Wikibooks:Requests for permissions/Mathmensch

(version deletion of my userpage)
I now have a global userpage on meta-wiki and would like it to show instead of the current one. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 05:51, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * This is not the place to request this... but have you considered simply replacing the contents of your user page with a hard redirect? Chazz (talk) 07:03, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Exactly, it should have been posted on Requests for deletion. But anyway, I've deleted the local page and we can see the Meta one now. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 10:02, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

(administrator)
Hello,

I'd like to suggest that I be made an administrator of this project. I regularly need to delete pages which I had put in the wrong place.

I'm a mathematician from Germany who is busy writing university level mathematics wikibooks. I'd rather not ban users or block pages, because my philosophy regarding these things is "laissez-faire", but if needed, I would volunteer to perform routine tasks such as page deletion or imports.

I also suppose that I'd stay out of the big debates, for reasons of time. Still, I'd be willing to share expertise if requested explicitly.compre

I suppose that I am known to many administrators here, because of my numerous deletion requests. I also like handling templates, and in fact I did so today, resolving an issue that has been reported to me today. --Mathmenschst (discuss • contribs) 11:20, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * In addition, I have an idea for an additional administrative tool, namely a "non-binding administrative recommendation" template. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 12:54, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Mathmensch Apparently you've been blocked on the two greatest Wikipedia], and I don't really understand why because your articles have been kept. Have you found a way to avoid this in the future please? JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 18:09, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I honestly did not quite understand what exactly I had been doing wrong, in both cases. It would of course be far from my mind to even consider the extremely remote possibility that I might have angered some people by pointing errors out to them. At any rate, I feel that if I were an admin, I'd also have the power NOT to block people, and to be patient with difficult cases like myself. Still, I feel that I should be very familiar with all regulations, so that I will take extreme efforts not to violate one. Any hints on how one can avoid it are actually very welcome. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 20:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I have doubts about such a request to make it more convenient to delete pages. The privs requested seem disproportionate to the reason.  Also, you say you need to delete pages that you put in the wrong place, but why not just move them if they're in the wrong place?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:50, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * First of all, I did not solely file this request in order to be able to move pages. Another serious reason was that I intended to bring my "laissez-faire" attitude to the adminship, which I think might be quite valuable. But then, it has to be said that the "move" button does not really delete the old page if one does not have admin privileges. Most of the deletion requests that have been filed by me over the years had the aim of deleting the redirects that resulted from the motion; these redirects do not serve any useful purpose, in contrast to Wikipedia, where someone might type in the wrong URL or search term. (Actually, in my view, WP could have more redirects, as well as more links, but that's another matter.) --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 06:25, 4 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Blocked on the two largest Wikipedias but you don't understand what you are doing wrong; about 700 contributions here in a year which is very low. No work in any of the other admin tasks - anti-vandalism for example. Laissez-faire is not really a good thing for an administrator who is supposed to apply the policies and standards in a neutral way, not just leave things to happen regardless of the policies. It doesn't sound very convincing to me. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 12:59, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Please do not only consider the edit count, but also the actual size of the edits. A comprehensive list of the wikibooks written by me may be found here. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 17:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Blocked on the two largest Wikipedias, indefinitely, with revocation of right to edit own talk page. I notice a mention on en.wp of the user going from there to meta and editing the essay "don't be a jerk".  I've truly had no complaints about this user's contributions to Wikibooks; but it does look as if the adminship request is being motivated by a chip on their shoulder about experiences on other projects (and, experiences from which the user appears to have come away having learned less about themselves than they might have).  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:04, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Learning about oneself is a quest that continues for a lifetime. I think I may be forgiven not to have finished it yet. (I'll omit the ping, since I know you have talk pages on your watchlist. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 17:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Specious; I made no reference to total self-knowledge. My explicit reference was to learning less that you might have, by which I intended to politely refer to learning less than you should have.  I hadn't thought it necessary to further bludgeon that point after the supporting evidence I'd mentioned.  The probability of a misfire of the administrative process drops with additional evidence; you were blocked on two projects rather than just one, two projects with rather different cultures, both blocks indefinite, both not allowed to edit own talk page.  All that cumulative evidence should cause your self-diagnostic instinct to tell you that there is something important you need to learn about yourself, even if you weren't applying for admin somewhere, and certainly before considering applying for admin somewhere.  The additional incident with "don't be a jerk", although I mentioned it foremost as evidence of carrying resentments cross-wiki, is also evidence of under-reactive self-diagnostics.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe you ought to look up who exactly made the edit that carried a resentment cross-wiki (EDIT: And who refrained from reverting it). Apart from that, I suggest you look up both Sally Clark (EDIT: In particular, the second point of Sally_Clark#Statistical_evidence or even Prosecutor's fallacy) and Admin reports board under criticism. I do not need to explain to you what these mean for your argument, do I? --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 05:08, 9 June 2018 (UTC)


 * That in itself is not a reason to veto. People do get banned there for all sorts of weird reasons but end up doing fairly well here (like myself). That being said, I haven't looked at the reason(s) for why he got banned there. However, I'm a bit puzzled at your (the requester) reason for adminship - you says that you need to fix mistakes you made; shouldn't those mistakes not be made in the first place? Also, I thought admins should generally be involved in anti-vandalism, but you do not seem to mention anything about that. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 15:24, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I might have made some mistakes. But be aware that these are mostly non-trivial mathematical issues. A great mind like von Neumann might have the whole picture of a book in mind before creating it, while simultaneously knowing every related topic, and in what generality these topics might need the chapter at hand to be. I do not have such a mind. That mistakes happen at this level is unavoidable.
 * To clarify: trouble elsewhere does not, generically, need to be any obstacle here. It is appropriate to understand the nature of the troubles elsewhere, lest there turn out to be a reason why they should matter here after all, making it reasonable to inquire, as was done up near the top of this discussion.  However, the incidents elsewhere appear to be significant in the motivation for the request here, which elevates the incidents elsewhere to a much higher level of relevance here.  It's also pertinent that the user has a history of carrying resentment from one project onto another.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * My userpage is transcluded from meta, so that if I voice my opinion there, this is for technical reasons. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 18:49, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

"Feel free to correct me or clarify if I'm wrong." – It seems apparent to me that my primary intention is not only to save wikibooks a lot of time (which of course benefits the community and hence the readership, which is not far from my considerations), but also to handle administrative action in a way that I deem most productive, especially in handling conflicts carefully, and bringing opposed parties to the table, using patience, friendliness and a good dose of healthy masochism. Above, I'd also declared my willingness to perform routine tasks. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 07:20, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * , while I think your intentions are absolutely fine, I think that you should show some raw evidence of what you call as "administrative action in a way that I deem most productive", which cannot be seen from your contribs (maybe it's too early?). Also, please explain "non-binding administrative recommendation".
 * EDIT: To the other admins, do you think that the presence of an additional administrator will help? Considering that out of the 8 admins, 3 are essentially inactive? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 07:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Above, I'd shown an example of my expertise in template editing. Moreover, from my talk page (specifically the current first section) it may be inferred that there is a particular way in which I intend to design the digital navigation through the books, in collaboration with Mr. Pi Zero. Certainly, I've got little experience in anti-vandalism, but that is not the only task that an administration needs to take care of. (Possibly I should mention here that editing certain templates requires the "sysop" privileges.)
 * Regarding the non-binding administrative recommendation, I imagine a template that says something like "An administrator commends the following action...; it is considered best practice to follow any administrative request such as this". I also have ideas for several guiding essays on meta, to be read by administrators on any project. They would have a lot more weight if I were an administrator myself, and followed the rules inscripted there. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 07:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * : OK, but can you, to the best of your knowledge and in your own words, explain why you were banned on en.wiki and de.wiki and why you think the admins blocking you were wrong (as can be seen on your en.wiki talkpage)? Note that while I wouldn't oppose your nomination solely on this, I think some extra scrutnity would be required. Additionally, I can see some evidence of significant edit conflicts, especially those on mathematics. What is your position on this - were the users wrong, were you wrong or are the topics of an ambigious kind? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 09:11, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I posted a request for an admin to step down. In essence, this was the only thing I did. I do not know why it lead to a block. Unrelated to this, the Signpost has recently published an article titled "Admin reports board under criticism". And the person who edited the "Master theorem" article was, in that instance, just wrong; the lower bound claimed by him only holds when the elementary step is nontrivial, and what he posted in response to my query did not make much sense and demonstrated a clear misunderstanding of the Big-Oh notation (apparently this person has a job at MIT; it seems as though this illustrous institute has seen better days). (In particular, $$0$$ is not big $$\Theta$$ of everything, since "constant 0" is not allowed (as opposed to the zero function, which is; he confused $$\Theta$$ notation with $$O$$ notation, and the second post contains a blatant non-sequitur. Given the institution he works at, I assumed that all this was clear to him and possibly misinterpreted his confusion as impoliteness.) --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 10:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * , fine; that instance was a edit war between two editors (apologies, I'm not yet to the level where I can understand what you wrote). Assume that you were the admin and saw this edit war. How would you react? And on the flip side, what happened in that particular case? Who 'won' the war?
 * It is generally a serious matter when a user requests an admin to step down, and I noticed that other users (admins) were much in support of that admin. What made you to post such a serious request?
 * Finally, did the same thing happen on de.wikipedia? I can't read German, but it seemed like you were again in conflict on that wiki. How would you ensure that this does not happen on en.wikibooks? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 12:16, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

