Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Barneca 2

Barneca

Voice your opinion (talk page) (20/0/0); Scheduled to end 16:36, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Barneca (talk · contribs)

Nomination By Pedro. Ladies and gents, this is a bit backwards as Barneca has provided below a substantial rationale as to why he needs the +sysop bit, and why his last RfA failed, done prior to me finding time to write a nomination. I will not re-iterate what you will read below, as it is better that the candidate says it. In summary, however, please note the following. I first ran into Barneca during the mess associated with User:Oldwindybear. At that time we were on opposite sides of the fence (it turns out Barneca was right) but I was impressed by his civility and thoroughness in the situation. At his first RFA I was pleased to support him, despite concerns regarding issues raised by Agüeybaná - see the candidates own Q4 below for more and the discussion at that RfA where I detailed why I felt support was justified.

I believe what we see here is an editor with a passion for Wikipedia, who endeavours to do the right thing for the good of the project. Yes, possible good faith mistakes were made in the past, but Barneca has been true to himself by leaving plenty of time between RfA's to demonstrate that he can be trusted, that he has learnt from experience and that his input to the project would be a net gain.

Fellow editors, I appreciate that there is some substantial reading and research to do before placing your comments in Support, Oppose or Neutral. Please make that time and I hope that you will find, as I do, that granting admin buttons to Barneca is a positive move for Wikipedia. Pedro :  Chat  09:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Co nom from waterdude

I second Pedro's excellent nom. I first encountered Barneca in his last RfA, where I initially opposed. In the end, the way he acted, with dignity and civility and all those good things, convinced me that he could be trusted, hence my change to support. I'd like to extend this now; I've seen only excellent things from him since. Ladies and gentlemen, another net positive; Barneca. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂0) 10:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Co-nom from MastCell

I'll second what the others have said above. Barneca is a mature, sensible, civil editor with experience enough to use the tools well, and judgment enough to know when not to use them and when to ask for help. I understand the concerns raised at his first RfA, but his subsequent track record shows them to be based on an isolated incident, and his contributions as a whole allay any concerns. He's demonstrated an excellent ability to stay cool and make considered and constructive rather than rash decisions, which is what we look for in admins. Whatever use he puts the buttons to will benefit Wikipedia; I hope you'll agree with me that Barneca is a highly deserving candidate. MastCell ^Talk 20:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Co-nom from Dreamafter

I have not but good to say of him, he is always helpful, when asked, and goes out of his way to ensure that things are done correctly and to policy. By far some of the best work around here is that which helps the other newer editors, at Account Creation by admins (and some other lesser people[like Barneca {Currently}]). You can't fault him for the work he has been doing, and is always up for criticism, and responds really well to it, fixing N.I.N.S. (Now If Not Sooner). ~ Dreamy ^§ 01:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Thank you all for the kind words, I accept the nomination. --barneca (talk) 16:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

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

A: I’m mostly stealing this from my previous RfA, but have updated it in a few places, so it might be worth a fresh read.

• Vandalism removal. I’ve spent a majority of my time here reverting vandalism, with nearly 200 reports to WP:AIV. Only one of them was declined, which should confirm my judgment in this area. It would be faster to block active vandals myself, rather than report to WP:AIV. I'll continue to go to Random pages and watch Recentchanges myself, but I’ll also help at WP:AIV. I won't necessarily continue to spend the majority of my time doing this, but I do think it’s important, it's something I’m happy to continue, and an area where I can jump in almost right away.
• Account creation. I’ve done quite a bit of work in the last few months at WP:ACC. The page is actually pretty good, backlog-wise; a small group of admins frequents that page several times a day. Still, every little bit helps, and if I do it too, then others are free to do something else.
• WP:AN and WP:ANI. I already occasionally wander by these boards and chime in when I think I can be useful. As an admin, I’ll do that a little more, in case someone needs an admin’s help. Similarly, I’ll keep an eye on CAT:HELP and CAT:UNBLOCK.
• CAT:PROD and CAT:CSD. As mentioned in my previous RfA, I’ve got a good track record of admins agreeing with my {{db}} tags. For vandalism, patent nonsense, attack pages, and general maintenance, I'd like to be able to delete them when I find them myself, without adding to the CSD workload. For notability and similar cases, in all but the most obvious cases I’ll probably continue to add tags to articles that I run across myself, rather than delete on my own; I think having two sets of eyes verify that something is speedyable for non-notability is good practice. But I’m quite willing to be that second pair of eyes, and so I'll also review articles listed at CAT:CSD and expired PROD's.
• Backlogs. I think there's a certain obligation to pitch in and help if entrusted with the mop. As I become more familiar with processes at each place, I'll try to help out with whatever backlogs are currently at CAT:AB.
• If I ever get bored, I'll find something new, watch and learn, and help out when I'm comfortable. I don't plan to focus on one area.

