Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Dr vulpes

Nomination

Dr vulpes (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello everyone I’m Dr Vulpes I made my account in 2017 but didn’t really start to edit seriously until 2022. Before I made my account I was an IP editor where I mostly corrected minor typos and added sources.

Most of my maintenance work has been with NPP, and it’s the kind of work that I enjoy doing. I can also be found moving articles though the AfC process or looking up sources for articles at AfD. I really enjoy AfC as it gives me a way to try and help new editors gain their footing. AfC also lets me do fun gnoming tasks for new articles such as copyediting, putting in citation templates, and linking to other articles. AfD gives me a chance to help source articles and apply policy in meaningful ways. I use AWB for WP:CHECKWIKI and WP:AWBTASKS, I previously used AWB for creating short descriptions as part of WP:WPSHORTDESC. I keep an incomplete record of my errors and mistakes to be both transparent and open about where I’ve gone wrong and how I’ve improved as an editor. I have a bot account VulpesBot which blanks inactive IP talk pages. I was briefly autopatrolled because I was really into making articles about lichen and when I decided I wasn’t going to go forward with that project I requested to have that permission revoked so as to not be a hat collector.

Between 2015 and 2022 I was enrolled in a graduate program so I never really got into editing seriously until I finished. Two of my unexpected wikibreaks in 2022 and 2023 were due to dealing with the effects of long covid. I have never engaged in paid editing or article creation. All of the significant edits I’ve made to articles about my previous employers/schools were made after I was a student or was longer employed by them. I look forward to everyone's questions and thank you for this opportunity. Dr vulpes (Talk) 21:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

It's my pleasure to co-nominate Dr vulpes. I contacted him in September to run for RfA, impressed by their record of helping new editors at AfC where they often leave encouraging and actionable comments when drafts are not quite ready to shine. They also frequently patrol NPP, where the tools come in handy, in addition to helping out with barnstar distribution after a backlog drive. When pointing out problems with other people's edits, they remain calm, kind and clueful. Hopefully, you'll join me in supporting him. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:07, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

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 in becoming an administrator primarily to help with backlogs and maintenance tasks including redirect CSD, page protection, and requests at WP:PERM. I see these tasks as an extension of the maintenance work I do at NPP and I find that to be really fulfilling. Eventually I would like to branch out and expand my contributions to other areas that need assistance, once I have gained the appropriate level of experience and mentorship. It’s important to know what you don’t know and I’m willing to take the time to ease into this role.

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

A: Bringing Clipperton Island up to GA status was a fun and rewarding experience, I hope to get it to FA one day. In middle school I earned my ham radio license and have been mildly obsessed with radio and far away islands ever since. There is a lot of interesting and diverse material about Clipperton which made it a real joy to work on. The amount of material I was able to find in multiple different presidential libraries was kind of shocking. Working on the Clipperton Island article has pushed me to start looking to partner with ham radio organizations and clubs to help preserve their material and our history. For example, given the island's remote location, obtaining media is a challenge. To overcome this, I reached out to the TX5S ham radio DX-pedition team that visited the island in January 2024 to ask them to donate images for the article. I’ve started articles about important DX-peditions and hope to keep creating more articles about future ham radio topics. I am also working on UC Merced, Atlantic Canada, and Begum Abida Ahmed with the aim of bringing them up to Good Article status. Additionally, I have contributed significantly by sourcing articles and assisting with AfC and NPP. During my graduate studies, I was trained in finding and organizing material for use in systematic reviews, a skill I excel at and enjoy getting to apply here. When I find an article at AfC or AfD that needs some additional sources, I try my best to incorporate them.

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: One conflict that stands out to me was the one at Indigenous science. I arrived at the article via AfD and disagreed strongly with how the article had been written. I drastically rewrote the article after there appeared to be rough consensus against the previous tone at AfD. After some more back and forth via talk page and edit summaries, involved editors reached a form of compromise and the article creator and I both walked away. It's a testament to one of our community's greatest strengths that we were able to sort out this disagreement quickly and form consensus. Now some of their material and ideas are being formulated into the same article and it helps add to the article in a meaningful way. Also from that editor I was introduced to WP:WPSHORTDESC which I enjoyed working on for a while.

I have had far more positive experiences collaborating with other editors than negative ones. Early on, when I began nominating and participating at AfD, I encountered some challenges. However, I learned a lot from those experiences, and after completing NPP School my understanding of policy significantly improved. Occasionally, I became frustrated during AfD discussions and would choose to step away from disagreements. Often, upon revisiting the issue after a day or two, I realized I was mistaken. I acknowledge that social context can be lost in online interactions, and sometimes what appears confrontational is simply a miscommunication or misunderstanding. I have found that apologizing, stepping back, and seeking mutual understanding from a place of respect can be effective. As part of my job I’ve taken conflict resolution and de-escalation workshops and try to use those skills when needed. That said, I generally don’t often edit articles on highly contentious topics outside of maintenance and gnoming tasks.

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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: I had been thinking about doing a traditional RfA sometime next year. Then last month Femke reached out to see if I would be interested in running for an RfA. They also offered to nominate me which gave me a bit of the push I needed. I still spent a couple weeks mulling their offer over and felt that the election format might be a less stressful alternative to a traditional RfA. In general I’m a fairly quiet and non-confrontational person so the idea of a week long RfA with all the attention focused on me was a real barrier for me. That said, if there had been a timeline for a second election within the next year I probably would have picked it over this election since there are a lot of people running. Dr vulpes (Talk) 04:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. 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: I do not see myself working on COI, sanctions, or sockpuppets for a while. These are areas that I don’t have a significant amount of time invested in. If there is a need for admins to work in those areas I don’t mind learning and moving in that direction but I would want some mentorship or someone to check my early work while I started getting into it. I view adminship a lot like how I started at NPP. I went to NPP school and worked with my peers to improve my understanding of how everything worked.I document mistakes and use them as ways to learn and improve. My plan is to stick to areas that I feel are natural extensions of my NPP work and closing discussions. Right now that would include page protection, requests at WP:PERM, and WP:RM. Over time once I gain the experience and familiarity with the role I would like to move into merges, splits, and vandalism. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

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

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Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

• Some concern with sloppy CSD tagging. Milk Daddy was an (apparently auto-)biography tagged A11; Milk daddy was a redirect tagged A10; Bo’oh’o’wa’er was a redirect created by a well-established user (coincidentally, fellow candidate Knightoftheswords281), initially to Regional accents of English#England, tagged R3; En.Gaetano Minale was a redirect (to draftspace) tagged A2; Welding safety was a redirect to a category tagged R2. —Cryptic 00:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 89.50% match rate, n of 275. 71 keep !votes to 157 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are great numbers; I don't suspect vote-stacking and haven't looked deeper. -- asilvering (talk) 06:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)