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CapitalR

Voice your opinion (talk page) (25/2/0); Scheduled to end 00:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

CapitalR (talk · contribs)

Nomination from Balloonman

Prior to yesterday I had never heard of CapitalR. Davidgothberg, however, indicated on the WT:RFA page that he knew an excellent candidate for admin, but didn't feel comfortable nominating the candidate himself. Honestly, I was a little dubious. I mean, if the candidate is qualified why not nominate him yourself? But I decided to check out CapitalR anyways. CapitalR has almost 25,000 edits. Now most of those are the results of bots, which I usually frown upon. But the reason why I frown upon the use of bots is because we generally see their use from people who want to fight vandalism and want the tools to block people and delete pages---areas where one's policy and interaction with others is crucial. In those cases, the bots don't help establish the user's credentials with policies/guidelines. CapitalR's use of bots is completely different. CapitalR works in two unusual areas.

First, he creates bots---particularly, he wrote one of the bot he uses---CapitalBot. According to the description, CapitalBot moves through all cities/towns/villages/etc in the United States and adds or updates {{Infobox Settlement}} using information from government databases. It is a manually-assisted bot, meaning that all edits are checked by its operator before saving. CapitalR wrote the bot and compiled the 50MB database that the bot uses. If you look at CapitalR's edit history, you will notice a break in activity from Wikipedia. According to CapitalR, this break was the result of his working this database and bot.

Second, CapitalR is a specialist in an unusual niche where having the admin tools will help him contribute to Wikipedia in a way that excites him---Templates. He is not seeking the tools to block people or delete pages, but rather to continue doing what he does best. He's a template specialist. He helps update and fix templates. Unfortunately, as templates are often vandalized and appear on hundreds of articles, he has difficulty working on his creations because they are often protected. Personally, I like specialist admins because we have too many "generalist" who don't know anything about these niches. An admin who specializes with templates, can only be a good thing.

But what most impresses me about CapitalR is his civility. Last year he faced some severe hostility from a user who's initial contact included the warning, it simply doesn't belong. Period. End of debate. Discontinue this or I will report this bot and have it disabled on wikipedia CapitalR maintained his composure and his edits were eventually supported by the wikiproject in question. In other cases, people approached him about various problems with his templates or bots, in each case he assessed the issue and fixed it without getting defensive or upset. Many of these people then thanked him for listening to their concerns and doing such a great job. I don't think CapitalR will be one of our more active admins, in traditional admin functions, but I definitely see him having a need for the tools to continue to do the job he does so well.

CapitalR already acts like an admin. I see no reason to believe that he will abuse or misuse the tools. We need to evaluate CapitalR on his strengths and his clear need for the tools, not based upon some preconceived notion of what we think admin's do. Balloonman (talk) 08:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Co-nomination from David Göthberg

I first ran into CapitalR last summer. At the time CapitalR was busy cleaning up all the different navboxes that we had back then and standardise them down to a single very versatile {{navbox}}. I noticed that he communicated well with all the people who had a myriad of questions about those boxes. And he worked carefully and tested his templates properly and discussed them with people before he deployed them. And he even handled it very well when I barged in and suggested major changes and totally new ways to code things. (But in the end I realised that his code probably was the best.) But not only did he make the navboxes way better, he single-handedly did many thousands of edits to update pages to use the new better navboxes.

However, I noticed there was one single problem. CapitalR's templates were locked as high-risk and thus he could not edit them himself. (No wonder since for instance his {{navbox/core}} is used on 615,000 pages.) He had to update them per remote control by using {{editprotected}} requests. So I pretty soon realised that he really needs to become an admin so he can continue to manage his templates in an efficient manner. Problem was that I had no familiarity with the RfA process. So this sentence has been on my to-do list on my user page ever since: "Nominate CapitalR for adminship." I have bumped into him every now and then since then, and every time has only increased my belief that CapitalR is of great service to Wikipedia and would be a very responsible user of the admin buttons.

Some days ago people were discussing over at WT:RFA that we need more admins. So I took the chance and mentioned that CapitalR would be a prime candidate. And thankfully Balloonman took it on himself to check up on and nominate CapitalR.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:
I accept. --CapitalR (talk) 11:28, 19 April 2008 (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: I expect my primary admin work will be editing protected templates, fulfilling editprotected requests on templates, and keeping a close eye on high-risk templates (protecting/un-protecting when necessary). A number of templates that I created or substantially edited were later protected, and as an admin I would be in a better position to maintain them. I also expect/hope to be useful and more active in the MediaWiki space, particularly for edits and questions related to collapsible tables and navboxes (which just got new CSS that I wrote). I do not expect to do much admin work in WP:AIV, WP:XFD, user blocking, or other "traditional" admin related activities, but think I will be a useful specialist admin for the community because of my extensive template work. If I ever find an instance where admin tools are required for processes I am unfamiliar or unexperienced in, I will not hesitate to ask for assistance from another administrator.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: My first major contribution was the standardization of nearly all navboxes into the {{Navbox}} standard. You may remember that not even a year ago there were about a dozen competing navbox templates and styles, many of which didn't have the collapsible feature, which led to huge and/or ugly navbox sections in articles. I combined the best features from them all together and designed {{Navbox}} and {{Navbox/core}}, and then proceeded to convert nearly every template using all the other designs to the new standard (about 10,000 conversions). There are now around 30,000 templates using {{Navbox}}, making for consistent styles and easier code maintenance (it's actually the 6th/7th most used template on Wikipedia now). I have also recently re-written the code for {{Navbox}}, adding many new features and fixing some of the common problems. This work has taken months, but is finally scheduled to go live on May 1 (a date set to give new CSS classes ample time to settle). In addition, I spend lots of my editing time fixing up other templates that use {{Navbox}} to make sure they work properly, and to keep the styles somewhat standard across all of Wikipedia. I believe that when users create new Navbox templates, they first find one with a style they like, and then modify its code. Thus, by promoting clean and consistent Navbox code and styles now, I'm helping ensure that we will have a lot less work to do in the future to clean up templates with problems.
My second major contribution was CapitalBot, which added {{Infobox Settlement}} to about 30,000 articles on US cities and towns. This was no easy task, and it took hundreds of hours (literally) to compile the government databases, map the data to Wikipedia articles, and then code the bot (I compiled the databases offline in the spring and early summer of '07, which explains my editing lull, and then coded the bot in late summer '07, and ran it in early autumn '07).
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: Oh, of course, but nothing too major that didn't eventually work itself out. Because I've done some large scale projects (CapitalBot and navbox standardization), I have attracted plenty of criticism from others who disagreed with certain aspects. However, I find that when I stay calm and clearly explain my reasoning, I can quickly work the problems out in a civilized manner. I regularly get involved in minor style disputes (a common issue with templates); if they cannot be worked out through a quick discussion I find that third parties are always a good idea to help out. As for stress, I occasionally get a little worked up personally, but try hard not to let that reflect in my comments and actions. At worst, I just walk away from a situation and let other editors sort things out; when I check back weeks or months later I'm generally satisfied with resolutions.