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

A. Again, mostly echoing my answer from last time, with a few updates:

• Mediation/DR. It interests me, and I’ve tried it informally a few times, sometimes more successfully than others. My largest undertaking in this area was trying to calm Video Professor down and whip it into shape, and in the end I think both sides were happy with the results. You can see more about my DR experience in general on my previous RfA's talk page. If you're curious about the Video Professor stuff, and if you're up for a long read, the relevant portion of the Video Professor talk page is archived at Talk:Video Professor/Archive. I was involved from roughly August 21, 2007 to October 1, 2007. The competing versions before I got involved are here and here, compared to my final version, which isn't much different than the current version.
• General helpfulness. Helping out at WP:ACC, wandering by the Help Desk, dablink fixing, article discussion when I have something useful to say, looking up info in the references and fixing it if it's incorrect, spelling/phrasing fixes, page moves... Just generally wandering around the 'pedia, fixing what I come across that seems to need fixing. I’m here because I enjoy poking around and looking at various articles, policies, processes, and try to participate in whatever seems interesting.
• Contributing without having a strong POV about, really, much of anything. I'm here because I love the concept of Wikipedia, and find it interesting, enjoy learning new stuff, and enjoy being useful, not because I want articles my way. Long term, I think that POV wars, and the socks and cross-namespace disputes they breed, are more dangerous to Wikipedia than vandalism. While I certainly don’t think you have to come here without any POV at all in order to be an editor or an admin, frankly I think the fact that I don’t have an ax to grind is a benefit, especially if I try to get involved in helping to settle other people’s disputes.

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. For the most obvious, glaring example, please see pretty much the entire discussion section of my previous RfA; I had a short but intense dispute with Agüeybaná in August. A simple summary is given on the talk page of my first RfA; see here. For my final comments on lessons learned, etc, please see that talk page, and my comments to Walton and Pedro in the discussion section of my first RfA. A one sentence summary: IMHO he and I acted like jerks to each other, we are both human, I have learned from it, and it was 6 months ago. OK, one further sentence: I never said I was going to post previously-received emails on-wiki, and fully understand that warning him I would post any future emails on-wiki was stupid.

The only other stressful conflict I’ve had since then was a bad experience three months ago, calling a questionable edit "spam", when in retrospect it might not have been. I was too quick to jump to conclusions there. It really ticked the IP off, but I apologized, was open to discussion the whole time, and didn't escalate the disagreement. You can follow this in User talk:Barneca/Archive 4#Why did you remove my entry on PDF ? and Talk:Portable Document Format#This 10 mo. User Barnaca is CENSORING My contribution. It seems to me like it was a dynamic IP, so there’s no way to know if they came back or not, but there was a definite failure to AGF there. It wasn't stressful until I realized he might be right, and that I hadn't assumed the best; after that realization, it got stressful for me in a hurry. I’ve since made an extra effort to not be a dick during RC work, and in fact I’m tweaking the templates I use to be extra-special-go-the-extra-mile gentle; see user:barneca/temps/uw-test1ac (Actually, see here for how it looks transcluded). That’s about it in the conflict and stress department. Normal garden-variety "barneca sucks" messages from vandals are like water off a duck's back.

My main tactics if I run into a dispute (stolen verbatim from my previous RfA) are:

• Discuss, if the other editor appears reasonable. Frequently one of us will convince the other, or we’ll compromise. Sometimes one of us will give up; that’s OK too. When someone is being polite, I enjoy the give and take.
• Disengage, if the other editor is uncivil or attacking me, or clearly uninterested in consensus. Arguing for the sake of arguing is a time sink.
• Ask for help. You won't see me block someone for being uncivil to me or attacking me. I’m not a huge fan of going to WP:AN or WP:ANI about civility complaints; I usually couldn’t care less if someone insults me on Wikipedia, and favor ignoring them instead. But if they just won’t leave me alone, and it interferes with my ability to be here, I’ll either go to ANI, or to a talk page of an admin that I know is active, to ask for another pair of eyes and some help.

