User:Mallanox/Admin coaching

Hey there, Mallanox! I am Nishkid64 and I will be your admin coach.

Here's a bit you should know about me:

I joined Wikipedia in January 2006, but didn't start editing much until July 2006.
I became an admin in late September 2006.
I have over 16,000 edits on Wikipedia.
I live in the United States, but I hail from India.
I am 17 years old, and I'm currently in the process of doing my college applications.
I spend most of my time involved in current events, sports, and biographical-related articles. I also do a good deal of vandal-fighting, admin chores, AWB cleanups, etc.

Nishkid 64 18:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for agreeing to do this.

I joined Wikipedia in April 2006 and was pretty aimless for the first while, initially editing in areas that specifically interested me. For a while I found a niche in categorising articles that were uncategorised. Most recently I have attached myself to the Films WikiProject where I have worked on creating and filling up film genre subcategories.

Whilst doing all of this, I have become reasonably familiar with the processes behind deletion. I have nominated several articles, and a couple of categories, for deletion. My natural instinct is that deletion is over used. I have seen articles about subjects that were deleted as mere stubs before they ever had the chance of being expanded into real useful articles. I see this most often when dealing with non US and UK subjects, a Swedish comedian was deleted for being non-notable despite being of huge renown in her own country. When questioned, the deleting admin told me to check Google hits to assess notability. There were thousands. I forget his reaction to this but I remember feeling that he didn't really give a hang about it.

This all having been said, one thing I need to learn before becoming an admin is how to decide what makes a consensus. Are all comments taken into account? Only reasonable arguments? Do I look out for users who vote the same in every debate? Although I am a staunch inclusionist, I do not want a reputation as being a loony who tries too hard to keep things and who looks at deletion debates with prejudice.

Also I need a better idea of what an admin actually does. Some admins don't seem to take part in anything other than editing but I realise I may not see other things they do. I suppose what I'm saying is I'm not sure I know the difference between an administrators obligations and priviledges.

So far I've made just over 4000 edits.

I live in the UK and have been here since birth though I consider myself a European citizen and have great interest in European culture as well as that of the world at large.

I am 28 years old and work for an international company. My work is primarily concerned with training new members of staff and developing the skills of existing team members.

I'm sorry for the length of the above but I felt it best that you not only know what I have been involved with but also a bit of insight into my feelings about the project. Once again, thank you for agreeing to take me on and I'll try not to cause you any trouble! Mallanox 19:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No, don't apologize Mallanox! It's wondeful that you explained yourself to me. Now, I have a good idea of what you believe in, and what your aims are on Wikipedia. Okay, first off, I'd like to do a edit count summary of you:

Category talk:	5
Category:	225
Image:	1
Mainspace	3590
Portal:	1
Talk:	250
Template talk:	1
Template:	2
User talk:	58
User:	42
Wikipedia talk:	51
Wikipedia:	232
avg edits per article	1.40
earliest	23:40, 25 April 2006
number of unique articles	3174
total	4458

From that alone, I can see some potential problems. 58 user talk edits? You definitely need to have more than that! People always look for candidates who have good communication skills with other users, and they frequently look at user talk edits to determine this. You have good Wikipedia talk participation, and that's a big plus for you. Despite the high number of mainspace edits, I don't see you really having that much focus on a few particular articles. Two things I suggest, are vandal-fighting (warning users --> higher user talk) and article-building (discussion with others--> higher user talk, higher talk). These are just some superficial suggestions I am making. Okay, now I would like to know what articles you would like to make some major contributions to? Nishkid 64 18:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

This is useful data indeed. I've never been entirely sure what a good level of communication should be. A good chunk of my edits will be category related so don't tend to be too controversial. As for article building, probably the area I have the most knowledge and interest would be film. No doubt I can find two or three articles I can expand on. Would I be better off, do you think, picking on stubs, or going for slightly better established articles (thereby having potentially interested people that I can communicate with)?

On the subject of vandal fighting. I've done this to a degree by watching articles and keeping an eye out for anonymous users and red-named users. Is there a better (more organised?) way I can do this? I've seen the recently updated articles list but would have no idea how to spot a suspicious edit beyond dodgy usernames. Any tips?

