User:MusikAnimal/RfA/TonyBallioni

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

MusikAnimal's nomination

I am pleased to nominate TonyBallioni for adminship. I've had the privilege of working with him over the six months or so at various venues, and have grown to appreciate the collegial spirit, sound input and judgement that he brings to table. My primary interactions with him were surrounding new pages patrol, where he has in my opinion shown superb leadership. Especially in the weeks leading up to WP:ACTRIAL, he stood out to me as someone who passionately cared about the project in protecting his beliefs, but was willing to work with all parties in such a way as to not escalate tension, and even suppress it. In fact he and I don't always see eye to eye, but he always had a way of politely expressing his sentiments. Reviewing his talk page and participation at WT:NPR, it's easy to see that it is his kind, courteous and helpful demeanor that makes him such a pleasure to work with, especially with new users. This is the type of admin I'd like to see more of, but his qualifications go well-beyond composure and civility.

I invite the community to congratulate TonyBallioni on his decade-long tenure, a milestone that he reached on October 7. During this time he has had various periods of activity, but has shown continuous dedication to the project over the past 14 months. Credited with seven good articles and 15 DYKs, TonyBallioni has a lot of experience with content building, which I think plays into why he is such a model patroller. I also find his participation and accuracy at AfD to be impressive, with over 900 AfDs total, and of the past 200, 91% matching the result. For this reason I wouldn't hesitate to give him the delete button, though he nobly has expressed to me he does not have a particular interest in deletion, instead favouring second opinions.

One of the most admin-worthy areas of his focus is dealing with copyright violations. I feel this genre of work does not receive enough attention, so it seems only natural that he should be able to take appropriate action himself rather than offloading it to administrative backlogs. Should he become comfortable in doing so, I think he is fully qualified to handle G12's himself, as evidenced by his CSD log. He is also one of the top 10 users of CopyPatrol, further validating his dedication to this area.

Overall I think his positive influence, level-headedness, and well-defined administrative interests make him a great candidate. I look forward to hearing the community's opinion, and hope you will agree that giving TonyBallioni the tools would prove to be much more than a net-positive — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:07, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

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

A: The two areas I would probably be most active in as an administrator would be with text copyright violation revdels and with PERM requests. I come across a fair amount of copyright violations in my work with new pages and also some older longstanding violations. The ability to revision delete rather than using the template or requesting it directly from an admin would be helpful, and I'd also be able to work on pages others have tagged with the template. In working with new pages, I also deal with a fair amount of oversight requests, and having the ability to revision delete private information pending attention by an oversighter would help protect individuals.

I already do a lot of work answering questions from users who are new to using some of the unbundled rights, especially with my work at WT:NPR but also with the page mover right. I think I have a decent grasp on how the rights are used, and would be able to help process PERM requests. I believe unbundled permissions often help users feel a sense of ownership in the project and are helpful in areas where we need more help dealing with backlogs.

I'd also continue to help out with closing requested moves, and the ability to execute a move when an article has been move protected and to perform G6 deletions in some complicated cases would definitely come in handy there. 

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

A: I'm proud of the work I've done improving the coverage of early modern papal conclaves: I have six GAs so far there, and am working towards turning the 17th century papal conclaves into a good topic. They're important historical events that are actually quite entertaining to read about (in my opinion), so working there has been a very enjoyable project.

I've also done a lot with NPP. I've worked to make the newsletter for that project, try to answer questions as best I can at WT:NPR, and participated heavily in the implementation of ACTRIAL, where I tried to do my best to work towards a positive outcome for everyone despite the tensions that existed between the WMF and the community.

My work in NPP also includes finding gems in the rough like Mariano Gagnon, which I worked with CaroleHenson to bring to GA status after finding it in the new pages feed like this, and articles like Tallinn Central Library, which I brought to DYK after it was A7ed. I believe very strongly in countering systemic biases on Wikipedia, and part of that comes with educating people new to NPP on what to look for in an article that suggests it might be notable even if it doesn't look so at the time. 

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'm very involved in policy discussions and with my work in NPP have participated in a fair amount of contentious AfDs. I always try to assume good faith on the part of the other person, but also have the unfortunate tendency to be long-winded. I genuinely view every discussion on Wikipedia as that, a discussion, and think that the back and forth is important part of reaching consensus. At the same time, it is important to realize when you as a person are getting in the way of the actual discussion, and take a step back. I try to do this, but I'm sure there are times where I haven't followed my own advice.

One occasion that I remember was during the deletion discussion on Elijah Daniel, I opened an ANI report on the conduct of another user. It was resolved quickly, and we moved to the talk page to deal with a content dispute, where we were able to come to a compromise within 24 hours. In the future, I would be more likely to avoid ANI in a similar situations: AfDs and similar discussions are stressful, and I don't think I've ever seen an ANI or content dispute get resolved when one is ongoing.