Wikipedia:Administrator elections/December 2025/Candidates/LEvalyn

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (342/131/70) (S/A/O); See official results – DreamRimmer ■ 07:36, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Nomination

LEvalyn (talk · contribs) – I am very happy to present LEvalyn to the community. LEvalyn is a careful and diligent editor with a focus on content. They've created an impressive 79 articles, and written 30 good articles at last count. They have also found the time to contribute nearly 300 reviews at articles for creation, and to chip away at WP:NPP. AfC is an area where admin tools can only be an asset, as reviewers are often the first to see inappropriate content or nefarious conduct, and I fully believe LEvalyn will be able to make productive use of the tools there. Unfailingly polite, firm but reflective, LEvalyn is exactly the sort of clueful and considerate editor I believe the admin corps needs: I hope you agree. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:11, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Co-nomination

I've been considering LEvalyn for a while now, and I'm thrilled with what I've seen of them as an editor and a person. Their kind and helpful commentary during GA reviews, of which they have many, is mirrored on their talk page, where they're always willing to help and do so in a kind and knowledgeable manner. On top of this, they themselves also have 30 GAs and a featured list!!

In addition to that content work, which I find exceptional, they've been contributing at AfC and NPP. In these two areas I've seen EXACTLY what I look for when trying to recruit people to AfC and NPP. They've demonstrated a great grasp of our notability guidelines, good judgement, a helpful and wonderful attitude, and the knowledge of their own personal limitations. When they find those limitations, they work to shore up those knowledge gaps. Someone always looking to improve who knows their personal limits, and has the knowledge and temperament that LEvalyn has, sticks out to me like a sore thumb when I'm looking for candidates. So, with all of this in mind, I hope people join me in supporting their candidacy. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:21, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept this nomination. I have one rarely-used alt account, LEvalyn at work. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay: I have never edited for pay. However, in the interest of full disclosure, at my day job in GLAM I've become known as a "Wikipedia person" and sometimes answer queries or give advice while "on the clock". Out of an abundance of caution, I made a dedicated account (disclosed above) for any related edits. These edits are not made at the direction of my employer. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I want to be part of maintaining the long-term health of the project. Through my work with newcomers at Articles for Creation, New Pages Patrol, and the "mentorship module" (which sends randomly-assigned newcomers to my talkpage), I try to invest in Wikipedia’s future by helping a "next generation" arrive. I see a similar need for there to be an inflow of new admins, and I think I can do that usefully while upholding community trust. In particular, I’ve heard from other AfC/NPP-ers who got the mop that admins patrolling those areas can make frequent use of view-delete, some use of delete (for redirects that block creation, or delete-on-sight drafts), and occasional use of blocks (for promotional editors or obvious socks). View-delete would also be useful for mentee questions to the tune of "what went wrong??", in cases where their draft/userpage has already been deleted. I could imagine getting nerd-sniped into work related to copyright or perhaps Did You Know queue promotion, though those are areas where I’d need to do more lurking and learning before I was confident I was prepared to use the tools. Mostly, I am trusting the admins who have suggested to me that the work will find me, and that by joining in, many hands will lighten the load.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Lately, I’ve written a lot of Good Articles about sexy eighteenth century literature by priests, e.g., Manon Lescaut, the Laurence Sterne Good Topic, and a non-priest one that still tickles me, A Spy on Mother Midnight. I did better in the most recent WikiCup than I expected! Outside of content creation, I’m proud of the number of Good Article reviews I have conducted, especially in connection with Women in Green. But for the long-term health of the project, I think some of my most valuable contributions are the Articles for Creation submissions I am able to "help along" to acceptance by polishing and adding sources, like at The Shared Space. They are rarely excellent articles, but I hope my edits improve both the encyclopedia and those newcomers' entry to it. I am also very pleased any time I get a second question from a mentee, since I see it as a sign both that my first answer was useful to them and that they are on the path to becoming a long-term contributor.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I find a lot of comfort in assuming good faith: it is easy to navigate differences of opinion when I know we are all just bringing our own perspectives on what will make a good encyclopedia. My biggest experience of conflict was an extended disagreement about shakshouka which went to ANI a few times. I think I was able to remain polite and open to other opinions even when I got frustrated at points, and it was a good learning experience for me about how Wikipedia’s formal processes for dispute resolution all work a little differently. It’s pretty rare for a situation on Wikipedia to cause me stress, but if I notice myself feeling grouchy (or if I want to write a "witty" reply to someone) I take that as a sign to disengage, work on something super-enjoyable to reinvigorate my love of the project, and return to the original source of frustration only if I’m sure that, 1, the situation actually requires my additional input; and, 2, I am able to respond in a spirit of goodwill.


