Sfoskett (
talk·contribs) – Recently surpassing the 17-thousand edit mark
[1], Stephen Fosketts is one of very few contributors who are part of the 15,000 club without sysop privileges. Since May 2004, Stephen has made a difference by providing a remarkable number of automobile-related photographs to Wikipedia under the GFDL or as public domain, correcting article inaccuracies, and reversing vandalism when necessary; he's also an invaluable contributor to
Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles. I believe
User:Sfoskett has proven to be an exceptional member who will not abuse administrative powers and proudly give him my full support.
Hall Monitor21:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:
I accept this nomination, somewhat reluctantly. I did not seek admin rights, and will not use them much, but would appreciate them.
Support - giving admin powers to someone who will barely use them isn't a problem; we should be concerned only if they'll use them inproperly. 15000 solid edits tell me that he won't.--
Scimitarparley18:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - he has made a very solid contribution to Wiki and it appears that admin powers will only assist him to continue to make a contribution. --
D-bot23:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support The answers to the first question are reasonable and show honesty and sincerity. Has a huge track record of solid contributions and whenever he breaks away from adding content to this Encyclopedia and performs some admin duties we'll be the better for it.
Rx StrangeLove00:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Strong Support we need as many trusted, experienced users to be admins as possible, even if they don't use it much. If in his normal article editing, he sees something that needs an admin, he will already be there with the power --
Rogerd01:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Strong support, with milk Dear god, we should be ashamed of ourselves, not having given this guy adminship before! Who cares if he spends hours vandalhunting, if he blocks one vandal a month, that's one user left the rest of you guys need to deal with.
gkhan01:50, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
It's better to have a person that we trust being an admin just in case. We don't "need" vandal fighting admins (though it is a great help) but that's not all adminship is about. The spirit of adminship (IMO) is that the community trusts you enough to give you extra power to help deal with situations that might require them. Hell, the more admins we can trust, the better. Sasquatcht|
c03:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. User has over 15,000 edits and the only complaints, as I far as I can see, are that he feels like he can make most of his contributions to Wikipedia without additional powers, which I feel that most users should be able to do. If the User finds his admin powers useful when dealing with vandalism on some of the many articles on which he works, then it is in the best interest of Wikipedia to give him the extra powers, even if he is not required to use them often.--
Kewp(t)10:20, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - It is amazing to see that we have a number of volunteer administrators who essentially work "full time" on this project. Sometimes it is nice to have more administrators who can dedicate that sort of time and energy to the project. However, we have to remember that we are primarily promoting users who are trustworthy, who can be ambassadors for the community, and who can help out whenever they can at their leisure. 17,000 edits is a tremendous amount of dedication to the project. This user is a thoroughly competent and trustworthy Wikipedian, and there is no reason to suspect that any of the administrative functions if given would be misused. This is a user who is exceptionally observant, and would clean up after the dangling ends we may occasionally miss or forget sometimes. For example, it could be things like adding missing protection tags to pages, deleting unsourced pictures, fixing page histories, and processing requested moves. --
HappyCamper14:41, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support, though please do keep in mind what Mendel said in his vote. While normally I'm not likely to support users with few WP: namespace edits, his edit count is impressive, and being active here for 17 months and >17000 edits shows tremendous dedication to this project. --
Idont Havaname18:12, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. No convincing reason was given to oppose. Admins have access to some tools, they are not obligated to use them. Let's see if there are any good reasons to support..., plenty of good work, has demonstrated trustworthiness and has a great amount of experience.
Sjakkalle(Check!)12:41, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support, per Chris Parham, Sjakkalle and Happy's comments. I am particularly mystified by suggestions that his recent break should in any way be counted against him—the guy has made 17,000 non-harmful edits, and in my book he's perfectly entitled to take a break for personal reasons momentarily. The only possible area of concern is his extremely limited participation in the WP namespace, involvement in which often indicates interest and familiarity with the workings of WP and related policy matters which are important for admins. However his positive attributes and obvious good sense convince me that he'll spend the necessary time to learn up these things before employing any new buttons he might receive.
encephalon19:52, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - the desire not to use the admin powers once gained doesn't bother me, after all adminship is not supposed to be a big deal --
Francs200021:21, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. I didn't express interest in using admin powers much either in my RfA, but ended up using them rather extensively. We need all the help we can get, and if the powers are used seldom, nothing was lost.
