Election Archive

The following Talk comments were made during the period leading up to the December 2004 Arbitration Committee Election:

Candidate Endorsements page organization

They only have to click on one extra link to see what you have to say, and you can say whatever you choose there in your user namespace. Please review the associated talk page if you want to understand the reasons for this, but currently we have reached a compromise format and I do not plan to change it. --Michael Snow 00:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The reason your endorsements are not on the individual candidate subpages is because I was copying from the version someone else had reverted back to, which didn't include them either. Presumably that's because yours were added to the different incarnation on the "Discussion" subpage. I'm sorry I forgot about that, and feel free to add them back in.

There's nothing dishonest about my comment; it is absolutely true. This format is far more useful because it allows people to decide what they are interested in reading. When only one page is overwhelmed with endorsements, your comments are probably less likely to really get read, as nobody will care much what you have to say mixed in with the jumble of other endorsements.

If you think excerpting is so important, why don't you try incorporating an excerpt in the text after the pipe character for the link to your endorsement page, like maybe the names of the users you endorse? What is "wiki-like" is creative problem-solving, not reactionary insistence on perpetuating flawed systems. --Michael Snow 00:34, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the piping suggestion. I went ahead and made that change. --DV 01:00, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Based on VeryVerily's edit summary (rv - why does this one user get to put commentary here?), I'm hopeful that what disturbed him was partly the unusual prominence the piped version had when it was the only one on the page. Now that it's not, and Johnleemk has commented in support on the talk page as well, maybe that can establish more acceptance of this compromise. --Michael Snow 06:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: Votes for arbitration

Dear David, my apologies for accidentally blundering onto the "Requests for arbitration" page with comments I was not entitled to put there. In my defence I can only say that I had been asked to comment there (a message sent to my User Talk page requested I do so), andI misunderstood the title of the pages. I had assumed that "Requests" meant that 'ordinary' Wikipedians were requesting that a page go on to a further stage where it would be looked at by administrators - the page title didn't suggest to me that it was final vote on arbitration. Sorry again, Grutness 18:48, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No need to apologize for an innocent posting in the wrong place. I've posted a suggestion on your user talk page. --DV 01:37, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your questions

My response is on User talk:Mirv/Arbitration election. —No-One Jones ^(m) 02:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your questions

In response to your questions, 1) I do not agree that Shorne's actions warrant blocks or a ban; and 2) I would not have blocked Shorne from editing communism-related articles for the length of the arbitration proceedings.

Because I am closer to the individual contributors who actually get things done around here, I think that I am better able to see the relationship between behavioral problems (e.g., repeated reversions) and the systemic problems in Wikipedia that engender and encourage the methods certain users approach conflict. Repeated reversions are inevitable when you lump together so many users whose worldviews diverge so starkly, such as Shorne and VeryVerily, and allow them to freely edit articles on subjects as emotionally charged and contentious as communism and nationalism. Because the dispute resolution process is so slow and cumbersome, repeated reversions are often the only method of dealing with conflict when dealing with someone who insisted on their point of view. If Shorne and VV were to be banned this minute, their disputes would just give way to revert wars between a new set of users working on these articles.

Because I have actually worked with both Shorne and VeryVerily, I can see them as "revert warriors" while understanding their merits as contributors. Both are incredibly knowledgeable and intelligent; both are prolific editors. (I have my own biases that lead me to believe that one has a better grasp of modern history and contemporary politics and a more compelling point of view than the other; but this is irrelevant to my objective understanding of what both of them have the capacity to offer our community.)

First, I would favor drafting a finding of fact that acknowledges their committment to the project and their merits as contributors. I would make it clear that the community did not view them as 'problem users' but rather as two contributors locked in a difficult political and personality feud in need of arbitration to establish a modus vivendi that would allow both of them to coexist as editors.

I would favor this instead of something that comes across as a 'sanction'. Trolls and vandals should be banned and blocked; but the best approach to disputes and repeated reversions is establishing a workable framework that allows all parties involved to coexist as editors. For example, I would favor a remedy requiring either of them to justify their changes on the talk page before reverting; if this not obeyed, a temporary block could result. If they cannot have a reasonable discussion with each other, they should be forced to foster a discussion between a different set of users pertaining to the merits of their competing versions.

If you want me to elaborate on the proposed remedies that I'd favor, please let me know.

Thanks,

172 04:19, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just saw the latest note on my talk page. Thanks for giving me the chance to respond. Please post additional questions and comments if you have any. 172 05:34, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not at all, David. I would ideally have liked to vote privately, but seeing as I've had to give my vote in public, I might as well go all the way! Cheers, Tannin 08:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My pleasure, David. Cheers, Tannin

Arbcom voting template

It's a template - you can edit it at Template:ArbComElection, and insert it using {{ArbComElection}}. Rdsmith4— Dan | Talk 15:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be protected - if someone vandalizes it, someone else will revert it soon enough. Policy does not allow pages with no history of vandalism to be protected. Rdsmith4— Dan | Talk 16:13, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Campaign Begins

Salve, David Vasquez!
Thanks for sending me the campaign banner. I will indeed post it on my user page. As someone who has campaigned for public office I can attest to how hard it is to get any attention. Once I ran for an office people weren't aware even existed! Good luck on your own campaign. Ave atque vale! PedanticallySpeaking 18:11, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not running for office, but I am running something of a "get out the vote" campaign!

Cheers,

--DV 18:26, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Salve!
Your "small world" comment reminds me of the best "small world" story I know. My cousin, who lives in Richland, Washington, is very active in her professional organization and travels to all the conventions, etc. One day she's sitting at O'Hare waiting to change planes and strikes up a conversation with her seatmates. The usual stuff, what do you do, where are you headed, that sort of thing. She asks where they're from. Richmond, Kentucky they tell her. Richmond, Kentucky! Why my cousin teaches at the university there. Really? What's his name. She tells them. Why we've known him for years! In O'Hare airport? There's a cafe in Paris--the name escapes me at present--that supposedly if you sit there the entire world will pass you by eventually. Perhaps O'Hare is the same way--certainly Frankfurt would be. I've heard that if Jesus Christ himself returned to Earth he'd have to go through Frankfurt. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 18:32, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Election thoughts

I was quite surprised to see that you haven't listed a candidate statement. Perhaps I misunderstood you before? I thought you wanted to run for the ArbCom, and were interested in getting information out about your campaign? Maybe you only want to campaign for others? If so then I *really* recommend that you get their permission first, as your actions seem to me highly likely to actually damage their reputations rather than help them.

There's something else that is puzzling me. I read over your endorsements, and the thing that is interesting to me is that you seem to have a concern about "insiders", and yet you endorse 3 people who are quite clearly "insiders" while giving a negative evaluation of someone who is very much thought to be a troublesome revert warrior by the majority of "insiders" that I know.

I really wonder if you don't have some mistaken ideas about who the insiders are, and what they are like. This would help me to understand why you're using rhetoric that seems so at odds with the reality of the situation.

--Jimbo Wales 19:38, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I posted a reply back on Jimbo's talk page. There are some very simple issues to resolve here. I appreciate the references to other election staffers from Theresa Knott. --DV 22:39, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry I've upset you

David you seem very upset by my comments on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2004/Candidate_statements/Endorsements#Election_Campaigning_-_What_is_the_Spam_Threshold.3F the endorsement talk page]. Please let me reassure you that it was not my intention at all to belittle you or or make you feel like you're not "grown up" enough to be involved. I certainly was being serious and I was not trying to wind you up. I've replied on bith Jimbo's talk page and on the endorsement page, but both pages are very busy and i don't want to risk you not seeing my comment. This has all been a terrible misunderstanding. Please accept my apology for any anger I caused you, I assure you it was not intentional. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 20:30, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I posted a reply interleaved with Jimbo's and your previous one back on Jimbo's talk page. Thanks for the references. --DV 22:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another "get out the vote" banner goes up!

Done. [1] Thanks for the tip! 172 21:12, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Done. :) -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 23:50, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Martin gets organized

Regarding "get out the vote" stuff. I've moved some stuff to Wikipedia talk:Spam/arbcom elections for starters. I'm not trying to marginalise this issues - more centralise it. I find it hard to follow discussions when they're spread out over several different pages: it becomes easy to miss some criticial point of view. Also, people often resort to making the same point in several places, which dilutes the overall signal/noise ratio. I've left pointers from the old locations, and in other appropriate places, such as the top of Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004.

