Ritchie333 ( talk · contribs · count) After being prodded about it at a WikiMedia Meetup, I'm thinking about going for the mop some time in 2013 and want initial feedback. Although I've had admin / moderator rights on various internet forums on and off for about 15 years (sadly little of which is verifiable), a WP admin is a much higher bar of responsibility that benefits far more people if done right. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:46, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Questions
Reviews
I've seen your comments at AN(I) recently and they've been pretty spot-on, so in terms of knowing policy, you should be good.
What concerns me is how you deal with conflict. It seems that you do have a pattern of abandoning GANs when there's even a hint of controversy, as also seen at Talk:M-102 (Michigan highway)/GA1. That's not courteous to the reviewer at all; someone had to step in and promote it under IAR. What also concerns me is your opinion of the U.S. Roads WikiProject. Why did you bring up us and not the UK Roads WikiProject? If anything, it's UKRD that is so completely dysfunctional that you ragequit the UKRD project over it. The fundamental problem with UKRD is a "we're doing it our way and don't give a rip about what anyone else outside the project, including MOS or FAC, thinks."
To me this seems like a "let's blame George W. Bush for everything wrong in the world" scapegoating session, where unfortunately those who have had disagreements with us in the past hop on the bandwagon to grind the ax whenever the opportunity arises. It's not just you, it's just an attitude that I'm seeing from quite a few editors, and many of the instigators are part of UKRD; but it seems to be something you are taking part in as well. Yes, we had issues back in the 2007-2008 era, as any project entirely run by 17 and 18 year olds might. Yes, in our efforts to help editors working on "foreign" road articles we might have gone a little too far at times. But that doesn't define us today.
I've even seen it go to the extremes of Kumioko bashing USRD for my completely unrelated block of Rich Farmbrough (which he eventually retracted after a few days of IDHT) and a sitting arbitrator blast the project for the mistakes of 2007-2008 and the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways 2 arbitration case, which were completely unrelated to the Racepacket case. I'm getting a bit fed up with the whole bias, and it needs to stop. We currently have 46 featured articles and almost 800 good articles, and our A-Class review has a 90% pass rate at FAC over the last three years. Imzadi1979 has brought over 90% of the Michigan articles to GA or higher. We've helped Floydian, an Ontario editor, as well as User:Tomobe03, a Croatian editor, and Evad37, an Australian editor. The first two have a significant number of road GAs, and the third should be getting his first pretty soon. Why do these good things go unnoticed and editors focus on the bad, or in this case, their exaggerations of the bad?
I want to help the UK Roads Project (as I do want to help any editor who wants to improve road articles). In the US we have tried-and-true practices that work. However, when one's efforts are spurned, it makes it difficult, and that's why we've mostly disengaged and let the articles decay as the other UKRD editors have left. But we're definitely open to help again. And I know it's not all you; there's definitely other difficult editors too.
As a sidenote, as an admin you will face a lot of criticism, whether your actions are right or wrong; being able to not entirely lose your cool will be helpful. -- Rs chen 7754 03:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we've interacted much outside WP:AfC. There I've seen your intimate knowledge of the policies and guidelines governing content and your sound judgment; you're one of the main pillars of support at the help desk. It might be more helpful if I could offer some criticism or advice for improvement, but honestly I think you're doing a splendid job, and I wouldn't know how you could change to do it even better. Huon ( talk) 18:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Ritchie333 ( talk · contribs · count) After being prodded about it at a WikiMedia Meetup, I'm thinking about going for the mop some time in 2013 and want initial feedback. Although I've had admin / moderator rights on various internet forums on and off for about 15 years (sadly little of which is verifiable), a WP admin is a much higher bar of responsibility that benefits far more people if done right. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:46, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Questions
Reviews
I've seen your comments at AN(I) recently and they've been pretty spot-on, so in terms of knowing policy, you should be good.
What concerns me is how you deal with conflict. It seems that you do have a pattern of abandoning GANs when there's even a hint of controversy, as also seen at Talk:M-102 (Michigan highway)/GA1. That's not courteous to the reviewer at all; someone had to step in and promote it under IAR. What also concerns me is your opinion of the U.S. Roads WikiProject. Why did you bring up us and not the UK Roads WikiProject? If anything, it's UKRD that is so completely dysfunctional that you ragequit the UKRD project over it. The fundamental problem with UKRD is a "we're doing it our way and don't give a rip about what anyone else outside the project, including MOS or FAC, thinks."
To me this seems like a "let's blame George W. Bush for everything wrong in the world" scapegoating session, where unfortunately those who have had disagreements with us in the past hop on the bandwagon to grind the ax whenever the opportunity arises. It's not just you, it's just an attitude that I'm seeing from quite a few editors, and many of the instigators are part of UKRD; but it seems to be something you are taking part in as well. Yes, we had issues back in the 2007-2008 era, as any project entirely run by 17 and 18 year olds might. Yes, in our efforts to help editors working on "foreign" road articles we might have gone a little too far at times. But that doesn't define us today.
I've even seen it go to the extremes of Kumioko bashing USRD for my completely unrelated block of Rich Farmbrough (which he eventually retracted after a few days of IDHT) and a sitting arbitrator blast the project for the mistakes of 2007-2008 and the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways 2 arbitration case, which were completely unrelated to the Racepacket case. I'm getting a bit fed up with the whole bias, and it needs to stop. We currently have 46 featured articles and almost 800 good articles, and our A-Class review has a 90% pass rate at FAC over the last three years. Imzadi1979 has brought over 90% of the Michigan articles to GA or higher. We've helped Floydian, an Ontario editor, as well as User:Tomobe03, a Croatian editor, and Evad37, an Australian editor. The first two have a significant number of road GAs, and the third should be getting his first pretty soon. Why do these good things go unnoticed and editors focus on the bad, or in this case, their exaggerations of the bad?
I want to help the UK Roads Project (as I do want to help any editor who wants to improve road articles). In the US we have tried-and-true practices that work. However, when one's efforts are spurned, it makes it difficult, and that's why we've mostly disengaged and let the articles decay as the other UKRD editors have left. But we're definitely open to help again. And I know it's not all you; there's definitely other difficult editors too.
As a sidenote, as an admin you will face a lot of criticism, whether your actions are right or wrong; being able to not entirely lose your cool will be helpful. -- Rs chen 7754 03:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we've interacted much outside WP:AfC. There I've seen your intimate knowledge of the policies and guidelines governing content and your sound judgment; you're one of the main pillars of support at the help desk. It might be more helpful if I could offer some criticism or advice for improvement, but honestly I think you're doing a splendid job, and I wouldn't know how you could change to do it even better. Huon ( talk) 18:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)