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Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Spy-cicle

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (131/202/283); See official results (non-admin closure)DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination

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Spy-cicle (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello, I'm Spy-cicle, I joined in December 2018 and have engaged in a range of topics here including video games, biographies, politics, and anything I stumble across. I have also engaged in fair number of AfDs during my time here and formerly served as a delegate for Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates. I have 11k edits and while my editing history over the last year or so has been a bit sporadic due to personal reasons I plan on ramping up my activity once again. I have never been blocked or have ever been paid to edit for Wikipedia. I have created 20 articles (excluding redirects or disambs) and produced 5 GAs and 2 FLs.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 23:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 interested so I can help out in various areas which are known to have backlogs on occassion. The areas specfically I want to help out at are WP:RPP, WP:AIV, and closing AfDs.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Across my 5 GAs and 2 FLs my best contributions are recreating the All Ghillied Up article, saving it from a merger and getting it to GA. Also proud of getting Clint Hocking and Johnny Depp filmography up to GA and FL, respectively. I am also proud of overhauling the Media Molecule article from a start class to B-class article (perhaps GA someday) which had intially had about 600 readable prose and 23 references before I overhauled it 2,400 readable prose with over 140 references and six free images.
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: Early on my Wiki 'career' I had a couple of edit conflicts. These arouse due to me not really understanding Wiki guidelines at the time. I remember one of them was because I did not know about MOS:INFOBOXUSE and thought it was standard and required for all biographies to have infoboxes. Fortunately, I am wiser now and have a good grasp of guidelines and policies as well as the importance of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF.

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: Adminship was not something I seriously considered until somewhat recently. I considered it briefly in the past but quickly realised I definitely did not have enough experience to become one. Reading over RfAs over the years, RfA seems like an incredibly daunting and stress-inducing process but I think the separate discussion and SecurePoll voting phases of Admin elections reduces some of that stress/anxiety. So hearing about Admin elections, recently renewed my consideration for nominating myself to become one; somewhat of a right place (in terms of my current level of experience), right time situation for me.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 01:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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: Areas I do not plan on participating in that immediately come to mind are CSD, SPI, or probably investigating incidents to do with COIN due to both unfamiliarity and lack of applied technical knowledge. If I decided I wanted to help out later, I would first, refresh myself and re-read all the related policies and guidelines. Secondly, if I had any gaps of understanding in interpreting these policies/guidelines I would ask an experienced editor in that area about it. Thirdly, if still need practical examples of applying policy have a look of recent examples of an experienced editor in that area to see how generally deal and handle such issues in that area. Finally, try my best to apply these policies/guidelines and find the most straightforward cases to deal, and avoid borderline/edge cases at least to start with.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Optional question from Tamzin

6. You brought the article Zuby to GA in 2021. At the time of passing GA, it said that Zuby, a cisgender man, "stat[ed] he had broken the British women's deadlift record while 'identifying as a woman'"; this was sourced to news articles about the publicity stunt, not to any sources that track British lifting records. When I reworded the article to clarify that this man had not in fact broken any women's sports record, as is standard for when we quote incorrect statements, you reverted me and then argued on talk that it was not necessary to clarify that his statement was false. You later twice reverted [1] [2] Acousmana to restore the words "he believes that only biological females should be allowed to compete [in women's sports]", putting unclear and dated terminology back in wikivoice. That bit, at least, has since been removed; the uncritical reporting of his false claim remains in the article. With that in mind, are you happy with the current state of the article and of how you have stewarded it? -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 04:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A: Looking back, yes I should have been more receptive to change like including the Outsports coverage which is currently in the article. The issue with the main dispute is that the Sky News and The Times articles do not outright say the Zuby's statement is false they just quote and attribute the claim to himself, which the article does attribute to him. Imo, it would not be correct to cite the Britsh weighlifting source in the article when no secondary RS covering the event did. Regarding the terminology part, yes that was an error on my part I believed at the time the Sky News article used the term but it was actually a quote so that should have been attributed, not in wikivoice.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 06:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Optional question from Abminor

7. If you get promoted to adminship, what should you do if someone asks you about an area - whether it be a contentious topic or a noticeboard - that you're not comfortable with?
A: I would try to redirect their question to those who are best qualified to ask it. This could be redirecting them to (in order of preference) a noticeboard on this topic, related WikiProject(s), or experienced editors in that topic area.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 23:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Optional question from Conlinp

8. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: Yes, in principle I support the idea of having some kind direct accountability in the form of recall petitions towards admins. For me, I just think an issue as delicate and critical as recalling admins by users needs to have great implementation otherwise the system could be unfairly abused against admins in good standing. Provided a good, non-abusable system was in place then yes, I would be fine with undergoing recall; admins get voted in by users, and so a way to recall admins who have been abusing their tools against the Wiki policies should be held accountable.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 07:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Optional question from Ca

9. On which areas would you consider yourself WP:INVOLVED?
A:


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: 84.30% match rate, n of 108. 36 keep !votes to 57 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers, but only 6 are from the last year; there is nothing unusual to mention about their participation in the six recent ones. -- asilvering (talk) 00:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personal comment: I don't see any cause for concern here. -- asilvering (talk) 00:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GAN & FAC notes. Nine nominations and one review at GAN; see stats here. The review was careful and thorough. All between 2019 and 2022. Eight reviews at FAC and no nominations, so a net contributor there; list is here. Opposes are not particularly common at FAC from new participants, so worth high-lighting this oppose in Spy-cicle's second FAC review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • The response to Tamzin's question is correct from a WP:V perspective but leaves me concerned about a lack of sensitivity to terminology and sourcing relating to trans topics. Searching through RSN archives, I see this pattern repeated in a comment opposing the reconsideration of PinkNews, which doesn't look great next to this !vote to preserve the reliability of a conservative watchdog described by Columbia Journalism Review as at its heart, MRC doesn’t exist to make the media better — it’s just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media. ([3]). signed, Rosguill talk 23:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't actually agree that it's true from a V perspective. If the sources had clearly said "Zuby broke the record," then we'd have been in awkward WP:WSAW territory. But that's not really what happened. As Spy-cicle acknowledges in their answer, sources uncritically quoted Zuby but didn't actually endorse the claim. In which case what V and SYNTH demand is that we not state anything that is not clearly stated in sources, and that's doubly true when it's an extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence. (To be clear, for anyone unaware, there are few if any top-level sports organizations that would accept "I identify as a woman" as sufficient to be in women's rankings, even before getting in to the procedural requirements for verifying a record.) My edit to the article didn't add anything like "but he isn't listed on the British Powerlifting records page", which would indeed be OR. It just reworded things to avoid any appearance of endorsing a claim that was both obviously false and not explicitly made in any source. Spy-cicle reverted that change, fought to keep it out, and even after replying above has still not fixed the error in what is ostensibly a GA. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 00:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I reviewed Spy-cicle's request for protection (n=26, but found like 12 in archives easily). I'm a bit too tired to count the rate of honoured requests, but my impression was that the hit rate is somewhat lower than for other candidates I've looked at. That said, I have to go back to 2019 to see what I consider a clear mistake (Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection/Archive/2019/06, asking for semi after 3 weeks of no vandalism, with a large gap between prior vandalism). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.