Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gatoclass 2

Gatoclass

Voice your opinion (talk page) (6/0/0); Scheduled to end 07:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC).

Gatoclass (talk · contribs) - Gatoclass is a fine user that I am nominating for adminship. We first met when he kept preparing the next updates for DYK on Christmas Eve and Christmas (December 25 2007). I gave him a special one-of-a-kind barnstar because I was so impressed with his timeliness and perseverance. We ended up combining to do almost all eight updates on those two days. He has been one of the most productive contributors with loading the next update; he has probably prepared more updates than anyone else since December. He always has to find an admin to update the list on the main page. If this RFA is successful, we would use his experience to help with DYK updates. An extra pair of trustworthy admin hands is always sorely needed.

Gatoclass is one of the most productive DYK contributors; he has 76 DYK articles in his 12,000 edits. He has waited a self-imposed six months since his first self-nom RFA. I believe that he is a very solid candidate who should have been an admin a long time ago. Royalbroil 03:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Co-nom by Bencherlite. I entirely agree with Royalbroil and am delighted to put forward Gatoclass for the community's consideration. When I started helping out at DYK, I just assumed Gatoclass was an admin and was rather surprised to learn that he was unable to take the final step of loading the DYK selection onto the main page. DYK is Wikipedia's "shop window" for new articles: it is the section of the main page that is updated most frequently, it is the best chance that many contributors have of seeing their work highlighted on the main page, and the longer there is between updates, the fewer articles get picked. At present, Gatoclass has to make requests like this when DYK is overdue. His list of articles he has created comes to an impressive 183. His contributions to discussion at DYK are polite and well-considered: I've not seen him biting newbies, for example. His first attempt on RfA went a bit pear-shaped because of his phraseology about blocking, but he will have learned from that and the six months since then (NB admirable self-restraint: not one of those who pops up every month with a self-nom) have been spent in profitable editing. The East European articles incident that Gatoclass mentions below were clearly not his finest moment, but it was some months ago and he has clearly learnt from the experience.

Gatoclass will be a fine admin for DYK purposes alone; as he eases himself slowly into other areas of adminship, I'm confident he'll be an even greater asset to the project. Bencherlite^Talk 06:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Thanks RB and Bencherlite. I accept the nomination. Gatoclass (talk) 05:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Candidate statement

I have been editing Wikipedia as a registered user for over two years now, prior to that I did occasional edits as an IP. I currently have over 12,000 edits. It was only in about September last year however that I created my first article and found it so much fun that I have since created almost 220 new articles, including 75 DYKs.

I have been involved as a reviewer and updater with DYK for seven months now, and in that time I have been gratified to have a number of administrators ask me if I would be interested in standing as an admin myself, which has given me the confidence to try again. In the event however, I decided to stick with the original commitment made in my previous RFA to wait at least another six months. It's been six months now, and consequently Royalbroil has kindly stepped forward to nominate me. Gatoclass (talk) 05:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

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

A: I've been preparing updates for DYK now since December 5th last year, so I've been involved in that for just over six months now. On numerous occasions it has been frustrating to have prepared the update and then been unable to find an active DYK admin to post it to the mainpage. Just over this last week, there have been multiple occasions when I have prepared an update, only to see it sit there until it's five, six, seven hours overdue because there are no active DYK admins. Naturally if I had the tools myself this would not be occurring, and I would also be able to relieve the workload of other DYK admins who often have difficulty finding the time when they are requested to post the update.

So basically DYK is my main interest right now. However, in the event that I am granted the tools, I feel it will be incumbent upon me to learn all aspects of adminship and to contribute in as many areas as possible, and I look forward to doing so. I do expect however, to be easing my way very slowly into additional responsibilities as I will need to thoroughly familiarize myself with the technical and policy details of each aspect as I go. To that end, I will certainly be attending admin school, and probably seeking some admin coaching as well.

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

A: My primary interest in the encyclopedia is definitely new content creation, and as I said in my previous RFA, I like to think my best contributions are ahead of me :) My most comprehensive article to date is still Western Pipe and Steel Company, an article that was quite a challenge to put together and that I spent a lot of time on. I also enjoyed writing Joshua Hendy Iron Works because I found it such an interesting company, Creusot steam hammer was another enjoyable piece of industrial archaeology, and a recent creation, Casco class monitor, was fun to write (and hopefully, to read). But I have many more articles in the pipeline that I am looking forward to putting together.

A secondary interest is dispute resolution, I can often see both sides of a content dispute which I like to think helps me find a middle ground between various POVs. I think I demonstrated my ability in that regard when I brokered the Joseph Stalin#Number of victims section which was a notorious battleground when I first came to it, the compromise edit I finally wrote back in 2006 has remarkably stood with barely a tweak for over two years now, which is pretty incredible considering what a battleground it was previously. Unfortunately, I have been too busy with content creation and DYK to contribute much recently in the area of dispute resolution, but I'm hoping to do more in the future.

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: Yes, I have, as I have an interest in some politically contentious areas. However, as I stated in my previous RFA, the worst conflict I have had was with User:Philip Baird Shearer over content at the List of wars and disasters by death toll page, a page into which I had put a huge amount of work and which PBS then proceeded to basically gut with little consultation. He and I had diametrically opposing approaches, I was content to allow the page to evolve organically (as it had been doing in leaps and bounds), he wanted to legislate everything prior. Progress ground to a halt and after weeks of arm-wrestling I finally decided to ditch the page as it just wasn't worth the headaches. In spite of my frustrations however, at no stage did I descend into incivility.

More recently (in about January this year), I inadvertently stumbled upon the hornet's nest of East European articles when I attempted to place a neutrality tag on Denial of the Holodomor page, sparking a debacle which only ended when I and the half dozen editors who opposed me were all slapped with editing restriction notices. I still believe the notice was completely unjustified in my own case, but accepted it with little complaint as I believe it was imposed in good faith. I note that if the same were to occur today, the restriction could not have been imposed in my case since I had not been made aware of the general restriction before I made the one injudicious comment (in the face of a barrage of personal attacks) for which I was pinged.

At the end of the day I did accept some responsibility for the debacle, in that I accepted that I had behaved somewhat dickishly in putting the article up for AFD, but by and large I regard the whole incident as an unfortunate series of misunderstandings rather than a serious dispute. I have been engaged in no disputes since. Gatoclass (talk) 05:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

General comments

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

RfAs for this user:

• Requests for adminship/Gatoclass
• Requests for adminship/Gatoclass 2

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

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Gatoclass before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Support. I've seen Gatoclass editing for a long time. He's done a lot of good work, is careful about what he says and does, and in all likelihood the extra power will only make him more careful. (Would have nommed him myself.) So here's my glob of vaseline.John Z (talk) 05:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
2. Beat the other co-nom support. Bencherlite^Talk 07:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
3. hjk( ) -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
4. Support. BorgQueen (talk) 08:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
5. Support I've gone back to January reviewing contributions and it all looks good stunning. Clearly you need the tools for T:DYK - as well as your prolific creation of articles and DYK hooks your desire to help at this often overdue page is admirable. In addition allthough I saw some talk page comments that made me pause, in reality you responded calmly and rationally. Occasional input at project areas like AN and RFA are sound. Informative edit summaries when making changes other than tweaks. Also constant reference to policies in these edit summaries, or when delaing with (for example) tricky BLP issues on DYK hooks. Very much a net positive to the project without the tools, and can only help further with the bit. Best Wishes. Pedro :  Chat  08:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
6. Support hardworking editors usually make good admins Alex Bakharev (talk) 08:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)