You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions. Make sure to use level-four section headers, not boldface.

Optional questions from Sohom

4. Could you explain your thought process behind how you handled your COI for the Suzanne Conklin Akbari article?
A: Happy to go into more detail. As my COI declaration mentions, at the time (four years ago) Akbari was an academic colleague, and in a conversation about Wikipedia she asked me if I could explain why she was the only faculty member of the Institute of Advanced Study who was not included on the List of faculty members at the Institute for Advanced Study. I said I didn't know, but her question hit me with a spark of curiosity. I investigated and concluded that her biography represented a clear gap in the encyclopedia, of the kind I sometimes fill for WP:Women in Red. I determined that she was not notable in 2006 when her article was deleted by PROD, but in 2021 she clearly passed NAUTHOR with two monographs, seven edited collections/anthologies, and many reviews. I then wrote the article entirely without consulting Akbari, the same way I'd write any other academic biography (eg, Deborah D. Rogers). I never discussed the contents of the article with her; I'm actually not sure if I even told her I wrote it.
It was only after I'd finished that it occurred to me that our acquaintance would qualify as a COI. I asked for advice from another editor (who happened to be an AfC reviewer); they said it looked suitably neutral to them, and since AfC isn't required, I should just disclose the COI clearly and then avoid editing the article in the future. In keeping with their advice, I have made only two minor cosmetic edits since then, discussed more in the next answer. If I were creating a similar article these days, I wouldn't move such an article to mainspace myself in the first place. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
5. With hindsight, would have done anything different?
A: Four years on, and especially now that I have experience as an AfC reviewer, I certainly know now to start the draft through AfC from the beginning (as I note above). I also think, with hindsight, it would have been worth the awkward procedural aspects of re-draftifying the article to submit to AfC after the COI occurred to me. The main thing that looks different in hindsight is the importance of having my judgment about the article formally double-checked on-wiki, and avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. At the time, my primary concern was the appropriateness of the actual article content; today, and especially if I become an admin, I would place equal emphasis on appropriate process.
As for edits to an existing article, I'd certainly use {{edit COI}} requests for anything substantive, especially adding any new material. The two edits I have made since creating the article were quite minor: in 2024 I moved one sentence and put another in past tense, and six months ago I moved a sentence added by someone else to a more logical position. To be frank, I don't think it would have been worth the demand on the community’s time to use {{edit COI}} requests for these. If I get feedback that these edits would more appropriately be handled through COI edit requests, I would in future leave this kind of tidying entirely to others. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Optional question from Wikieditor662

6. Could you be more specific in regards to what you want to help out with specifically as an admin?
A: I can try! To be more specific about how the admin tools are useful at NPP and AfC, it would often be useful to execute WP:G6 speedy deletions of redirects that block page creation, or other speedies like WP:G4 or WP:G15 which can be found at both AfC and NPP. WP:G4 speedy deletions also need the admin tool of view-delete to be sure that the new draft is a recreation of a deleted one. "Things that naturally pop up while reviewing" is the main area where I expect to find use for the tools right away. I also plan to ask some admins to guide me through a few admin tasks, and see which ones I resonate with. For example, at DYK I’d call myself "backlog-curious". I’ve only promoted one hook to a "prep" and did not enjoy it; once I discovered that other people like the puzzle-box aspects of curating a set of hooks to create a "prep", I resolved to leave that work to them. However, promoting from "prep" to "queue" – the task that requires advanced tools, since it alters the main page – appears not to require that curation element I dislike, but rather requires the kind of quality-control checks of individual hooks & articles that I enjoy so much in Good Article reviews. So I hope to give it a try and see if it becomes one of my routines, like checking AfC book submissions and having a GA review going. I don’t want to make promises I may not keep – I don’t think I will know what "my areas" of adminship will look like until I’ve had a chance to try them – but that’s how I imagine finding my way with the tools. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:06, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Optional question from Conyo14

