Meta:Requests for adminship/TonyBallioni

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a closed Meta-Wiki request. Please do not modify it.

TonyBallioni

TonyBallioni (talk • contribs • deleted user contributions • logs • block log • abuse log • CentralAuth • stalktoy) Bureaucrats: user rights management.

Ending 22 March 2019 03:51 (UTC)

Hi all, I'm Tony. I'm a sysop, CheckUser, and Oversighter on the English Wikipedia, and a global renamer here on meta. I'm requesting meta adminship because generally speaking, I'm online at times when LTAs are online and there aren't many meta admins or stewards on, as well as the fact that many of the accounts I deal with on en.wiki will start causing issues here after they are blocked on en, and depending on the time, there isn't anyone around to deal with it. I deal with most of these via IRC, which is why you won't find much in my contribution history, but it is a problem that I encounter relatively frequently.

I'm active on meta, am familiar with the policies, and think I can be trusted to help deal with protections and blocks as needed. I'd also be more than willing to help out with request for help from a sysop or bureaucrat in any way, and would start out slow.

To address the negative parts about me: I'm aware I can be controversial, and at times I'm critical of users here and on other projects. I call spades spades, and I don't often hide my views. There are many times where I'm sure I've made mistakes, but generally my goal is to stay within policy and say when I disagree with it if it makes no sense. Despite this, in every position I have been trusted with, I am always conscious of local and global policy and when I disagree with it, seek consensus.

