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Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/The Squirrel Conspiracy

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The following is preserved as a closed administrator election discussion. No further discussion on these pages is permitted. Please visit the voting page for next steps.

Nomination

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The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello! I'm The Squirrel Conspiracy. I previously edited as Sven Manguard for a long time and as Nezzadar for a shorter time before that. Over a decade ago, I had an RfA that was unsuccessful because I was worried you could get from Nezzadar to my real identity. Now I don't really care about that. I'm an admin on Commons and Wikidata, so I know what the mop entails, and while it isn't recent, I have a solid track record writing articles. I make no promises that I'm going to be a high volume contributor as an admin on this project - that's why I've avoided a traditional RfA - but I do promise to stay around and help out where I can, in areas where I feel comfortable that I'd be knowledgable enough (for example, if WP:FFD ever gets backlogged, it would be an easy place for me to slide in).

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Yes, I accept.

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

No, I have not.

Questions for the candidate

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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 am an admin on Commons (currently my primary project), and often tackle cross-wiki spam and vandalism. Having the mop here would make that work easier for me and alleviate some of the burden on other admins when spam and vandalism here needs deleting/revdeling. Additionally, having the ability to see deleted contributions would be very helpful in investigating potential cross-wiki spam and vandalism (often I'll see a file was uploaded on Commons as part of the creation of a page on this project, which was subsequently deleted).
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I've done a lot of things over the last fifteen years. I proposed the Filemover right and created 45 articles, a handful of featured lists, and 17 good articles. Architecture of the Song dynasty will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first GA and because I worked on it with User:NickDupree, who has sadly passed away.

Noways, I've scaled my time on Wikipedia way back, as the time and energy I used to have for major writing projects has been consumed by my career and side gig. Instead, I'm primarily active on Commons, where I can drop in for 15 or 30 minutes at a time and do a bunch of work that doesn't require much day-to-day continuity. My recent work on this project centers around fighting cross-wiki spam and vandalism.

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: It's impossible to be on a large, collaborative project for 15 years and not encounter conflicts. However, I find it's helpful to keep in mind that there are plenty of other editors about and no issue needs to be resolved by me alone. If I think I'm getting heated, I disengage and let other folks step in.

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 Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I came up in the era where RfA was a deeply involved - at times even vicious - process. I didn't see a traditional RfA as being worth it - either in time or emotional bandwidth - for the amount and type of mop usage I'd anticipate being able to contribute. When I saw the call for volunteers for the admin election, I figured it would be a low stakes way to go about seeing if the community had any interest in giving the mop to someone for a few hours a month of admin gnome work.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. 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: I don't see myself participating on the admin noticeboards, articles for deletion, or requests for permissions on this project. I already do those kinds of things on Commons and the need for my time there is arguably greater. If I were to take on work that I'm not doing at the moment, it would probably be around DYK, as I used to prepare sets there a while ago. Should that change, I would ease myself into the new responsibilities, looking at current policy and what other admins are doing, before I kick the training wheels off.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. You write "Nowadays, I've scaled my time on Wikipedia way back" and you haven't made more than 83 edits a month since 2020. If elected, do you foresee your editing activity per month on Wikipedia changing?
A: Not really, no. Commons is my main project, and I spend a dozen plus hours a week there. As bad as the admin-to-workload situation is here, it's much, much worse on Commons, too. I'm requesting the mop here purely so that when cross-wiki anti-spam and anti-vandalism work carries from from Commons to here, I have the tools to resolve the issues without needing to add to the workload of the existing local admins. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 04:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Discussion

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 77.40% match rate, n of 53. 2 keep !votes to 53 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only 9 in the last year; most of this data is from 2020. Given the candidate's stated reasons for running I don't think any of this is terribly relevant (in particular, I think anyone worried about high delete !vote ratios shouldn't be, given their emphasis on cleaning up cross-wiki spam). More relevant is the approach, so here are his two noms from the past year: [1], [2]. Both successful, and both appropriately open to discussion ("appears to" fail GNG, etc). No real flags, red or otherwise. -- asilvering (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GAN & FAC notes. Two reviews at GAN not long after account creation, in 2015 and 2016. Both are reasonably detailed. Nine nominations at GAN; most in 2020, several of which were quickfailed. GAN stats are here. Eight FAC reviews -- list is here; five are image reviews, and several were opposes on copyright grounds, e.g. this one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the quickfailed GANs, I used the best available sources I could find, but the reviewer didn't feel they were reliable enough, and considering that there just weren't better sources covering competitive Super Smash Bros players, I abandoned the effort to see them through GAN. If I recall correctly, they were all already nominated before the first one failed. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 05:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Declined speedies

  • U5 en:User talk:Ozzie Ostrichorange 2023-10-04T07:52:41Z
    • Was an advertisement. Admin truncated page instead of deleting.
  • G3 en:Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Dream Craft 2022-09-05T04:08:46Z
    • Converted to PROD and subsequently deleted. Then restored as a subpage of list of hoaxes.
  • G12 en:Drug policy of South Korea 2020-07-13T17:05:06Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead of deleting.
  • G5 en:Virti Vaghani 2020-07-13T03:25:37Z
    • I don't remember this one. I must have saw something that made me think it was a sock, and the admin must have saw something that indicated otherwise.
  • U1 en:Turbopolsa 2020-06-26T22:16:57Z
    • This was from when it was a sandbox page in my own userspace.
  • G12 en:Drug policy of South Korea 2020-06-16T00:40:31Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead.
  • A7 en:Rebecca Win 2020-04-16T04:42:30Z
    • I converted this to an AfD, and then withdrew that after editors found Burmese-language sources.
  • F8 en:File:Makassar Script alphabet-2.png 2020-03-21T07:24:51Z
    • IIRC it was the same file when I filed the request, then someone cleaned up the pixelation on the Commons file.
  • G12 en:Petite France (theme park) 2016-01-09T01:50:10Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead.

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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