Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Preslethe

Preslethe

Discuss here (5/7/1) Ending 04:33, 2006-07-16 (UTC)

Preslethe (talk · contribs) – This editor has done excellent work on United States and I would like to see this editor become an admin. -- R'son-W (speak to me/breathe) 06:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept the nomination. — President Lethe 04:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Support

1. Support. Sometimes you have to consider quality over quantity. Axiomm 05:23, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Support. As nominator and per #1. -- R'son-W (speak to me/breathe) 06:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
3. Support. He has 1500 edits to the main page space, the most important space on the site. He's been here for 8 months, opposing users fail to see those qualities which pass many standards. Sunglasses 06:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Support. I was a little hesitant about voting support due to the reasons given by the opposers, but after reading the answers about the edit conflicts, I think this user would make a good admin due to experience in that category. And I agree with Sunglasses about the eight months. -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 06:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
5. Support per Sunglasses & Buchanan-Hermit -- Samus 10:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strong oppose, very few project and user talk edits; needs a bit more experience--TBCTaLk?!? 05:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Strong oppose 25 WP edits - CrazyRougeian talk/email 05:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
3. Mild Oppose. Doesn't appear to make enough contact with the rest of the community: very few User Talk and Wikipedia space edits, with relatively few Talk page edits. No editor is an island, and no admin in particular: I'd like to see more involvement with others and demonstrated ability (such as RC Patrolling over a long period of time) before supporting. RandyWang (^raves/_rants) 05:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Oppose per low WP space edits. --WinHunter ^(talk) 05:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
5. Oppose not quite yet. Needs more interaction with the community -- Samir धर्म 06:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose. You need more experience with Wikipedia policy and/or vandalism fighting to ensure you can effectively use the extra admin tools... Your article contributions seem quite nice but the low amount of WP-space edits and user talk edits don't show an in-depth knowledge of policy or how you will communicate with other users given a situation that goes beyond simple article discussion. Try such venues as AfD and, if possible, recent changes patrol if you want this kind of experience. Also, you don't need admin tools to become a good article writer and a respected member of the community. Grandmasterka 06:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
7. Oppose WP edits far too low, same with distinct page edits. May need more experience too.--Andeh 07:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Neutral. I'd like to see this editor become an admin too, but right now I can't be sure that this user is experienced enough with wikipedia's policies. Less than 100 WP namespace edits suggests to me that the user is not quite familiar with wikipedia processes. Also, the answer to Question 1 is not very convincing at all. DarthVader 06:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• Icey's Tabular Individual Statistics. Icey 05:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
• See Preslethe's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool.
• See Preslethe's edit counts from Interiot's tool2.

Username	Preslethe
Total edits	2054
Distinct pages edited	417
Average edits/page	4.926
First edit	21:05, 15 October 2005
	
(main)	1559
Talk	390
User	11
User talk	47
Image	16
Template talk	1
Category	4
Wikipedia	26

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.

A: So far, at the pages I'm directed to read in this question, I don't see anything that I specifically object to doing. All of it looks like things I could handle or could learn to handle.

The main issue is time. I am trying to reduce the amount of time I spend at Wikipedia per day, or at least to use the time more efficiently. So, having additional abilities at Wikipedia would not mean that I would immediately devote more time per day to Wikipedia to exercise those abilities.

One thing that I like about the idea of being an Administrator is that, if another Wikipedian, a non-Admin, should come along and say that (s)he wants to accomplish something but is unable to because of not being an Administrator, I could, after investigating the matter and making sure that my help would be in compliance with the guidelines as I understood them, help said editor accomplish the task.

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A: Recently, I've twice had nice messages (one of which was this nomination) at my Talk page about my work on the "United States" article; there've been similar remarks at that article's Talk page. These words from other Wikipedians are a nice supplement to the validation I normally get from seeing that a only very small percentage of my edits (to articles in general) is reverted.

I like it when I can flesh out a stub (as I did somewhat with "RAF Daws Hill") or improve an article whose information is good but whose 'Wikipedia-ness' is lacking (e.g., yesterday with "Pankaj Mishra").

I have sometimes found myself often rereading my work on "Acronym and initialism", "Hypercorrection", and "United States"; I do this partly to search for ways to improve the texts, but also because I'm somehow especially glad of my contributions there.

I also like my contributions at Talk pages. Although I tend to write longer posts than many others, I am getting more and more the impression that my posts help move things along for editing the articles, in terms of bringing in information and reputable sources, clarifying information, and improving article language.

Recently, I've done a lot of work on "It's a Wonderful Life", which had several stylistic anomalies and some surprising errors of fact.

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 in editing conflicts.

Usually, when I end up in such a conflict, I explain my position in many words, and I try to do this very inoffensively: still, although I am glad when the result is that a person sees and agrees with my side, I feel strange about having pointed out so many flaws in someone else's work.

