So the nominations for the 2009 arbcom elections are open. In other news, the voting method, the no. of candidates being elected, and their terms are not yet established, so if you'd like to nominate yourself for an indeterminate amount of time, to be decided in an indeterminate way, to a committee of indeterminate no. roll up, roll up, roll up :-)

ps. I was feeling a bit amused by the above, and decided to withdraw (partly as an intensely thought through socio-political and philosophical comment on the elections and the process) - unfortunately it didn't stick. I'm not sure if that means I'm running or not.

I don't think they were actually saying that you can't withdraw your candidacy, but only conditioning this upon your actually being a candidate to begin with.

I promise not to run in this year's election.

No objections from me--I would not vote for the re-election of any sitting arbitrator due to the wrongful treatment I received at the hands of the ArbCom this year. But I would be interested to know what, if anything, you feel you've accomplished as an arbitrator?

I think the ArbCom's performance this year was the best since the ArbCom was established. They've got a ways to go, but I think they made some progress.

Well, seeing as how my motions kept your restrictions from remaining indefinite and how I supported the complete lifting the second time through...

But it's obviously natural to be anti-arbcom when you've been sanctioned by them. As for accomplishments, my drafted cases were handled quick. No three month battlegrounds from this guy.

Your speed in handling your cases was appreciated. One reason why you all need to create more sub-committees is to handle other matters so that you all can concentrate on cases.

By the way, I believe I'm under ArbCom sanction also, and it's similar to Everyking's. I'm ok with it, however.

True, I'd forgotten about that--a few arbitrators did vote to lift the sanctions, so in that respect I was too harsh. But when I was talking about accomplishments, I wasn't really talking about issues of speed and productivity. What I really meant was "how did you contribute to the development of the ArbCom's working philosophy and relationship with the community?" Do you think you facilitated the continuation of the status quo, or do you think the ArbCom has improved in some basic way through your contributions?



You're an ArbCom-convicted stalker like me? In that case, I must say that it was highly irresponsible of the ArbCom to appoint you to its short-lived "Advisory Council"--after all, we stalkers are extremely dangerous people. Did they put you under Tony Sidaway's mentorship too? That's when you know they really like you!

Likewise. Big improvement.

Right. A big improvement from "insanely inept well beyond any attempt at parody" to simply "incredibly slow-moving and dunderheaded, giving a bad connotation to the words 'abitration' and 'committee'". Also a big move from actively corrupt to merely incompetent.

You guys are like the child who sees a pile of crap under the tree on Christmas morning and assumes there must be a pony under there somewhere.

I guess the way I see it, the current ArbCom is an improvement on previous versions in so far as they seem to understand that the way to herd cats is not to simply stand somewhere and yell "heeere, kitty-kitty." They seem willing to at least try new approaches, though I don't think we can say that they've found one that works yet.

Logically, as Wikipedia content becomes more stable, the community becomes more unstable, as various individuals and factions fight over less and less "free" territory until everything becomes contested in some way. They'll eventually have to split the ArbCom up into different groups based on type-of-dispute, just to handle the increasing workload - but as long as membership is more a popularity contest than a review of who's qualified at dispute-resolution, it's doubtful this will do much more than make the system more bureaucratic.

Ironically, increased user attrition is probably the one positive thing the ArbCom and its descendants can look forward to. If they're all smart enough to encourage it, the whole thing might even become somewhat manageable again.

Me three. But then I would say that, woudn't I?

The current ArbCom proved to me that it will not tolerate someone who calls passionately for stronger ethics and better accountability within the Wikipedia community, but I have to say, they did so in a largely non-confrontational way. Also, Risker's re-ban of my primary account has liberated me to do the other things I'm happier doing on Wikipedia, without detection or interference. So, that's a good thing.

Improvement or not, the level at which the Arbcom operates remains appallingly poor. There is not a single current member that I would ever vote for, nor do I see any suitable candidates.

Rather, I would like to see the entire inquisition, oops ... institution, abandoned.

Of course, how effective it is is ultimately irrelevant, since it is illegitimate by virtue of the manner in which it was established.

