User:True Pagan Warrior/Admin coaching/Lesson 1

This is exactly how the first three questions will appear on an RfA. Please reply so I can get an idea of how you rate yourself. (A bit redundant I know, but if you want to make any changes, please do - otherwise just copy paste).

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 administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: My first interest on Wikipedia was correcting minor errors, and I would continue this with a focus on {{editprotected}} requests and reviewing WP:ERRORS. I'm also interested in helping out on reducing backlogs, such as CAT:RENAME, WP:UAA, and WP:SFD after I spend more time learning about stub sorting.

2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?

A: It is a modest article, but I am very pleased with the progress which has been made on Headless Horseman Hayrides. The version I first discovered had been created by an enthusiastic fan and would not have survived a deletion discussion had it been nominated. I was familiar with the business and was able to find references to verify its notability.

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: My opinion on conflict has changed since I've been on Wikipedia. After seeing the stressful, tendentious, and conflict-ridden situations which can arise over complex issues like climate change, I do not believe I have ever had any stress or conflict on Wikipedia. Communicating only in writing makes it very easy for conflict to ignite or escalate for very little reason; our brains are wired to process words in the context of body language and tone of voice. I believe that our brains fill in those cues when they're absent, and how we fill them in depends more on our own state of mind than anything else. If I find a particular comment troublesome, I imagine the editor saying it very non-threatening voice (for example, Dorothy Gale, and that puts things back in perspective for me.

The following questions will not be on an actual RfA, but will serve to help me to better analyze your areas of familiarity and unfamiliarity.

Questions from FASTILY

1. How comfortable are you with working with media files and image policy on Wikipedia? (i.e. WP:NFC, WP:NFCC, WP:IUP, ect.) [Rate on a scale of one to ten - one being "uncomfortable" and ten being "master"]

A: 4 seems about right. I have uploaded and properly tagged some images of my own creation, a couple of logos, and an image created by someone else that needed permission submitted to OTRS, so I know I can understand the basics.

2. How familiar are you with WP:CSD in general?

A: 3 - the A7s and the A3s are tricky business, and I think it's a shame that they're called "speedy" deletions, because I expect I'd make mistakes if I went to quickly through them.

3. How familiar are you with Wikipedia's blocking policy in general? [one to ten]

A: 5

4. Do you do much anti-vandalism work?

A: I used to do more than I do now, when I had Huggle installed. Speed was a problem for me, I made too many mistakes, and elected to remove the tool. I still Twinkle my watchlist but vandal-fighting is not my stock-in-trade.

5. (Be honest) Have you ever engaged in any sort of incivility or harassment of other users?

A: I could have done better here, but that's the most incivility I've used here. That's the one incident that I brought up as an example of a stressful situation at my first RfA, but I no longer think is worth mentioning there considering what else happens on this site. It's probably my worst moment on the site; I felt extremely unwelcome and was snappish because of it.

6. Have you written/contributed majorly to any articles? If so, which article(s)?

A: I have really great ambitions in this area, but I find it's easier to plan than practice. For me at least, article creation requires uninterrupted blocks of time, and I don't tend to have them to spare all that often. However, I'm trying to get the list of bow tie wearers to featured list status, and I believe my draft of Overlook Mountain could easily get to GA if I had a day in the right library. Other articles I've worked on significantly include:

One of my earliest edits (I'm not even sure if I had an account or not) was an attempt put a friend's birthday in the entry for that date - and I was sincerely surprised at how quickly it was removed! I've done my best to contribute more constructively since then, but the above represent a good sampling of my work.

7. What do you know about Wikipedia's page protection policies?

A: I'm assuming that if you test my ability to research answers you'd say so, so I won't look. Page protection can be used to prevent recurring vandalism, although usually full protection is not necessary for that, and permanent protection is reserved for very high-profile pages. Protection can also be used to stop edit warring; this always means protecting the "wrong" version, since someone is bound to disagree with whichever version is chosen. I don't know the criteria for evaluating WP:RFP off the top of my head.

8. Have you ever participated in any WP:XFD debates? If so, how frequently?

A: Yes, but rarely. It seems that something short of consensus happens there, as a compromise with the very low participation. It's probably a place I could spend more time.

9. What is your area of expertise on Wikipedia? (e.g. Help Desk, Image policy, article CSDs, article writing, ect.) What do you do to contribute there?

A: Most of what I do is gnomish proofreading and removal of weasel words. I a few broad areas that I tend to focus on one at a time, in no particular order:

AfD/DelRev
Cutting out uncited material and rewriting promotional language in business articles
Writing about notable topics in my local area
Working on an article that caught my fancy doing one of the above
RfA
Copyediting (which I put on the list with all the sincerity of a New Year's resolution; this is an area I very much want to get more involved in once I have bigger blocks of time to devote to the project)

10. What do you hope to accomplish through Admin Coaching? Do you have any specific goals you want to achieve through coaching? Do you have any specific areas you would like to work on/improve on?

A: I don't see adminship as a trophy, and I have no particular interest in the "sexy" areas of adminship. I don't mind spending my time working on obscure backlogs that most editors aren't aware of. You're looking for students willing to learn about images, and I know enough to know that images love backlogs. If you can teach me how to evaluate licenses properly, I'm more than happy to focus my time there.

My RfA turned up a significant minority who considered me "too deletionist," which surprised me. I believe that this was based on one nomination only, not my entire history, but I think a focus on deletion policy can't be a bad thing.

11. Is there anything else you'd like me to know?

A: Nothing comes to mind.

My Commentary.

I've looked over your answers, and I think I have a general idea of what we will need to focus/spend more time on. Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. Proceed to Lesson 2 please. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)