Meta:Requests for adminship/Base

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a closed Meta-Wiki request. Please do not modify it.

Base edit

Base (talk • contribs • count • logs • page moves • block log • CA • email)

Ending 16 November 2015 20:25 UTC

Extended for 48 hours, to close on 18/nov/2015

Hi. I would like to try to get a sysop flag in here. I hope that I do meet the subjective activeness criterion. I am mostly active here around translations and translate adminship though from time to time I do other kinds of things. (e.g. run my bot).

I have a sysop flag in 8 wikis (yeah, sounds hat-collectish) which are 2 content wikis (ukwn (temporary), ukwq), 1 chapter wiki (+crat, because of my audcomm membership in there), 1 test wiki and the rest are actually forks of Meta-wiki being Outreachwiki and several Wikimania's wikis so if we group it it's actually just 3 actual flags of ukwn, ukwq and [metawikis] :).

It must be mentioned so that nobody accuses me of hiding it (it is on my userpage but anyways) that I have a "dark background" of being emergency desysopped in ukwiki 3 years ago. 7 of 8 flags mentioned as well as translateadmin flags, wmf wiki acc and otrs membership were obtained in years following that so I hope that this point in my wikilife does not causes problems here.

Here's link to my sulinfo in case I have forgotten something.

Well to the point.

What has triggered me finally applying here for the flag is just another complaining in ukwiki about CN banner being in Russian (it happens regularly with about every third banner. CN/Meta-admins approve Russian translation forget to approve Ukrainian translation in time thus Russian fallback is being applied and many Ukrainian users become very angry with accusing WMF and whoever in russificating them and whatever). It would be nice to have the rights to approve the translations as well as it won't be useless to have other CN related rights (like creating or editing them) since I am a WMUA member, involved in WLM, WLE, ESPC ukrainian parts' organisation to some extent. Perhaps in case this nomination turns unsuccessful I will also apply for CN adminship.
Then I would like to have access to local interface messages localisation. It's mostly what I have sysop flags on Wikimanias' wikis for. I already have some contibutions in here in ns8 but there's still left what to translate.
I am not very active in cvn stuff but to have rollback and delete rights would be nice. Hard to say how much active I was in this in the past particularly because I cannot view my deleted contribs
I am active around files so sysop flag would allow me to e.g. clean list of files with the same name as on Commons as well as to try to do something about rest of files in here. I do believe that local wikis should have 0 files and Meta's empty EDP is a good thing for moving towards this here, following the procedures of WM:RFD, of course.
I would also like to apply changes to interwiki map and other similar pages (white/black lists whatever) but those I am going to do after getting a consultation from users who has made it before so that I do not miss something.

Though it's quite much I have listed but I cannot guarantee mega activity. It won't be low activity either though. In case I am elected at all, that is :)

P.S. As you have noticed being able to express my thoughts in short piece of text is not a skill of mine :)

