this project – is my best work.
- 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: Of course. Always because I made a mistake, because I was gung ho about something. To be honest, it was people like me for whom WP:BRD was written. How I've resolved disputes (and my goofs), is exactly that formula: be bold, get reverted, and then work it out. Take this example from back in 2018. As an admin however, I will be more cautious before doing something like this again.
You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions disguised as one question, with the intention of evading the limit, are disallowed. Follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked are allowed.
- Optional question from Cryptic
- 4. What was the context of your recently-deleted User:Vami IV/Userboxes/clericalfascist?
- A: I grew up in a conservative household, but in the lead up to the 2016 US Presidential elections, I fell into the camp of Donald Trump. I adopted increasingly right-wing politics, and even publicly professed to be fascist. Thankfully, I had a lot of people to mock and shun me for my cringe beliefs, and friends to talk me down from those cringe beliefs. Since then, I've done a lot of soul searching and reading, and on-wiki written about such things the history of American imperialism, Confederate war crimes, and helped purge racists from this project. It goes without saying that I still feel a lot of guilt about how I used to be. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 17:17, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from John M Wolfson
- 5. Your edit summary usage is spotty compared to what is ideal for an administrator, at a rather low 75%. Furthermore, as late as last November it was as low as 50%, and has vacillated between there and 100% since then. Communication is an essential skill for adminabili, so edit summary usage should be rather high. Will you commit to using edit summaries in all of your edits? There is an option in your preferences that you can check to remind you to use a summary at every edit. You don't necessarily need to check it (I don't), but it can help. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 17:48, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Go Phightins!
- 6. I was just wondering if you might say a little bit more, in general, about how you think about reaching conclusions like this one, that "enough is enough" and the encyclopedia is better served moving on without a particular editor in our ranks. I imagine this comes up in the CCI area too, and so I am just a bit curious as to your thought process about these sorts of conduct issues (and am not asking for reflection on the particular AN/I thread I linked). Thanks.
- A: I reach my conclusions regarding the net positivity of someone based on their willingness to consider criticism and advice, and change. In that case, that editor was absolutely unwilling to do any of that, had demonstrated this on their talk page and at ANI, and had a history of angrily rejecting any input regarding his edits while trying to pull rank. As the Buddha is incorrectly said to have said, "It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles." –♠Vami_IV†♠ 18:34, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Bilorv
- 7. (Per a comment below.) Do you believe this 79-word attributed blockquote to be a copyright violation? Why or why not?
- A: Yes. And I explained as such to that editor, though admittedly by linking an essay (twice), which they also did. Per Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text:
Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea.
I punctuate, Brief quotations. It is worth noting that I am not the only editor who thinks that OQ and other OQs constitute copyright violations. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 19:01, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- A: Yes. And I explained as such to that editor, though admittedly by linking an essay (twice), which they also did. Per Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text:
- Optional questions from Elli
- 8. You do a lot of work in CCI, removing copyright violations, because they are against site policy. However, one of our most fundamental site policies is "ignore all rules" - as long as doing so makes the encyclopedia better. How can you justify removing copyright violations from articles that are deemed good/vital - cutting them down significantly - why not apply IAR and let them stand?
- 9. Would you consider closing controversial discussions as an admin? If so, how would you assess consensus in a large discussion where, if you count the !votes, it's split narrowly in favor of one option, but you're convinced that the other side has stronger policy-based arguments?
- Optional question from Scorpions13256
- 10. Imagine a situation where a 10-year-old article has turned out to be a complete copyright violation. Would it be smart to nominate it for deletion via AFD?
- A: AfD is not the process for removing copyright violations; WP:CP is. There have been many times I've used CP to delete presumptive or confirmed copyright violations because of the difficulty in just cleaning them up by hand, but there are times you really should just clean it up by hand. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 20:23, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Celestina007
- 11. Thank you for volunteering, You have my support. Generally, what are your thoughts on undisclosed paid editing?
- Optional question from Sennecaster
- 12. At CCI (and copyright cleanup in general), both copyright editors and violators are capable of violating civility policy. As someone who will (presumably) be opening cases at CCI and dealing with repeat copyright violators, what are some ways that you could handle heated case openings and exchanges?
- A: That really depends. There are editors who violate copyright and contribute in good-faith, and can't grasp copyright policy, and then there are editors who refuse to, or perceive your warnings about copyright as a personal attack. There are and have been CCI cases on both types of editor. So I will observe WP:CIVILITY and WP:AGF, even while opening a case. A copyright violator's actions will speak to the goodness of their faith. There is also the input of other admins, copyright admins especially, to lean on. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 01:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Celestina007
- 13. Good Response, I’m sorry to ask two, my second question is, are you ready to do the hard and controversial work, other admins would generally shy away from?
- Optional question from Chess
- 14. You said in question 1 that you "I fell into the camp of Donald Trump" and that "thankfully, I had a lot of people to mock and shun me for my cringe beliefs, and friends to talk me down from those cringe beliefs." Would you allow an editor who supports Donald Trump to be mocked and shunned on the English Wikipedia?
- 15. You also said you were proud to help "purge racists" from the project. What would you say the line is at which an editor is a racist and needs to be "purged" from the project?
- A: I did not say I was proud about that. I'm not going to be proud about banishing contributors. The line is bringing that racism on-wiki – a racist username like the linked example, edit warring to keep a racist and demonstrably false view in an article, use of slurs, – and refusing to cease racist on-wiki behavior. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 04:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Haleth
- 16. I'm aware that you are fairly active on Discord, and a fairly outspoken participant at that. Obviously Discord is a more informal environment compared to Wikipedia, being off wiki and all, and everyone has the prerogative to dislike another editor on a personal level. That said, whenever you openly denigrate another editor on the public chat log who isn't in a position to respond, I WP:AGF that it is probably said in jest as opposed to a malicious casting of aspersions at said editor. Still, now that you are seeking adminship, and because we all agree that a sysop's conduct is held to a higher standard compared to other editors, do you think you will self-reflect on your prior conduct and consider whether it is appropriate public behaviour befitting a sysop, even when it is off wiki?
- Optional question from Ifnord
- 17. A piggy back to Haleth's question, for clarity. Have you engaged in off-wiki behaviour (in the context of Wikipedia only, identifying users by name) which would not have been appropriate on-wiki, in terms of civility, etc?
- A:
- Optional question from Beeblebrox
- 18. As you are apparently active in working to remove copyright violations, could you explain why User:Vami IV/Archive/Stadtarchiv Stuttgart is not one?
- A: I had completely forgotten about that subpage. That is trans-copyvio and should be deleted immediately. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 00:15, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Comment: I have requested that page be speedily deleted per G12; I created it at 14:55, 11 October 2016 UTC to work on Stuttgart and History of Stuttgart. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 00:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- A: I had completely forgotten about that subpage. That is trans-copyvio and should be deleted immediately. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 00:15, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Cullen328
- 19 My question is a follow-up to #7 above and to DGG's oppose. I happen to think that judicious use of properly attributed quotations can often be a great improvement to articles. Personally, I use them frequently in the "Critical reception" sections of articles about books, films, works of art and so on. I just checked one such article that I wrote and found a three sentence quote from a professional critic that was about 80 words in total, attributed by name to the critic and the publication. I think quotes like that are often proper, and I would hate to have you come along and revision delete that quote and block me for copyvio. So, please describe in detail the factors that you use to differentiate an acceptable quotation from one that you would deem a copyright violation. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 21:44, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- A: With the discussion surrounding this matter now, I believe this is a question bigger than just me and look forward to the relevant RfC(s). To answer your question, I first ask, "is a quote necessary here?" or "what does this add?" (questions I ask myself especially after reading Tony's guide) – I've also seen "am I unable to word this better?". This is kind of vague, and is governed by personal taste. In my experience, the answer to the first is almost always "no", "not much", and "no" (such as in the link for the third question). Reception sections are where this changes. I have experience reviewing them before becoming a copyright investigator and writing them, as at Harry F. Sinclair. I haven't reviewed or written an article about music or a movie yet, but a quick review of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (picked at random) leaves me feeling comfortable in my beliefs. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 04:38, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Optional question from Iflaq
- 20. Will you ever block an admin if necessary? Will your blocking process be same as a non admin block?
- A:
- Optional question from xaosflux
- 21. Some edits could be a copyright violation, some could be plagiarism, some could be both. Could a contribution be plagiarism without being a copyvio, and if so how should such a contribution and the associated editor be responded to?
- A:
Discussion
- Links for Vami IV: Vami IV (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · rfc · spi)
- Edit summary usage for Vami IV can be found here.
Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.