(saving someone the trouble by asking the following question myself:)

4. What have I done to address the concerns from my previous RFA?

A. There were a few concerns raised in my last RFA:

• Civility. I'm really a very civil person, honest; I just had a bad day. But I can understand how people were concerned last time, as my conflict with Agüeybaná was only a month before my previous RfA. I’ve really just continued to edit as I always edit, perhaps taking an extra 2 seconds before hitting the save page button, and if you look thru my contribs I hope you’ll agree that the thing with Agüeybaná was an abheration, not part of a pattern.
• AfD experience. With only 3 XfD's before my first RfA, I commented on 6 more AfD’s during the RfA, in response to a concern raised by J-stan. I’ve commented on five more XfD's since then. To be honest, I haven’t gone out of my way to do that; all five I’ve participated in were articles that I ran across somehow that interested me. A total of 14 XfD's isn’t much, but it should be enough to show I’m not a raving deletionist or a raving inclusionist, and if forced at gunpoint to close a non-contentious AFD, I’ve seen the mechanics and could do it. (I’d probably just let them shoot me if they tried to force me to close a contentious one).
• Wikipedia space edits. I’ve kept to the same general pace, except I started working at WP:ACC. Some portion of my deleted edits (can’t see for myself, obviously) are at the regularly-deleted WP:ACC page, which should “count” toward WP space edits.
• Article writing. After my last RfA, I started out with plans to try to write an article, but it was stressing me out, and I've come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t make sense to do that. It’s not what I’m here to do, so it’s not something I want to imply I’m here to do. If you truly believe a background in article writing is necessary for adminship, then I disagree, but I’ll understand if you oppose. But it seemed somewhat dishonest to try to compose an article, and probably do it badly, just so I could tick off something on a to do list. By the way, if a short stub would satisfy you, I did write Diaphragm (structural system), but it isn’t headed toward GA any time soon.

Questions from EJF

5. Would you add yourself to admins open to recall? Why?

A: You know how it never rains when you remember to bring your umbrella, and always rains when you forget? That’s what recall is like; the people you would want to use it on seldom agree to sign up. But, it’s still a good idea to bring your umbrella, and it’s still a good idea (IMHO) to have voluntary recall. It indicates a certain amount of trust in the judgement of the community, and provides an extra level of accountability to the community. A lot of the problems with recall occur when people figure out or adjust their process mid-crisis, so I’ve already created my process and plan on adding it to the list. It’s currently still in draft form, but only so I can tweak it in response to comments here. Recall has a little more teeth to it than some think; I think the community would judge someone gaming the system to avoid a legitimate recall effort fairly harshly, whether it violates “policy” or not. I haven’t done an exhaustive survey, but I believe with one exception, admins who were perceived to have attempted to avoid recall eventually requested desysoping anyway, basically due to social pressure.

6. How would you deal with a POV-pusher who had not committed any vandalism?

A: POV pushing is a content dispute, and so is subject to WP:3RR. I’m pretty much a 1RR person anyway, so step one is to not edit war with them. If it was a clear NPOV violation, I’d probably revert once, and add a note to the talk page why I disagreed, and leave a message on their talk page asking them to discuss it on the article talk page. If they re-added the material, I’d put a {{disputed}} tag up rather than revert again. As long as there wasn’t a BLP issue and they were talking, I could live with their version on the page until consensus was reached. If we couldn’t get consensus, I’d follow the normal DR procedures to get more eyeballs on the article. The key to fighting POV pushing is more eyeballs; more non-POV people involved. There are {{uw-npov1}} tags, but I doubt they’re much use.

If they refused to discuss, and just keep re-adding the same material, that's starting to feel more like vandalism in my mind, but noting that not everyone agrees, I'd still follow the procedures above, but perhaps more strongly. If I was involved in the discussion, I wouldn't block, I'd ask somewhere for another admin to do a sanity check and block if appropriate. Without having more specifics in the question, I can't say much more than that. Is that what you meant, or did you mean, what if I come across a dispute others are having with a POV pusher, and was asked to act in an admin capacity?

Yes, that was the answer I wanted, nothing specific, I was just interested in a general answer, and I am happy with what you have said. EJF (talk) 18:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

7. Would you ever undo another admin's actions? Why?

A: Only in very rare circumstances. I would first discuss it with the admin in question, on talk pages or by email, depending on the subject matter. If they agree, it's probably best if they undo their own action. If they said “undo if you want to, but I’m not going to”, I might do so, depending on the circumstances. If we still disagreed, or if I couldn’t get a hold of them in a reasonable time, I’d take it to WP:AN or WP:ANI or somewhere else appropriate (I don’t do IRC), and might undo their action if consensus developed for it. If the other admin is acting in good faith, it’s hard to imagine a situation where it was vital to undo their action right away, without talking to others. Blind reverting of another admin's action seldom achieves the desired outcome in a drama-less fashion.