I think I can be trusted with the tools here on meta, and am volunteering my service. If people disagree, that is fine, but it would be useful, and I think I could help, so I'm offering. The rest is up to you. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Trusted user. Kind regards, — Tulsi Bhagat (contribs | talk) 04:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trusted user with good experience locally and globally. Sure, he may disagree with the way things are sometimes done here, but it can only help Meta when done in the proper way (unlike some other users who have not expressed their disagreements in productive manners). No concerns here. --Rs chen 7754 05:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We should focus on promoting those who are actually active here to adminiship rather than promoting users who happen to hold rights on other projects. I find it hard to support someone who's opening sentence states what they do on other projects rather than the one on which they are seeking the rights. I've been clear about this before, but I do not like the trend of enwiki admins coming over here and asking the community to give them rights based on what they do on a separate project. Nihlus 05:27, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Y not? — regards, Revi 05:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- I have to echo Nick here. — regards, Revi 08:42, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Looking at your contributions, I don't see any activity on meta besides voting in RfA—for that you do not need those rights. You say one wouldn't find much in the contribs, but in fact you do not find there anything at all. Before you request admniship on a wiki, you should maybe at least edit it. —KPFC 💬 06:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- KPFC, I'm a bit confused by your statement. I have over 500 contributions to meta, am active in steward requests of global permissions, and renames (all of which I do through meta and can be seen here) as well as discussions on global policy and when need be RfCs. Most of my activity is behind the scenes here because of the nature of the work that I do: I regularly request stewards lock global LTAs that are active on meta, and monitor recent changes here both through the IRC feed and through the recent changes feed. The requests I make are through #wikimedia-stewards^connect, where any steward can confirm I am extremely active and work with people from multiple wikis on vandals and LTAs that impact this project as well as other local projects. If I made all of those requests at SRG (which I could if I wanted to) I would probably be approaching 100 in the last month alone.
  If people want to know the main reason I am requesting adminship here it is because there is a need roughly between 00:00 UTC and 6:00 UTC for meta sysops because that is a period when most of the people who are active and monitoring this project are asleep. I am a night owl and am awake and am around when everyone is making the requests both on IRC and on here. Sorry for the long response, but I wanted to clarify it since this actually is something that would be very useful for me, and I think for the meta community even if based on time zones. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:02, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Timezone is just a plus, not main criteria.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 07:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I qualify based on that criteria, and I don't believe I should be an admin. Nihlus 20:31, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Does well on en.wiki, trusted user. RhinosF1 (talk) 06:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, Sorry to me you seems to be not a material for Multilangual Wiki Admin, 500 contrib is fine and all IF you have strong track record on xWiki, but you are obviously not one with strong track record of xWiki activity. Why do I say xWiki activity is a must for me to replace the local activity criteria for meta adminship? Because I know (as I am ex meta admin myself) Meta Admin have action that can be performed in Meta that affect global wikis. I suggest you to get more experience in Multilang or xWiki activity.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 07:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support There's not a significant amount of work to be done on Meta these days (was there ever) and the argument that a user should be active on Meta doesn't hold water. We're not blessed with capable and competent users queuing up to help, so if a capable and competent user such as Tony offers to provide a small amount of help on a project like Meta, we should be enormously appreciative. The arguments presented by Nihlus and Aldnonymous are poor but indicative of the current thinking, which explains why so many of our projects are now in terminal decline - offers of help most frequently being met with negativity or bitter intransigence now. Nick (talk) 08:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Veracious (talk) 09:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Nick. I think Tony has sufficient experience here. He has provided a valid rationale for adminship too. While I agree with some of the points Aldnonymous and Nihlus brought up, it does not give me enough reason to oppose. There has been significant vandalism here, and no admin is around to deal with it at times. More help is needed in blocking LTAs/vandals. If someone is willing to offer assistance, I am willing to support. With that being said, I hope that Tony will be active if he obtains adminship. Jianhui67^{talk★contribs} 09:56, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per Jianhui67. There is a vandalism issue, and TonyBallioni is more than qualified to assist in it's management, especially when you take into consideration his history on the English Wikipedia as an administrator and functionary. Vermont (talk) 15:09, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Novak Watchmen (talk) 15:31, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I'm not entirely sure what meta admins do as this is not a content wiki (and I really don't understand how this could be controversial), but if Tony wants to help there should be no reason not to let him. He's competent, trustworthy, and capable. Bradv🍁 15:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per Nihlus and Aldnonymous. Ę-oиė >>> ™ 16:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per Jianhui67. If this RfA is approved, Tony should consider checking in with Aldnonymous as to exactly what actions Aldnonymous is most concerned about when s/he writes "Meta Admin have action that can be performed in Meta that affect global wikis." Then until Tony is sure of his ground on such actions, he can avoid them. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:17, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Global filters. Vermont (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have no intent of using global filters or messing with them. Edit filters have never been a major part of my work on any project, and while I am familiar with them broadly speaking, I can't ever see myself changing them or even blocking based on them. My work has always been watchlist and recent changes based, and I don't see that changing. Part of being trusted to have any advanced permission is knowing what not to use, and I wouldn't be using global filters. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The spam/title blacklists still go through Meta, I believe. --Rs chen 7754 18:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, those do too, local projects can have individual ones where sysops can add things, but this also would be pretty high on my "never touch" list. I don't know regex, have no interest in learning it, and haven't ever done anything with it on en, and I wouldn't be doing anything with it here. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:26, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I'm a sysop here, and I don't touch that stuff, either. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support per Nick and bradv SQL ^{Query me!} 18:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support. No-brainer IMO. Hiàn (talk)/_{editing on mobile account} 18:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Support per Nick. Why not? Natureium (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tony is smart, thoughtful, and committed to following policies. He would be a real asset to helping this project operate well. Yet, his nomination statement is compelling me to disagree with him. I believe him when he says that he knows he's made mistakes. In the moment I don't think he is capable of considering that any action of his could be a mistake. And that's not entirely unfair - since he's smart, thoughtful, and mindful of policies his mistakes are likely to be rare, bordering on non-existant, in any sysop action. I also think the issue is less that he calls a spade a spade when it comes to users and more that he can lack the ability to empathize with people who aren't him and don't have his power and privledge. However despite this when I heard he was running for sysop I came right here so I could support him. I know that I am a nobody in Wikimedia but please know that I can not state strongly enough that Meta is fortunate that given all he does for the Wikimedia movement he wants to be a sysop here. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Candidate is an active member of the Meta community. I find it wrong to expect Meta community members also be inactive on all other projects. Candidate is also experienced, careful, and a good communicator. AGK ■ 21:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trusted and experienced user. No concerns. —AlvaroMolina (✉ - ✔) 21:32, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hard choice, firstly I am not convinced of some of the voters above who voted support without much meta experience and one even said that they don't know what meta adminship entails. Also the applicant doesn't have too much meta edits as well as patrols. Deleted contributions are minimal and non deleted contributions are towards the stewards area not meta related areas. However, I don't quite care about monolingual, this is less important in a meta sysop than steward. I also feel that since they are a sysop on enwp, they should be able to handle most of the things here, their assurance that global EF they won't touch is good as that is the only action meta sysop can do that will have impact globally without local bypass option. In addition, timezones are a plus as I often frantically trying to find a sysop in my time zone and there's just no one less some stewards or billinghurst, and coverage in this UTC 0.00-8.00 where they are active is just quite thin. I will hope they stay more active on meta but otherwise the above will lean me to the support side. If someone wants to help, I think we should let them help. Just hoping they will seek advices from the more experienced sysops before any controversial actions. --Cohaf (talk) 01:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose In general I can not trust a monolingual user to become admin on multilingual wiki.Minimaxima|^talk 02:43, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support They're trustworthy and have sufficient admin experience. Being multilingual wasn't a requirement back when I ran for RFA on Meta-Wiki... and monolingual folks are just as capable of using the tools as anyone else is. --Az1568 (talk) 03:13, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Per Aldnonymous and Minimaxima. --Arifin.wijaya (talk) 07:49, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per Nick - do not get refusing the help of people who are competent (very much so in this case). Galobtter (talk) 19:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've been thinking about this a bit. On the one hand, TonyBallioni isn't particularly active on Meta and I prefer admin candidates to have more experience here. On the other, I think that the candidate knows how to use the sysop tools correctly and would not misuse them. That lands me in the Support category, since I generally think that competent people who volunteer should be given access barring some good reason why not. I will say, however, that "calling a spade a spade" is no excuse for operating without tact. We owe it to ourselves and to the project to offer honest opinions and stand up for what we believe in, but in a respectful way that does not simply dismiss people who disagree in good faith. – Ajraddatz (talk) 23:43, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- For what it’s worth, I was offering that as a self-critique, not an excuse. I think we likely do disagree on what the line is between good faith disagreement and behaviour that’s generally not helpful in discussions that should be pointed out, but I think it’s fair criticism of me to say that I can be harsh in discussions, sometimes unnecessarily. It is something I have been working on, but I’m generally of the view that you should know your faults and acknowledge them when requesting advanced permissions, which is why I brought it up. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I was certainly amused, you used to complain about my 6000 contribution (at that time I have 13000+ contribs globally) 1 here despite I speak the language and being a sysop there, but now you want to be Admin on meta with just 500 contribution, you want to force your standard on others but don't apply your own standard to yourself, where is the fairness in this? I don't care if this being counted as revenge votes but I sure don't like the hypocrisy here. Murbaut (talk) 14:55, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your offer and the acknowledgement of weaknesses. However, I cannot share Nick's assessment that "[t]here's not a significant amount of work to be done on Meta these days", the opposite is true. While debatable, I believe admins (and candidates for adminship) can be expected to be at least minimally involved in the community. A few attempts to participate in discussions on central venues like Meta:Babel and other pages in this namespace would be a start, but such kind of activity seems to be lacking in your contributions, which is likely what KPFC was referring to in his comment (i. e. the steward pages and perhaps RFH are just a minor part of this wiki). With regards to cvn, metawiki is different from content wikis like