Wikiquote:Requests for adminship/Ferien

Nomination
Hello there,

I'm Ferien. I've been active on Wikiquote on and off for about a year, as of making this statement. My changes are mostly anti-vandalism but if you look in my contributions, there are also a few minor contributions like category changes and external link fixes in there.

I'm mainly requesting to become an administrator because of the amount of vandalism I see here. I currently have rollback here through global rollback already, so I can quickly revert the vandalism when I see it. However, I have noticed there are a few edit warring vandals here and I don't think reverting vandals several times when they can't be stopped helps anyone. I notice when I'm around, a lot of the time there are no admins around at all and sometimes there is a long wait for a sysop to arrive, and stewards will take emergency actions. I think I may be helpful in this regard, I am available for a good chunk of the day and when awake, I am usually reachable within an hour whichever way you contact me (whether it be an on-wiki or off-wiki method). My timezone is UTC/UTC+1 depending on the time of year.

And in terms of admin experience, I am currently a simplewiki sysop where I have made a couple of thousand deletions and nearly a thousand blocks. I have noticed there are a couple of vandals who I have seen both on simplewiki and enwikiquote, which may help in decreasing disruption here.

I do not claim to have a lot of experience with areas like content creation here. I have around 800 edits but I am not expecting my activity to change any time soon – from September 2021 until now I have made around 40-120 edits per month. If you don't want me as an administrator here based on my little experience with content creation or with Wikiquote articles, I totally understand. Regardless of how this RfA turns out, I will still be around as part of my work in the SWMT.

Thank you for your time, Ferien (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Candidate's acceptance: Not applicable, self-nomination. --Ferien (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Vote ends: 1 March 2022 18:00 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate
Is vandalism the most serious problem on Wikiquote (WQ) for the community? If so why do we not see any discussion of it on the wq:Village pump? Does WQ have any other urgent problems in need of a fix? If so, what are those problems?

