Guild Wars Wiki talk:Elections/2007-06 bureaucrat election/Ab.er.rant

I wasn't sure how much I could write in the nomination page here without making it sound too enthusiastic; I'm not sure if these things are supposed to be impartial or not. Regardless, here I can speak more freely: I think Aberrant would be an example of the ideal bureaucrat that should be part of the Arbitration Committee that has been proposed. He knows the wiki very well, he is very familiar with content and policy writing, he's fought his share of heated debates and arguments here on the wiki, and from what I can tell, his handling these situations has been very positive.

My impression is that he's also a very hands-on kind of person. Some of us (me being one of them) would be more than happy to just keep yakking and arguing back and forth about any discussion topic forever and ever and ever. Unfortunately, that's a sure recipe for stagnation and nothing concrete getting done. Fortunately, there's others like Aberrant (and Rezyk, and several others) who are far more conscious about when it's still necessary to discuss, and when it's better to just roll up the sleeves and start condensing all that discussion into actual results. Unfortunately for them, this means that they often end up with the lion's share of the work that's done on any particular project, which makes their efforts even more commendable. I think these kinds of editors are a wiki's greatest assets. But I digress...

From what I've seen, he's helpful and friendly toward other editors, not abrasive and always positive when communicating.

He has also proven to be able to hear both sides of an argument and to be flexible in his opinions toward issues as discussions progress and new ideas and arguments are brought forward. Someone who is able to keep an open mind without getting trapped in any particular point of view is worth his weight in gold, I'd say (real gold too, not fake GW stuff!).

I'm starting to sound like a shill, so I'll wrap this up here for now. --Dirigible 06:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Umm... I'm... very flattered :D Thanks. I didn't know I could be described like that. I would've said something to the effect of me liking to bulldoze things along. -- ab.er.rant 01:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Some optional questions from myself to the candidate:

1. Are you willing to disclose your email address publicly, if elected?
2. How often and for how long do you expect that you might be "away from wiki" for a few days or more, over the elected term?

--Rezyk 16:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I have several email addresses, and I don't think there'll be a problem disclosing one of it for public use. Currently, I'm more active during the week days than during the weekend strangely, so I'm usually not around during the weekends.

But in all honesty, with neither experience of being a bureaucrat nor a sysop, I would just like to add that I would try my best to learn. -- ab.er.rant 10:54, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

may I propose...

That if Aberrant has no experience in being a Bureaucrat that we nominate him for regular adminship first (when the chance comes, which I have no clue when that will happen). --Karlos 08:19, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Sysop-ship is not a step-up to being a Bcrat, at least the way we have it set up here. Sysops have a general janitorial role, BCrats have a general arbitration role - they're completely different positions. While you would be free to nominate him for a sysop position (once Rezyk finishes that policy draft and we argue for a bit, <3 Rezyk), I'd really rather we didn't think of it as a stepping stone - the BCrat is a role that requires a completely different set of skills than a sysop, and a good sysop would not necessarily a good BCrat make. MisterPepe talk 08:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Acting as a sysop teaches a great deal. I'd say if we have to take someone without bcrat experience (which is a bad idea this early on), the next step down would be someone with sysop experience; they aren't as far apart as you might think. -Auron 11:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Unlike GuildWiki, Sysops here aren't expected to be moderators. BCrats handle the user disputes. See GWW:ADMIN for more detail on roles, in case you missed those discussions.

While it may teach a great deal, I'm not objecting to the idea that being a sysop would be good general wiki experience - however, I highly object to the notion that it's a prerequisite for the bureaucrat position. While a GuildWiki sysop might have a decent bit of experience in what a bcrat would be expected to do (the whole moderation thing), a GWW sysop really is a glorified janitor - and I personally don't ask the janitor about anything except the best way to clean something up. It seems, at least to me, that you're reading something into the Sysop position that's not there - they exist solely for cleaning up the wiki (at least on this wiki).

And, TBH, I disagree with you about the "tak[ing] someone without bcrat experience" - as I mentioned elsewhere, I voted for Ab.er.rant specifically because of his lack of experience - I feel that during the formative period here, our Bcrats need to be a Tabula Rasa, and most especially be open to new ideas and changes (and, conversely, have few preconceptions about how things should be). MisterPepe talk 11:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

In any way you see the difference between the roles of sysops and bcrats here, the fact is the lack of experience is and will always be a hinderance. You would not hire an electrician as your restaurant's head chef because they cook supper for him/herself every night, would you? — Gares 11:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

How can you ever get experience in being a bcrat if you never get the chance to be one because of lack of experience... - anja (contribs) 11:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

And, of course, if a sysop gives a different kind of experience, one that's not relevant to the bcrat position, it's like shipping that electrician off to a cosmetics school to learn how to cook. MisterPepe talk 11:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Not quite. It's like shipping a dentist off to be a family doctor; they're similar enough that serving as one will aid you immensely with the other.

Like I said, this is too early to teach someone how to be a bcrat; this wiki is still young, and any mistakes made by an ignorant new bcrat will hurt worse than a new bcrat could down the road. If someone wants first-hand experience at bcratship, they can wait; for now, the best interest of the wiki is to rely on someone who knows the ropes and will take us through until (at least) RfAs get started. -Auron 11:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'll continue to disagree with you on that one, which is partly what these elections are about.

And, by the way? Having a dentist practice general medicine on your kids would be pretty stupid, TBH. Just because they know how to drill teeth and do proper oral hygiene doesn't mean that they can diagnose and treat Pertussis. Extending that further, that analogy suggests that someone with basic medical training in one small sub-field would be able to apply that limited knowledge to a completely different area of study, which is absurd. Even in a very related sub-field, for example, Oral Surgery, any typical dentist would be far out of his league, and would be up for a malpractice suit for dabbling in it.

Personally, I think my analogy was more apt, especially in showing the way that such experience would not necessarily relate. Your analogy just did a better job of hiding it, that's all. However, it's pretty obvious I'm not going to convince you on this right now, so I'm going to go get some much-needed sleep (staying up till 6am ftl), and I'm going to keep my vote right where it is, thank you =) MisterPepe talk 12:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If you were picking a family doctor, would you pick the one with previous experience as a dentist or the one without previous experience at all? :/ -Auron 12:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(ri)Definately the one without prior experience. At least he still has a clean slate to work from and all the goodness from his education/apprenticeship still in his head. The dentist-one would probably first comment something about my teeth and then start subscribing my regular placebos. ;) --  (CoRrRan / talk) 12:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict many, many times) Actually, the bcrat position and their duties basically mean they rest on their laurels for the majority of their appointed time. You also do not need to be a bcrat to gain experience for the position, but when the time comes for a bcrat to step up, I would like to rest assure that he/she has the experience to make the correct decision. I have seen him participate heavily in discussions here and have thought him a great contributor every since he started back on GW, but contributing in discussions and adding content is not a requirement for being a bcrat. While I have not seen him involved in any user disputes does not mean he hasn't, which is why my vote is a neutral one for this individual. — Gares 12:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(Bloody, bloody edit conflicts - curse my taking a half hour to write up a decent response) Would the Dentist be the better choice in that circumstance? Possibly. However, I'd go and find another HMO personally - any that keep dentists on file under "Pediatrician" really should go DIAF. Just because that's the better choice doesn't mean it's a good choice. Really? It's more likely to be a case of enough knowledge to be dangerous than anything else, at least in that example. Neither person knows what the heck they're doing, but the Dentist makes the mistake of thinking that he does. Perhaps we should choose another field to pull our analogies from - preferably one that involves less death if you mess up.

I really do see this as a case of apples and oranges, though. You're making the assumption that the two are related, and I don't think they are. Is a sysop a position of trust on the wiki? Yes. However, it's based around different things than the BCrat is. I'm going to make one last attempt at this before I hit the /sleep.

A BCrat has only two duties on the wiki:

• Assigning user rights

• This is really just a matter of following policy and pressing three buttons. This really requires no experience, so I'm going to leave it out for the moment. If you want to bring in back up, go for it, but I don't really see why you would.

• Through ArbComm, presiding over user disputes.

• Sysops have a few responsibilities: Deleting/undeleting, blocking/unblocking, and protecting/unprotecting. Note that none of these involve arbitration.
• A normal user would have access to all other abilities. Since a BCrats job doesn't involve any of those particular tasks, it would stand to reason that those particular skills would be of relatively little (if any) value.
• Any normal policy discussions or understanding thereof could be obtained by a regular user, unless there's some super-secret "Book of the Sysops" that us puny mortals normal users aren't allowed to know about.
• The other component of this duty, aside from policy/guideline understanding seems to be judgement - whether a person is capable of making good decisions, seeing things in a neutral manner, and acting appropriately. The burden of this is lessened by the triumvriate, but it's still important. I don't really see how a sysophood would prepare someone for this either - at least, not more than any normal user with 8000+ edits.

Even if you're not convinced, Auron, I hope you at least see why I find the idea of seeing sysopship as a stepping stone to bcrathood to be such a silly concept. It really doesn't sync up. If it's because of the idea of a "position of trust" on the wiki, that's somewhat absurd. Just because I'm trusted to run a bot account doesn't mean I've got any experience that would be helpful as a BCrat either. I'd be a horrible bcrat, as I'm pretty sure you can tell. I'm nowhere near diplomatic enough ;)

And now, to bed /snore MisterPepe talk 12:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a very unrealistic stand to take. Before aberrant (or anyone for that matter) can jump in and start calling the shots as a bureaucrat in a dispute between users, he should really have built a name for himself in terms of leadership.

Now, granted, leadership is not necessarily practiced only from an admin seat, but it is expected from an admin. You can be a normal user and get into the middle of disputes and help resolve them and help guide discussions and drive issues all you want (see Dirigible), but once you are an admin, there's more pressure on you to be involved. You can't be on and see two guys having a revert war and choose to ignore it, a regular user can.

As you do that (get involved in disputes and discussions, handle requests from users, exercise your powers and judgement as well as you can, and make sure the policies of the wiki are upheld AND are healthy for the wiki), you become better at it, and you earn people's respect and your word in disputes carries more weight.

That is the value of having Admin experience before becoming a Bureaucrat. I would have thought it was very self-evident. However, I hope I made my point clearer. I don't think it's a prerequisite, but I think it's fair to point out that one who has absolutely no experience in adminship is at an obvious disadvantage from one who has. --Karlos 13:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

To come right back to the start of this discussion: Having been a sysop might be helpful in being a bureaucrat, but it is not necessary. Therefore I dislike the initial proposal of making Aberrant sysop before he should run for bureaucrat. If you really feel not being sysop is such a huge drawback, do not vote for him. Others will feel differently and not be deterred. Or be deterred by completely other circumstances. In the end we will know the winner when we look at the votes. --Xeeron 13:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

My point was that it's going to harm his chances, and I would actually like him to make it eventually. I'd like to be wrong, but I voted against every candidate with no experience, not just him because that aspect is important to me. Others of course can choose to neglect that aspect entirely. My point was that I was worried that if he loses this bid, that for the next round of voting, he (or the voters) would be discouraged to try Aberrant for adminship, and I really think he deserves to be an admin. That's what I was getting at. --Karlos 13:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. You might be interested in helping work out Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for adminship then. --Xeeron 14:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)