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Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/Dan Polansky

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Dan Polansky (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account)

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I'm nominating Dan Polansky for curatorship because he has been actively involved in useful editing and contributing thoughtfully to Wikiversity discussions for some time and seems to know his way around.

Dan has a long edit history on Wikimedia sister projects and has disclosed an indefinite ban on Wiktionary. The relevant discussion is here. I imagine the community here would like to know more about that, if you don't mind explaining below, Dan?

Personally, I'm happy to assume good faith and base on my view on actions on Wikiversity. From my perspective, Dan's contributions add value to Wikiversity and further useful contributions could be made as a curator.

Let's discuss and see what the community decides. Over to you. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 10:45, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I was banned for "racism" and other allegations. I did acknowledge and still do that I should not have made the remarks for which I was banned indefinitely. Editors should be judged based on individual merits and behavior, not based on group membership. One may think that group membership statistically predicts certain cultural traits and behaviors, but one should not e.g. prevent Chinese from gaining adminship in the English Wiktionary; observing the behavior of the individual person in question is all that is needed to determine fitness for adminship. I am not sure why I made these remarks. Did I or some part of me want me blocked? The best rational reconstruction I figured out later was that it was a provocation (a knowledge-acquisition tool) made by some entity in my unconscious, but that is very speculative and unreliable.
Another allegation was "obstructionism". This manifests itself as me saying things like, if you are saying you have consensus, where is your evidence? Thus, where is the Beer parlour discussion or a vote? An example of my "obstructionism" was my disagreement with editors renaming reference templates to include language code, which runs counter to plain majority preference revealed in Wikt: Wiktionary:Votes/2019-06/Language code into reference template names. A small number of editors proceeded to push their preference without a vote and counter to the mentioned vote, and they are likely to prevail. I think my stance of asking for evidence of consensus is usually a fair one, giving power not to me but rather to supermajorities.
There are other allegations. However, the blocking administrator did not build any case to support most of the statements in the block summary, e.g. by providing diffs or other specifics. I cannot comment on specifics that the blocking administrator did not provide.
On my talk page here, I proposed that I obtain tools only for a probationary period of, say, 1 year. After that period, I would automatically lose the tools. If editors would be happier with 6 months, why not. That would mitigate risks.
Let me add that while I am grateful to you (James) for having so much trust in me to nominate me, my not having the tools is very unlikely to hinder the things I love doing the most, contributing content. I am happy with the English Wikiversity providing a venue for publishing various ideas and researches, often philosophical ones, providing excellent tools for doing so. The English Wikiversity has a great potential that for some reason remains largely untapped. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 17:40, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Been listening to his music for 18 years. Very willing to help, but I'm no mentor Dumbassman (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Note) This user made their 1st edit in Wikiversity after the opening of the CFC discussion. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 03:21, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Custodians offering mentorship
Discussion and voting

  Comment The link Jtneill has provided is broken, but here's the link to the relevant discussion. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 19:45, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Atcovi: Thank-you for the correct link - I've updated it in my nomination. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:35, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment I have read the discussion about the alleged racism, including this one, but I don't really see it that way. I see Dan Polansky as a philosopher who simply wants to have an open debate. In my opinion, it is very difficult nowadays to have an open debate about cultures that are different from your own, because you then have the entire woke movement against you. I believe that you should be allowed to say anything about other cultures, even that they might be backward or outdated, as long as you maintain respect for the people of that culture. As long as everyone is treated equally and no one is excluded, you can say whatever you want as far as I'm concerned, provided you remain respectful and thoroughly explain why you hold your views. That's how it should be in a democracy, in my opinion. As Voltaire would say: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."— Preceding unsigned comment added by S. Perquin (talk • contribs)

This nomination has been open for five weeks. Community support is mixed. The nomination has also drawn mixed comments from several users new to this community. It is important to note that the nomination itself is for curatorship rather than custodianship. Curators have additional content tools. They don't have additional user tools. I don't see any comments questioning Dan Polansky's content approach, only regarding user interaction on other projects.

Separately, I reviewed several discussions regarding content edits in which Dan Polansky has participated. The discussions were consistent in showing respectful discourse, even when disagreements remain. Because Dan Polansky will have a mentor, and because curator tools may be removed by the mentor or any other bureaucrat or custodian if deemed necessary, the nomination is approved. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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