Wikinews:Requests for permissions/Administrator/Matt

Matt
Otherwise known as TheFearow, Matt's done a lot of work around here, and I see absolutley no reason why he shouldn't have the mop. He's also been helping us quite a bit with our bots, and has adminship on MediaWiki.org, so he's not a new administrator. I think that Matt certainly deserves the tools without question.

Questions

 * What is the meaning of life?
 * 14. Matt | userpage|contribs 05:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What will you do with the admin tools given that they are provided to you? --Nzgabriel | Talk 01:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Primarily work on cleaning up vandalism, deleting speedy deletion stuff, and blocking vandals/trolls/etc. I'd also like to help clean up the archiving backlog, which should be done ASAP. All generic admin tasks :) Matt | userpage|contribs 21:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Votes

 * as nom Thunderhead - (talk - email - contributions) 05:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * --Brian McNeil / talk 08:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 *  —Fellow Wiki  Newsie 15:47, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * support This user has demonstrated he is an asset to the wikinews comunity. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * ~  Wi ki her mit  02:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * --Jcart1534 17:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with the answer provided to my question. But as a side note, don't you think we have too many admins...? --Nzgabriel | Talk 03:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No such thing, IMO. Administrator is a status given to trusted users, and we can never have too many trusted users. Thunderhead - (talk - email - contributions) 00:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thunderhead is quite correct here. Admin is as much an indication of community trust as a requirement to help maintain the wiki. If you think back to before you had the priv bit I'm sure you recall intermittent frustration that you couldn't delete vandalism articles and the like. As a normal user you run up against a wall where you're using things like notnews to alert admins that stuff needs zapped. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


 * again —Zachary talk 00:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * --Mark Talk to me 15:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm familiar with Matt from en.wp, and he fits the description of "trusted user" quite well. EVula // talk // 18:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 10:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Grimlock 12:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments

 * Earlier RfA under the username TheFearow can be found in the archive.


 * I'm currently in the process of studying Matt's contributions in order to ensure I make a fair judgment of this user and have a small criticism to make. Looking through Matt's user talk page, I see a lot of other users who appear to be talking to themselves. I suspect this is because the user is replying to comments elsewhere. Doing this makes it very difficult for anyone else to follow the discussions and I would strongly discourage this practice. It might be appropriate in some instances to notify a user on their talk page that you have replied to ensure that they are aware as of course they may not be watching the page where they left the message. Adambro 15:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Some people prefer to reply on the talk page of others because it gets the new message flag and you have a high degree of confidence they've seen your response. We can't enforce "I respond on my talk and notify you", but it may be a better approach to keeping discussions less fragmented.
 * For adminship and any investigation of a user's contributions you do want to see what they write on other people's talk pages, but you're more interested in "have they avoided or - better yet - defused disputes?", have they "borrowed" a mop and bucket and cleaned up vandalism? Adminship should be "ask not what the wiki can do for you (i.e. give you the priv bit) but what you can do for the wiki". What an admin can do for the wiki is help keep it a place where good-faith contributions are welcomed. There are discussions elsewhere on us being curt or rude with newcomers, this should be extended to potential admins. Zach and I had a run-in with a very rude admin on Wiktionary (?IIRC?) I don't want us having the same rep. --Brian McNeil / talk 16:07, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I reply on their talk page, especially with new users, as I find it much easier to keep track of replies. When I started on enwiki, I waited over a month for a reply before going to their page to ask for them to reply, and realising they replied on their page already. If someone asks me to reply on my talk page, I will. Also, if there are more than two people communicating (unless one is a new user) then I will keep it on one page. Matt | userpage|contribs 09:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)