Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Hawkeye7

Nomination

Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hi I'm Hawkeye7. Some of you might know me from the Military History and Spaceflight projects. Or you might have met me at Wikimania in Hong Kong in 2013, Italy in 2015 or Poland in 2024! I've been around a long time. I started editing almost twenty years ago and am one of the most active Wikipedians. I am primarily a content creator, having written 110 featured articles and 370 good articles, and have created over 500 articles!

I generally pitch in when there is work to be done. I have participated in numerous drives. I rarely turn down a request for help, even when it is outside my area of expertise like reviewing an article on ice skating or rock bands, or assisting with a workshop on articles on Bhutan. I have developed bots to streamline the featured article processes and clean up backlogs.

I was was once an admin but was desysopped by ArbCom in the Civility Enforcement case twelve years ago. I was the third of several admins in a chain of knee-jerk admin actions and as such was technically "wheel-warring". This may not have led to sanctions from ArbCom, but it was part of a wider disputes which ended up at arbitration. This decision was not taken lightly, nor alone, but the responsibility was mine. At the time I thought that the editor in question would persist with a course of unacceptable behaviour until finally blocked for good. Regrettably, that ultimately proved to be the case, but not until after several more ArbCom cases. Twelve years is a long time ago - many editors have not been around that long - and I have a clean block record. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:09, 12 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: I've been a Wikipedia editor for nearly twenty years now. I was recently re-elected as lead co-ordinator of the Military History project. As such I am frequently called upon to perform various administrative tasks even though I am not an admin. I am an autopatroller, file mover, new page reviewer, mass message sender and template editor. I feel I can make a contribution as an admin. I am in a different time zone to most, so can particularly help in areas where a quick response is warranted. One area I am particularly interested in helping out at WP:DYK, where there are often logjams due to no admin being available to promote the queues. I have a lot of experience in this area, having written or expanded 480 DYK articles and having worked on assembling prep areas. I would like to help reduce our backlogs, especially those at WP:RPP and WP:RM that most impact the content creation process.

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

A: I am particularly proud of my work on featured articles. Initially, I wrote military articles based related to my PhD research, on the Second World War in the South West Pacific Area, like Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines, Admiralty Islands campaign, Landing at Nadzab, and Battle of Sio. I am particularly interested in logistics, and wrote on Allied logistics in the Kokoda Track campaign, British logistics in the Falklands War, British logistics in the Normandy Campaign and American logistics in the Western Allied invasion of Germany (love the image I found for that one). I also wrote articles on the Manhattan Project, such as Robert Oppenheimer, and astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I have conducted article writing workshops and was Wikipedian in Residence with Paralympics Australia, writing up my experiences in Paris 2024 for The Signpost

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: You cannot be active for twenty years without some conflicts. Over ten years ago I was desysopped by ArbCom. I have now been on Wikipedia for nearly twenty years and have never been blocked or banned. I have not appeared before ArbCom since that case over ten years ago. If this RfA is successful, you have my word that I will work quietly and diligently, and use the administrative tools to help build the encyclopaedia.

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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.

Optional question from Cryptic

4. What on earth did you realistically expect to happen as a result of Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 37#Review request? —Cryptic 00:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

A: I did not expect anything to happen or change as a result. I merely posed a question for my own edification about whether a close RfA could be appealed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?

A: To support the process! I felt that the standard RfA process had become too adversarial and intimidating, and was was deterring qualified editors from nominating. As a result, the number of active admins has been steadily declining. When people emailed me suggesting that I should run, I was still a bit hesitant. I did not want to be one of a small number of editors running, but I very much wanted the trial to succeed. I was one of the editors who pressed for this reform, most recently and back when it was first proposed years ago. I therefore delayed throwing my hat in the ring. I hope that my doing so encouraged others to also put their name forward! As it happened, a lot of other people delayed nominating until the eleventh hour (in one case, literally). We are still a long way from arresting the decline in active admins, but I believe this will be a step forward. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. In 2023, at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Glencora Ralph/1, you said "There is no point in GAR at all." (referring to the process as a whole) and that the article containing no information on her career post 2012 (including a 2016 Olympics appearance) was "Not a reason for GAR. WP:SOFIXIT applies." Do you stand by those comments about the GAR process?

A: No, that was hyperbole. A GA should address the main aspects of the topic. This is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles. It allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics. This includes articles that are not up to date. The sad fact is that we don't have enough editors to keep everything up to date and mass nominating articles at GAR defeats its purpose of reviewing and improving articles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Novem Linguae

7. It looks like two editors recently claimed that you have a COI related to Australian Olympics articles. Can you please summarize what is going on at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Alison Creagh? It is hard to follow.