El_C21:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. I actually thought Sfoskett was an admin from when I first came here, but now that I've seen that he isn't a mod and has made a large number of edits, I support him. --
ApolloBoy23:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support Just because someone won't be a terribly active admin doesn't mean they shouldn't have the powers. It's not a zero-sum game. Giving more people more tools to make this place better can only make this place better, even if those tools aren't used all that often by a particular person. There is no harm in less-active admins.
Tedernst18:46, 27 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose per Durin's comments. Plus, I dont think that I can support someone who isnt necessarily desirious of sysop powers; we need more active admins. You can decline the nomination until you feel you are ready.
Orane(t)(c)(@)16:57, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose, sorry I've changed my vote. I guess I didn't read clearly since I just saw "I accept this nomination, somewhat reluctantly. I did not seek admin rights, and will not use them much, but would appreciate them.", we don't need admins that will barely use admin powers. Admins are needed to be active and stop trolls, vandals, etc.
PrivateButcher17:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
I think you would find that a large number of my historic edits are for reverting vandalism. However, I have not had much time for that in the last few months. See below. --
SFoskett20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
PB, I'd rather have someone trusted to use admin powers doing so occasionally instead of not having them at all. Consider it this way - suppose you have $50,000 in the bank, and someone offers you a gift of cash, but it's only $50. Do you turn it away because it's too little? Even if Sfoskett makes minimal use of admin powers, any use he does make will surely benefit Wikipedia, so why deny him (and the rest of us) even a minimal benefit?
BD2412talk20:47, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
It came off as a bad attempt at trying to appear moderate. If he doesnt want to be an admin, then he should withdraw. I've seen several rfas with the "i'm not gonna actually do anything so dont worry" statement.
freestylefrappe03:49, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose, no offense to the editor, but if you're not going to use the powers "much at all" then I don't see a point or a reason to give them to you at all. Good editor to be sure, but why should we bother here? It's like telling the coach of a basketball team that you'll play, but if the ball is passed to you, you might not shoot it.
K1Bond00722:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
He also suggests that he would actually revert quite a bit of vandalism, which is a perfectly sufficient reason to make him an administrator. To continue the analogy, people who hog all the shots aren't good teammates either; he might be looking to pass the ball to someone who has a better shot. Think
John Stockton. --
Michael Snow23:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
John Stockton didn't pass all the time, he stepped up and took the shot quite often. He was a team player. Theres a difference between assisting and not doing anything at all. He blatantly states "I do not see myself using any administrative priviliges much at all. I did not seek admin rights, and am ambivalent about having them." So why should we bother to support this? He's a very good editor, but if you don't want to take on administrative duties then you shouldn't have administrative powers. We need active admins. That's the point here.
K1Bond00723:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Administrative duties? What are those, aside from not misusing administrative privileges if you're going to use them? I'm not aware of any requirement that admins be "active" as such. --
Michael Snow23:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Rephrase to 'sysop chore' per the question below. I'm sorry. I'm not going to debate this much further so long as his answers go unchanged. We all have differing criteria. One of mine is that they will be active with 'sysop chores'.
K1Bond00700:53, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
The admin tools are for fighting vandalism and intervening in disruptive behavior. They don't make it any easier to make the encyclopedia better, just protect it from the entropic forces that tend to make it worse. -
A Man In Black (
conspire |
past ops)
05:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Neutral
On one hand I'm not sure that a less-active admin wouldn't still improve Wikipedia, but I'd be concerned that without actively adminning it would be easy to miss out on best practices and policy refinements. —
mendel☎20:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Since August 24 of this year, your contributions have virtually collapsed. Your average # of edits per day over the period from then to now is just 2.6 edits per day, with just 153 edits over the last 2 months. I'm not saying this is a reason to oppose (this is not a vote, but a comment). I'd like to see your explanation for this. --
Durin16:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
I have had some personal/life commitments push Wikipedia to the back burner lately. I intend to continue contributing long term. --
SFoskett20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
How does this edit summary % work? Does that include minor(m) edits? What about edits to one's user page? Does it include edits to talk pages, where the person will have to open and read them anyway? Articles, off course, changes need summaries, as that he highly useful, but I don't know what the 56 includes. This could be editcountitis :).