Support
- Support trusted user, demonstrates a need for the tools. -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 16:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - not a jerk, has a clue, will be another admin to look at my RD1 requests at CCI. firefly ( t · c ) 16:21, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I feel obligated to elaborate and reaffirm my support here given the hullabaloo below in the Oppose and comments sections. As I said there, today Vami_IV is no more a fascist than any of us - his answer to Q4, his content work, the support of various contributors from WP Germany, and his repeated, sincere disavowal of his prior beliefs shows this clearly. This is getting somewhat away from the point of RfA, but we must allow for, and celebrate, people casting off problematic views and moving forward, and not hold them eternally accountable for things they believed as teenagers. Who among us didn't have beliefs as a teenager that make our grown selves shudder? Sure, Vami's happened to be more extreme than some, but the important point is that he is no longer that person. He is a tireless writer of quality content, a kind and respectful Wikipedian with the mirror opposite philosophical values to those he previously held, and a sterling candidate for the mop. Judge Vami on who he is today, not who he was. firefly ( t · c ) 10:09, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Strong support I am passionately enthusiastic about this RfA. Vami is a fantastic editor and person. He's unyieldingly dedicated to his goals; he writes with fluency and sophistication; he understands what the project wants and needs, and serves it best he can. He won't just be a good admin, he'll be a fantastic, Hall of Fame admin. Vaticidalprophet 16:22, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- support Net positive, seems to be a good editor for adminship! 🌀CycloneFootball71🏈 |sandbox 16:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Proficient, hard working, good history of content creation. I have a lot of respect for Vami and the work he does around here, and I'm certain he'll be a great admin, peko. ◢ Ganbaruby! (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I, like many others, have been watching Vami for some considerable time to push them towards running. I would have supported off their work a year ago. However, since that point I've also got to know them personally in more depth, and have been able to experience their good judgement and interaction with other users. All of these nicely combine in someone who would be a good mop, especially in the perenially understaffed copyright field. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:26, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vami is an important contributor at CCI, a place where he demonstrably has a need for the tools. He knows (and follows) rules and customs, and (afaict) is civil and can introspect. He will do well with the bit. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 16:30, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Not a jerk; has a clue. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, trusted contributor and shows a need for the tools. EpicPupper (talk, contribs) 16:42, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I have interacted with Vami quite often over the last few years, at first because he reviewed some of my good articles, then actually to collaborate with a good article with him. From these interactions, I have found him to be trustworthy. I have also seen him conduct a lot of cleanup at CCI, which sadly is a little understaffed. I think, based on his activity at CCI, he has a pretty good need for the tools there. Epicgenius (talk) 16:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Trusted editor with a need for the coveted mop. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. MER-C 17:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I have come across Vami IV a few times in the past and they have been amiable without appearing to be a pushover. They are a fine content creator, with a couple of successful FA nominations to their name, the most recent being promoted just three weeks ago. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:15, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Looks like a great candidate. Best of luck! –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:40, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I have full confidence in Vami. Their GAN work is particularly praiseworthy. (t · c) buidhe 17:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Trusted user, genuinely dedicated to improving Wikipedia in all facets, took serious thought into running for admin. Most importantly, does a good deal of work at CCI, which always needs more mops. Kncny11 (shoot) 17:42, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Net positive. Has a clue, not a jerk. Best, —Nnadigoodluck███ 17:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I'm surprised I haven't encountered him in my content work and FACs, but seems good to me with the appropriate answer to Q5. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 17:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Net positive.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 18:02, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Clear need for the tools, and has the skills to use them in an area that I’ve heard needs more admins. Honest and satisfactory answer to Cryptic’s question makes me feel even better about supporting. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 18:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Strong support: brilliant content work and I gave them an award for it recently. We need more people in CCI who have the mop, enough reason for a strong support by itself. #4 doesn't concern me—people can change and any current fascist will give off a spectrum of warning signs that are not present here. Some random checks convince me that Vami IV has a temperament plenty good enough. — Bilorv (talk) 18:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Looks good to me. – SD0001 (talk) 18:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, do not see any issues.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:29, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support as nom, obviously. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:32, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Had good experiences with him since our first interaction. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 18:39, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Passes my RFA criteria. Clovermoss (talk) 18:44, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Have only seen good things from them. FemkeMilene (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support On balance, I am satisfied with what I see in terms of reflectiveness, willingness to change course when necessary, and instincts on conflicts with other editors. And any help in the copyright area is, of course, welcome. Go Phightins! 18:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: Looks fine; answer to Q4 especially shows that he can reflect and accept mistakes. Another copyright admin is great. Tol | talk | contribs 19:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Is competent, has a need for the tools. Good luck! ~ANM🐁 T·C 19:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I doubt they'll misuse the tools and they clearly could use them, so why not? -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 19:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I have had many conversations with this user in WP:DISCORD and feel they can be trusted with the tools. Link20XX (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support with enthusiasm. The candidate is clearly dedicated to the project and has been an asset to the community, and will make good use of the tools. DanCherek (talk) 19:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Vami IV is willing and able to accept criticism and learn, and he is an enthusiastic Wikipedian. Let's give him more types of work to do! —Kusma (talk) 19:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support A demonstrated need for the tools and a clue as to go about it, both of which are my criteria for supporting any candidate. Furthermore if MER-C & Premeditated Chaos trust someone I trust them too. Celestina007 (talk) 20:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Very familiar with Vami from GAN, definitely has the head to be an admin. Kingsif (talk) 20:06, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Per the excellent response to my question. There was a situation a few months ago when Vami IV did in fact nominate a Billy Hathorn article for deletion via AFD. He did also have notability concerns. His answer tells me that he has learned and is ready for the mop. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - has the right attributes. Cabayi (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - an ability to introspect and change questionable beliefs is to the candidate's credit, even if the views are not. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. An archetypal admin candidate here. Fills in all the checkmarks in relevant experience and clearly has both extraordinary passion and dedication, which more than qualify him for the role. Aza24 (talk) 20:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, user can be trusted with the admin mop. NASCARfan0548 ↗ 21:16, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I have had a decent amount of interactions with Vami in the past month and they have always been pleasant. Combine that with solid copyright knowledge and great content creation and you have an absolutely fantastic candidate. --Trialpears (talk) 21:25, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Not a big deal, one asks why not? - TNT 💞 21:31, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Good answers, good overall opinion of them. Guettarda (talk) 21:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Have had several interactions with them through participation in the MILHIST project, and I've seen no red flags. I personally think the use of overlong attributed quotes is more of a WP:NFCC violation in most cases than a copyright one, but that's nothing to hold against them. Hog Farm Talk 22:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Although some points have been raised here that might in other circumstances be concerning, I believe that Vami has been and will continue to be in earnest when they express a desire to address and such points. Their genuine humility and willingness to take ownership for previous errors and not repeat them is exactly the type of attitude that admins should display. Best of luck. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:27, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, demonstrated need for the tools, history of content creation and interacting well with other editors, clearly would make a good admin. Devonian Wombat (talk) 22:30, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vami has enough knowledge and I know that they'll do a good job as an admin, good luck! --Vacant0 (talk) 22:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Why not? -FASTILY 22:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- * Pppery * it has begun... 22:49, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Vami has earned my trust on matters of temperament and disposition, and has served the encyclopedia with honors as a content creator and as a CCI cop. He is diligent and dedicated, and will make a wonderful admin. — Goszei (talk) 22:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Vami has been a tremendous help at CCI, and has unrelenting dedication to that sphere. Also a friendly editor overall and in our interactions with one another (mostly off-wiki). I'm interested to see their future endeavors as an administrator. --Chlod (say hi!) 22:59, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support of course. Have seen Vami IV around, and have been quite impressed. Answers above indicate an ability to engage in self-criticism and self-reflection, very useful attributes in an admin. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:01, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support no brainer considering adminship is no big deal at all. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 23:33, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - As a great editor and decent trustworthy fellow, Vami would no doubt be an asset. //Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 23:38, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Good contributor, and no reason to think he'd abuse the tools. The userbox might've been a red flag some time ago, but he removed it years ago, asked for it to be deleted, more or less disavowed it, and thus far nobody has identified where those beliefs actually caused problems while editing. What else could we want? For what it's worth I don't know anyone my age (or really anyone over 30) who isn't embarrassed about some belief they held when they were younger. I'm ever thankful that social media wasn't really a thing when I was in high school/college. No reservations about supporting. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support as a net positive. Miniapolis 00:05, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - encountered him as an active user on Discord; always helpful and without a doubt knowledgeable on copyright matters. His response to the userbox shows openness to growth and change; we can't expect anyone to have always held perfect beliefs. Yeeno (talk) 🍁 00:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I do believe that this user can be trustworthy with use of any of the tools listed at WP:MOPRIGHTS.--🌀Locomotive207-talk🌀 00:58, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: a trusted contributor with good judgement; thank you for volunteering. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- It is indeed hard to forgive the candidate's sins... namely the one time he called me "Tammy". But I think I can bring myself to look past that in recognition of his long history of positive contributions to the project. (In seriousness, I've known Vami to be a conscientious person capable of great introspection and self-critique. There's a number of ways that I wish more Wikipedians could be as self-aware and open as he is.) -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 01:27, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I feel obliged to elaborate here, as I think the discussion below is utterly unfair to Vami. Joe Roe and others have spun a narrative based on a hypothetical version of Vami that simply doesn't exist. I'm a disabled queer trans leftist Jewish woman. The Nazis would have killed me five times over. And I am an ardent anti-fascist. I have spoken to Vami at length about social justice issues on Discord. He has readily acknowledged and apologized for his past beliefs, never trying to hide them, always unequivocally acknowledging that he was wrong. In fact, I've had to dissuade him from being too hard on himself about them. He's someone who's passionate about social justice and about opposing fascism in all forms. I would not vote for him otherwise.
- I imagine my views on the intersection of far-right politics and adminship are more extreme than Joe's: I'd be fine with a rule that we automatically desysop any Trump supporter. I will never vote for an admin candidate who's right-of-center by American standards (although I wouldn't vote against someone solely on that basis). I'm sure that'll piss some people off, but, like I said, I'm a disabled queer trans leftist Jewish woman. I have very low tolerance for those I associate with my oppression. Vami asked me (unprompted) a while ago, did I think he should have been blocked for the fascist userbox? I gave him my honest answer: Yes. And, I told him, I would have supported an unblock once he wised up and apologized. Wikipedia is no place for fascists. But it's a perfectly fine place for people who believed dumb things as teenagers and later apologized.
