Battlestar Wiki:Requests for adminship/The Merovingian (3)

The Merovingian

Back to RFA.

Vote here (6/3/0) ending 17:51, 6 August 2006 (CDT)

The Merovingian (talk • contribs) – The Merovingian's history with us has not been entirely smooth. During his first months with us, his unmatched energy and enthusiasm for the project were sadly tempered with an impatience and quickness to anger which did not recommend him for adminship.

In the last few months, his demeanor has improved drastically, and he has acquired a remarkable maturity and level-headedness. This track record was unfortunately marred by an incident three months ago, involving a series of attacks against fan reporter Jim Iaccino, a.k.a. "KoenigRules". The results of this were such that I was forced to oppose his last nomination for adminship - despite his recently improved behavior, I felt he needed to demonstrate that he was capable of adhering to higher standards on a permanent basis.

It is my opinion that Merv has done so. He now makes persuasive arguments in rational tones, he appeals and defers to group consensus when appropriate, and he has been helpful and patient with new users.

Merv has always been a contributor of the highest order. As one of the most serious and vocal opponents of his adminship in the past, it is my pleasure to state my belief that Merv has demonstrated the maturity and patience to wield admin privileges responsibly and effectively. I would be honored to work alongside him as an administrator. --Peter Farago 00:37, 28 July 2006 (CDT)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:--I am The Merovingian, and I accept this nomination. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 17:51, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

Support

1. Support as nominator. --Peter Farago 00:37, 28 July 2006 (CDT)
2. Support I am delighted to support, based both on absolutely superb contributions and behavior that has steadily improved to its currently decorous state. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 04:18, 28 July 2006 (CDT)
3. Support Has made excellent contributions in the last few weeks. --FrankieG 06:40, 28 July 2006 (CDT)
4. Support. I feel gaining Peter's support after all this time is no mean feat. You've earned mine as well for the same criteria. With great power comes...well, you know the rest. Get your mop and bucket. --Spencerian 07:10, 28 July 2006 (CDT)
5. Support I've been highly impressed with his contributions and such here recently. --Talos 13:05, 29 July 2006 (CDT)
6. Support Merv was the second user to greet me when I came here. I was overzealous when I first arrived, but he helped me to temper myself through helpful suggestions that were not rude or even bossy. He's an excellent editor here and I couldn't think of a better choice for admin. --Homeworld616 01:33, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

Oppose

1. Oppose With all due respect, the arguement that a couple of months of improved behavior is equivalent to "adhering to higher standards on a permanent basis" is unpersuasive. KR was not the subject of a mere prank or fan infighting, but suffered an intrusion in his professional life that can not be overlooked for a nice e-mail and the submission of some articles, no matter how well done. Those of us who work in professional environments know that administrative and organizational memory for this kind of thing is not wiped clean even when it falls below the threshold for disciplinary action. Some errors in judgement are simply incompatable with being trusted with positions of authority, and I believe this is the case here, whatever his contributions. Mero may be a talented contributor and editor, but he should remain so. --Cranky1c 12:08, 16 March 2006 (EST)

Member since 31 July 2006. Vote will not be counted.---->As a countermeasure against voter fraud, you have to be a member of BattlestarWiki for at least 3 weeks before you're allowed to vote (and even then, your vote might be cast in a bad light if you only occassionally contribute). This person joined less than 6 hours ago. Yikes. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:32, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

Merv, what business do you have in striking out someone's vote in YOUR OWN RFA? That's something for the admins. You have no business discarding ballots for your own election. That takes a LOT of chuztpah. I'm changing to a NO vote. --Larocque6689 00:11, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Note: I'm sorry if I'm not allowed to do that I wasn't sure; we don't do RFA's very often, I thought anyone could point that out. Regardless, no, what was balsy was that we have a 3 week waiting period before voting and you've got people joining a matter of hours ago to try and vote people down (Peter just editing something a few minutes ago; Peter I assume if I have done something wrong you'd have told me? If I have I'm sorry, I wasn't sure what to do)--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 00:35, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Merv's action was appropriate, per the precedent we set during Merv's second RFA. See the relevant page for details. --Peter Farago 01:09, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

