User talk:Genius101/Admin coaching

First steps

Please look atUser:Genius101/Admin coaching and then answer the questions in "Why do you want to be an admin?" and the "Standard RFA questions". That will give me some initial ideas of how to coach you.

--Richard (talk) 06:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Why do you want to be an admin?

You wrote "I'm not much of an article-writer, although I do have a couple DYKs." Is this an accurate self-assessment or are you being humble? Frankly, some RFA commenters will take a negative view of admin candidates who do not do a significant amount of article writing. This is a recurring issue so you can expect that your lack of article-writing experience will be seen as a negative. It's not that every admin has to be a prolific and polished article writer. However, RFA commenters expect a candidate to have done enough article writing to be familiar with the issues of WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:RS, WP:V, WP:CIVIL, WP:DR etc. If all you've done is fight vandals but have never been involved in a content dispute between two or more good-faith established editors, then people are going to feel that you do not have enough article-editing experience to be a good admin. An admin may be called upon to resolve a content disput. More importantly, an admin must be more above reproach than Caesar's wife; he/she must not violate Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and must not use admin privileges to advance his POV.

My advice is that you make an effort to become involved in article editing. Once again, you don't have to write long, sparkling articles. But make sure you get involved enough to be really familiar with how the above-mentioned issues look "in the wild". It's one thing to read about these in a Wikipedia policy or guideline. It's another thing to wrestle with them in the heat of a conflict with another editor.

--Richard (talk) 06:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

See below response. gENIUS101 18:22, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you been in any conflicts over editing?

I went to your Talk Page and read the exchange with Geo Swan about Arabic names. You weren't that rude so there's no point in suggesting to others that you were. However, the comment that "I was a bit rude before I realized who he was" could be a huge red flag. The way I read that sentence, I draw the implication that you were rude to Geo Swan until you realized who he was and then you stopped being rude because of who he was (meaning that you wouldn't have stopped being rude if he had been somebody else). You should never be rude to any editor regardless of who he/she is. Of course, there are several admins who are rude, uncivil and downright nasty. RFA commenters don't want to add to that group and you should avoid suggesting that you might be one of those.

--Richard (talk) 06:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

What I meant was that I wasn't sure if he was a troll or a good-faith editor. Looking back, I should have just AGF'd. Thanks, gENIUS101 18:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

You wrote "Other than that, there hasn't been much [conflict]." Actually, some RFA commenters will view such a statement negatively. The rationale is that someone who truly hasn't seen much conflict doesn't have adequate experience to be an admin. The logic is similar to the one above about article-editing experience. If you haven't been involved in conflict, how will you know how to resolve it? Also, how will we know how you will conduct yourself when you do become involved in conflict? It's a little like not wanting to give a teenager a gun until you know that he/she is mature enough not to use it in anger.

Now, the effects of admin privileges are, for the most part, reversible and no lasting damage is done when they are misused except for the hurt caused by their misuse and the damage to the trust that the community has in the admin corps as a whole.

It sounds strange to suggest that you should get more involved in conflict. You should not try to create conflict but it may be useful for you to observe conflict where it exists and to try to get involved in resolving the conflict as an informal mediator or just as an involved editor. Consider looking at WP:3O or WP:RFC. These are disputes where there is an existing dispute where one or more involved parties is asking for an outsider to come and provide a (hopefully) neutral and objective opinion. If you get involved often enough, you will sooner or later find a dispute where you think one side (or both) is being a total idiot, a total jerk or a downright disruptive a**hole. That's when your ability to keep your cool gets tested. What's needed is the ability to resolve a dispute even when you think the other side should be banned from Wikipedia and have his fingers cut off to make sure he never comes near a keyboard again. If you think I have felt this way from time to time, you're absolutely right. I'm no saint. I've lost my temper a couple of times. Usually, I apologize afterwards but mostly I try to avoid saying things that I'll have to apologize for afterwards.

--Richard (talk) 07:02, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I did forget about one other conflict: Jeff Halevy. From what I remember, it was one editor's pet project, while another tried to add some maintenance tags to it. Both were IP's, and started to edit war over it. The one who wrote it contacted me on my talk page for help. I think I managed to calm them both down a bit. Thanks, gENIUS101 18:22, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Status check

I see you are making good progress in working your way through the Administrator's reading list. While you needn't memorize every word of every document, understanding the broad principles in each document is a good idea. You will probably get a few questions that test your grasp of Wikipedia philosophy, policy and guidelines. Sometimes, the questions are challenging issues that are "gray" areas. You don't have to become a "policy wonk" but you don't want to come across as clueless either.

I have found this model for admin coaching and am currently adapting my model to incorporate it. I have added questions from Malinaccier's first phase onto your admin coaching page.

In particular, please take some time to answer the question about what you expect from the admin coaching process. Is this what you expected? What is working and what is not working? What can I do better?

It's hard to judge an editor's experience solely on the basis of statistics but a high-level analysis of your contributions suggests:

• your contributions to main space pages (i.e. articles) is high
• your contributions to Talk space pages (i.e. article talk pages) is relatively low,
• your contributions to User and User talk space pages is relatively high (User space is especially high and User talk is a bit high)
• your contributions to project space (i.e. Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk) pages is relatively low.

Some RFA commenters would interpret this statistics as follows:

• you do spend a significant amount of time editing articles which is good - however, this could be substantive editing, vandal fighting or automated edits using a bot. Since you indicate that you are "not much of an article-writer", this suggests vandal fighting and automated edits using Huggle. As I've stated before, you should attempt to get some more article writing experience because some RFA commenters do not favor giving admin privileges to those who are not article writers.
• you might not spend much time interacting with other users about articles. Of course, this could be explained if you prefer to discuss articles with users on their talk pages rather than on the article's talk pages. However, some people consider high edit counts in User talk space to suggest excessive socializing rather than conversation focused on article editing. RFA commenters want to see interaction with other editors over substantive content and policy issues because this is where conflict occurs. If you don't have experience in those areas, then you probably haven't seen real conflict and we have no way of judging how you would behave in such a situation.
• you appear not to have spent much time in the project space (a big negative for many RFA commenters, even great editors get dinged hard for lack of experience in project space).

Of course, the above analysis is based on edit counts and cannot evaluate the nature and quality of the actual edits nor does it take into account knowledge that you may have gained from reading a policy page or observing a conflict without actually making an edit. However, you need to understand that "edit-countitis" is endemic among RFA commenters and enough of them are infected that a wrong-looking edit count can instigate enough oppose !votes to sink an RFA. Think of edit count analysis as the qualifying process for the RFA. If you pass that analysis, then people will focus on your answers to questions and your actual edits. However, my perception is that many RFA commenters just look at the stats and vote against a candidate solely on the basis of the stats.

This is not an argument to manipulate your stats but, you do have a choice in how you spend your time on Wikipedia. Take these issues into consideration and spend time where you can gain the appropriate experience.

If you have not developed significant experience in WP:XFD (especially WP:AFD), WP:RFA, WP:RFPP, WP:3O, WP:RFC, then I recommend that you do so. RFA commenters tend to hang out in various project namespace pages such as the ones I just mentioned. If you participate there, you give them a chance to observe you in action and get to know you.

You should also spend some time reading several RFA's in WP:RFA. You can learn a lot about what RFA commenters are looking for by reading both successful and unsuccessful RFA's. The top of WT:RFA has a table that provides the status of current ongoing RFA's. Focus more on the ones that are failing. There is more to be learned there although reading the successful RFA's will give you some idea of what kinds of answers pass muster with the RFA commenters.

--Richard (talk) 16:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)