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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Resurgent insurgent (talk | contribs) at 01:03, 7 November 2007 (→‎Support: sup). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

David D.

Voice your opinion (talk page) (6/0/0); Scheduled to end 22:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

User:David D. - David has been editing since June 2006 and is an active contributor to the reference desk and peer review. He was also instrumental in the writing and successful nomination of the featured articles Enzyme and Enzyme inhibitor. As well es these mainspace contributions, he finds time to write templates for the Molecular and Cellular Biology project, comment on AfDs, and help with the biology portal. David is a calm and mature editor with expert knowledge on a variety of scientific topics. His wide experience and friendly attitude will make him an excellent administrator. Tim Vickers 20:20, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept David D. (Talk) 22:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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: My primary need for the tools are for editing and vandalism reasons.
  • For Editing:
    • Page deletion: When moving articles to more appropriate titles there is sometimes a need to delete an older page.
    • Editing protected pages: Working with templates sometimes needs the ability to work on protected pages.
I have come across both these issues in my time at wikipedia. I have got around this in the past by asking other admins for help. Most admins are receptive to helping but it can be slow progress and often make one think twice before initiating improvements that require such requests.
  • Controlling vandalism:
    • Semi-protection to prevent random vandals: Some pages are much more susceptible to vandalism than others and these sometimes require a semi protect, especially at the start of the school year. Examples include anything that is taught in high school (from core topics; photosynthesis, to vandalising the rival school; Horace Mann School) or political hot potatoes (Jesse Owens, cloning). Currently I make request to other admins, although if I can use my own judgement in such cases that will mean other admins do not need to spend time reassessing the situation.
    • Semi-protection to prevent vendetta editing: When banned or blocked users go on a vandalism spree, using new IP's, pages need to be semi protected so regular users do not have to waste their valuable editing time reverting pages to a more NPOV version. Examples I have come across include The Skeptic's Annotated Bible and Louisiana Baptist University.
    • Full-protection to prevent edit warring: To have the ability to protect a page is useful is when regular users just won't stop edit warring. Examples I have seen include University of Ottawa and Barrington Hall; in both cases highly POV edits from alumni including original research. As an outside observer it is sometimes useful to protect the page for a while to force the aggrieved users to use the talk page.
How often would I use these powers to protect or semi protect a page? This is not clear, but obviously if I'm involved in the editing I would request the input from another admin, as I do now.
  • Blocking: As an outside observer in a dispute I normally discuss issues on talk pages and have found that other admins normally step in before I would have blocked a user. I think I have a fairly high threshold before I find all avenues of dialog have been exhausted (see answer three for more info). There are exceptional cases. One is when an IP starts to add spam (such as their local directories) to town articles. Normally they will add their spam to tens or more articles. If such a user continues despite warnings I find the use of a block justifiable since such users have no intention of being contributors to the encyclopedia, their mass additions are just exploiting wikipedia as a marketing tool and a block prevents further damage that must be undone by other volunteers.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Working with other wikipedians to improve the science articles, especially working with the MCB wikiproject. I restructured and added much to the Mitochondrion, Photosynthetic reaction centre and Cellular respiration articles. I have helped with contributions and suggestions to help others bring biology related articles to FA status, including Enzyme inhibitor. Also in connection with the MCB wikiproject i have been working with others to standardise the {{GNF Protein box}} template. The goal is that this will be used on all pages that describe human genes. I feel this work is important since it will have a high impact being used on thousands of different pages. This is an ongoing collaboration with AndrewGNF (talk · contribs) and is currently been implemented on a small scale by ProteinBoxBot (talk · contribs).
I have been active on some articles that I would consider controversial from the perspective of NPOV. Some I came to from my biological interests such as Answers in Genesis and Jonathan Sarfati. These have been particularly hard to edit with respect to finding a stable article that both creationists and scientists find satisfactory. I have found writing from a creationist perspective on biology to be good practice for finding a true NPOV. In these cases i have found my best contributions are often on the talk page, trying to negotiate something acceptable. I experienced a similar slow but rewarding progression on the human article, again my edits on the talk page i feel are more important than the contributions i made to the article itself.
A collaboration with Evil Eye (talk · contribs) to standardise the athletics pages tables of results resulted in the format being adopted for all the athletics pages. Two examples 2005 World Championships in Athletics and 1994 European Championships in Athletics.
Finally I have participated in the science reference desk on and off. There is a hard core group of contributors there that only answer questions and I do not match their contributions, nevertheless, I often make tweeks to articles in wikipedia based on answers I have provided on the ref desk. I think this is one of my better contributions since not only is this providing a services to readers but a valuable feedback to the quality of wikipedia articles too.
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: As a scientist I find my biases are often problematic when the science/religion boundary mixes in wikipedia. I have tried hard to take the higher ground and do all my fight with rational discussion. Sometimes this has led to little headway but much discussion which is frustrating. In one case, Jason Gastrich (talk · contribs) would never listen to reason continually pushing his chronic POV and revisionist history. In fact, this user was banned before I ran out of dialog with him so i think my patience to talk is quite high. This was a worst case scenario and on some other pages such as Answers in Genesis and Jonathan Sarfati mentioned above, quite stable articles have resulted from long and patient rounds of discussion.
Similarly in the school debate, which seems like eons ago now, but I found much common ground with Thivierr (talk · contribs) despite the fact we started at different ends of the spectrum for the argument. I realise patience can actually solve problems here if other users really do wish to improve the encylopedia. In the Human article I found protagonists in Goethean (talk · contribs) and Sam Spade (talk · contribs). I'm not sure if we really resolved our differences but at least we managed to talk it through and tried to keep the debate at an academic level rather than a personal one.
Every so often I have lost it. I have to admit I had some harsh words for the Ref desk trio of StuRat (talk · contribs), Light current (talk · contribs), and Loomis51 (talk · contribs). I was in a camp that felt the ref desk should not be the place for toilet humour and unreferenced "best guesses". These three really wanted the right to behave as they wished. The problem here was that middle ground was an impossible goal since the three would not budge. Here I did lose my cool a few times, and I'm not particularly proud of that. Nevertheless, at the time I felt strongly the ref desk was heading for anarchy and was becoming less useful.
In summary, no one is perfect. I have tried to use dialog where possible, for as long as possible. This will always be my goal with respect to resolving issues on wikipedia. It is my view that placing impersonal templates on users pages or worse, blocking users is unacceptable in the long term if we are trying to find real solutions to a problem.

General comments

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

Discussion

Support
  1. As nominator Tim Vickers 23:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support I see nothing wrong with this user. Good luck!--SJP 23:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Most overdue nomination in the history of overdues This is a Secret account 23:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support I think user would be good at handling the role of admin-ship and continue to be an excellent editor. TOL 00:09, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support. This is a long overdue nomination indeed, the best of luck to you. RFerreira 00:11, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Strong support - in my limited involvement with SndrAndrss, I frequently wished that David D. had been given the mop, because of patience and commitment to policy. Addhoc 00:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  7. No problem. Resurgent insurgent 01:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Neutral
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