enwiki, since it is mostly a working platform for Wikimedians, and almost exclusively read by Wikimedians. This makes the removal of classical vandalism a less urgent task, in most cases a WM:RFH notice should suffice, unless more serious things warranting action of an oversighter occur, for example. Pages here are usually accessed less frequently and by users who are familiar with the basics of the wiki software and have basic understanding of the vandalism problem. I cannot really judge the enwiki track record, since I am not too involved in that project myself. --Vogone (talk) 23:35, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Ajraddatz; net positive. Tony understands what would be expected of him and would make an overall positive contribution to meta and the community. Operator873^talkconnect 02:11, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support I've also noticed the lack of availability of Meta admins during the time Tony mentioned. I believe Tony would be a benefit to the project by helping to clean up after LTAs outside of the role of stewards. Work in this area is not well-represented in an edit count due to IRC coordination and handling of private data. While I share some of the opposers' hope for more multilingual administrators, stewards, and other cross-wiki roles, I do not feel that this hope is a sufficient reason to prevent others from helping in that role. Giving one person adminship does not prevent any other person from being granted adminship by the community. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is kind of a late vote – hopefully I don't edit-conflict with the close. I'm familiar with TonyBallioni through interacting with him as an administrator on the English Wikipedia. Tony is one of those editors whose judgment I instinctively trust, and although he is certainly not always right (no one is always right), what he has to say will frequently make you think carefully about your own opinion on the matter. He is outspoken when he believes something isn't right, but that does not mean he will not listen to opposing views and factor them into his thinking. Indeed, if you think he's wrong, don't be afraid to set him straight (in a respectful way, of course). Fundamentally, I see TonyBallioni as a good editor who has the Wikimedia movement's best interests at heart. Mz7 (talk) 04:09, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - He has a clue, is a decent admin on other projects. Not concerned with edit count as there traditionally isn't alot to do at meta these days. --Cameron11598 (talk) 05:00, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - competent admin on other projects. If I had known this was going on earlier, I would've commented sooner. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:33, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I find it worrisome that many individuals have come from enwiki in order to support this but they themselves are not active on this project. Additionally, there seems to be a few individuals who frequent IRC that have commented here without being active on Meta. I won't call it canvassing (I also won't not call it that either), but it is highly irregular and suspicious. The closer of this discussion must take that into consideration. Nihlus 06:02, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, I think that's a fair concern, but I think there's an easy explanation: I'm relatively well known on en.wiki, so that would likely explain why en.wiki users are here supporting. People see names the recognize and talk to others about what is happening here: you see it anytime we have global requests. People from local communities come out when they see people they know. I'm obviously biased, but I don't find the fact that the majority of my support is from people who are more active on en.wiki any more suspicious than the fact that 6/8 opposes are id-n speakers and many of them haven't edited meta in years either. I'd likely also attribute that to the "high profile user from local community commenting" factor, as one of their local CUs was an early oppose.
  Meta policy allows that people who are active on local projects come here based on their previous experience, and I think !votes both ways are valid. Anyway, it'll be up to the local 'crats here on meta to decide, and I'm fine with whatever the outcome. As I said, I volunteered because there is to me what seems to be a clear need and I'm willing to fill it, but I'm also perfectly fine without it. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- That's pretty desperate stuff, Nihlus. You've got, let me see, about six or eight administrators from en.wp coming out to support Tony, none of us are what you would describe as sheep who will blindly support a candidate - my name is down on this list because I know Tony, I have the skill and expertise to evaluate his performance as an administrator and I've reached an independent conclusion that his appointment here on Meta would be a good thing for this site. I see nobody here who I think you would describe as being canvassed who I know would risk tarnishing their good name by blindly supporting someone, so whilst I can't speak for my colleagues from elsewhere, I'm bloody sure they've all done an independent, critical assessment of Tony and have decided to support for reasons that they can (and strangely, have) elucidated at some length, above. Nick (talk) 08:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- I view it as less eyebrow raising, for the reasons Nick and Tony laid out, than the fact that so many of the opposes have come from a particular wiki. This being my 43rd edit on META I am hardly a regular but come here, as I suspect if we were to look at the contribs of the other enwiki editors you're referring to, and try to participate as a positive member of the community when there is something of interest to my enwiki editing. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Is it possible that we stop this discussion, I guess enough have been said both sides? This is a little excessive. Can we let a bureaucrat to decide. Comments or insinuations about possible canvassing aren't helpful if they cannot be backed IMHO. Let's go by meta norms that all editors can comment and when it's close, a crat can exercise discretion and I'm sure they'll. Regards,--Cohaf (talk) 13:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per KPFC and others; your activity is indeed not very high and most of it seems to be voting. Also, all edits except one since starting this request have been about this request. That doesn't strike me as particularly good. Also, in the recent SE you complained about someone being too bureaucratic for sticking to policy. I would prefer if people sticked to policies. —MF-W 14:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Super strong. I thought I voted already but apparently did not. Tony is competent, diplomatic and will be an asset to meta. Praxidicae (talk) 14:44, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus. Per bureaucrat chat on the talk page. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above request page is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Comments about this page should be made in Meta:Babel or Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat.