Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Lourdes 2

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Oppose 1[edit]

Moved to talk page from RfA

  1. Oppose per Q10. The explanation of what is being done in such edits is weak. My impression is that the candidate goes to a random page, runs a formatting script (which one?) and then moves on. For a more recent example, see Hendrick Zwaardecroon. This page has had a clean-up tag since 2009 but the candidate ignores that, runs their script and moves on, as usual. What I'm not seeing here is any added value or appreciation of WP:COSMETICBOT. I am familiar with some other editors who love doing things like this and, in my experience, they tend to be trouble-makers; they annoy other editors more than they please them. I therefore feel the candidate needs more experience and understanding before they are given a more powerful toolset to play with. Andrew D. (talk) 14:15, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Something something lengthy back and forth that makes no real difference in the end. GMGtalk 14:21, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Andrew, when I look at your talk page, I find numerous editors complaining about you going to an article and removing a PROD tag for no reason and when challenged go into an exchange similar to this, so this all sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me. Yeah, I can't get excited about edits that remove spaces in Wikitext, but that's all they are - annoying, which is one of the worst reasons to sanction someone. Plus, I'd rather somebody make only gnomish edits on an article they don't understand, rather than diving in with two left feet and proceeding to display they don't know what they're talking about. I might be tempted to clean up formatting on White supremacy or Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations, but I wouldn't do anything else for fear of a very obvious POV spilling out. In any case, Lourdes has said she won't do that sort of stuff anymore as it seems to annoy people - so what is the issue? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:40, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Ritchie333: Where has Lourdes said they won't do that sort of stuff any more? I don't see such a statement here. Andrew D. (talk) 23:29, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
here. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 00:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see now, thanks – in the General Comments. It's good that they will refrain from doing that now. Andrew D. (talk) 00:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ritchie333 I think it is pointless for any editor to validate Andrew's votes at Rfa with a response. His decision for Lourdes, and any other worthy candidate, was set before the Rfa even began.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 19:34, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My experience here is that there are some editors who love opposing people at RFA for the most minor reasons, "and, in my experience, they tend to be trouble-makers; they annoy other editors more than they please them." Hmm. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:32, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I compare it to the Old Dougstech "Too many administrators currently" argument. It just gets ignored in the long run. --Church Talk 22:51, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let's do Kurt one better. Running for admin is prima facie evidence of needing to be opposed. ansh666 23:55, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenMeansGo: it was a valiant effort. --JBL (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You know. I'm a servant at heart. (Also Church is a fantastically elegant user name and I'm jealous I didn't think of it myself.) GMGtalk 23:07, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Andrew Davidson has been a serial opposer at RfA for years, including his earlier stint as Colonel Warden, and very often the only opposer; in fact his participation at RfA is as deliberate trouble-maker on some otherwise immaculate runs for office. Despite persistent requests to refrain, and even on an ANI not so long ago, he still can't resist the opportinity to spoil even those RfA that are clearly destined to pass. It's precisely the behavour that gets RfA a bad name and why potential candidates of the right calibre are reluctant to run. It does not enhance his crediibility, nor does it rhyme with his otherwise excellent outreach work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yep. For this guy to accuse others of being troublemakers who annoy other editors is the most stunningly hypocritical thing I think I've seen in my time here. Reyk YO! 11:15, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of @Andrew Davidson:'s conclusions, background, disruptiveness, hypocrisy or lack thereof, he does raise a salient point. I took a look at Lourdes' mainspace contributions going back many thousands of edits. Roughly 40% of their last 2000 mainspace contributions (and 23% overall) have been these sorts of cleanup operations that are utterly pointless. People have been burnt down over this before. Lourdes began doing this in October of 2016, and has made 1,652 of these edits. I'm surprised the issue wasn't raised with Lourdes before this. I checked their talk page history/archive. Nobody has ever raised this issue before now. I'm glad to see that Lourdes has indicated they won't be doing it anymore. With that, I think that's the end of this. Whatever AD's motives were, whatever their background is, I think this issue is closed, unless we want to WP:ABF. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:17, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

