Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Ahecht

Nomination

Ahecht (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hi, I'm Ahecht, and I've been a registered editor here for 18 years (and I was editing as an IP for at least a year before I registered for an account). Over that time I've focused on several areas of the project. I started out mostly doing copyediting and then moved on to anti-vandalism work. After spending a fair amount of time at WP:New pages patrol and WP:Recent changes patrol, I decided that I wanted to spend more time helping with content creation, as opposed to removal, and became involved with WP:Articles for creation and WP:Articles for creation/Redirects. At the latter, I created {{Request redirect}} to automate much of the review process, which led me down a rabbit hole to the technical side of Wikipedia. Since then, in addition to WP:GNOMEish work, I've created or improved hundreds of templates and modules, written widely used userscripts and external tools, and run bots that affects tens of thousands of pages. If you've seen my name around recently, it's likely either through a template or module I created, my work cleaning up pages that are broken because they exceed the post-expand include size limit, or as a page mover at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. When I was marked as an administrator without tools back in April I said I would consider running if elections were held, so here I am.

I have never edited for pay, and will never do so. I have a bot account, Ahechtbot, and an unused doppleganger account, Ahect. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:19, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

This is my third RFA nomination. Ahecht has made over 58,000 edits and is setting a personal record for activity levels in 2024. I've found their module work to be helpful and barnstar-worthy. They're active at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests where we have a critical need for more administrators who can move pages by deleting redirects rather than by non-optimal page swaps, so this should be a long-overdue promotion from page-mover. Clean block log; no noticeboard drama; 'nuff said. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:20, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?

A: A lot of the work I've done already has been on the "administration" side of Wikipedia, and my work in New Page Patrol, Articles for Creation, and answering edit and move requests as a template editor and page mover has given me a lot of experience with determining consensus and working in "customer service", helping newer users and answering their questions and complaints. Since there have been several technically-minded administrators who have recently resigned or gone on indefinite wikibreaks, I'd like to be able to use this experience to help with administrator backlogs, which would initially be edit and move requests for fully protected pages. I don't have any plans to get involved with deletion outside of WP:G6, but I could see myself branching out into other underserved areas of Wikipedia.

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

A: I have a lot of edit history since 2006 but much of it is WP:GNOMEish, so while I know there are plenty of articles that I've rewritten or made large contributions to over the years, it's hard to remember most of them. Among the highlights, I've spent a lot of time updating and maintaining articles on cruise ships, including getting List of largest cruise ships promoted to featured list, I've rewritten large sections of movie articles, including Toy Story and Tough Guys Don't Dance (film), and, although I prefer editing existing articles, I have created a handful from scratch such as Spaceflight, Inc., Bill Sherman, Hollywood United Methodist Church, and Rival (consumer products company).

My most significant work has been on templates that impact a large percentage of Wikipedia pages. In addition to {{Request redirect}}, I updated {{High-use}} to automatically show transclusion counts tabulated by my bot Ahechtbot, I converted {{Reply to}} (aka {{ping}}) to Lua to allow more people to be mentioned at once, created Module:Gridiron color to consolidate 10 different color templates, created Module:Science redirect to consolidate 5 different redirect templates, and made significant contributions to Module:Taxonbar. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I rewrote {{Medical cases chart}} and {{COVID-19 pandemic}} to be native Lua, saving hundreds of pages from exceeding the post-expand inclusion size limit. In my efforts to further fix pages that exceed the inclusion size limit, I created Module:Flag, created Module:English Heritage listed building, created Module:Country2nationality/Module:Iso2nationality, and reworked Module:Navbox (and I'm sandboxing another revision that will consolidate {{Navbox}}, {{Navbox with columns}}, and {{Navbox with collapsible groups}}).

I've created several widely used userscripts, including Pageswap GUI (which I've used to help move almost 1000 articles), Picture of the Day Helper (which I've used to create over 60 Picture of the Day templates), Watchlist cleaner, TemplateSearch, Refresh, and Mass Move. I also have created several tools hosted at toolforge, including toolforge:ircredirect (which powers WP:IRC help disclaimer), toolforge:excel2wiki, and toolforge:randomincategory, and am a maintainer of toolforge:afdstats.

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: It's impossible to completely avoid conflicts over an 18-year tenure. I deal with them by assuming good faith, and, as long as the other party isn't actively harming Wikipedia, just reminding myself that this is just a website I volunteer for, and it's not worth getting overly worked up about. If it's clear that my position doesn't match the consensus, I back down and continue on with my life. When I've upset people by denying an edit request, reverting an unproductive edit, or declining a draft, calmly explaining the policies and giving them next steps to follow has usually been able to diffuse the situation. In the rare cases that it isn't, I seek out help from the appropriate venues. Similarly, I know that some of my more technical edits have caused confusion, especially when I've screwed up and accidentally broken a page. I just try to be responsive, quick to self-revert if needed, and treat the other party the way I would want to be treated if the situation were reversed.

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You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Discussion

• Links for Ahecht: Ahecht (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Ahecht can be found here.

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.