Richwales

Richwales (talk · contribs · count) I've been on Wikipedia for a little over five years now. I'd like to improve my skills, get out of any ruts I may have become stuck in, and possibly be of further service here by becoming an admin some day (see here). Richwales (talk) 05:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

1. What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?

   I've made major contributions to several articles dealing with U.S. citizenship and immigration law. My first big piece of work here, in late 2005, was a major rewrite of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. More recently, I started an article on a completely different topic (the White Horse Prophecy), which was listed in DYK in early June. I've also spent time trying to forge consensus between warring factions, seeking extra input on pages where a small established group of editors were at an impasse, and reporting obstinately counterproductive editors where necessary. I recently started getting involved with the "third opinion" (3O) process. I see myself as aspiring to be a peacemaker — something that, sadly, is often a losing battle around here.

3. Have you been in any disputes over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

   The most stressful editing conflict I've been involved with happened in early February 2010, in connection with the article on Another Gospel, a book linked to the Christian countercult movement. I got into a serious conflict with another editor who strongly objected to material I felt was essential in order to provide context for the reader and make the piece more NPOV. I tried very hard to stay calm and polite, even though it seemed the other editor was accusing me of violating just about every policy and guideline in existence. When we couldn't agree on the validity of sources or on the appropriate waiting period before removing not-yet-adequately sourced new material in a non-BLP article, I posted an RFC and got some more editors involved. In the end, some (not all, but some) of the improvements I had originally argued for did make it into the article. If something like this happens to me again, I'll try harder to find good sources sooner rather than later — though, to be honest, I still believe I was basically doing the right thing and that the other editor was overreacting. You can find more details here.

Reviews

Review by C628 (talk · contribs)

Apologies this has taken so long, first off. That said, here goes.

• First thing I notice is you've got a nice balance of contributions among the namespaces, which is good, and in relation to an RfA, always good. Especially nice how many of your edits are to talk/user talk pages; shows a willingness to collaborate.
• Content work is generally good, though I noticed a distinct lack of references on a lot of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Not sure if that was your fault, since I didn't look very far back into its history, and if you only rewrote it, than there's not much to worry about, but if you added a bunch of unsourced text, than that's a problem, and wouldn't look good at an RfA. Same goes for Another Gospel, adding unreliable sources isn't good either, although I commend you on keeping a calm head and changing how you went about working on the article as the debate progressed. (FWIW, White Horse Prophecy didn't seem to have those problems, so good there.)
• As for your work as peacemaker, I don't have any problems with it, you seem like a perfect person to do it. Civil, calm, able to speak rationally, all excellent traits for that.
• Edit summary usage nearly 100%, very good there.
• As for an RfA: I would advise not going in soon, per stuff I cited there (sourcing problems especially). If you can prove you've learned from them (White Horse Prophecy is a good first step), I would say submitting an RfA late this year or early next would have decent chance of success (don't take my word for, have someone more experienced advise you first). You've already proved you're a level-headed person, which is the biggest thing, now you just need to prove you can add quality content.

That's all I can think of, if you've any further questions, feel free to ask me about it on my talk page or here. Cheers, C628 (talk) 00:53, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]