Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Georgewilliamherbert

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[edit] Comment

George, I definitely see you as a calm, reserved and fairly rational contributor that deserves to know that, aside from a somewhat overly critical analysis of some administrators such as myself, you generally do a decent job here. I am most concerned however with what is, from my point of view, to be a lack of empathy for those contributors who are under duress. This is a unique project whose sole purpose for existence is to write an encyclopedia. It therefore attracts persons like me, who have zero interests in blogs and most of the rest of the online community. I have never equated anything that has happened to me as being anything remotely similar to a real life (physical harm) situation, though I have received several different death threats via email...one of which was blocked by an arbitrator after running checkuser. I definitely do not want to overblow anything as a few supporters have mentioned. Should you be promoted to be an admin, I hope you will spend a LOT of time getting involved in the community efforts to help ensure we have a harassment free experience here, and not go question when someone like myself makes five or six blocks of what most admins would definitely see as trolling accounts (not once was a single one of my blocks overturned) out of the several dozen persons who have antagonized me about the ED website and related matters. There is a time when one no longer has to assume good faith when faced with repeated and termagant (and yes, disruptive) badgering. In addition, my enforcement of an arbcom decision that involves this website, isn't just about me just because I am part to the decision...I removed less than 20 links to the ED website out of more than 200 that I could have removed, so that is not excessive zeal as you wrote in your edit summary...excessive zeal would be to remove them all...and I made it clear that I had no intention of removing them all, only making the adjusts to current user pages...I know you are aware of the conversation, so I'm not going to dig up the diffs now. I accept that you have extensive online experience and I am aware that you have had situations become very unacceptable in real life from them. I myself have 20 years of law enforcement experience, and one of these areas was in interrogations, so I do know when things are spiraling downhill...if an Admin sits back and doesn't occasionally take matters in their own hands to defeat harassment of themselves and of others, then they simply become targets and I know of many contributors who have left the project because of these things. Contributors need to know that they can come here and they will have an enjoyable experience and not have the gnats nitpicking at them about petty little details. I hope you will get in the trenches, make tough decisions that involve blocking contentious editors, aide the project in reverting vandalisms and assist us in formulating policy. Should you be promoted to admin, I have hope that if you end up becoming the target of a series of termagant badgering by those whose main efforts here have nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia, that if forced to take matters into your own hands somewhat, others won't come along and critique your efforts to defeat harassment to the point that you feel like packing your bags and leaving us.--MONGO 22:20, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

In addendum, please see this comment by Fred Bauder, and understand what he is trying to say...[1]...my main take is that we need solidarity.--MONGO 22:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

(The above constructive criticism and discussion deserves an appropriate response and will get one as soon as my migraine recedes... Georgewilliamherbert 22:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC))

Take some tylenol (I just did!)...the admin nomination process isn't supposed to be one that makes you feel ill...so I definitely hope that I am not making you feel this way. I think I have written all I can on the matter and hope what I have written is understood to be nothing more than constructive, not overly critical or overblown. Thanks for your time.--MONGO 22:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't nomination-driven; I just get them sometimes. Midrin is the primary response; Tylenol doesn't do anything for me. As I noted on the main page, I do see your contributions as constructive criticism, not hostile, and I hope others see them that way as well.

I think we both clearly want the same end goal - Wikipedia as an environment where editors and administrators are supported well by a community in writing a good free encyclopedia. Supporting each other against the occational abusive troll is clearly but unfortunately going to be part of that.

As I responded to Lar, It's hard enough to convey some of the conflicting issues of "I support you" and "...but you're making it worse" in person, much less online where emotional content is much easier to lose in the discussion. Ideally, we have enough admins around ANI that in the case of real serious problem, we can focus more people's attention on it and deal with it as a community rather than leaving it up to any one member to deal with.

In a sense, as a normal editor and not admin at the time of the ED fiasco, my avenues of response were sort of limited. I couldn't go off tracking down and blocking the real problems. Several other admins were, so I figured that angle was covered. That needed to be covered, clearly, and if I had been an admin I would have been there with them.

Perhaps the "...but you're making it worse" would have come out better if I'd been an admin and actively working on the problem alongside you and others at the time. Less ambiguity possibly in your mind regarding my motives or fundamental solidarity if I'm there in the trench.

At the time and through the current time, that's not an option for me as I'm not an admin (hopefully, "yet"). As I said in my statement, I will spend part of my time hanging around ANI and if necessary responding to future incidents like that. Avoiding admins feeling like they're in a corner alone is important.

I do feel that we have to have a community where admins get critical feedback as well, though. We are all human; we all make mistakes. I certainly am not going to pretend I don't in my WP experience; some of them have been posted on the main RFA page, and i'm sure there are others out there in the WP logs. I don't have any reason to think I'm less error prone than anyone else. I think that it's important that the feedback mechanisms work; we need to have support and solidarity too, and they have to balance. I don't have any special insight into how to do that, other than try and communicate a lot if there appears to be conflict, and keep people's good faith in mind.

I really liked the Meatball Wiki "Defend each other" policy which Lar posted in his question.

In terms of how WP deals with this in the future... I don't think we can make enough policy to cover every situation which may come up. I intend to work personally to be there for people (admins or editors) who need help and ask for it. We will surely have another future situation where someone's responses in self defense have started to exacerbate the situation and that "...but you're m aking it worse" message needs to get sent; From the ongoing interactions with you, I know that if that happens, I need to be more sensitive to the admin's perspective and more supportive. If the RFA passes, I'll have more tools to be proactively assisting them overall.

This has been a good feedback dialog here. Thanks for the constructive opposition. Georgewilliamherbert 00:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)