Advisory Council on Project Development Options

[Eva Destruction]

Surprised this hasn't already been mentioned here, especially since it seems to be composed of 75% WR members. While I'm more than willing to be pleasantly surprised, this looks like a very peculiar idea to me. (My thoughts on the matter are here).

[Kelly Martin]

What I find really interesting in reading the comments on the RfC and its talk page is that Wikipedians in general appear to be remarkably stupid people. Does nobody in this entire pit of despair understand the utility of a discussion group or an exploratory committee? It's quite common for bodies corporates to establish a committee and charge it to "investigate options and report". Such a committee has no "authority" to do anything, and yet such committees are both commonplace and essential.

I assume that the main reason for this is that the Wikipedia community, or at least that section of it that participates in "community discussions", is overwhelmingly stocked with teenagers who have no experience with anything other than being bossed around by their parents and their teachers, and have no concept of someone having authority arising from any source other than fiat.

Oh, and in addendum I see that Slimmy is going after Flonight now. Two snakes going at it, that should be good for some lulz.

[everyking]

What I find really interesting in reading the comments on the RfC and its talk page is that Wikipedians in general appear to be remarkably stupid people. Does nobody in this entire pit of despair understand the utility of a discussion group or an exploratory committee? It's quite common for bodies corporates to establish a committee and charge it to "investigate options and report". Such a committee has no "authority" to do anything, and yet such committees are both commonplace and essential.

I assume that the main reason for this is that the Wikipedia community, or at least that section of it that participates in "community discussions", is overwhelmingly stocked with teenagers who have no experience with anything other than being bossed around by their parents and their teachers, and have no concept of someone having authority arising from any source other than fiat.

Oh, and in addendum I see that Slimmy is going after Flonight now. Two snakes going at it, that should be good for some lulz.

Kelly, I hear the ArbCom is now considering applications to join the council...it's not too late to sign up! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

[Kelly Martin]

Kelly, I hear the ArbCom is now considering applications to join the council...it's not too late to sign up! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

I just tried to email Casliber about it, but he lists a false email on the ArbCom page, and Newyorkbrad has so far refused to convey my interest to the Committee.

[jayvdb]

Kelly, I hear the ArbCom is now considering applications to join the council...it's not too late to sign up! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

I just tried to email Casliber about it, but he lists a false email on the ArbCom page, and Newyorkbrad has so far refused to convey my interest to the Committee.

Casliber has fixed his email address, but I've not heard from NYB about this. Self-nominations are better sent to arbcom-l unless you want a sanity check from an arbitrator. When I saw your post here, I added you to the list of self-nominations being discussed.

I am currently abstaining on your nomination; my reasoning is:

Kelly has proposed similar bodies in the past, and their failure to launch is a considerable part of her problems. I am leaning towards supporting Kelly here, especially as she is now an external voice. Her offwiki activities, like posting very old arbcom-l email, is the only thing that makes me think twice about this. If she is serious about this, and is willing to keep her onwiki contributions in line with community expectations, I think she would be a good addition to the council, and there is the possibility of healing a rift here at the same time. Also, there is no greater critic of Arbcom, so our addition of her to this council should help to distance the Council from the Arbcom.

I think I am well-informed about the arbitrary-notions blog, but I am not as familiar with the earlier issues that surround you, and would appreciate a refresher course from your perspective (preferably via email; cross-posted here if you like). My concerns about the (now closed) blog will be reduced if you are willing to put old disputes on the shelf, for a few months, in order to ensure that the positives you may bring to this council would not be overshadowed by drama. i.e. Please convince me that your self-nom is serious and sensible, because I am not convinced of either yet. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) That may be simply because I havent seen what you have sent to NYB and/or Casliber, so you might want to inform the rest of arbcom as it will take a majority of the committee to approve your nomination.

[Kelly Martin]

Self-nominations are better sent to arbcom-l unless you want a sanity check from an arbitrator.

I don't send things to arbcom-l because in the past things I've sent there have been either ignored or returned with a message that the "moderator has rejected your posting". At least when I send something to a named arbitrator, and no response is forthcoming, I have a specific person I can hold accountable. Frankly, I think the main reason the ArbCom has long requested that emails be sent to arbcom-l is precisely so that unwanted communications can be plausibly denied. Getting a Wikipedian to accept accountability for his or her actions, or lack thereof, can be tough, but you have to start somewhere.

That may be simply because I havent seen what you have sent to NYB and/or Casliber, so you might want to inform the rest of arbcom as it will take a majority of the committee to approve your nomination.

