If I skipped a name, it's because I don't know the candidate enough to add anything beyond their Captain's blurb. I'll be further familiarizing myself with y'all in the next week.
Aftokrator - We put you up, and I wrote your blurb. I stand by it.
AriadnesThread - Honestly we had considered putting you up for MAST, but felt that you just hadn't quite gained the experience with our team to go up to OS for us. I'm thrilled to see that Discord felt differently. You're a mature and measured presence in staff discussions, and I'd happily vote in support of you.
basirskipreader - We very nearly put you up for promotion this time around for your work on Adult Content Curation. You're a level-headed and analytical member of that team, and I'm happy to have you. We passed because of your habit of linetoeing and riling up folks in 19cord. I don't think that this is enough to not vote for you, but it is something that I think you could dial back on.
Like Lord pointed out below, often conversations arise where there's no option but to push that boundary. I can understand that. The instances that gave me pause were ones happening outside of those conversations. Just take a second before committing yourself to that kind of inflammation; if you do it all of the time, it loses its weight when it's called for.
Fishish - I'm going to echo some of your areas of improvement. I've seen you be very inflammatory on Discord - notably in the conversation following the AI discussion. I understand - and even agree with - your vitriol in a lot of situations, but you're often helping to push conversation from productive or at least productive-adjacent to an outright flame war. There are places for that, but in a community where you're acting as a staff member is not one of them. If the conversation has no hope of being productive, please allow yourself to disengage from it.
Guaire - We put you up and like Afto, I stand by the reasoning for it. It's not as frequent, but I've seen you get riled up in conversation - specifically also in the conversation following the AI discussion. Going to repeat what I wrote for Fishish. I understand - and even agree with - your vitriol in a lot of situations, but you're often helping to push conversation from productive or at least productive-adjacent to an outright flame war. There are places for that, but in a community where you're acting as a staff member is not one of them. If the conversation has no hope of being productive, please allow yourself to disengage from it.
Kufat - I first joined the community for real on IRC in 2019, and you've been a good and level headed staff member or quasi-staff member the whole time I've been around. I trust your technical skills, and I trust your judgement.
Pedagon - We've bumped heads and clashed over a few things in staff chat, but I've always felt that this is because you care deeply about the site and its community. You've got a good mind for how the culture of collaborative fiction works, and you're always pushing for more accountability and more transparency. Your work with the Moth Squad has been stellar, and while I haven't had a reason to interact with the team through crit, it's been a delight to see them work so cohesively and to see you work so efficiently as their leadership.
I really appreciate the fact that you take the initiative to be the change in processes, and it's something that I'm happy to see rewarded with further authority and responsibility. And reading your commentary on yourself, I'm thrilled to see such honest self-reflection.
Since you're up for Admin I am going to be a little more critical than I would be otherwise. While I think your combative nature comes from a good place it often seems that you're not extending that same benefit of the doubt to others. Just try to keep in mind that the reason the other side is upset is probably the same reason that you are. And if you are aware of that, just slow down a bit and let your words reflect it. I know that I can have the same problems. I don't think that this comes anywhere close to preventing a vote in your favor, but it is your weakest point that I've seen.
torcsandantlers - When I had the idea of allowing commentary on candidates before promotions there were two things I didn't really consider. One, that I would be one of the first admin candidates subject to it. And two, that it might be used as a platform for candidates to talk about themselves as candidates. My primary concern was just making sure that the community could have a voice in the process and that early voters weren't blindsided by the reasonings of late voters.
So since I'm up here, I guess I'll do this commentary thing. It's pretty obvious that I'm up here because of policy stuff - Bright's List, Charter Rewrite, Promotion Reforms, etc. (And I'll be holding y'all to that office and paycheck
Uncle Nicolini and
OriTiefling) Like
Pedagon pointed out most staff probably know me from pinging them to go discuss and/or vote on something. You may also know me from doing promotions - this cycle will make one year of me being the primary person handling promotions, as one of the Captains of MAST, or as a member of the Disciplinary Team. I'm pretty proud of my work with MAST, but I think it excels from being mostly under the hood.
The Admins very generously put an N/A for my area of improvement, but it had been brought up during my promo round that I've had a problem with a "short fuse" or "flipping out", and I can kind of see where that impression was coming from. Often my communication style is just very blunt, and I work in an environment where I clash with someone professionally while having a completely separate personal relationship; it's an understood part of my professional life. This isn't the culture on the wiki, and it took me a while to understand that most everyone else I was interacting with were approaching it both as their role and as a social relationship. It's left some unintended impressions. I'm hoping that I've improved upon this enough that no one still feels that way.
Personally I think my biggest weakness is that I often lose track of time entirely and days or weeks will pass without my realizing that I haven't yet completed some task or another. I use calendars and reminders to help, but I'm very often an unintentional flake.
As an Admin, I would aim to continue to codify the site's policies, to make them fair and transparent, and to continue to open up processes to community input.