Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mboverload: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 08:10, 6 July 2006

Mboverload

Discuss here (12/21/7) Ending 01:18, 2006-07-12 (UTC)

Mboverload (talk · contribs) – Sometimes you just keep bumping into the same editors over and over again. Mboverload is just one of those people. Edit as I might, I just can't seem to get away from him. He is, by his own apt summary, "a WikiGnome with claws."

Here's your rundown (stolen from RfA/Gwernol/CrazyRussian):

Edit count – 15000 + (see counter below)
Time around – Since April 2004
Civility? - Yes.
Edit summaries – Almost 100% comprehensive edit summaries
Mistakes – A good part of his edits are removing typos, so no.
Email enabled? – Yes, and AIM
Userpage? – Very clean, almost identical to this
Any edit warring/blocks? - 1 block by Cyde several months ago for conflict during the userbox debates, no edit wars
FA participation? – Don't think so (but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

It might be helpful to think of mboverload's contributions to Wikipedia in three groups: spellchecking, vandal fighting, and article improvement. Spellchecking is obvious; mboverload has over 10,000 edits in the English Wikipedia just correcting typos with all of his AWB settings published with even a spamlist for updates. He is active in WP:TYPO and as you can see in the completed work section. In terms of Vandal Whacking, mboverload is a Vandalproof Administrator and frequent VP user. Mboverload is to be commended for his quick response to AOL vandalism and reporting on it in his userspace. In terms of article improvement, mboverload does the best job highlighting his accomplishments on his userpage. He is also probably one of the most contactable editors, with an email link in his sig, an AIM chat SN publicly available, and always seems to be lurking on the wikipedia IRC channel. I also noticed on the Administrator's noticeboard that he created printable guides to what is and isn't criteria for speedy deletion. User:Mboverload/wikipediarules

I feel that mboverload would make great use of the administrative tools, particularly in fighting vandals, and hereby nominate him as a Wikipedia Administrator. Alphachimp ^talk 01:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:I do! Please read my answers before you vote. =D --mboverload @
Support

Support, as nominator. Alphachimp ^talk 01:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Pink Post-It Note Support - Mboverload isn't an admin already? —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 02:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom Werdna (talk) 02:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unconditional support. Have seen this guy in a lot of places, and thought he'd make a great admin, if he weren't one already. Kimchi.sg 02:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Support - seems to be an excellent editor with a passion to help Wikipedia become a better place hoopydink^{Conas tá tú?} 02:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - VandalProof Moderator and a fine one at that - Glen 02:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support totally disagree with his userbox position, but he's competent nevertheless, and this guy wants to do the tedious stuff like fixing typos and whacking vandals and apparently talking to banned users at 3AM, which is far beyond expected levels of dedication. Having a sense of humor and not suffering fools gladly are both good things in an admin. Opabinia regalis 04:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Will be a great admin. Onco_p53 05:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - is always needing an administrator to do something or other for him on IRC; it would benefit the project to just let him take care of it on his own.—Scott5114 ↗ 07:03, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Will make a good admin. DarthVad e r 07:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support mostly per Opabinia regalis. Wikipedia would be a much jollier place if everyone was more like Mboverload. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
STRONGLY SUPPORT Great guy and a very good contributor.Abdelkweli 15:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We all lose our cool at times, and I see absolutely nothing in the diffs below that warrants such a hyperbolic reaction from the opposing voters. Rebecca 05:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very friendly editor. Will make a good admin. --Steve-o 06:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

I have generally had good relations with Mboverload, but during a dispute I was trying to resolve, between Nathanrdotcom and Exploding Boy, Mboverload made some less then helpful comments [1],and [2]. This is the type of situation an administrator may have to deal with, and Mboverload's saying "I'm not sure what people are bitching about this time" did not help. If this can adequately be explained I may change my vote, but until then, I do not feel comfortable supporting. Prodego ^talk 02:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry you feel that way, no bad feelings. Exploding Boy was complaining that his browser, which from the screenshot was obviously configured wrong, was screwing up on nathan's sig, which it shouldn't have. I made a comment that he should use Windows Update because his browser was having problems no one else was. The later comment was an off the cuff remake to nathan to try and cheer him up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mboverload (talk • contribs)
While it is important to try to calm down editors during a dispute, you must make sure not to rile one editor while calming another. Saying that Exploding Boy was "bitching" was likely to do just that. The problem was probably an old version of I.E. not interpreting "colour" properly. Remember in the future that during disputes one must act carefully, it often requires kid gloves. Prodego ^talk 02:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - That block from "several months ago" that the nomination paragraph tries to gloss over is actually from less than two months ago, and was very significant. I invite all of the potential voters on this RFA to examine the evidence for yourself:
- "Do you hate blind people or something? What's going on?" (taking a potshot at another user of a TFD of a metadata spoken Wikipedia template)
- "the only vandalism I see is you sticking that deletion template in it" (note, the "vandalism" refers to an in-process {{tfd}} placed on a template)
- "Conrad hates women!" (an attack against the user who nominated a template for deletion that contained nudity)
Mboverload simply lost his head over some in-process TFDs (not necessarily only userbox TFDs, as the nomination statement misleadingly leads us to believe) and made some very inappropriate comments. I would not trust him in the slightest to be an administrator.

In addition, Mboverload has inadvisedly been running AWB on his main account, thus inflating his edit count by thousands, or possibly over ten thousand, minor, automated fixes. Note that WP:AWB strongly encourages the use of a secondary account for en-masse AWB runs; to prevent gumming up the main account's contribution history with automated diffs. Taking away all of the AWB-inflated edits, mboverload's real edit count probably doesn't meet the standards of a fair number of RFA voters. --Cyde↔Weys 02:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm intrigued as to where precisely on WP:AWB this stringent advice is given: to my knowledge a second account is recommended for BOT activity. In any case, are you going to complain about this person and myself "inflating" our edit counts? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those comments were in jest and made in a mistaken atmosphere of a message board where things like that are allowed, but which Wikipedia does not and I agree with Cyde they were inappropriate. Obviously I should have been more serious about tfd. It was a misguided attempt at humor that I completely regret and have learned from. Also, I have consulted with 3 different adminstrators and they have all aproved of my AWB user. --mboverload @ 02:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, why shouldn't Mboverload be allowed a small comment in jest? TfD is not a life or death matter, a joke once in a while contributes to the lax and jolly atmosphere here at Wikipedia. A lax & jolly atmosphere is in part what made Google so succesful, for instance. I know wouldn't want to contribute to some evil, deadly-serious encyclopedia. PS: Cyde, I think someone has editcountitis. "Ten thousand" minor fixes more than makes up for a few "real" edits. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't think that there is anything wrong with the high edit count. True...they are minor edits, but they are still "real" edits. The sheer time and energy it would take to make over 10,000 edits using AWB far surpasses their size. mboverload is a great example of a contributor that really gets into what he's doing, whether it be correcting spelling or improving articles. I don't think that one dispute is enough to jeopardize his candidacy. Alphachimp ^talk 17:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hear hear! +Hexagon1 ^(t) 07:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose per Cyde. SushiGeek 02:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I have seen some manuel edits by Mboverload and wasn't too terribly impressived and was concerned somewhat with Wikimaturity. The responses to the TfD seem out of line and recent. I am troubled by this and, unfortunately I can not support this nomination. Yank sox 02:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose per Cyde. The "Conrad hates women" diff did it for me - a textbook case of assuming bad faith. Please control yourself, learn to always assume good faith, and I may reconsider next time. Also consider that remarks made in jest may be easily misunderstood, especially on such a public place as Wikipedia. Kimchi.sg 02:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please view it in context, if that's all I ask of you. It was not a literal comment, it was a light-hearted comment in jest about him putting up a userbox about women up for deletion. --mboverload @ 02:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about the other diffs that Cyde cites? Will you excuse all of them as light-hearted comments made in jest? Kimchi.sg 03:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Uncivil. Another recent example is this diff in the midst of a thread where a whole string of good editors were saying "sure, block the troll, but there's no need to tell him to f* off, is there?", so Mboverload thought it funny to do just that. This was his sole contribution to the thread. It's not big to tell someone to fuck off and call them a troll, it's not clever, and it is not funny. It is particularly not these things when a whole list of people have explained precisely why; would-be admins need to listen to conversation and then not decide to pour petrol on its flames. -Splash - tk 03:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose per Cyde, Splash above. --WinHunter ^(talk) 03:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unfortunately, the instances pointed out against Mboverload have persuaded me to oppose adminship. I have been hurt by uncivil people and don't plan to give admin powers to someone who can sometimes be that way. --WillMak050389 03:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the same reasons as Cyde and Splash. I expect a certain level of decorum to be displayed by admins, we are building an encyclopedia not a community. There is nothing wrong with Mboverload's mainspace edits, I may well support in the future if he can display a greater maturity and civility in his interactions with other users. Rje 03:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. mboverload has contributed very well as a wikignome, and we do need more wikignome-like admins. My suggestion would be to make a conscious effort to tone down sarcasm or attempts at humour (as I think some of the diffs in question were benign initially, but may have spiralled downward in an attempt at humour), and to continue the positive things that you've done here (as listed above) -- Samir धर्म 03:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for reasons of civility. Things might seem hilarious when thought of in the heat of the moment, but when considered in isolation on-screen they come across as rude and dismissive. I wouldn't want to be treated in this manner by an admin. (aeropagitica) (talk) 06:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the recent block and comments about civility concern me. Show that you can be civil doing RCP and the like for a few months, then I will be happy to support. Abcdefghijklm 08:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as per Cyde. i think that a revote should happen in the future if you can show yourself to be professional in the wikipedia namespace. -- preschooler @heart 09:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]
Oppose per Cyde + Splash's diffs. Civility? No. Proto///type 11:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Cyde, I initially wanted to support, but civility issues raised by Cyde made me oppose. Not yet. --Ter e nce Ong _{(Chat | Contribs)} 13:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. — Jul. 5, '06 [14:25] <freak|talk>
Just out of curiosity, why are you opposing because of a rule cheat-sheet? +Hexagon1 ^(t) 07:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for obvious reasons. --Nearly Headless Nick 15:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per above.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 16:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Thoroughly uncivil as per above. Fails Diablo Test anyway. Anwar 18:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Lack of civility is a major concern. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 18:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per civility issues. --Shizane 22:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