I will be running again, on the same platform as last year: to decline every case presented to it to try and prevent it from actually being able to do anything.

With the possible exception of Newyorkbrad, the Arbcom membership has repeatedly shown itself to be utterly incapable of handling any responsibility that requires transparency, tact and intelligence. At best, their behavior has been inconsistent. At worst, they have displayed high levels of arrogance, venality and blatant lying that has given the committee's rulings the scent of an unflushed toilet.

In many ways, Arbcom is a thankless task. But does that mean that only the stupidest members of the "community" are willing to handle the task?

As with all things in life, you get what you pay for.

So far a slow start for nominations compared to last year, one user who I'm not familar with his work (Fritzpoll), and another who's just trolling that page and I highly recomend he withdraw(Kmweber).

Arbcom has improved a tad since last year. Just a tad though. There are, however, still too many useless arbitrators, who fail to deal with actual problematic disputes that are harming the project, and on the other hand will immediately seek to sanction somebody who is unpopular, or who made one mistake that did not effect the encyclopedia in any way. They have their priorities all wrong, that much is clear.

Criteria:

Editors must have 1,000 mainspace edits as of 00:00 UTC on 10 November 2009. For the purposes of this requirement, deleted edits may be counted.

Editors must be either 18 years of age or older, or of majority age in their place of residence, whichever is higher.

Editors will be required (per this thread) to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation before taking their seats. (See also, WT:ACE2007#Ruling on age limit.)




How do I determine if I've 1,000 mainspace edits across Thekohser and Wikipedia Review?

Fritzpoll runs a bot which updates a master BLPFD list in Lara's user-space.

Not sure but this could be intended to replace the original BLPFD page which was created following my suggestion to David Gerard in April 2008. That page was regularly updated by one Erwin85Bot until somebody shut it down in July 2009.

Fritzpoll's bot has (or had) another task to list articles found on other-language Wikipedias but not on English. I know I found literal thousands of such topics myself when researching rivers/mountains/lakes etc. of central and eastern Europe, and I translated maybe a dozen of them. I'd be happy to see a more coordinated effort in that area.

From what I've seen I'm pleased with his work, but I'd have to see the other candidates before commenting further.


Hah!

So ummm… why do you hate Wikipedia?

Eh, you're banned. If you're banned you don't exist.



Since when did Kurt get unbanned?

He left Wikipedia during the ban discussion. Cf. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive575#Kurt_Weber

Like this.

(You do.)

Edit: Actually, by my count Thekohser alone has 1073 mainspace edits, counting deleted ones (I counted the deleted ones manually, since I'm not aware of any way to automatically sort them by namespace).

Your links are fuxored, see [1].

I won't even pretend to be capable of understanding how that happened. Still, they now produce the amusing statement "wikipedia is not a valid wiki", so that's something.

No, I'm not.

This bot is running (as we speak) and some of it's output can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Danish/Missing articles. Template at the bottom of that page shows that not much is done so far, but that's because the thing takes an age to run for each Wikipedia. Current doing the German Wikipedia so that'll be a few days.

I saw Jenna/Lara request a bot for the BLP AfDs and fulfilled it because it's a worthwhile thing to keep track of all things BLP-related on-wiki.

The criteria say nothing about being banned.

So, if I've got the necessary edits, heck, if someone wants to nominate me...

Greg

I clicked that link and it said "wikipedia is not a valid wiki". (Oh, you already noted as much.)

You've found a loophole. Congratulations.

It would be kind of impossible to, you know, answer questions and such, and if an arbitrator can't even edit... actually, that sounds like a good idea!

He can do everything on his talk page. And of course he could get his case reviewed by the ArbCom.

Hm, yes, I'd vote for him.

ArbCom is self-nom only...

I wonder.....should I bring up certain Arbcommers' chronic inability to deal with
the Notorious Shankbone, causing them to ignore or refuse personal requests
from WPers in good standing, including a number of admins?

Just wondering.

