Slimvirgin/Felonious Monk/JzG case, ArbCom stalling, or just lazy? Options

[Bob Boy]

Has anyone seen another case which went for so long with no ArbCom activity whatsoever? What's going on here? Have they been actively working other cases besides this one?

[Moulton]

Wikipedia is like Web Side Story, with rival street gangs staking out their territory and fending off intruders by kiboshing them with the WP:Rules. Each local cabal is an ad hoc ochlocracy unto itself. The whole thing gives me a bad case of dyspepsia.

[Rootology]

Wikipedia is like Web Side Story, with rival street gangs staking out their territory and fending off intruders by kiboshing them with the WP:Rules. Each local cabal is an ad hoc ochlocracy unto itself. The whole thing gives me a bad case of dyspepsia.

Dude, you are SO far off base. It's not any homage to West Side Story.

(IMG:http://www.massbia.com/images/articles/quadrophenia.jpg)

It's this.

There's a bigger problem with community desysopping (aka desysopping by lynch mob)

The bigger question: If everything in Wikipedia is required (Foundation rules) to be decided by consensus, why is this one thing--removal of permissions--exempt on English Wikipedia?

All the other projects seem to run just fine with community desysop.

[UserB]

There's a bigger problem with community desysopping (aka desysopping by lynch mob)

The bigger question: If everything in Wikipedia is required (Foundation rules) to be decided by consensus, why is this one thing--removal of permissions--exempt on English Wikipedia?

All the other projects seem to run just fine with community desysop.

Not everything scales well. Ruling by general consensus works great for a team of 5. It works very poorly for a discussion with 500 people offering opinions.

In a smaller project where there are fewer admins to consider, every active user can realistically be expected to comment on every adminship or de-adminship. But on a large project , 20 highly opinionated users can show up right at the beginning of an RFA (or RF-deA) and have a disproportionate effect on the final outcome, even if they might be the only 20 people that, all things being equal, would hold that opinion. Part of it is that nobody wants to back the "losing side" and part of it is that nobody bothers doing research once it looks like the outcome of the RFA is decided. (When I see a New England Patriots-like score on an RFA, I don't even bother clicking on contributions.)

So if you wanted to get someone without a support network (or a "cabal") desysopped, all you have to do is get 20 of your wiki-friends to show up right after the RF-deA goes live. Chances are that the drive by votes will fall in line with the majority. That abuse is my issue with it and it's a problem soley due to scaling. In a small project, your 20 wiki friends is 2 wiki friends, so it doesn't have the same stigma.

[Rootology]

Not everything scales well. Ruling by general consensus works great for a team of 5. It works very poorly for a discussion with 500 people offering opinions.

Sure this would scale well. Look:

Based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Suc...andidacies#2008

* June: 554 supports on 8 successful, 69.25 avg
* May: 1451 supports on 18 successful, 80.61 avg
* April: 1608 supports on 16 successful, 100.5 avg
* Total: 3613 supports on 42 successful, 86.02 avg
* 55% of 86.02 = 47.31 for April-June 08.

Why not base it on a rolling average of the preceding average supports for the past 3-6 months? That way everyone is on the same exact standards, fairly. Took less than 3 minutes to pull these with a calculator. Do the same for arbs, cats and everyone else.

So, you would need a dead minimum of 47 to qualify the recall and then it would need to finish passing above that over 55%. You would need a substantial number of people calling for the recall. Limit the recall to users with x edits/tenure like RFAR voting (heck, just use the same exact metrics) and that's pretty fair and scalable then. Frighteningly so. The ratio needed would update each time and if you're feeling frisky you can adjust the 55% along the axis of the support percentages that are average out over the given months. It would be kids stuff for a bot writer to draft this and the super simple numbers to community recall/deadmin would constantly be current with what the community standards are to sysop in the first place.

Summary...

Based on what Amerique and Until 1=2 said at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ame...ommunity_recall it would require a minimum of 75% support on a qualified user recall to have it pass, like a regular RFA. So if I was an admin TODAY, it would require with my slight tweak a minimum of 47 plus established users (using the standards on who gets to vote for Arbcom elections) to say "Root sucks" within 7 days, and then it would require a finished passing percentage of 75% of those same established users for me to lose my bit. It would be virtually impossible for any lightweight, trivial, or frivilous recall to succeed. No cabal anywhere is that powerful in 2008 on Wikipedia. Not even remotely close.

This post has been edited by Rootology:

[Milton Roe]

Not everything scales well. Ruling by general consensus works great for a team of 5. It works very poorly for a discussion with 500 people offering opinions.

Sure this would scale well. Look:

Based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Suc...andidacies#2008

* June: 554 supports on 8 successful, 69.25 avg
* May: 1451 supports on 18 successful, 80.61 avg
* April: 1608 supports on 16 successful, 100.5 avg
* Total: 3613 supports on 42 successful, 86.02 avg
* 55% of 86.02 = 47.31 for April-June 08.

Why not base it on a rolling average of the preceding average supports for the past 3-6 months? That way everyone is on the same exact standards, fairly. Took less than 3 minutes to pull these with a calculator. Do the same for arbs, cats and everyone else.

So, you would need a dead minimum of 47 to qualify the recall and then it would need to finish passing above that over 55%. You would need a substantial number of people calling for the recall. Limit the recall to users with x edits/tenure like RFAR voting (heck, just use the same exact metrics) and that's pretty fair and scalable then. Frighteningly so. The ratio needed would update each time and if you're feeling frisky you can adjust the 55% along the axis of the support percentages that are average out over the given months. It would be kids stuff for a bot writer to draft this and the super simple numbers to community recall/deadmin would constantly be current with what the community standards are to sysop in the first place.

It's a good patch suggestion, but in actual operation, the first time a JzG gets booted there's going to be recount whining to make Florida 2000 look like a high school student election. Also, there remains the problem which is sort of equivalent to "incumbent franking privilege" where admins already in office have access to all kinds of back-channel vote-recruitment devices that are absolutely non-transparent. It would take a lot to get over these. However, for some really bad eggs, I think it could be done.

So: anything to throw the rascals out! Formally suggest your idea at the WP:VP!!! At least seeing the opposition will smoke out the "real Cabal" once again. We have to recount our enemies every once and a while, and there's no way to do a "villain roll-call" quite like floating a good reform suggestion at VP, just to see who speaks against it.

MR

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: