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Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/R. fiend

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R. fiend

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Final: (53/7/4) ended 19:04 [20 September 2005] (UTC)

R. fiend (talk · contribs) – Ladies and gentlemen... R. fiend has been a strong contributor since his first edit on March 30, 2004. Since that time, he has racked up over 11,000 edits, including 8,000 in the article space and 2,000 in Wikipedia space. He participates religiously in AfD, VfU, RfA, and many policy discussions, and has done a yeoman's work on a broad array of articles, including the subarticles of State leaders by year and List of songs by name, and many things Irish. Also, R. fiend invented the smerge (slight merge), which is a good and useful thing. This is an editor who will wield a mop well.  BD2412 talk 19:04, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I gratefully accept. -R. fiend 19:52, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  1. Support of course - how could I not after all those nice things I just said? -- BD2412 talk 19:05, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. 11,000?! Give him the mop AND the bucket. KeithD (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Whaaa? RFA cliché no. 1! Dmcdevit·t 19:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support {{rfa cliche}} --Phroziac (talk) 19:45, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support how come he's not already?  Grue  20:02, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support, deserves to be an admin. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 20:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Strong Support Great work on VfD/AfD and related topics. Suprised he wasn't one already, actually. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 21:10, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Strong support - Continue to be brilliant, R. fiend!!!! (and yes, all of my standards are met) --Celestianpower hab 19:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose - Due to the above discovery, I need to change my vote. I really hope he has a good explanation for his comment "Cry me a river" attitude to newbie-biting because that attitude goes against the most important (in my eyes) policy we have here. --Celestianpower hab 19:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Support (sorry for changing my vote twice). After reading his comments below, I may have misinterpreted the comment he made on User:R._fiend/Why_VfD_isn't_seriously_broken (or it was ambigious to start with or a bit of both) but now it's clarified I feel able to support once more. I personally don't agree with him on this but I don't believe there is any reason to oppose based upon this. He'll make a good admin I think. --Celestianpower hab 21:24, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support. Smerge. Redwolf24 (talk) 23:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Exactly the kind of administrator we need more of. —Cryptic (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support. Martin 23:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support. A little brusque, but certainly nothing to be concerned about. R. fiend has always struck me as even-handed and I have no doubts about the candidate's fairness. Always insightful at AfD/VfD. Fernando Rizo T/C 23:50, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Hearsay does not an oppose vote make. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-09-14 02:44
    Hi Yoda. :) --Phroziac (talk) 21:37, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Wile E. Heresiarch 03:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support I hate editcountitis, but surely one with 11,000 edits could be an admin. Go ahead and get the powers. Bratschetalk | Esperanza 03:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support Very active in VFD AFD et al. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:33, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support. Just the kind of editor who deserves the proverbial mop, bucket, and bulldozer to keep garbage out of Wikipedia. jni 09:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Sure very high edit count, knows his way around, does plenty of community service. Fawcett5 12:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Strong Support I'll forego the cliched comments. It's all been said. Carbonite | Talk 15:33, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support. After 11,000 edits there are bound to have been some conflicts, but he appears to be a good editor who is undoubtedly ready for the admin tools. Jonathunder 16:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Those of you who have a problem with the phrase "cry me a river" -- give me a break. Andre (talk) 18:45, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support. Sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind. Gamaliel 05:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support. Could occasionally do with a bit less deletionism, but overall someone who would use the admin tools wisely. Grutness...wha? 13:10, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  25. That he can be snappy on deletions is no reason not to recognise that he'd be fine with the mop - David Gerard 15:06, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Support as per most of the above sentiments. Hamster Sandwich 16:54, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support, for reasons that should be obvious, given my own level of AfD participation. --Scimitar parley 17:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support, he's a bloke with clue. Pilatus 21:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Support! He's been here