Memory Alpha:Nominations for administratorship

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Please read the full policy on becoming an administrator before nominating someone for administrator privileges. Nominations submitted on this page are considered for at least seven days; during this time, both Administrators and registered members may express their opinions and vote. Unregistered members may not vote. Nominations must be unanimously approved in order to be accepted. Nominations that are unresolved after fourteen days will be rejected. Past nominations, both rejected and accepted, can be viewed here.

bp

Looking over the CSS files are proof enough that bp should have admin powers. While not the most active of users, almost all his edits are on the site maintenance side, and he clearly has a grasp of MA policy, so I don't see a reason to have an admin do all his edits for him. ;) In all seriousness though, bp has been here helping to keep the site looking good and running long before I was, and I think giving him admin powers would be in the best interests for MA. - Archduk3 00:05, November 16, 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

• I'm going to oppose this nomination. A lot for Cid's comments, especially about over directness. I realize that as of late this is basically the pot calling the kettle black, but then I wouldn't expect to pass a nomination myself at this time. I have a much more concrete reason, mainly that he wouldn't be able to serve in the role well because of his low activity. If one looks at bp's contributions over the last few years, he goes months at a time without a single edit, and then only a handful of days in a given month with activity. One of the primary roles of administrators is to combat vandalism, and he would not be able to do so on almost any day. We don't seem to be at a shortage of admins able to delete pages, edit style sheets, or move images. At least we aren't in such an extreme shortage that someone with such low activity would give us better service then we have now. The only other major admin tool is the revert button. As far as I know, both bp and I already have the revert button, we were given it independently of admin functionality. Bp is, like it or not, not a regularly active editor. An administrator should be. MA has even had policy discussions about removing administrators based solely on the grounds of inactivity. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 16:11, November 22, 2010 (UTC)

• I am also going to oppose, because of both the low activity(which even the nominator admits to) and the points Cid raised.--31dot 01:59, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

I'll reply to Cid here as well, since it would be rather foolish to post this block twice.

There is no activity requirement to be an admin, beyond being "a registered member of the community for at least several months, and to have made several hundred edits to articles." Bp is clearly a "recognized member of the community" and while not the most active of members, is still far more active currently then Alan, who's more or less been AWOL for the last 6 months. I'm not suggesting we de-admin Alan, since when he is here he generally more than makes up for his absence, and unless I'm mistaken he still has the most edits. I feel bp more than makes up for his absence as well.

Admins do more than just combat vandals as well, although that is the most frequent activity that requires sysop powers, but it is not the primary role as I see it. Site maintenance would be our primary role, of which combating vandals is just one part. Bp already does a lot of site maintenance as is, and I think he would do even more as an admin.

This is also not to suggest that he, or we, should flat out forgo the policies and guidelines by not having discussions before hand. I don't think there is an admin who hasn't just made a change at one point or another without bringing it up first, but I haven't seen anything that I would call an edit war between admins while I've been here when that change is contested, so to suggest that including bp would somehow lead to that is confusing at best, and disingenuous at worst. That said, there is currently plenty of room for debate and discussion between admins over said policy and guidelines, which unless I'm mistaken is the whole point "the more administrators that participate in the system, the better", so I don't think that a little bit of rabble rousing on the talk pages, if that were to happen, is going to bring down the whole house of cards as it were.

I also don't consider bluntness to be a major drawback for the most part, or I never would have suggest sulfur for bureaucrat ;) , but I can see how that could be a problem. Of course, are there any admins who haven't been accused or being at least rude at one point? That's not to sidestep or down play the issue, just to point out that there are many ways to read what was typed without ever hitting upon the way it "said".

While I don't expect to change anyone's mind here, I did feel I should at least defend my reasoning for the nomination, since I admit that I could have put at least half of this in there beforehand. I also know that becoming an admin isn't some sort of prize we hand out for time spent and edits made, but I do feel that we could be doing ourselves a disservice by not at least suggesting members more often who meet the requirements, since I was surprised to see that bp hadn't been nominated before. - Archduk3 07:04, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

Comment

Thanks, Archduk3. --bp 22:02, November 21, 2010 (UTC)

This is probably going to be difficult - I'm not trying to deliberately step on anyones toes, but with bp now having accepted the nomination, he of course deserves some other reply than just silence. So - should bp become an admin here? On the one hand, he has been an active contributor for years now, and has helped MA in more than one way during that time - examples are custom scripts and CSS fixes, work on several of the more arcane templates, etc.. On the other hand, being an admin is not only about doing the behind-the-scenes maintenance work, but also about accepting the explicit and implicit rules of a wiki while doing so (if nothing else, at least as a necessary evil). In that regard, I think that bp's directness (for lack of a better term) might lead to some problems down the line. Not enough to actively oppose this nomination, but enough to at least bring it up proactively and ask that this please not happen, should there be further support votes.

Also, and this is not directed at bp specifically , I have to question the reasons for this nomination: should anyone become an admin for the sole reason of giving him access to the site's "layout"? I think not. I see an increased interest in the CSS files over the last few weeks - of course, related to the skin change, but still: the more people are editing the files, and the more often they do it, the higher is the need for doing it while following the typical workflow for controversial wiki edits: discuss first, change later. If this is followed, we don't need to hand out admin access for just the reason of editing the files - and if it is not followed, this might lead to admin edit wars over the CSS files sooner or later. Not exactly what we'd want to have. -- Cid Highwind 13:32, November 22, 2010 (UTC)