WP Sado-Masochism Festival — It's 2018 Arbcom Election Time!

[Poetlister]

I can't think of a more fitting candidate than the guy who successfully convinced the directors of a university that FA/GA was akin to an academic peer review process. He is perfect ...

Jeez, you really are besotted. I bet you've even got a photo of him on your bedroom wall. I can imagine your ultimate fantasy .......

It is unfortunate that far too many people on here do not understand English irony.

[Kumioko]

I can't think of a more fitting candidate than the guy who successfully convinced the directors of a university that FA/GA was akin to an academic peer review process. He is perfect ...

Jeez, you really are besotted. I bet you've even got a photo of him on your bedroom wall. I can imagine your ultimate fantasy .......

It is unfortunate that far too many people on here do not understand English irony.

I have always thought the best Wikipedia example of irony is how people in the WMF and the Wikipedia community try to convince people that Wikipedia articles are trustworthy when even Wikipedia policy doesn't consider itself trustworthy.

Wikipedia is and always has been little more than a fan site. It may have a lot of good information in some places, but it's still a fansite nonetheless and the information in it generally should be treated with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

[WhoReallyCares]

If you can produce great articles, why not do so commercially? I think I've told you already this is what I now do. It's only a sideline , but it's something I like. And unlike the dogshit on Wikipedia, commercial clients will thank you for your endeavors and encourage you to stick at it.

Hard to find the clients.

I made a note of this a while back. Perhaps you'll find it helpful:

https://www.jeffbullas.com/get-content- ... s-insider/

There are plenty of other, similar resources on the net.

As for getting clients, seek and ye shall find.

[Dysklyver]

If you can produce great articles, why not do so commercially? I think I've told you already this is what I now do. It's only a sideline , but it's something I like. And unlike the dogshit on Wikipedia, commercial clients will thank you for your endeavors and encourage you to stick at it.

Hard to find the clients.

I made a note of this a while back. Perhaps you'll find it helpful:

https://www.jeffbullas.com/get-content- ... s-insider/

There are plenty of other, similar resources on the net.

As for getting clients, seek and ye shall find.

Ironically I was one of the main driving forces towards getting Forbes classified as an unreliable source.

[WhoReallyCares]

I can't think of a more fitting candidate than the guy who successfully convinced the directors of a university that FA/GA was akin to an academic peer review process. He is perfect ...

Jeez, you really are besotted. I bet you've even got a photo of him on your bedroom wall. I can imagine your ultimate fantasy .......

It is unfortunate that far too many people on here do not understand English irony.

I have always thought the best Wikipedia example of irony is how people in the WMF and the Wikipedia community try to convince people that Wikipedia articles are trustworthy when even Wikipedia policy doesn't consider itself trustworthy.

Wikipedia is and always has been little more than a fan site. It may have a lot of good information in some places, but it's still a fansite nonetheless and the information in it generally should be treated with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

RE: It may have a lot of good information in some places

Yep, some of it is excellent [a lot of the stuff about typefaces, for example], but IMO most articles are atrocious.

I have a question. You clearly want to get back on board and help improve things. But if you succeed and Wikipedia is ultimately deemed a better or more reliable source, would you agree this increases the likelihood of your best friend James Alexander getting a pay rise?

If so, is this your dastardly plan:

1. You get unblocked
2. You make massive improvements
3. The whole world now trusts Wikipedia
4. James Alexander gets a succession of pay rises
5. Pleased with himself, he stuffs his fat face with an ever-increasing number of cheeseburgers
6. And one day ....... heart attack

[Kumioko]

This is obviously off topic but I'll answer anyway, partially because some people in Wikipedia and even some admins and arbs that participate here, don't like it when I tell my side of the story in venues they cannot control.

First I know I am not going to get unblocked simply because of people like James Alexander, members of the Arbcom and a few others who will do anything to prevent that and protect the abusive culture of admins. Floquenbeam threatended to quit over me being allowed to edit in order to drum up support for my ban and he told Tiptoey to F** off for even asking about my ban (Tiptoey stopped editing a short time later and I blame Floquenbeam for that). A couple of other admins were allowed to overrule a community decision to unban me because they didn't support it. In another case an admin named NeilN was allowed to forum shop and vote stack and run to multiple venues looking for support in order to undo the unblock WTT gave me and WTT himself went back on his word when he said he would be there when the wolves showed up and where was he? As far away as he could get...I was on my own!

My ban has always been about silencing a critic and showing the community what happens when you stand up to abusive admins. It was political posturing and punitive for my outcry of abusive admins and had nothing to do with how bad my contributions were. Regardless of the hyperbole and bullshit or even the fighting and socking I have done after the fact (that I consider fruit of the poison tree BTW), my ban is and always has been bullshit and based on lies and was forced into existence by a vocal minority that violated policy to even get it in place. There really shouldn't be any surprise from anyone that I fought it and make a point to evade it, but it's truly unfortunate how many admins and others tell me offline they wished I wasn't banned and that they disagreed with it but then turn around and advocate the ban or refuse to do anything about it. The fact is, no one cares because no one cares about improving Wikipedia anymore and that's really the bottom line. They care about themselves and that's it, period, full stop.

Very few, if anyone, realistically think I am not going to improve Wikipedia or contribute positively because not many, if any I don't think, have said I didn't do a lot to improve Wikipedia (and Commons). No, the problem isn't with my contributions, it's that I actively and aggressively tried to change Wikipedia culture and improve the community and that people would rather believe lies from admins who do 5 edits a year than facts from editors who do ten thousand a day. In fact they often go out of their way to discount, discredit and draw attention away from it to help their case.