- All of this criticism is of a caricature, painting a conscientious supporter of social justice and anti-fascism as some wolf in sheep's clothing based on unsubstantiated fearmongering. I think several commenters here should be ashamed of the conclusions they've leapt to. We don't check WP:AGF at the door when we come to vote at RFA. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 09:29, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: I have been waiting for this for a majority of my (really short) tenure on Wikipedia. We need more willing admins at copyright, and he fits it well. The tools will be put to good use. I think that every mistake made there may look bad, but CCI in general lacks a general collective knowledgebase to ask for tough cases, so mistakes arise out of WP:BOLD and are hopefully never made again after they are criticized. His encouragement for me (and others) entering copyright work and to continue said work is not exactly related to his sysop candidacy, but shows that he is an editor willing to collaborate and make people feel valued around the project. Sennecaster (What now?) 01:41, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support based on my interactions with the candidate, good Eddie891 Talk Work 01:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vami has helped me on several occasions via the unofficial Discord server. They have always been polite, patient, and helpful. They seem quite qualified.DocFreeman24 (talk) 01:46, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, I have seen Vami around and witnessed the valuable contributions they make, will be an asset. Cavalryman (talk) 02:10, 6 June 2021 (UTC).
- Support Looks good to me, definitely seen Vami around once of twice before. Justiyaya (talk) 02:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support as a wikifriend. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:00, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Net positive. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 03:29, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support I met Vami in the Discord server and he's always been kind in my interactions with him. Additionally, I appreciate the work he's done at CCI. Regarding the questions I asked - I think the first one ended up being phrased quite poorly, as everyone I talked to didn't seem to understand what exactly I was asking about, so I appreciate his response to it anyway. As for the second, I'm glad Vami answered honestly - nothing wrong with admitting there's a task you're not interested in / won't enjoy doing. I'm sure Vami will be a great sysop around here. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Pamzeis (talk) 05:18, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, no problems here. Graham87 05:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support net positive. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:25, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support LGTM --DannyS712 (talk) 06:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. CCI work is thankless and absolutely necessary. Just like mopping. Vami seems like an editor who demonstrates dedication, competence and a positive attitude. BusterD (talk) 06:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. The user shows a clear need for admin privileges. Despite some of the issues raised, some of which are notable, I think that this user will be a net benefit to the admin team, and shows a strong editing history. Bibeyjj (talk) 08:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Yes! Leijurv (talk) 08:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Belated support as Co-nom. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:00, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - great content creator who is also dedicated to CCI, an area where we badly need admins. Exactly what we need. As someone who is very much not a fan of Trump (and that's putting it politely), to the extent I generally stay well away from writing his articles. I want to say a few things. Firstly, there is a massive difference between Conservatism and Fascism - indeed, I think compared to some countries such as Sweden, Joe Biden could be called a Conservative - and mixing up the two terms is dangerous and wrong. Secondly, it is not a problem to have believed right-wing politics (or, as I prefer to call them, lies) in your youth, and then distance yourself from them with remorse as you mature. So I trust VamiIV will be able to use the admin toolset responsibly in a neutral manner. The blockquote issue is something I have come across. Calling it a copyvio is a legitimate view, but more often the problem is that articles with excessive quotations tend to not be written too well, and trimming the quotations down so they are paraphrased can improve the article. In any case, nobody has given any evidence that VamiIV would abuse administrator tools in this area - he seems to be just stating his view in discussion, with people disagreeing politely. So I think that point is moot. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Much of this is strawman, Ritchie333: something's either a copyright violation or it is not (in this case a fully sourced quote is not), and whether they are a sign of a well-written article or not is cobblers (nothing to do with with either admin toolkit or copyright generally). so, to clarify, you've addressed 50% of the opposes. ——Serial 10:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Pretty sure stating a living person is a criminal (when they haven't been convicted) goes against BLP. Specifically stating that one would jump for joy when a living person "gets done over for tax fraud". Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 10:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- Ritchie said that they will be pleased
if he gets done over for tax fraud
. "Done over" here is a British idiom meaning 'defeated' or in this context 'convicted'. Nowhere in his !vote did he state that anybody was, at present, a criminal. firefly ( t · c ) 10:15, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- Hoping that someone will be convicted of a crime presupposes that they are, in fact, guilty of the crime. I don't see why attacking an living person and saying they committed tax fraud is OK here. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 10:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- Ritchie could just as well have meant that he hopes it turns out that Trump has committed tax fraud. Personally, when I say "I hope Donald Trump spends the rest of his life in prison", I'm expressing no opinion on whether he's actually committed any crime. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 11:27, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Tamzin Exactly that. I copyedited the above sentence that some editors took offence to, as it was not the main thrust of my argument. You can judge my opinion of Trump from reading some of our articles like Veracity of statements by Donald Trump, Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations and 2021 United States Capitol attack, so in my opinion BLP does not apply (otherwise at least the first two articles could be deleted per WP:BLPDELETE). Furthermore, in my opinion anyone causing all of the issues expressed in those articles should end up in prison as basic justice - but if he can't be proven beyond reasonable doubt to have committed those crimes, prison for tax fraud will suffice. I think the phrase is "Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb". Anyway, this is going off-topic. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:32, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Ritchie could just as well have meant that he hopes it turns out that Trump has committed tax fraud. Personally, when I say "I hope Donald Trump spends the rest of his life in prison", I'm expressing no opinion on whether he's actually committed any crime. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 11:27, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Hoping that someone will be convicted of a crime presupposes that they are, in fact, guilty of the crime. I don't see why attacking an living person and saying they committed tax fraud is OK here. Chess (talk) (please use
- Ritchie said that they will be pleased
- Support—Anyone with the capacity for the kind of introspection that led Vami IV to disavow his past political leanings, not to mention the honesty and courage it takes to admit it openly in their RfA, is somebody we should want to have as an administrator. @Vami IV: Don't be ashamed! You were inundated with extreme right-wing demagoguery, and your old beliefs are a reflection of this—but you outgrew it! That's more than can be said for many other people who adopted those sorts of reactionary views. You have matured into a genuinely decent, compassionate person. And look at how far you've come: literally hundreds of new articles under your belt, stellar work in some of the more contentious of the site's subject areas, and now you're at the precipice of being granted a set of tools that are given only to the most highly trusted of volunteers. We're proud of you! Kurtis (talk) 09:37, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Very strong support They are a very trusted editor here, leading me to believe they would be an outstanding member of our cadre of sysops here because they have the proficiency and competence of one. They’ll be a helpful addition to the members who use the tools due to the fact that they are sufficient and pre-eminent. ScrapheapNinjaShuriken77 10:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I see nothing to make me belive that the editor in question would abuse the tools. Additionally, I strongly trust the nominators here. !ɘM γɿɘυϘ⅃ϘƧ 10:45, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support precious, lasting good relations --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:13, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Grimes2 (talk) 13:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Fine for me. --Minorax (talk) 14:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support No issues, good luck. Shellwood (talk) 15:17, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support with thorough disgust at what's taking place in the comments section at this RFA.--WaltCip-(talk) 15:59, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support: trusted, has a demonstrated need for the mop. JavaHurricane 16:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vami is a superb contributor, and we have worked together before (see Vami's very voluminous list of birds). Vami is very kind and helpful, and have no doubt they will take the feedback received here on board. The copyright quote matter is a result of the lack of proper guidance, and I think we as a community should lay better ground rules around what quotes do and do not count as copyvios. In several places, all our guidance says is "brief" quotes are allowed. In practice we have allowed up to paragraph length quotes, somewhat contrary to a textualist reading of "brief". Something ripe for an RfC it appears... With regards to the political angle, this is the first time I've ever heard of it, and I have interacted with Vami significantly on and off-wiki over the years. Never once have I thought that Vami was bringing POV or disruption, and they have always been beyond courteous. Political indoctrination is a spooky thing that happens to many young folks, and we should be glad that folks can escape such things. Vami seems to have done much soul searching on the matter. So all in all: Vami's political issues lie behind him, the copyright issue is a matter of community disagreement, not inherent fault on Vami's part, and Vami is an excellent contributor. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 16:59, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support, WP:NOBIGDEAL. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Can be trusted with the toolset. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. A good editor, who is responsible and motivated. Aside from minor peccadilloes and dirty laundry (of which most people, including adminstrators, are guilty), there is nothing to suggest that Vami would be anything less than an excellent admin. They have a great deal of experience with creating, reviewing and editing content. Things like AfD participation do not really matter if they're not going to work in AfD. They've been making the place better for a whole, which I expect this to continue after enmopment. jp×g 19:24, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - I believe this user can be trusted with the mop. While I was concerned that Vami once professed to being fascist, I believe that it was merely a case of not understanding the true meaning of the word. - ZLEA T\C 19:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support meets most decent criteria. Vermont (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirbopher2004 (talk • contribs) 23:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support It's not a slam dunk for me; the fascism thing does bother me even after professing a hard turn, and I disagree on the copyvio stance (as expressed in Q7). But I like most of the answers and I definitely like the straightforward style shown there. The content work is, of course, great. I guess the WP admin works will be able to buffer a candidate with some less middle-of-the-road views, in exchange for the likely benefits of having them on team. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:57, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support. I also disagree on the copyvio stance, but (as a longtime intellectual property attorney) I agree with the applicant and |CaptainEek that the project as a whole needs to be clearer in this area. The political issue is potentially a firecracker, but I would just advise the applicant to steer clear of the use of administrative powers with respect to disputes in that area unless obvious vandalism or the like is involved. Other than that, I see no problems here. BD2412 T 03:00, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - Clear net positive planning on doing important work in an understaffed area. The discussion around the copyright specifics has been interesting, I think I'm in the camp of people who don't entirely agree with Vami IV's stance on quotes - but it's become clear that this is a fairly broad disagreement that probably does need some RfC work, so I'm happy that any disagreements seem to be solvable in the future. Any other direct behavioural issues seem to go back into the relatively distant past, and as long as Vami IV isn't planning on swinging into serious American politics admin work I do not see it as an issue today. ~ mazca talk 09:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support Vami's helped me a lot in my editing and has always been there for me on Wikipedia. Vami has done diligent work in the field of copyvio investigations, and I think admin powers would provide a boon in this regard. Roniiustalk to me 10:48, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - no concerns, even about the 'fascism' thing. Editor has expressed regret and it was a number of years ago. Regards, your friendly neighbourhood socialist ;) GiantSnowman 11:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Support - provided the candidate keeps to the five pillars...what's the problem? SethWhales talk 14:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
- Oppose I am not satisfied with the response to Cryptic's question, in which the candidate feels guilty about being conservative and/or right-wing. Wikipedia already has enough of the opposite bias. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 18:29, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @The owner of all: He was fascist, not conservative. He never once implied that voting Trump was something to be ashamed of. Scorpions13256 (talk) 18:47, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- That may be true but I have experience in real life of conservatives being labeled fascist. That's about as much as I'm willing to discuss that on Wikipedia. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 18:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I understand, but I'd like to let you know that I am conservative too. Scorpions13256 (talk) 18:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Anecdotes from offwiki life don't really matter in RfAs, you know. It was Vami himself who called himself fascist, and Vami himself who regrets it, as is his right. This is not a discussion of conservatism in particular or political beliefs in general. This is a request for adminship, where the Wikipedia editing community collectively decides whether (or not) a user has need for the tools, and is fit for the tools, per the established guidelines, traditions and precedent that govern the project. So please, oppose him all you want for valid reasons you might have to believe Vami will not be a good admin per our rules, but if the only reason you can think of is political, know that it is not relevant. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 19:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- That may be true but I have experience in real life of conservatives being labeled fascist. That's about as much as I'm willing to discuss that on Wikipedia. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 18:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Adding to what Scorpion has said, what the candidate wishes to feel about being right-wing/conservative is, to put it very bluntly, none of your business, nor is it relevant to this RfA. Outside of extremes such as racism/fascism/transphobia/homophobia, we do not police editors' opinions; even if, as you charge, Vami is "leftist", that is simply irrelevant. Your vote, being based on the private, non-harmful, personal identity of the editor not being the kind you like, is a bad-faith vote. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 18:59, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I disagree. Wikipedia is extremely influential in real life and there is politically-motivated things that happen in real life that affect people. I believe it is not bad faith to use someone's stated political opinion as a factor in determining things. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 19:21, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I also disagree with your assertion that my !vote is based on disliking his political views. There are other issues raised. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 19:21, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Then mention those in the vote, rather than politics. I hope you understand this is not a political election. If you do not, it is very unfortunate. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 19:30, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I have no idea how a candidate's guilt towards a previous personal political opinion is enough to single handedly disavow every single other aspect in support of their nomination. Unless you can provide some actual evidence for why this has been a bad thing (e.g. difs) then there is quite literally no validity to the argument. Aza24 (talk) 20:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Can we move this to the talk page? This has to be one of the most ridiculous opposes I've seen. The nominator has changed how they describe their political views, so it's believed that they can't manage the admin toolset on Wikipedia? If there is additional reasonings, then this is the place to share them. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- @The owner of all: He was fascist, not conservative. He never once implied that voting Trump was something to be ashamed of. Scorpions13256 (talk) 18:47, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose I too oppose using long quotes, and in fact unnecessary quotes in general, as a matter of style. . But an attributed quote of 75 words is not in my opinion a copyright violation when discussing ordinary prose, and I specifically disagree with the example in Q6 above . I don't think we can draw an absolute line, and we've never defined "brief", but I think it depends on the nature of both the cited work and the article, with an upper limit of perhaps 300 words or so (which is about the normal academic limit) Complete quotes of a work however short are copyvio. 25 words from a 50 word newspaper notice are probably copyvio; 100 words from a printed nonfiction book probably are not. I'm much more worried about using snippets, which easily can be quoting out of context and distorting NPOV. There's enough disagreement here that we may need a more general discussion. But I think the views of the candidate are at one extreme end, and I therefore would not give admin powers to enforce them. (and though I may stand at the other end, I don't take admin actions to enforce my view) DGG ( talk ) 06:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I think it's sufficiently clear (based on answers to my question) that the Vami IV wouldn't let their political biases affect their editing and I appreciate how they've managed to distinguish between off and onwiki conduct. That being said, I had some concerns about the nominee's userpage (I elaborated below in the discussion section) and on further review I've come across something far more troubling.
Apparently two weeks ago Moneytrees deleted the page with a G7 rationale and restored it 30 seconds later "per request" as seen at Special:Log/User:Vami IV. The page history from before that moment has disappeared into thin air. I don't like to cast aspersions on other editors but it looks like Moneytrees deleted and then partially undeleted the nominee's userpage. If this occurred, it is in my opinion WP:ADMINABUSE and a misuse of the WP:Selective deletion process which is not to be used for covering up bad stuff before an RfA; only complex history merges. Given that I am not an admin I cannot see exactly what happened here but judging by circumstantial evidence it looks like that is what happened, given that Joe Roe has informed us that deleted revisions on the nominee's user page exist and I cannot see them. While I can forgive someone being an open fascist in the past and the minor userpage issues I see right now the fact that there's some kind of cover-up going on here w/r/t the nominees userpage history makes it impossible for me to support them. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 06:57, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- Moved to talk. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 09:25, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose I can't feel comfortable with what I regard as the candidate's tendency to occupy fairly emphatic or extreme positions; in my view it is desirable for an administrator to be comfortable with the middle ground, where subtlety, nuance, moderation and compromise can be found, and I'm seeing too much of the opposite in the candidate. The fascism thing is one example, another - seemingly coming from the opposite political pole - is on (Redacted). I also don't like that the candidate requested that a question be removed from this RfA - it seemed a pretty inocuous question to me, and not exactly difficult to answer in a casual manner, even if the candidate found it objectionable. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:41, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose I probably won't win any friends with this oppose, but I don't think this user is suitable for adminship. Looking into their contributions, I saw several incorrect uses of English. Those struck me as odd at first, but then I saw the statement "As this the first of the reviewee's articles that I have reviewed, they should note that I am a grammar pendant and will nitpick in the interest of prose quality" attached to around twenty GA reviews, over the course of a year and ending only recently. This might have been a simple typographic error (with a lot of irony), but it strikes me as too much. I don't think our admins have to have a perfect command of English, but I do think they should be alert to such glaring errors. Vami IV, sorry I can't support, but thank you for running. --- Possibly (talk) 05:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Amusing case of Muphry's law, but is this really an oppose matter? Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Are you serious? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 05:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- (small note: it seems that usage of “grammar pendant” started and ended in April 2020 but some of the talk pages have been edited by others since: see e.g. this GAR from that month with "grammar pedant" in its place) eviolite (talk) 05:51, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Are you suggesting that a user who writes FA quality articles is somehow not suited to adminship because they do not have good enough grammar? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:49, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose I came to this RFA expecting to support the candidate. I was aware of their excellent work in content creation, which I admire. I'd also like to say how much I value their contributions to the GA process and CCI. Having read this RFA and looked through the candidates userpage, I must echo PaleCloudedWhite's rationale for opposing. While choosing a userbox in support of a form of fascism shows an egregious lack of judgement, it's also been at least a few years in the past (I've seen 2017 suggested below). It seems the candidate has moved on and disavowed these beliefs but I'm not sure their judgement has improved much. The CCI Bingo on their userpage is an example of this. Why would one name "Indian subcontinent" in the same breath as "sockpuppet party in the edit history" and "awful attempt at paraphrasing to get around Earwig's"? Regardless of the statistics being discussed in the comments section, this box is plain bad taste and inconsiderate to a large share of our contributors. (It is also WP:BITEy.) I wonder why this box wasn't taken down before running to be an admin since it was bound to raise questions. It's this tendency towards the unnecessarily emphatic and the lack of judgement associated with it that make me uncomfortable. Modussiccandi (talk) 09:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose. I haven't encountered Vami before, but after some research I don't think he is mature enough to use the tools responsibly, especially when it comes to communicating about them to other editors. The fact that until late 2017 his user page stated
This User Identifies as a Fascist. Plz no discriminate
, as I have discussed below, is obviously a huge red flag, but it's not the only thing. I don't doubt that Vami has changed his mind about this and of course he's far from the only person to have said embarrassingly extreme things as a teenager. With that said, he uses the same trivialising internet-speak to denounce fascism above ("cringe beliefs") as he did to deflect criticism for it then ("Plz no discriminate"), which strongly suggests to me that he still does not understand the seriousness of it. Just six months after he removed that box from his user page, he volunteered as "coordinator" for WikiProject Germany, a role he continues to perform and which is prominently referenced in this nomination. That the extreme "cringe" (to borrow his phrasing) of an American teenager who formerly espoused fascism coordinating Wikipedia's coverage of Germany has apparently never occurred to him is again a poor reflection on his maturity and ability to consider how his words and actions come across to other people. I have not included diffs here because they in the history of Vami's user page, which he (wisely) had deleted shortly before this RfA because it includes numerous personal details self-outed when he was a minor. I'm glad Vami has now realised what a bad idea that was, but the fact that he only did so a few weeks ago, similar to how he only deleted the fascist userbox he created in January, does not scream maturity to me. Nor does the racist stereotype that Indian editors do not understand copyright on his userpage or the concerns raised here about his behaviour on Discord. Vami does seem a capable Wikipedian but with his young age, apparent lack of maturity, and, as PaleCloudedWhite puts it well, a tendency to rush to extremes, I worry he will quickly get into trouble with the admin toolset. – Joe (talk) 09:32, 7 June 2021 (UTC)- Joe Roe, why is it cringe for a reformed fascist to coordinate WP Germany? Do WP Germany have any complaints? Internet-speak is not trivialising - like it or not, much of it has diffused into the English of Gen Z irl and can be used in deadly earnest just as often as in meme-speak, and so, just like with any other kind of English in which jokes are cracked, you need nuance and context to understand it now. FWIW about the CCI Bingo, I don't feel racially attacked by the "Indian subcontinent" box, because I know I'm not a copyright violator. It is indeed true that subcontinent-related topics make up a far larger share of CCI cases than they should, as the proportion of subcontinent-related articles and editors is small overall. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 11:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- This oppose, to me, suggests that you would like our admins to be making their decisions on optics (dubious optics at that) rather than what is actually beneficial to the project. The fact that they remain the co-ordinator suggests that there haven't been any issues and any optics issues were so clearly obvious to all that it took roughly 4 years and an in-depth review by the entire community for anyone to find them. Everyone wants admins to be capable of a) admitting fault and improving b) working the tough areas c) making the controversial decisions. So the reasoning for penalising Vami for having the audacity to show good behaviour escapes me Nosebagbear (talk) 12:39, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Nosebagbear: That's a fair point. My oppose is partially motivated by 'optics', but I don't think that is mutually exclusive with what is beneficial to the project. This situation reminds me a bit of the recent scandal on Scots Wikipedia, which went largely unnoticed for 7 years, but still managed to severely damage the project's reputation in Scotland and beyond when it came out. It's easy to think that the world isn't paying attention to us, but they are. In my corner of the real world, the vast majority of the people I talk to about Wikipedia have no interest in engaging with us because they think the project is sexist, racist, and generally toxic. You can also find this view repeated again and again in academic literature and academic social media like twitter. This conclusion is usually based on recollections of media coverage of things like the Strickland incident, where the nuances of internal wikiprocesses and the fact that the AfC reviewer in question was and is extremely beneficial to the project are not mentioned, only the (essentially correct) headline that "Wikipedia excludes notable women". So yes, I worry that—"Wikipedia moderator in charge of articles on Germany is former fascist"—could turn into yet another bad headline and yet another swathe of potential editors alienated. That really sucks for Vami, I know, but the harsh truth of the world is that when you publicly espouse fascism, there are long-lasting consequences no matter what you do afterwards.
