David's original point is a valid one and is an excellent example of the fact that failing internal processes do affect the success of Wikipedia. AFD, RFA, the AC election, and the AC itself are examples of processes that are not scaling well, and they are also examples of the way that a changing editor and administrator base is affecting the quality of processes throughout Wikipedia. There's no one minding the store anymore: Jimbo, Angela, and Anthere have minimal engagement with the community itself, having instead chosen to look outward and emphasize publicity and financial matters. Recent policy initiatives, such as the deletion of unsourced images and the restrictions on anonymous creation of articles, have been driven by legal, financial, and public relations concerns rather than anything that any contributors to the project have said.
One thing that is clear is that the community can't make any nonincremental changes to policy itself without solid leadership, and there are any number of contributors with social insight who have quit even discussing meaningful change (as well as those who have quit the project entirely) because of the impossibility of accomplishing it. The reasons for this have to do with the size of the contributor base, the fact of the developers not being accountable to the community, and the presence of many contributors who are perhaps excellent writers and editors but who lack skills and experience in group decisionmaking.
The Uninvited Co., Inc. (a Delaware corporation)
On 1/11/06, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
One thing that is clear is that the community can't make any nonincremental changes to policy itself without solid leadership, and there are any number of contributors with social insight who have quit even discussing meaningful change (as well as those who have quit the project entirely) because of the impossibility of accomplishing it.
We've managed to expand speedy a few times. The community can make changes but only when the option of doing nothing has been completely exusted.
-- geni
On 1/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We've managed to expand speedy a few times. The community can make changes but only when the option of doing nothing has been completely exusted.
This reminds me of that famous non-quotation by Edmund Burke - "all that is needed for evil to triumph is good men to do nothing" and variants thereupon. I am trying to think of a pithy Wikipedia equivilent.
-- Sam
On 1/11/06, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
the fact of the developers not being accountable to the community
What exactly do you mean by this? How are we not accountable and how should we, in your opinion, be?
uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
Recent policy initiatives, such as the deletion of unsourced images and the restrictions on anonymous creation of articles, have been driven by legal, financial, and public relations concerns rather than anything that any contributors to the project have said.
I suspect that kind of policy initiative is simply more visible because it has to happen quickly. To take an example of an internally generated shift, consider the citing of sources. Two years ago, some editors would routinely not supply sources, and defend their practice; nowadays such edits risk being mass-reverted, and the editors' protests would be met with scorn by all.
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions, where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis. For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
Recent policy initiatives, such as the deletion of unsourced images and the restrictions on anonymous creation of articles, have been driven by legal, financial, and public relations concerns rather than anything that any contributors to the project have said.
I suspect that kind of policy initiative is simply more visible because it has to happen quickly. To take an example of an internally generated shift, consider the citing of sources. Two years ago, some editors would routinely not supply sources, and defend their practice; nowadays such edits risk being mass-reverted, and the editors' protests would be met with scorn by all.
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions, where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis. For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we have learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom elections, campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be even more anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one issue. My suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom elections, but less divisive. The community nominates certain people (how this is done is up to them), who will then write their candidate statements, etc. Those who oppose/support must provide links/diffs/etc. showing why they oppose/support. For instance, "Oppose. [a few links to instances of POV pushing]" Unless the situation may be ambiguous, there should be no need to say "POV pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review the candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow, please let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has a bit of potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions, where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis. For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we have learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom elections, campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be even more anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one issue. My suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom elections, but less divisive. The community nominates certain people (how this is done is up to them), who will then write their candidate statements, etc. Those who oppose/support must provide links/diffs/etc. showing why they oppose/support. For instance, "Oppose. [a few links to instances of POV pushing]" Unless the situation may be ambiguous, there should be no need to say "POV pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review the candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow, please let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has a bit of potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".
Arbcom is perhaps the hardest kind of position to elect, because the people involved have to get in the middle of all the worst fights in WP. To take the project I've been involved with the longest, WikiProject Ships, there have only been a couple serious arguments in the nearly three years of its existence. Most of the time it works to have one person propose, one or two say "good idea", and the rest silently acquiesce in the new order of things. Other times you get a proposal, an objection, a bit of discussion, and then deadlock; nobody wants to call a vote even, because it would simply numerify the near even split. The irony is that everybody is acting in good faith, and if a "first among equals" were to break the tie, project members would just go along. For many projects, I imagine that if someone were to put a hand up, that person would be elected by acclaim; others may indeed need to set up more of a formal balloting process.