Recently, someone reverted one of my edits at "Emma Watson", and exhibited, in the edit summary, a strange understanding of parts of speech and of hyphenation. I restored my edit and again used the summary to try to explain the reasoning. The editor who had reverted my edit then left me a message—and what disappointed me was that this editor still had a different understanding from mine but decided to defer for, I guess, just the sake of avoiding an edit war. My preference is that the editor actually understand, rather than defer just to avoid a battle; I left a reply explaining the matter, but don't know whether the editor has seen it (or would consider it pedantic and/or patronizing).

Yesterday, I removed someone's addition to the "United States" article. Today, I had a message from that user, and wrote a long reply. This is the kind of thing that bothers me when I see no response, or no positive response, to my explanation: I worry that I may have hurt the editor, scared him/her away from editing (or at least editing in a certain area). What I hope is that the editor will understand my point of view and that, if (s)he still disagrees, we can discuss it. Obviously, if the person still disagrees but decides to "pick his/her battles" and not bother more with the issue, that's kind of O.K. But I just wish I had a better way of knowing that I hadn't hurt the editor, scared the editor off.

Something similar happened at "Droit de seigneur". On the Talk page, I explained why I had reverted someone's recent edits. In reverting, I left an edit summary saying that I would be happy to explain the reversion. The editor asked me to explain, and I did. But, while I know that one result of the explanation was that the editor didn't restore his/her edits, I unfortunately don't know whether I hurt that editor's feelings or scared him/her off.

Last month, I made an edit to the "United States" article, and said, in my edit summary, "Haven't been here in a while. Indeed, a much improved intro. I hope the value of these small changes is seen." (The sentence about the improved introduction was in reaction to someone's comment at the Talk page for that article.) Four minutes later, my multipoint edit was undone, with an edit summary reading "not really, no. no reason whatsoever to mention the length of the war in the intro, 'following' fits 'emerged' better than 'with' imo, etc". The speed of this reversion, and the thoughts mentioned in the edit summary, bothered me. But I was sure my edit had been valuable. So, I restored my edit and made two other changes—and left an edit summary reading "Two more small ones in the intro—and restoring mine. I'm adding an explanation at Talk, which will come very soon, to help avoid any battling." I then went to the Talk page and left a detailed explanation of the changes I'd made. The result? The other editor understood, and we worked together on improving the paragraphs in question. I was really glad that, this time, my explanation of my work was met with explicated understanding.

Also last month, someone made what I considered a very rude edit at a Talk page (it's the work of User:MJCdetroit in that section). I decided to post a brief response expressing my disapproval. Not many days ago, some days after the MJCdetroit had replied to my response, I discovered that reply for the first time—and I did post a reply (which I find mostly rather reasonable and uninflamatory) even though it may not be seen by many. (It's the last post in that section.) Anyway, this is the kind of attitude I try to keep about Wikipedia.

There was one time when I was strongly annoyed by another Wikipedian. The discussion is here. I was astounded that the editor seemed to take my critique of his/her writing so personally—and even went so far as to edit my post, with the result of making me appear to be in error or even dishonest. I knew that the emotion of this situation was high, and decided to save my further views on the article text for another time, restricting my reply at that moment to the matter of that editor's altering the text of my post to support his/her contention that one point in my post was plain "Wrong." What was the editor's response? To describe the editing of my post as "self-correct"ion and to tell me "This is a dynamic wiki: deal with it." There also seemed to be vague threats. So what did I end up doing? I just left it alone for a while—and watched as that editor returned to the article text in question and continued to play with it, seemingly bringing it ever closer to my version, which (s)he had originally rejected repeatedly and rather scathingly.

That was the incident that bothered me most—and I'm glad to say I walked away from the fight. I'm sure that some fighters take their opponents' silence as acquiescence—and I hate to think that that editor may have thought my silence was agreement—; but I think that not letting it get even more out of hand, even if it meant that the editor falsely thought I was giving in, was the smart thing to do.

Somehow, work at Wikipedia is definitely helping me develop that "like water off a duck's back" part of how I deal with substantive disagreements as well as personal rudeness, both at Wikipedia and in other parts of life.

I have not paid particular attention to other Wikipedia Administrators. I mostly don't even know whether an editor is a 'regular' Wikipedian or an Admin, and tend just to think of everyone as a 'regular' one. But there is one Wikipedia who, I know, is an Admin—and I must say that I hope I never go as far as I've seen him go: he talks of other Wikipedians' "pugnacious attitude"s and laments that he will 'have to educate' them. That's not my style.

Well, anyone who knows me knows I could go on much longer. But I hope this little sampling gives an idea of some of my Wikipedia philosophy.

Mostly, I take this nomination as a kind compliment. But I grasp that, with the extra 'powers', I may be able to do some extra good occasionally. I've been considering the nomination for close to a week, especially in light of my need to spend less time at Wikipedia. But, hey, why not? Although I may not run around exercising my Administratorship all the time, I don't see the harm in having the ability to do it when it can help.

I'm honored to be nominated. If the nomination is unsuccessful, that's O.K. too.

President Lethe 04:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)