Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Request for Adminship/Albedo

Administrator Candidacy Questionnaire

Why would I be a good Administrator?

I just added my name to the list for Asst. Admin for this site. As a site User, I've tried to support the Admin as best I can, editing with comments, posting links to the Guidelines on over-enthusiastic newbie's pages, stuff like that. I'm active on site most days/week. And if you could see the look on my face, you'd know I'm not over-eager for this, which is a good thing. It's always dangerous to hire people who volunteer, but I have the time and energy, so... why not?

If you care about "What has Albedo done?", here are some things I'd not blush about if someone were to mention them:

Instituted a use for current events page, where you just read about my application.

Complete edit of more articles than I can remember - not "rewrite" (altho' that too), but just re-organizing and formatting what was there and tying it together.

Re-organized all the randomly titled design pages into formal "X design" article format.

Added the Welcome template to more newcomers than I can remember.

Added more redirects and disambigs than I care to remember (including welcome, among others).

Just added all this info to my User page moments before Briess instituted this form. :P

Meh - In short, I'm active enough and have a decent sense of writing and organization, both for a single article and for a collection of them.

Vote me. Yay. --Albedo 10:25, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Supporting Evidence

Special:Contributions/Albedo & more recently: Special:Contributions/75.62.155.145

Link to any articles you are particularly proud of.

Conceived of veins and clusters page, combining many random pages into that one article. My first solo article.
Re-organized and partially re-wrote the various and scattered "defense" pages (Defense guide, Defense design, Military design, Trap design, and related others) into their current format. See Talk: Fortress Defensefor an idea of what it was before. This was a bitch, as it was a complete cluster before. Established editing policies in an attempt to never go there again. (Open any of those pages to edit and read <-Notes to editors->), and/or see relevant discussion pages).

Consulting on the Talk pages, conceived and/or wrote or re-wrote the current armor, armor piece, weapon, dwarven weapon and other weapon page collection, thus removing every single redundant article on every individual weapon and piece of armor in existence. Sheesh, as if.

Edited, formatted and organized the Color schemes page so the colors and differences could actually be seen at a glance, and the process understood (even by a newb!).

Saw the need, created this tag and implemented its use:

Public Q&A

Q: What sort of things would you like to do with the admin tools that you currently are unable to do. Mason11987 11:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A: A lot depends on what my tasked duties and rights are as co-Admin and what the "party line" is on improvements - the question is moot if my leash is a short one (and I'd expect it to be at first, at least). But, answering blind, I'd like to see the "build-a-diagram" process easier to use - if some internal coding could make that easier, that would be sweet. Maybe a page of standard tables, and a step-by-step tutorial "how to" for mid-level editing techniques like sortable tables & etc. I'd like to see some sort of easier tracking for IP-only posters - right now they're faceless to users, even when they're editing regularly (altho', again, that may depend on Admin policy). Maybe as part of that, I'd like "contributions" to be a link on other User pages, so navigation to that information is easier than it currently is.