1. Oppose I've reconsidered my vote light of Merv striking out Cranky's vote. Not that there was anything wrong in striking out Cranky's vote, but the fact that Merv did it shows that he hasn't learned much in the way he deals with people. I would like to respect Peter's judgment that he's now ready for admin-ship, but this incident just pushed me back to the "NO" camp. Thanks Merv. I should also add that I'm utterly baffled that this process has gone on for nearly a year and three previous failed admin votes, in which at least one of them Merv nominated himself, and in the other two he accepted. I guess the one question I have is "why does this position matter" so much? He didn't even refuse the nomination after the KR incident, which would have been the honorable thing to do. In previous RFA's, he's bragged that he had a Plan R ready (recruitment) to essentially troll for votes at other forums. (Mercifully, this was not employed during the last RFA). Still, the question begs to be answered: Why does this position matter so much? Why is being a contributor not good enough? And sadly, I don't agree that he's ready yet. I really wanted to give him a chance.--Larocque6689 00:16, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
2. Oppose Strongly - Merv has attitude has not changed and I think that people should be reminded of the RFC in how he handles difficulties situations. Not one person owns any such article has people and Merv has told me. No article is of ownership so saying that you are working on your articles should be a presence that he still has the mentality of ownership of the wiki. A - Merciful and I worked on the Battle template for two weeks and got comments during that time. And once Merciful updated all the pages, Merv objected to it's use and the design. B and C - In that note, The BW:ES project has not been finalized nor has anything been set in stone, yet he has gone around to all the episodes and made significant changes without getting any consent with the project group. Posting something on the think tank for project creation, not for doing the standards does not count. The BW:ES project was not his creation, but FrankieG project idea. The podcast project is also something to point out, while there was a field to "view" podcasts from the episode pages, the idea was never implemented because there was to many disagreements. (i.e. Battlestar_Wiki_talk:Podcast_Transcripts#100.25_done_podcasts_we_should... At this point before he did this, the BW:TANK project did exist.) D - No project on welcoming committee. It's open for anyone who can post a welcome message to someone and not just posting, but also helping. G After being a strong opponent to the idea he has graped the idea that he should be the only person in charge of maintaining the portals (e.x. Check Userpage) and decide what should be placed. (e.x. The RDM Portal FA is a current BW:FA candidate.) The Cylon agent speculation page has been a project, but disallows other users information on the page. My own conflicts with merv have yet to be resolved. I have yet to hear an apology from him from the many actions he has done to enrage me leading up the the RFC on me. The BW:AN post is another thing. And if you look closely at the RFC, he did preach. The RFC was not a discussion forum, but analysis of the situation of people's comments. I can not vote for a person who can not apologizes to someone after they admit they are wrong except he can to people outside the Wiki. (I woudl expect a public appology on Larocuque talk page for his choice of words to show that he is ready to be an admin) And using the System Message namespace for an RFA, shows me that messages are going to be abused. This system is for server related issues regrading updating and databases issues. General information should be posted on the BW:CP where there is a notice board, but RFAs don't get "riddled" everywhere except someone's user talk page or if they have pages under "Watch" status. Also in the current sub-page of BW:TK, an established project, he objects to a subpage for a list of manual checks for users and admins. The list is going to be design for admins and users alike to see what is going on the wiki and to give shortcuts to the correct pages. Not one person can be the trafficker of information. We each have our own skills that relay on one another. Merv thinks his skills is all this wiki needs. Me, I good at code, not content, but I love the show, Peter good at grammar, CA, good at grammar. Frank is another contributer to info. Merc has been good with design and syntax fix. Spenc is good at condensing things. Talos is good at images. Ford same reasons. And the wiki can not be here at all without Joe. As posted out, Merv does not want us associated with a outside forum in anyway shape or form to function as one. Also to bring back a forum issue is irreverent to why we should not listen to Larocuque's vote. I do agree that Cranky1c's vote should be discounted because it breaks every rule in the book, but a simple "Please read the RFA guidelines, would have been a simple enough." Also posting a link where there is adult content is UNWISE without any warning. If any of the pictures are like bad, that is serious bad things that can happen to the Wiki even though you are linking. -Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:38, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
3. Weak Oppose Ok this was a tough decision and most certainly isnt mean as an attack as an oppose. I definitly think you are over a lot of the bad stuff that happened in the past but there are still times when arguments get a little out of hand and when you make changes before concensus is made. I also think the whole Koenigrules issue was a pretty big thing and its hard to forget that. Apologies are fair enough but you need to think a little more about how your actions can affect other people. I think this needs to be made completely clear too. And if you does make admin I most definitly dont want to see posts on Skiffy and other forums of you "speaking on behalf" of the Wiki as has done in the past. I'm still skeptical about if another bad situation is going to arise in the future, and if so then it may bring the whole of the Wiki into disrepute as you would be an admin. So just be very very careful about what you say/do outside of the wiki. Good luck Merv, but im staying neutral on this one. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 10:54, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

   Ok I'm sorry to do this but i'm moving to oppose. From the comments ive seen from other people here there are some serious issues about Merv's behavour outside of the wiki, and im really not sure we want to bring some of this bad kharma here. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 03:55, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Neutral

Comments

• It's only been a month since the last RFA. Why are we going through this again so soon? Edit: Please ignore the last question. I just noticed it was Peter who made the nomination. --Larocque6689 19:06, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

• A few things to point out: Laroque6689 is of course, trying to goad me into some sort of inappropriate outburst disproving that my behavior is fine. So instead of taking my word for it, I'll supply links to things he's said and you can decide for yourselves, but essentially, Larocque6689 is one of the regulars from "The Moist Board": many of you, my fellow, BattlestarWikipedians don't use the messageboards a lot so to give a quick run through: when they talk about "those internet Original Series fans who hated the new show and clogged the messageboards full of cruft when the Miniseries came out", that's them. ---->Essentially, I refuse to be intimidated by trolls on the messageboads, and do not shy away from saying that Scifi.com's messageboards have little if any moderating and we need moderators to keep order there. More so than ever after a new troll "hatebait", began sexually harassing several members of the messageboard.---->At any rate, many of you saw during my last RFA that these people just go on mudslinging grudge matches and I doubt actually care about the show. For starters, Larocque6689 does not care about KoenigRules. --->Yikes, this is one of the more tired messageboard arguement tactics by a third party; I am not fighting with KoenigRules, have retracted everything about that mishap, and (Although this is based on how he feels) I think things are productively moving foward. The point is, it's been more or less a rehash of an arguement from April. When Larocque6689 can't think of something actually new to use to defame someone, he just reposts the same old arguements into a room to open old wounds. They just don't like it that I want to actually have people behave on Skiffy, observe: "Blame would-be Sciffy moderator The_Merovirgin, who reports posts of his enemies as fast as they are posted).--Larocque6689". --->Larocque & Co. kind of obsess over me, as seen in this example, just reposting the same things over and over again. --->here's another one = Larocque and the other TOS trolls really just hate it that I actually want there to be moderators on Skiffy. I mean heck, Koenigrules was there post-GTA's and shared in my disgust at the troll backlash from the likes of hatebait, who kept sexually harassing people but never got banned. They kept running around going "report a post and your a snitch and a troll!" (Trolling being the exact opposite of reporting bad posts). And of course, Larocque has now announced my new RFA in another troll-forum], in the dedicated Hate-The-Merovingian thread. Any surprse that a few hours after we started, someone joined BattlestarWiki (Cranky1c) for the express purpose of voting against me? Well, judge for yourselves Larocque6689's conduct and character; check out his List of posts on MortalStorm and List of posts on Moist Board. I'm sorry that KoenigRules and I, and the rest of the BSG community, have to keep dealing with people like this. --->Finally, Larocque6689.....is just obviously a malicious user who popped in to vote against me. Please take a look at the Full List of Larocque6689's Contributions to BattlestarWiki:' Once, on April 12, he made some minor changes to "33" and "Water". Besides that, All he's done is come here to yell about me becomeing Administrator....of a website he hardly ever uses. Funny that he knew to voice his opinions on my RFA here, when an announcement that there's an Administratorship election in progress wasn't even posteed as a header on top of the website: these TOS trolls (people that actually use the term "GINO"/originated it) just....stalk me on the internet all the time and obsessively read everything I do. Creepy and petty. ---->What are Larocque6689's opinions? Well, judge their worth on their merit I guess. Myself, I would value KoenigRules vote/input on my RFA (even if negative) and have sent him a PM asking if he'd like to vote me up or down. Because KoenigRules knows what KoenigRules thinks, not Larocque6689. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 00:19, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
  • A couple of things Merv. First, it's true I haven't contributed a lot to the Wiki. One of the reasons was that your power-tripping drove me away. I had actully prepared a whole whack of stuff from my own BSG website. At some point I would love to buff up both the TNS and TOS sections, but that's my business. (And to the Wiki-ians, yes, you have permission to use my website as a resource ) Secondly, I'm not trying to goad you into anything - I'm just asking a simple question: "Why does this matter?" Thirdly, someone did alert me to this RFA. I thought it was open, which is why I posted in it. There's no conspiracy at work, it's just a fact. I was going to go "neutral" until you struck out a vote against your adminship (which I really think was out of order). Cranky's vote should have been discarded but not by you. You could have shown restraint: you didn't. Finally, instead of using this opportunity to show your best side, you belittle my (modest) contributions here, try and second-guess my motives, and bring in stuff from other forums which don't have any place here. I did not come here to thwart your latest attempt to become an admin, rather, I just came here with some questions. If you could just calm down for a few moments, this exercise could become productive again. (To the wiki people, I'm sorry I screwed up the formatting, this isn't exactly user-friendly and I'll try my best not to do that again) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Larocque6689 (talk • contribs).
    • I appreciate that there are complicated inter-personal issues at work here which involve off-wiki activities, but could I please encourage the participants here to refrain from harsh language and mud-slinging? Every user here is entitled to an opinion. --Peter Farago 01:20, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
      • Merv, NEVER link to other websites which contain adult/pornographic images, at the very least without some kind of warning. Some of us use the wiki at work... --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 04:16, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
        • Merv, you not doing yourself any favors responding to these types of posts. It's making me waver on my support. I appreciate your hard work, but these kinds of attacks are best ignored. --FrankieG 07:53, 31 July 2006 (CDT)
• I would just like to add that I dont have anything against you Merv, and i've been very impressed with the contributions you have made here, however as can be seen from this page there are still a lot of issues regarding conflicts with other people and i'm not sure this is the kind of thing we want to bring over to the wiki. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 08:05, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Questions for the candidate
A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What duties, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Battlestar Wiki:Project List's for a list of projects.

