User talk:Justarandomamerican

A barnstar for you!

	The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
	For stopping vandalism dead in its tracks earlier today. Fast - ZoomZoom (talk) 22:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Some info

I saw you'd taken the lead on managing the 67.168.231.23 disruption. I asked around about that last week and tl;dr that address is inextricably linked with Smn/Bhinegar/Gioguch, a prolific sockmaster associated with massive cross-wiki abuse on nearly all of the major wikifarms fandom, miraheze, wikimedia, etc. and who is also the source of numerous rangeblocks on 2601:1C2:4E00:3DE:0:0:0:0/64 although that won't be an issue here since only IPv4 identification is used. Hopefully this place is small and uninteresting enough that they stay away, but if not it should be possible to seek assistance from those dealing with this case elsewhere, Best Fast - ZoomZoom (talk) 01:53, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Fast: Great, an infamous sockmaster. I'll take charge for now, but won't hesitate to call for help from a steward or from wikifarms. Justarandomamerican (talk) 02:02, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Hope you're not feeling discouraged

So I just missed your steward request. First, I wanted to thank you for putting yourself out there and stepping up, because I do think testwiki could use some more long term janitorial help, and I hope to see a another stewardship request some months down the road. You have been doing good, and mostly thankless, work behind the scenes, and that deserves to be recognized. I also know, that even when you know it isn't personnel, it still sucks to experience what feels like rejection from fellow community members. I think the general point of the oppose advice is good though, even if six months seems a tad long to me personally. So unless you know everyone in a community already from work elsewhere, or it's a new startup where the founder is begging anyone for help with maintenance, your unlikely to be given the highest permission around in less than 30 days. But every community is a little different so there are no guarantees.

I can only speak for myself here, but to me there are really three things I look at when someone wants to take on an advanced role within an online community.

First I have to trust that they won't misuse any permissions attached to it. That does not mean that I won't support someone who doesn't know javascript if a permission gives them the ability to (re)write it, just that I need to trust them to know their own limitations and not use that particular piece of the tool kit. And as a corollary because we are all human and make mistakes eventually, that they are the kind of person who will fix their own errors if they can or be unashamed to promptly seek help from others if they can't.

Second (and I've shamelessly stolen this criteria from a user on communitywiki) comply with the precepts of Fidonet policy four Section 9.1., and no I'm not making this up.

1. Thou shalt not excessively annoy others.
2. Thou shalt not be too easily annoyed.

it's unreasonable to expect any real human to never make any social missteps, or to be unfailingly polite all the time, but so long as someone follows those two rules I can trust they will ModelDesiredBehavior sufficiently well for the community to function.

Finally, be committed. It's easy to say yes I'm committed to this community, of course I'll be here to help out on a regular basis. But things change, an initial burst of excitement may not last. Interest fades, burnout happens, or it turns out that outside of a small working group, many community members are jerks I don't want to be around. However much I may truly believe that yes I'll be here a year from now still putting in regular effort, the truth may turn out otherwise. So how can community members judge who is a short-termer and who will still be turning up in the far future to empty the trash on New Year's morning? Really the only way is to wait and see. Who sticks around, who leaves, and who maybe pops by once in a blue-moon. Depending on the size/age of the community as well as the amount of work to be done the period may be shorter or longer, but the basic principle holds, there is no way for either the community or even me myself to know without having a track record to go off of.

So I think you meet my first two criteria. As for the third, well I believe you earnestly intend to be here helping out many months in the future, but the record is a little thin to go off. So that one is really an unknown. That probably would've left me in the neutral column, albeit really wanting to support, but I can understand and respect the oppose point of view and I hope you can as well.

I think it is strongly to your credit that you were responsive to feedback in a calm collected way. So just keep doing what your doing and I'm sure that when your ready for another go, there will be no shortage of supports. Best, Fast - ZoomZoom (talk) 01:20, 13 December 2020 (UTC)