Wikipedia:Editor review/EVula

User:EVula

EVula (talk · contribs) Eventually, I'd like to be an administrator. However, I'd like to get an idea of what I need to adjust in my editing behavior before making the attempt. I think I'm a good editor, but everyone has some room for improvement; I'd just like to know what that room is. :)

Since joining in February of this year, I've gotten a little over 7,000 edits, with about 3,900 of those being mainspace edits. I have a lot of userspace edits (about a twelve hundred) since I've GUSed a few userboxes (and generally try to fix the instances myself, rather than wait for a bot to do them). I've also got a nice little collection of nominated AfDs.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback. EVula 21:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reviews

Hello, EVula, pleased to meet you. Here is my review, hopefully it will give you an idea about how you are doing.
1. First of all, as you have GUSed some userboxes, I had to take into account your latest 5,000 edits intead of your latest 2,500. This allowed me to notice you have been active since middle July. Administrators are usually expected to have not only a good number of contributions, but also activity in some months prior nomination, and the fact you have been active since July at least is a good advantage.
2. Administrators should contact users with queries, reply them, and interact with them. Out of your last 5,000 edits, you have around 220 edits in user talk pages. That is a pretty low amount, just around 5% of your total edits. As an administrator, you need to be able to easily converse with users and vandals, explain the situation, warn, give advice, and the fact that just 5% of your edits were done in such circunstances means you still lack some experience in treating them.
3. I also notice 330 edits article talk pages. Since you consider yourself a WikiGnome, that explains the fairly low rate of communication with others when trying to improve articles, as wikignomes usually spend little time in articles (arrive, do some fixes, put some tags, remove others, and leave). As you are a member of the Mortal Kombat wikiproject (I was invited to join it, but declined as I would be rather innactive), you have contact with users sharing your passion with Mortal Kombat. I suggest you to select an article and coordinate efforts of the WikiProject (or any other WikiProject you are member of) in order to make it at least a good article and, if possible, a featured article. Also, you may consider hitting Special:Random, and try to improve the article you arrive to good status. That should give you some more information about the different Wikipedia style guides. Your efforts in The Zombie Survival Guide are pretty good, the article grew quite a lot, but it can still be polished. Try checking the style guide for headings to get an idea about what else can be done. Although nobody expects you to know every style guide, it is good for practice to ask yourself: "Can I do something more?" If you don't know the answer, you can always request feedback or a peer review to get more ideas. Although it would seem an administrator does not need to know about these things, remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and every editor and administrator is expected to contribute to Wikipedia growth first and foremost.
4. Nearly 500 edits in the Wikipedia namespace may be considered low for someone who wants to become administrator as well, especially when 200 are in the WikiProject Mortal Kombat. You have contributed 12 edits in Requests for adminship and 105 in deletion discussions. However, as an administrator you will be judged not only by your behaviour, but also your ideals. The best way of knowing your criteria is to participate in discussions. People will be able to know if you are an m:inclusionist of an m:exclusionist by checking how you "vote" in XFDs, and will learn what you think a good administrator should have by your participation in RFAs.
5. Apparently you have a good summary usage, so no problem there. Both editors and administrators are expected to use them well. However, try not to say holy shit.^[1] Also try not using rvv as summary, as new users who make good faithed edit may not understand what that means. It is not harder to type reverted vandalism, in example. Also, I don't see what is so destructive about this. This would seem more like a test for me than vandalism, just like this and this. Of course, people consider vandalism to different things, but remember that administrators, as they have the power of blocking users, should be careful with what they call vandalism.
6. The way you dealt with conflicts is a good precedent. Just remember to keep your head cool, take a break when necessary, stay civil, and remember that most times you will be the more experienced editor in the discussion, and as such you will have to take a "listen and reply" or more defensive approach instead of a "speak and listen" or more offensive approach when the other lacks experience, and a more aggressive approach when he refuses to acknowledge the different policies, guidelines and style guides Wikipedia has.
I believe you have some chances at becoming administrator in a couple of months. I can't give you a more exact "feeling" about a possible nomination, as you haven't stated why you would like admin powers. Unluckily, as you have GUSed userboxes, when reviewing your contributions they "hide" the others (in example, if someone checks your last 1000 contributions only, he will see a lot of infoboxes move, but little about administrator-like tasks). Note that people will ask you to talk more with users through user and article talk pages, so it would be a good idea to begin coordinating efforts to improve an article. Good luck! -- ReyBrujo 01:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your feedback (I converted your bullets to an ordered list for ease of reply). And now to respond to you in turn:
I've actually managed to stay fairly active since March or so, though my activity has certainly been higher in the past few months than at the onset of my work on Wikipedia. I'll make sure not to do any GUSing for a while before I submit an RfA, though. ;-)

Duly noted. I've started actively warning vandals when I revert their edits, including adding a diff.