Voice of All@|Esperanza|
E M20:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
The edit summary simply totals the number of edits for which there are edit summaries and divides by the number of total edits made by the editor to arrive at a percentage of total edits for which there are edit summaries. It includes edits marked as minor. It includes edits to one's own user pages. It includes edits to talk pages. Edit summaries are a useful tool in vandal fighting and editing in general. It is, in my opinion, important to include them for all edits, even minor ones. Please see
this diff for further rationale. Note that there are possible dopplegangers of Sfoskett. Please see
Wikipedia:Edit summary as well. --
Durin20:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
A. I do not see myself using any administrative priviliges much at all. I did not seek admin rights, and am ambivalent about having them. The only reason I would accept these rights at all is so I could deal with vandals more effectively than my current route or reporting them and hoping for the best. I would also appreciate the reversion ability, since that is something I do a lot of in the auto articles.
Update - I feel I must add to this answer. No, I do not anticipate becoming a troll/vandal hunter or spending hours reverting vandalism. I am a contributor more than an editor - I have written well over 100 full articles (and far more stubs) and expect to continue to do so. I was inclined to decline the nomination at first, but felt better of it and decided that it would be nice to have the admin powers to use occasionally. If people only want to give adminship to people who will be active admins, then by all means oppose. But if you want to help me be a more effective contributor then support. I will continue to write articles either way.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
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 have been involved in a number of conflicts, including contentious ones as
List of automotive superlatives and
Hummer H2/
Hummer. Throughout these, I attempted to maintain calm and rationality, however hard it may be. I feel that by keeping our eyes on the prize, so to speak, of creating an encyclopedic work, we can diffuse tense situations through reasonable discussion and democracy.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.
Sfoskett (
talk·contribs) – Recently surpassing the 17-thousand edit mark
[1], Stephen Fosketts is one of very few contributors who are part of the 15,000 club without sysop privileges. Since May 2004, Stephen has made a difference by providing a remarkable number of automobile-related photographs to Wikipedia under the GFDL or as public domain, correcting article inaccuracies, and reversing vandalism when necessary; he's also an invaluable contributor to
Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles. I believe
User:Sfoskett has proven to be an exceptional member who will not abuse administrative powers and proudly give him my full support.
Hall Monitor21:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:
I accept this nomination, somewhat reluctantly. I did not seek admin rights, and will not use them much, but would appreciate them.
Support - giving admin powers to someone who will barely use them isn't a problem; we should be concerned only if they'll use them inproperly. 15000 solid edits tell me that he won't.--
Scimitarparley18:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - he has made a very solid contribution to Wiki and it appears that admin powers will only assist him to continue to make a contribution. --
D-bot23:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support The answers to the first question are reasonable and show honesty and sincerity. Has a huge track record of solid contributions and whenever he breaks away from adding content to this Encyclopedia and performs some admin duties we'll be the better for it.
Rx StrangeLove00:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Strong Support we need as many trusted, experienced users to be admins as possible, even if they don't use it much. If in his normal article editing, he sees something that needs an admin, he will already be there with the power --
Rogerd01:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Strong support, with milk Dear god, we should be ashamed of ourselves, not having given this guy adminship before! Who cares if he spends hours vandalhunting, if he blocks one vandal a month, that's one user left the rest of you guys need to deal with.
