It is with great reservation that I, A Follower, am coming to you, the community, to humbly ask for administrator rights.
Honestly, I never thought I’d be writing one of these. The reason that I am is thanks to you, the community at large, who have made this a great place to spend my time and have rejuvenated my passion for editing, and for that, I thank each and every one of you. Now, onto business.
Who am I?
I would hope by now that most of you know who I am. For those that don’t, my name is Andrew and I’m a 25 year old Canadian university student. I have a degree in evolutionary biology and am working towards a second bachelor’s in military history. Prior to going to school, I worked for a private contracting company overseas. I am hoping to work closely with my country’s military in the future, and am currently exploring options to work in France in the near future.
On the wiki, I am one of the resident late-night moderators, equally due to a crazy schedule and a moderate caffeine addiction. I joined the wiki in June of 2011 and I, like many, initially migrated to The Vault after the split. As I found the situation (and the new host) to be distasteful, I departed from there shortly after. I returned here to find a thriving community, much to my surprise. I was made a patroller in 2013, and the community elected me as a moderator in December 2013.
Why me?
There are several reasons that I think qualify me for this position, and I will detail them below.
- Late-night moderation of the wiki
Right now, our intrusion from vandals is admittedly at a low point, although we still do see them occasionally. Late at night (my time), there are very few (if any) admins monitoring the wiki. In the past, when noticing something, I would notify Leon (GarouxBloodline). With his departure from the wiki, this is no longer possible. Chad is also often present in these hours, although I’m sure he’d like to be sleeping and not dealing with wiki issues; I hope to alleviate some of the burden on him. In terms of vandals, there have been 3 instances where no admins could be found and I was forced to find a VSTF member on Community Central to ban a vandal. Personally, I would like to keep this in-house as much as possible, rather than farm it out to users who potentially do not know our rules.
- Bot useage
I have recently implemented a bot for use on the wiki, based on pywikipediabot. The nice thing about pywikibot is that it can differentiate regular user accounts and sysop accounts for the purposes of editing. I am making an assumption that granting me administrator rights will also grant them to my bot, which has some uses. This can allow me to run scripts based on sysop tools, which can be invaluable at times. While I fully admit that I am still learning the bot’s framework and how it functions, granting me (and it) these tools early will help ensure that I have the bot mastered (relatively) by the time we actually need it, likely when FO4 gets it’s official announcement.
- Leaving a mess
This is more just a personal principle of mine. I don’t like people cleaning up my messes, and with botwork, recats, and de-capping articles, messes is what is left sometimes. With admin tools I can delete my own unused categories, bad redirects, and merged pages, etc. Rather than have another admin do it, which takes time away from what they’re working on. Simply put, I’d rather clean up after myself.
- Contributions
I really don’t like talking myself up, but I guess that is kind of a part of this, isn’t it? Anyways, here are my contributions:
| There should have been a list of this user's edit counts here, but the edit counts feature is no longer available. |
And, for my bot:
| There should have been a list of this user's edit counts here, but the edit counts feature is no longer available. |
Keep in mind the bot has only done a few test runs over the past week or so, and there have been some problems with the scripts and framework that is being addressed by the pywikibot developers.
Some of the more specific things I have done recently, or am currently working on:
- Created overview pages for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas test cell content
- Recategorizing and renaming several category trees to follow consistent formatting
- Completely rewrote the navbox template for the Brotherhood of Steel (still in progress, can be seen here)
- Created an archive for our former sysop rights holders (yet to be implemented, can be seen here)
- Added new content and descriptions from the Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel game manuals, created article pages for Fallout Tactics game manual
- Continuing on with the remnants of the decapitalization project, removing some of the redirects page renaming has caused
Apart from that stuff I also patrol the recent changes, and try to give direction to new users as best as possible. I am a fierce proponent of the ‘good faith’ policy, and when I revert edits I believe to be made honestly, I try to at least leave a detailed summary as to why, or I try and communicate with the user as to where they went wrong.
As stated before, I am a late night moderator of chat. I can’t say much more than that, those who know me from there know my conduct in chat, and I hope they judge me accordingly.
My promise
Should you as a community choose to give me these rights, I promise I will use them with the utmost discretion and with as much objectivity as I can muster. If you choose not to, I promise to take any criticism to heart and work on myself to become a better contributor to this wiki, and I promise to continue to use my existing extra rights to the best of my ability.
Furthermore, should the time come where I am no longer able to contribute actively or use my extra rights appropriately, I promise to step down and let someone else take up the mantle.
If you read that entire spiel, congratulations, you get a cookie. Vote is below, please make your mark, any questions will be answered as promptly as possible.
A Follower Talk 23:39, February 1, 2014 (UTC)
Vote
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Yes
Of all the people who are eligible to run for administrator at this time, you are one of two people who I believe is ready for the job. 
Into the wild blue yonder... 23:43, February 1, 2014 (UTC)- OfficialLolGuy Talk Blog 23:44, February 1, 2014 (UTC)
- Convenient timing, I see. 69.l25 (talk)
- Why not --Veteran Legionary (talk) 23:53, February 1, 2014 (UTC)
- I have supported this from day 1 and you know that. You will make a great admin, my friend. "Some say this user is a Patroller..." 00:00, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- Greets Peace'n Hugs (talk) (blog) 00:21, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- Your a good chat mod so i think you can be a good admin -SirVaultBoy (User talk:SirVaultBoy) 00:50, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- Best candidate to fill Leon's shoes. 01:03, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- "Semper Invictus" 01:25, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- We do need admins, and you fit the bill perfectly. I see no reason to deny this request.
Limmiegirl Talk! ♪ - Spocklan116 05:18, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
No
Neutral
Comments
Thanks for everyone's input, I will respond to any comments/concerns as they are brought forward. A Follower Talk 23:39, February 1, 2014 (UTC)
- Just in case anyone was wondering, a admin that has a bot will have the bot granted admin rights also, if requested. The Gunny 01:17, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for clearing that up. I assumed it was the case, as it would be weird to give admin powers to a non-admin bot. A Follower Talk 01:24, February 2, 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for clearing that up. I assumed it was the case, as it would be weird to give admin powers to a non-admin bot.