This actually touches one of my ideas for a guiding essay on meta: Namely, one that contains the following rule: If there is an edit-war about a certain page, and both advocated versions are acceptable, then there is no need to use administrative privileges. Now this was actually NOT the case on the English Wikipedia, since my version was correct and the version of the other user was wrong. Hence, it might have been an appropriate measure to set the page to the version that I put forward, and lock the page against non-admin edits. (If the expertise on the issue would have been lacking, an expert on the matter could have been consulted; Wikipedia should be tumbling with these.) In the particular case, there was a compromise solution where the condition that the elementary step is nontrivial was added to the article. This was imposed by the other user and it reduces the generality of the statement (although admittedly, it sharpens it a little). The ideal solution would have been to state both statements, but given the climate on ENWP, I did not dare even to think about editing the article in such a manner. The de-admin request was filed because I was discontent with the administrator's handling of the conflict. He also deleted my whole userpage for invalid reasons, blamed an insult made by the other user on my behaviour and after I filed the request, he even wrote that he enjoyed me getting the kind of negative feedback that I received (which was not well-natured), and I also browsed through some of his earlier conversations, which to my mind were marked by hostility towards other editors. He wrote, for instance, about how much he despised of the average Wikipedia editor (of which I may be one; I've certainly been insulted a sufficient number of times on this site to make this assumption plausible). About the conflict on the German Wikipedia: I believe that I have been at various times accused of being a representative of a company's competitors, a member of a Russian troll factory, or a hard-left fanatic. That may have had something to do with the fact that I have been vocal on political issues, and in my view, Wikipedia lacks the infrastructure to protect divergent viewpoints. However, on Wikibooks, I do not intend to meddle with any affairs such as these (mostly, because they are irrelevant to the project), and thus, I do believe that the probability that I would create the kind of hostility against my account that manifested itself at DEWP is very small. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * While you start to sound convincing on your reasoning, I still have a few concerns after going through your userpages - the same thing which users like also raised. (resentment)
 * For instance, on Meta, you replaced your userpage with "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS", apparently under a rage of resentment. I wonder what "4 lights" meant, but saying that IS IT MAYBE NOT OK TO INSULT ANYBODY? CAN'T I NOW EVEN RECORD THESE INSULTS? (in all caps) does not help matters and only serve to reaffirm those users' points, even if I believe that you were genuinely enraged. How will you prove that you won't fall into such a rage again? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 19:56, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I stand by myself defending myself against insults. I've been, for four years, the victim of continued verbal abuse on this project, and I can document that quite well. I did use all-caps, yes, which might have been inappropriate and I know that it's considered impolite. I'm a well-tempered person, but insults against my person will always be met with rejection and embafflement. To be quite honest, I think the persons who termed me as they did should apologise. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 20:04, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

