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Posted by: Peter Damian

Roger Davies - Support Appears likely to be ineffectual, a positive characteristic. [[User talk:Kelly Martin|Kelly Martin]] 20:47, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Rlevse - Support Willful disregard of own conflicts of interest indicates that this candidate has the arrogance and chutzpah to be nearly as bad as James Forrester in the role. [[User talk:Kelly Martin|Kelly Martin]] 20:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

White Cat - Support How better to deal with nationalistic edit warriors, but to put one on the ArbCom? [[User talk:Kelly Martin|Kelly Martin]] 20:49, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Good for Kelly. Biting humor is the best use of the ArbCom election I've seen so far.

Posted by: Newyorkbrad

Well, that's easy for you to say; my perspective as one of the people who has to work with whoever is elected to get the work done might be a little different.

I enjoyed some of Kelly's mordant comments (minus the blatant personal attacks) myself, but IMHO they would better have been posted as a userpage commentary or a blog entry (as last year) than as actual votes.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Your problem is obviously that you take Wikipedia too seriously.

And I'm not going to waste blogspace on commenting on ArbCom candidates. I prefer to save my blog for things that matter, like bread recipes and strange things about radios.

Posted by: dtobias

I, for one, found your blog more interesting when it wrote about Wikipedia, something I'm interested in unlike recipes (I rarely cook) and ham radio (I let my novice-class license, call sign KA2EBW, expire around 25 years ago without ever really using it... I have no idea why I happen to actually remember that call sign in that case!).

Posted by: Kelly Martin

To each her own, I always say. If you don't like my blog, you can always start your own.

Posted by: gomi

Listen to Kelly, folks, she knows what she's talking about. This is because she is a recovered member of the taking-Wikipedia-too-seriously club. A look at Kelly's 2006 contributions will show someone who took WP very, very seriously, and became increasingly annoyed at the dysfunctional chaos emanating from the project. Her initial reaction was try to impose some order, and that was reacted to as some kind of wiki-tyranny.

I say this as someone who was then (2006) not at all impressed with Ms. Martin leading up to her departure from the Wikipedia politburo, then later thought very highly of her insightful criticism. Kelly is reformed, recovered, rehabilitated, renewed. You should listen to her.

Posted by: everyking

Kelly has improved a great deal (but I have admittedly not entirely gotten over the whole ordeal in which she tried to get me banned), but her votes are still disruptive, and if a person doesn't take Wikipedia seriously enough to cast serious votes, then it's hard to take that person's criticisms seriously. I also think it's inappropriate to abandon the project for a long span of time and then suddenly pop up to cast some votes, particularly when those votes take the form of sarcastic jabs. This election really is quite important to the future of the project and it's not something people should be playing games with.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Someone needs a big spoonful of Kelly's patented Don't Take Wikipedia Too Seriously medicine.

Posted by: everyking

Surely, if I can be convicted of "taking Wikipedia too seriously", the same can be said for someone who's a moderator on the Wikipedia Review forum?

Posted by: gomi

Hah! What a steaming manure-pile of an argument! "Serious votes"? You must be kidding. If Wikipedia wanted a serious voting system, then they would use the secure, secret voting system they already possess and use it for Arbcom. Instead, they want a silly !vote that can be gamed, manipulated, and mined for endless amounts of wiki-drama! This election is a complete joke, from Jimbo's monarchical "I will appoint whom I see fit" posturings to smear campaigns to ... just about everything! Kelly's !votes call it like it is, not like you wish it was. This "election" will change nothing about Wikipedia except the names on some obscure pages.

Oh, pffft. If Wikipedia is the encyclopedia (sic) anyone can edit, then it is the encyclopedia anyone can criticize. And sarcasm may be the lowest form of humor, but it beats the humorless posturing of Wikipidiots all to hell every time.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

>100,000

Posted by: dtobias

Yes, I think the "Taking Wikipedia Too Seriously" disease is just as prevalent here as there.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Jesus Christ Dan, don't you think that "equivalence" one-trick-pony is getting old?

Posted by: Kato

Indeed.

The election was an ugly, needless, pointless, public spectacle anyway, Kelly's votes merely made it an amusing ugly, needless, pointless public spectacle.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

My governor was just charged with attempting to sell a seat in the United States Senate, and as I type various Actually Important People are scheming to impeach him and remove him from office while other Equally Important People are scheming to convict him and stuff him into a nice federal penitentiary. It's times like this that remind us of the utter irrelevancy of who gets to add the irrelevant title of "Arbitrator" to his list of silly decorations on a silly website.

Posted by: One

"Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree."

I guess advice about whether Obama should retrain Patrick Fitzgerald as U.S. Attorney is now a moot point; if the man's replaced I think everyone screams bloody murder. I doubt Obama feels any loyalty to the governor anyway. It was just a matter of time for the indictment. It's apparently the primary way that incumbents are removed from office in Illinois.

I could never be a politician in this place, but I would love to someday be an Assistant U.S. Attorney here.


Yeah, Wikipolitics are much less weighty, but I would still like to see reform and accountability.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I think most of us would like to see reform and accountability. It's just that most of us have realized that it ain't gonna happen, at least not while Jimbo remains at the helm.

Posted by: everyking

It's not irrelevant within the context of Wikipedia, and it's certainly not irrelevant to those of us who have been on the receiving end of the ArbCom's decisions. Let me point out, Kelly, that you have never been banned or sanctioned by the ArbCom, despite your total rejection of the project, your history of controversial admin actions, and your trollish antics after you resigned your adminship. The ArbCom even expressed official gratitude for your "long and honourable service"! I, on the other hand, have passionately supported the project as a whole, seeking only relatively minor reforms in the handling of administrative issues, and yet the ArbCom (yourself included) has kicked my ass quite severely on several occasions, and continues to pinning me to the ground right up to the present day. I can overlook your involvement in that, or at least I can try, but I find it extremely grating to hear you lecture about the unimportance of the ArbCom in light of the above. Perhaps if you were in my position, you'd feel differently.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I rather doubt it. That you do think so means that you are letting too much of your self-worth be derived from other people's perceptions of you.

Quite frankly, I consider the 90 minutes I spent last Friday night helping a 14 year old I've never met before (and may well never meet again, although I hope not) get his amateur radio license to be of more socially redeeming value than all the time I've spent on Wikipedia.

Posted by: everyking

In your case, I agree with your assessment of the respective value of those activities, but probably not for the same reason as you.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

I find it astonishing anyone could assign supreme importance to the ArbCom, given the shockingly low, embarrassing standards re: it's election. The very fact that El Jeffe has the ultimate veto, and will exercise his Royal Prerogative on a doctrine of "all voting is evil, but some votes are more evil than others" exposes the whole process as a sham to any honest person.

Honest person ... that brings up a possible answer to the question "Why do you (and others) persist in a losing game, for years on end?" I have a theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

Confidence tricksters often rely on the greed and dishonesty of the mark, who may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning. This is such a general principle in confidence tricks that there is a saying among con men that "you can't cheat an honest man."

I suggest you accept Kelly Martin's advice. What do you have to lose?

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Yes, and behind your reasons for agreeing is the crux of why you cannot let go of your obsession with Wikipedia.

Posted by: Milton Roe

In fairness, Wikipedia is like a country (my own, the US, for example). Am I supposed to take the US seriously? Do I take it TOO seriously? Well, which part of it? Some parts are impossible not to take seriously. Some are impossible to take seriously. The country and the people are not the current political administration, for example.

The same is largely true of Wikipedia. There is the content, which comes in all varieties, from the fine and sublime to the horrid, and then there are the people who administrate, who also come in all stripes, from those who seem continually to try to interfere with creation of good content, to those who actually create and enable the creation of it. Most of the big-administrative personalities on Wikipedia I can't take seriously. Many are lightweights and boobs. But the best of Wikipedia's content, which will outlast them all, I do take seriously. A lot of those pages are read thousands of times a day around the world. The buffoons in charge don't get credit for them, because they largely didn't write them. And don't help the people who do write them, very much.

By way of example for this kind of thing: Did you see Charlie Wilson's War? The Soviets getting thrown out of Afghanistan was orchestrated by an interested but not-particularly-notable and certainly little known congressman from Texas, a socialite doing "the cause" as a sort of hobby and bake-sale,a black-sheep CIA operative, and an improbable collection of people from Israelis to Pakistanis who got into the same odd bed, for reasons of their own. It was the biggest covert op in the history of the US, but it didn't happen by any kind of top-down planning at all. Reagan, tied up with Iran/Contra, had (almost) nothing to do with it.* He doesn't really get credit for it (save for one big decision, see below).

And then, the result of lack of long term vision: after the Soviets were booted out in 1989 using US-supplied weapons, we screwed up and left also, leaving the place to the bad guys. And then, after we booted the Taliban out in 2002, we screwed up and left it to the bad guys AGAIN! And now Obama, when he goes back into the place, in force, has the unprecedented opportunity to make the same mistake yet a third time, in only a generation (or his successors do).

Now-- to meander back to my point: are we in danger of taking the US and its antics "too seriously," or "not seriously enough"?

Milt

*Edit added later: after reading the book and seeing the History Channel documentary I see Reagan did one critical thing: after the idea and the funding was set up, he overrode everybody to authorize US Stinger missles to finally go to Afghanistan in 1986. Before that, the CIA fought Soviets with outdated Societ stuff bought from Egypt, and it just wasn't working.