Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bobherry

Bobherry

Bobherry (talk · contribs · count)

End date: 20:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello everyone!

I am pleased to be nominating user Bobherry for consideration of the position of administrator. He has been an editor here for some three years and during that time has come to be known as a daily fixture. In preparation for this RfA I have been mentoring Bobherry for over two months. This has included me asking him for opinions on matters such as the length of blocks, adequate warnings, page protections and many other daily admin tasks. I have also been researching his editing here and his need for the tools. During the beginning of his nominating articles for quick deletion he started off with having most of his nominations being accepted by administrators but a considerable number being turned down. Nowadays, however, almost all of his nominations are being accepted showing a great increase in understanding of what should and what should not be quickly deleted. He takes part in discussions at RfD and shows considered reasoning in his comments there. He also is very active at VIP where he reposts vandals and open proxies almost daily and in discussions on WP:AN and WP:ST. He is furthermore an active editor in the mainspace of the project which is very important to us all and has many edits to userspace where he uses Twinkle to properly warn problem users and notify them of quick deletion nominations. Please take your time in considering Bobherry for the mop and take some time to look at his actions, particularly those in the last few months. I have found him to be a pleasure to mentor and very friendly on Discord chat. Thanks for considering this RfA. Yours, fr33kman 20:53, 13 November 2023 (UTC)TC)

Candidate's acceptance: I happily accept. Thank you. Bobherry Talk My Changes 20:59, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Support

1. Support as nom. fr33kman 21:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
2. Support. He is very driven and dedicated to the Simple English Wikipedia. I think that his changes to the Simple English Wikipedia speak for themselves. He has my support. Red-tailed hawk (talk) 01:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
3. Support Kk.urban (talk) 17:31, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

   Support Dont know this guy, but seems pretty legit, Oh you guessed it (talk) 18:24, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

   Administrator note: This user is a sock and globally locked fr33kman 19:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

    Bureaucrat note: Vote struck, account was not registered prior to RfA so does not count. --Ferien (talk) 19:30, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose. I'm here because Bobherry has been quite open in the Wikimedia Discord about their desire to run for adminship, and so I have had this page watchlisted for quite some time to make sure that I could share my thoughts. I'll start out by acknowledging that I am an enwiki tourist and that most of my interaction with Bobherry has been via Discord (where I am one of the server admins), so if either of those is a deal-breaker then please feel free to discount this vote. With that said...
   Bobherry, in my experience, simply does not have the maturity or self-reflection to be an administrator. His behavior was consistent with what I would expect from a newbie antivandalism patroller – lots of excited "look how many vandals I reverted today," an overeager "I'm fighting vandals and Defending The Wiki!" mentality, and the like. I expect more from someone with his experience who is considering running for adminship. Further, moderators of the Wikimedia Discord had to remind him on many, many occasions about the importance of WP:DENY. Even after Bobherry himself added a line about "don't talk about vandals on the Discord server" to your version of DENY in this edit, he was failing to observe DENY a couple weeks later. I'm not talking about cases of asking for help, like "there's a vandal on my talk page and I'm on my phone, could someone help me revert it?" I'm talking about posting links to/images of "funny" vandalism, posting infodumps on things LTAs like GRP do, that sort of thing, even after repeated warnings (ranging from polite requests to formal warnings). Also, number of admins told him over the past year to stop seeing adminship as a goal to be reached (and to stop dropping hints about wanting to be one), but those hints went ignored as well. And since Bob's nominator brought it up, he was removed from the aforementioned Discord last month for taking pictures while driving, posting them to Discord, and bragging about how careful a driver he was. This was the second time he had done this, and was the last straw for the moderation team.
   The problem, for me, isn't that Bobherry made mistakes. We all make them, and any sysop who tells you they haven't done something wrong with the tools is lying to you. What matters to me is listening when someone tells you you're making a mistake, and learning from those mistakes. My experience has been that Bob doesn't listen and doesn't learn, or at least that suggestions, advice, and warnings have to be given to him repeatedly before he makes any effort to change. These are not behaviors that are suitable for adminship, and therefore I do not believe he is qualified for the role. GeneralNotability (talk) 01:43, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

   Firstly, Discord is NOT Wikipedia! In my view a person should be judged by their onwiki presence alone when it comes to elections. Bobherry might be hard to deal with in a real-time text system but that's not how he is onwiki. I've mentored him for almost three months now and I've witnessed a big change in his actions and how he thinks. He has shown a real need for the tools in his day-to-day life onwiki. I don't see him getting into arguments here nor do I think he'll misuse the tools. On the contrary I think he knows what he is doing. I find it slightly creepy that you have been stalking this page just waiting for an opportunity to jump all over him the second he pops his nose up. I think that says more about your personality than it does his. fr33kman 17:04, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

2. Oppose While I'm sure you're dedicated to the wiki, GeneralNotability raises significant concerns about the temperament needed to serve as an administrator and their views on adminship. --DannyS712 (talk) 11:56, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Comments

(Full disclosure: I am an en.wp editor who is quite active on the Wikipedia Discord server who sometimes does some work with antivandalism on Simple English Wikipedia)

For now, I am neutral. On one hand, Bobherry is an excellent contributor to Simple English Wikipedia in terms of countervandalism, and giving him the mop and bucket will help se.wp's VIP backlogs reduce substantially. On the other hand, as GeneralNotability stated I have some concerns about judgement and temperament - not changing one's past poor behavior despite having multiple people give feedback frankly shows a lack of self awareness, IMHO. Regarding "seeing adminship as a goal to be reached", my personal view is that it really depends on what specifically the aforementioned "goal" is about - if one wishes to be an admin for helping maintain the project, making constructive contributions and/or reducing Wikipedia's backlogs and not for any sort of personal gain I am completely fine; however, if one wishes to be an administrator for "status" and "power" it is an obvious no-no for me. So, that being said, I will support this if and only if Bobherry sufficiently demonstrates that he will be receptive to feedback at all times and improve his behavior when concerns are raised by others and will not feed the trolls if he ever becomes an administrator. #prodraxis ^connect 05:18, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello thank you for your response. I can promise you that I can and have changed compared to who I used to be and I am ashamed for who I used to be. And I am sure I speak for everyone when I say that wanting to be an admin isn’t bad, that is why most people will ultimately become one. I do not see admins as having more power or being more senior then a normal user or IP and I simplify want to be able to fight vandalism more effectively. I would listen to what others say as well. Should I fail as an admin I am also open to recall. Thank you again and I hope you are doing well since we last spoke. Bobherry Talk My Changes 17:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I think Bobherry is open to listening to comments and advice. One of the first interactions I had with him was negative; he reverted an edit he made on my talk page. After talking with him he recognized his mistake and apologized for it. That shows a user open to feedback. If elected I think Bobherry would make very good admin. He certainly has need of the mop. He is constantly finding things for me to do, lol ... :) fr33kman 18:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Fr33kman, thank you for your explanation. I just have a few more questions to ask @Bobherry which will determine if I will change my !vote or not:

1. What is a recent instance (within 2-3 months at least) where you have received constructive criticism about your editing and have worked actively to improve the way you edit in a long-lasting manner?

2. What should you do and not do when dealing with LTA's to avoid feeding the trolls?

#prodraxis ^connect 21:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)