a while, knows his way around, and has legitimate concern with building a great encyclopedia here. Adminship is long overdue for a user like him! --Idont Havaname 23:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Smerge - I mean, support. sɪzlæk [ +t, +c, +m ] 11:36, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  31. Support. After looking at his edit summaries, R. fiend seems thoughtful and thorough. The arguments made below that he should not be an admin because people disagree with some of his specific opinions on articles doesn't make sense: admin tasks are not the same as editor tasks. The standards for an admin are "will they contribute to admin tasks" and "will they abuse admin privileges." "Must agree with my personal positions on editing content, such as article deletion" is absolutely a novel requirement for adminship, and while people are free to oppose an adminship for whatever reason they want, this seems like a particularly petty rationale. I see absolutely no sign that R. fiend will abuse his authority, and every sign that he will be responsible. Give him the mop. Nandesuka 11:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Support, holding the opinion that Wikipedia articles should meet some kind of reasonable standard is not evil. Proto t c 13:41, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  33. Support Molotov (talk)   20:31, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  34. Erwin
  35. Support Although I'm... disappointed... that R. fiend's contributed to List of songs by name, I've liked a lot of his contributions, by which I mean things like developing smerge and impressing me at a great many Wikipedia namespace pages. The Literate Engineer 03:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  36. Support. JuntungWu 05:33, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  37. Support On User:R._fiend/Why_VfD_isn't_seriously_broken when responding to Hurts new editors with rough comments about articles. gives the response Cry me a river. Also hangs out at VfD a little too much. Closer inspection.... support Ryan Norton T | @ | C 19:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • If I may quickly respond to this: By the "cry me a river" comment, I wanted to make the point that the feelings of people who write completely unencyclopedic articles and get bent out of shape when they are nominated for deletion is certainly no reason to scrap the deletion policy, which is what some people seemed to propose. Creating an encyclopedia should be our task; the feelings of others are secondary, or perhaps teritiary. If you want major contributions look at my user page: I've got a pretty good "brag sheet". If my last 500 edits weren't terribly substantial, well, I do have 10,500 others. You should find some good stuff there. As for the edit summaries, well I predicted someone would mention this. I use edit summaries in the vast majority of my article contributions, but keep in mind I consider the "m" indicating a minor edit to be a summary; a summary that says "this edit is minor; nothing substantial in the article has changed. don't worry about it". I use the minor edit option generally for fixing grammar and typos, adding (sometimes removing) links, minor rephrases, small formatting changes, and the like. I do not use summaries in my edits in the talk or wikipedia spaces, or any others outside of the articles themselves, as I don't believe them to be necessary there. If anyone wants to know what I said on a talk page or such, the answer is just a click away. -R. fiend 20:08, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Additional note: I have further edited and explained the cry me a river comment (but not removed it) from the said subpage. -R. fiend 20:26, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Adminship shouldn't have much to do with substantial edits. Our powers are used for smaller, more boring, janitorial tasks. So, doing more small tasks, he'll probably get more use out of his powers then someone who does substantial edits. So that actually makes me think he would be a better candidate. Of course, some one who can juggle both big and small tasks, and do them well, would *really* be a good admin. I can't agree with his vfd views, while we are making an encyclopedia, editor feelings are very very important. It really makes me mad when people use <insert random expletive> comments. Especially when it's something encyclopedic, and maybe should just be merged somewhere. And, I think even minor edits should have summaries. Mostly because it's nice to know what happened. Even something simple like "copyedit" would be great. Personally, i use crappy summaries in talk, and I usually use either none, or something funny, on my user page. I always use real edit summaries on other people's pages. (Do you think i have this many user page edits just from *my* page?) But basically, potential gain is higher then potential loss. I haven't paid enough attention to VFD to notice him there, but if he's making rude comments, PLEASE STOP... --Phroziac (talk) 21:29, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yeah, I know and major edits are not one of my criteria - just a pedantic point I always make. I think admins should do major edits because they are looked up upon by the community on how to behave etc.. Personally, even if people get elected I hope they take my comments to heart as constructive criticism rather than blind opposition, as it were. Basically, the reason I'm really opposing is because candidate strikes me as a little bitey to users (not just "newbies"). Also, I realize it's a bit unfair using user space as an example here, sorry about that :). I also appreciate the (multiple) explanation(s), but it appears as (maybe in haste) that the candidate is defending a different answer than the one I pointed out. Also, about edit summeries - they really should be used on minor edits too. Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:46, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