Optional questions from jc37

4. While I am impressed by the template work of the candidate, there are more tools in the admin's tool box than just the ability to edit protected pages. Just to illustrate that you have at least a passing knowledge/understanding of more of the tools and responsibilities could you describe/summarise:
  • 4a. Generally, why and when should someone be blocked?
  • A: Blocking is not a matter to be taken lightly, as it remains in that users log forever and can prevent other constructive edits. Repeated vandalism, personal threats and attacks, edit warring (including 3RR violations), and violation of policy and consensus are common reasons for users to get blocked, but generally after a series of warnings that their behavior is not acceptable. If one suspects a user of evading a ban or block, or being a sock puppet, it may be best to have a checkuser look into the situation first before issuing a block. It is not appropriate for admins to block users that they are personally involved in a content dispute with, and admins must understand that they are not exempt from being blocked themselves. In general, blocks should be used as a preventative tool, not a punitive one.
  • A: In my opinion, protection of pages should be used sparingly and with care, so as not to disallow good faith editors from making constructive edits. Protection might be used for pages undergoing significant amounts of recent vandalism or edit warring; however, blocks might also be considered if appropriate, so as not to prevent non-involved parties from losing access to editing. Semi-protection might be a better option over full protection when IPs are causing large amounts of vandalism or disruption to articles on living people. High-risk templates that are unlikely to change much are good candidates for indefinite full protection; similarly, high-risk templates that might change could be indefinitely semi-protected. It is important to remember that when protecting a page due to disputes, admins should not protect a specific version; rather, the current version, whatever it might be, should be protected, and then changes can be discussed on the talk page until consensus forms about how to resolve the conflict (this applies to content disputes, not vandalism or other policy violations). In addition, protection should generally not be used as pre-emptive measures against vandalism or disruption (except for high-risk templats); rather, it should be a last resort after problems have occurred and are likely to occur again.
  • 4c. When would it be appropriate to speedily delete a page?
  • A: Basically, if there’s any non-trivial reason for a page to be kept, then it should probably not be speedily deleted, but rather should go through the appropriate form of WP:XFD. Before speedy deleting an article, it is important to give it a chance if one might exist, especially for pages created by new users. Some quick examples of when speedy deleting would be appropriate are pages dedicated to nothing but vandalism, nonsense, advertising, or pages about people with no clear significance. Templates can be speedy deleted (after 7 days with the appropriate tag) if they are copies of other templates, or provide no useful functionality that cannot be found in other templates. Other speedy examples are users requesting their own pages to be deleted, images without proper licensing or in violation of WikiMedia policy, and pages that are recreated after being deleted from a deleting discussion and not undergoing a deletion review. Again, if any doubt exists over whether speedy can be applied, it is best to review WP:SPEEDY or to put the article up for deletion at WP:XFD.
  • A: Consensus should be determined by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of a debate, acting in the best interests of all users, and coming up with a solution that most users can “agree to agree to”. It is important to remember that consensus does not mean that everyone must agree, and it should be determined by discussion, not just by polls. One should be very careful about judging consensus if he/she has a particular bias in the matter, and should be on the lookout for users who attempt to circumvent consensus via forum shopping or failing to gather a large or diverse enough audience for a proper discussion. The amount of discussion or degree of agreement before a reasonable consensus is reached is undefined, but I feel that it should be somewhat proportional to the size of the proposed change. Simple style changes or the rewording of a paragraph being discussed on a talk page might reach consensus quickly and with little discussion, but deletions or controversial/complex moves should have a good reason and significant agreement before being executed. It is important to remember that consensus can change over time, but I believe that the burden is on those who wish to change it to demonstrate why their new way of doing things is better. For example, if consensus is determined in WP:XFD to delete or keep a page, the standard for reversing the decision should be higher in WP:DRV to avoid users constantly holding re-trials when they don’t get their way.
  • 4e. User:JohnQ leaves you a message on your talk page that User:JohnDoe and User:JaneRoe have been reverting an article back and forth, each to their own preferred version. What steps would you take?
  • A: First, it is important to remain unbiased in such situations. If User:JohnQ came to me because he knew that I agreed with one of the sides in the edit war, or because we had previous encounters and he’s trying to get me to agree with him again, then I may not be the best person to fairly resolve the situation. In addition, if the article in question is something I know little about, or an article with a history of edit warring, I may not be the best admin to step in. In that case it would be perfectly acceptable to step back and post a notice about the article for other admins to examine, and send JohnQ a message saying that I’m letting others take over for a more unbiased opinion (a long time ago I was that JohnQ and realized after the fact what a bad position I put an admin in when asking for help, so I would not want to repeat such a situation). If, however, the conflict involves blatant vandalism, inappropriate material (i.e. improperly sourced information about living people), or other clear cut matters, then it may be acceptable for me to step in and deal with the situation right away. Again, it is important to apply the same rules here as one would if it were reported to the admin notice board: don’t block anyone unless proper warnings have been given, don’t issue cool down blocks, encourage discussion and consensus with other users before future edits are made, enforce the 3RR fairly on both parties, etc.