May I suggest that you:

Move any other conversation you know of on this point to the same place, so we can see everything people think about it at one glance.
Have a look at reworking the page to remove a few bits of duplication that have cropped up where you've posted the same thing to multiple places.
If you feel it is appropriate, publicise the page further.

Thanks, Martin 00:05, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spam is in the eye of the beholder

Thanks for your reply, I respect what you're trying to do. Anyway, I gave a few more rambling thoughts on that page, although I fear they probably don't form the most coherent point. :) Shane King 04:36, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your vote

Although I'm a bit confused. You stated that you want Talk pages to remain an open forum, yet you are voting against allowing users to receive campaign messages on their user talk pages?

Could you clarify your position so I can better understand your perspective?

Thanks again for taking the time to vote on this proposal.

--DV 11:12, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not voting against users getting campaign messages. I'm voting against a mandatory "tag" for deciding whether one wants them _or_not_. I think that one should have the opportunity to post campaign messages to any talk page, subject only to the de facto rules for talk pages. — David Remahl 11:18, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi again, DV. I'm afraid I can't agree with your proposal. You'll see my reasons on the poll page (hope I didn't mess your tidy poll up too much). I'll add a little more detail here, so that you can see where I'm coming from. One of the reasons I have less time for the 'pedia than I used to is that I now administer a couple of special-purpose wikis for community groups here in Australia, with a third one on the drawing board. In doing this, I've had to learn a good deal about the software that makes Wikipedia (and my wikis) possible — and trust me, it is not a simple task to install it or administer it. Above all, each wiki requires a great deal of hand customisation (at least it does if you want the job done right) and every time the software changes, I (and countless other wiki webmasters around the world) groan and shudder at the work involved. Sure, each change is for the better - well, mostly - but each change also requires a phenomenal amount of work - not just from people like me, but also from the developers, who must code it, test it, debug it, and deal with all the emails from users who don't understand how to drive it!

For a change to be worthwhile, it really needs to be a change of broad usefullness. If at all possible, it should not require a change to the database format - as if it does, the upgrade hurdle is much, much higher. (Despite the best efforts of the development team, the MediaWiki database update procedure remains horribly complex and far from risk-free. Data loss is a constant fear.) The addition of the categories code is a good example of an excellent change. It is broadly applicable to almost any wiki, is very easy for users to understand (uses can simply ignore it if they please), it is a general-purpose feature enhancement that benefits almost everyone, and, if there is no need for it in a particular circumstance, it adds no extra complication to speak of. The proposed election messages mod, in contrast, would be a highly specialised one with (I imagine) no broad general-purpose use. This is exactly the sort of "just one extra feature" that we should strive to avoid.

If peope want to complain about election messages, let them complain. The candidates are not stupid: they will soon work it out. And if they are stupid .... good! I want to know if someone is stupid before I vote for him!

Best regards,

Tannin 12:55, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PS: I'll take this oportunity to recognise the excellent work you are doing on the election. Although I disagree on this particular point, in broad I soppurt and applaud it. - T.

We cross-posted. Forgive me not taking the time to respond in depth to the many interesting and important points you just raised - I'm off to the other side of the continent in the morning, and really should be getting myself organised, not fooling about on the 'pedia! Some really quick points though, not well-thought-out, just off the top of my head.

I have no idea how many people frequent recent changes vs rarely visit it. I have always more-or-less assumed that everyone does just because I do myself. But I have absolutely no evidence for that. I'd really like to know!
Would we get better wiki-government by publicising elections more broadly? Or worse? Lacking evidence, I am reduced to guessing. My guess is about the same. Right now we get the serious editors (because they make themselves aware of at least the major goings-on), and the loonies and trolls (because they are loonies and trolls). A bigger turnout would redress the balance. But would adding a lot of votes by people for whom wiki-government is of marginal relevance result in more common sense? Or more ignorance of the way things really work and what actually needs doing? (No answer to this one, I'm just asking the question.)
IMO, one of the worst things about the 'pedia these days is the IRC channel. If you are not on IRC, you are a second-class citizen. If I was Tsar Jimbo, I'd ban IRC. (If I possibly could - probably impractical: be like banning marijuana or alcohol.)
Recent changes, I suspect, is less visited than it was, say, 2 years ago, or even 1 year ago. The changes come so thick and fast now that no-one can keep up. I think there is a cae for splitting recent changes into several categorised lists (using article categories: sport, entertainment, history, science, etc). That way, contributors could at least try to keep up with (e.g.) the history pages, and maybe we would recover a little of that community spirit that is so lacking of late.