Getting the Mortal Kombat articles up to GA (or even FA) status is a long-term goal of mine, and is something that we're making progress towards even now. However, all of them suffer from having few cited sources (aside from the games themselves), which makes any large-scale effort very difficult. For now, I'm helping to develop the style guide for all MK articles, which I think is the most important place to start. Also, most of that co-ordination is being done on the project's talk pages, hence a lower number; however, once the style guide is being used consistently, I have no doubt that I'll get more involved in individual articles to address each article's unique "quirks" within the style guide's base skeleton. As an aside, I actually am familiar with the heading style guide (and never hesitate to drop heading caps as I see them); the ZSG headings break those guidelines, however, because they are named after the book's chapters (which are capitalized as such). I'm not sure which way is "proper", but I erred on the side of the source material. *shrug* Once some of the MK articles have been improved, I'll most certainly submit them for peer reviews.

Also duly noted. I've actually submitted three or four templates for deletion today/yesterday, and I'll try to become more active in both TfD and AfD than I have been in the past.

Heh, yeah, I can see how "holy shit" might not be the most descriptive and helpful edit summary ever. :-) I'll also try to steer clear of "rvv" as my entire edit summary in the future; I got into that habit while taking out vandalism at work, where I needed to make it short and sweet. I define "destructive edit" as any edit that removes more than it adds; while destructive edits are helpful in certain cases (I've done plenty), when an anon editor removes perfectly valid content without providing any rationale at all, I'll just automatically revert (if I had been a bit less familiar with the article, I probably wouldn't have done it as quickly as I did on the MK character article). I'll admit that perhaps the Nashville/cheese edit could have been labeled something other than vandalism. However, the War Stories edit was vandalism (in my eyes); the anon editor was arguing with me about the proper styling of episode names.[2][3] Even after using their talk page to explain the situation and guidelines, they continued to edit without addressing me (after I've told someone why what they are doing is wrong, if they keep on doing it, I consider it vandalism).[4][5] Eventually plange came along and backed me up (albeit while simultaneously calling me a girl at the same time,[6] but it's all good).

Yeah, I think I've handled my disputes fairly well on Wikipedia. Offline I was mad as hell, with plenty of swearing on my part, but I did my best to do it far away from the computer. :-)
Well, one of the reasons that I'd like to get my hands on a mop would be to help out with anti-vandalism efforts; right now all I can do is report them, and I'd like it if I could help take them out further. For starters, I'd like to help out with XfDs, as well as review users who are requesting the be un-banned. Once I get my bearings even more, I'd like to start helping with dispute resolution and mediation (I'm comfortable in the rules to do effective editing, but I can't spout it off the top of my head, and I don't have some of the nuances down quite yet).

Again, thank you so much for your feedback. EVula 02:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello EVula. I am impressed by your excellent work and it is my belief that an RfA at this stage would be overwhelmingly successful. More than half of your contributions are to article space, denoting that you are efficiently helping to build Wikipedia. You should append User:EVula/Contributions to your RfA for it provides detailed information about your commendable involvement with the projects stated therein. You already have wide experience with images and templates. That's a big plus, since some users sometimes refrain from supporting for lack of experience in those areas. You have a 100% edit summary usage, so no cons there either. Now, my only minor concern at the moment is that I verify little participation in XfD lately. Perhaps you should join a few discussions before bringing forth your RfA, otherwise some editors may feel like you don't need the admin tools, even if you do seem to revert some vandalism. By the way, I could also suggest that you make a little visit to recent changes in the days before your RfA and spot/revert some vandalism there. That will look good for users who check your recent contributions. As for your conflicts, I suggest that you don't state that you are clinging to WP:IAR on a specific dispute. Sometimes, stubborn users can make us question our own sanity, but resorting to a revert war and feeding trolls is never a good choice. A WP:RFC is usually a better option, for it may attract other users into the dispute and foster consensus building in a peaceful, organized manner. I guess there's not much else I can add. You're doing a superb job and I look forward to see your RfA. Best regards.--Hús ö nd 23:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the fantastic feedback. Your primary concern seems to be my lack of XfD activity, which I agree with. I'm trying to get more involved with both TfD and AfDs, which is one of the reasons that I don't feel particularly comfortable submitting an RfA right now (although I certainly appreciate your faith in its success). As per ReyBrujo's advice above, I've been a lot more hands-on when addressing the vandalism that I come across, what with more verbose edit summaries and warning the users for each infraction; I think between that and XfD activity, it should sufficiently address most concerns about why I would need a mop.
  
