Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hersfold 2

Hersfold

Voice your opinion (talk page) (10/4/0); Scheduled to end 01:18, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Hersfold (talk · contribs) - I am Hersfold, and I've been a member of Wikipedia for eight months and seven days, according to the little userbox on my page. In that time, I've participated in several aspects of the project, including the CVU, new page CSD patrols, the Help Desk, the IRC help channel, Motto of the Day, rather extensively at Articles for creation, Articles for Deletion, a couple GA reviews, some article cleanup and writing, template writing, and I've recently started in the Adopt-a-user program. There are probably a few others that I've missed, but if so, my involvement in them hasn't been too high.

I'm a dedicated editor to the encyclopedia willing to do just about anything that is needed. My edit count is over 5,000 edits, with most of them coming from areas such as the help desk and AFC. I did have one previous RfA which I withdrew when it was clear the consensus was heading towards "not enough experience." I hope I've gained the experience everyone was looking for and have earned their trust to help out the 'pedia as much as I am able. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Co-nomination by KTC: Gee Hersfold, I was going to do the nominating! :D Everywhere I go on Wikipedia, I seems to run into Hersfold, or at least his edits. He deals with questions, from newbies or even the more experienced, with patience; his edits shows a lot of effort spend in fighting vandalism. He has shown he understand policies by his response on the help desk / helpme request, his participation in community process such as RFA & AFD. In turns of editing, he has also spend a lot of time reviewing and processing AFC as he has already stated. I believe he will make a very good and very helpful admin. -- KTC 02:08, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Gee, lemme think... I accept. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. You may wish to answer the following optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

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

A: I have just started college, so to start out with I'm probably going to be looking for some tasks that can be completed in short sections of time. I will definitely work on backlog clearing - I've had some good experience with that at AFC (678.16 articles in the recent drive - that's 677 full reviews, and a half-review and a two-thirds-review, if anyone's wondering about the decimal.). I've also had plenty of experience with vandal-fighting, so might work in the AIV department and RFPP, although I've not as much experience in the latter, I will freely admit. Deletion patrols will be a part of my admin workload as well, mainly CSD but also with closing out AFD's and expired PRODs.

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

A: I'm quite proud of my work at AFC clearing out the backlogs - I just missed first place, about 20 articles behind davidwr, and about 50 in front of the third-place runner. That was a lot of work, but together the AFC Wikiproject managed to clear out a year's worth of unreviewed archives, and I am pleased to have contributed so much. I've also done some work in the mainspace, mainly with the articles Liberty High School, Carroll County, Maryland (rewrote to proper format), Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park (started as stub and contributed a pic, which is now gone), and Carcross Desert (started as stub and expanded to start-class). I'm also quite proud of my recent adoptee and my other work helping others out at the help desk and "in the field." My graphic design has also helped out, designing three barnstars (one two three) as well as the logo for WPAFC. I also added a lot of the {{tltt}} codes with SebastianHelm at WP:UTM and designed the templates {{nn-welcome}} and {{uw-bite}}, for CSD warnings and anti-biting, respectively.

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: None that were overly serious - when I first came in and didn't quite have the grasp of things, I had a bit of an issue where I tried to stop an edit war and didn't really go about it the right way (see here). Another time I tried to point out a somewhat bitey edit by another user and he got a bit annoyed about the comment (linky). Those were both several months ago, and I haven't had any major conflicts since, only the occasional vandal getting pissed because I reverted his edits. In all cases (including the pissed-off vandals), I've tried to deal with the situation as politely and calmly as possible - on the internet, it's impossible to use inflection to help indicate your meaning, so I've tried to be very careful in what I say and how, and will always remember to do so in the future. I adhere as closely as I am able to AGF and civility, and am more than willing to apologize when I don't (which I have done more than once, I'll admit).

Please ask additional questions, I'll try to get to them as soon as possible. If I don't respond in a day, give me a ping on my talk page or email me.

General comments

• See Hersfold's edit summary usage with mathbot's tool. For the edit count, see the talk page.