Optional Question from Dominik92

5: An IP user vandalizes a page leaving a suicide message on it, what do you do?
A: The first thing to do is treat all threats of violence (against others and against one's self) seriously, and to post a note on the administrator's noticeboard. This is something I have no experience with, but there may be another more knowledgeable admin immediately available willing to help or take charge. The second thing to do would be to reply to the user asking if there is anything to do to help. Next, one should send notification to the central WikiMedia office about the incident for them to take immediate action. Performing an IP lookup to get a general location of where the user may be and posting it on the noticeboard would be a likely next step (or if it were not an IP user, requesting a checkuser to help). Finally, one should see to it that local authorities or a suicide prevention service are contacted and given the relevant information (if the IP were in the USA then I might be capable of making such a report; otherwise, I would probably need help from another user or the office to find the appropriate people to contact). A quick Google search and reading WP:SUICIDE indicates that this has happened before, so it should be taken seriously. In addition, most law enforcement and emergency services take such notifications seriously and encourage reporting, even if it ends up being a hoax. Taking a few minutes out of editing to perform the steps I just listed to help a fellow human being seems like a reasonable expectation for such a (hopefully rare) situation.

General comments

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

Discussion

Support
  1. Support - K, I'm suitably impressed. I felt that your answers to my last question in particular were excellent. - jc37 23:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support - Excellent answers to questions, superb edit history, great work. No reason not to trust user with the buttons. Tan | 39 00:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Clear need for the tools expressed in the nominations and highly articulate answers to questions. No trust issues with this candidate. Darkspots (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support - A specialist! Needs this for template work. I also like the idea of an administrator participating in an " unconventional/non-traditional" manner. Wisdom89 (T / C) 01:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Dlohcierekim 01:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support extremely well-qualified, especially in an area where few admins have expertise. Horologium (talk) 01:16, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Weak Aye Aaright Done enough, no worrying answers. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Co-nom support - I have always been very impressed by CapitalR's work. And today with his answers above, he impressed me again. --David Göthberg (talk) 01:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support – It is time that Wikipedia looks to specialized user, with specific talents, to take some of the administrator roles that the project thrusts upon individuals who may be lacking in certain skill-sets. This user has been a faithful and trusted contributor since 2006. No major conflict with regards to civility – is a major contributor in their area of expertise – and has stated quite articulately the need for the few extra buttons and has reaffirmed that they will be staying within their area of expertise. If they wander to far from the path, it is only a click away from taking their privileges away. Good Luck to you. ShoesssS Talk 02:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support You did navbox...and you're not an admin? I see no reason to distrust you. Your work in the template namespace has been a great help to the entire project. You will do well with the mop, and, more importantly, the keys to the locks. Paragon12321 (talk) 02:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Nom-Support has a definite need for the tools. May not be a typical candidate, but knows his stuff.Balloonman (talk) 03:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Has been around since Feb 2006 with over 6000 mainspace edits and over 25000.No concerns.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 03:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support All I really need is to know that the user won't abuse the tools, in this case, I found no evidence that he would. This, combined with extremely well thought out answers to the questions is more than enough to gain my support. The DominatorTalkEdits 03:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Somehow I remember implementing {{navbox generic}} the parent to {{navbox}} and converting thousands of navboxes to using the CSS classs. And since then it seems as though CapitalR has been stalking me. ;-) Anyway, Wikipedia needs good active template admins and can understand CSS. And no I haven't had time to review your CSS yet.