      • @Hammersoft: when we've had significant issues with cosmetic cleanups recently it was when huge number of edits were being made flooding watchlists and recent changes (e.g. hundreds per hour) - I haven't looked at a frequency analysis for Lourdes' potential cosmetic edits, but it seems to be a low number over a long time (1650edits/~15 months is only 3 edits per day) - were there any bothersome bursts in there? — xaosflux Talk 17:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, no really large blocks. Cursory review shows 16 such edits in a group on 26 November 2017, 17 on 9 November 2017, a bunch of others with 9 or 10. Maybe there's larger blocks, but I've only gone back a few months. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          FWIW, I never saw such edits in any large amount when I did my random spot check before nominating (which usually means picking diffs at random from the last 5k-10k edits). Regards SoWhy 17:34, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Hammersoft: Thanks for the analysis. When I checked the candidate's contributions, I picked the month of Oct 2017 and saw quite a lot of these edits with the summary "clean up and fixes". I did some spot checking and came to the conclusion that they weren't doing much except fiddle with spaces. I was aware that editors like Rich Farmborough had been sanctioned for doing too much of this and that we had a policy which forbade it. So far as RfA was concerned, the issues were then a lack of policy knowledge and an inclination to engage in busywork which some might find vexatious. Anyway, I'm curious to know how Hammersoft got his numbers such as the 1652 figure, please. Was this done using the edit summary search tool? Andrew D. (talk) 18:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Brute force. I hammered at it softly. Thank you, I'm here all week. Seriously; I just listed mainspace contributions, and using Firefox's search box which shows how many results (up to 1000), I searched for "clean up and fixes". I had to cap at 2,000 edits per page for search, as anything higher yielded results >1000. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:15, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • That echos the results I got using my brute force method. I haven't used wmflabs, though I probably should. I have the background/knowledge. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:33, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the technical tips. Does anyone know what this "clean up and fixes" script/tool is? Is it one of the scripts which the candidate wrote themself? I had a look at those when I inspected their user page but couldn't see much point in them. For example, one of them lists all the current AFDs but I'm used to doing that in other ways which seem adequate. Andrew D. (talk) 19:39, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes - in User:Lourdes/common.js, AutoEd's complete.js script is configured to make edits using that summary. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. I find that I tried this out myself but then I commented it out because it didn't seem to do anything useful. Andrew D. (talk) 23:04, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Shame......, It may be a better idea for each and every one to ignore Andrew which is pretty much the case anyway. –Davey2010Talk 15:49, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As a man obviously wise beyond his years observed in that discussion: "Probably more time wasting overall is the feeling that a single oppose on an RfA with 150 supports really needs a two pages long discussion from five editors when it's fairly obviously inane in a way that could be well covered in a single comment." GMGtalk 16:06, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. This was more than sufficient, imo, yet here we are. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The candidate has not ignored the issue raised here. It is to their credit that they have undertaken not to make any more edits of that sort. Andrew D. (talk) 23:03, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose 2[edit]

