Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Johntex

Final count: (37/2/0) ended 14:07 October 26, 2005 (UTC)

Johntex (talk · contribs) – It is both a pleasure and an honor to nominate Johntex for adminship. John has been around for 10 months now, and his edits number 2448 today, well distributed among namespaces. He's a well respected and dedicated user who is deeply involved in the project, and not only in the online aspects but in real life as well, like organizing Wiki-Meetups with Jimbo as he did just yesterday [1]. He's also seriously engaged in welcoming, helping and guiding new users, AfD, cleanup tasks, RC patrolling, etc; and regularly performs a high degree of activity in maintenance, vandal fighting, and general site improvement. His exemplary conduct is clearly demonstrated through a flawless record, and his significant contributions have earned him the recognition of his peers [2]. I'm sure we'll have an extremely valuable admin in him. Shauri   smile! 14:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

I humbly accept and I thank Shauri for her kind words. It is an honor to be nominated, and a double honor to be nominated by such a fine editor as Shauri. Johntex\^talk 16:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support

1. Supersize support as nominator! Shauri   smile! 14:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
2. Support. Shauri's description of the candidate and her trust seal it for me.--Wiglaf 14:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
3. Strongly Support. Personal interaction with Johntex and dozen of common watchlist pages that I see him make great edits to daily make me proud to support his bid for adminship! -Scm83x 15:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
4. Support without reservations! Beat me to it. · Katefan0^(scribble) 18:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
5. Support, I definately trust the nominator wouldn't nominate anyone undeserving, and the person seems deserving according to what I've seen. Private Butcher 19:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
6. Support, good egg.  BD2412 ^talk 19:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
7. Support Astrotrain 19:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
8. Yes. He has enough experience to get the dustbuster. Supporting.  Denelson83  19:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
9. Hook 'em. Thoughtful, well rounded user. This in particular really impressed me, and is the final reason I choose to support. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 20:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
10. Merovingian (t) (c) (e) 20:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
11. Support. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
12. Sure Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
13. Support --Rogerd 00:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
14. Support. -- KHM03 00:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
15. Support after looking through his contributions. Now I'm off to spam RN about the MC... Redwolf24 (talk) 01:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
16. Strong support based on his response to my query below. freestylefrappe 01:50, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
17. Support I see nothing but good things from/about this guy. Besides, he has an edit count not even Durin can take issue with:>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 01:58, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
18. Support —Gaff ^ταλκ 02:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
19. -- (drini's page|☎) 02:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
20. Support Have seen him around, always good edits. Banes 05:38, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
21. Support MONGO 05:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
22. FireFox 08:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
23. Support. The Minister of War 10:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
24. Support. I trust the nominator. The editor's good too :). Oran e (t) (c) (@) 19:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
25. Support. Never met him but has votes from a lot of people I respect, including the nominator. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 20:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
26. Support, per Evilphoenix. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
27. Support. Robert 00:06, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
28. Support --JAranda | watz sup 20:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
29. Support I think this user would be a great addition to the cabal...  ALKIVAR™  02:52, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
30. Support seems civil, reasonable and willing. Alf ^melmac 08:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
31. Support. +sj + 20:11, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
32. Support. El_C 21:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
33. Support --Kefalonia 08:11, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
34. Support -- DS1953 ^talk 16:34, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
35. Support An excellent editor. -Willmcw 19:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
36. Support Extremely worthy candidate. jareha 22:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
37. Support Johann Wolfgang 18:06, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

1. --Boothy443 | comhrá 21:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

   File:Pikachu2.gif. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 20:09, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

   I queried Boothy on his opposition to my nomination for adminship in order to see if there was an area of concern for me to improve upon. He has replied at my Talk page to give some explanation of his vote to oppose. If I understand him correctly, he generally wants the bar for adminship to be set high. He seems to think that the system of admins and their nomination is flawed. I also found a partial disclosure of some of his voting guidelines by reading through the RFC on him. [3]Johntex\^talk 02:49, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

   I find it very hard to assume good faith with Boothy's oppositions. Opposing nearly all potential admins. without explanation is essentially incivil, and without such explanation, in fact, he is not abiding by WikiGuidelines. Furthermore, I believe that these oppositions are a result of simple malice. I noticed that Boothy has 16,000 edits, but is not an adm - perhaps he is trying to hold others back. His contributions reflect a tendency of anger when people have only asked a simple question [4] or he is excessivley sarcastic [5]. I request that medition or arbitration be considered against this user. Him abusing the rights of RfA is harmful to the Wiki in my opinion - trolls, vandals and spammers are not allowed to continue in bad faith - so this user should also comport himself in a civil manner on these RfAs. He is abusing his rights here - and he is apparently making no attempts to stop. He has the right to vote, sure, but all the other Wikipedians have the right to a fair RfA. Something needs to happen! Molotov (talk)   03:51, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