          • I know many disagree, but I believe if a user makes a truly minor edit (I have noticed people mark many quite substantial edits as minor; I certainly try not ever to do this) there is no need for further explanation. Sure, I've seen people make summaries to the effect of changed "recieving" to "receiving" as that is the correct spelling, remember "i before e except after c", and this word clearly has a "c" before the "ie", or, in this case "ei", so the latter is clearly correct. Me, I'll just mark it with an m and be done with it. If it's going to take longer to summarize the edit than to make the edit I'll likely just mark it as minor and be done. I am certainly not one of those people who has all my edits marked as minor by default (I'm not even sure why that option exists; it invariably leads to edits marked as minor when they are not). People should be able to trust that I have not made a major change to the article, and if they can't, well, I don't suppose they'll be casting a support vote here anyway. That being said, I sometimes do not leave summaries when I should. I do forget at times, and there are those rare occasions when I can't really think of how best to sum up any change I just made. As for not leaving them in the wikipedia or talk spaces, well, as they will not fundamentally change wikipedia as an encyclopedia in any way, they, to me, are not as significant. I have been known to get rather verbose in discussions, and sometimes it's hard to summarize my point in a few words. If someone wants to know what I added to a VfD discussion, I've probably already summarized my position in the vote itself, and don't care to do so again. (If you said "he probably just voted to delete anyway", give yourself two points and then read this.) As for defending a different answer, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. As noted, I've clarified the comment I made on the subpage, but I am preapred to give further explanation, if waranted. Oh, and as a final note, I think this talk of "major edits" is a bit of a red herring. Surely you're not accusing me of not making any major edits? I have written upwards of a hundred articles (some pretty small, to be sure, but still). Obviously anyone with thousands of edits is going to have more minor ones than major ones. As Phroziac mentioned, both are important. -R. fiend 13:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  38. Support. Although some may not like his forthrightness, I believe that R. fiend will be a good admin and will not allow his personal opinions to get in the way of judging consensus. I also agree with Proto's comment above. Rje 11:55, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  39. Support: A person can make substantial edits and be a good admin, and, for whatever it's worth, the point that he was making with "cry me a river" is one we ought to consider: if a new user makes a mistake and gets on VfD, then we should be as nice as possible. If a new user tries to game the system, tries to holler his way to a "keep," or tries to play the "I'm just a blushing flower whose soul will be crushed if this is deleted," then we ought be quite unconcerned. Anyone who will fold after a VfD, whose petals will be crushed, is not going to manage very well in a place where no one gets to own his or her own words. We don't cease to be a wiki- or an encyclopedia because of the subjective state of the authors and editors. R. fiend has been exemplary in trying to make the system better (working on deletion reform, working in policy, trying to solve edit wars and conflicts) as well as the encyclopedia better (writing as well as voting, contributing as well as tinkering). This is what we look for in admins. Geogre 12:24, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  40. Support, on balance. I've looked at the specifics within Xiong's objection: at several (though not all) of the diffs he considerately provides. While I see things that could have been done better I see nothing there that alarms me. I've read Owenx's objection: it has merit, but for me it's not strong enough. There are already some gruff administrators (even, dare I say it, bureaucrats), and the pedia is the better for them. Polite, explicitly expressed consideration can take a lot of time; all admins have to make some effort but not all must be very good at this; a certain degree of gruffness is OK if it gives more time for people like Rfiend to do more good work. So Rfiend should be given mop and bucket, together with advice to slow down a little -- not much, but a little. -- Hoary 13:16, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  41. Support - seems would make a good admin. --G Rutter 19:59, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  42. Support on the grounds that I've actually heard of him. Deb 23:26, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  43. Support. Ambi 08:27, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  44. Support strong contributor to wikipedia --TimPope 22:12, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  45. Support. --Fire Star 03:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  46. Support. utcursch | talk 05:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  47. Support. —Xezbeth 07:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  48. Support. Lupo 10:38, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  49. Support. Can't believe that I missed this RFA... Ral315 16:16, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  50. Yarrrr!, an expert at swabbing the poop deck. -- the wub "yarr!" 21:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  51. Support strong contributor NoSeptember 22:48, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  52. Support, I don't know this candidate, but voting oppose at this point would be useless. — JIP | Talk 05:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  53. Support, we always need more vandal fighters.-gadfium 09:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