"evidence suggests they're in denial of something that has caused extreme administrative action against them on multiple other projects, and inclined to carry resentments about those incidents cross-wiki" Could you point to an example where I carried resentments about incidents cross-wiki? To be precise, I do not believe there is a single one. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, and what would I be in denial of? Can you specify? At least, you should say what I fail to see before accusing me of doing so. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, and finally, when one speaks of evidence, it is always appreciated if the same is delivered. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * For the benefit of third parties reading this, I point out that I have explained the evidentiary basis of my position. Twice.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:16, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * For the benefit of third parties reading this, I point out that I fail to see how what Mr. Pi zero depicts as "evidence" supports his position, in the sense that the facts cited by him do not, in my view, prove his point. I've explained at length above, and I followed his lines of thought carefully. --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 05:08, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

First of all, I tried to get unblocked the usual way using the unblock ticket system, but my requests were being turned down. I had made a screenshot of the unblock request:

I then received the following "turn down" message:

"Hello Mathmensch,

Before your block you sought advice from an uninvolved admin and then rejected it when you disagreed with it. Counting those admins who blocked or reviewed your block, the block has been supported by five other admins. This is in addition to adverse comments on your behaviour at AN/I or on talk pages. All this should tell you something.

Now, I note that you are unhappy with some remarks about yourself. If and when you are unblocked then you can pursue a remedy for those remarks, if you so wish, through the recognised channels. COMMENT: This is precisely what I was blocked for. However, your first priority should be to try to get unblocked. In order to have a prospect of this you need to show that you understand that:

a) The admin action that you complained about was justified. b) What was wrong with your behaviour that got you blocked. c) What steps you are taking to ensure that this behaviour will not be repeated in the future. COMMENT: That is, in order to get unblocked, I've got to make a confession.

My advice is to make your next appeal effective by convincingly addressing these issues. In your last appeal you said "I will file an unblock request every month from now on". You will not, because, if your next appeal is declined, you will not be allowed further appeals at UTRS for an extended period.

Just Chilling English Wikipedia Administrator"

Addressing your second point: Apart from the fact that I'm the only person who edits mathematical wikibooks, it is sometimes not straightforward how one would put a conglomeration of mathematical statements into a twitter-like text form. (Imagine how difficult this must indeed be, given that politians struggle on occasion to phrase politics in that way.) --Mathmensch (discuss • contribs) 08:36, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Vote

 * 1)  I think you can do the job but please use the maintenance templates to avoid to let untraced "TODO" comments or empty templates. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 08:01, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) Ich bleibe neutral durch die Anliegen oberhalb. --Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:18, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 3)  It seems to be true in my opinion that the requester has faced unusual hostility in other projects. However, seeing the otherwise subdued and unsupportive response to this request, I'd rather wait for some more views before affirming support. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 20:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC) My previous vote opposing has been removed; check the history to read that
 * 4)  Nominee has been, to my knowledge, an asset as a contributor to this project.  However, objectively assessed as a candidate for adminship, evidence suggests they're in denial of something that has caused extreme administrative action against them on multiple other projects, and inclined to carry resentments about those incidents cross-wiki.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 5) . What has been tried to be unblocked on English and German Wikipedia? Why so many missing edit summaries?--Jusjih (discuss • contribs) 04:33, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 6)  While I do not pretend to understand the ins and outs of blocking on other projects, I am deeply concerned about the amount of controversy this request has engendered, particularly relative to the amount of admin work the requester plans to be taking on. Chazz (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2018 (UTC)