The FT2/OrangeMarlin fiasco probably has made the Committee reluctant to take the initiative on their own to censure editors who are causing too many problems for the wiki. Thus, they have to wait until someone takes the time to build a case against the problematic individuals and then make a formal RfAR.

So, users that up their count by randomly removing external links from bunches of pages, or by stalking someone and reverting all their edits, will quickly qualify, whereas users that carefully prepare new articles in their userspace until they think they're ready to publish, never will.

Don't know about never, but basically yeah.

I am almost bored enough to run. Almost. Not quite.

I would expect that it would be regarded as the proper thing to do for him to recuse himself from any proceedings related to such a case.

Yes, but since when has it been proper for members of the ArbCom to do the proper thing?

Is Kurt Weber aware of the fact that 7 out of 9 of the German Wikipedia's "ArbCom" resigned when it became clear to them that they lacked a community mandate?

That's why they should move the articles from their userspace rather than just copying and pasting.

How was that situation addressed? Did their ArbCom shut down, did it continue with only two members, or did they quickly bring in new members?

Why not? The whole "banned" editor concept is a piece of shit -- the current arbitrators themselves openly acknowledge the policy doesn't work and cannot be enforced, but they are too stupid to address changing it. Greg's candidacy could be used to raise the issue of so-called "banned" and "indef blocked" editors -- a contradiction in an environment that bills itself as "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" -- and question how a "community" united on the concept of creating a reference text has become subdivided with inconsistent enforcement of policies.

Run, Greg, run!

It's been discussed before, including Greg's case and one or two others that will no doubt be familiar to many here. Greg may be interested to know that I supported his unblock and was one of several people left with their credibility dented when he rapidly achieved a re-block.

He didn't "achieve" a reblock -- Arbcom's stupidest arbitrator took it upon herself to reblock him because of some sassy edit summaries that were not, by any stretch of the imagination, disruptive to Wikipedia's well-being.

I'm sorry that I disappointed you, Happy Drinker. How did you feel about Shoemaker's Holiday deliberately withholding from Sage Ross the audio file of the Board candidates' interviews, in the very face of Ross saying that he would edit the file in a fair and impartial manner?

I agree with Horsey's interpretation here. In the end, I'm really more able to achieve what I want to achieve on Wikipedia, without interference, by being "banned" under my best-known identities. So, ultimately, while it is a ding on my outside-Wikipedia reputation, I guess; practically speaking, banned is the better way to go.

Thanks for your unblock support, though! You were one among about 30 people. I hope they're not all similarly duped as you are to be "dented" by what was in reality a stupid re-ban.

I chose the word "achieve" carefully. Note I didn't say "earn".


It was more than 30; there was a great deal behind the scenes. Of course, if yopu can prove that the ban was stupid, you can appeal and good luck to you. However, I suspect that you won't get as much support as last time.

At the rate things are going, every candidate who runs will be getting elected. Risker points out the number of candidates running last year compared to this year. It's kinda low, but understandable.

Risker also notes that “the manner in which arbitrators, supposedly selected for their good judgment and wise counsel, are treated with suspicion, condescension and distrust from the moment of their appointment, has been pointed out to me by several highly respected editors as the reason that they are not interested in participating.” This, of course, is a phony argument.

“Highly respected editors” don’t have to fear being “treated with suspicion, condescension and distrust” if they do not act in a manner that triggers suspicion, condescension and distrust from the “community.”

You cannot vigorously prosecute some people for sockpuppetry while openly stating that you are allowing others to operate socks without fear of being blocked. You cannot loudly yank away the “tools” without due process from an adult admin with no history of abusing his rank but quietly return the tools to a desysopped teenager with a blatant history of irresponsible behavior. You cannot claim that you welcome dialogue with editors but then censor attempts by the “community” to ask questions of the arbitrators or ignore the comments left by the “community” in RfArb.

Unfortunately, Risker and her posse keep forgetting that they need to flush their own toilets before complaining about the smell from other bathrooms. As usual, Arbcom is pretending the rest of the "community" is out of step and they are the only ones who are right.