ctangent

Hello, Wizardman. I was an administrator six years ago; sysopped in 2006, burnt out a little over three years after that. I think our paths may have crossed before but I don't remember ever speaking to you. I'm impressed that you chose to stick around for so long.

I've got a few questions for you:

1) How do you feel about teenaged administrators? I ask because, when I was sysopped, I was fourteen years old. I successfully hid my age my entire time at Wikipedia, but I always wondered what the reaction to my sysopping would be if I had been open about my age.

2) What made you run for ArbCom? By all accounts it's a thankless, tireless, and downright awful job and always draws the ire of Wikipedia Review. I certainly hope that your administrators are more well behaved than my class was...

3) Let's talk about biographies of living persons. The biggest wheel wars of my days stemmed from deleting/undeleting biographies of those still living. BLP as a policy was just starting to emerge as I left; how does Wikipedia handle BLPs now, and how does Wikipedia today deal with feedback from the subject of the article?

4) Has the deletion process been reformed? RFD was always controversial when I was around; it was strongly biased towards deletion and ultimately open to the whim of the closing admin.

Looking back, I think I was a poor administrator and I should never have been sysopped at age 14. I left Wikipedia around five years ago this winter, and I've always wondered how the site has changed since I left. I got desysopped due to inactivity, but I'd never think about asking for the tools back, or even reveal my account name; too much has changed since then and I'd rather distance myself from my internet past.

I'm not sure things ever were together, you know? AN/I was a clusterfuck every single day when I was there. Every day was a new mess that needed fixing.