Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Blanchardb 2

Blanchardb

Voice your opinion on this candidate (talk page) (9/4/1); Scheduled to end 23:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Nomination

Blanchardb (talk · contribs) – Presenting Blanchardb for your consideration folks. Blanchardb has been editing productively here since September 2007, and in that time has made almost 75,000 edits. Blanchardb is known to me through his work at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation where he has been highly active for the last 2 and a half years, with more contributions to that page than any other editor, all of which are helpful and productive - working there also involves working with the articles needing translation, which he also does a great deal. Just the other day he translated Charron Island from the French Wikipedia. When it comes to other Admin areas, Blanchardb is very active in both vandal fighting, 25% of his edits are with huggle, and deletion, with approximately 12,000 deleted edits, the majority of which are csd tagging and prods. He is also very active at AFD. Blanchardb is no slouch when it comes to article writing either, he helped bring List of bridges to the Island of Montreal to featured list status and has several DYK's, in additon to his work translating articles. He is also civil and willing to help other users, as a look at his talk page will show. One final thing, Blanchardb's previous RFA, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Blanchardb, was over a year ago and the main issue was not actually Blanchardb so much as it was his nominator, looking at the supports vs the opposes I think its likely it would have passed at the time had there been no issue with the nominator. Overall I think that granting Blanchardb the bit would be excellent for the project. Thank you for your time Jac16888^Talk 20:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Given the number of people who, lately, have suggested that I try, I accept the nomination. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 22:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: I believe most of my work as an admin would be in the speedy deletion and expired prods department. Those are the areas I know the best. I am already taking an occasional look at C:SD and untagging articles that are either improperly tagged or ineligible for speedy deletion. Additionally, as a WP:PNT regular, I may act as a consultant when another admin comes across a situation where foreign-language material requires administrator attention. I speak fluent French, I have a basic understanding of Spanish and German, and I know how to use the tools we have at our disposal at PNT to identify obscure languages (WP:LRC, for example) and assess articles to see whether they are worth translating.

Addendum: I would also help at WP:AIV whenever that page has a backlog. Cases listed there need immediate attention, and most of them must be acted on in a matter of minutes, unlike listings at WP:UAA or expired AfD's, many of which can easily remain unanswered for an additional 24 hours without the delay being detrimental to the project.

2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?

A: My best contribution, of course, would be the featured List of bridges to the Island of Montreal. It is the first list of its kind to get Featured List status on Wikipedia, and I believe it is the model to be followed by similar articles. When I started working on that list, at first I thought all it needed was references for the information that was already present, but I found that some of the information was either wrong or missing. Plus, I had to drive to every one of the individual entries of the list to take pictures. This led to a discussion at WP:FP about accepting that for some subjects we will never be able to get an FP-quality picture when I asked for suggestions about File:Île aux Tourtes Bridge.JPG.

I am currently working on List of crossings of the Saint Lawrence River, which is different in several respects. For one thing, it lists ferry services. For another, I had to find a way to organize entries wherever the river splits into two or more branches. Finally, I will never be able to get this listed at WP:FL before I drive to Massena, New York just for one picture, and to a Salaberry-de-Valleyfield public library to dig for information on the minor bridges there.

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: The only situation that I would say did cause me stress is now ancient history. Écrasez l'infâme (talk · contribs) (whose username I knew was a direct reference to a work by Voltaire) came to the Bible article and added an over-referenced POV-pushing addition in which he insisted that the entire list of scholars supporting his opinion be kept either within the article or as a footnote. His addition was clearly a violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:REL He was reverted by several people who had the article on their watchlists, yet I was singled out as his main opponent, presumably on the grounds that I made the first revert. He tried to pass of the other reverters as supporting his position, not too credibly, I might say. In the end, just as I was filing a report against him at WP:3RR, he was filing one of his own against me at WP:WQA. He got a 24-hour block, which he unsuccessfully contested, and the WQA case against me was closed as stale. He never has edited since then. I wrote in the WQA thread, "I rest my case," but I believe I would have saved myself some stress if I had done that before the WQA case was even filed.

As for a WP:3RR block I got in December, while I wasn't too stressed about it, what I learned from it is that there is a way not to deal with people whom I strongly suspect of being sockpuppets. In the future, if I see someone who looks to me like a probable sockpuppet, I'll let them edit unhindered (except in cases of clear vandalism, of course), and I will simply gather enough evidence to file a strong case at WP:SPI.