  1. Oppose. This is a tough one. R. fiend's actions are correct: he reverts when something has to be reverted, he marks for CSD or nominates for AfD when the article warrants such treatment. I also share many of his opinions about the VfD process itself. However, being nice takes time, and R. fiend's terse approach can be seen as overly militant, scaring away newbies and adding to an already elevated atmosphere of animosity on AfD. This terseness also manifests itself in his Edit summaries, as mentioned above. Very few editors are capable of productive work at the rate that R. fiend has demonstrated in the year and a half he has been with us, but a good admin needs to be courteous, not just efficient. I am sure he will never misuse his sysop powers, but creating the appearance of power abuse can be very disruptive to the community as well; after all, we have to remember we are dealing with an army of (mostly) well-intentioned volunteers, not chairing a court-martial. I am sure R. fiend can change his manners to appear less confrontational, and once he does that I'll have no hesitation in supporting his promotion. Owen× ☎ 21:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I doubt R. fiend has actually scared away anyone who would have otherwise significantly contributed to Wikipedia, and I am personally confident that, if he becomes an admin, he will not create the appearance of power abuse. I suggest that certainty about his positive contributions should outweigh such doubts. -- BD2412 talk 23:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC
    • I tend to agree with BD2412's comment here. We need admins of many kinds; the very nice, approachable ones who will help anybody, the ones who will do the janitorial work, etc.... and that includes the ones that are willing to lay down the law where needed. Remember RickK. ;-) Not everybody liked him, but he did work that needed to be done and really helped us out. --Idont Havaname 23:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC) (comment was by me; I signed it ~~~~~ by accident... --Idont Havaname 03:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC))[reply]
  2. Oppose. New content creators, however misguided, should be welcomed. I don't want to empower editors who do not have that view. Also, whatever your personal views on edit summaries, several users have shown a great deal of upset at those who don't use them. It only takes an extra moment, so I think disregarding those users is not acceptable. You're not just a deletionist, by the way. You are a rather unpleasant, pisstaking deletionist -- just the sort of thing that makes the AfD pages a bit of a cesspit. Grace Note 03:30, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    The personal attacks are not warranted, Dr. Zen. [1]. If you're so concerned with unpleasantness, what about your "farewell" message [2]?Carbonite | Talk 15:42, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Get over yourself. It's a fair description of the guy. I'm not attacking him, just disagreeing that he's being opposed just for being a deletionist. And my farewell message was a long time ago. In any case, I don't have any problem with unpleasantness where it's merited. It's certainly to be preferred to the mock politeness that is used to veil personal attacks here. And to whiny sniping of the kind you've just indulged in, frankly. Grace Note 23:30, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose. This user has been extremely hostile to me on VfD before, and seems to be one of our most radical deletionists. Everyking 05:45, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose for the reasons clearly articulated by OwenX. —RaD Man (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose for now Although R Fiend has the editing credentials... I dont think he has the personality for it he's a tad too hot under the collar at times (and if anyone would know about that its me). At this juncture i'm going to have to go ahead and oppose, however I think its possible he may improve by his second nomination.  ALKIVAR™  09:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose -- no support for deletionists and their destructive agendas. — Xiong熊talk* 14:31, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is NOT a valid basis for opposing. What is important is if you feel he will respect consensus (and by extension, guidelines that have been established by consensus), and there is no evidence that he would not. Fawcett5 21:30, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Fragmented discussion merged from User talk:Xiong -- please avoid fragmented discussions.
    Xiong, I do not believe that R. fiend is truly a "deletionist", or that he has any agenda other than our shared goal of making Wikipedia an excellent encyclopedia. I tend towards inclusionism/mergism myself, and would not have nominated R. fiend if my thorough review of his contributions did not confirm my confidence in his ability to be a good and fair administrator. Besides, it's just a mop. Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 20:44, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you think it is a matter of your opinion? Inclusionism and deletionism are objective criteria; one could argue extensively about any exact numerical score, but it's an obvious fact that your candidate is well to the right of center. Do you think I can't be bothered to check contribs before I vote? Or are his contribs my opinion, too?