- That said, it is only part of the reason. I also think Vami is personally too immature to use the tools responsibly, as I explained above. – Joe (talk) 13:12, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose I'm not convinced of competency in the area of copyright based on their responses, which I consider to be the most important part of the project. That would only be a weak oppose from me, but I've also read Joe's oppose directly above mine and share those concerns. I wouldn't say it's a complete disqualification, but I'd like to see a few more months of maturity in both of those areas before handing over the mop. SportingFlyer T·C 11:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I'd like to clarify based on the discussion below, my biggest concern is the fact their user page was revdel'd a mere two weeks before this RfA, making it impossible for non-admins to see. While I'm not necessarily dissatisfied with their response, I'm concerned about the lack of transparency there, and the fact that it seems to have been done specifically to prepare for an RfA run. SportingFlyer T·C 14:31, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I can of course not speak for Vami, but I find it completely natural to look through your user page before RfA. I myself checked my userpage just a few days ago to make sure everything there was relevant and up to date. If I in the process was reminded that I shared some personal information I no longer want to be readily available on wiki I would have contacted an admin and asked for it to be removed from the history just like Vami did. --Trialpears (talk) 14:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I understand tidying a user page before an RfA, but given the topic of discussion here, revdel'ing it to where there's only two versions in the page history, especially given everything that's been discussed here, gives me pause. (It's also not outcome determinative to my oppose.) SportingFlyer T·C 14:56, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- SportingFlyer might I point you to Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Vami IV#Chess's oppose, where this has been discussed a lot and two different admins have said there was nothing shady in there. -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 15:33, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- No-one doubts the lack of shadiness. What's called into question is a matter of trust, and that's where admins cannot pronounce. ——Serial 15:40, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Precisely. You could boil my response down to a simple "I don't quite trust them with the tools yet," and it's not just the revdel issue, either. SportingFlyer T·C 16:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I understand tidying a user page before an RfA, but given the topic of discussion here, revdel'ing it to where there's only two versions in the page history, especially given everything that's been discussed here, gives me pause. (It's also not outcome determinative to my oppose.) SportingFlyer T·C 14:56, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I'd like to clarify based on the discussion below, my biggest concern is the fact their user page was revdel'd a mere two weeks before this RfA, making it impossible for non-admins to see. While I'm not necessarily dissatisfied with their response, I'm concerned about the lack of transparency there, and the fact that it seems to have been done specifically to prepare for an RfA run. SportingFlyer T·C 14:31, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose per their answer to Q7, which, being a mixture of "others did X" and "I like to think Y": the opportunity was there for a robust defence of their position; an opportunity not taken, unfortunately. There are also obvious questions as to maturity and general savvy. While almost nothing they have done (raised in the opposes) is absolutely egregious, all together they smack of trying to do too much, too quickly when they do not possess—at this juncture—the necessary qualities to do so. More haste, less speed, as they say!Oh, and Vami IV, the community's always interested in democracy; if you have any spare Discord messages on the topic available, could you post them here? Many thanks! ——Serial 12:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Serial, currently you've posted both an Oppose and a Neutral... just letting you know. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 12:40, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Many thanks, Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI; FWIW, I thought your Twitter comment was right on point. Talk about dumbassary! ——Serial 12:49, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Serial, currently you've posted both an Oppose and a Neutral... just letting you know. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 12:40, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose Generally along the same lines as Joe Roe.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:18, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose - I don't care what political views people held when they were teenagers (although Joe has a good point about optics and judgment, it's less of a concern for me), but the answers to questions and recent concerns raised here lead me to believe they're not ready to use admin tools. Levivich 14:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose. In regards to Wikipedia, I do not participate in social media or other off-wiki communications. Everything I do on Wikipedia is on Wikipedia. It's transparent. I do not care about the candidate's previous or current political views but the specter has been raised regarding incivility off-wiki (in relation to users on-wiki) and has not been addressed. My bar is generally low, adminship is no big deal. But, before I jump on the, "...is not a jerk," bandwagon, I have to know. The candidate is welcome to either reply (I will not consider it badgering) or answer my question in that section. Ifnord (talk) 15:40, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Ifnord, Do you mean this? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:21, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose per Joe Roe. The nuking of his user page history shortly before this RFA doesn't help his case either. -- Calidum 16:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose per DGG and Serial, and answers to Q7 and Q19. Their views on sourced block quotes lead me to believe they would be over-zealous as an admin in that area. Their answers to many of the questions are disappointingly short and perfunctory. I am also concerned by the issues over the fascist userbox, which I don't think can just be explained away by the folly of youth. Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Neutral
- (Moved to oppose, sorry.)
Obviously the Seamus Heaney farce was quite unacceptable; I'm glad the candidate acknowledges this. Only eight days ago, too? I note that they also think a referenced block quote is a copyright violation; I'm yet to see them distance themselves from it. Bizarre. Having said that, anyone who can respond to the kind of foolishness we regularly see at AfD without bursting their spleen with laughter clearly has something praiseworthy in their temperament. Good luck.FWIW, I'm also interested to know the answer to Cryptic's question, for obvious reasons. ——Serial 16:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)- @Serial Number 54129: Where is the "referenced block quote" link meant to point? I'm not seeing Vami at a glance? -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 17:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- No, that ~80 word referenced-block quote is what they believe to constitute a copyvio; it would be useful to hear from them in this regard. ——Serial 18:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- You won't hear anything unless you ask, so I've asked. (Though my own opinion is that this is reasonable to link in CCI when searching for a general context of copyvios by a user, that we should be stringent with long quotes and that there's certainly not sufficient reason for using such a long quote rather than picking snippets and/or paraphrasing.) — Bilorv (talk) 18:15, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- No, that ~80 word referenced-block quote is what they believe to constitute a copyvio; it would be useful to hear from them in this regard. ——Serial 18:03, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Serial Number 54129: Where is the "referenced block quote" link meant to point? I'm not seeing Vami at a glance? -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 17:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- (Moved to oppose, sorry.)