I'd also like to (try to) get more people involved in expressing opinions on the editorial direction and policies of this wiki - not to make it a pure democracy, but some sort of welcoming and well-advertised public forum where voices can be heard. But mostly I'd learn the tools themselves to see what is possible, both possible to improve and create anew - it's hard to know what I'd do with something I'm admittedly not very familiar with. But I didn't know jack about editing a wiki a year ago, not a single double-bracket or triple-apostrophe, nada, and I caught on pretty quickly as a User, so I have faith in myself.--Albedo 02:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh - I'll toss this out too - if I learned html and how to program Cisco router IOS (which I did), I can learn Wiki code. In case anyone had concerns in that direction.--Albedo 10:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Q:In the next few months, the next version of DF will be released. This will make a lot of information here obsolete. How do you see yourself as an admin dealing with this? --Kwieland 15:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
A: Um, a month of heavy drinking in Mexico until the smoke clears? Actually, I've been thinking about this (every time I edit a page, recently! How long will that edit be relevant?) There will be three periods in the rewrite - the first will be a mass of new pages (some have already been posted as placeholders, empty atm) and "it appears" and "needs more research" type articles, which might last at least a couple weeks, maybe months. I'd look into instituting a new "category" template, like the current "delete" or "mod" templates, that tags all the old pages as "previous info" - and thus a central page would be created where these can be scanned by users and updated as they have the information and desire, and the template removed. This is hella busywork, but it might be the only way to avoid the problem I ran up against when I found DF shortly after the last version update - no one really knew what did what anymore, and old assumptions were reinforced by pages that looked good but were badly out of date (or just bad guesswork). But beyond keeping an eye out for future stub articles and redundant titles, this will mostly be User-based (altho' I probably would join in "as a User", as I do now.)
The second phase, overlapped with that but extending for months, will be a flood of brand new hard information, observations and theories, complete rewrites and new articles or even entire new groups of articles - Burrows, the new Medical system, the new Squad system, the new... well, almost everything! Again, as moderator, I don't see my job to micromanage or "plan" that, but let it form organically along the same lines we have now - possibly trying to guide similar information to be combined and over-expanding articles to be split, and a readable formatting style overall, but only when things are really ugly. Possibly call attention to areas that are crying out for help once the initial rush is over. The last stage will be where we are currently - details, tweaks, better wording, and that's largely hands off.
Overall, I foresee the biggest problem (besides legacy information being overlooked and contaminating the new) to be lack of research and verification of facts. We see it now - an over-enthusiastic user "wants to help", and so makes an assumption based on one observation, and it's just not got it right. Constant reminders to use the Discussion pages are in the future, I just know it. (Possibly a reworking of some of the alphabet Rules?... that's a bigger and longer discussion, and not my decision to make. But there are some unwritten policies that could be formalized for the better, imo, and this might not be a bad time to make those changes.)
And, of course, all this in cooperation with whatever Admin policies the new crew establishes amongst themselves. However, realistically and simply put - it will be my job to do whatever Briess tells me to do! --Albedo 16:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I want to try to get away from instituting arbitrary Briessisms and start letting this become even more of a public resource. One of the reasons for this whole RfA stuff is that I don't want to have my unique world view be imposed on the wiki over everyone else. Of course, I am also a dirty hypocrite or some such. --Briess 20:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, well, it'll be a balance between us all, I'm sure.

I was going to add that depending on how radically the new version changes everything, it might- just might - be worthwhile to start a new wiki, the same way that this one replaced an older one a while ago. If more pages are just wrong than right (or if a large number of them are), then copying/pasting the few that are good would be easier, and result in a better end product, than hoping to keep track of updating every last legacy page in need of editing. I mean, at some point, "starting over" is easier than fixing, and we would still have the old to base the new off of, and that would guarantee some measure of oversight for every page included. But, again, I'm not sure all of what that would entail - and that's the sort of thing that Briess would know better than I.--Albedo 02:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Public Discussion

Discuss things here, yay

Shaun White kicked. Seriously. --Albedo 10:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC) You see that faceplant he took? And an hour later a walk-away gold? Seriously.--Albedo 10:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Votes

Support

Strong Support --Kwieland 18:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC), great df player, lots of experience, good editing skills, practices the be bold meme.
Strong Support positive contributions to the Wiki --MathFox 16:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC) Updated, shows fairness in dealing with other admin candidates --MathFox 21:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Strong Support - Easily one of the best users we have on this wiki. He's dedicated, smart, has a clear direction for the site and has been helping since before I was around. Great choice. SirPenguin 19:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Strong Support As soon as I joined up and started talking around on the wiki, this guy appeared repeatedly. He is intelligent, knows the game, knows the wiki, and seems to know people well too. --Kydo 05:18, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Strong Support - See above and below, great candidate. --Pugi 09:16, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Support What, you mean.... he wasn't already?Garrie 09:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Support I think he would be a fantastic admin, and clearly has the determination to help out with everything on the wiki. Mason11987 11:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Support There are two traits Albedo has that are not often found in the same person, both of which are crucial for an administrator to perform well. He has enough confidence in himself to take the actions he thinks are necessary and defend them. And he has enough doubt about himself to recognize and repair his own mistakes. VengefulDonut 18:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Support QFT, VengefulDonut. My thoughts precisely. -Edward 21:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

OPPOSE: Blah blah blah, here's why, signature

Neutral

NEUTRAL| blah blah blah here's why signature