    This edit is especially obnoxious. Here he's tried to shortcut VfD with speedy. Here he's masked his intent with weasel words. This article eventually got moved to a more reasonable name; that could have been done at any time without the mess of a VfD nomination. In this so-called "comment", the candidate applies the kiss of death and preempts a slew of related pages on the grounds that elected county officials are "non-notable".
    These ([3] [4] [5] [6] [7]) are all votes to delete.
    It's no use at all asking me if I think this or that vote is a "good idea" or attempt to prove a fallacy by asking if I "would have" voted keep on any of these. I'm opposed to deletion, I'm opposed to voting, I'm doubly opposed to VfD, AfD, TfD, PQRSTfD, and any other manifestations of the deletionist agenda -- period.
    I find the candidate's explanation of his ignorance of edit summaries totally inadequate. An edit with no summary is no edit at all; it is a stealth edit. About the only time I omit an edit sum is when I fiddle with my own pages. I can't wait to see his invisible edit sums for the block log.
    I've previously noted my objection to self-aggrandizing admin candidates. Those who defend their candidacies vigorously, as this one has done, gain especially little credit in my eyes. I say, if you aspire to a position of neutral trust and your neutrality has been questioned, the proper response is to retire and meditate on that criticism, keep it in mind while editing for another few months, and see if that criticism does not abate. [8] is the final straw for me. I don't care if you've made a million edits; that is no qualification for adminship. — Xiong熊talk* 21:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Forgive me for finding it odd that a person who shows a particularly strong interest in assuming the additional duties of being an administrator should be deemed less qualified because they "defend their candidacies vigorously". I'd rather have admins who truly want the job. Besides, I repeat, it's only a mop. -- BD2412 talk 04:00, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Boothy443 | comhrá 05:22, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

  1. Neutral — I have mixed feelings after reading everything. I do not want to oppose, but I'm not supporting either. I might still change vote in the future, though.

    Journalist C./ Holla @ me!

  2. Neutral. Agree with Journalist. I'm going to reserve judgement at this point. R. fiend does seem to do a good job, but his/her style is so antagonistic some times. I have to think about this one. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 20:04, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Neutral, at least while I consider it more. Dragons flight 18:19, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Neutral: I'm abivalent. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 16:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Question: Why are you so interested in AFD? I have been preparing some analysis of AFD voting patterns. It's not ready yet, but I am far enough to notice that you are number 27 on the list of most active voters with more than 320 votes in June-August window. That level of participation is enough to give me pause, and want to know why you are so active in the deletion process and something about your personal philosophy for what belongs in Wikipedia. Dragons flight 15:39, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • While I don't purport to speak for R. fiend (who I'm sure will provide his answer in short order), I note that he has long had an explanation on his user page of his AfD voting rationale. His high level of AfD participation is simply an example of his high overall level of participation. Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 16:01, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm sorry but I cannot comment or give my opinion on any subject which may or may not come before me as an administrator, as it would undermine my ability to -sorry. Went into John Roberts mode for a second. A fair question. I think the strongest personal philosophy I hold is the first of the 5 pillars of Wikipedia: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. There are things that belong in an encyclopedia and things that do not, and I believe that removing those that do not belong is an essential task. The standards for inclusion in wikipedia are obviously wider than for any other encyclopedia that I know of, but there are still standards. One of my pet peeves is promotional material, be it self-promotional or the active promotion of other people, things, etc. When we start having articles on the guy who got 1% of the vote in the primary for the Green Party for the election of City Councilman for Spluddville, Nebraska, or the actor whose only role was a single line in an episode of Star Trek:The Omega Station at the Edge of the Omniverse, we are treading very close to, if not right in the middle of, promotion. Once wikipedia becomes a haven for promotional material it loses it's credibility as an encyclopedia and becomes the worlds biggest blog. The notion that anything goes as long as it contains what are more or less facts is worrisome to me. I have some concerns that there is too much emphasis on quantity and not enough on