- Neutral: I'm actually pleased to see someone in copyvio work. The issues from [1] with VAGUEWAVE comment discussed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2021 May 27 would have been an oppose by me if the candidate had not brought it up themselves at Answer 3. In general I'd support removal of copyvio's first and ask questions about it later but was this over the top. The risk of Red mist, and a couple of other points which may be giving me very slight twinges combine to making me sit on the fence, certainly for the moment. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 05:09, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Neutral Their response to Cryptic's question concerns me. This is not because of current or past political beliefs; there's no political belief that should be disqualifying to adminship, provided it doesn't influence one's editing. My concern is that they seem to be going through some sort of personal identity realignment that they're working through via Wikipedia which I'm not sure is conducive to good adminship and opens the potential for drama. I'm not going to oppose, though, because I'm not sure sure I can more aptly quantify a reason to do so. I suppose I just find the confessional tone of the reply rather off-putting. I always welcome an explanation of past edits when there's a question about their purpose or intent, but this is more of a "begging for forgiveness" vibe which I find slightly immature. Perhaps I'm misreading it. I'll ruminate on this a few days. Chetsford (talk) 14:18, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
General comments
- And FWIW, I can assure you that Vami has, in all interactions I've seen on the Discord server, uniformly, without exception, expressed his remorse about the userbox in particular and his fascist views in general. Also, as he's replied to Cryptic, we don't have to take him merely at his word that he's changed - his edits speak for themselves. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 18:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Like Scorpions13256 (talk) 19:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I am uncomfortable with how an editor who's not here is being discussed at Q6. I note that the question was not asking for specifics about the case or the editor. This comment made well after TPA was revoked was already inadvisable IMO. Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- IMO, it was inadvisable for two editors I otherwise respect to write multi-paragraph defenses of an editor who was harrassing me offwiki. If Vami's response was inadvisable in turn, it was because it was responding to comments that shouldn't have been made. Vaticidalprophet 18:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 18:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- What do you agree to, The owner of all? Please be specific. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 19:11, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Regarding the fact that an editor other than the one standing for adminship is being discussed. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 19:14, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Well, it was more "discussing the editor who is standing for adminship's interactions with someone else" - which I think is reasonable. Nearly everything on this site is an interaction with someone else, after all, so a hard-line standard here would prevent diffing pretty much anything. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:16, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Regarding the fact that an editor other than the one standing for adminship is being discussed. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 19:14, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- What do you agree to, The owner of all? Please be specific. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 19:11, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I strongly agree that the comment you link to was undesirable. AFC is now on life support without this editor, and I am really disappointed that there was not a better outcome. This was one of a couple of places where I've found I personally disagree with Vami IV, and nonetheless I was a strong support, because I don't think this relates to misuse of admin tools or conduct that's beyond defensible. I guess I'm one of the editors that Vaticidalprophet is referencing above—shoot me an email if you'd like to talk about this privately, or for me to explain why I made the comment. I am sorry that you've been harassed off-wiki, and I wasn't aiming to defend or undermine that. — Bilorv (talk) 19:07, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Question for Elli regarding their question: How does retaining copyvio content in an article, "make the encyclopedia better"? Why would that be justification to invoke IAR? ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 19:17, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @The owner of all: I asked the question for Vami to answer - I'll be happy to explain my reasoning after he answers (in fact, I will in my !vote), or if he chooses not to answer, after the RfA ends. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Elli, you've asked an experienced copyright editor a question that most copyright newbies could answer without having to look it up. I really think you should strike it as not really adding much to the discussion. Your second question is no great shakes, either. If I were you I'd consider striking both and just spend a few months listening at RfA, see if you can pick something up. —valereee (talk) 19:39, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- All three of the copyright questions are rather bad, but shouldn't be too hard for Vami to answer. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 19:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I agree, but why add silly questions into the mix for no good reason? Every silly question requires the candidate to spend time and energy during a highly stressful time. You don't want to just say, "Of course not. IAR has no place in CCI." So you have to think, compose, maybe research to get your statement right. It's not helpful to the process. —valereee (talk) 20:02, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- All three of the copyright questions are rather bad, but shouldn't be too hard for Vami to answer. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 19:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Elli, you've asked an experienced copyright editor a question that most copyright newbies could answer without having to look it up. I really think you should strike it as not really adding much to the discussion. Your second question is no great shakes, either. If I were you I'd consider striking both and just spend a few months listening at RfA, see if you can pick something up. —valereee (talk) 19:39, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @The owner of all: I asked the question for Vami to answer - I'll be happy to explain my reasoning after he answers (in fact, I will in my !vote), or if he chooses not to answer, after the RfA ends. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @John M Wolfson: I know my question is bad. I am asking this question based on an experience I recently had with him. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Duly noted. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 20:07, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Scorpions13256, actual concerns are never bad questions. If you have an actual concern your question addresses, that is a good and relevant question. —valereee (talk) 20:08, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Valereee: I will explain after he answers. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Of course. —valereee (talk) 20:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @John M Wolfson: @Valereee:, he answered satisfactorily, and I explained my reasoning for asking the question. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Of course. —valereee (talk) 20:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Valereee: I will explain after he answers. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @John M Wolfson: I know my question is bad. I am asking this question based on an experience I recently had with him. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Vami didn't remove the fascist userbox from his user page until August 2017,[2] six months before he appointed himself the coordinator of WikiProject Germany.[3] I'm not sure whether that says more about him or us, but I'm surprised that this particular revelation hasn't provoked more comment. – Joe (talk) 21:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I'm disappointed that you chose to make this comment with an edit summary that accuses Vami of a crime. I invite you to self-revdel it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed. Totally uncalled for. Scorpions13256 (talk) 21:25, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I gave serious consideration as to whether this was eligible for R2 revdel and decided it isn't but agree that the edit summary came out in a way I am guessing Joe did not intend based on the contents of the edit itself. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:29, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49: I left a message on Joe's talk (but not here) explaining why I made an R2 redaction of the edit summary. I agree that the content itself isn't at the same level, so I left it alone. To avoid further digression, anyone is free to raise concerns on my talk page. — Wug·a·po·des 03:04, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Not as disappointed as I am that the majority of the great and good of this community are apparently more concerned with the minatuae of copyright law than having an administrator that a few years ago openly espoused fascism. The use of fascist symbols outside of education etc. is a crime in Germany. That is a fact, not an accusation. And presumably the Coordinator already knows that. But again our priorities have become distorted to the point that it's apparently more important to quickly expunge uncomfortable truths rather than discuss, say, what might happen if a journalist finds out about them. – Joe (talk) 11:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- The key point here is that Vami has quite obviously done some deep soul-searching introspection and realised that their prior views were wrong. They are now no more a fascist than any of us - their content work alone is proof of their changed perspective, to say nothing of their answer to Cryptic's question. With regard to
quickly expunge uncomfortable truths
, I presume you are referring to the revision deletion - revdel was applied because Wugapodes felt it was a BLP violation eligible for revdel under RD2. That is not expunging uncomfortable truths, that is simply Wug following policy. Regarding "journalists finding out", not only is that an extreme hypothetical, I would argue that someone genuinely changing their problematic views, expressing profound regret for them, and being respected and lauded by the community for doing so is precisely the sort of thing Wikipedia should be known for. We must allow for, and indeed even celebrate, people changing their minds. firefly ( t · c ) 12:14, 6 June 2021 (UTC) - You did not simply say X is a crime in jurisdiction Y. You said, unequivocally, that non-public figure A is guilty of a specific crime despite that person having never been convicted (let alone charged) of that crime. As I said on your talk page, that is a bright line violation of WP:BLPCRIME. While we are on the subject of crimes, homosexual activity is illegal in many countries and in some cases punishable by death. At my RfA, no one thought I should be held to the legal standards of countries I do not live in despite me, a homosexual, being in violation of the laws of multiple countries. Why? Because whether I might have violated the laws of other countries is at best irrelevant and at worst grasping at straws. If we want to talk about things that are crimes, remember that defamation is also a crime, and unlike the laws of Germany or Saudi Arabia, it is a crime in your jurisdiction, Joe. Privacy and the avoidance of defamation is what motivates our BLP policy, and RfA is not a free pass to charge people with crimes for rhetorical points. No one has removed your comments raising concern about the candidate's past beliefs, and editors have asked about and discussed the particulars of fascism on this very page without violating BLP. Despite your hyperbole, you are free to do so as well. But do not confuse the point: you are not being criticized for "uncomfortable truths", you are being criticized for a bright line violation of our BLP policy. — Wug·a·po·des 20:21, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Wugapodes: Your analogy with homosexuality only works if I picked a jurisdiction at random. Obviously I didn't. I mentioned Germany because Vami has repeatedly referenced his leadership of WikiProject Germany in this RfA and, as I said, he became the coordinator of that project just months after he apparently stopped calling himself a fascist. For historical reasons, Germany—and words cannot express how astonished I am that I have to spell this out—is especially intolerant of fascists.
- And what part of that factual statement is defamation, exactly? Any admin can see that Vami's user page once contained a fascist eagle, accompanied by the words
This User Identifies as a Fascist. Plz no discriminate.
