User:Durin/Matt Britt RfA
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[edit] Matt Britt
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Voice your opinion; Scheduled to end 22:00, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] STOP: On the format of this RfA
Observe: This RfA has been intentionally formatted much in line with common practice at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct. This format has been suggested as a potential way of conducting RfAs at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship from time to time and at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform. Contributors to this RfA are asked to please refrain from holding this format against the nominee. This is merely an experiment, intended to help RfA evolve. Matt Britt has graciously agreed to be the guinea pig for this experiment.
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[edit] Nomination statement for
Overview: User:Matt Britt is an electrical engineering undergraduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He first came to Wikipedia in September of 2004 (first edit), more than 2 1/2 years ago. He's been an active, regular contributor during most of that time, with generally increasing activity over the last year and a half. He's never been blocked block log, shows coolness and maturity, and is an all around fantastic editor.
General behavior: I've reviewed various talk space messages performed by Matt Britt and found him to be apologetic when need be [1], polite [2], helpful in attempts to quell brewing fights [3], having a good understanding of policy [4], supportive of centralized debate [5], understands the difference between vandalism and content dispute [6] and patient with other editors [7]. He also has a good approach to the concept of improving the encyclopedia [8]
Main space contributions: Matt has contributed significantly to areas of his expertise in electrical engineering. He's been quite active in this arena with substantial contributions to Central processing unit, Computer, Embedded system, IBM System and a whole host of other subject related articles.
Non-mainspace areas: Matt's contributed to a very broad range of Project space pages, including Wikipedia:Featured article review, Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, Wikipedia:Peer review, Wikipedia:Reference desk, associated talk and sub pages of those areas and many other areas in project space as well. It's hard to find an area where he has not contributed at least some, if not significantly, in project space.
Featured pictures: Matt has had two of his pictures elevated to featured picture status. These are Image:80486dx2-large.jpg and Image:Internet map 1024.jpg. I found it encouraging that he was modest about the latter [9].
Vandalism fighting: Matt Britt has been a very active vandal fighter on such contentious articles as Jehovah's Witnesses and Xbox 360. In total, he's made more than a thousand vandalism reversions in his time here. He has received a barnstar for his work on vandalism [10].
Other: I found Matt's essay at User:Matt Britt/Don't just do whatever to be very refreshing, and demonstrative of a strong grasp of what it is we are trying to achieve here.
Conclusion: I find Matt to be a great presence on the project. His ideas on where we are supposed to be going, along with his patient demeanor and willingness to work with others on contentious issues show him to be well capable of the extra demands placed upon an administrator. Having Matt as an administrator will be a great asset to the project. --Durin 20:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Candidate acceptance and statement
Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:
[edit] Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for participants:
- 1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog and Category:Administrative backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
- A: Mostly the ability to speedy delete articles per WP:CSD and block disruptive and unrelentant spammers after warning them. Surprisingly, I come across a significant number of both just by following the trail of editors of the articles I watch (especially those related to video games and electronic test equipment).
- 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any with which you are particularly pleased, and why?
- A: I'm pleased with Oakland Cemetery and CPU simply because I put a lot of work into writing them and am proud of the result. I'm even more pleased with computer since its current state is the result of a joint writing effort with Steve Baker, and it was a pleasure to be able to collaborate on a major article rewrite. I was happy to have the viewpoints of another person in writing such a broadly-scoped article, something that I had a hard time finding with the first two articles I mentioned (one can never be quite sure if a fair treatment has been given if they are the sole author and editor).
- 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: I've been an ongoing proponent and somewhat a poster child for binary prefix guideline at WP:MOSNUM. I've been involved in numerous lengthy debates on the matter, many of which become frustratingly cyclical and induce a lot of arm waving. This usually involves some firm language, but it rarely becomes incivil due largely to the good intent of everyone involved. I suppose that could prove stressful to some, but to be honest, Wikipedia doesn't cause me anxiety on a personal level. I say this with all the bittersweet love possible, but Wikipedia simply doesn't have any bearing on my well-being and I don't give it a lot of thought in my daily offline activity. Hobbies, however diverting, should be kept in appropriate perspective.
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- Perhaps a better example of a stressful situation regards the actions of two editors on pages related to (and including) Jehovah's Witnesses. Without going into gory detail, there was a lot of incivility and egregious personal attacks, things escalated to an arbitration case, and two prolific editors ended things on very bitter terms with permanent bans. Before the arbitration case was opened, I decided that my energies on Wikipedia were better spent making productive edits rather than engaging in viscious debates, so I removed the related articles from my watch list and avoided them for about a year. In the time after that I worked heavily on the aforementioned CPU and computer articles, so I think the decision was a good one. I've recently returned to editing the Jehovah's Witnesses related pages since a much nicer and more reasonable group helps maintain them now. (the full text of the RFAR can be seen at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Tommstein; back then my username was "uberpenguin")
[edit] Views
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[edit] Demonstrated need for tools
Matt has demonstrated a need for the tools based on his very significant activity in vandalism fighting and his answer to question 1 above. His use of warnings to a variety of users [11][12][13][14] shows he knows how to use warnings appropriately and would not block inappropriately without warning users beforehand.
[edit] Nominee response to this view
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[edit] Editors who endorse this view
- --Durin 20:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Editors opposed to this view
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[edit] Nominee has long, consistent history at Wikipedia
The nominee has been with Wikipedia since October of 2004 and consistently active with the project since 2005 as demonstrated by the chart on the talk page of this RfA. There's few gaps of any significance in his contributions. He remains available for and involved in ongoing discussions of pertinence as demonstrated by his recent attention to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) [15].
[edit] Nominee response to this view
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[edit] Editors who endorse this view
- --Durin 21:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Nominee appears to be trustable
Matt has never been blocked [16]. Further, the last (and only) time he was ever warned about anything about his editing behavior that could lead to a block was in January of 2006, more than a year ago. Lastly, despite be confronted with sometimes very contentious users, he has kept his cool. This, combined with his previously noted willingness to warn users of improper behavior before acting seems to indicate he would not act rashly with the admin tools and would use them appropriately for the betterment of the project.
[edit] Nominee response to this view
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[edit] Editors who endorse this view
- --Durin 21:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] View template
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