The admins wouldn't even allow me to comment in the discussions to ban me because they wanted to control the narrative and feared (rightly so) that I would be able to defend my case and prove the ban discussions were unjustified. Ironically they violated policy and did the same things I was fighting to me, to bully me out of the project. Why else would the Arbcom get involved and say my unban had to go through them, rather than the community, when the Arbcom had nothing to do with the ban? It's because that way they can control it and make sure I don't get unbanned! It's because the people who get elected to the Arbcom are many of the worst abusers of policy. James Alexander at the WMF got involved because I refused to accept my bans and to support the admin culture he is a part of. It never had anything to do with trust or safety, it was to protect the house POV and make sure that admins can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't affect other admins.

Because I advocated admins be held accountable it affects them directly and they can't have that. None, or at least very few of them, care about the damage it does to the community or the project because most of them aren't editors...they are controllers, they are manipulators, they are narcissists and they are trolls and POV pushers. They got to where they are by largely being yes men (or women in the case of folks like GorillaWarfare), going with the house POV, voting the right way in discussions and through political manipulation and they don't generally do anything that affects the house POV or that would interfere with admins, which is them, having the power to do what they want.

So do I believe my contributions would lead to an increase in pay for James Alexander? Absolutely not because the WMF doesn't even care about what goes on in the projects. They care about donors and even if the donors care about the projects, the donations they contribute goes to helping do almost everything except improve the projects or the culture including James' pay. The fact is James is incompetent and always has been and so are all or most of the people that work in the Trust and Safety section. James has been there for years and has become completely disconnected from the community. He wouldn't know what was good for it at this point if someone wrote it down for him.

[Dysklyver]

I suppose all of this brings up an important point really, which is;

What does Arbcom do?

1. Arbcom specifically deals with last resort cases of unresolved behavioral disputes.
2. Due to procedural creep, Arbcom signs off on matters concerning administrator desysops.
3. Due to excessive bureaucracy, Arbcom signs off on decisions regarding functionary actions in many situations.
4. Due to slightly peculiar rulemaking, Arbcom has the competence to lift bans and blocks it didn't enforce.
5. Obviously Arbcom has the competence to lift sanctions, bans and blocks it has itself imposed.

What should it do?

* Delegate the workload of emergency desysops to the bureaucrats. The process would remain much the same, any crat could desyop immediately, and the crats would hold a crat chat to confirm the emergency desysop.
* Delegate the workload of functionary oversight to the functionaries, who would regulate themselves as the stewards do, under WMF supervision as the stewards are. The functionaries would be appointed in the same way as the stewards.
* Restrict Arbcoms remit to only include lifting sanctions, bans and blocks it has itself imposed. The other workload would be dealt with instead by any admin working on UTRS who feels like doing it, and these admins would have the remit to putting appeal to a community vote if they are satisfied that such a vote is worthwhile.
* Appeals of non-arbcom actions based on private evidence related to CU/OS blocks would obviously go to the functionaries who could review the block if the evidence was compelling, generally appeals do not need to be based on private information.

And what should it not do?

1. Attempt to run the community like a pseudo-parliament when they clearly aren't.
2. Lord it over admins as if they have extra power when they really don't.
3. Try and influence policy, fix Wikipedia, or make changes to the environment.
4. Excessively influence content via use of sanctions.

[Kumioko]

You make a lot of good points. I would argue that not having an arbcom at all would make very little difference at this point. They don't respond to unblock requests and the ones they do respond to they only unblock 3 or 4 a year.

They don't do all that many cases and when they do they are poorly researched, crafted and implemented. They are always unbalanced in their determinations, they nearly always predetermine the outcome in the acceptance of the case, etc. In purpose they have become little more than hatchetmen and women for the very few expert debaters in Wikipedia like Fram who use the Arbcom process for their own POV.

[Eric Corbett]

I think it's long been the case that you could quite accurately predict the outcome of an ArbCom case just by looking at those arbitrators who voted in favour of accepting it.

Added to which I've never seen the point of an Evidence phase, as very little evidence is ever submitted, and the arbitrators rarely seem to read any of it anyway.

[Kumioko]

I think it's long been the case that you could quite accurately predict the outcome of an ArbCom case just by looking at those arbitrators who voted in favour of accepting it.

Added to which I've never seen the point of an Evidence phase, as very little evidence is ever submitted, and the arbitrators rarely seem to read any of it anyway.

I agree just as I believe there is absolutely no value in having a giant section of a case filled with such groundbreaking statements as:

Purpose of Wikipedia:
The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the project for other purposes—such as advocacy, propaganda, and the furtherance of philosophical, ideological or religious disputes—is prohibited.

None of which is even true anymore anyway! There is no atmosphere of mutual respect or camaraderie! The atmosphere is famously toxic and often described as a hostile workplace.

- Use of the project for other purposes—such as advocacy, propaganda, and the furtherance of philosophical, ideological or religious disputes—is prohibited. Oh really? What would you call Women in Red, the Wikipedians in Residence, site blackouts, how about Kecoffman coffmanizing the Nazi articles! The list goes on!

I mean the WMF these days does more political advocacy than they do support for Wikipedia.

[Eric Corbett]

There's certainly an awful lot of meaningless waffle of the sort you describe.

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

[Kumioko]

There's certainly an awful lot of meaningless waffle of the sort you describe.

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Yeah I'm not worried about being called racist or misogynist. Anyone who wants to call me that is just lying and spreading hyperbole which would be pretty much par for the course on Wikipedia. Anyone who actually knows me would know calling me a racist or a misogynist would be about as truthful as calling the Moon a ball of cheese.

[Eric Corbett]

The facts mean little. Just look at Ms Gender Desk and her Manchester obsession for instance, by which of course she means me.

[Kumioko]

The facts mean little. Just look at Ms Gender Desk and her Manchester obsession for instance, by which of course she means me.

Lol, yeah I've seen. I've come up there a few times myself although I do have to admit generally in a more positive light than you.

On a separate note, I have just used my fourth account to vote, or vote against, the arbs...1 in the US, 1 from Merry old England, one from Ghana and one From Canada. Later this weekend, accounts from Mexico City, Australia, Ireland and Sicily!

[GorillaWarfare]

Catching up on this thread after spending Thanksgiving with my family away from reliable internet, so apologies for delays.

Have you ever seen pictures of them [stewards] as a group? Nearly all of them look like they had roles on the Revenge of the Nerds and most do almost nothing of benefit to the projects other than grace them with their presence.

Would you prefer the WMF hire a team of models to take the "steward" photo? Who gives a shit what they look like? If their appearance had anything to do with their ability to perform their job we'd require a headshot at the steward elections.

Case in point is the unban problem and I am going to use myself as an example merely because I am most familiar with my own case. A lot of complaints have been said about me, some true and some not but one thing that I do not believe I have ever heard anyone say about me regarding the projects was that I don't care about their success or that I didn't do a hell of a lot of work to improve them. In fact most of what has been said about me are attempts to minimize the amount of work I did to justify to enough people who don't know any better that having me out is better than in. Of course that only benefits the POV of a smal group of Wikipedia editors, but that doesn't matter.

In the case of the Stewards and my ban, a couple had an active hand in getting me out and keeping me out because I was vocally opposed to the admin double standard and that disturbs both the house POV and their control (stewards are also admins). It is a human natural instinct that if you are in power, you want to keep it. I was disturbing that dynamic and so it's natural that the Stewards and the WMF would want to get me out rather than fix the actual problems with abusive admins that are actively dragging the projects down.

My god you really are delusional, aren't you?

Well the whole create a new account thing is just horseshit. I have created many, many accounts and in many of them I bothered no one, I made no comments, I made no drama. I edited stuff and not only were those accounts blocked, sometimes as other sockmasters like the Dog and Rapper vandal, the edits were deleted including restoring vandalism I reverted.

You might not be as good at sockpuppeting as you think

Wikipedia is and always has been little more than a fan site. It may have a lot of good information in some places, but it's still a fansite nonetheless and the information in it generally should be treated with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

And yet somehow you're obsessed with trying to edit it again. Interesting takedown, there.

Not going to quote your whole recounting of the tale of your block because I suspect most folks here have heard it enough to be as bored of it as I am.

As for Dysklyver's Nov 23, 2018 10:23 am post (and Kumioko's reply), I'm starting to think you might be out of touch with the ArbCom? Your bullet points are completely inaccurate.

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

[Jim]

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm not saying this is my position, but the answer to your question is "easily". You simply have to believe that there are better ways that the time and resources devoted to that project could be utilised to benefit women, and thus be "anti" it because you believe it makes less resources available to other approaches which you favour. There are other ways, I'm sure, but that's one that springs instantly to mind.

[Midsize Jake]

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm not saying this is my position, but the answer to your question is "easily". You simply have to believe that there are better ways that the time and resources devoted to that project could be utilised to benefit women, and thus be "anti" it because you believe it makes less resources available to other approaches which you favour. There are other ways, I'm sure, but that's one that springs instantly to mind.

Well, it helps if you already believe that Wikipedia editing is a bad thing for people in general, regardless of gender. (Presumably Ms. Warfare doesn't believe that, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary.)

[Volunteer Marek]

I'm basing my votes on the response to K.e.coffman's question. Partly because I think it's a relevant and important question, but also because it's the kind of unorthodox question which is good at revealing the character of the responder.

Ahaha.

Hahahahahahaha.

wheeez

Coffman's question is a plant, fool.

Like a geranium?

[Volunteer Marek]

...and TDA has posted his tripartite guide which gives: 1) TDA's prefered panel 2) an HTD panel, 3) the WikiReal panel.

Mr. Advocate (who writes about Wikipedia for Breitbart.com) says his choices were "generally informed" (though "not always") by how the candidates answered the question posed by User:K.e.coffman (T-C-L) about how ArbCom should respond to an unwanted increase in far-right editing activity. You've got to admire that about him - Mr. Advocate is nothing if not consistent.

Now we just need a Voter's Guide from Mr. Proabivouac in which candidates are inversely ranked solely on the basis of how likely it is that they identify as a gender different from the one they were originally born with, and the voters will be all set!

I think TDA's viewpoint about this is more reasonable than he's getting credit for, although he didn't do a good job explaining the basis for it. Here's the issue: while far-right trolls (Mikemikev socks, etc.) do exist on Wikipedia, based on my observations they don't generally cause much damage in the long term, because their edits tend to be such obvious NPOV violations that they're reverted in a matter of seconds.

On the other hand, something that I think has been causing more harm to the project is the McCarthy-esque paranoia that some users have shown about sniffing out editors who might possibly have a far-right point or view. This issue was previously discussed here in the case of MjolnirPants, who applied the term "Nazi" to editors with an extremely broad range of viewpoints and tried to get all such editors blocked. This ended up extending to editors such as Obsidi (T-C-L), who appeared to only be motivated by a genuine concern that BLP policy wasn't being followed in an article about a right-wing figure.

If an ArbCom candidate takes the position "far-right editors must be stopped at all costs", or some variant of that, I think there's a danger they're going to make this second problem worse. An attitude that's less likely to exacerbate the problem is to just say that these editors should be dealt with the same way as any other type of POV pusher, along the lines of DGG's answer.

True, far-right trolls like Mikemikev don't cause much damage in the long run. On the other hand, far-right civil POV pushers do. That's the point of coffman's question as I see it.

(Kingsindian makes some good points in their reply above - I'm too lazy to respond right now, just like I'm too lazy to read answers to more than one questions in this thing)

[Midsize Jake]

And yet somehow you're obsessed with trying to edit it again. Interesting takedown, there.

Also, I should probably address this point, and not for the first time I might add. Mr. Kumioko actually isn't obsessed with trying to edit WP again, he's obsessed with pointing out the injustice of his having been banned from editing WP - which is not the same thing, though I'll admit that the distinction probably seems a little blurry after the first couple-dozen thread derailments. And as far as the sock-puppet accounts are concerned, he's not "trying" to edit again, he's actually doing it, and (if what he says is even semi-accurate) WP is blocking lots of IP ranges in response, which is a good thing if it prevents even a small number of innocent would-be marks from being taken in. So, good work, gang!

Anger and frustration over an unjust website ban, especially after racking up a lengthy record of more-or-less worthwhile contributions, is a hard thing for people who haven't been through that experience to grasp. And I'm not just referring to Wikipedia; it could be almost any interactive/crowdsourced website, though wikis are especially susceptible to this problem.

To be fair though, many Wikipedians do realize this and have responded by trying to making their bans and other sanctions more "granular," i.e., topic bans and interaction bans rather than lengthy or indefinite blocks. To the extent that these techniques actually work, they should be commended for taking that approach. (A little too late for Mr. Kumioko, of course, but that's how it goes.)

Anyway, it would be nice if we could get back to the original topic somehow, and for those keeping score, there's a roughly 50-percent chance I'll split this part of the thread out to a separate one in the next day or two.

[Midsize Jake]

Coffman's question is a plant, fool.

Like a geranium?

He could mean something more like a power plant or possibly a manufacturing plant, though his earlier reference to the question in question seemed to suggest that he believes Mr. (or Ms., as he prefers) Coffman is hoping to lay the groundwork for the WP leadership to establish a political "litmus test" - whereby far-right Wikipedians will eventually be given the ol' heave-ho squarely on the basis of their far-rightness. Which might seem like a good idea at first, until you find out who's making the decisions as to what the term "far-right" means, and what those decision-makers' qualifications are (if any).

[Dysklyver]

As for Dysklyver's Nov 23, 2018 10:23 am post (and Kumioko's reply), I'm starting to think you might be out of touch with the ArbCom? Your bullet points are completely inaccurate.

FYI that was a short essay on what Arbcom should be with only a limited nod to what it actually is and what it thinks it is.

[Kumioko]

As for Dysklyver's Nov 23, 2018 10:23 am post (and Kumioko's reply), I'm starting to think you might be out of touch with the ArbCom? Your bullet points are completely inaccurate.

FYI that was a short essay on what Arbcom should be with only a limited nod to what it actually is and what it thinks it is.

Not only that, her bullet points don't address the problems or answer any of the questions. All she did was, as usual, make statements that border on personal attacks in order to discredit a comment she doesn't like. She deflected and ignored without really addressing anything, something the arbcom does a lot.

Btw, midsize Jake has it pretty much 100%. Its not a matter of being able to edit again, it's a matter of not giving in to terrorists and bullies who didnt even follow site policy to get me banned and allowed, in violation of those policies, multiple people on multiple occasions, to manipulate the discussions to get the result they wanted. I will fight forever just out of the principle of it. The exception would be that my intent has never been to derail a discussion, but so many y things have happened to me on the WMF projects, a lot of things apply to my siuation.

[WhoReallyCares]

As for Dysklyver's Nov 23, 2018 10:23 am post (and Kumioko's reply), I'm starting to think you might be out of touch with the ArbCom? Your bullet points are completely inaccurate.

FYI that was a short essay on what Arbcom should be with only a limited nod to what it actually is and what it thinks it is.

Not only that, her bullet points don't address the problems or answer any of the questions. All she did was, as usual, make statements that border on personal attacks in order to discredit a comment she doesn't like. She deflected and ignored without really addressing anything, something the arbcom does a lot.

Molly is the consummate WikiPpolitician.

Word coming through from my insider sources is encouraging: Molly is putting up a brave battle in several swing states and appears to be ahead of the pack in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. California's gonna be tough, and most analysts agree she won't get Alaska. Drmies has regained Alabama [this is now confirmed], but is struggling elsewhere.

Exciting days ahead!

[Kumioko]

Oh don't get me wrong, I know she'll win a seat. She is, as you say, a politician and she doesn't really do anything to try to change the culture other than a few comments. What Wikipedia needs is more editors, not more politicians.

[Eric Corbett]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I could go, but I know I'd be wasting my time in trying to explain more fully to you.

[WhoReallyCares]

Oh don't get me wrong, I know she'll win a seat. She is, as you say, a politician and she doesn't really do anything to try to change the culture other than a few comments. What Wikipedia needs is more editors, not more politicians.

Agreed, but Arbcom is such a silly irrelevance it's hardly worth worrying about.

Let be honest about things: Drmies wants to win so he can tell his employers and students he's regained Alabama and is once again back in the driving seat; Molly's ambition is to go to work on Monday morning and say "Hey guys, not only did I take Massachusetts [with a 17% majority], I also got California, Wisconsin and Texas!!!"

And of course none of this has anything whatsoever to do with building an encyclopedia.

[Randy from Boise]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I don't have even remotely the same view as Eric of Women in Red, but I do think GW goes too far with her question.

First off, WiR. This is 100% precisely, exactly how those concerned about a gender-related "content gap" at Wikipedia should have responded rather than what did take place in Phase 1 — that being political organization (Gender Gap Task Force/Gendergap-l mailing list) and an effort to blame cultural characteristics at Wikipedia (verbal vulgarity and occasional aggressive interactions between content people) and the political structure of the site (boys on Arbcom behaving badly) for the problem at hand (content).

The solution to a content deficit is to focus effort to repair the content deficit, not to advance an unproven, almost religiously mystical belief that Genitalia Determines Consciousness — that only introduction of a new crop of female editors and removal of a section of the existing crop of male editors could possibly fix the gender-related distortion of content at Wikipedia.

So, after the political battle was fought to the inevitable stalemate in 2014-16, rough dates, a move was made to a true content-focused approach at repairing WP's content deficit. I think that any reasonable person looking at the WIR project must conclude that steps forward have been made. Indeed, one wishes that there were similar projects to address other content deficits, such as, as one example, coverage of Africa and the African diaspora.

That very positive assessment aside, does it logically follow that a negative view of WIR as an institution implies an attack on women? This goes too far. There is room for criticism of all bureaucratic deformations, and in an era when Wikipedia raises and spends about $100 million a year, there are going to be bureaucratic deformations aplenty. WIR's leadership and their spending of donor dollars are worthy of as much scrutiny as any other aspect of WP, and such scrutiny should be able to be made without fear of baseless charges of "misogyny."

Nor is the content actually produced by WIR exempt from the criticism that is levied about any other project. I particularly have no problem whatsoever with the WIR content I've seen, which is a tiny proportion of that which has been produced, but one's mileage may vary there. If a person is convinced that a wave of shit is being produced, assuming there is validity to the assertion, one should be able to make the argument without any ulterior motive necessarily being implied.

So GW goes too far, even if I think that Eric is more or less completely wrong about both the strategy of WIR and the content being produced itself.

RfB

[Randy from Boise]

TDA's guide on Wikirev is empirically based. He counts noses in the Voters' Guides to generate the following sequence:

1. AGK and Mkdw (exact tie)
3. SilkTork
4. Courcelles
5. GorillaWarfare
6. Kelapstick
7. Joe Roe
8. DGG
9. Drmies
10. Robert McClenon
11. Lourdes
12. Isarra
13. Fred Bauder

........and notes that the top two picks of the fixers are not even on my list of winners this year.

"Consistently every year, the candidates at the very top are also the top vote-getters. This means either AGK or Mkdw getting the most votes with the other likely being in second. SilkTork and Courcelles have enough of an edge over GorillaWarfare there is a good chance they will take the next two spots. GW doesn't have enough of an edge for me to predict ranking, but she is likely to be back on the Committee. Kelapstick would be favored for the last spot, but Joe Roe could sneak in there given the current breakdown. DGG and Drmies both have outside chances of getting on ArbCom. Opposes are not as clearly predictive on the bottom ranking, but in cases where there is a large gap between the lowest ranked user and the next-lowest, the lowest user in the guides is lowest in the election, which means Bauder at the bottom.

"I note this is starkly in contrast to what may be Carrite's final prediction. He only altered it from his early prediction based off Weller's withdrawal. Seems this election will be the definitive factor in whether Carrite is really as great a prognosticator as he thinks himself to be, or if he is just lucky. Guides suggest AGK and Mkdw will not only be elected to the Committee, but be at the top. Carrite seems convinced GorillaWarfare will be at the top with AGK and Mkdw not even landing seats. Usually, his predictions have closely aligned with the guides with this year being the first major deviation."

linkhttp://www.wikirev.org/forum/viewtopic. ... t=10#p4545[/link]

Hey, I'm gonna ride the wave until the wave knocks me off my surfboard — why the hell not?

As to my methodology, you are right that it doesn't involve counting noses. Everybody is onto the first step, which is tossing off all the non-administrators. This year we have a very difficult 8-to-make-6 with former arbs not named Fred Bauder. My money call is Kelapstick over Mkdw and AGK. We'll see; I absolutely could be wrong.

I weigh prior election results pretty heavily. Thus GW in first place (projecting that the NO vote will evaporate while she retains her massive fan club) and don't think that Dave Goodman is gonna lose, nor Drmies.

RfB

[Dysklyver]

And of course none of this has anything whatsoever to do with building an encyclopedia.

Overall that is the problem with arbcom. It is literally nothing to do with building an encyclopedia. It just creates a bunch of people who play Wikipedia like a game and have fun with the model politics, and I should know -- I am one of them.

I mean yes I have written a few hundred short articles, a few dozen DYK's, a GA, and some lists that are pretty good. But barely a third of my edits are to mainspace and I could say therefore that I spend far too much time "socialising" on-wiki.

The same goes for most admins, and all the arbs. Way too much time building an ever more complex structure of policy and procedure. And people wonder why the number of editors are down over a third?

A big sweep out of the Wikipedia namespace would massively help the encyclopedia, more than a hundred new admins, more than anything else. But that's a bit off-topic here.

[Randy from Boise]

And of course none of this has anything whatsoever to do with building an encyclopedia.

Overall that is the problem with arbcom. It is literally nothing to do with building an encyclopedia. It just creates a bunch of people who play Wikipedia like a game and have fun with the model politics, and I should know -- I am one of them.

The game is being enjoyed by a whole bunch of people this year. It looks like the count of voters in 2018 (1,576 and counting until Dec. 3) will be higher than 2017 (1,993) and 2016 (1,950) and could plausibly come close to the record number of voters in the superheated race of 2015 (2,674). And this despite the attenuation of Arbcom's perceived importance.

And, yeah, it has little to do with constructing an encyclopedia. It is the discipline committee of a self-governing website, after all.

RfB

[Eric Corbett]

... even if I think that Eric is more or less completely wrong about both the strategy of WIR and the content being produced itself.

RfB

I'm not trying to persuade you or anyone else of the worthiness or otherwise of WIR, we can all make up our own minds about that. I was simply stating my opinion and demonstrating the truth of the fact that it's impossible to be critical of WIR without being accused of misogyny by the likes of Gorillawarfare. If she had any moral compass at all she would be ashamed of that kind of attitude.

Yet that's the calibre of ArbCom member we've come to expect I suppose.

[Poetlister]

the edits were deleted including restoring vandalism I reverted.

You might not be as good at sockpuppeting as you think

There's another point there. Isn't it stupid and contrary to the alleged aims of Wikipedia to restore vandalism, even if the correction was by a banned user? If the editor making the reversions is incapable of realising what is a vandalism correction, why on earth is he or she being allowed to edit Wikipedia?

[Kumioko]

the edits were deleted including restoring vandalism I reverted.

You might not be as good at sockpuppeting as you think

There's another point there. Isn't it stupid and contrary to the alleged aims of Wikipedia to restore vandalism, even if the correction was by a banned user? If the editor making the reversions is incapable of realising what is a vandalism correction, why on earth is he or she being allowed to edit Wikipedia?

Exactly! If building an encyclopedia was their goal, then of course they wouldn't revert, but it's not. That is in fact WHY bans are so effective of a weapon on Wikipedia. Once implemented, they create an enemy out of the editor to everyone on Wikipedia regardless of the merits of the ban....including members of the arbcom who have the authority to ensure they are done right. But only when it benefits them to do so it seems.

Even then the WMF by way of James Alexander is taking that authority away because they don't trust the arbcom to do it anymore.

[WhoReallyCares]

the edits were deleted including restoring vandalism I reverted.

You might not be as good at sockpuppeting as you think

There's another point there. Isn't it stupid and contrary to the alleged aims of Wikipedia to restore vandalism, even if the correction was by a banned user? If the editor making the reversions is incapable of realising what is a vandalism correction, why on earth is he or she being allowed to edit Wikipedia?

Exactly! If building an encyclopedia was their goal, then of course they wouldn't revert, but it's not. That is in fact WHY bans are so effective of a weapon on Wikipedia. Once implemented, they create an enemy out of the editor to everyone on Wikipedia regardless of the merits of the ban....including members of the arbcom who have the authority to ensure they are done right. But only when it benefits them to do so it seems.

Even then the WMF by way of James Alexander is taking that authority away because they don't trust the arbcom to do it anymore.

RE: Exactly! If building an encyclopedia was their goal, then of course they wouldn't revert

I think you'll find they do it because they're mentally ill or autistic. When you're blocked you become a sort of non-person. In Scientology terms, you've been "declared a suppressive". Ergo you're no longer part of the cult. If you attempt to return you'll be feared and viewed with deep suspicion; any edits you make will be unwelcome and considered likely vandalism.

Never in a million years will it occur to these worthless lunatics that if even if you were rightfully blocked, you might still wish to make constructive edits and improve the encyclopedia.

PS. A perfect example of this occurred at FAC back around Summer 2017. A Malaysia-related article had received five supports [including one from former Arbcom member, Casliber] but was very clearly wrong from top to bottom. When I pointed this out my comments were deleted NINE times. Sure, they were re-instated each time, but the disruption was insane. Casliber then started an ANI thread to ask:

This banned guy is pointing out the article is shit. He's right, but are we allowed to accept his comments?

Eventually the article was withdrawn.

[Dysklyver]

They are not obligated to revert your contributions, or even to G5 all your articles. Whether they do is entirely down to whether anyone really cares to do it or not, and perhaps to their personal preference. In some cases they may (and have) used AWB on full auto to just undo everything and delete all created pages with the "nuke" button. In other cases they leave everything, even outstanding RfC votes, and only G5 a few pages that people probably saw in the New Pages Feed. (They being a collection of people, not all of whom are admins.)

The last time anything I did was indiscriminately undone, a lot of people complained quite vocally about it, and proceeded to get some other admin to restore some 50 pages or so, the conclusion basically was that admins can at their discretion delete, revert, or strike contributions by banned editors, but are entitled to keep the contributions if they want to.

That particular incident resulted in a lot of pages being restored but minus their history, so you can't see who originally wrote them. I suspect this is a copyvio of sorts.

[Kumioko]

You're both right of course and as for AWB, if I wanted to be a jerk I could just modify the code to not require it to use the checkuser page. To be honest, given the app is opensource I'm rather surprised someone hasn't used it as a spamming tool.

[GorillaWarfare]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I could go, but I know I'd be wasting my time in trying to explain more fully to you.

I'm actually curious, does anyone have a rough number of how much money goes to WiR from the WMF? Aside from that, I'm generally of the opinion that people can volunteer their time wherever they like—people spend a lot of time doing things on Wikipedia that I think are a bit of a waste, but that's their prerogative. You're right, though, that it's not fair to describe people who are anti-WiR as anti-women.

[Kumioko]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I could go, but I know I'd be wasting my time in trying to explain more fully to you.

I'm actually curious, does anyone have a rough number of how much money goes to WiR from the WMF? Aside from that, I'm generally of the opinion that people can volunteer their time wherever they like—people spend a lot of time doing things on Wikipedia that I think are a bit of a waste, but that's their prerogative. You're right, though, that it's not fair to describe people who are anti-WiR as anti-women.

I'm also quite surprised an Arb and supposedly educated person doesn't know the difference between being anti agenda pushing project with a history of personal attacks at anyone that doesn't agree with them and being anti-women. The idea you don't know the difference is so hard for me to believe that all I can think is you're just trolling Eric.

Secondly, I seriously doubt the WMF gives them much if any money at all. Regardless of the merits of it or any other project, the WMF historically doesn't give money to things the community cares about. If it doesn't involved pet projects by a donor, donations or travel for Katherine Maher or her acolytes, the WMF doesn't really care.

[GorillaWarfare]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I could go, but I know I'd be wasting my time in trying to explain more fully to you.

I'm actually curious, does anyone have a rough number of how much money goes to WiR from the WMF? Aside from that, I'm generally of the opinion that people can volunteer their time wherever they like—people spend a lot of time doing things on Wikipedia that I think are a bit of a waste, but that's their prerogative. You're right, though, that it's not fair to describe people who are anti-WiR as anti-women.

I'm also quite surprised an Arb and supposedly educated person doesn't know the difference between being anti agenda pushing project with a history of personal attacks at anyone that doesn't agree with them and being anti-women. The idea you don't know the difference is so hard for me to believe that all I can think is you're just trolling Eric.

Secondly, I seriously doubt the WMF gives them much if any money at all. Regardless of the merits of it or any other project, the WMF historically doesn't give money to things the community cares about. If it doesn't involved pet projects by a donor, donations or travel for Katherine Maher or her acolytes, the WMF doesn't really care.

I am not an arb, and I'm educated, not "supposedly educated". But you know this.

Furthermore, the project does not have a "history of personal attacks at anyone that doesn't agree with them and being anti-women" (I'm not even sure grammatically what you mean by the anti-women part of that sentence).

Regarding your doubts about the WMF giving them much money, I suspect that's the case as well. That somewhat strengthens my confusion at people being anti-WiR—if people want to edit biographies of women or whatever, how is that more concerning than people who want to edit in topic areas covered by other WikiProjects? I would understand being concerned if the WMF was funneling large amounts of donor money towards WiR, since not everyone wants their donation money to be spent on specific topic areas, but as far as I'm aware that is not the case.

[Kumioko]

Oh please, members of WiR constantly attack anyone who doesn't walk on eggshells around them. You're not kidding anyone here, we've all seen it. You yourself are on the list of those attackers, so I really don't expect you to do anything except enable and justify that project. For every good thing that project does, the work is cancelled out by the drama behind it.

Editing biographies of women is fine, there are tons of articles that need to be written. I have a list of over 2500 just on women alone, mostly from India, China and Africa, all of which are grossly under represented on EnWP. And those are just military related ones BTW. What isn't ok is weaponizing gender and then calling every man who doesn't agree a mysoginist and threaten them with indef blocks/bans. Given that you have already doles out at least one of those on extremely weak grounds, it sets the example that if anyone opposes the project or doesn't abide by threats of blocks without discussion, they'll pay the price.

[GorillaWarfare]

Oh please, members of WiR constantly attack anyone who doesn't walk on eggshells around them. You're not kidding anyone here, we've all seen it. You yourself are on the list of those attackers, so I really don't expect you to do anything except enable and justify that project. For every good thing that project does, the work is cancelled out by the drama behind it.

Editing biographies of women is fine, there are tons of articles that need to be written. I have a list of over 2500 just on women alone, mostly from India, China and Africa, all of which are grossly under represented on EnWP. And those are just military related ones BTW. What isn't ok is weaponizing gender and then calling every man who doesn't agree a mysoginist and threaten them with indef blocks/bans. Given that you have already doles out at least one of those on extremely weak grounds, it sets the example that if anyone opposes the project or doesn't abide by threats of blocks without discussion, they'll pay the price.

I don't actually consider myself a particularly active member of WiR—I'm a member almost in name only. I think I'm listed as a member, I write articles about women sometimes and occasionally remember to list them there, and I think I subscribe to their newsletter, but that's about it. That's partly my concern—I think you might be considering "feminist Wikipedians" and "members of WiR" to be synonymous.

[Kingsindian]

You make a good point about initiatives such as Women in Red as well, but anyone who appears to be critical of that in particular will soon find themselves pigeon holed as a misogynist; if you're anti the project then you're automatically anti-women.

Can you explain how you can be anti the WiR project without being anti-women?

I'm staggered that you would even ask this question.

I'm very much anti the Women in Red project because I see it as simply a flag waving "Look, we're doing something" waste of time, money and effort which emboldens a load of second-rate editors to produce indefensible crap. Added to which, the output from the editathons and so on it organises is almost uniformly inept.

I don't have even remotely the same view as Eric of Women in Red, but I do think GW goes too far with her question.

First off, WiR. This is 100% precisely, exactly how those concerned about a gender-related "content gap" at Wikipedia should have responded rather than what did take place in Phase 1 — that being political organization (Gender Gap Task Force/Gendergap-l mailing list) and an effort to blame cultural characteristics at Wikipedia (verbal vulgarity and occasional aggressive interactions between content people) and the political structure of the site (boys on Arbcom behaving badly) for the problem at hand (content).

The solution to a content deficit is to focus effort to repair the content deficit, not to advance an unproven, almost religiously mystical belief that Genitalia Determines Consciousness — that only introduction of a new crop of female editors and removal of a section of the existing crop of male editors could possibly fix the gender-related distortion of content at Wikipedia.

So, after the political battle was fought to the inevitable stalemate in 2014-16, rough dates, a move was made to a true content-focused approach at repairing WP's content deficit. I think that any reasonable person looking at the WIR project must conclude that steps forward have been made. Indeed, one wishes that there were similar projects to address other content deficits, such as, as one example, coverage of Africa and the African diaspora.

That very positive assessment aside, does it logically follow that a negative view of WIR as an institution implies an attack on women? This goes too far. There is room for criticism of all bureaucratic deformations, and in an era when Wikipedia raises and spends about $100 million a year, there are going to be bureaucratic deformations aplenty. WIR's leadership and their spending of donor dollars are worthy of as much scrutiny as any other aspect of WP, and such scrutiny should be able to be made without fear of baseless charges of "misogyny."

Nor is the content actually produced by WIR exempt from the criticism that is levied about any other project. I particularly have no problem whatsoever with the WIR content I've seen, which is a tiny proportion of that which has been produced, but one's mileage may vary there. If a person is convinced that a wave of shit is being produced, assuming there is validity to the assertion, one should be able to make the argument without any ulterior motive necessarily being implied.

So GW goes too far, even if I think that Eric is more or less completely wrong about both the strategy of WIR and the content being produced itself.

RfB

This seems on-target to me. Also, I have contrasted the fates of WiR and the Gender Gap task force before. (note: the measure I used in that post is defective. The overall point is still ok though).

[WhoReallyCares]

Questions for Molly

A guy posting as Grillofrances asks:

1. At which age did you become software developer?
2. What are the main technologies you use in your software developer work?

I wonder why he considers this relevant. Anyway, I'm going with HTML, SASS [plain CSS is so yesterday], Jquery [certainly not vanilla Javascript], and perhaps a bit of PHP / SQL. Oh, and LAMP Stacks.

[Eric Corbett]

Questions for Molly

A guy posting as Grillofrances asks:

1. At which age did you become software developer?
2. What are the main technologies you use in your software developer work?

I wonder why he considers this relevant. Anyway, I'm going with HTML, SASS [plain CSS is so yesterday], Jquery [certainly not vanilla Javascript], and perhaps a bit of PHP / SQL. Oh, and LAMP Stacks.

Why are you answering for Molly? Has she lost her tongue?

[Bezdomni]

Maybe just to be sassy?

Much of what makes the Sass community strong is a culture of kindness and respect[.]

source

[Eric Corbett]

I have no idea what the Sass community is.

[WhoReallyCares]

Maybe just to be sassy?

Much of what makes the Sass community strong is a culture of kindness and respect[.]

source

Yay! So you're a Sass dude. Didn't you once say you used to teach my CSS shit [Mozart] to your students?

PS. How's it feel being back on the Pedia? Enjoying yourself? And in what topic areas are you editing?

[Bezdomni]

Yay! So you're a Sass dude. Didn't you once say you used to teach my CSS shit [Mozart] to your students?

PS. How's it feel being back on the Pedia? Enjoying yourself? And in what topic areas are you editing?

Nope. Just discovered it on their lovely page. Regarding Mozart, I showed it to them at Zen Garden, I didn't actually teach it per se.

Yes, I'm enjoying myself rather too much when I should be doing something else. Rabelais. Other (philosophy). Criticism of Wikipedia. Category:French Jews. Clinton Foundation, etc.

In a word haphazardly (de coq à l'âne), wherever that flea buzzes in my ear (quand vient la puce à l'oreille). I haven't checked my stats to see if I'm a wiki +/- or =.

[Dysklyver]

I have no idea what the Sass community is.

You really don't need to know because it isn't a "community" really. Not in the way that FOSS is a community. Suffice to say is that Sass is visual effects software for the internet. Basically, it is a component of web development, and therefore anyone doing websites will eventually find themselves having to use it.

P.S. All this waiting while people vote is so boring! I want to know who wins!