Mackensen (talk) 02:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral Changed from Strong Support due to the information provided by Cyde Weys that I had not known before. I still feel that he's a good editor, although he might not possess the extreme level-headedness one needs to be a great administrator at this time. hoopydink^{Conas tá tú?} 02:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning toward support... An excellent VP mod, and I have never seen him lose his cool agianst a vandal. I want to wait and see what his response is to critisism. Eagle talk 03:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
M e rovingian {T C @} 03:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral, i'd really like to support despite Cyde's findings, but the answer to question 2 just didn't satisfy me, so many edits yet no proud major improvement to any article. Also fails my criteria.:Þ--Andeh 09:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral We disagree on AOL blocks but his heart is in the right place about improving WP. I would like to see long answers to my AOL questions below so I can understand him better. Hort Graz 11:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral Great contributor. But per Cyde's comments I can't support yet. Garion96 ^(talk) 19:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Mboverload's edit count using Interiot's tool

Username Mboverload
Total edits 15519
Distinct pages edited 12512
Average edits/page 1.240
First edit 03:31, 11 April 2004
 
(main) 12618
Talk 190
User 536
User talk 1234
Image 17
Image talk 3
Template 41
Template talk 2
Help 2
Category 4
Category talk 2
Wikipedia 783
Wikipedia talk 87

Mboverload's edit summary Mathbot's tool

Edit summary usage for Mboverload: 26% for major edits and 99% for minor edits. Based on the last 74 major and 150 minor edits in the article namespace.

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: Oh boy! New page patrol, new user patrol, and AIV! I love that stuff, I'm not joking, that's the kind of thing I live for. AWB just came out with a new "IRCMonitor" which is going to be a godsend for that kind of thing. Due to my extremely high “contactability” (AIM, IRC, and email) I plan on being a go-to admin for blocking people who threaten users physically or post their personal information. That isn't something to joke about, and I don't plan on treating it like it is. Also, a user can feel free to contact me for help with ANYTHING, and I mean that. I know how powerless you can feel when something is going down and you can't find an admin to help you out. Hopefully I'll help eliminate that problem, even at 3AM in the morning.

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

A: I am hugely proud of my typo fixing. If a new user sees a spelling problem in an encyclopedia of all places that personal automatically thinks less of Wikipedia. With new spelling problems being introduced every few seconds I don't know how I'll keep up with it, but I'll certainly try. I am also proud of my work in cleaning up articles with slants or unneeded information, especially school articles. Ug, I just can't stand POV articles and I'll usually drop everything and fix them if I come across one.

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 get into conflicts with school kids because I like cleaning up school articles, which requires lots of patience. I try to explain to them why we can't take their section about ghosts at the water fountain in the encyclopedia but when they blow you off and continue to revert...that gets me ruffled. Of course, I believe that using admin powers in a "content dispute" is very much wrong, so I'll be in the same situation as before in that regard.

Also, I got into a dispute with Cyde about userboxes. However I think we I am better for it in the end, haha =P. Without that frustrating experience I wouldn't be the editor I am today. I think it's water under the bridge, I think me and Cyde get along just fine now.

I love blowing off personal attacks against me, I think that's one of my strongest traits. A vandal can scream and whine at me all he wants, but in the end I'll tell him to have a nice day.

