User:MolagBallet/RfA

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Request for Adminship: MolagBallet

Our Request for Adminship (RfA) process is based on Wikipedia's policy. An editor, when nominated, accepts and answers questions, which can be asked by any registered editor. Votes and comments can also be left by any registered editor. Daveh makes the call, based upon the community's consensus, after about a week.

MolagBallet (talk⁺ • contribs • edit count • logs • email)

MolagBallet has, over the past few years, been one of the most prolific editors we have, editing even more prolifically than me! She has consistently been fair in discussions and knows how to leave disagreements on wiki discussions within those discussions themselves, which I believe is very important for an admin. In addition, with the amount of effort ESO takes to continue to document, having another admin who plays ESO consistently would be a huge benefit to the wiki. I know that I don't play ESO quite as much, and I'm sure several other admins likely are in the same position. We also would be well served in having another experienced admin by the time TES6 information starts getting released, which is likely to be soon. For these reasons (and so many more), I nominate MolagBallet to become an administrator for the wiki. :)

I wholeheartedly accept this nomination! --MolagBallet (talk) 00:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Questions

Q1: What do you hope to accomplish as an administrator?

I hope to be able to better serve the site and its users as an administrator.
For one, I seek to uphold the standard of quality we've outlined for the UESP. I want to make information accessible to our readers: our information needs to be easy to find, easy to read, and very thorough. I also want to help maintain our pages: deleting unnecessary files or redirects, dealing with spammers and vandals, and restoring things that may have been wrongfully deleted in the past. I am capable of sitting in front of my computer and performing tedious tasks that most people would find boring, or would quickly relegate to a bot. A fitting example would be what I did today: I added categories to a bunch of icons that needed them, and went back and manually fixed the ones I had messed up when I noticed I made a mistake. I had to mark a few pages for deletion in the process, which is something I do regularly, whether it's a redirect from a move or an image with an improper file type that's being replaced with one of the correct file type. Having the ability to delete these pages would lighten the load on the existing administrators.
I also want to be someone that our editors can look to when they have problems with the site or each other; someone who can resolve interpersonal issues and defuse tense situations before they fester. I don't think we're lacking in that department, but if I'm going to even dream of accepting this nomination, I need to acknowledge the fact that people have feelings, those feelings can lead to problems among our users, and an administrator is supposed to be someone who can help in those situations. Being an administrator isn't just about maintaining the site's content, it's about making sure people are taken care of on the user side of things as well.

Q2: What do you see as the UESP's main challenges in the near future?

Keeping up with ESO seems like the most prominent challenge at the moment. ESO has a lot of collectibles, a lot of content, and a lot of pages. I know this not just because people talk about the scale of the namespace, but because I've touched a good 70-85% of those pages. Online:Mounts is huge. I had to split Online:Body Markings between Body Markings you can acquire through normal means and Body Markings you collect from Crown Crates because the page was getting so large, it would take a full minute and a half to load on my computer. It isn't just keeping up with ESO as it updates that we need to worry about, it's maintaining existing pages to accomodate the new content as well.

Q3: How do you interpret the balance between enforcing policies and being innovative when policies prove to be problematic?

Policies are like the laws of our little "land", so to speak: they exist for a reason and should be enforced. But we have to face some difficult questions in regards to policies on occasion. Case in point: the arguments over Original Research and Unofficial Lore. What is UOL/OR, how far should we take it, and where are our boundaries? At what point is a statement an inference based on facts, and at what point is it rubbish we've tied together from thin air based on similar, but unrelated strings all hanging from the same ceiling? When we have issues with policies, whether they're unclear or users have problems with them for one reason or another, we need to address them through change. We can't just be sticklers for the rules who refuse to bend.
I'll take a page from the Argonians and put it this way: the reed that bends doesn't break when the river rushes over it. If a policy proves ineffective or problematic, the best thing we can do is sit down, listen to our users, figure out exactly what's wrong with the policy, and make changes accordingly when a consensus is reached. If we have a problem with one of our policies, and we don't change or clarify things, people are going to continue to have problems with said policy.

Q4: What action will you take if you see another administrator perform an action that you completely disagree with? Do you believe it is ever necessary or permissible to revert the actions of another administrator?

If I disagreed with another administrator, I'd formulate a talk page post explaining what I disagreed with and why, and if I felt the change they made was egregious, I would revert it. I don't think administrators should never have their edits reverted; everybody makes mistakes and sometimes even the best of us can do things that others disagree with for completely valid reasons. We're human. That's what the aforementioned talk page post is for: to communicate the hypothetical issue, how I think it should be handled, and discuss if there's a compromise to be reached. I don't believe in not giving feedback. If I have a problem with something another administrator is doing, I'll tell them what bothers me and try to see if we can reach some sort of middle ground. This kind of goes back to what I said about policies: we can't resolve conflict without communication.

Votes

• Support: As nominator. Jeancey (talk) 23:08, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Molagballet's edits are consistently good quality. You have covered why she deserves to be one well enough, so yes i agree that we need an admin like her for when TES 6 comes around.Zebendal (talk) 23:31, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Heading to Special:RecentChanges every day and seeing MolagBallet's name plastered everywhere is a reassuring experience. There is no doubt how much of an asset she is to this site. Dcsg (talk) 00:28, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: I know how dedicated, MolagBallet can be and I've been impressed with the work and dedication she has put into the site, not to mention all help she had been with the vampire page, and even the impressive work she put into the lycanthrope page. I know she goes out of her way to get screenshots and does a lot of work. So I support her for this because I feel she has what it takes.TheVampKnight (talk) 00:46, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: MolagBallet is doing fantastic work, both content- and maintenance-wise. She is courteous, clearly put thought into her responses above, and exhibits all the qualities one would expect from an administrator. She has also been moving many pages and marking others for deletion, so having the ability to suppress redirects and delete pages would be of great benefit. --Oriwa ^Talk 01:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Having worked with Molag many times now on overhauling lore articles, ESO, Skyrim NPC dialogue, etc. I'm more than confident she has the skills to take this position, especially with how much work she puts into certain namespaces such as ESO, she's always active on Discord as well, so communication with her is never an issue. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 19:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: In addition to the huge number of content edits MolagBallet has accrued in the ESO namespace and elsewhere, she has consistently shown a willingness to engage with the maintenance side of the site and to learn from any mistakes. She was successfully nominated as a patroller well over a year ago and has been a tremendous asset to the site in that time. She has strong interpersonal skills and can deal with conflict on and off the wiki in a productive manner, which is an essential trait for any sysop candidate. In this regard, I am impressed by her responses to the above questions and perfectly happy to support this nomination. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:05, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: A fantastic editor and patroller. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 17:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support: I can't think of a better candidate to have, this user is so incredibly hardworking and dedicated to the wiki that its insane. They have a very level head and are one of the most reasonable and good-willed people I've ever had the pleasure to speak to. I've been editing for almost 10 years and normally I'd factor in experience, but with how quick of a learner MolagBallet is and how much they can accomplish within a short timeframe I'd say her ~2 years of editing are equivalent to 6 years worth of experience haha. The amount of work she's done for this wiki cannot be understated; if it weren't for her contributions I think the ON space would be stuck around ~8,000 missing photos (compared to the current ~1,800), many pages would be barebones level empty, and many other mechanics would not be properly understood or listed. A lot of its current strength in documentation and formatting is all thanks to her. Most of all they have a very good grasp on knowing where their talents lie, and generally when she edits namespaces its with a lot of care and effort; I don't believe I've ever seen her address any page without first researching everything about it, which a lot of users don't bother to do in favor of pretending to be well-versed on the subject. A lot of pages owe her their thanks. She is just so knowledgeable about so many matters about the wiki and the games thanks to her intuition and grit. I'm very much looking forward to see how she will do as an administrator. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 23:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Consensus: Support. Fully supported by all participants. --Ilaro (talk) 15:06, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Completed

A big welcome to our newest admin! -- Daveh ^(talk) 15:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)