2. Oppose - This editor has engaged in WP:POINT disruption in the past (for example, VfD'ing pages in retaliation for editing disputes on other articles [6]). He's currently a party to a merged arbitration case involving myself and several other editors that I initiated in late August against another user. This is notworthy because JohnTex joined the arbitration with a countercomplaint against me last month regarding a dispute we had in late May on the Houston Chronicle article. I had not encountered JohnTex anywhere else on Wikipedia between May and September when he joined the RfAr, nor did he participate any further in the Houston Chronicle article or its subsequent mediation attempts. Thus, I consider it fair to question the timing and motive of his involvement in the RfAr given that he was apparently trying to resurrect an old dispute that he had not even participated in for over three months with an editor he had not even encountered for that same period of time. Rangerdude 16:20, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The arbitration against Rangerdude involves multiple editors and concerns his POV pushing in articles and uncivil treatment of many editors in Talk pages. He has tremendously slanted the Houston Chronicle article to the point where it consists predominately of controversies. He has admitted nominating for AfD the Dusty Mangum article solely because I created it [7]. My nomination of Dan Patrick (radio host) for AfD was a good faith nomination of an article about someone I considered to be a non-notable person. It was consistent with my general practice of nominating non-notable topics for deletion. The result was 8 keep votes to 5 delete votes, so it was as if it was a completely clear-cut keep it was not as if the community thought it was a completely clear-cut keep. My nomination to delete the article was also consistent with my Proposal to restore some form of balance to the Houston Chronicle, and to the related articles that were suffering under POV-pushing by Rangerdude. My joining the arbitration against Rangerdude was not an example of resurrecting an old dispute. To the contrary, I had been following the correct dispute resolution process in waiting on the outcome of a request for mediation. In fact, User:MacGyverMagic specifically requested me not to edit the articles while mediation was underway. [8] The reason Rangerdude did not encounter me for a while is that I was following the request to avoid editing the articles during mediation. Mediation never solved the dispute. Therefore, I joined the arbitration case as the next step in dispute resolution. Johntex\^talk 19:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - It is curious that JohnTex would attempt to defend his VfD on Dan Patrick by citing the Dusty Mangum VfD considering that the vote on the latter (9 to keep, 7 to delete) was actually closer than the 8 keep/5 delete vote on Dan Patrick! That JohnTex's VfD on Dan Patrick was a retaliatory disruption is further evidenced by the fact that he initiated it only 11 minutes after the article itself was created [9]. Much to the contrary of what JohnTex indicates above, the arbitration case of which Johntex speaks was initiated as a retaliatory RfAr by User:Willmcw a few days after I posted the original RfAr against him. In accepting the cases, the Arbcom voted to merge this second case into the original that I filed against Willmcw. It is particularly notable that I did not even encounter JohnTex anywhere on Wikipedia between late May 2005 and September, when he suddenly popped up again to second Willmcw's RfAr against me citing as his only evidence our dispute from three months earlier at Houston Chronicle. His claim that he had been "following the correct dispute resolution process" on the 3 month old dispute at Houston Chronicle is similarly false as evidenced by the mediation page for this article, Talk:Houston_Chronicle/Mediation. This mediation started on June 12th and attracted comments from myself and the other three editors who had been involved in the Houston Chronicle dispute (Katefan0, Nobs01, and Willmcw), yet as its page history shows [10] JohnTex did not make so much as one single contribution to this mediation, which would've been the "correct dispute resolution process" were he genuinely following it. In reality his last recorded act of participation in the Houston Chronicle dispute was an edit there on May 28th [11] - some 13 days before he claims the mediator asked him not to make any changes there on June 10th. Thus, he not only skipped from participation in the mediation stage entirely but he also dropped out of the original dispute on Houston Chronicle itself almost two weeks before it even advanced to mediation! Given these facts I believe it is safe to classify JohnTex's involvement in the current RfAr as a textbook example of resurrecting an old dispute. Rangerdude 18:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Rangerdude's view has been noted, there is no benefit to any one to debate the matter with him here. The RfAr is the correct place to seek resolution of this matter. If any other editors have a question about this matter, I will be happy to try to address their questions. Johntex\^talk 18:09, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And I encourage anybody who wishes to review this case in making their vote decision here to view the diffs above. You will find that (1) JohnTex completely dropped off the article where the dispute was happening two weeks before it advanced to the mediation stage, (2) JohnTex completely skipped that mediation process, (3) JohnTex suddenly resurrected his interest in this dispute after three months of silence when Willmcw filed a retaliatory RfAr against me a few days after I initiated arbitration against him, and (4) between May 28th when he left Houston Chronicle and August 26th when he decided to join Willmcw's RfAr, JohnTex and I did not even encounter each other anywhere on wikipedia. If you don't mind having administrators who like to resurrect disputes from three months in the past at opportune times, then by all means vote for JohnTex. That he does this sort of thing, however, should be clear to all in making their decisions. Rangerdude 18:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

1. Neutral Not strong opposition, and willing to change to support, but I'd like an explanation regarding you're interaction with Achilles and the purported spammming. Normally I wouldnt question this, but there appears to be come controversy. freestylefrappe 00:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reply Thanks for your question, freestyle. It is a little complex, so I will try to explain:

I was watching Jimbo's talk page when I saw Tony Sidaway leave this message. In his message, Tony asks Jimbo to weigh in on an action taken by Achilles. Tony said "Achilles, observing the failure to gain consensus for deletion of an autofellatio image, clearly diagnosed the problem (correctly, in my opinion) as bias due to the fact that most wikipedians don't watch WP:IFD or Autofellatio... he spammed a rather large number of Wikipedia user talk pages...he did so in a selective manner...contacting only those who seemed likely to express a point of view he agreed with."