He doesn't deny it. A statement has to be false to be libel. But good job tackling the real problem here: not talking about whether we're happy with our community's abject failure to confront an open fascist, but making sure that edit summaries referencing pseudonymous editors on project pages conform precisely to our biography of living persons policy. Real defender of the wiki stuff. – Joe (talk) 21:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- Joe, it is defamatory to state, as you did in your now-removed edit summary, that someone has committed a crime. Full stop. I find it hard to believe you can't see that, and harder to believe that you are actually choosing to double down on it. What do you mean that Vami has "apparently" stopped having fascist beliefs? Are you suggesting that it's impossible that a teenager on the internet could fall into reactionary beliefs and then reconsider them with age and maturity? Do you think Vami's answer to Q4 is a lie? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- "Apparently" as in Vami might well have abandoned his beliefs before he removed the infobox from his userpage, but that's the only data point we have. Apologies for the ambiguity there. As for the rest, I'll just reiterate that something has to be false to be defamatory. I don't doubt that Vami has matured and changed his mind. I haven't even formally opposed this RfA yet. The question I was raising was whether, given the chain of events and his continuing involvement with WP Germany, he has matured enough, plus whether we as a community are happy with our failure to deal with an open fascist four years ago. It is very, very disheartening to see that editors respect instead would prefer to talk about petty CCI disputes or wikilawyer BLP to take the sharp edges off the real-life implications of espousing fascism. – Joe (talk) 08:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Premeditated Chaos and PMC: Also I feel like I have to point out, as with Chess/Wugapodes below, that defamation is a crime where I live, so this comment would appear to be doing the same thing that you're saying I shouldn't have done. Can we not agree that it would be better to focus on the substance and spirit of what each other are saying, rather than playing wiki- and IRL-lawyer? – Joe (talk) 09:59, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Joe, it is defamatory to state, as you did in your now-removed edit summary, that someone has committed a crime. Full stop. I find it hard to believe you can't see that, and harder to believe that you are actually choosing to double down on it. What do you mean that Vami has "apparently" stopped having fascist beliefs? Are you suggesting that it's impossible that a teenager on the internet could fall into reactionary beliefs and then reconsider them with age and maturity? Do you think Vami's answer to Q4 is a lie? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- The irony of Wugapodes talking about how bad it is for an editor to accuse another of a crime onwiki then in the same comment accusing an editor of criminal defamation is not lost on me. Hypocrisy at it's finest. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 21:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- I did not say Joe committed defamation and I challenge you to quote where I did. I said, as a fact, that defamation is a crime. I never said anyone defamed anyone else (unlike what Joe said about Vami) — Wug·a·po·des 21:56, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Uh huh, saying "defamation is also a crime, and unlike the laws of Germany or Saudi Arabia, it is a crime in your jurisdiction" is 100% not an accusation because you didn't say the magic words. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 23:03, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- To quote Joe
That is a fact, not an accusation.
But nice try! It's funny that when asked to say specifically where I made an accusation, you try to hide your failure by sarcastically pointing out that you couldn't. I know you say it with sarcasm to try and make it seem like you're clever and "won", butis 100% not an accusation because you didn't say the magic words
is actually a very important aspect of what distinguishes an accusation from other kinds of statements and even Joe acknowledged that when he distinguished stating facts about laws from making accusations about breaking them. Now of course I'm just a lowly linguist who teaches how language works to university students, so I'm sorry if my understanding of speech acts is not up to your level, but merely reminding someone of what is and is not a crime is not an accusation that they are criminally liable, particularly in the context I used it: the very next sentence is about how defamation as an abstract concept informs our local policies and why we should therefore take that policy seriously. Defamation is a crime in pretty much every jurisdiction, so unless you think "Robbery is a crime in your jurisdiction, Chess" is also an accusation, you'll need to work a little harder than a proof by sarcasm. That will be hard, of course, as we both know you're blowing smoke and scrambling to save face now that you've been called out in public for baselessly accusing me of hypocrisy. Unlike Joe, I didn't point out a particular law that was broken. I didn't even say Joe broke a law. Unlike Joe at no point did I say that anyone committed any crime, and your sarcastic admission of your failure to quote an actual accusation when I asked shows that. But sure, keep trying to both-sides this by willfully misreading what I said so that you can win an argument on the internet. — Wug·a·po·des 06:54, 7 June 2021 (UTC)- Has Chess now committed the crime of defamation by falsely accusing you of falsely accusing me of defamation? Have I by asking this question? Will we be able to stop this spiral of libel-inception before the whole wiki is revdel'd? Help us, oh mighty linguist who teaches how language works to university students. – Joe (talk) 08:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- To quote Joe
- Uh huh, saying "defamation is also a crime, and unlike the laws of Germany or Saudi Arabia, it is a crime in your jurisdiction" is 100% not an accusation because you didn't say the magic words. Chess (talk) (please use
- I did not say Joe committed defamation and I challenge you to quote where I did. I said, as a fact, that defamation is a crime. I never said anyone defamed anyone else (unlike what Joe said about Vami) — Wug·a·po·des 21:56, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell, neither the Italian or Spanish fascist symbols fall under Strafgesetzbuch section 86a. —Kusma (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I believe the Nazis also used the eagle symbol. In any case, as should be obvious to anyone reading my comment with an ounce of good faith, the point was not to play lawyer, but to point out the embarrassing fact that at one point we had an American teenager who recently called himself a fascist "coordinating" our coverage of Germany. And raise the question of whether we are happy to give that same person the bit just a few years later. – Joe (talk) 21:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Your comments are rising to the level of sealioning - "just asking", oops, nothing bad meant, just raising a little eensy question - never mind that the question of Vami's discarded beliefs has been asked and answered at Q4 right from the start. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I certainly didn't mean to do that. As you can see from the flak I've already gotten, it's hard to be direct on this issue. But to clarify, I am indeed saying that it is very bad that Vami had a fascist userbox on his page four years ago, very bad that he shortly thereafter became the coordinator of WikiProject Germany, where hypothetically to the best of my knowledge etc. etc. displaying that userbox would be a crime, very bad that this is trivialised in Q4 as a "cringe belief", very bad that you or the other nominator didn't even mention it, and very bad that few people here seem to care much about any of this. It was a question in the sense that I assumed my comment would provoke some good faith discussion of this – apparently wrongly. – Joe (talk) 08:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Joe, If you had stuck to the language you used in any of the actual edits you've made we would be discussing Vamis userbox to the extent we were discussing anything at all. But you went a good deal further in the edit summary and accused a teen, who was perhaps a minor at the time, of a crime. Like an actual specific statutory crime. That's why you are getting pushback and Cryptic who asked the actual question is not. I think I did extend good faith in my response above and would ask you to consider in good faith the concerns others have and consider in good faith that others are considering whether they trust Vami given the totality of their record. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49: What interests me is whether you, or anyone else "pushing back" at me on this, actually thinks what I said was incorrect. – Joe (talk) 08:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Incorrect factually? IANAL let alone a German one so I have no idea. I am a little sad that you choose to ask me a question rather than deal with the substance of what I wrote. Barkeep49 (talk) 12:12, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49: What interests me is whether you, or anyone else "pushing back" at me on this, actually thinks what I said was incorrect. – Joe (talk) 08:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Your comments are rising to the level of sealioning - "just asking", oops, nothing bad meant, just raising a little eensy question - never mind that the question of Vami's discarded beliefs has been asked and answered at Q4 right from the start. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I believe the Nazis also used the eagle symbol. In any case, as should be obvious to anyone reading my comment with an ounce of good faith, the point was not to play lawyer, but to point out the embarrassing fact that at one point we had an American teenager who recently called himself a fascist "coordinating" our coverage of Germany. And raise the question of whether we are happy to give that same person the bit just a few years later. – Joe (talk) 21:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- The key point here is that Vami has quite obviously done some deep soul-searching introspection and realised that their prior views were wrong. They are now no more a fascist than any of us - their content work alone is proof of their changed perspective, to say nothing of their answer to Cryptic's question. With regard to
- At WikiProject Germany, Vami hasn't displayed any fascist tendencies or sympathies. When he wanted to be coordinator, we all said "meh, sure, whatever, go for it" so he was kind of elected unopposed (see here if you really care). —Kusma (talk) 21:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Generally speaking, I feel like the community just obsesses over RFA’s so much so that some editors would look for something/anything to pillory the candidate over even when the basic requirement for “passing an RFA” is having a clue about how Wikipedia works and a need for the tools, but somehow everyone wants to just air an opinion no matter how
irrelevantobtuse and counter productive it may be. Celestina007 (talk) 21:43, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- HighInBC I'm not sure that's a relevant question for someone currently going through RfA. What exactly are you trying to learn about the candidate? —valereee (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- I am trying to get a sense of what they consider to be unfair or excessively harsh. I think this is very relevant to an editor's ability to be an admin. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 23:56, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Please assume good faith. What I said is what I mean. You and I may disagree about if considering what you consider unfair or harsh has an effect on being an admin, but that does not mean I am not being honest. Please argue the points I make and not make comments about what you think my motives are. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 00:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Leaving this here as I'm not voting yet but I don't like how the CCI Bingo has "Indian subcontinent" as a square. It's not OK to promote stereotypes based on geographic location and I would hope then if the nominee continues to work in CCI as an admin (which they're clearly planning to do) that they don't stereotype based on geographic location. It's also annoying to see the nominee's userpage call out a living person for "possible racism" under the subheading of "kill-on-sight sources". The intersection of violent rhetoric with living people onwiki should be avoided and unsourced claims that a person is possibly racist probably violates BLP. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 04:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Leaving aside the rest of your commentary, I find it hard to take the phrase "kill-on-sight" as "violent rhetoric" when used in reference to written sources. If you do an onwiki search excluding mainspace there are plenty of examples of well-respected users using it in discussions to refer to similar things that they don't like and wish would be removed. It's certainly a bit expressive, but violent? No. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:08, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- To recognise that the Indian subcontinent generates proportionately a more serious amount of copyright/COI/spam problems than other places isn't stereotyping... it's true. 27 cases out of 200 at CCI are explicitly subcontinent-related, possibly higher than any other single geographical entity. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 15:46, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI, If you consider that India a population that is +/- 250 times that of Norway, you'd have to conclude that CCI cases of Norway related subjects (1) are at least ten times worse than India's (21). Vexations (talk) 16:08, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- (ec) How at all is 27 out of 200 cases (13.5%) disproportionate when the Indian subcontinent has a population that's 22% of that of the world? – SD0001 (talk) 16:12, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Vexations, SD0001, the WMF in 2011 measured Indian contributors to be only 3% of all Wikipedia editors across all languages. The metric is indeed old, but I have no reason to believe we are 22% of the English Wikipedia editing population, the same as the general population. Comparing the English Wikipedia population to the world population is fairly useless - even the Brits outnumber the subcontinent's editors despite having only a twenty-fifth of the population. Remember also that we're talking only about CCI here, where cases are only opened for long-term copyright issues. As someone who roams a lot in India-related topics, I assure you that plenty of small-time editors add a ton of copyvio to a depressingly large number of articles. Copyvios are a chronic, festering disease in subcontinent-related articles. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 16:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- "Despite composing 3% of the editing population, the Indian subcontinent commits 13.5% of the copyright violations". While the stat may be true, it ignores the actual root causes. Specifically that we haven't done a good job at turning Indian editors into productive editors or accepting them and our general lack of "good" coverage on India related topics. Throwing in a cavalier reference to Indian subcontinent = CCI ignores the root causes and feels like stereotyping without any context. Chess (talk) (please use