RfAs for this user:

• Requests for adminship/Hersfold
• Requests for adminship/Hersfold 2
• Requests for adminship/Hersfold 3

• Links for Hersfold: Hersfold (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

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Please keep criticism constructive and polite. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Hersfold before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Strong support as co-nom. KTC 02:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Support he is a exellent editor and can be trusted with the mop. -Flubeca^Talk 02:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Strong Support great editor as shown in his contribs. Very experienced and deserves the tools. --Hdt83 _Chat 02:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Support An excellent editor. Unlikely to abuse admin tools. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 02:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
5. A little more mainspace activity would be nice, but I support anyway, for his great work at the Help Desk and AFC. --Boricuaeddie 02:32, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
6. Support - Exellent contributions to the projectspace. --Hirohisat ^Kiwi 02:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
7. Support per above. NHRHS2010 ^Talk 02:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
8. Support as nothing I have seen makes me believe this user would misuse the tools. - Philippe | Talk 03:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
9. Strong support For reasons above. Cheers,JetLover 03:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
10. Support A good editor and impartial unlikely to abuse tools.Harlowraman 04:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
11. Weak Support The comments by JayHenry who I respect a great deal left me leaning to oppose. However a review of your last 2000 contributions shows an enormous amount of civility, a genuine desire to help the community and new contributors and you certainly seem able to cite policy. Wether you fully understand the policies is my concern, so I'd advise you to be careful if granted the buttons - however on balance I see no reason not to trust this editor to do the right things. Best. Pedro |  Chat  07:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
12. Strong support No need to ask my usual newcomer question - A brilliant user who assumes good faith--Pheonix15 10:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
13. Support No evidence that this user would abuse the buttons --SXT4^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 10:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose You are a good editor but I think you need more time. You have low main space contributions. But it's looking at two of your most recent AFD contributions that leaves me believing you're not ready. You recently argued to keep the guy in that one Mike Jones rap video, and voted to delete this. You described Bertrand Russell as "apparently notable." When challenged about this, instead of checking whether or not he's one of the most important thinkers in the history of human civilization (which he is), you said "Just because I may not know who this person is, does not mean I don't understand Wikipedia policy." Actually, when you fail to look at any context, it does. I don't like to oppose off a few diffs, but in this one discussion alone you failed to understand at the very least WP:SOAP (not even close), WP:NOTE, WP:V and WP:DP. I'm sorry, but I don't trust you evaluating the deletion of articles until you've had more experience. --JayHenry 03:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

   Ok, thanks for the comments. I'll try to work on that. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:05, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

2. Weak Oppose per lack of Mainspace editing, as well as per JayHenry. Jmlk17 03:59, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

   User has 885 mainspace edits... out of curiosity, how many are enough? --SXT4^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 10:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

   I have been here about 6 months, and have over 1,100 mainspace edits! Politics rule 12:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

3. Oppose I don't think Hersfold would purposely abuse the tools but the Bertrand Russell incident is an ominous sign. Not knowing about Russell is no crime of course. However participating in the AfD about a book without taking the time to follow the link to the author is sloppy and as JayHenry noted, the ensuing stubborness isn't reassuring. I also found a lot of reliance on Google searches to determine notability [1] [2]. In some cases, Google may be a pretty good indicator but it's still a superficial one. I will probably support in the future but as of now, I have to oppose. Pascal.Tesson 05:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Oppose per JayHenry and Pascal.Tesson. I likewise agree that Hersfold wouldn't abuse the tools and think he is a fine editor who does great work at AFC, but am compelled to oppose for the following reasons:
   • The Why I Am Not a Christian AfD incident is too recent to overlook. When the key issue is the notability of the subject, one should generally comment only after checking for sources, especially if someone else has made a reason argument for keeping (as was the case in the above-mentioned AfD).
   • I was also uncomfortable with this comment; specifically, I thought that the suggestion to create a BJAODN WikiProject went against the spirit and letter of WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY when one factors in the fact that BJAODN was just supposed to be a 'fun' distraction.
   • Finally, in this AfD earlier this month you suggested merging multiple articles and then deleting them. Per the GFDL this is technically not permitted (at least not unless someone manually merges the article histories).

   If you hang around AfD some more (either as an observer or participant), you'd probably be a shoo-in at a future RfA (assuming this one doesn't succeed). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 07:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

5. Oppose - I don't oppose very often these days, but I think some more experience is needed, per the reasons provided by Black Falcon and JayHenry; the Bertrand Russell comment Jay cites in particular makes me think another few months of familiarisation would be beneficial. Neil ム 10:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
6. Not knowing who Russell was isn't great but not bothering to look him up before commenting at the AfD shows a lack of care which would be very worrying for someone with admin powers. "References could probably be found (I don't really have the time to check myself at the moment), and it could be arguably notable as the author is apparently notable himself. However, it is a borderline WP:SOAP, and could perhaps provide a bit more background and a bit less quoted material." Reading it again I'm speechless actually. Nick mallory 12:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
7. Weak Oppose Lack of mainspace edits. Politics rule 12:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Neutral