--Base (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Please could you explain more about why you were emergency desysopped on ukwiki? It appears that you were blocked for vandalizing the sitenotice on that project. Then repeatedly unblocked yourself until a steward stepped in. Is this correct? If so, you will appreciate that people will have concerns about trusting you with rights that can effect every WMF wiki... WJBscribe (talk) 16:02, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like I can trust Base given all my past interactions with this user, but the desysop on ukwiki is still somewhat concerning. However, considering it was three years ago and Base has been trusted with admin rights on multiple wikis since then, I don't think anything like that will happen again. PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:40, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll explain in details. In smaller text so that those not interested do not have to scroll too much. Ctrl + in case you need zoom. Just few days after I was elected a sysop on ukwiki there was a bill of a law which was to criminalize slander was considered in Ukrainian parliament. Activists found that that bill does not have a clear definition of what is a slander so they decided it may be used as an instrument of regime by accusing any non-loyal to government or president in slander and thus imprisoning them. Some ukwiki contributors thought that it might damage Wikipedia by lessening quantity of independent sources as well as possibly also being a threat to wikipedians who write about politics especially politicians in power. They initiated a vote for ukwiki to place a banner protesting against the bill. Though they were in rather majority there were against opinions as well. Mine was that as long as wikipedians follow BLP they are out of threat and per what Wikipedia is not WP is not a soapbox so political banners are to be kept out of it, there are better platforms for manifesting one's political position. The vote wasn't properly made known to the community by watchlist notice as is required for such important things. It was I who placed it after all. The common timespan for votes in ukwiki is 1 week but this one lasted iirc ~4 days and even less was in WL notice. Many opponents did not thus have a chance to express their opinion. Basing on all this especially on WP is not a soapbox and the length I decided to use all I can for keeping WP withing its 5 pillars. So to the night of 1st October (iirc the date was when the bill was to be considered in the second reading in the parliament) I had prepared a bot which will remove the banner from sitenotice as well as unban me in case I am banned (iirc it was doing it every 2m or so, the source code of the bot is on my talk page's archive in ukwiki so if someone wants it might be looked at). I started this bot using my main acc with sysop rights and went to sleep. When I woke up the next day I found that I have been first stopped by an abuse filter (by user AS iirc) and then emergency desysopped by Vituzzu on NickK's request in IRC. It was a bad decision to make and I should have rather tried to draw attention of more people against it as well as use Meta for getting an opinion / action from global community concerning the vote being held, but, well, what was done was done, I do not have a time travel machine to fix stuff in the past. I will not repeat something like that of that I can assure you. As I have mentioned I have a WMF wiki access, an OTRS access, translate adminships (allows to spam 1000 or so translators in one click :) ), sysop flags in important for wikimedians wikimania wikis, and important for outreach outreach wiki which is being visited by wikimedia movement partners. I am also a WMUA member which implies attending some events with glams and of the kind. I already have many ways to affect WMF wikis already. Actually I know wiki/Mediawiki good enough to know how it can be affected even without special rights or accesses. But I cannot remember me affecting the wikis in a damaging way since that accident. I dearly know what are the consequences of doing something silly because of this point in my wikilife and that's not what I possibly want to repeat. Another thing is that after over 4 years I am a wikimedian I do not have the energy I used to have. Usually I avoid or quite passively participate in any big prone to drama places like votes about banners (ukwiki had many since then both politics involving and not. Has one now as you can see). But sure it is up to you whether you trust me and I cannot be objective towards myself (many of what I have written may look like excuses perhaps), I just ask that you do not make your judgement basing on just those ~30 actions 3 years ago I cannot make disappear of several tens of thousand (that's if you do not count the bot :) ) I have made on wikis :) P.S. My sysopship on ukwiki also consisted of ~400 non-damaging actions, there's still a for-several-years admin who has less actions than me. Just so that you not think that the bad abuse was the only thing I have made there :) P.P.S. I am sorry, it's another long post from me. --Base (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. As I was already mentioned above, I will comment here. The issue here is that while Base can be good at translations or technical stuff, Base is not good with any community-related issues: if he has his own point, he will most likely do everything to push it (up to WP:POINT). That situation with emergency desysop in Ukrainian Wikipedia was just because Base could not accept the fact that banner was to be displayed on 1st October (because there was a national campaign on that date involving dozens of leading websites) and stated that community discussion should last exactly 7 days. It was clear from the beginning that discussion will be closed on 1st October but Base decided to disrupt Wikipedia just to illustrate his point that discussion should have lasted exactly 7 days. Since then I have also observed a few more cases where Base disagreed with some actions for purely procedural reasons (e.g. an arbitration request requesting asking Arbitration Committee to dissolve itself), thus I do not think that this attitude has changed. As adminship on Meta is not just purely