Mallanox 04:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I use Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool which is a very useful and effective tool for vandal-fighting. It's not an external application; it works within your browser using javascripts. See WP:LAVT for more. Tell me if you're planning to use it, and I can give you some tips and pointers. Nishkid 64 15:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Anti-Vandal Tool

OK, I've got the tool. If you want to give me some pointers I'd appreciate it. I'll try and use it in the meanwhile and see what it does. Mallanox 23:02, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, sorry for the delayed response. Well, can you give a screenshot of your toolbox? I use VoA's admin script, and it has a lot of extra features, so I'm not totally sure about all the things you have right now. Nishkid 64 01:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to do a screenshot but my toolbox contains:

Upload file
Special pages
Filter recent changes
All recent changes
Recent IP edits
Monitor my watchlist
Live spellcheck

Mallanox 01:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, that's all I needed to know! Thanks =) Okay, here's a breakdown. Live spellcheck-patrols recent changes and looks for spelling mistakes. Monitor my watchlist-looks for recent changes in articles on your watchlist. Recent IP edits-all edits made by IP's (use for vandal-fighting). Filter recent changes-filters edits by going through Recent Changes and looking for certain vulgar words such as curses, obscenities, etc. It's really wonderful! Okay, basically, it's a javascript, so you just watch the list update. First, try doing Filter recent changes. You will see some changes by IP's and new users for articles and it says some word such as "Fuck" or "shit", or something like that. Since you're not absolutely sure if it's the current person who vandalized, you can click on "Show details" or scroll over "(last)" and see what the user just added/removed from the article. If you think it's vandalism, click on "(last)", and that will open a new window which contains the diff between the current version and the previous version. If it's a bad edit, then click " [rollback (warn)]" and that will automatically revert the edit in the current window and open a new window in which you can warn the user for vandalism (use warning templates). Another way, which I personally find really easy and really fast (using this method, I reverted over 150 pages in a course of an hour) is by clicking show details and then clicking "[rollback]" if it is vandalism and also clicking "warn" next to the user's name. Rollback automatically reverts the edit, and warn opens a new window where it defaults to a test1-n warning. If the user has vandalized a lot, just change to test2-n, etc. By the way, it's really helpful if you have tabbed browsing, so I suggest using Firefox or the newest version of IE (I heard it has tabbed browsing now). If you still have questions, reply back. Nishkid 64 01:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Anti-vandalism progress

Ok, well I've been doing vandalism fighting. I couldn't tell you how many reverts I've made but it's quite a few. Also put lots of test and warning tags on talk pages. Even had some (admittedly brief) dialogue with some other vandal hunters. I wasn't aware how much larking about happens on Wikipedia, it's no wonder so many users are needed to revert mischief edits. I find it more irritating when a group start on a page as I noticed and reverted about 6 edits in one go from three users. I did make a mistake and reverted something legit but I noticed pretty quickly and reverted myself, no-one has complained about anything I've done yet, to my knowledge anyway. I think it's been reasonably successful.

That's great, Mallanox! I'm glad you've seen how useful vandal-fighting is on Wikipedia! Keep up the great work, and I'll think of some other exercises for you to do after school's out for winter vacation. Nishkid 64 23:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

CSD

These WP:CSD practices were created by EWS23 for use in admin coaching. We're stealing them from him for the purposes of this practice. This a test to make sure you understand the policies of speedy deletion. The following are actual cases that EWS23 came across while clearing out CAT:CSD.

Assume that the title of the page is everything following User:EWS23/CSD/. You are allowed to use any technique that you might usually use to assert notability (e.g.- Google), but you are not allowed to use Wikipedia in any way (you cannot see if the page still exists on Wikipedia, go through deletion logs to see if it was deleted, and any Google searches you do should use "Subject -Wikipedia" which is a good tool anyway to help eliminate Wikipedia mirrors).

Assume for this exercise that you are an administrator. View the page, but do not edit it (they are being used for multiple coachees). Then, return here and comment below the entry in question. Write whether you would delete the page or not. If you would, cite the specific criteria at WP:CSD that you would use to delete it. If you would not delete it, state why, and state what you would do to the page (simply remove the tag, redirect it somewhere else, keep it but remove certain information from it, etc.).

In real cases, you should ALWAYS check the page history before making a decision. Sometimes the page is a legitimate article that got vandalized, or page moved, etc. In this case, the page history won't tell you anything, but remember that in real cases the page history is important.