  1. Oppose Too much of an inclusionist for my tastes. Cases like this, this, and this show that she distorts GNG beyond reason, seemingly accepting sources at face value. Ironically, I have more confidence in her judging consensus at an AfD than offering her own opinion. But if she offers bad opinions I can only assume she'd accept bad opinions, too. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Color me intrigued. How is someone with 57.4% delete !votes "too much of an inclusionist"? Regards SoWhy 09:45, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I posted examples. Read those. Chris Troutman (talk) 11:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) @SoWhy: No, no, no! That is a not-good, terrible, horrible argument. First of all, that "57.4%" needs to be compared to the average AfD !vote to know if it is higher or lower and by how much (FWIW my gut feeling says that it is lower, I would guesstimate most AfD succeed and many more are unanimous delete than unanimous keep, so I would expect the delete percentage to be significantly above 50%). Second, there is a huge selection bias in the way people choose in which AfD they participate; e.g. if someone comments only on BLP discussions, and those end up being deleted more often (I do not know if that premise is true but assume it for the sake of the argument), you can expect (ceteris paribus) that they will !vote delete more often. (For instance, I rarely pile on unanimous AfDs, and those are more often delete than keep, so this skews my delete percentage downwards).
    The only way to estimate how much someone is inclusionist is to compare their actual !votes on a sampling of AfDs with either your estimate of what a correct !vote would have been or what the actual !votes in the AfD have been. (That's what CT has done.) You might argue about whether the results of that methodology really prove a certain degree of inclusionism, whether that degree is "too much", whether the sampling of AfDs was fairly taken and well analyzed, but your stat ain't a decent counterargument on its own. </rant> TigraanClick here to contact me 11:40, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Tigraan: Chris thankfully showed me that my comment was possibly too compressed to be understood. I replied to him on my talk page. You are welcome to participate as well. Regards SoWhy 12:33, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Without people using the exact words, I was criticized for being both too inclusionist and too deletionist in my RfA (which I'm sure gave SoWhy a laugh ): whether someone is a deletionist or inclusionist in RfA-speak typically means "where do they stand on a particular set of articles that I have opinions on". I've never seen Lourdes as an arch-inclusionist or ARS-type. Her percentages come off that way (57% is a low deletion percentage as most AfDs close delete), but it's because she makes reasonable arguments to keep and always does BEFORE. I've also seen her argue quite strongly for deletion in a reasonable and respectful way. I think she'll have a pragmatic approach to deletion, which I see as a positive: on the flip side, it also means that she'll likely face criticism for closes when people who are on the far end of either side of the spectrum disagree with her: I think she can handle it, and that she'll likely be correct most of the time. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:52, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a no-win battle. You either get opposed for being too inclusionist, too deletionist, or for lack of AfD voting.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 20:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Interesting that all three examples you give of being too inclusionsist are for articles that ended up being kept. It seems to me that Lourdes' inclusionism is exactly in line with the community's and their interpretation of guidelines based on your evidence. SpinningSpark 17:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to pile on, but it doen’t really matter unless there is some reason to believe they would disregard consensus in favor of their own philosophy, and I’ve seen no evidence of that. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Spinningspark: I provided a detailed explanation here. Your claim about Lourdes being "in line with the community's and their interpretation of guidelines" makes the unproved assumption that the community is right. That AfD analysis tool is screwed up by that logic, portraying the entries where the editor was with consensus in green while shading the others in red. I think TonyBallioni is making the same mistake, seeing Lourdes add a pile of links at an AfD, as if those citations are meaningful. On another point, deciding to argue with RfA/RfB opposers has always been, to my mind, the wrong way to go. You know where my talk page is. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really. YouTwoTV was "no consensus" which isn't quite the same as "kept" without prejudice. And another was a marketing buzzword that ended up getting redirected. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose 3[edit]

  1. Oppose - not to be "that guy who nitpicks", but I do have several concerns involving Lourdes. Two years of experience is a little less than I like seeing; my general rule is that if you're newer than I am or have fewer edits than I do, I am going to wonder what makes you so special that I should support you. I agree with Andrew's point above about high numbers of merely cosmetic edits done through a script that cause no change to the actual content of the page as it appears; this seems to be simply an attempt to boost one's own edit count. Also concerning is her apparent lack of use of the preview button, as on the help desk earlier this month and many other instances, causing her to make a half dozen consecutive edits to the same page in rapid succession. As such, if you account for these, Lourdes has far fewer than the 17K edits she boasts on the surface.
I'm also not the type to bring up old business, but the first RfA, a self-nom twelve months ago, also seems a bit misguided, running after only fourteen months and 11K (many trivial or automated) edits, in blatant disregard to the advice of Kudpung and seemingly ignoring concerns related to experience and demeanor. While not blatantly uncivil, Lourdes can admittedly be a bit snippy at times, such as the many times she has brusquely pointed someone to a rule page with nothing more than a one-short-sentence explanation if that.
In short, while there are no dealbreakers that jump out at me, there are a combination of factors that make it hard for me to support this RfA. 65HCA7 00:32, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@65HCA7: I understand you don't enjoy bringing up old business, but you seem to be doing a rather thorough job of it here with the detailed analysis of the candidate's edit profile between 2 December 2015 and 8 February 2017. Airbornemihir (talk) 04:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Airbornemihir: The majority of my comment concerned recent or relatively recent matters; the diff I linked was from earlier this month. My mention of the previous RfA was not the sole reason for my oppose; I merely brought it up because I felt it needed to be discussed in the context of my point. The comments I made are still relevant and still stand to this day, never mind that her last RfA was a full twelve months ago. 65HCA7 22:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@65HCA7 and Airbornemihir:, it doesn't really matter, this RfA is going to pass anyway. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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