If vandalism on WQ a problem why is adding more admins going to solve this "problem"? Is this an answer looking for a problem? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, thank you for the questions.
 * Vandalism can be quite a severe problem on some wikis, but I wouldn't say it is the most severe problem here because typically, it is reverted within minutes either by anti-vandals or the SWMT if there is no-one around. I think a bigger problem is edit warring vandals and LTAs (long-term abusers), because to stop them, admin tools are usually needed, undo/rollback alone can only do so much if your edit's going to get reverted again in a minute. The block and protect buttons can slow these editors' vandalism down, if not stop them for a short amount of time, hence more admins = higher chance of an admin being available = the vandalism would be slowed down or stopped, so more admins can definitely help with this. As to why no-one talks about the vandalism on the village pump, trolls should be denied recognition, talking about them on such a viewed page would be giving them the attention they want, which is also why I'm not giving examples of the vandalism or anything like that here. I can't think of any urgent problems on Wikiquote in need of a fix off the top of my head right now, so I think no. I hope I answered your question but if not, please let me know. Thanks. --Ferien (talk) 16:26, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Support. I have seen the many times this user has helped to fight the waves of vandalism to which the site is subject on a regular basis. I believe that having another admin to formally help maintain our site would be a benefit and I support this request. ~ UDScott (talk) 18:56, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. I've worked with Ferien for a while on other WMF projects, and he's been most helpful there -- and here. I think it would help having another admin on WQ, especially given the persistent disruption we've seen recently. Excellent candidate. Antandrus (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 3) Support. We definitely need more vandal fighters here, and I know of no reason to oppose this nomination. I myself am presently extremely limited in the time I can expend here, and some of the long-term abusers of the past have recently increased their activities considerably. Most days lately I receive notices of multiple attempts that have been made to log in under my user name, and thankfully I remain quite confident that such attempts will continue to fail -- but unfortunately the recently most active of trolls and vandals do a great deal to disrupt normal activities here, and more reliable help in blocking and reverting their vandalism is certainly welcome. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:40, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 4) Support user can be trusted, has a clue, would be a net benefit to the project if they were an admin --DannyS712 (talk) 07:08, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 5) Support That our regular LTAs don't like you very much is enough for me.   G M G  talk  17:10, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 6) Let's do this! --Synoman Barris (talk) 10:23, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * 7) Support. Don't see any issues; answer regarding Quotability is sufficient. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 16:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Normally I would just comment but there doesn't appear to be a comments section. Ferien, do you believe that anti-vandalism and the like is an exception to the notion of creating content? The inverse is also the case; such people generally have a high activity level, however in this case you acknowledge you are not that active, which is fine, I never thought that sysops were supposed to be editing every day, as long as they are being valuable and reasonably active (I've taken breaks of several months before). This seems like it is more of a case of global rollback (which you already have) or global sysop (which doesn't affect this wiki). Naleksuh (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello, I think it is very reasonable that there are many people/wikis in general who believe content creation is important to admin tools. It shows experience with how the wiki works and what the main focus of the wiki is. The main purpose of Wikiquote is to store quotations from notable people that are sourced and as I said in my nomination statement, I have little to no experience with that kind of work. That being said, anti-vandalism is crucial in ensuring that people can still use this site and the admin tools themselves do not involve content creation. Even on a wiki where there is a large amount of people who feel content creation is needed from an admin, enwiki, there has been an effort to disconnect content creation and administrative work, as you may have seen from the recent disconnection of autopatrolled from their admin tools. The point I'm trying to make (if I haven't made it clear already) is: whilst most people feel experience with content creation is best for admin, and I completely understand if you feel it's necessary yourself, the admin tools themselves do not relate to content creation, therefore content content is not required for adminship in my opinion, so I nominated myself. Does that answer your question? --Ferien (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Also, I think it may be important to note that there was a discussion about global sysops abilities here – I believe it occurred within the past year or so. There was a reasonable amount of support for enwikiquote to become a GS wiki but stewards declined to make it one because there was not a clear consensus to make it one. But if you look at a couple of the recent RfAs, some candidates didn't have content creation but wanted to help the wiki and they had experience in anti-vandalism here, and they gained support and became sysops. So it's this situation where there isn't quite the consensus to have global sysops on this wiki yet RfAs for people wanting to help with anti-vandalism etc. can end up succeeding. --Ferien (talk) 20:06, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ferien : You say that the purpose of WQ (Wikiquote) is "to store quotations from notable people that are sourced"  but I don't understand who the notable people are in The Lego Movie, for example. There are many more such pages on WQ. Would you please explain?
 * Also what does GS mean? Ottawahitech (talk) 21:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Not just to store quotations from notable people but also in notable creations like the Lego Movie, yes. But maybe it's important to note that the people in the Lego Movie are likely notable as well. Maybe I should have just said Wikiquote is a quote compendium.
 * GS = global sysops. They typically make uncontroversial actions (like cleaning up vandalism) in GS wikis. Some wikis are automatically GS wikis because they have few to no active admins but others enable it because they would like the help. A discussion like that was started here and as I said, it got support but not enough consensus to have GSes here. --Ferien (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "Maybe I should have just said Wikiquote is a quote compendium." – You have used the word "maybe" twice while explaining the essence of Wikiquote. To make sure you understand the scope of the project, could you please summarise in own words what determines whether a quote can be listed here? 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 15:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Let's also consider that Wikipedia is for notable people, events and more generally, things, but I can also call it an encyclopedia (which is a lot simpler), so that's why I answered the way I did. It's not "maybe" this is what Wikiquote is, it is "maybe" this is what I should have put in my answer because it's clearer. I think you'd agree that "encyclopedia" is clearer than "pages for notable things", right?
 * Anyway, your question: as I have already said, I am not experienced on the content side of Wikiquote, and I do not claim to be, so I'm not going to be able to give a perfect answer to your question. I didn't volunteer to add to the content here, only to protect it from the rather persistent vandal attacks you have likely seen recently. That being said, there are a few factors I know as to whether a quote can be listed. You've got to consider whether the quote is particularly quotable or well-known and quotes should have sources to show they're real and well-known. The notability of the author and/or subject should also be considered. And a quote should not be too long, otherwise it's not a quote, it's just a copy of their work. Thanks, --Ferien (talk) 16:25, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose. Too soon. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:48, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Protected
Please note that I have semi-protected this page due to interference from LTAs --DannyS712 (talk) 07:08, 24 February 2022 (UTC)