Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Grandmasterka

Grandmasterka

Discuss here (14/0/0) Ending 05:00, 2006-07-14 (UTC)

Grandmasterka (talk · contribs) – Grandmasterka hails from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, and has contributed large amounts of work in Pages Needing Translation and in Spanish and Portuguese related material.

Grandmasterka is a regular at WP:PNT, with well over 100 edits there, where he sifts through non-English dumps and analyses them and helps with translations if possible. He mostly writes articles about Spanish and Portuguese topics, usually translated from those wikipedias.

For those who are conscious of the Diablo test, Grandmasterka has been working on the Museum of the Portuguese Language, which is now in the process of becoming a featured article. Going through an FAC is a test of NPOV which is the main pillar of encyclopedic integrity and one of the most important characteristics of an administrator is to set a good example of NPOV for users.

For editcountitis purposes, he has close to 4000 edits, but this is an understatement of his contributions here due to the fact that translating 40+ articles is hard work under any circumstances, but especially as he is listed as level-1 in Portuguese and 2.5 in Spanish. The relative rarity of Portuguese-speaking editors and content on en.wiki only serves to magnify his immense contribution in this corner of wikipedia.

Secondly, an administrator is meant to be an ambassador for Wikipedia, and the civility, politeness, enthusiasm and encouragement ([1], [2], [3]) that Grandmasterka brings to the project is amply evidenced. He has not engaged in edit-warring or disruption at all.

His ability to work and discuss issues in a group can be observed at PNT as well as at Talk:9/11 conspiracy theories- a rather emotional and controversial topic; which is ample evidence that he will be able to weather the inevitable storms that an administrator will face.

He helps to revert vandalism and warns the offenders appropriately. He does NP patrol and his record and contributions at AfD, ([4], [5], [6]) which show discussion and reasoning, would suggest that he would close AfDs with the discretionary wisdom required, and make reasoned judgments when the numerical results are indecisive.

He also has a very thorough usage of edit summaries, allowing others to see what he has written and follow the historical development of articles. His email is enabled. His userpage and signature are in order.

Giving Grandmasterka access to admin tools will speed up the works at PNT, AFD and also CSD. It is a privilege to recommend Grandmasterka to the community for administrator status. Blnguyen | rant-line 05:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Wow, what a nom! Thank you so much.

I was hoping to get a scholarship to go to Wikimania this year, so I could hopefully meet some of the fine editors I've worked with here over the past several months, in person (seriously, I'd like to meet you.) But alas, during early August I'll be on a week-long wikibreak in order to (maybe, hopefully) gain Wikipedia-level notability for a real-life group I am involved in (whose article someone else can write.) It's been a real pleasure. Oh, and I accept the nomination. Grandmasterka 03:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Support

1. Strong Support. Blnguyen | rant-line 05:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Strong Support per very good editor, very good answers to questions, and a very well written nomination. Teke 05:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
3. Support looks fabulous -- Samir धर्म 05:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Strong support I normally don't like cliches, but when I saw this I actually had to check his deletion, block and protection logs to verify he wasn't already an administrator. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 05:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
5. Support - looks good to me, but I'd prefer mainspace edits more than WP space edits. --WinHunter ^(talk) 05:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - Your point is valid in the scheme of raw edit counts, but the weight of those mainspace edits is quite high - around 40 new articles, a lot of which are translated from a non-native langauge, so the edit-count does not do justice to the effort that he would have put in to create them.Blnguyen | rant-line 05:36, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   You are right on that. However, the candidate also have 362 redirect creations in mainspace. So if I minus that in the mainspace edits and give a 10 x count to the 40 new articles you mentioned, the candidate still having a lower mainspace edits than the WP space edits. I trust your judgement in nominating this user, but I just want to state my preference. --WinHunter ^(talk) 06:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   You still seem to be attempting some kind of mathematical conversion for encyclopedia-writing to project participation. Believe me, I share your concerns that the ideal candidate be primarily interested in the encyclopedia, but I'm certain that won't work. Dmcdevit·t 06:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   I am having exactly that concern...I think I have to agree with you, so I striked that comment out. Btw, forgive me for using math in this because I am from a math background. --WinHunter ^(talk) 06:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   :-) Dmcdevit·t 06:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   Mathematical analysis is no problem for me.. See Vertex model and Quasi-Hopf algebra.Blnguyen | rant-line 06:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

   Heh... It does expose the quirks of my editing style... I've created several large stubs in one edit (such as this.) And I like having a lot of redirects for things. Grandmasterka 06:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

6. Strong support the personification of the ideal Wikipedian. This Fire Burns.....Always 05:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
7. Support. Experience is exactly what I looked for and I see it. Should get the mop. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 05:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Support, very promising. RandyWang (^raves/_rants) 05:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
9. Support I trust Blnguyen wouldn't nominate a candidate not suitable, apart from that I've seen this user around a few times myself and by the answers they look quite eager and prepared for admin. According to Blnguyen has been contributing heavily to many articles too, also apparently passes the classic 'Diablo Test'. Even though they haven't conjured a huge amount of edits, possibly because translating pages takes along time? :) Partially passes my criteria too!--Andeh 06:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
10. Support, with no misgivings. This is what adminship is for, and translation work is particularly appreciated. (And thanks to Blnguyen for the thorough nomination.) Dmcdevit·t 06:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
11. Thought-he-was-already-cliche Support Honestly. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 07:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
12. Cliche Support. No seriously, you aren't one already? Great contributor, great answers, and great nom. BryanG^(talk) 07:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
13. Support per nom. Alphachimp ^talk 07:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
14. Support seems to be a good guy abakharev 07:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
15. Support As adminship is 'no big deal' I see no reason not to :) --негіднийлють ^{(Reply|Spam Me!*|RfS)} 07:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

Comments

• See Grandmasterka's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool.
• See Grandmasterka's edit counts from Interiot's tool2.