gkhan01:50, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
It's better to have a person that we trust being an admin just in case. We don't "need" vandal fighting admins (though it is a great help) but that's not all adminship is about. The spirit of adminship (IMO) is that the community trusts you enough to give you extra power to help deal with situations that might require them. Hell, the more admins we can trust, the better. Sasquatcht|
c03:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. User has over 15,000 edits and the only complaints, as I far as I can see, are that he feels like he can make most of his contributions to Wikipedia without additional powers, which I feel that most users should be able to do. If the User finds his admin powers useful when dealing with vandalism on some of the many articles on which he works, then it is in the best interest of Wikipedia to give him the extra powers, even if he is not required to use them often.--
Kewp(t)10:20, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - It is amazing to see that we have a number of volunteer administrators who essentially work "full time" on this project. Sometimes it is nice to have more administrators who can dedicate that sort of time and energy to the project. However, we have to remember that we are primarily promoting users who are trustworthy, who can be ambassadors for the community, and who can help out whenever they can at their leisure. 17,000 edits is a tremendous amount of dedication to the project. This user is a thoroughly competent and trustworthy Wikipedian, and there is no reason to suspect that any of the administrative functions if given would be misused. This is a user who is exceptionally observant, and would clean up after the dangling ends we may occasionally miss or forget sometimes. For example, it could be things like adding missing protection tags to pages, deleting unsourced pictures, fixing page histories, and processing requested moves. --
HappyCamper14:41, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support, though please do keep in mind what Mendel said in his vote. While normally I'm not likely to support users with few WP: namespace edits, his edit count is impressive, and being active here for 17 months and >17000 edits shows tremendous dedication to this project. --
Idont Havaname18:12, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. No convincing reason was given to oppose. Admins have access to some tools, they are not obligated to use them. Let's see if there are any good reasons to support..., plenty of good work, has demonstrated trustworthiness and has a great amount of experience.
Sjakkalle(Check!)12:41, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support, per Chris Parham, Sjakkalle and Happy's comments. I am particularly mystified by suggestions that his recent break should in any way be counted against him—the guy has made 17,000 non-harmful edits, and in my book he's perfectly entitled to take a break for personal reasons momentarily. The only possible area of concern is his extremely limited participation in the WP namespace, involvement in which often indicates interest and familiarity with the workings of WP and related policy matters which are important for admins. However his positive attributes and obvious good sense convince me that he'll spend the necessary time to learn up these things before employing any new buttons he might receive.
encephalon19:52, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support - the desire not to use the admin powers once gained doesn't bother me, after all adminship is not supposed to be a big deal --
Francs200021:21, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. I didn't express interest in using admin powers much either in my RfA, but ended up using them rather extensively. We need all the help we can get, and if the powers are used seldom, nothing was lost.
El_C21:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support. I actually thought Sfoskett was an admin from when I first came here, but now that I've seen that he isn't a mod and has made a large number of edits, I support him. --
ApolloBoy23:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Support Just because someone won't be a terribly active admin doesn't mean they shouldn't have the powers. It's not a zero-sum game. Giving more people more tools to make this place better can only make this place better, even if those tools aren't used all that often by a particular person. There is no harm in less-active admins.
Tedernst18:46, 27 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose per Durin's comments. Plus, I dont think that I can support someone who isnt necessarily desirious of sysop powers; we need more active admins. You can decline the nomination until you feel you are ready.
Orane(t)(c)(@)16:57, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose, sorry I've changed my vote. I guess I didn't read clearly since I just saw "I accept this nomination, somewhat reluctantly. I did not seek admin rights, and will not use them much, but would appreciate them.", we don't need admins that will barely use admin powers. Admins are needed to be active and stop trolls, vandals, etc.
PrivateButcher17:16, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
I think you would find that a large number of my historic edits are for reverting vandalism. However, I have not had much time for that in the last few months. See below. --
SFoskett20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
PB, I'd rather have someone trusted to use admin powers doing so occasionally instead of not having them at all. Consider it this way - suppose you have $50,000 in the bank, and someone offers you a gift of cash, but it's only $50. Do you turn it away because it's too little? Even if Sfoskett makes minimal use of admin powers, any use he does make will surely benefit Wikipedia, so why deny him (and the rest of us) even a minimal benefit?
BD2412talk20:47, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
It came off as a bad attempt at trying to appear moderate. If he doesnt want to be an admin, then he should withdraw. I've seen several rfas with the "i'm not gonna actually do anything so dont worry" statement.
freestylefrappe03:49, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Oppose, no offense to the editor, but if you're not going to use the powers "much at all" then I don't see a point or a reason to give them to you at all. Good editor to be sure, but why should we bother here? It's like telling the coach of a basketball team that you'll play, but if the ball is passed to you, you might not shoot it.