    In response to Useight I am curious, "CapitalR how will response to other admins who irresponsibly break important template and shoot the job queue up to 6 million?" — Dispenser 03:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  15. This guy's awesome! And I don't say that about very many of you. He can only help the community as a whole even if he only uses the tool when he see fit! No reason not to give him the tools.—MJCdetroit (yak) 04:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Strong Support Specialists get a thumbs up from me, as many consider me to be a jack of all trades. It's always nice to see a person who does a small number of things but does them with dedication, vigor, and... does them well. --SharkfaceT/C 05:12, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support What we have here is a talented and dedicated template editor who simply wants to be able to continue what he is already doing. For some, becoming an admin increases one's ability to contribute; for others, not becoming an admin reduces this ability (a similar situation led to my own RfA). I've been following his work for a while and have been impressed with his technical savvy and impartiality—the latter is incredibly important for major template work, considering the huge number of articles affected. I see no potential for abuse here and so by granting CapitalR admin rights we can let him continue his good work here.
    For those who see the nominee's low mainspace participation as a indicator of a lack of understanding for this area: how can you possibly work on something that affects thousands upon thousands of articles without this understanding? 52 Pickup (deal) 06:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support The protection tools will help with his template work. WOSlinker (talk) 07:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support based on a very few interactions at Template:Minnesota and Template:US state navigation box. Seems to handle all three things well: the politics of requests, bug reports and template coding. -Susanlesch (talk) 07:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support per 52 Pickup. Kusma (talk) 08:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Agree with Shoessss and 52 Pickup. Here we have oodles of relevant experience, sensible answers and someone who seems most unlikely to delete the main page just to see what happens. No bother. Angus McLellan (Talk) 10:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Strong support - calm, polite, experienced, editor. Dan Beale-Cocks 12:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Weak support. Not much experience in the projectspace which usually demonstrates a lack of policy knowledge in most users. Your answers are good, however, and this offsets my worries. Good luck, Malinaccier Public (talk) 12:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support per his two most excellent nominations. Not only can he be trusted with the tools, he will make excellent use of them. -FrankTobia (talk) 12:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Weak Support - I like the answers to the questions but the lack of experience in the projectspace is a slight concern. Good luck :-) TheProf - T / C 12:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. Oppose. Sorry to be the first (and possibly only) opposer, but you lack experience in the Wikipedia namespace. Only 125 edits there out of 25,000+ edits is extraordinarily low. Even though I did calculate that that equates to less than 0.05%, I don't care about the ratio, but instead the lack of experience indicated by the number 125. Perhaps I will be accused of editcountitis, but if you take a look at my admin standards, I want to see at least 500 contributions to the Wikipedia namespace (regardless of ratio to total edits). I am aware that you will be focusing in the template area, but you'd have the tools in all areas and I would want you to be more familiar with other areas. Useight (talk) 01:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If I understand the purpose of your standards, the requirement is to ensure familiarity with the areas in which tools will be used. I don't think it's an unreasonable standard, but I would say that as the candidate intends to use the tools in the Template space, I think it might be fair to factor some of his contributions there toward the total. Like you say, an admin will have the tools in all areas, but a candidate who is interested in specializing in vandal fighting might only have 100-200 edits to Wikipedia space outside of AIV. So we're looking at a candidate who has the same level of experience where he plans to use the tools, and a comparable level of experience outside, and the difference is mainly that because of his unusual specialization, much of his tool familiarity comes in a different namespace. I hope I don't seem like I'm badgering as I've not voiced an opinion myself. Just thinking aloud really as I think it's something to at least consider... --JayHenry (talk) 05:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Useight: I am curios: Since admins get to edit high-risk protected intricate templates that may be transcluded on up to 2,500,000 pages, why doesn't your admin standards include any demands on experience in template handling? --David Göthberg (talk) 09:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Weak oppose - Good contributions, just doesn't meet my standards. Soxred93 | talk bot 03:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder the same as I asked Useight above? Mind explaining? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidgothberg (talk • contribs)
Neutral
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