Best: Tannin 13:16, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Election image

Please correct Image:ArbComElectionDec2004.jpg so that it reflects the correct dates for the election, which have been changed to run from December 4th to December 18th. --Michael Snow 16:37, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I fully support your effort to get out the vote

David, you wrote "Unfortunately my proposals for getting out the vote are being met with a lukewarm response by the insiders around here, so I'm hopeful a grassroots effort can work around the lack of 'official' publicity for the election."

I think this comment is very unfair. I think you'd be much more successful if you didn't go around acting like the elections are a sham and that some mysterious "insiders" are trying to keep it low profile. I support that we make the elections very high profile, but the irony is, I suspect that this will result in the _opposite_ result from what you want.

What I do not support is your going around making inflammatory comments. It's just divisive and serves no helpful purpose in achieving the goals you seek. Can you please tone the rhetoric down a little bit? Good people want to help you, but you make it quite hard when you attack them at the same time. Jimbo Wales 21:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've posted a reply on your user talk page, but I'll just state here that as the number of voters grows, the ratio of trolls to good editors should stay roughly the same, with the result that the good editors will outnumber the trolls more than ever. (This ratio should also hold true as the overall size of the community grows.)

I can understand your perspective that you feel I am attacking good people. You'll get no argument from me that almost everybody I've dealt with is "good people". But as I've stated from the get-go, the failures of the current Administration have gone on for too long, and the consequences are starting to multiply, so it is good and right to point this out and look for fresh faces with fresh ideas that will make the editing environment better.

I've posted more detailed replies and analysis on your talk page.

Regards,

--DV 05:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

An election promotion proposal

What do you think of putting a nice message on the edit screen asking people to vote? This seems to me to be the ideal placement for such a message, since it reaches *all* the editors. Furthermore, it best targets the audience you're looking for: the good editors who stay away from policy pages. --Jimbo Wales 21:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's a bloody good idea IMO Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 21:25, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Excellent creative thinking, but it will also reach many, many people who cannot vote (people who haven't ever logged in or who haven't had their username for at least 90 days). If we choose this, we need to be willing to deal with a significant volume of concerns from such people. --Michael Snow 22:29, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. An excellent idea. Micheal Snow's concern can be addressed quite easily with a fairly small modification to the code. The edit page code already has to figure out if the user is logged-in or an anon, so step 1 is to only provide the notice to logged-in users. Step 2 is to add a second if clause checking to see if the user has been registered for 90 days. This should be a simple thing to code - hell, I could probably manage it myself and I'm strictly a hardware man. A real programmer (a Tim Starling or an Eloquence, for example) could do this in a jiffy. And thirdly, it might actually make an extension of general usefulness (i.e., not just for election notices). For example, we could use it to have different default editing help screens for anons, new users and veterans, targetted to their level of experience. Tannin 23:08, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree that this is an excellent idea. I really appreciate the hands-on approach used by the founder of this site. Do Tannin's refinements make this viable? --DV 06:06, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the image. Tannin's suggestions would satisfy me. --Michael Snow 06:09, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I love the idea, but ideally, in the long term, we should move to promulgate awareness about Wikipedia's workings; perhaps even during non-election times, we could have a short quip like "Want to get even more involved in Wikipedia? Vote or discuss policy, collaborations of the week, featured article/picture candidates and more!". Asking someone completely unaware of how Wikipedia works to vote is like asking someone completely unaware of how America's government works to vote. It doesn't matter if they don't know the exact things (how many voters in the recent US election knew how the electoral college works?), but I really don't think it makes sense to ask a user who's never edited a page in the Wikipedia: namespace before to vote for candidates he may never even have heard of. Johnleemk | Talk 13:11, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipolitix

David, thanks for your very encouraging comments. My suggestion of a resistance movement within Wikipedia was not altogether serious, and would probably not be very effective for the reasons you suggest. But I do think it is time for a political party, a party which can campaign among the community of Wikipedians for an agreed program of reforms: a platform. As you say, however, political parties can only operate within a democratic political structure - a structure in which the majority can gain control of "the state" (in this case Wikipedia) through an electoral process. At the moment Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is somewhere between an anarchy and a benevolent dictatorship of Mr Wales. So the first plank of our platform must be the establishment of democratic control over the editorial policy of Wikipedia. A democratic process, however, implies a "demos," an electorate or community of citizens. Creating a defined community of registered Wikipedians, and criteria for membership of it, must therefore be the second plank. Adam 09:58, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: Voting tallies == number of active editors?