Good luck, Heimstern. Just edit each section, and post why you would keep/delete the article. Nishkid 64 19:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Halo 3 trailier

My understanding of WP:CSD is that it's for things which are obviously not meant to be on Wikipedia. This article offers little context but some if you read between the lines. The notability is there, the unusual way in which the trailer was made. The length of it though is a concern and I can't see much scope for expansion. All in all, I don't think that it is obviously not for Wikipedia. I would merge with the main Halo 3 article which a fact tag. A quick google searched yielded a lot of results even on pretty specific searches e.g "allard microsoft "halo 3 trailer" -wikipedia" (386 items isn't many normally but I think its a lot for such a specific search. I can't quickly prove that one but if I left a note on the creator's userpage, they would hopefully be able to revisit and cite their source. Malla nox 23:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm revisiting this, I'm not sure if that's allowed! I've noticed that the title is mis-spelt and mis-capitalised. I would check to see if futher information exists there and merge is necessary. Otherwise my initial decision stands. Malla nox 23:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Basically, merging should be the ideal thing to do in this type of situation. After merging, contacting the author of the article is a good idea, so that you can possibly get more references and such for the article. Nishkid 64 14:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Union Millwright

Delete under criterion WP:CSD#A3. Malla nox 23:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Correct! This is a classic example of CSD A3. Nishkid 64 14:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Webs

I would delete this page. Reasons WP:CSD#G11, WP:CSD#A1, WP:CSD#A7. No context as to who this guy is even if I searched on Google I couldn't be sure I was finding the right person. There's an apparent attempt to further a business interest. There's no assertion of notability other than his ability with wrenches which is too weak in my view for it's presence on Wikipedia. Malla nox 23:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a definite CSD G11 and CSD A7, but I'm not so sure about A1. There are many stubs here that are just as small as this article. However, it's good that you found other reasons for deletion. Nishkid 64 14:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Neil Haverton Smith

I note his name is in an unusual format, I would check Neil Haverton-Smith to see if there is anything there, though I think it unlikely. There is a claim of notability which also establishes context, just about. I would normally have a look at the creators userpage (if there is one) to see if it is likely it was created about himself. Google gives no results, I guess it's not acceptable to speedy delete with reference to WP:SNOW so I would go for converting speedy tag to prod for verifiability. Malla nox 23:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

This CSD practice is up in the air. Some people can see that it's probably speedyable since it doesn't appear to assert much notability and it may be a hoax. However, when you're not totally sure that CSD applies, then AfD or prod would be appropriate in this type of situation. Also, good application of WP:SNOW. Even if it's going to be a definite delete under AfD, it's best to avoid the speedy deletion and rather, get a community consensus on these sort of things. Nishkid 64 14:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Fall Out Boy

I wouldn't hesitate to keep this. One glance at their discography shows they are notable. Malla nox 23:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Discography is a good thing to look at. Try to see that it matches the notability requirements set out at WP:MUSIC. Also, a Google test would be useful, since it's possible that someone could have added falsified information to the discography (since there's no proof they actually did that well; unless it's sourced). Nishkid 64 14:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

Despite appearances I believe this to be a legitimate article. A cursory glance at google shows that he is/was a real person and the events (sort of!) really did occur. I would imagine if this were a real case there would be a better version of the article which I could restore. If there wasn't, I would stubify it and let it grow from there. Malla nox 00:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is a perfectly valid subject, but it really needs expansion/cleanup. Adding the stub, wikify, and expand tags would probably be most appropriate here. Also, expanding it with references for yourself would help out. Nishkid 64 14:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit count

User:Mallanox

      run at Sun Jan 14 14:36:07 2007 GMT

Category talk:	5
Category:	231
Image:	3
Mainspace	4004
Portal:	1
Talk:	273
Template talk:	1
Template:	2
User talk:	171
User:	70
Wikipedia talk:	64
Wikipedia:	313
avg edits per article	1.45
earliest	23:40, 25 April 2006
number of unique articles	3545
total	5138

Editcount generated using Interiot's wannabe Kate's Tool. Nishkid 64 14:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it looks like you've made more contributions to the article, user talk, Wikipedia, and Wikipedia talk namespaces. That's good so far! You need a few hundred more user talk edits. I don't believe I have seen an RfA pass when a user had less than 500 user talk edits. The best way to get user talk edits would be through RC patrol. Revert articles and warn. =) Also, you might want to try to bring some article to GA/FA status. It's great that you are interested in a wide variety of subjects, but it would be ideal if you had many contributions to any one particular article. Nishkid 64 14:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)