quality, and as wikipedia grows the amount of mis- and even dis-information grows too. 750,000 articles is an awful lot to police for vandalism, particualrly the more clever vandalism we sometimes see. There are plenty of people who do not accept wikipedia as a reliable source, and they have every right to be skeptical, and the sheer amount of shoddy contributions only backs up these opinions. Those who judge wikipedia on its best aspects will find it to be a great source for an enormous variety of information; those who judge it on its worst (and people will do so) will find it to be full of sub-literate crap and a stone throw away from a sci-fi fansite. I try to clean what I can, and my basic thought is that if you come across something in Wikipedia that, if seen in Britannica, would make you say "What the hell sort of crap is this doing in a highly respected encyclopedia?" something should be done right away. If it can be fixed easily, it should be fixed, but if fixing would prove very difficult or impossible, then the deletion process needs to be invoked. Some eventualists would say "give it a few months" maybe it will improve. Yeah, but maybe it won't, and in the meantime it's a blight on wikipedia. Sometimes having nothing is better than having complete crap; it's more ammunition for the judge-the-worst camp. Horrible articles on good subjects can be later recreated from scratch as good articles on good subjects, and nothing is lost by getting the horribleness out of the article history.
    • I also have a concern that wikipedia is in danger of becoming the encyclopedia of events from 2003 onwards. It's only natural that more recent events get more coverage, but at times it gets ridculous. The article on John Roberts is already substantially longer than that on John Marshall, and Roberts isn't even on the Supreme Court yet. This doesn't really pretain too much to deletion, but it is a concern of mine. I know wikipedia is inconsistent, but I sometimes think it's too inconsistent.
    • I don't know if people would make much of a deal about AfD if most of my votes were to keep; maybe they would. But the removal of the bad is an important process. I always try to explain my reasoning, sometimes in great detail. I think it pays off; if i had a dollar for every time I saw someone comment "agree with R. fiend" at Vfd...well, I couldn't retire, but I could buy myself a very nice bottle of scotch. I vote delete more often than keep. A keep is an article's natural state; it doesn't take much effort to keep an article, but deleting what I see to be articles that are worse than nothing can be a difficult. That being said 320 seems a but high to me for 3 months. I'm thinking that some of those aren't votes but additional comments I sometimes make after voting; I do get involved in some lengthy discussions on the VfD pages at times. I'm not too surprised at being in the top 30 though, and I am certainly not apologetic; as I said, it's an important process, and thankless work to boot. -R. fiend 16:56, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've put a discussion of R. fiend's interesting notion of deletion to protect from promotion on his talkpage, if anyone's interested. Actually, I should add, R., that people are interested if you tend to vote to include. I generally vote to keep articles. Those that really need deleting don't tend to need my vote to be deleted! I generally only bother if I have something to say. So I very much understand your position (the mirror of mine). I think that if, say, Radman were ever to ask for adminship, he'd be facing a similar opposition to yours, but from the other side, as it were. The difference is, he wouldn't be a danger of speedying something that ought to be kept ;-) Grace Note 02:38, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm parsing for recognizable bolded text on signed lines. For your interest, my preliminary count is 253 delete, 62 keep/merge, and 23 with comments or other unparseable bold text. For the community as a whole, about 2/3 of AFD votes cast are deletes. You are running closer to 80%, significantly deletionist, but not as severe as some of the admins we already have. Dragons flight 18:19, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think it's worth commenting on the dangers of assigning a designation of significantly deletionist (or any other such term) based on an automated parse. Such a count, in and of itself, has no means of determining a user's thoughts regarding unvoted articles -- suppose that R. fiend only votes on articles he considers borderline. Alternatively, suppose he only votes on articles that he considers clear-cut. "80%" carries drastically different meaning for those two cases, and the more likely "votes on some proportion of each" renders it virtually meaningless. Additionally, given my understanding that admins generally don't close AfDs they vote on, I fail to see why this matters at all (please correct me if I'm wrong here). — Lomn | Talk / RfC 04:59, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's a question of perception though, far more than of a careful weighing of the figures. I would have no idea how big a percentage of articles R. fiend wants deleted; I just know he has that kind of philosophy. Grace Note 06:37, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