technical, I don't think that Base is a good candidate — NickK (talk) 23:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Found one more example, a more recent one and taking place on Meta (I assume I have some COI as I was also involved in this discussion). Here is a lengthy discussion, initiated by Base on ukwiki and moved to Meta following his block on ukwiki, where Base stated that ArbCom decision is invalid as it was signed just with --~~~~ and not with Support--~~~~. This was a WP:POINT to illustrate Base's idea that ukwiki ArbCom is bad and should not exist — NickK (talk) 12:05, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support Base clearly is an experienced user here on metawiki, who will make good use of the tools, if granted. I myself did not experience Base acting disruptively in the recent past and do not expect this to change. Vogone (talk) 10:52, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support As PiRSquared17 says, what I've seen from Base has been good, and he holds several positions of trust. The uk.wiki de-sysop is 3 years ago, and the uk.wiki Arb thing is a year old and doesn't look like that big of a deal. I say give him a shot. I don't think he'll abuse our trust. INeverCry 17:38, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support I don't see any particular reason to oppose this request. So I affix my approval and Base is a trusted user.--Grind24 (talk) 14:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support Why not? Experienced user. Alan ^(talk) 17:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, regretfully - I find myself in agreement with NickK. Also, 3 years doesn't seem like a very long time to me. WJBscribe (talk) 23:06, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support Uk.wiki and Meta.wiki communities are not the same and as far as I know the last of them haven't problems with this user. -- Ата ^(talk) 12:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
+1 we clearly need more community help with CentralNotice/Usage guidelines enforcement and other translation issues here at Meta-Wiki, for which Base has always seemed to me a thoroughly positive contributor here and elsewhere. (Disclaimer: I was told of the existence of this discussion by private IRC message, after [1].) Nemo 12:57, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nemo, is that a support? +1 is kinda ambiguous without context. ;) Regards. Theo10011 (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose basically per NickK. The POINT issues are just a disqualification in my humble opinion, and I reckon that candidate's temperament is unsuitable for meta-adminship. Not sure I endorse the idea of granting admin tools based on a "vague purpose" here on META, that is to say, I could not see it is necessary for you to become a adminship in view of the fact that your contribution is mainly translation. Sorry,--Infinite0694 (Talk) 15:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
TBH, I don't see how the issue will affect how well the user uses the tools here. So, support. Jianhui67^{talk★contribs} 16:07, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per PiRsquared. I've seen Base around, seems like a genuine contributor and a positive for the community. I hope he remains active and helps with translations for uk in future. Good luck! Theo10011 (talk) 16:14, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 23:00, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Bureaucrat note: At this moment, this RfA is very borderline. To favor a clear consensus in favor or against promotion, I think it is fair and thus have decided to avail myself in the prerrogative given to Meta-Wiki bureaucrats and therefore I extend the duration of this RfA for 48 hours, to close on 18th November 2015 @ 20:25 (UTC). —Marco Aurelio 22:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 years isn't a long time? Also, per Jianhui67. eurodyne (talk) 03:14, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per above. --MF-W 13:26, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support I rather trust the user with tools and hopefully he will make best of it Mardetanha ^talk 19:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Making my support explicit (per my comment above). PiRSquared17 (talk) 15:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support, in overall I've seen Base as a great user and I do trust that he will use his tools wisely on Meta. --Stryn (talk) 18:12, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Vote cast after closing time. —Marco Aurelio 16:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, being a sysop on meta can require diplomatic abilities, which in my opinion have not been demostrated yet. Sa vh ^ñ 23:34, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Vote cast after closing time. —Marco Aurelio 16:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Successful. Should have been closed earlier, but I was away. I have discounted votes from Stryn and Savh as I explicitly extended the request for 48 hours, and those were cast after the closing date and time. With that in mind, we have 12 supports and 4 opposes, which makes the required 75% of approval required for being promoted. As such I'm giving Base the admin rights. However I must say that if we look at the RfA archive, we can see that most RfA passes or not very clearly, and that it is not that often to see this kind of borderline RfAs. The community has some concerns with Base, and while he's been supported for the job, I'd hope Base works on the issues pointed above. Thanks. —Marco Aurelio 16:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The apparent lag with this post against the closure date is intentional. Now, that it's over a week, there are, though relatively few, some my actions as a Meta admin to be looked at. I invite all, who have something to comment, to my talk page to point, suggest, advise me what I should improve in my actions. This is not a one time invitation, please feel free to write me whenever you see it is needed. I believe and hope such would be best way to solve any concerns. Thanks again, I appreciate all the opinions and votes made during the RfA and would try to do my best. --Base (talk) 19:30, 29 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]