Username	Grandmasterka
Total edits	3948
Distinct pages edited	2611
Average edits/page	1.512
First edit	09:34, 13 November 2005
	
(main)	1390
Talk	182
User	194
User talk	477
Image	15
Template	49
Template talk	2
Category	2
Wikipedia	1613
Wikipedia talk	24

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: I am a fairly avid newpage patroller (with somewhere around 1000 deleted edits, I think) and it would be nice to be able to speedy delete (and undelete) pages on my own, although I'll be a little more careful and do my homework when I can actually delete something instead of just placing a tag on it. (I've rarely been wrong about a speedy deletion though, that I can recall.) I also anticipate checking CAT:CSD often... A week ago I would have dedicated a lot of space here to how CSD is taking too long, but I've noticed that a couple of recently promoted admins have really taken charge and made the process much smoother. Still, I can be of service in that area. Speedy deletion is also helpful at WP:PNT. In addition, I will close XfDs (especially AfDs) as I have a large amount of experience in that area (see question 2) and delete expired pages at CAT:PROD.

As to vandalism: I will be less active in blocking vandals than in those other areas at first. Admittedly, I only have 5 edits to WP:AIV and I have never done any appreciable Recent Changes Patrolling (mainly due to technical restrictions I have right now that prevent me from using tools such as VandalProof and GodMode that really make it worthwhile.) However, I do a fair amount of vandalism reverts of things that show up on my 1,500+ item watchlist, as can be evidenced by my contributions, and I always warn vandals when appropriate (many times I will warn vandals that others reverted but did not warn.) Thus, I feel I can be of some service in this area as well, in cases of obvious vandalism or in applying username blocks.

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

A: I am especially proud of the many translations I have contributed to the English Wikipedia (which are showcased on my userpage.) It is not always easy to try to interpret someone else's words in a way that will make sense to another native English speaker.

To be completely honest, I did not know a single word of Portuguese before I got here. I never would have guessed that Portuguese topics would become such an area of concentration for me. I was probing a page I had just discovered back in February, Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, for pages in Spanish. I found a short page in Portuguese, realized I could actually read it and translated it, with a little help from a machine translator. My entire knowledge of the language (growing every day) comes directly or indirectly from Wikipedia, and I know many editors who use this wiki to improve their English. More to the point though, it has led to many translations by me from both languages, including translations of two articles that were featured articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia, Catarina Eufémia and Museum of the Portuguese Language (both entirely from scratch, and both good articles on the English Wikipedia.) The museum article is up for featured status... It looks like I have some objections to address as soon as I am done here.

Other than that, I am somewhat proud of the contributions I have made to Wikipedia process, such as AfD. I think my signature is in every AfD day log since mid-February, except I'm pretty sure I missed May 20th (and no, I haven't gone through and checked that.) Okay, enough extreme bragging...

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've decided to go into great detail about an unusual and stressful situation I ran into, and how I handled it on my own.

I worked a little on New Chronology (Fomenko) to try to get it to a point where it was NPOV enough for everyone so we could remove the disputed tag at the top. A few IP editors who are supporters of the theory began to use the talk page of the article to write very long-winded essays about why this theory is The Right One, in some attempt to convince other editors. (What's funny about this to me is that they never really tried to edit the article... Just the talk page.) I got tired of this takeover of an encyclopedia talk page, and abuse of its purpose, and having to move the scroll bar way down to see comments by people who were trying to improve the article, so I deleted the offending comments, more than once. One editor tried to report my "abuse" at the Help desk, and when I told another not to write long essays on the article talk page, he thought I was biased (of course) and said as much, in another long statement. Part of his point, however, I felt was valid enough, in that there were many anti-Fomenko statements that had nothing to do with the article on the talk page as well. I told him this while giving him a couple tips for editing the article, and then I went through and deleted POV comments and discussions that were not related to improving the article. I also made an attempt to reach out to the editor that "reported" me at the help desk. I could see how some people might think my selective deletion of items on a talk page might constitute undue ownership of a page; but in this case, I think it was helpful in slowing and then (hopefully) stopping what could have been a stickier situation that might have resulted in blocks for those editors. And besides, talk pages are not discussion boards, and comments unrelated to improving an article have been removed in many other places. I have since taken the page off of my watchlist... I have no desire to exert ownership of that talk page, and I have the utmost faith in the community to stop those who continually use talk pages to push a POV.

Other than that, I'm not very prone to conflict. For some reason, my userpage has never been vandalized despite my heavy involvement in Wikipedia maintenance (I have a long way to go to catch up to Titoxd) although my actual (nonexistant) article was vandalized (I appreciate that!) I don't jump into any kind of debate here unless I a.)Am willing and able to defend my position, or b.)Willing to change my position.

I hope my answers are helpful and aren't too long for you. If you have more questions, I'll answer them if I know how to.