            • "How big a percentage of articles R. fiend wants deleted" is an odd, and in my mind flawed, way of putting it. I don't have quotas or anything ("and if elected, I will oversee the deletion of 10% of all articles from Wikipedia by 2008!"). The percentage of articles I want deleted, and I think I can speak for many like minded users, is the percentage of utterly awful or unencyclopedic articles to be found in Wikipedia. Obviously I have no figures on what those numbers are, but every so often I do a bunch of random article searches, and it's not too uncommon that I come across something that, in my opinion, should be deleted. (The last time this happened the article in question was deleted unanimously.) If the number of such articles were as small as I would hope it would be, the chances of a random search of 700,000 articles hitting one of them should be infintessimal. (This says nothing of the very poor but not deletionworthy substubs I come across all the time in such searches.) But clearly it is not. That leads me to believe that Wikipedia can use some good old house cleaning. The rate of growth of Wikipedia, while nice and all, has its disadvantages. As I said before, there seems to be an emphasis on quantity over quality, which is somewhat troublesome. As for AfD, my basic approach is this: if I see a near unanimous conensus forming, I usually do not bother examining the article or voting, particularly if the reasoning expressed by the voters appears sound. There is really not much point of adding a "me too" keep to an article that is clearly not going to be deleted. However, sometimes I will add a vote to unanimous or near unanimous deletes, as even with 4 or 5 delete votes one or two single keeps (even somewhat dubious ones) can prevent a consensus (particualrly depending on the closer) so it's nice to build up a comfortable margin. It's the more controversial ones I tend to get actively involved with, and I admit more often than not it's on the delete side. If I have special knowledge or interest in a topic at AfD I will generally add my two cents, if nothing else, regardless of how the voting is progressing. AfD is way too big to vote on everything (though some people apparently try to, which is fine as long as they put thought into each of their votes). Finally, I would like to add, I generally do not vote "keep and cleanup" on truly bad articles unless I plan on doing the cleaning myself, or have reason to expect someone else soon will. Too often these result in a keep, but do nothing to bring the article up to even the most minimal standards (obviously I will vote "keep and cleanup" for a decent article that needs a bit of work, I'm talking about the "theres potential for a good article under this title but what's here now is terrible" stuff we see too much of). -R. fiend 15:26, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow. This page reaffims Slowking Man's law. Let's keep it civil,please. Bratschetalk | Esperanza 03:38, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Is that the one that says that for any conversation of a certain length there will be a poster who pointlessly demands that everyone is "civil"? ;-) Grace Note 04:15, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Questions for the candidate
A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)
A. Well there's always reversions of vandalism, but I've been doing those the long way for over a year, and it hasn't really bothered me yet. While the rollback button will certainly prove useful, I don't really see it as something one needs adminship powers for. Taking care of CSDs has been something I have had an urge to do. I've noticed at times a long queue of articles waiting to be deleted, improved, or sent to VfD (or is it AfD now? I've been a bit out of the loop since I moved last month). I admit I've had enough of tagging things and would like to be able to take the patent nonsense out myself. We all know there's enough of it that keeps coming.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
A. I've written and expanded quite a few articles, and I'm pretty pleased with all of them, in general. I guess work on the Easter Rising, making it a much more complete article, has to rank up there (I think I did much of the editing when I was still an anon, actually), as well as related articles on the people and such involved. My user page lists most of the articles I started; check them out if you like. I guess I'd also like to mention that when I first got here all the characters from Peanuts redirected to the main Peanuts article. This was at a time when just about every Pokemon had its own article, and I figured it was a disgrace for an full article on Charizard and a redirect for Snoopy. So I started articles on most of the major characters, and others were quick to pick them up, improving them greatly. A very good collaborative effort, which is what wikipedia is all about.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A. I'm pretty laid back, generally, and don't get over stressed too easily. I have had some editing conflicts (who hasn't?), but they've always involved discussion throughout the reversions and changes, and the articles in question turned out the better for it, in the end.
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