For some reason I was under the impression that thousands of editors were working on this project.

There are, but very very very few are active any more; see Special:Listusers. Most users register and leave after a while.

If there really are thousands of editors, then your examples only strengthen my argument that elections need more publicity, because most editors have clearly not been watching for polls and elections if only 1% of them voted.

Extremely few users stay for long, and of those that do, most of them edit sporadically. At the most, there's somewhere between 500 and a thousand active users on Wikipedia, by my rough estimate.

(As a matter of fact, in most countries with free and fair elections, the vote would be disbelieved and annulled as a farce if only 1% of the electorate turned out.)

As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is not most countries. We are an encyclopedia, not an attempt at a democracy. Though we do our best to ensure voting is conducted smoothly, we can't be bothered to spam every user's talk page whenever there's a new survey.

I myself only found out about this election by an offhand reference on someone's user talk page. And I've known serious, although absent-minded writers who needed to be reminded to change their clothes every day, so this business about expecting any serious editor to check the portal and recent changes seems overly optimistic - hence my suggestions to be more proactive about publicizing elections.

As I've already told you, if you'd like to spam people, it's none of my business, but the idea of putting up notices about the election and expecting people to read them is a procedure that weeds out inappropriate voters, IMO. Can you honestly expect users who have never interacted with more than a few of these users to be able to properly vote for them? It's very hard to judge who's appropriate and whose not based only on their statement of candidacy, and few voters will be willing to look at anything other than that; certainly they won't bother to look up every candidate's past history.

In short, there's no point in advertising to a group of people who have never taken interest in Wikipedia's internal workings. It's like asking someone who doesn't care about politics at all to vote — there's no point. Rather, why not get that person interested in politics? That's why I told you to make people aware about Wikipedia's internal workings — the community portal, for example. Getting out the vote for the sake of getting out the vote is pointless if the voters know nothing about what or who they're voting for.

I myself only found out about this election by an offhand reference on someone's user talk page. And I've known serious, although absent-minded writers who needed to be reminded to change their clothes every day, so this business about expecting any serious editor to check the portal and recent changes seems overly optimistic - hence my suggestions to be more proactive about publicizing elections.

If users specifically ask you for reminders that's okay, but unsolicited crossposting about a subject the users you're talking to probably have never bothered to think about before makes no sense at all to me.

You stated, "I see no point in advertising the election on several thousand user talk pages", so please back up your speculation about why this isn't necessary with some objective data, otherwise I think your assumptions are mistakenly supporting a policy which (un-intentionally) suppresses voter turnout.

Close to 500 people voted in the Arbitration Committee Elections July 2004. Johnleemk | Talk 14:59, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My responce to you

Sorry I couldn't respond to your message quickly. I was on Vacation for Thanksgiving. I responded on my talk in the Italic text. Thank for showing interest in me! :)--[[User:Plato|Comrade Nick @)---^--]] 08:08, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Foundation Issues

Can be found here

Kim Bruning 14:33, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Quick note on Public Domain and US Government

This image is almost certainly not in the public domain via the US government. Merely being Federally funded is not enough to trigger the requirement that the production has no copyright. More than likely, this photo was taken by an employee of the school, and this person is almost certainly not a U.S. government employee acting in an official capacity. (School teachers are normally employees of the local school district which might be a division of a State government, but almost never Federal.)

In general, just taking something from a website that might (or might not) be Federally funded is not enough to ensure public domain status.

I hope this explanation is helpful. :-)

By the way, I'm not comfortable with the idea that you changed your user page based to remove endorsements at what you think is my request. I'm not really sure what I said that made you think I wanted this. Jimbo Wales 10:43, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I responded on Jimbo's user talk page. --DV 03:15, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)