User talk:COLIN WILSON

User:Huysman guide to easy building up accounts to adminship aka how to become an admin as soon as possible

I have an account, on an IP range other than my normal one, where I am working towards admin. For me the whole key is to do this in as little time and effort as possible. Once this account becomes an admin, I will switch to another IP range and start working for an adminship there. When I am halfway to all the way there with the second account, I will start using my first admin account to correct the right-leaning bias of Wikipedia.

One thing we can discuss is how to become an admin as soon as possible. I tried doing this a year ago and it was hard, but find it is easier nowadays. A lot of the tools are there now that didn't used to be, from reverting vandalism, to things tagged with cleanup tags, to whatever. The key to me is, how many edits can I make in an hour where people say what I'm doing is a useful edit? Of course, if you're adding a few paragraphs to an article, make sure to do it in more than one edit, that's common sense. I just work to get to that 1000 edit threshold.

Obviously, I don't get into the kind of fights I do with my real account which I use from my normal IP range. I do everything I can to avoid fights, at all costs.

Also remember people like to see people in different spaces. So aside from article space I do AFDs, leave notes in user talk and talk, and other places as well.

While I'm getting good at doing a lot of quick edits fast, I also feel I should have some gravitas as well. So right now I am focusing on an area or two I want filled out on Wikipedia, which are pretty sparse anyhow, so I won't be raising too much conflict. A lot of the data is just facts, names etc. I just want to seem like I do more than just wiki-fairy stuff. When people ask what I edit, I'll talk about what I'm interested in, but it's the other stuff that will get me up to over 1000 edits.

Just read what people say in RFA, that's a good guide. You know - working in different areas of Wikipedia so it's obvious you're familiar with the rules, leaving edit summaries, that type of thing. Some people want to see a conflict mediated. Luckily, that's not always necessary. If it is, tread lightly, it is important not to get into fights.

Any advice from others on becoming an admin, quickly, with minimal effort? I'm gunning not for one, but several admin accounts. Perhaps we can collaborate, meaning maybe we can have two or three people working on an account 24/7 on the road to adminship. Once we have a few, we can go to work on what we want to do. If we have a lot of these admin-road accounts, we can even hold off on one or two of them, letting them go deep undercover - maybe they can even get on ArbCom or something. We'd have to have some kind of IRC ass-kissing bot for that though.

Very good tips. I agree and I think that there is a strategy towards becoming an admin. Two key points are to participate in Articles for Deletion and Request for Adminship fairly regularly. When you do this, you should err on the side of deletion and support votes respectively, but generally go with what others say. What you say in these 2 environments will do much more towards you becoming an admin than any other single thing that you might do.

You should generally try to steer clear of too much dialogue. Edit summaries are good, and writing to someone on their talk page to say thank yous and positive things are good. But if you get to deeply discussing policies on talk pages or policy pages or user talk pages, then your chances of becoming admin quickly are getting shorter, because some people will perceive such things as "conflict". Its still possible to become admin when doing this, but its a lot harder. You then either have to vigorously tow the party line, i.e. just become an automaton with everything by the book, or else you have to get support from people in power. Of course, you can go the long way around and keep going with it, and you will eventually get there.

I would have been interested if I'd accepted the nomination for adminship back in November last year. I would have guessed that I would have got about 50/50 in votes, or maybe slightly over - i.e. not enough to get in. But had I wanted to become admin, I wouldn't have made all of those "controversial" sub pages, nor would I have gone out of my way to help people out. Such things get people to think that you aren't worthy. Whilst the majority will think that you're good enough, it displays too much independent thought.

So the key overall is to act like a robot, like one of the crowd, just doing what everyone else is doing. Make initiatives, or at least pretend to, but always just do them in the expected directions.

You could probably almost write a computer program, a bot, to get towards adminship.