  I'd like to get into more RC patrolling, but I generally come late to every party when it comes to reverting such spam; I do quite well spotting stuff as it hits my watchlist (and then stalking their other vandalisms) and catching FA vandals, but I'll certainly take your advice into consideration.
  
  Likewise, I appreciate your advice about clinging to IAR (and edit wars in general). While I'm sure that I'll just never get into another disagreement with an editor (I've got my head ~~up my a-~~... uh, in the clouds...), in the future I'll try to involve other parties much sooner than I did in the Devastation example (for other Mortal Kombat-related edits, I might head to the WikiProject again [although sooner] for a quick extra set of eyes; for anything else, RFC will be my first stop).
  
  Thanks again for your feedback. You must have had a really good dinner, because you were amazingly positive... ;-) EVula 04:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Questions

Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
Well, my (rather verbose) commentary of my contributions can be found at User:EVula/Contributions, but I have to say that I am particularly pleased with my involvement in the Mortal Kombat WikiProject. Aside from designing their absolutely fantastic logo, I've worked hard to remove unsourced fancruft from across numerous articles (see The Khameleon Konundrum), and created a specific style guide for the project to standardize information across all the character articles (still a work in progress, though, and with the new MK game being released this week, a lot of "unprocessed" additions have been made). I like to think that all my changes helped to spark more interest in the project, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part. :-)

As far as my actual article edits go, I'm much more of a WikiGnome, so instead I involve myself in various Manual of Style changes to subtly improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia. I am particularly proud of my rewrite of The Zombie Survival Guide, which expanded it greatly (Before and After).
Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
Yeah, I've had negative run-ins with three different people:
1. My first experience with the "pleasure" of wiki-disagreement came in the form of DreamGuy (talk · contribs). To this day, I believe he is an abusive obnoxious editor, who bullies others and violates rules willy-nilly whenever he feels like it. My particular problem came from attempts at adding the aforementioned Zombie Survival Guide to Zombie#Zombies in literature and fiction. His argument was that it was merely spam (and felt comfortable labeling me a spammer). Eventually, he started railing against the ZSG article, labeling it as non-notable (and refusing to use the article's talk page to discuss the issue); it was actually DreamGuy's negative attitude towards the article that prompted me to overhaul it (seriously, just to shut him up). The ultimate solution was just to let the Zombie matter drop for a while.
2. My second editor conflict was with Justinpwilsonadvocate (talk · contribs), an (in my opinion) off-kilter editor who I first tussled with over at Talk:Vanderbilt University Law School. After our disagreements (for some crazy reason, I kept removing his unsourced/unverifiable claims. Silly me!), I suspected (and caught) him stalking me.[7] He then proceeded to constantly pester me on my talk page; so much, in fact, that I asked him to leave me alone (albeit a, *cough*, bit stronger[8]/[9]). The solution to this issue was... well, to tell him to leave me the hell alone and to restrict all communication to just content discussion. I'd like to note that I was quite cordial to him after I'd told him point-blank that he shouldn't talk to me about anything other than content discussion.[10][11][12] He seems to have lost interest in Wikipedia, and I'm perfectly happy about that. :-) (as an aside, his userpage is a 99% reproduction of mine at the time, right down to using my name).
3. My third (and, to date, last) foray into the world of unpleasant dealings was with Wesborland (talk · contribs). The fledgling Mortal Kombat: Devastation article had suffered from loads and loads of what can only be described as concentrated drivel. I worked very hard to trim out all the BS and institute an aggressive source citation system.[13] However, Wesborland came in and started removing sources and adding unsourced (and poorly worded/formatted) information.[14] The resultant edit war saw both of us violate WP:3RR, although I didn't report him; instead, I used his talk page to try to address the myriad issues I had with his edits (last version before he severely pruned the discussion[15]). For this edit war, I'm clinging desperately to WP:IAR; this wasn't just a content dispute, he was adding unverifiable information, some of it original research, and was removing perfectly valid content without explanation (which constitutes vandalism, in my opinion). With every revert I performed, I tried to tweak the copy in an attempt to guess at what his problem was.[16] [17] [18] I even asked for help from a fellow Mortal Kombat WikiProject member[19], who backed me up in my assessment of the article.[20] [21] In the end, he finally gave up adding bad information, and we were able to call a truce. Don't ya just love happy endings?
So, that covers the "how did you deal with it?" portion. Future debates would really all depend on the situation; it has been more than once that I've gotten extremely worked up over a situation (at least once or twice with all three situations mentioned above), in which case I simply try to divert my editing attentions (in the case of Justinpwilson's persistent use of my talk page, it made it highly difficult for me to just ignore him, so I walked away from Wikipedia entirely for a few hours each time he started pissing me off).