A: Back in 2011, the Australian Paralympic Committee (now called Paralympics Australia) initiated a project to document its history. This included collecting documents and museum pieces and conducting oral history interviews with Paralympians. An online component was recognised as being important, and Wikipedia was identified as part of that. So they contacted Wikimedia Australia, and a joint endeavour began, called the "History of the Paralympic movement in Australia". I was brought into the project in 2012 as an experienced editor, albeit one with no knowledge of Paralympic sports whatsoever. I attended the 2012 Paralympic Games in London as a journalist with accreditation supplied by the Australian Paralympic Committee.

Later that year I was asked by the president of Wikimedia Australia to become the Wikipedian in Residence at the Australian Paralympic Committee. It should be emphasised that Wikimedia Australia was eager to be able to say that it had a Wikipedian in Residence, but no pay was offered, because Wikimedia Australia had run out of money. Nor would I have accepted any, because I had a full-time job, I would have had to seek permission from my employer, which might not have been forthcoming, and, above all, my very busy work schedule precluded me from devoting any fixed amount of time to it. Instead, we agreed that I would contribute what I could, when I could. Neither myself nor my predecessor was ever physically present at Paralympics Australia's headquarters in Sydney, except for a edit-a-thon held there in 2018, but I conducted a series of edit-a-thons and workshops around Australia until Paralympics Australia ran out of money as well, and terminated their part of the project in 2020.

Nonetheless, a small but devoted group of us continued to work on articles about Australian paralympians, coaches and administrators, and Australians at the Paralympic Games. As related in The Signpost, I obtained a media accreditation from Paralympics Australia for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games for myself and another wikimedian as a freelance journalist and photographer from Wikimedia Australia. By "freelance", I mean we were not employees of Wikimedia Australia; I am just a member of that organisation. As far as the International Paralympic Committee was concerned, we were just non-rights news media, like the folks from the newspapers, radio, Getty images and the rest. As such I updated many articles related to the games and created new ones. Amongst these was an article on the new president of Paralympics Australia. In Paris I found that she had no article, so I created one. As was my usual practice, I submitted the new article to DYK to get some more eyes on it. Another editor raised the possibility of a COI in writing an article on a person who heads an organisation with which I have an association through wikipedia. I did not think so, but I left it for a uninvolved editor to make a determination. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?

A: There certainly are such areas. I have been around a long time and have been involved in many parts of the content creation and bot processes, but I freely admit that I do not know everything. One area I know absolutely nothing about that immediately comes to mind is sock puppet investigations. I have have never been involved in that aspect of Wikipedia at all. (I do not plan to participate in that area, due to unfamiliarity with it, but I have said that I am always willing to help out with any area.) I would read through our policies, and information pages, particularly the Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Administrators instructions, and look through the current cases and archives of discussions. I would seek out an admin with experience in that particular area as a mentor. Until I became confident in the area, I would refer decisions to her. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Just Step Sideways

7. You have commented in your nom and in one of your answers to the standard questions about why you were desysoped, but it seems a bit short on the actual details. The committee in fact passed three findings related exclusively to your behavior[1], specifically that you wheel warred, that you made personal attacks on a user you had just blocked, and that you did these things after a previous admoinishment from the committee regarding the involved admin policy. Now, it's been a long time and this community can be wonderfully forgiving if one owns up to their own errors, what would you say to those who feel you still have not really done that, up to and including right here in this discussion?

A:

Discussion

• Links for Hawkeye7: Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Hawkeye7 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.

• where there are often logjams due to no admin being available to promote the queues -> you already have template editor rights, and DYK recently reduced protection of queues to template editor, so you can already do that. (In my opinion that action makes no sense, but I'm uninvolved there so will leave it at that) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  I did not know that proposal got up! (Makes no sense to me either, but I guess they are getting desperate.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

• While I've posed a tough question above, I also feel the need to comment that I have worked with Hawkeye7 multiple times at FAC and found his editing to be exemplary, in terms of research, accuracy, and ability to create engaging prose and properly summarize. I definitely learned from his editing in making my own forays at FAC. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
• I think it's worth pointing out this user's two previous attempts to gain the mop after their desysopping. There's also this current conflict of interest noticeboard discussion mentioned in the questions. Graham87 (talk) 01:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  Hi Graham87! Haven't seen you since that last Paralympics Australia workshop in Perth! Hope you are doing well. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)