I then left this message on Jimbo's page, saying "A message to selected people is not spam...Tony Sidaway stated on Achilles’ talk page "Spamming is sending the same message to lots of people." That is not a full or correct definition. For example, www.dictionary.com defines spamming as "Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail." While it is true that his message could be considered "unsolicited", it was not sent "indiscriminately". He sent the message only to people whom you had reason to believe would be interested in the message. What could be wrong with reaching out to people who are likely to have an interest in a topic?..."

I then left this message on Tony's page, alerting him to the fact that I had replied to his message on Jimbo's page, saying "Hello Tony, I wanted to let you know that I disagree with the comments you made at Jimbo Wales's talk page about Achilles reaching out to potential voters on the autofellatio image issue. I have posted my explanation of why I believe Achilles' actions are not spam on those two Talk pages. As a courtesy to you, I wanted to notify you here that I have made those postings since you may not be watching those pages. This way, you have an opportunity to respond if you wish."

Tony replied "A message to selected people is not spam I'm sorry but that is just silly. Spam is the same message repeated lots of times. Putting the same message on lots of user talk pages is spam. But that isn't the issue, is it? He didn't just spam, he intentionally spammed *only* those people who agreed with him. He tried to cook the vote, to campaign, to go against the consensual decision making that has served Wikipedia so well and turn it into a scramble for votes, and was caught red-handed."

To which I replied, "...Let's set aside for now whether it was spam or not so that we may focus on what you say is the issue. You are equating a "get out the vote" campaign to "cook[ing] the vote". They are not the same. Cooking the vote would be using sock puppets to stuff the ballot box. What he did was analogous to the Democratic party encouraging Pro-choice or gay marriage proponents to go to the polls in a United States presidential election; or the Republican party doing the same with senior citizens and members of the Bel Air country club. Why is there anything wrong with appealing to people who are likely to be receptive to your arguments? How does this go against the "consensual decision making" process? Were people intimidated to vote a certain way? Did he tamper with the counting of the votes received? No. People were encouraged to speak up about an issue he felt they would be interested in. In my relatively short time here, I've seen hundreds of examples of people doing the exact same thing without receiving criticism, and I don't see anything wrong with it."

So, in summary: what happened was Achilles did some campaigning on a deletion issue. Tony complained about it to Jimbo. I chimed in to disagree with Tony and defend Achilles' actions. Some discussion ensued. It was all pretty cordial. We all went on about our business. The full discussion thread is in my Talk archive if you are really interested. I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions. Johntex\^talk 01:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Questions for the candidate
A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)

A. I like a lot of variety in my time on Wikipedia. I spend time: contributing to articles, contributing to AFD discussions, on RC patrol, reverting vadalism, answering questions at the Help Desk, welcoming new users, etc. I woud certainly continue these tasks. The one-click revert tool would be helpful in reverting vandalism as I come across it. I would also add helping with AFD closures to my "to-do" list. I know that we consider that being an administrator should be "no big deal". I think that is true in the sense that there is plenty a good user can contribute to the project without being an admin. On the other hand, I think that new users are especially likely to look to administrators for assistance and to set an example. Therefore, I would endeavor to be especially mindful of my obligation to help other users out and to act as a role model.

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A. Yes and No. Sometimes I go back to them and see there is so much still to improve! Two of the first articles I created were Hook 'em Horns and Stratellite. I think they have developed pretty well, though of course other editors have done a lot of the work. Sometimes, making a small addition to an article can be very gratifying, such as adding a source to help clear up confusion over what day is Victory over Japan Day.

3. 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?

A. Yes, sometimes people get passionate about their views on how to improve an article or make this a better place. I think passion is great as long as it comes with civility. My experience is that participating in a dialog is usually sufficient, and I've had a lot of great conversations with people here that have allowed us to reach consensus / compromise on many topics. For example, I'm pleased about the development of Hubbert peak theory. This is an article where emotions can sometimes run high, but I'm happy that we've been able to keep the conversation at Talk:Hubbert_peak_theory civil and that we've been able to work together to improve the article.

I also feel it is important to get help when you need it. I think avenues such as peer review and the dispute resolution system are important parts of Wikipedia. I have tried to help in responding to peer reviews, and I have recently requested peer review on an article I created so that we can ensure my personal opinion does not carry into that particular article. I am a party to a request for arbitration involving User:Rangerdude and several other editors, and I am hopeful that the arbitration process will be helpful to those of us involved.

My plan for dealing with future stress is to try to set an example for good behavior. Also, if things get stressful in one area of Wikipedia, I can always go over to another area I enjoy, or simple hit "Random article" and look for a new way to contribute! Johntex\^talk 18:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Update: the peer review process has been very helpful to Baby Gender Mentor, as you can see in comparing the before and after. Johntex\^talk 22:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The above 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 article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.