Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Stephen B Streater

Stephen B Streater

Voice your opinion! (6/1/0) Ending 09:10, 2006-08-26 (UTC)

Stephen B Streater (talk · contribs) This is a co-nomination between lethe and JzG.

Stephen B Streater has been a Wikipedian since February 2006. He initially came to my notice because he created articles on his own products - a bad start. His response was exemplary. He accepted the deletion of the articles, went and learned the policies, and quietly worked at building the encyclopaeida while his products grew in importance. I moved his article back into mainspace myself, once there was compelling evidence per WP:SOFTWARE. Stephen is also a calm and meausured contributor on numeorus science and technology subjects. He injects calm and balance into conflicts.

Stephen has impressed many of us with his calm responses to less-than-calm comments, with his willingess to listen before forming judgments, and with his ability to work productively with difficult people. He is mature and shows genuine commitment to the idea of building a great encyclopaedia. In other words, he is exactly what we want in an admin.

• Just zis Guy you know? 17:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

I am happy to accept this nomination. Stephen B Streater 22:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

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.

I don't see sysop functions as chores.

Working on a contentious article, one colleague commented: Stephen has earned our trust on both sides, so if he has to be the one to execute changes, that's fine. [1] A voluntary de-facto article protection. A series of edits here helped cool the situation at personal rapid transit which had been in a low level edit war for many months. More editors have since joined this interesting article, which has continued to develop, often after consultation on the relevant talk page.

I like to intervene in disputes to bring people together - participatory mediation. Often all it needs is to provide the missing link between two editors. Two areas where I have been able to contribute successfully are content disputes and personal disputes. Sometimes one has to resort to compromise, but I prefer more creative resolutions where the parties are happy with the way forward. Though difficult to achieve, it is very rewarding as it reduces effort wasted in conflict later on and can enable people to work together productively.

After the excitement of every day life, I like to relax into some routine maintenance. On AfDs of failing articles, I tend to preserve useful content even where I vote for deletion (eg [2], [3] and [4]), and this would extend to tidying up AfDs which I close as merge. It is inevitable that not all the 100+ articles deleted each day have had a full debate, and being able to see deleted articles in deletion review would allow me to contribute more there. I would continue to tidy up my share of the more colourful contributions. These are mostly from my watchlist but also by following other contributions from these marginal editors. The negative energy on Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, where people can sometimes get rather exasperated, would benefit from more positive solutions.

I notice that neutral point of view disputes have one of the biggest backlogs. I take the luxury of looking into some depth about the controversial subjects I get involved with. This has led to my high average edit count per article. The result is often a more neutral point of view in my edits. In this light, this Barnstar was much appreciated.

Admins carry a lot of weight with new users. Rather than a simple revert, I enjoy educating our newer users in how to make their efforts more productive. Perhaps a relevant motto here is "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for life". Speedy deletes are a good opportunity to help new users, showing them not to take the rejection personally.

Wikipedians should expect some useful tools, implemented as Java applets, further down the line.

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

My favourite edits are those which help move Wikipedia forwards. An edit in the resolution of a heated debate may be further improved by others, but may nevertheless be a necessary step towards a solution. I also like those major edits which accurately reflects consensus and persist. This edit led to this, which cooled an edit war on no personal attacks. A series of edits starting here helped turn UniModal into an interesting Wikipedia nugget following its narrow AfD, with positive contributions from all parties in a heated process. These uncontroversial changes to Requests for adminship followed a burst of editing conflicts, but were largely accepted. I have helped tidy up the Java applet article, starting here. The wind power definition fix has survived the test of time. I've also been helping raise Mathematics to featured article with minor fixes, first paragraph and second paragraph. I've started a number of new articles, and it's particularly gratifying when other people chip in too eg Nokia N93. The second (keep) AfD for the FORscene article demonstrated an improved grasp of how articles should be constructed, and I also have an editor's Barnstar from AfD.

I have added about a dozen videos to Wikipedia articles, shot on various camera phones. These are watched every day, with about 5,000 views so far, and none has been removed; I think that gives a pointer to the Future. While video is still in its infancy here on Wikipedia, most (over 90%) of you will be able to see these examples of Wikipedia videos eg Bungy jumping and Childbirth.

Although not strictly my edits, I am most pleased about the appreciation editors have shown when things work out well. I've been blessed by a collection of positive sentiments on my talk page eg CComMack, Nigelj, Phaedriel, Lwieise and more scattered throughout article talk pages. I find it particularly rewarding when an idea in a contentious debate gets picked up and leads to a resolution.

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?

I've been in my share of editing conflicts - I tend to engage in conflicts between other people as conflict usually indicates important ideas are fighting to surface. As I am without malice, my contributions often end up as mediation. I don't get stressed by Wikipedia. There is good in everyone, and helping to tease this out while encouraging people to acknowledge and respect each other allows the true strengths of Wikipedia to reveal themselves. It is easy to remember that we are all working towards the same goal.

Where conflict is concerned, often a bucket is needed to supplement the mop. [5]

4. What personality traits make you suitable for the admin role?

Tough enough to deal with vandals, patient enough to deal with new editors, forgiving enough to bear no grudges, strong enough to insist on what is right, flexible enough to retract when wrong, detached enough to avoid personal conflict, persuasive enough to resolve differences, knowledgeable enough to work within the rules, imaginitive enough to add another question to the standard three.

Comments

• See Stephen B Streater's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool.
• My edit count (Interiot's Tool) as of the time on this stamp. Stephen B Streater (Talk) 09:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Username	Stephen B Streater
Total edits	3463
Distinct pages edited	626
Average edits/page	5.532
First edit	12:14, 12 February 2006
(main)	1589
Talk	758
User	103
User talk	359
Image	2
Template	1
Template talk	1
Help talk	1
Category	1
Category talk	1
Wikipedia	405
Wikipedia talk	242

Support

1. I unreservedly support this nomination. He has consistently been the voice of sanity and temperance over at Personal Rapid Transit, where such qualities are in short supply. His interventions there cooled down a kerfuffle which had sent several full-fledged admins fleeing. If he can negotiate with a tar baby like that and still feel like logging back into Wikipedia on the 'morrow, then I figure he can handle most anything. Unless power corrupts, and I doubt in this case that it will, he'll make a stellar admin. Skybum 00:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
2. Calming and reasoned approach is perfect at disarming the worst conflicts. I have seen him around a lot getting his hands dirty. In the good sense. David D. (Talk) 07:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
3. Support. Appears civil on talk pages, works hard, and contributes to multiple areas. SynergeticMaggot 08:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
4. Support Good interactions with other editors. Apears to be a sensible all-round chap and solid admin material.  (aeropagitica)   (talk)  08:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
5. Support, while slightly below my editcounting requirements he impressed me by his answers abakharev 09:22, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
6. Support Impressive answers to questions. A civil user as well. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 10:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Neutral Oppose (vote changed and explanation slightly rewritten based on examining the codec situation 11:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)) I take issue with the statement "I have added about a dozen videos to Wikipedia, shot on various camera phones" when what was really added was external links to off-wiki videos with unclear licenses, which apparently need a special patented player applet supplied by the candidate's company (see FORscene). I consider the cited edits to be linkspam per WP:EL no matter how good the videos are. Referring to this as adding videos to Wikipedia shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Wikipedia's nature as a free encyclopedia. Adding videos to Wikipedia would be wonderful; that's done by licensing them freely, converting them to a free format and uploading them to Commons, not linking them externally. Candidate otherwise seems very good. Phr (talk) 10:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

   I've proposed making the format freely available within Wikipedia, including the wiki-style web browser editing. Far more people have Java than the current system. There is a discussion on meta.wikimedia.org. Being a wiki, I (and others) have led by example. This is a big subject which needs further discussion; but then, being a visionary was never the easy path :-) Stephen B Streater 10:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

   Stephen, "freely available within Wikipedia" is totally unacceptable; Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and that, more fundamentally than anything, includes the freedom to fork and re-use, which means the format has to be freely available everywhere and not just within Wikipedia. We don't use patented formats on Wikipedia; we don't even use mp3 audio, for which there's about a bazillion implementations distributed as source. We are similarly cracking down on fair-use and "permission within Wikipedia" photographs. The last thing we want to do is become a marketing platform for some company's patented codecs, even when the company is run by as genuinely esteemed a contributor as yourself. I'm sorry but you're showing a basic misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is about, even though your contributions as a mediator and article content writer are excellent. Please do everything you can to separate your "business hat" from your "Wikipedian hat". After reading FORscene about the nature of the codecs, I now see your video links as out-and-out spam and I'd appreciate it if you could remove all of them (of course it would still be great if you were to contribute the videos in a free format by uploading to Commons as described above). Also, right after reading that article, I went into the shower and while in there I decided to change my vote to oppose; I came out and saw your response, but please don't interpret the vote change as a reaction to your reply (i.e. I had already decided it). I am regretful of this as I think you are a fantastic candidate in many ways, but this issue is just too basic. I'll consider supporting a future RFA for you (in the event this one doesn't pass) if you show you understand and can uphold Wikipedia's libre content policies even when your business interests pull you in another direction. As a very minor separate issue, I think you have too many extlinks to your company on your user page (Google bombing) and I'd appreciate it if you could decrease the number (not to zero, we do want to know what you do). Phr (talk) 11:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Neutral