4. Additional question from Mkativerata. Do you think these tags were in error? Why? [1] [2] [3]

A:

The_Tenderloins This was a borderline case. The only claim of notability for that troupe was winning a prize in It's Your Show, which, despite being on NBC, does not have an article on Wikipedia (although it probably should). This is not American Idol, however on second thought I think it should have gone directly to PROD or AfD. So yes, this one was in error.

Carrolls_Winward This is a case where the claim of importance is stated in terms too vague to be credible.

ChildFund_Alliance This is a case of WP:NOTINHERITED. As I pointed out to the creator, being sponsored by a notable organization does not automatically confer notability.

5. Additional question from RadManCF. Could you give links to any discussions about your block? I'm not likely to oppose because of the block, I'd just like to know the particulars of the situation.

A: Here's a link to the 3RR report. There's not much else to see.

General comments

RfAs for this user:

• Requests for adminship/Blanchardb
• Requests for adminship/Blanchardb 2

• Links for Blanchardb: Blanchardb (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Blanchardb can be found here.

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/Blanchardb before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Without hesitation.  7  23:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
2. Support I'm actually quite surprised why this user isn't already an admin. No issues here. ~NERDYSCIENCEDUDE (✉ message • changes) 23:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
3. Support Seems like this candidate has been solid over the past few months, so no worries here.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 23:24, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
4. So very overdue. ceranthor 23:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
5. Absolutely. per above. Dlohcierekim 23:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

   Continued support despite Mkativerata's examples. Blanchardb has over 2,000 deleted contribs, so has generally done a good job with CSD tagging. I believe Mkativerata 's examples are aberrations and not represetative of his knowledge and ability, and that it is still reasonable to support. Dlohcierekim 00:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

   Unless the counter is wrong its actually nearly 20,000 deleted contribs (18,716)--Jac16888^Talk 00:24, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

   Thanks Jac. I stopped at over 2,000. If nearly 20,000, his error rate is pretty small. A pity as far as timing goes. Dlohcierekim 00:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

   I don't think you can assume that all deleted contributions are "correct" unless you look at them (I can't). How many were incorrect and then incorrectly deleted? I don't know what the error rate is. But several howlers over a few weeks, combined with a response that demonstrates a misunderstanding of the most widely used CSD criterion, is certainly concerning enough for me. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

6. Support. Can be trusted, plain and simple. -- œ^™ 23:40, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
7. Support - No reason to oppose. Blanchardb has a lot of experience and knowledge, is courteous, and has plenty of great contributions to Wikipedia. -- Atama頭 23:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
8. Support No worries here. --The High Fin Sperm Whale 00:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
9. Support--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 01:11, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose sorry. I don't find the answers to Q4 satisfactory enough to allay my concerns that the candidate interprets A7 incorreectly and will continue to do so as an admin. The answers clearly conflate "notability" with "significance or importance". These are not isolated examples: this was particularly suprising. Mistakes are fine; everyone makes them. But the consistency with which these poor tags have been applied takes "occasional mistake" to "consistent misapplication of policy to the project's detriment". Bad CSD tags are a concern for a number of reasons: it can result in losing good content; it can create work at DRV; it bites newbies unnecessarily; and it shows misunderstanding of policy generally. I am also concerned by the 3RR block: 3RR is such an easy rule to comply with. But that alone would probably not have been enough to oppose. I recognise this is an experienced candidate with a generally fine editing history; but I don't think adminship is suitable at this time. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:05, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
2. Oppose The response to question 4 really concerns me. I feel that A7 is a vital criterion to understand because it is very often overused, and statements like "The only claim of notability for that troupe was winning a prize in It's Your Show" indicate to me that the criterion is not understood. A7 does not ask about whether such a claim is in fact notable per WP:N but rather whether any claim of notability is asserted (which, by the candidate's own admission, is made). --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 00:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
3. Oppose. Per the recent block from edit warring and the answer to question 4. Sorry, FASTILY_sock^(TALK) 01:24, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose answer to Q5 does not satisfy me at all, I would expect a more thorough self examination to be generated from such a question by a candidate requesting the mop. The answer makes me think meh. -- RP459 ^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:47, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Not sure for the moment. While Q3 does help to reassure me, the 3RR block is still too recent for me to comfortably overlook. --Dylan620 (contribs, logs) 23:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

#'I'm sitting here until the CSD issues have been resolved. In addition to the examples mentioned in Q4, this was particularly suprising. I'm seeing a lot of questionable (and downright wrong) recent CSD tagging that has had to be undone by admins. I'm worried that will be come questionable deletions that have to be undone at DRV. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:36, 14 April 2010 (UTC) Moved to oppose. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)