User:MusikAnimal/RfA/Mz7

Mz7 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

MusikAnimal's nomination

I'd like to present to the community User:Mz7 as a candidate for administrator. Mz7 has had an account since March 2010, and has been actively editing since 2011. In this time he has accumulated over 11,000 edits to the mainspace, much owed to content building, counter-vandalism and working at WP:AfC. He single-handedly wrote the good article Wings for My Flight and also expanded Vinicius and Tom from a mere few paragraphs to good article status. In addition to mainspace contributions, he is a host at the Teahouse, WP:OTRS volunteer, has performed over 400 non-admin closures, and works at other poorly attended backlogs like CAT:COMMONS. Above all, I find Mz7's kind demeanor to be the most impressive trait. Reviewing his talk page archives you'll see how well he communicates with both new and seasoned editors. All things considered, I find Mz7 to be a level-headed and multifaceted Wikipedian who could do wonders to far corners of Category:Administrative backlog. I thank the community for their consideration in who I believe will become a cherished addition to the admin corps — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:37, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Samwalton9's co-nomination

I'm very happy to be co-nominating Mz7 for adminship. While I can't confess to being familiar with his work on the encyclopedia before MusikAnimal mentioned him as a potential candidate, a thorough investigation of his contributions has left me with no doubts that he would make a great administrator. In addition to the areas highlighted above, I found that Mz7 has a good history at AfD (though note that if you use the AfD tool his votes are hidden amongst many edits relisting discussions - the tool tracks 500 AfD edits at a time, not 500 votes) and a solid CSD log, with all the articles that I spot checked being correct tags. I'm also happy to say - once again - that this is an editor who is happy to provide clear and friendly help to new users; a great sign for a potential administrator.

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. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: I see myself easing into the tools as a natural extension of the kind of behind-the-scenes, janitorial work I typically find myself doing already. I’ve worked in both counter-vandalism and the deletion process since early 2012, so I envision myself closing AfDs, evaluating CSDs, blocking vandals, and protecting pages as I continue to work in those areas. More recently, I joined the OTRS team in November, and the administrator toolset would be especially helpful for using revision deletion in response to the emails we receive about gross BLP violations and copyright violations. (I find myself pinging administrators often about those.) The toolset would also be helpful for reviewing files deleted under WP:F11 that have since gotten a permission statement sent to OTRS.

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

A: While I’m certainly not a prolific content creator, I do enjoy writing and improving articles about any topic that happens to catch my interest. I particularly enjoyed working with the Wings for My Flight article. It was a rather obscure book at the time I stumbled upon it—my library didn’t have a copy of it at the time, so I had to take out an interlibrary loan on the book two times. The first time was to read the book, and once I finished it, I started a userspace draft on it, but had to return the book before I could pull enough information to move the draft to mainspace. A few years later, in 2014, to my surprise, the book was republished and received additional coverage as a result. I also had a bit more experience working with research databases then, so I picked up the dormant userspace draft and published a stub out of it. A few weeks later, I took out the second interlibrary loan on the book and began to develop the content summary and background sections of the article. It was an fun experience, and in October 2015, it became my first GA. Beyond Wings for My Flight, I’ve written one other GA, Vinicius and Tom, the mascots of the 2016 Summer Olympics—another topic I enjoyed reading and writing about.

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: I’ve definitely been involved in disagreements here and there—a natural consequence of the collaborative nature of the project. I think the healthiest approach is stepping back, looking at things from the other side, then explaining your side respectfully, never blowing anyone off, especially new editors. This can be difficult if you believe the other side isn't doing the same for you. While I try not to make mistakes too often, I would warmly welcome feedback if I could have done something better, and the same would hold true regardless of whether I am an administrator. A few months ago, I made the foolish mistake of replacing a secondary source with a primary source on an article covered by WP:MEDRS. It was reverted, I received valuable feedback, and it will never happen again.

One memorable conflict revolved around a new editor who added a trivial detail about a fictional character in a children’s TV series article. It was an extremely trifling matter to have a protracted dispute about, but unfortunately, a conflict did begin when another editor reverted the addition. The new editor was confused, so they added it back in, and I observed as a cycle of edit warring began over this small, obscure detail. After issuing a few warnings about the edit warring that were faced with mounting frustration, what I eventually did was sit down and spend 15-20 minutes writing several paragraphs explaining in detail Wikipedia’s MoS fiction guidelines and how they applied to the article. It worked. The new editor indicated their understanding, stopped reverting, and agreed with the consensus that had developed on the talk page. They even sought my advice later on two occasions: later that month and then the following year. Both of which I responded to with the same level of attention and detail, which were received positively. I believe the lengthy explanations were worth the effort: we successfully retained a new contributor.

As for stress, what I do is go to a quiet area of Wikipedia—such an uncontroversial article topic—and do some basic article development (finding sources, expanding the article, copyediting, adding images/templates). This is a great way for me to ground myself and return to why it is we are all here: to build an encyclopedia. It is especially refreshing when the topic I’m writing about is something I’m genuinely interested in.