7. Why did you choose to go through Admin elections instead of RfA?
A: I don't like having people make a fuss over me. Elections seemed like marginally less fuss. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Optional question from Fade258

8. Which admin action do you feel is the most sensitive and why?
A: This is an interesting question. I consider all admin actions in some way sensitive; otherwise we wouldn't have to restrict the tools to a trusted subset of editors. If we mean "sensitive" in the sense of "involving exposure to information that may require discretion", I'd answer view-delete. If we mean "sensitive" in the sense of "risky for the project", I'd point to technical areas where one could create a lot of disruption very quickly: one mustn't muck up a filter such that all incoming edits are blocked. If we mean "sensitive" in the sense of "requiring particular care due to its possible impact on others", I might answer blocks/unblocks; that's an area where the tools give admins a particularly stark power differential, and mis-handling the situation can have a disproportionate impact on an individual who may have few options for recourse. Though, I struggle to think of any admin action that doesn't require particular care due to its possible impact on others. For example, implementing a speedy deletion may be more "routine" than "sensitive" because it follows an established clear consensus-- but it still requires care on the admin's part to verify that it meets the criteria for that clear consensus. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Optional question from Jessintime

9. What is your opinion on admin recall generally?
A: It strikes me as the sort of thing that there ought to be some kind of process to do, and I am very glad that other editors are dedicating their time and attention to monitoring and fine-tuning the specific details of the process. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:33, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Optional question from Let'srun

10. How would you handle a situation where a user accused you in good faith of being WP:INVOLVED?
A: I consider INVOLVED admin actions a pernicious abuse of the community’s trust, so this is something I’d take quite seriously. In general, I’d request input at the Administrators’ Noticeboard or Administrative action review (depending on what felt best suited to the situation) and invite other administrators to reverse my action. My goal would be to put the situation entirely into uninvolved hands, as an assurance to the editor in question that they are being treated fairly. If the specific admin action is one that wouldn’t be disruptive to reverse and then un-reverse (ie, a page deletion rather than a block), I’d consider pre-emptively reversing the action while other admins weigh in. The experience would also prompt some serious self-evaluation; if I got broader feedback that the action in question was indeed INVOLVED, I’d take that as a sign that I’ve gotten "too deep" in that part of the project and need to take a break from it. It’s my impression that those who address vandals, sockpuppets, spammers, LLM slop, etc, can be worn down over time in a way that alters their judgment; I personally believe that content creation is a good antidote, so I’d probably stay away from admin tools until I’d written a few GAs and refreshed my mindset. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:12, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

  • Notes on AfD participation: n=189. LEvalyn's !votes are always extremely well-considered and useful. Helpful even when brief: . Patience in the face of LLM-generated tendentiousness: . Kind even when arguing for deletion: . Treats AfD as a discussion, not a fight: . Willing to put in the work in the event of WP:ATDs: . A valiant search for sourcing: . I'm not even mad about this one, where he !voted against me. An excellent record. I'd say something about how I wish he spent more time at AfD, but I guess he's busy writing all those GAs and I'll have to be content with what I can get. -- asilvering (talk) 00:47, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
  • I'm midly concerned about the lack of WP:AFC and {{edit COI}} use on Suzanne Conklin Akbari. The duality of "Hey I'm connected enough that I need to use the {{connected contributor}} template and declare a COI" and "but, btw, I can edit neturally about them and do not require AFC or {{edit COI}}" is a bit jarring to me even though technically okay within policy. -- Sohom (talk) 01:37, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
    Much would depend on how they are connected, what edits they make on the topic and the sources used. If the source is reliable, the information uncontroversial a reasonable person can easily make neutral edits. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:40, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
    Agreed. It seems the relationship was not paid in the broader Wikipedian sense, so neither precaution was required by policy. Toadspike [Talk] 01:36, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
    @Toadspike Based on reading the response above, I do think {{edit COI}} or WP:AFC would be required though not mandatory due to the "writing about friends" clause in WP:COI. Though that being said, I think I understand better why they did take the actions they took and why it might have seemed correct to them at the time. I do like their response to Q5 in that their approach has changed in the years since and that they now place more emphasis on the correct process vs only the outcome! Sohom (talk) 14:05, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
    @Sohom Datta Sorry to nitpick: "required though not mandatory"? I assume you meant "recommended though not mandatory", in which case I agree. Toadspike [Talk] 15:27, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
    Yep, my bad! Sohom (talk) 16:30, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
    @Sohom Datta, honestly, I think in general we (as in wikipedia at large) care too much about the process and not enough about the outcome, and I think someone who had no interest in being an admin four years ago was correct to care more or less exclusively about the outcome at that time. And I like to see people being able to make calculations like "is this worth community time?" rather than wasting that time basically for the heck of it. But it's also good, I think, that @LEvalyn clearly recognizes that for an admin, the appearance of impropriety is much more of a concern. Admins still get to WP:IAR, but differently, and I'm confident that L would be able to navigate that kind of thing. -- asilvering (talk) 21:41, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
  • One minor thing I noticed while looking through the candidates: your signature is pretty and I really like it, but it doesn't closely resemble your username, which can be confusing, especially for newer editors. Would you consider modifying it? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:50, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
    You raise a fair concern, and it wouldn't be a sticking point for me. I was hoping people would call me L, and want to avoid being addressed as Evalyn (just personal preference), but I've been workshopping a few options. What do you think about ~ L 🌸valyn or ~ le 🌸 valyn ? I wouldn't mind ending up being called "valyn". I'm open to input from others as well. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 02:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
    Personally, I prefer le 🌸 valyn as it contains your full name in a readable format. People with low visual acuity may have trouble with the other proposed signature. I simplified my sig about the time I became an admin. It's important that people can readily identify who they're dealing with. As an admin, you'll be dealing with a lot more people than previously, and many who have not previously interacted with you, thus the need for clarity. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 22:13, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
    I personally don't care as long as it can't mislead me into accidentally pinging the wrong username. If a sig is something that's clearly not a username, I'm generally all right with that. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:07, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
  • I'm also worried about why they want to be an admin. I noticed ambiguity in their original answers, so I asked, however, besides WP:CSD their answer overall still sounds sort of vague or unclear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikieditor662 (talk • contribs)
    What about anything here gives you anything to be concerned about? Maintenance minded editors will always find helpful tasks and areas to contribute in. I've long said put the tools in the hands of knowledgable people who demonstrate competency and can contribute in a positive way with the tools. If your main concern is genuinely that you want a better stated reason than someone wanting to help, well, then I think you're part of the reason we have trouble getting people to step up and stand for adminship. Hey man im josh (talk) 06:13, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    The proximal answer to why LEvalyn is running for adminship is that I cajoled him into running. I did so because, in addition to all the qualifications I cover in my nomination statement, I am of the opinion that we have a dire shortage of admins, and the continued success of this project requires us to find every competent editor willing to do maintenance work and give them the tools to do it. There are many cases in which having the admin tools makes an AFC reviewer more efficient: speedy deletions, viewing deleted revisions, and blocking UPEs are the obvious ones. It won't bother me if LEvalyn doesn't demolish the admin backlog: he will make productive use of the tools, and every action he takes will other admins work. If his potential use-cases aren't sufficient for you, you are welcome to oppose him. But it isn't reasonable to say he's been unclear as to what he will do with the tools: he has answered that, clearly, twice. Vanamonde93 (talk) 06:32, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    I am not planning on opposing their nomination based on this. Even though it's probably clear they will help in some ways, parts of his answers seemed vague, which could say something about him. Wikieditor662 (talk) 06:35, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    I don't consider these answers vague either. They indicate clear short-term uses, and rightly recognize it's difficult to predict what you'll find fun. When I RfA'd, I had no idea I'd enjoy CSD, but recently discovered I do like working there as it's a mix of binning really bad content and mentoring editors into better CSD tagging. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:25, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    My own answers were considerably more vague than L's. I like to think I've found some perfectly good uses for the tools since. -- asilvering (talk) 21:35, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    I see what you mean by vague and I would love to have her elaborate and I also can appreciate letting her continue to answer questions and comment. Docmoates (talk) 18:19, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
More information Collapsed discussion - Hiding in good faith, not relevant to nomination ...
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The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

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