Optional Question from Yanksox

4. Can you elaborate further about your dispute with Cyde? Yank sox 02:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A: It was a misguided attempt at humor that did not transfer over the keyboard, which it often does not. It was on AFD discussions during the very tip of the userbox debates. I didn't do anything completely blatantly uncivil as I recall. He did block me for incivility (which it says up in the nom), which I objected to and it generated several pages of discussion on the administrator's noticeboard because I don't think I was given a warning. In the end I have absolutely no bad feeling towards Cyde and I'm neutral on my blocking. However, I think it made me a better editor. I hope this isn't a reason for your to oppose, but I understand.--mboverload @ 03:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Optional AOL questions from Hort Graz

Detail your blocking plan when you are dealing with a persistent vandal who uses AOL. How long do you block? How often must he returen before you start to do longer blocks?

A: One single AOL IP? 15 minutes to start, another 15 minutes if it's the same IP, then 30 minutes, then 3 hours. After that I think it really depends on the situation, but I am not for blocking AOL ips for more than 24 hours.

If you block a range of AOL addresses, will you commit yourself to stay around during the block to help the innocent victims of the block?

A: Of course. It was my choice and I have to take responsibility for my actions, especially when they effect people that only want to help. I may kill the block just for them.

After you have blocked an inappropriate user name, will you check the Special:Ipblocklist to see if this block is creating massive collateral damage?

A: Yes. When using VandalProof I always check the contributions of a vandalizing user to see if they have done anything else. Simple and fast way to head off an attack from the source.

Have you ever experienced being autoblocked because another user was blocked? Are you empathetic to those who may suffer this way, or do you not care?

A: I have been blocked from editing at my college. I was mad, but I understood there was a good reason for it. I am empathetic towards the people who are blocked, but if this is the AOL image vandal, they can wait 30 minutes. If I find legit users on a range block I would probably unblock immediatly just in case the AOL image vandal has gone away.

You are a soldier in Iraq, and you are under attack from heavy arms fire. Your attackers are in the vacinity of several innocent civilians. Is it better to shoot your attackers even though you may kill some innocent civilians, or should you refrain from shooting?

A: If these are just punks and I have a good place to hole up in, I would wait for the civilians to get away or disengage the target. I don't exactly like the analogy, being blocked for 15 minutes and getting shot are not exactly similair =D --mboverload @ 21:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 50: / Line 50: @@
 #:Mboverload simply lost his head over some in-process TFDs (not necessarily only userbox TFDs, as the nomination statement misleadingly leads us to believe) and made some very inappropriate comments.  I would not trust him in the slightest to be an administrator.
 #:In addition, Mboverload has inadvisedly been running AWB on his main account, thus inflating his edit count by thousands, or possibly over ten thousand, minor, automated fixes.  Note that [[WP:AWB]] strongly encourages the use of a secondary account for en-masse AWB runs; to prevent gumming up the main account's contribution history with automated diffs.  Taking away all of the AWB-inflated edits, mboverload's ''real'' edit count probably doesn't meet the standards of a fair number of RFA voters.  --[[User:Cyde|<span style="color:#ff66ff;cursor:w-resize;">'''Cyde↔Weys'''</span>]] 02:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
+#:::I'm intrigued as to where precisely on [[WP:AWB]] this stringent advice is given: to my knowledge a second account is recommended for BOT activity. In any case, are you going to complain about [[Special:Contributions/Kelly Martin|this person]] and [[Special:Contributions/Phil Boswell|myself]] "inflating" our edit counts? HTH HAND —[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 08:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 #::Those comments were in jest and made in a mistaken atmosphere of a message board where things like that are allowed, but which Wikipedia does not and I agree with Cyde they were inappropriate. Obviously I should have been more serious about tfd. It was a misguided attempt at humor that I completely regret and have learned from.  Also, I have consulted with 3 different adminstrators and they have all aproved of my AWB user.  --[[User:Mboverload|mboverload]][[Special:Emailuser/Mboverload|<font color="red">@</font>]] 02:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 #:::I disagree, why shouldn't Mboverload be allowed a small comment in jest? TfD is not a life or death matter, a joke once in a while contributes to the lax and jolly atmosphere here at Wikipedia. A lax & jolly atmosphere is in part what made Google so succesful, for instance. I know wouldn't want to contribute to some [[Microsoft Encarta|evil, deadly-serious encyclopedia]]. PS: Cyde, I think someone has [[Wikipedia:Editcountitis|editcountitis]]. ''"Ten thousand"''  minor fixes more than makes up for a few ''"real"'' edits. +[[User:Hexagon1|Hexagon1]] <sup>([[User talk:Hexagon1|t]])</sup> 10:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)