{{reply to|Chess}}
on reply) 21:30, 6 June 2021 (UTC)- The context here is that when we get copyright violations on the Indian subcontinent, it is more often than not extremely blatant, spammy, and the sources copied from tend to go dead faster. I really fail to see how this is stereotyping without context considering that this same trend is seen in anti-spam work. As Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI said, we see a chronic issue with copyright violations. Opening CopyPatrol will inevitably drag you to the subcontinent. This isn't something that Vami in specific can or has to solve/work on fixing to get the mop. I also fail to see how this shows that he is untrustworthy of the mop, considering that the policy is the same for every editor who commits copyright violations; preventatively block if they don't understand. No admin is going to specifically target Indian editors because of a known and acknowledged trend in copyright cleanup. Sennecaster (What now?) 11:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I have generally seen the same issues with articles on the Indian subcontinent. They regularly appear at CAT:CSD, often tagged as A7 or G11, and this is one of the reasons I would personally like more Indian admins to help sort out the wheat from the chaff so I don't make a mistake and speedy something that's actually notable because of past experience. And highlighting this issue is not "racist" at all, in the same way that it's not at all racist for Sitush to go around fixing up a bucket load of caste articles, complain about the quality and sourcing of them in occasionally blunt terms, and get all sorts of grief from people because of it. For another example, at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Vanamonde93, there were quite a few people in the "oppose" camp who appeared to be based in or around India and who appeared to have a score to settle - and again, some of these were called out by Sitush. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:33, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- The context here is that when we get copyright violations on the Indian subcontinent, it is more often than not extremely blatant, spammy, and the sources copied from tend to go dead faster. I really fail to see how this is stereotyping without context considering that this same trend is seen in anti-spam work. As Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI said, we see a chronic issue with copyright violations. Opening CopyPatrol will inevitably drag you to the subcontinent. This isn't something that Vami in specific can or has to solve/work on fixing to get the mop. I also fail to see how this shows that he is untrustworthy of the mop, considering that the policy is the same for every editor who commits copyright violations; preventatively block if they don't understand. No admin is going to specifically target Indian editors because of a known and acknowledged trend in copyright cleanup. Sennecaster (What now?) 11:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- "Despite composing 3% of the editing population, the Indian subcontinent commits 13.5% of the copyright violations". While the stat may be true, it ignores the actual root causes. Specifically that we haven't done a good job at turning Indian editors into productive editors or accepting them and our general lack of "good" coverage on India related topics. Throwing in a cavalier reference to Indian subcontinent = CCI ignores the root causes and feels like stereotyping without any context. Chess (talk) (please use
- Vexations, SD0001, the WMF in 2011 measured Indian contributors to be only 3% of all Wikipedia editors across all languages. The metric is indeed old, but I have no reason to believe we are 22% of the English Wikipedia editing population, the same as the general population. Comparing the English Wikipedia population to the world population is fairly useless - even the Brits outnumber the subcontinent's editors despite having only a twenty-fifth of the population. Remember also that we're talking only about CCI here, where cases are only opened for long-term copyright issues. As someone who roams a lot in India-related topics, I assure you that plenty of small-time editors add a ton of copyvio to a depressingly large number of articles. Copyvios are a chronic, festering disease in subcontinent-related articles. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 16:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Haleth - do you have a specific example of what you are suggesting here? This feels very much a "have you stopped beating your wife" leading question. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:14, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I am not sure how specific I should go without searching for specific messages from Discord, and then copying and pasting them here. The purpose of the question is not to trap the candidate or make them look bad in any way, or even to defend the editor(s) who have been ostensibly badmouthed or bring it to their attention. What I am interested to know is whether Vami is ever self-conscious of their public behavior and if so, whether they are open to adjusting or regulating instances of off-the-cuff behavior once they've become an admin, even in off-wiki contexts like Discord chats. And again, it is an optional question. If you and/or Vami think this question is out of line, it doesn't need to be answered. I just think it is perfectly reasonable to scrutinize an admin-to-be's behavior whether it is on or off wiki, which in turn may inform their behavior and MO as admin. Haleth (talk) 14:30, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I get scrutiny, but "whenever you openly denigrate another editor", suggests to everyone that they have done exactly this. I can't say I've seen anything of the sort, so the question has come out of left field as far as I am concerned. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:37, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I am not sure how specific I should go without searching for specific messages from Discord, and then copying and pasting them here. The purpose of the question is not to trap the candidate or make them look bad in any way, or even to defend the editor(s) who have been ostensibly badmouthed or bring it to their attention. What I am interested to know is whether Vami is ever self-conscious of their public behavior and if so, whether they are open to adjusting or regulating instances of off-the-cuff behavior once they've become an admin, even in off-wiki contexts like Discord chats. And again, it is an optional question. If you and/or Vami think this question is out of line, it doesn't need to be answered. I just think it is perfectly reasonable to scrutinize an admin-to-be's behavior whether it is on or off wiki, which in turn may inform their behavior and MO as admin. Haleth (talk) 14:30, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Ifnord Is this meant to include any time the candidate has done something rude in the history of their life, or just in the context of Wikipedia? If the latter, it might be useful to clarify. jp×g 19:30, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- I hear Vami doesn't inline cite everything he says offwiki. Vaticidalprophet 19:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- Wait wait wait... Ifnord is at worst asking if Vami has ever done anything uncivil in their entire life and at best in the last 6 years?? What is going on people??????? Aza24 (talk) 01:10, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Charitably, I would assume that Ifnord is asking about off-wiki but Wikipedia-related forums, like WP:IRC, WP:DISCORD, and the like. Presumably we aren't requiring everyone wanting +sysop to be the Uncondemning Monk. Vahurzpu (talk) 02:43, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Wait wait wait... Ifnord is at worst asking if Vami has ever done anything uncivil in their entire life and at best in the last 6 years?? What is going on people??????? Aza24 (talk) 01:10, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- What I imagine to be the hardest thing in RfA is that candidates are not able to respond to opposition. Haleth's question raised the spectre of potentially incivil behaviour off-wiki. I do not care if the candidate is in an angry debate with someone over politics at some discussion board, I do care about name calling and such if they mention Wikipedia users by name and use it as a circumvention to our civility policies. I will clarify, but this (optional) question will allow me to make my own assessment if the candidate is, or is not a jerk. This seems to be a new criteria for RfA. Ifnord (talk) 15:27, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Would there be any objections if I restored the history of User:Vami IV up to the revision of 1 August 2018, at 06:53? I don't believe there is anything in any of those revisions that would meet the outing policy - if there is, could a fellow admin please mention the diff number so if we do restore, that can be immediately revision deleted. I think the time has now come, for people looking at the RfA to get the full facts. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:10, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Ritchie333, yeah, I want to say something first. Moneytrees🏝️Talk/CCI guide 16:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
About RfB
Requests for bureaucratship (RfB) is the process by which the Wikipedia community decides who will become bureaucrats. Bureaucrats can make other users administrators or bureaucrats, based on community decisions reached here, and remove administrator rights in limited circumstances. They also oversee local change usernames venues in conjunction with the team of global renamers and can grant or remove bot status on an account.
The process for bureaucrats is similar to that for adminship above; however the expectation for promotion to bureaucratship is significantly higher than for admin, requiring a clearer consensus. In general, the threshold for consensus is somewhere around 85%. Bureaucrats are expected to determine consensus in difficult cases and be ready to explain their decisions.
Create a new RfB page as you would for an RfA, and insert {{subst:RfB|User=Username|Description=Your description of the candidate. ~~~~}}
into it, then answer the questions. New bureaucrats are recorded at Wikipedia:Successful bureaucratship candidacies. Failed nominations are at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful bureaucratship candidacies.
At minimum, study what is expected of a bureaucrat by reading discussions at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship including the recent archives, before seeking this position.
While canvassing for support is often viewed negatively by the community, some users find it helpful to place the neutrally worded {{RfX-notice|b}}
on their userpages – this is generally not seen as canvassing. Like requests for adminship, requests for bureaucratship are advertised on the watchlist and on Template:Centralized discussion.
Please add new requests at the top of the section immediately below this line.
Current nominations for bureaucratship
Related pages
- Requests for self-de-adminship can be made at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.
- Requests to mark an account as a bot can be made at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval.
- Requests to remove the administrator access of another editor due to abuse may be made at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case, but you should read Wikipedia:Administrators#Grievances by users ("administrator abuse") and attempt other methods of dispute resolution first.
- Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship – Failed proposals to create a community-based process for de-adminship processes.
- Wikipedia:Miniguide to requests for adminship
- Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship
- Wikipedia:Advice for RfA candidates
- Nominator's guide
- Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination
- Requests for other user permissions can be made at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions.