Giano Wars: Revenge of the ArbCom, More Soap Opera than Space Opera, though Options

[The Joy]

Well, the Giano Wars continue.

Giano (T-C-L-K-R-D) was blocked under the ArbCom-placed civility parole for insulting Theresa Knott (T-C-L-K-R-D) .

Giano comes back as an IP to say hello to Bishonen (T-C-L-K-R-D) .

Charles Matthews (T-C-L-K-R-D) reblocks Giano for evading a block.

Moreschi (T-C-L-K-R-D) unblocks the block with the backing of several administrators.

FT2 (T-C-L-K-R-D) blocks Moreschi and Giano. Now its likely Moreschi may lose his sysop bit for his act of rebellion.

Many administrators now hate FT2 and Charles Matthews, but the Community is still heavily divided.

Sigh. And the tragedy continues.

I told you this would only end in tears...

[everyking]

Given Scott's stated commitment to cutting out the drama and focusing on encyclopedia writing, I thought I would check to see what sort of articles he'd been writing recently:

Unfortunately, he's got no article contributions in his last 50 edits, except for his nomination of the David Gerard article for deletion (drama!). His last 50 edits overwhelmingly involve scolding and lecturing other editors for disagreeing with him about arbitration issues (drama!). Well, maybe that's just a fluke; how about the previous 50? Eight out of those 50 are article edits, although none of those appear to be substantial edits.

[Doc glasgow]

Given Scott's stated commitment to cutting out the drama and focusing on encyclopedia writing, I thought I would check to see what sort of articles he'd been writing recently:

Unfortunately, he's got no article contributions in his last 50 edits, except for his nomination of the David Gerard article for deletion (drama!). His last 50 edits overwhelmingly involve scolding and lecturing other editors for disagreeing with him about arbitration issues (drama!). Well, maybe that's just a fluke; how about the previous 50? Eight out of those 50 are article edits, although none of those appear to be substantial edits.

Wow.

I pull you up for your repeated and unmerited presumption that the "community" agrees with you, and because you have no answer you attack the messenger.

I am what I am, but that does not make you the voice of the community, nor even of those who do write the encyclopedia.

Am I happy with the election results? I have no idea. However, I certainly accept them, and I promise that in 11 months I will not be claiming that I, and not those elected, am the authentic voice of the community.

[Milton Roe]

Am I happy with the election results? I have no idea. However, I certainly accept them, and I promise that in 11 months I will not be claiming that I, and not those elected, am the authentic voice of the community.

Good for you. But without a decent democratic election with registered voters and a reasonable campaign to see that everybody is informed, it would silly for anybody to claim that a wikipedia "election" was the "voice of the community."

Of course, we didn't (couldn't) have really good instruments in place in the last arb election to prevent double voting, because we rely on checkuser to catch seasoned socks. Few people have that, so it's not effective. You think every voter was checkusered? Even checkuser isn't nearly as good as a personal ID (which you need in a real election). And there's so much squeeling from some people when checkusers check people without "probable cause" that you'd think it was comparable to breaking down your home door and going through your underwear (sock?) drawer. See SlimVirgin's complaining on Wiki-en-L last July about Lar's check of Wikitumnus and Crum375. This has a chilling effect.

In addition, may I remind you that most normal methods in democratic elections are banned on WP? I saw daily tags on the top of my screen asking for donations to WMF during the arb election, but for a general election which the "community" was supposed to be making, I saw nothing to point me to a vote-in-progress. Did I miss it? A decent tag-box would show up every day and contain a link taking you straight to the voting site, with a short explanation on how to vote. Instead, voting was made nearly as difficult as possible. Even if you made it to many pages about the election, you had to realize that the phrase "voting is now open" contained an Easter-egg link in the word "voting" to get you to the polling place. That feature was either designed by a programmer-nerd (the kind we keep in back and don't let speak to the customers), or else it was a deliberate attempt to screen voters. Which is fine if you admit to it, but don't use the word "community."

And finally, no election is an election if active general campaigning is outlawed. What that does, is hand campaigns over to people who have backchannel networks which aren't open to public view, and Wikipedia contains plenty of those. But that's not the "community" unless by "community" you mean the bunch of insiders who figure they control (and should control) the administration machinery of Wikipedia. It doesn't represent anything close to the community of presently-active registered editors.

[CrazyGameOfPoker]

In addition, may I remind you that most normal methods in democratic elections are banned on WP? I saw daily tags on the top of my screen asking for donations to WMF during the arb election, but for a general election which the "community" was supposed to be making, I saw nothing to point me to a vote-in-progress. Did I miss it? A decent tag-box would show up every day and contain a link taking you straight to the voting site, with a short explanation on how to vote.

Er, yes.