Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Dev920 2

Dev920

Voice your opinion (talk page) (4/0/0); Scheduled to end 12:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Dev920 (talk · contribs) - Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dev920, who has been contributing with us since March 2006. She has more than 9400 edits (2500 of them in mainspace and, most impressive, 2004 in user talks, showing a penchant for dialogue). Elected coordinator of the Wikiproject of LGBT Studies, a project with more than 200 members, she has an impressive knowledge of Wikipedia policies and processes. She is a regular at XfD's, and her prodding habits have resulted more than once in a noticeable increase of the quality of an article. She is highly involved in the community, teaching several newcomers to Wikipedia how to contribute and patiently explaining them our ways (she has in fact adopted several users). Add to that that she has written several brilliant FA's and even created a wikiproject. She regularly does a *huge* amount of maintenance, hence the need for the tools. Her previous nomination was eight months ago. Concerns from reviewers seemed to focus in her handling of editing very conflictive articles such as Islam. Dev920 since then has addressed this by stepping away from such articles in which she feels she cannot keep a cool head, showing a great deal of maturity (and it should be pointed out that she actually received an Islamic barnstar for her efforts). She may be very firm when defending policies and opinions (aren't we all?), but always polite, and sometimes she even uses humour to try to de-escalate tense situations, which I think shows how far she has come. Another concern had to do with the creation of a Tory-related project in userspace, which she defended was technically within policy. As she has not repeated any such action, and several reviewers in fact were of the mind that all this user needed was a bit more of time before becoming an admin, I believe 8 months later she is finally ready for the tools. :-) Raystorm (¿Sí?) 11:38, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept this nomination and thank Raystorm for having such faith in me. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 12:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. You may wish to answer the following optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?

A: I want to go where admins are needed most – I have noticed there are plenty of admins blocking users, not so many clearing the CSD backlog on a regular basis. I would also like to help out at page semi/un/protection, having been grateful in the past to the admins who do this. I would like my time as an administrator to focus more on the article side of things – protection, deletion, that sort of thing, stuff that often piles up very quickly.

2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?

A: At the moment I am most proud of my (and WP:LGBT’s) ongoing work with List of LGB people. It’s gone from this to what you see today. I’m also proud of my work on Trembling before G-d, which I improved from a stub to FA status in a week (see, Jumpaclass IS a good idea. :D ). Also, getting myself and Wikipedia into The Advocate, the largest gay magazine in America, was pretty amazing.

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

A:I said last RfA that “Conflict is not something I enjoy, but I’m willing to stand up, be counted and enter the fray if the encyclopedia needs it”. Someone interpreted that as saying I was argumentative and willing to force my views on other people, which isn’t true. I believe in vigorous debate, but ultimately, we have a policy of consensus on Wikipedia, which I abide by and if everyone abided by it we’d probably have a much more peaceful community. I think most conflicts I do end up entering is precisely ‘’because’’ someone else refuses to accept the majority consensus – and if that person is me I like to hope that I will happily admit that fact when I realize it. There are some articles which are tagged as within the remit of WP:LGBT that I really don’t agree with, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I accept because I am at odds with the majority of the project’s members.

Generally it’s easier to defuse a potential conflict than run straight into it, and I think I’ve got better at doing that in the past few months, particularly as I now work predominantly in an area, LGBT, that many editors feel quite strongly about. But it is inevitable that people sometimes snap and are incivil, however, and I am no exception. If I did not lose my temper occasionally I would be offering myself as the Messiah, not an administrator. On Talk:Marriage, I utterly lost my rag and got quite angry. I haven’t edited there since. It’s not a pleasant edit to have in one’s history, and I do regret both saying it and working on that article in the first place – too much bickering going on over there. Fortunately it happened over six months ago.

Incidentally, while I have a captive audience, I would like to say that I find the rising levels of harsh, but technically not incivil, comments on Wikipedia, particularly on FACs, extremely disheartening and if anyone knows of how we as a community can reduce this please drop a line on my talk page because I’d like to get involved. See here for some discussion I’ve already had on the topic.

Optional question 4. - from User:Alison

• As your previous RfA failed largely on issues of incivility, how do you feel things have changed since then and what steps have you taken to address concerns raised? - Alison ☺ 12:39, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

General comments

• See Dev920's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.

RfAs for this user:

• Requests for adminship/Dev920
• Requests for adminship/Dev920 (2nd nom)
• Requests for adminship/Dev920 2

• Links for Dev920: Dev920 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

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Please keep criticism constructive and polite. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Dev920 before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Support -Naturally, as nom. Will make a fine admin. Raystorm (¿Sí?) 12:30, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
2. Strong support - yayyy!! Dev will be a great addition to the admin team - Alison ☺ 12:31, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
3. Titan Support - At last someone worthy enough...We cant expect a better admin than Dev920..Good Luck Mate..--Cometstyles 12:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
4. Support. I believe that Dev has learned from past mistakes and that the issues that resulted in opposition at her previous RfA are behind her. Dev's involvement in Wikiproject LGBT Studies has been invaluable and I have always had extremely positive interactions with her. She is experienced in the areas that admins need to be - I'm convinced she will delete only what needs to be deleted and block only those that policy requires be blocked. WjBscribe 12:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose for same reasons as before. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
2. Oppose Sorry Dev, I've got to oppose. I actually quite like you but I really question your maturity and ability to handle conflict. During Wikipedia:Esperanza/Mediation, where I mediated your dispute with Ed, your constant arguing with one one another was quite disruptive (check the mediation page to see what I mean). Dev remove every single comment Ed made to her talk page, which only inflamed the situation[1][2][3]. Then when Ed comes over to your talk page to say he's leaving wikipedia due to the dispute and the fact that he has cancer [4], she removed that as well, which I strongly believe was a really nasty thing to do, and showed a complete lack of empathy [5]. Now don't get me wrong, I think Ed could have handled the whole esparanza dispute better, but I question your judgement by refusing to discuss anything with him and removing any attempt at discussion that Ed made, it makes me think that in a similar situation, you would just hit that block button to stop discussion with you. Ryan Postlethwaite 12:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Neutral