User:BlankVerse/adminship2

originally posted to User talk:BD2412 04:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Although it would be very nice to have the rollback tool, the pages on my watch list get surprisingly little vandalism and spam. Even then it is almost never part of a large vandalism or spam run, so they are easy to clean up.

On the other hand, I have no interest right now in getting more involved in the tedious backstage maintenance work on the Wikipedia (other than trying to turn the California and Southern California WikiProjects into self-sustaining projects). I have not, and will never do RC patrol. I definitely will not wade into the middle of edit wars or article disputes. I don't want to get involved in speedy deletion work, and certainly don't want to deal with the dysfunctional AFD arena. In my opinion, if you accept a nomination for adminship, you are also volunteering to do your share of the shit work on the Wikipedia as well (although as far as I can tell, out of close to 600 admins most of the work is done less than 50 of them).

So I will keep doing my occasional vandal rollbacks by hand, I'll welcome some of the new editors that show up on my watchlist, and I will very occasionally deal with problem editors (User:Ronald20 is my current project).

Thank you for the offer, but for now I'd rather not get more involved in the Wikipedia bureaucracy. (Please note that I do admire and appreciate all those who are willing to do the Wikipedia scullery work.) BlankVerse ∅ 04:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Update 1 December 2005: With a larger watchlist I am seeing more vandalism, and so I am doing more manual rollbacks. It is becoming more tempting to become an admin just to have that rollback button. I still think, however, that everyone agreeing to become an admin should also be willing to do their fair share of the maintenance tasks on the Wikipedia. ^Blank ^Verse 08:34, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Update 3 January 2007: I find that I am acting more and more like a Wikipedia admin, so not having the magic buttons sometimes is frustrating.

I am doing more than my share of vandalism reverts, as well as welcoming new editors. Anyone can do that, but I am often then adding advice for any new editors who I find have not been following Wikipedia's Policies and Guidelines in the hope that were misguided or hadn't learned the rules yet.

After reverting vandalism, I then follow through and check the editor's other contributions. If they have been repeat offenders, or if it had been problematic edits ({{spam}}, {{blatantvandal}}, etc), I then add warnings to the editor's user page. For anon IPs, I usually add {{sharedip}} and/or {{ipowner}} templates after doing an rDNS. What is especially frustrating for me is that I often see IPs that have had escalating warnings over a 2-3 day period, including vandal-bot warnings, and blatantvandal warnings, and so they are way overdue to be temporarily blocked.

I am also doing such admin-like efforts such as trying to stop edit wars, and counseling problematic editors. This will sometimes include warning editors over the consequences of their actions such as article page protection and temporary blocking of the editor. If the ~~threat~~ advice doesn't work, then I have to trudge off to WP:AN/3RR, WP:RFPP, or WP:AIV to get some administrator to actually do the necessary actions.

Another frustration is when I come across a spam run. The usual spamming for Southern California articles is 2-4 articles, so that's easy to do the old-fashion way. When it's 10-20 pages, then I have to report it, or find a friendly admin that I know is online. ^Blank ^Verse 05:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)