A. Episode Summaries, episode analysis, episode questions, episode notes. Character bios. Cylon series. Spearheading the Writer/Director category project. Furthing the Timeline project (and fighting the grave threat posed by the Season two timeline discontinuity). The Battles series (which I created). Going through every source of information available, be it GalacticaStation, GateWorld, NowPlayingMagazine, Lucy Lawless fansites, Ron Moore's blog, the official messageboards, and post as much information as possible on this Wiki, and turn it into a truly reliable "go-to" site for up to the minute BSG information, **making sure that all of the information we post is properly sourced.

B. Expanding our Cast and Crew articles, which so far are kind of sparse. This is major ongoing project.

2. Of your articles or contributions here, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A. The battles pages, all of which were of my own design (I made the battleboxes for Lord of the Rings battles on standard wikipedia, and when these were done, I wanted to keep doing something like that so I created the battles series here)

B. Due to my vast knowledge of BSG trivial facts and analysis, I have made great contributions to the episode guides, and as it's not like I have a life outside of this :) I'm usually the first to post notes for an episode up after it airs (though this is not a rule), and I'm really happy with the episode guide stuff I've done (check the history tabs, etc). I guess a random sampling of some of my better works would be Downloaded, Cally, Uniform, Fall of the Twelve Colonies etc., my great contributions to Life Forms of the Twelve Colonies (ever vigilant),...and pretty much the entire episode guide. I spearheaded the movement (after debate for months) to give Cylon copies who have become individuals their own character pages, and to consider them separate characters.

C. Created and implemented the Episode Standardization project, in which I removed the "mini-reviews" from our Season 1 episode guide and replaced them with (I hope) impartial Analysis.

D. Helping out on the Welcoming Committee.

E. I tried to work things out with Koenigrules after what happened the other month; last RFA I was shocked that KR thought I hadn't appologized for what happened (I did, completely, I just made a big mistake which I retract); however rather than draggint things out in the open I tried to work things out through Private Messages on the bboards since my last RFA, which I felt was the more mature thing to do.

F. Since my initial time at BattlestarWiki, as Peter mentioned above, I've gone from "biting the noobs" to gently trying to help along new users. See this page for one example. Also, as Homeworld616 said above, he was a new user and rather than becoming impatient that he was unfamiliar with things here (as I might have a year ago) I helped him along with constructive imput.

G. Updating the Portals Project pages, and my extensive contributions and revisions/restucturing of the Cylon agent speculationpage (Jammer = Cylon), as well as Science in the Re-imagined Series

H. Asking a large portion of questions on Battlestar Wiki:Official Communiques; I hate it when other websites get to talk to someone like, Katee Sackhoff, and half the questions are "wow, why are u so hot?" "Wow, is it fun to work on the show?" etc. I'm happy I was able to provide good questions for that which actually addressed several long standing problems (although the Wizards have gained the upper hand in the Season two timeline discontinuity.

I. On my own initiative e-mailing Bear McCreary and obtaining his permission for BattlestarWiki to post the lyrics to the soundtracks here.

3. Have you been in any conflicts 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?

A. After my last RFA, I Private Messaged Koenigrules and (I hope) worked things out, in private as opposed to dragging it through the public eye.

B. During the RFC for Shane, rather than preaching fire and brimstone I tried to be restrained and give Shane opportunity to reform his behavior. That could have gotten ugly but I think we handled it well, without having to have temporary bans or anything.

4. I have worries that because of the amount of previous RFA's and self nominations that you believe that being an Administrator is very important to you. I don't agree with people using Admin status as a "trophy symbol", what can you say to alleviate my concerns about this and what would you do as an administrator that you are not currently allowed to do as a user?

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group ^{(TRS: "Water")}. It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.

Original Series definition: a title of nobility (e.g. Lord Baltar)