Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/McCormack

Self-nomination McCormack (Talk) – Blocks • Deletes • Imports • Moves • Protects • Contribs

Request for custodianship / looking for a mentor.
Reasons: I was watching an episode of mass vandalisation of Wikiversity and saw how many key pages were blanked before a custodian could be alerted to take action. I could really have done with privileges to revert with one-click and block a mass vandal. I won't be around Wikiversity often, but when I am, I want to help stop this kind of thing. I have my own installation of MediaWiki, so I have daily experience of standard sysop functions. I also have involvement with a number of open/free projects in the educational technologies field, and contribute with tools development. McCormack 07:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little hesitant - I don't think we are ready to adopt an adversarial approach towards vandalism. --HappyCamper 02:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The incident in question was blanking of over 100 pages in 15 minutes, including the main colloquium page. I'm generally a dialogue-not-block kind of person. I was just referring to this extreme kind of mass vandalism - it was frustrating to watch this and realise that nobody was around to do anything. See: Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Stinky_sock. If I hadn't witnessed that, I wouldn't be putting my name forward. McCormack 04:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Afterthought: if you're confident you have enough people to protect against this kind of thing, I'm happy to withdraw my application. McCormack 04:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, my comment wasn't intended to come across that that way! Fixing vandalism is more like fishing...sometimes we catch them, sometimes we don't, and that's okay too. The nice thing about a Wiki is that things can be easily fixed. What I don't want to see happening here are well meaning contributors being burned out after fishing trips. For want of a better way to express this, personally, I think it is better to have custodians who mop by thinking "click, click, click, click, *poof*" rather than "zap, zap, zap, zap, *destroy*". My bias is generally towards measured Wiki participants, so why not leave this application around for a little longer while the community gets to know you better? Or repost it in a little bit, whichever your preference is. The bits are handed out to reasonable people, and in my book coming across as being not particularly "power hungry" is a definite plus. So please stick around :-) --HappyCamper 22:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, OK. I'll leave this application hanging here until it gets archived :) Unfortunately I don't really have time to hang out on IRC and go through what is probably the conventional route. My thinking was if (note the word "if") Wikiversity is short-staffed, it might think about giving some extra admin rights to part-timers. But I'm really not sure if that's necessary. -- McCormack 10:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW, hanging out on IRC isn't a prerequisite for custodianship here. :-) I'm not sure what the 'conventional' route to custodianship is really. Each candidate is a little different, so simply do what you like doing, and what you do best. The rest of the candidacy then seems to take care of itself. The nice thing about this is that we end up with custodians with a variety of skill sets which is good for Wikiversity. --HappyCamper 16:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to mentor and support McCormack's candidacy - his work on Help:Quiz and comments here indicate a level head and commitment to help. Cormaggio ^talk 10:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Very surprised and very pleased! Thanks :) McCormack 12:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done McCormack now has probationary custodian status. sebmol ^? 14:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Nomination for full custodianship

• Mentor: Cormaggio (Talk) – Blocks • Deletes • Imports • Moves • Protects • Contribs
  • Evaluation
    • I nominate McCormack for full custodianship. McCormack has been a probationary custodian since April 24, 2007. Over this period, he has been active in discussions relating to policy, and to developing initiatives to widen Wikiversity's appeal, in the Wikiversity:Pre-tertiary portal. He has also been active in dealing with vandalism. I strongly support McCormack's continued custodianship, and trust that he will do his best for the community. Cormaggio ^talk 17:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Questions and Discussion

Five days of community discussion from 5th June to 10th June.

• I support full custodianship. Question for the candidate: would you be willing to add yourself at Wikiversity:CheckUser policy#Access? --JWSchmidt 17:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Many thanks for the kind comments. On the check user question, I'm familiar with the issues as discussed earlier. It's desirable to avoid too much centralisation of powers, so bureaucrats and candidates for "bureaucracy" should probably not have CU access. But a further point would be that CU access should be given to people who know how to interpret IP addresses. I'm not a network expert. I'd always have to turn to someone else to interpret the results (short of numerical identity, which I could probably spot). -- McCormack 19:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support - I think McCormack would be great custodian. --Remi 23:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Count me in too. Pro. --HappyCamper 19:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Closing note: All comments in favour - McCormack made full custodian. Cormaggio ^talk 07:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)