Commons:Administrators/Requests/Poco a poco

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for adminship.
 Support = 35;  Oppose = 0;  Neutral = 0 - 100%
Closed as successful by — 99of9 (talk) 21:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Poco a poco

Vote

Poco a poco (talk · contributions · deleted user contributions · recent activity · logs · block log · global contribs · CentralAuth)

Scheduled to end: 11:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm nominating Poco a poco for adminship, because I think he has the right experience, knowledge, and temperament. He's made amazing contributions to Commons with his photography, as well as tens of thousands of edits, and understands Wikimedia projects in general. He is an active admin on the Spanish wiki, and can communicate in a few other languages.

Poco a poco has accepted my nomination. 99of9 (talk) 11:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Indeed! my motivation to accept this request is to help out with maintenance tasks, which I often come accross, but cannot solve on my own. Through my long time experience as admin in the Spanish Wikipedia and the fact that I spend several hours a day in Commons I think that my help could be welcome. I am also interested in licensing and technical stuff and enjoy mediating in conflicts. Through my more or less tight links to Spanish, German, Polish and American culture I think that I bring some relevant communication skills, as well. Feel free to ask whatever you'd like to know. Poco2 12:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Votes

Comments

  •  Question: Hello, and congratulations for your nomination to adminship. I want to know your opinion on Commons scope breath in general, about the challenges posed by lax upload policies (such as mobile uploads) that favor the accumulation of unused/unusable stuff, and the perils (if you feel there’s any) of militant deletionism. I’d also would like to know how you feel about the importance of categorization. -- Tuválkin ✉ 12:46, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hello Tuvalkin, thanks for your comments. I will answer to your questions one by one:
1. My opinion on Commons's scope: I do fully agree on the aim of the project
makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all, and
acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.
--Commons:Project scope
In other words, we do of course need in the first place media files to improve the quality of our sister projects, in some cases I even believe that an illustration is the most essential part of them. At the same time I believe in the idea of Commons as a free licensed respository for the world. The project is growing and it is more and more the people who, outside of the Wikimedia movement, use material from Commons. I have uploaded almost 10,000 pictures and get almost every week emails of people from everywhere telling me that they are using some of my pictures. We are becoming a messager of the free license media and I am excited about that. Some time ago nobody knew about free licenses apart from public domain and I think that Commons has played an important role to change that.
2. Accumulation of unusable stuff (due to lax upload policies such as mobile uploads): I am not sure if I have fully understood your concerns, but I will share my thoughts about cell phone photographs. This has been also an topic in the context of Wiki Loves Monuments. I think that soon we'll not have anymore reasons to complain about mobile uploads, both, because the quality of the cell phone cameras will reach the level of compact cameras, and because the band width are increasing allowing the upload of bigger files. Therefore IMO the upload of cell phone pictures is a temporary problem due to the first generations of mobile cell cameras. Actually, some of the successful candidates in QIC have been taken with a cell phone camera, I couldn't have believed that 3 years ago. On the other side, the advantage for the project of pictures taken with a cell phone camera is that they often "immortalize" situations that are unusual and you cannot foresee (I always have my cell phone with me but rarely my DSLR camera). So, I don't believe that a policy should address cell phone pictures. On the other side, today many people are taking tons of pictures of all king (also with no possible encyclopedic usage) and some of them upload them in Commons. This is a problem from which also Wikipedia has been suffering for years (people believe that for the fact of being the free encyclopedia they are free to upload everything). To prevent this problem we need education, to mitigate the problem we need clear policies and to handle and deal with the problem we need patrollers and admins.
3. Importance of categorization: Crucial. What is the point of uploading an image of a very rare insect if I don't enter a proper description and category? Look, I have docens of very nice pictures of plants, flowers and animals that I haven't uploaded because I haven't been able to figure out yet their scientific name, and therefore I see no point in uploading them to Commons. I spend a lot of time travelling with my camera and developing the pictures, but I do spend most of the time finding out what is on the pictures...
I hope I could answer your questions. All the best, Poco2 18:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for your replies. What you said about #1 and #3, and some AGF earns you my support vote. Concerning #2, the issue is not at all the technical quality you can achieve with this or that kind of camera, but the “easiness” of taking a random shot and have it in a wp article in 3.04 seconds — what kind of contributions it encourages (more vandalism than with other approaches), how it contributes to adding clutter to Commons, and why this kind of “outreaches” are the darlings of WMF people, as opposed to actual work. -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • We like to see a babelbox on every Administrator's User page. I see one here on a sub-page under the link "About me", but that won't be helpful to the user who doesn't read English. Ordinarily I'd prefer to see it on the base user page, but given the artistry there, I'd like to hear what others think. It's particularly sensitive in this case because Diego has seven languages. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Some indication of the language skills at the user page would be nice to have, however not mandatory as there are boxes at the user talk page, which you usually open for talking to a user. -- Rillke(q?) 16:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      • Well, Rillke mostly said what I wanted to point out. Comments belong in the talk page and there I have always had my babel box. If not sufficient, I can search for or create a gif or something like that in many languages inviting to contact me in my talk page. Poco2 18:48, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I didn't notice that there was a second babelbox on the talk page -- that's fine, thanks. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 12:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Poco a poco, 1) could you please elaborate for what things you're planning to use admin tools. Commons needs active admins, it often has a large backlog on DR's. So, if you plan to help closing DR's, I would like to know if you ever participated in a DR (which concerned not one of your uploads) here on Commons, maybe you can name me an example, as I don't remember to ever have seen you commenting on a DR. I know of course that you have the most QI's, soon most FP's here, but admin flag is no award and for an admin I expect competency in some other areas. 2) Imagine there is a DR on this file, the nominator refers to no-FOP-Russia, the uploader votes {{Vk}} and claims that the buildings aren't original enough to be a work of architecture. No further votes/comments, the 7 days are over. How would you decide? Thanks --A.Savin 16:16, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hello Alexander, thanks for sharing your concerns. It is obvious that you know me mainly due to Commons, and you cannot know much about my activities in the Spanish Wikipedia. Believe me when I tell you that my profile there is completely different to Commons. Before becoming a very active Commonist in QIs and FPs, I had already gathered over 100,000 edits in the Spanish Wikipedia mainly with maintenance tasks. Actually, for some months I personally reviewed each single new article there until I started a wikiproject with a group of dedicated users that ensured the systematic review and improvement of each single new article for over a year (note that in the Spanish Wikipedia everybody, including IPs, can create new articles). I have over 40.000 actions as admin (mostly deletes but also blocks or rights changes, since I am also bureaucrat), I have initiated there new policies -including one to establish a process to remove the rights as admin, since the job had been lifelong-, introduced new tools and created over 1100 new articles (no bots involved). I just wanted to stress that I am not only a very active photographer thanks to Commons, but also a very dedicated user since 2007 in many other areas, especially related to maintenance.
Answering now your questions about DR, I think that a quick search would have given you an answer. Anyhow, here are some recent examples of DRs where none of my uploads was involved but I took part: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Pepa López.jpg, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Burj khalifa-dubai-2011 (5).JPG or Commons:Deletion requests/File:Freida Pinto at Cannes Festival 2013.jpg.
Please, don't misunderstand this RfA, it is neither 99of9's nor my intention to apply for these rights as a kind of price for my contributions in Commons, which, by the way I consider very humble in comparison to many users here. In the meanwhile I have gathered experience in admin tasks in other projects and I do spend a lot of time in Commons, therefore it is for me a natural step to help this project in other tasks.
To your concrete exercise. Normally, and following Russia's regulation a picture depicting an architectural does not belong to Commons as long as the last of the architects who created it died for more than 70 years. In this case, though, I tend not to consider those buildings as architectural work (originality threshold), and therefore I would not delete it right away. Still, and due the fact that Russia's, along with France's and Italy's regulation for these matters are quite strict., I would double check with another admin like you, before I close it. I'd just rather ask twice than take such a decision on my own. Licensing topics are complex and a different animal in each country, therefore I'd act independently only in those adminship areas where I feel confortable with and extend it step by step (btw that's what "Poco a poco" stands for in Spanish :)). I do the same with license reviews: Sometimes I find a case where I am not sure about what to do, and therefore I include the file in my watchlist, write a note in my notepad and let somebody else take care of it. After it is done I analyse the result and take good note of it. I am aware that there are some areas where I still can benefit from more experience. All the best, Poco2 19:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Admin and crat in Spanish wiki, this I didn't know before. I'd really like to know how you manage to have the time for everything at same time, given also the fact that you travel & upload far more than most of the colleagues including myself. Anyway, I find your statement quite satisfactory, thanks for taking time. --A.Savin 21:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There are still a couple of other activities that I haven't mention ;) Poco2 21:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Diego, you well hide a lot of about you from us! Glad to see we have such an active, dedicated and experienced user here! Best wishes. JKadavoor Jee 02:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
JJ, I think that there are many colleagues in Comons that match that profile, but anyhow, I am really glad that you believe I belong to them :) Poco2 16:44, 4 December 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion.
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