My discussions with NYB were in private IRC chat, and I had no expectation that he would share them with anyone else as he never indicated that he would. (NYB has never made a promise to me that he has failed to keep. That puts him heads and shoulders above most other Wikipedians.) Casliber, on the other hand, indicated that he would forward my comments to the appropriate forum. So your comments are at odds with his. Perhaps part of the problem is that I believe that the Casliber may believe that the ACPD is empowered to name additional members on its own authority, without consulting the ArbCom, and thus forwarded my self-nomination to them, while you seem to believe that the ArbCom is the sole party empowered to name additional members. In any case, it's obvious that you're not all on the same page. Perhaps you should figure out what it is that y'all are doing and get back to the rest of us.

The only active "old dispute" I have with Wikipedia is your ongoing unwillingness to remove all references to me from your project space. I've requested this several times, but no action has been taken; I can't even get my old talk pages deleted. Perhaps you could show some good faith by executing this request (which I have made several times by several reasonable channels), instead of responding with some folderol about how I need to tag them with some unspecified tag that someone who has not been active in the site for three years would almost certainly not know.

[jayvdb]

I don't send things to arbcom-l because in the past things I've sent there have been either ignored or returned with a message that the "moderator has rejected your posting". At least when I send something to a named arbitrator, and no response is forthcoming, I have a specific person I can hold accountable. Frankly, I think the main reason the ArbCom has long requested that emails be sent to arbcom-l is precisely so that unwanted communications can be plausibly denied. Getting a Wikipedian to accept accountability for his or her actions, or lack thereof, can be tough, but you have to start somewhere.

You could email arbcom-l and cc: an individual arbitrator.

I don't know much about list management practices in the past, but I would be surprised if there are any emails sent to arbcom-l in 2009 that have been "lost", intentionally or otherwise. We did have a very brief problem that caused a few ban appeal emails to be lost in the works, but the sender was also copying in individual arbitrators, so we forwarded them to the list.

My discussions with NYB were in private IRC chat, and I had no expectation that he would share them with anyone else as he never indicated that he would. (NYB has never made a promise to me that he has failed to keep. That puts him heads and shoulders above most other Wikipedians.) Casliber, on the other hand, indicated that he would forward my comments to the appropriate forum. So your comments are at odds with his. Perhaps part of the problem is that I believe that the Casliber may believe that the ACPD is empowered to name additional members on its own authority, without consulting the ArbCom, and thus forwarded my self-nomination to them, while you seem to believe that the ArbCom is the sole party empowered to name additional members. In any case, it's obvious that you're not all on the same page. Perhaps you should figure out what it is that y'all are doing and get back to the rest of us.

I think that you should back up your assertions about what Casliber has said, or wait for him to comment before jumping to "obvious" conclusions. It could be simply that Casliber didn't get around to doing what he promised to do, or that I had already beat him to it, because I did it as soon as I saw your comment here about having problems getting your nomination through to the committee.

The committee have published the first round of members, and are proceeding with the second round (which includes consideration of every self-nomination we have received; I hope we haven't missed any) as if it will go ahead, but that is on the back-burner at the moment due to the RfC.

My understanding is that the committee expects the community will decide how the council membership is to be maintained after the second round of appointments.

The only active "old dispute" I have with Wikipedia is your ongoing unwillingness to remove all references to me from your project space. I've requested this several times, but no action has been taken; I can't even get my old talk pages deleted. Perhaps you could show some good faith by executing this request (which I have made several times by several reasonable channels), instead of responding with some folderol about how I need to tag them with some unspecified tag that someone who has not been active in the site for three years would almost certainly not know.

You want all references to yourself removed from project space, but also want to be a member of this council which resides in project space?

That makes me wonder if you are serious, as it would be very unorthodox for a person to have their past history in project side of Wikipedia wiped clean. That sai, I can understand that you may desire this as a prerequisite to involving yourself in the project side of Wikipedia again. If you do want this as a pre-requisite to being appointed, I think we can proceed with your nomination in round two, with the invitation not being official sent until you are happy with the outcome of the request to remove your name from the project namespace.

Requests like this have occasionally been sent to oversight-l, who then use a mix of oversight, ordinary deletion and page blanking to fulfill the request where they see fit. I suggest that you do the same as this request will likely require quite a bit of discussion between oversighters and yourself, and I expect there might need to be some compromise. For example, I recall that you participated in the most recent Arbcom election, and I doubt an oversighter would remove your name from there. If you have already sent requests about this using the typical channels, I am happy to look at the list archives if you will give me some indication on where I should be looking.

[Kelly Martin]

I think that you should back up your assertions about what Casliber has said, or wait for him to comment before jumping to "obvious" conclusions. It could be simply that Casliber didn't get around to doing what he promised to do, or that I had already beat him to it, because I did it as soon as I saw your comment here about having problems getting your nomination through to the committee.

You just asked me to post supposedly private emails, which I would assume if I were to do you would proceed to hold that act against me. I consider this disingenuous on your part, and as such does not foster trust. It's obvious to me that you and Casliber are on different pages. This might be because you haven't talked to one another, but if that's the case then it reflects poorly on you for making public statements without checking your facts first. If you don't want people to draw reasonable conclusions from your statements, don't make them. You're doing a terrible job of encouraging me to believe that you are acting in good faith.

The only active "old dispute" I have with Wikipedia is your ongoing unwillingness to remove all references to me from your project space. I've requested this several times, but no action has been taken; I can't even get my old talk pages deleted. Perhaps you could show some good faith by executing this request (which I have made several times by several reasonable channels), instead of responding with some folderol about how I need to tag them with some unspecified tag that someone who has not been active in the site for three years would almost certainly not know.

You want all references to yourself removed from project space, but also want to be a member of this council which resides in project space?

That makes me wonder if you are serious, as it would be very unorthodox for a person to have their past history in project side of Wikipedia wiped clean. That sai, I can understand that you may desire this as a prerequisite to involving yourself in the project side of Wikipedia again. If you do want this as a pre-requisite to being appointed, I think we can proceed with your nomination in round two, with the invitation not being official sent until you are happy with the outcome of the request to remove your name from the project namespace.

Requests like this have occasionally been sent to oversight-l, who then use a mix of oversight, ordinary deletion and page blanking to fulfill the request where they see fit. I suggest that you do the same as this request will likely require quite a bit of discussion between oversighters and yourself, and I expect there might need to be some compromise. For example, I recall that you participated in the most recent Arbcom election, and I doubt an oversighter would remove your name from there. If you have already sent requests about this using the typical channels, I am happy to look at the list archives if you will give me some indication on where I should be looking.

And again I get bureaucratic obstructionism instead of helpfulness from yet another Wikipedia beanpusher. "I can't be bothered to do this, why don't you send your request to this address, which is staffed by unspecified anonymous individuals, where it can be dutifully ignored." Congrats, you've just added yourself to the list of "Wikipedians who don't really give a damn." I'm not asking for a complete "memory-wipe"; I'd settle for courtesy blanking of the various pages that are dedicated to discussing what a terrible person I am. At first thought, that comprises both RfAs, the RfB, the various RfCs, and all pages related to the two times I ran for the ArbCom. While there's some choice assholery buried away in various noticeboard archives, it's harder to find that stuff and I'm not as concerned about it. As I also said, I would like all my user talk pages (including archives) deleted; I've made this request several times but nobody seems willing to do it, for reasons I do not understand.

Also, please note that this is not a "prerequisite" for my "return to involvement" in Wikipedia as I have no intention of returning to involvement in Wikipedia; rather it's an outstanding request I've been making for some time which a number of Wikipedians have said seems reasonable to them but which they have themselves refused to carry out out of fear of retribution from the community. This is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your good faith toward me, and perhaps do something to give me reason to believe that Wikipedia is not entirely the collection of spineless assholes it appears to be. This isn't a negotiation; it's an opportunity for you to prove your humanity.

I have no intention of participating in any sort of "on-wiki" process; I find attempting to participate in discussions on Wikipedia tedious and irritating, as much due to the technical shortcomings of the medium as anything else, and in any case I no longer know what my account password is and so cannot log into my old account anyhow. It's my hope that the ACPD will recognize that wikis are a terrible format for effective discussion and move their deliberations to a more practical environment; if not, then my proposed participation may turn out to be irrelevant. If so, then so be it.

[Sarcasticidealist]

I'd settle for courtesy blanking of the various pages that are dedicated to discussing what a terrible person I am. At first thought, that comprises both RfAs, the RfB, the various RfCs, and all pages related to the two times I ran for the ArbCom. While there's some choice assholery buried away in various noticeboard archives, it's harder to find that stuff and I'm not as concerned about it. As I also said, I would like all my user talk pages (including archives) deleted; I've made this request several times but nobody seems willing to do it, for reasons I do not understand.

I've courtesy blanked the RFAs, the RFB, and (I think) all the RFCs. I've also deleted your talk archives. Consensus, such as it is, seems to be against deletion of user talk pages on request, so I won't do that without an MFD because I'm a shithead who likes to adhere to what he sees as rules in a futile attempt to encourage some basic principles of governance over there; if you can find another admin willing to do it, I certainly won't complain.

Still looking into the ArbComm stuff.

[Tennis expert]

I've courtesy blanked the RFCs.

Interesting. Please blank the RFC about me as I am no longer on Wikipedia, which you can find here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...t/Tennis_expert