Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kudpung

Kudpung

Voice your opinion on this candidate (talk page) (21/2/1); Scheduled to end 09:56, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Nomination

Kudpung (talk · contribs) – Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to present you Kudpung, whose username is derived from a Thai village, and who has tempted me to interrupt my break from the project space! Kudpung is an experienced editor (almost 27k edits, but quality not quantity!) who is largely involved in gnome-ish activities, where he often finds himself having to bug an admin. However, his activity doesn't stop there. He has been a significant contributor to five GAs (Malvern College, Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern water, Milford Haven, Wellingborough), has spent time largely running Wikipedia:WikiProject School, has founded Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire (the county, not the sauce!) and played a large part in establishing and implementing the WP:BLPPROD process, as well as loitering at WP:EAR to offer assistance to newbies. All things considered, I think Kudpung is a calm, rational and uncontroversial editor, three qualities that would be of great benefit to the admin corps. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:58, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Co-nomination

For my third ever nomination, I present Kudpung. A member of Wikipedia for five years now, but only active since mid-2009, he's a well-rounded editor with interests in content and deletion. Kudpung has contributed to five good articles, dealt with translation (taking on the formidable Brontë family article), and, as HJ mentions above, began the Worcestershire WikiProject. A much more detailed list of his contributions to the project can be found on his userpage in the "Contribs and Userboxen" section.

Though some of Kudpung's views differ from mine, I cannot help but admire him. It seems that he puts care into every edit he makes and that's a desirable quality in an administrator. He's also got a backbone, and he's not afraid to share his opinion. But he's mature and knows when to contain himself.

Kudpung's comments always seem insightful and he seems to have quite a lot of clue. I usually find them to be well-backed and knowledgeable.

Having some 27,000 edits, Kudpung clearly has the experience to take on the job. He has diversity within that experience, with a large percent of his edits to article space and a decent amount to talk, showing an interest in content while being able to discuss problems and suggestions. With more than 100 edits to three of his good articles, it's obvious that he is dedicated and here for the better of the encyclopedia.

It's undeniable that Kudpung's a strong, well-rounded editor. So it seems only logical to me that he'll be the same as an administrator. ceranthor 20:02, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I thank you both for your kind words and I'm happy to accept.Kudpung (talk) 07:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: I work a lot on BLP and NPP backlogs, and school articles - all areas that have a lot of vandalism, poor or no sourcing, self-promotion, and CSD candidates. I also work regularly at a help desk where many enquiries lead to a use of the tools. I therefore come across many instances where uncontroversial use of the tools is needed. I take an interest in COI and SPI but not being able to view previously deleted pages and users’ deletions, I don’t spend a lot of time in these areas yet. I !vote regularly on AfD for schools, BLP, and music, and would close some of the less controversial issues and DRV, and look into some of the chronic backlog areas, but my Wiki editing time is so full I don’t know which ones yet. Most of the areas I work in are concerned with cleaning up articles and other procedural interventions that need the tools rather than policing the authors who create them, or going on witch hunts for vandals and 3rr, etc. I would of course keep an eye on any filters that ring alarm bells, and chip in on some backlogs such as, for example, MfD etc, that don’t get so much attention. However, I wouldn’t be going out of my way to discover new niche areas where I can wield the mop - the number of daily occasions I come across where the tools could be used among my 50 – 100 daily; mostly manual edits is already enough to keep me very busy, and I work in a time zone where most of the English speaking world is asleep, which would enable me to reduce the nightly or hourly backlog of attack and other CSD pages.

2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?

A: I have a weakness for being talked into helping out on all sorts of projects and backlogs. Very few of my edits are minor or automated, and until I realized that GA is no big personal deal (but definitely a criterion of quality), I used to think it was the Malvern GA; it’s a long article and I didn't create the short stub, but I wrote most of it and took many of the photos for it, and with a lot of help, I got it to GA. Then I thought perhaps it was creating the WP:WORCS project and getting it going. Then I thought it was the translation I was asked to do of the huge French Brontë article (200 kB, 9,000 words). I like to think that I create or expand articles within the guidelines, so most of them (I think) are fairly clean. On policy and meta stuff, I was able to play a significant part in getting the WP:BLPPROD moved forward to operation, and I once worked like a maniac to clear three days of NPP backlog almost single-handed, but it was done to help demonstrate some issues at WP:NPP and BLP. As a result I came up with a new NPP feature that with the help of a bot programmer is now up and running. I’m also trying to revive the huge WP:WPSCHOOLS project and I‘m currently working on ironing out ambiguities in the notability GL for schools. I know it sounds a bit cliché, but probably my best contribution is the sum total of all my contributions.

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

A: Stress? No. There have been some awkward moments, because anyone who works on quasi-administrative stuff is going to make some enemies among the people who refuse to abide by policy and try to win arguments by gaming the system. I just generally leave a deadpan message with a few links to policy, and walk away without taking too much of the bait. I've never taken anyone to a notice board for anything they have done to me - in fact I don't think I've ever reported anyone except perhaps sockpuppetry, because I’m usually able to resolve such issues before they need to be taken that far and I like to think I can handle any disputes I'm involved in without screwing up editor and admin time. Of course if I had the tools, I would certainly get more involved, as a neutral 3rd party, in cases where only admin judgment is allowed, but as a lay editor, I just try to steer clear of the conflict zones.

I dislike system gaming intensely and I’m very quick to recognise clear cases of it. It is cunning and disingenuous. In my opinion, once their art is blatantly obvious, maintaining a pretense of assuming good faith in such situations is also hypocritical. The only times I was taken to ANI was a long time ago by a very young, former sysop, whom I had templated for what I thought (and still believe) was a serious abuse of the edit summary system. I didn’t handle it too well when he complained and I was threatened with a punitive, cool-off block (by an admin who has since disappeared from Wikipedia after a very short time in office) unless I apologised for what I supposed was a very veiled and mild form of PA. Otherwise, my tp is totally free of warnings of any kind, and I’ve never deleted any. I’ve probably archived a total of two very rude and unwarranted PA messages to stop myself seeing them until I do my monthly archive. Everyone has their own threshold for what they consider breaches of civility and PA - some look between the lines for insults that are not there; it's one of the problems of written conversation that has no intonation to qualify the semantics. I found this meta essay really useful: m:Rule of diminishing replies. Detractors will be smug in the belief they've won, and it might look bad for me on my talk page, but as one editor put it once: as long as the project's integrity is preserved, it's probably OK to let the other party have the last word.

Completely optional additional question from Strikerforce

4. In the course of your usual travels around the project, is there any particular standing Wikipedia policy that you find to be particularly troublesome or a "roadblock" to content creation, more often than it is useful? If yes, which policy? Why do you find it to be troublesome? In brief, in what way would you suggest that policy be modified so that the core rule is still maintained, but it is less of an issue?

A. No, I don't actually find any policies that are a roadblock to content creations. Quite to the contrary however, I find a lot that I consider are open to a too liberal interpretation that allows too many of the wrong kind of articles to be let in or to escape deletion. (See these opinions of mine, Nos. 16 & 19), especially those that are AfD closed as 'no consensus' and hence default to 'keep' simply because not enough people expressed their opinion, even after a relisting, or are closed as 'keep' because a great majority of clueless !voters, or sheer dogged inclusionists, or SPA argue for 'keep' in ignorance (or simulated ignorance) of the policies. However, I am not a deletionist per se, and I'll often !vote keep if the nomination is erroneous, but I do find that on the whole, most articles that face PROD or AfD are there because they should be. Nevertheless, the articles I rescue from even getting as far as a deletion process, far outnumber those I send to AfD or !vote 'delete' on. Policy does not need to be modified, it needs to be expressed more clearly - very often, the words that are wasted at AfD appear to me to be on the interpretation and validity of policy rather than applying it to the notability of the defendant article.

Additional optional question from Ebe123

5. Write a convincing oppose position and then do a rebuttal for your candidacy.

A: Oppose: Kudpung is not really clueful at all about about creations. One of his articles, Klingon Language Suite, was deleted last week. He doesn't really know much about policy does he? We can't have admins who write articles that get red linked.

Reply: It was the only article of mine that has ever been deleted and it was one of my earliest creations, and it was, if I remember, a two-line stub. It must have been two years old, and suddenly last week it came up as a red link in the contribs list on my user page. It wasn't on my watch list because it was probably created before I even knew what a watchlist is. I know it's optional, but I do think the PRODer could have had the decency to template me about it - not that I would have bothered defending it because it was about a competitor's product! I'm satisfied with the number of creations I have already, and any recent ones such as Rose Garrard are most unlikely to face deletion. I intend now to concentrate more on meta stuff and cleaning up and rescuing other people's creations.

Additional optional question from Townlake

6. I've noticed you maintain a lengthy trophy case of barnstars at the top of your user talk page. What is the purpose of your user talk page, and how does this list of barnstars advance that purpose?

A: Lengthy? For the number of edits I've made and the time I've been around there aren't nearly enough! Most admins could fill six pages with their barnstars and some do ;) Actually I don't set store at all by barnstars, althought I'm very grateful to the kind people who have given them to me. I was absolutely top of the class in languages and creative writing at school but all the prizes went to pupils who were less clever than me. I suppose the teachers decided I was good enough already and the others needed more encouragement. Since then, and for the rest of my life I've always declined awards wherever I could, and I feel most uncomfortable when I can't see my way out of having to receive one. I didn't go to any graduation ceremonies at college either - I let them send me my degree certificates by post. The barnstars are on my talk page because I don't want them on my user page, and out of respect for the people who gave them to me, I won't delete them so they've got to go somewhere. My user page is the place for anyone to go who wants to know anything about me, and the barnstars are there too, but very discrete. Perhaps when I have got a dozen more I will make a special page for them, but for the moment, when people give them to me, they arrive on my talk page and that's where they'll stay for a while. The purpose? To make people ask me about them on my RfA ;) But on a more serious note, if you mean to ask what is the purpose of the talk page, then the best answer on Wikipedia is here: User:Kudpung/Don't lose the thread

General comments

• Links for Kudpung: Kudpung (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Kudpung can be found here.
• I think I just ought to point out that my time zone is UK + 7, and anything up to America + 12 or more, so there may be a lag in response time. Thank you for your understanding. --Kudpung (talk) 10:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

Discussion

• Edit stats are on the talk page for those who can't or don't wish to load X!'s tool. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Support

1. Support I was thinking of nominating this editor at some point too, but both co-nominators stole my thunder. Minimac (talk) 10:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
2. Support I've seen Kudpung around a few times and always felt he was a good editor. Reading over his recent edits, I'm impressed with his temperment and clear way of talking. I would have no problem supporting this candidate. Worm^TT 10:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
3. Another no-brainer. Long time coming. StrPby (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
4. Support I think Kudpung can be trusted with the tools. We have disagreed on some specific points but I am not going to make some childish grudge-oppose over a disagreement on an AfD months ago. Having seen Kudpung around a lot, I'm sure there's a good understanding of policy and lots of hard work for the benefit of wikipedia. bobrayner (talk) 10:26, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
5. Support. An easy one. Kudpung has plenty of experience and knowledge of Wikipedia's policies, and has very insightful judgment into policy issues. And he's pretty calm and mellow too, which is what we want. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:26, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   And just an additional thought based on comments below - Kudpung does a lot of good work trying to help newcomers, especially difficult ones. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:44, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

6. Support With a single exception (which I am not even gonna raise) this editor has always shown to have a clue when I met him in an AFD, which is all that is required for a good administrator. Yoenit (talk) 10:34, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
7. Support I am happy what this user has to say. Plenty of experience. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
8. Support - I see plenty of clue here, and have for a while. There is no real need to go searching through his contributions for it. Reaper Eternal (talk) 11:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
9. Support A very good editor. I thought you were already an Admin Kudpung =O – Novice7 (talk) 12:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
10. Super Support It's about time. I'm not worried at all over the oppose based on one diff. Kudpung tried hard to resolve the disupte and turn the editor around with no luck. It's hard to deal with very young people like Gobbles, as I also tried. Kudpung has helped write many GA's, and has shown much dedication to the project. He's the type of person Wikipedia needs as admins, helpful, dedicated, cool-headed, and intelligent. Good Luck Kudpung, you'll do fine. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 13:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
11. Support I have frequently come across Kudpung, and I have always found him to be a thoughtful and constructive editor. He has a very good grasp of policies, and an intelligent understanding of how to apply them in particular cases. He frequently goes to some effort to explain things to inexperienced users, rather than just throwing a boilerplate warning at them, and looking through his editing history I have found that he regularly patiently explains things in a courteous and constructive way to editors who have created problems. These are characteristics which are of great importance in an administrator. Is he perfect? No, of course not, and Kudpung himself admits in referring to the ANI case he mentions above that he "didn’t handle it too well". However, we all make mistakes sometimes, and the fact that he is able and willing to acknowledge his mistake is a strong point in his favour. That incident was a year ago, and I have not found anything similar more recently. The ability to learn and improve is good. In any case, he merely "didn’t handle it too well", rather than "completely mishandled it". There are people with far worse incidents in their history who have gone on to become excellent administrators. Do I always agree with Kudpung? No, there have been times when I have disagreed quite strongly with him. However, that is no bar to supporting: there is room for administrators with a wide range of points of view. Kudpung is perfectly right in believing that the admin tools would be helpful to him in the course of the sort of work he regularly does. To be able to deal with an issue and move on to other work, rather than to have to seek an admin's help and wait, will help his time working on Wikipedia to be even more productive than it already is. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
12. Support I've been watching the candidate for some time, and I'm impressed at the dedication and cluefulness. This nomination is overdue.--SPhilbrickT 13:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
13. Weak support He seems to be good at adminship but he already has lots of groups so he could do enough. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 13:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
14. Support No reason to expect the tools would be abused. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
15. Support No issues seen, positive interaction history. No reason to believe the tools will be abused. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 14:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
16. Support. Non-controversial nomination, experienced, demonstrated civil interactions, no apparent psychoses. --Quartermaster (talk) 14:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
17. As nom. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
18. The diff given by the lone oppose sums up my impression at the moment ... Kudpung has worked very hard, he knows a lot, and his his heart is in the right place, but occasionally he says things that offend people. That's an observation, not a reservation ... he'll make a very good admin. - Dank (push to talk) 14:32, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
19. Support well respected and trustworthy. Nomination statement is factual and well repreasenative. Ottawa4ever (talk) 14:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
20. Support. Intelligent, civil, trustworthy. Ideal candidate. -- œ^™ 14:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
21. Support Another great candidate – integrity, trustworthiness, experience, temperamentally well suited for adminship are all concepts that come to mind when evaluating this candidate--Hokeman (talk) 15:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose per diff[1] provided by the first neutral comment below. While it appears that the interaction may have been with a rather difficult editor to converse with, I believe that it was bad judgement for Kudpung to have gotten involved when he did. I also have a problem with the interaction that the candidate chose to provide in one of his answers above. I will investigate further, but my first instinct is to oppose based on communication issues. Strikerforce (talk) 11:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   I really couldn't disagree more, for the reason I have outlined below in the "neutral" section. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

2. Oppose Keepscases (talk) 14:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   Can I ask you why? I hope you know that without reason your oppose carries very little wieght. Well, let me throw out a guess. It's because Kudpung does not agree with the questions you ask on RFA isn't it? Your behaviour continues to frustrate me.....Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 14:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   Time for an RFA ban? Keepscases has made only about 1500 edits in nearly four years, but the vast majority have been to RFAs - usually asking ridiculous questions. That he can't even be bothered to explain his opposition for those who don't know the backstory doesn't help his case either. AD 15:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   Wot? No question? Keepscases, you've ruined my day. The only reason I agreed to run for office was for an opportunity to answer one of your questions :) Kudpung (talk) 15:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Neutral

1. It should be said that Kudpung has always gone out of (his/her?) way to give a well-reasoned argument for opposing, rather than going off of the basis of one question or diff. This is a neutral, but if there is to be opposition I would expect opposers to extend that same courtesy. Nonetheless, I feel uneasy about supporting an admin so soon after what appears to be sticking the knife in [2]. I accept that Gobbleswoggler was an extremely frustrating editor, and was a good example of why we shouldn't blindly assume good faith. But in that instance the issue was resolved, and it was bad judgement to wade back in. —WFC— 10:53, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   I'm not contesting your 'neutral' !vote, but perhaps you'd like to go back 6 months and list the dozens diffs where I tried really hard as a kindly uncle to coax him into seeing reason and avoid him being given the chop. I actually rather liked that kid and felt sorry for him; his personal problems go much deeper than Wikipedia where he sought to escape the frustrations of RL. He was actually editing in totally good faith - albeit disruptive, unlike, for example, this one, and if I had got my knife in a couple of days earlier, he might still have been with us. See my comment about reading too much negative stuff into written messages ;) --Kudpung (talk) 11:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   Point taken, and I'll mull it over. Perhaps "knife" was in turn too strong a word, but I nonetheless think that it was a questionable decision to return there, and that it would have looked worse were you ever a blocking administrator in similar circumstances. Although as I said before, I think it would be absurd to oppose you on the basis of one diff, unless there were further evidence that this was part of a pattern rather than a lapse in judgement. Regards, —WFC— 13:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   In fact the analogy I was making was that I might not have blocked Gobbles for another couple of days, whereas I would have given Crouch the big orange banner a lot sooner than the other admins did. No complaints meant to the sysops however, whose decisions I wholly respect. All of us concerned in both cases did our very best. Kudpung (talk) 14:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   Actually I thought that Kudpung was making an attempt to be helpful to the person in question. He seemed to me to be trying to help the user to keep the block in proportion, and to encourage them to move on and put it behind them, rather than getting upset about it. He also mentions that he had drafted a "welcome back" message, but that circumstances had led him to drop it. I really don't see how all that can be called "sticking the knife in". Perhaps the message might have been phrased better in a few details, for example "Doesn't that tell you anything?" was perhaps not ideal, but still very mild in the circumstances. Substantially the message reads to me as constructive, and I would regard it as evidence in favour of Kudpung, not against. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

   That's exactly how I read it too. A combination of exasperation with the editor and himself may have shown the edit as a little over the top but I felt it was more of a constructive edit than a "sticking the knife in". Worm^TT 14:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)