K1Bond00722:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
He also suggests that he would actually revert quite a bit of vandalism, which is a perfectly sufficient reason to make him an administrator. To continue the analogy, people who hog all the shots aren't good teammates either; he might be looking to pass the ball to someone who has a better shot. Think
John Stockton. --
Michael Snow23:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
John Stockton didn't pass all the time, he stepped up and took the shot quite often. He was a team player. Theres a difference between assisting and not doing anything at all. He blatantly states "I do not see myself using any administrative priviliges much at all. I did not seek admin rights, and am ambivalent about having them." So why should we bother to support this? He's a very good editor, but if you don't want to take on administrative duties then you shouldn't have administrative powers. We need active admins. That's the point here.
K1Bond00723:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Administrative duties? What are those, aside from not misusing administrative privileges if you're going to use them? I'm not aware of any requirement that admins be "active" as such. --
Michael Snow23:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Rephrase to 'sysop chore' per the question below. I'm sorry. I'm not going to debate this much further so long as his answers go unchanged. We all have differing criteria. One of mine is that they will be active with 'sysop chores'.
K1Bond00700:53, 22 October 2005 (UTC)reply
The admin tools are for fighting vandalism and intervening in disruptive behavior. They don't make it any easier to make the encyclopedia better, just protect it from the entropic forces that tend to make it worse. -
A Man In Black (
conspire |
past ops)
05:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Neutral
On one hand I'm not sure that a less-active admin wouldn't still improve Wikipedia, but I'd be concerned that without actively adminning it would be easy to miss out on best practices and policy refinements. —
mendel☎20:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
Since August 24 of this year, your contributions have virtually collapsed. Your average # of edits per day over the period from then to now is just 2.6 edits per day, with just 153 edits over the last 2 months. I'm not saying this is a reason to oppose (this is not a vote, but a comment). I'd like to see your explanation for this. --
Durin16:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
I have had some personal/life commitments push Wikipedia to the back burner lately. I intend to continue contributing long term. --
SFoskett20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
How does this edit summary % work? Does that include minor(m) edits? What about edits to one's user page? Does it include edits to talk pages, where the person will have to open and read them anyway? Articles, off course, changes need summaries, as that he highly useful, but I don't know what the 56 includes. This could be editcountitis :).
Voice of All@|Esperanza|
E M20:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
The edit summary simply totals the number of edits for which there are edit summaries and divides by the number of total edits made by the editor to arrive at a percentage of total edits for which there are edit summaries. It includes edits marked as minor. It includes edits to one's own user pages. It includes edits to talk pages. Edit summaries are a useful tool in vandal fighting and editing in general. It is, in my opinion, important to include them for all edits, even minor ones. Please see
this diff for further rationale. Note that there are possible dopplegangers of Sfoskett. Please see
Wikipedia:Edit summary as well. --
Durin20:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)reply
A. I do not see myself using any administrative priviliges much at all. I did not seek admin rights, and am ambivalent about having them. The only reason I would accept these rights at all is so I could deal with vandals more effectively than my current route or reporting them and hoping for the best. I would also appreciate the reversion ability, since that is something I do a lot of in the auto articles.
Update - I feel I must add to this answer. No, I do not anticipate becoming a troll/vandal hunter or spending hours reverting vandalism. I am a contributor more than an editor - I have written well over 100 full articles (and far more stubs) and expect to continue to do so. I was inclined to decline the nomination at first, but felt better of it and decided that it would be nice to have the admin powers to use occasionally. If people only want to give adminship to people who will be active admins, then by all means oppose. But if you want to help me be a more effective contributor then support. I will continue to write articles either way.
2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
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 have been involved in a number of conflicts, including contentious ones as
List of automotive superlatives and
Hummer H2/
Hummer. Throughout these, I attempted to maintain calm and rationality, however hard it may be. I feel that by keeping our eyes on the prize, so to speak, of creating an encyclopedic work, we can diffuse tense situations through reasonable discussion and democracy.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.