Questions from Thehelpfulone

8. What is the difference between a ban and a block?

A: Dicdef: A block is when an admin prevents a particular account or IP address from editing Wikipedia; a ban is when ArbCom or the community at large has decided a particular person should no longer edit certain articles, or Wikipedia as a whole.

Real life: is a bit fuzzier, as some blocks can have the effect of bans; for example, you can’t use sockpuppets to evade a 3RR block, so that has the same effect as a “temporary” ban on a person; and an “indef block that no admin is willing to overturn” has some similarity to a ban.

The main difference is, if User:ExampleVandal has been indef blocked for vandalism, and creates the account User:ExampleReformed and starts making legit contributions, that’s acceptable. If User:ExampleVandal has been banned and does the same thing, they’re violating their ban and the new account can theoretically be blocked (although, from a practical point of view, it would certainly be hard to detect).

9. What would your personal standards be on granting and removing rollback, if any?

A: I would be somewhat liberal; no evidence of a tendancy to edit war, and a sense they'd been around long enough to understand what they were doing, and when they should and should not use it. It's so easy to remove if it's abused, and (IMHO) it's so much less powerful than its reputation, that problems are easily dealt with. I would grant it to a user I was familiar with, if they asked and if they met the above criteria, without demanding they go thru WP:RFR. Personally, I think Twinkle is a much more dangerous tool than rollback.

Question from Moreschi

10. In several recent arbitration cases (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren), administrators were given the ability to apply discretionary sanctions to users editing various areas of the encyclopaedia (sweeping areas, too). How, if at all, would you go about enforcing these sanctions? Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

A:(Preliminary answer) I'm aware that this remedy was imposed in several recent ArbCom cases, but haven't looked into the specifics. I'll have to do some ArbCom case reading (yay, what fun!) and get back to you later.

General comments

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

RfAs for this user:

• Requests for adminship/Barneca
• Requests for adminship/Barneca 2

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

---

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Barneca before commenting.

Discussion

• Why so many noms? Silly. CordeliaHenrietta ↔ Talk 17:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

  Three had previously, and independently, said they'd like to nominate me in the past few months, and know about different areas of my contributions. One kind of crashed the party, but I like him (he says nice things about me) and I saw no point in asking him not to. Silly, but I hope relatively harmless. --barneca (talk) 17:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

  It is a bit silly, but Barneca's a popular guy. I wish I could say I'd never seen an RfA opposed on the basis of "too many noms", but I have, so if it becomes an issue I'll happily remove mine and content myself with strong support. MastCell ^Talk 19:26, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Support

1. Because nominators are allowed to support pre-transclusion. Since now. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂0) 10:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
2. Support If thats so, then no one-can yell at me now! But seriously, I co-nomed, can't be more trusting than that. ~ Dreamy ^§ 01:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
3. Strong Support per my nomination. Pedro :  Chat  16:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
4. Strong support: Excellent candidate, absolutely no concerns, per my nomination. MastCell ^Talk 16:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
5. Support -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:01, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
6. Support Good user who obviously knows his stuff. Ryan Postlethwaite 17:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
7. CordeliaHenrietta ↔ Talk 17:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
8. Support as in the first RfA - good vandal-fighting, edits, etc. I've seen improvements on edit count, edit sumamry use, civility, etc. Bearian (talk) 17:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
9. Support Dlohcierekim Deleted? 17:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
10. Interacted with Barneca a few weeks ago, and I found them to be polite and friendly. I think the issues raised in the last RfA have been dealt with, and I have no concerns here. Acalamari 17:34, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
11. Support per Hiberniantears and TwoOars at RfA/Barneca 1. - TwoOars 17:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
12. Support Only seen good things, has learned from previous comments, should make a good admin. Woody (talk) 18:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
13. Support Good Luck! --The Helpful One 18:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
14. Support - in particular for the stirling work done in unmasking the various identities of oldwindybear, and pursuing the case with a combination of determination and civility. -- roundhouse0 (talk) 18:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
15. Support, excellent contributions, excellent answers to questions. EJF (talk) 18:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
16. Support It's clear this user's made real concrete efforts to improve, and has done a great job. Proud to support here. :) GlassCobra 18:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
17. Strong support Definitely He'll make good admin.--NAHID 19:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
18. Support - trustworthy editor. Addhoc (talk) 19:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
19. Support - great editor. Will only make wikipedia better. - Milk's Favorite Cookie 20:11, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
20. Support - Wow, awesome at dealing with potential conflict, from a good look at their talk page. Always friendly and helpful in every edit I looked at, plus good about taking criticism. And clearly knows their stuff. An asset to the project, and leaves no doubt that they will use the tools well. delldot talk 20:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
21. Oppose Too many noms. Icestorm815 (talk) 20:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)