I'm not sure how much WP as a whole needs to get involved. It might be sufficient just to announce that projects are free to have "leads", let them each experiment, and then later recommend to all projects what seems to work the best.
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest on wikipedia.
-- geni
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest on wikipedia.
Ergo my earlier suggestion that, if we give more autonomy to WikiProjects, we should have some sort of community accreditation for it. In other words, it would be up to the community at large to delegate control to each specific project as necessary. WikiProject Schools may be too contentious, and may therefore be refused such authority; but for many projects this would not be an issue.
Kirill Lokshin
On 1/12/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
Ergo my earlier suggestion that, if we give more autonomy to WikiProjects, we should have some sort of community accreditation for it. In other words, it would be up to the community at large to delegate control to each specific project as necessary. WikiProject Schools may be too contentious, and may therefore be refused such authority; but for many projects this would not be an issue.
Kirill Lokshin
The problem you have is that it will be less effort to bring in outsiders to support your position rather than to change your oponents position. This results in people not involved with the project being brought in solely to decide the result of votes.
-- geni
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The problem you have is that it will be less effort to bring in outsiders to support your position rather than to change your oponents position. This results in people not involved with the project being brought in solely to decide the result of votes.
If you mean in the case of disagreement within a project, their votes could be discounted under the same reasoning that we discount votes from very new users in AFD: they're not really part of the community (referring, in this case, to the project rather than to Wikipedia as a whole). Given that most projects don't fall apart over day-to-day disagreements, there's no reason to think that adding any formal weight to the process would suddenly result in a rash of vote-stacking.
There are, of course, a few projects that exist mainly as glorified debating forums rather than resources for collaborative editing; presumably they would not be given the authority to run their own deletion discussions.
Kirill Lokshin
geni wrote:
On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest on wikipedia.
I don't see enough parallels with IWC to be meaningful - they have large and competing economic interests involved, not a shared goal of building a single work. And would "schools" be that large of a project? My impression is that 90% of the contributors only work on one school, don't even stick around long enough to join a project.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions, where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis. For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we have learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom elections, campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be even more anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one issue. My suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom elections, but less divisive. The community nominates certain people (how this is done is up to them), who will then write their candidate statements, etc. Those who oppose/support must provide links/diffs/etc. showing why they oppose/support. For instance, "Oppose. [a few links to instances of POV pushing]" Unless the situation may be ambiguous, there should be no need to say "POV pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review the candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow, please let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has a bit of potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".
Arbcom is perhaps the hardest kind of position to elect, because the people involved have to get in the middle of all the worst fights in WP. To take the project I've been involved with the longest, WikiProject Ships, there have only been a couple serious arguments in the nearly three years of its existence. Most of the time it works to have one person propose, one or two say "good idea", and the rest silently acquiesce in the new order of things. Other times you get a proposal, an objection, a bit of discussion, and then deadlock; nobody wants to call a vote even, because it would simply numerify the near even split. The irony is that everybody is acting in good faith, and if a "first among equals" were to break the tie, project members would just go along. For many projects, I imagine that if someone were to put a hand up, that person would be elected by acclaim; others may indeed need to set up more of a formal balloting process.
I'm not sure how much WP as a whole needs to get involved. It might be sufficient just to announce that projects are free to have "leads", let them each experiment, and then later recommend to all projects what seems to work the best.
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
From memory [[WP:DS]] is sorting out AFD by topic/subject area...
(In case WP:DS is something else, it should be [[Wikipedia:Deletion sorting]]...)
Stan Shebs wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions, where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis. For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we have learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom elections, campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be even more anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one issue. My suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom elections, but less divisive. The community nominates certain people (how this is done is up to them), who will then write their candidate statements, etc. Those who oppose/support must provide links/diffs/etc. showing why they oppose/support. For instance, "Oppose. [a few links to instances of POV pushing]" Unless the situation may be ambiguous, there should be no need to say "POV pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review the candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow, please let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has a bit of potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".
Arbcom is perhaps the hardest kind of position to elect, because the people involved have to get in the middle of all the worst fights in WP. To take the project I've been involved with the longest, WikiProject Ships, there have only been a couple serious arguments in the nearly three years of its existence. Most of the time it works to have one person propose, one or two say "good idea", and the rest silently acquiesce in the new order of things. Other times you get a proposal, an objection, a bit of discussion, and then deadlock; nobody wants to call a vote even, because it would simply numerify the near even split. The irony is that everybody is acting in good faith, and if a "first among equals" were to break the tie, project members would just go along. For many projects, I imagine that if someone were to put a hand up, that person would be elected by acclaim; others may indeed need to set up more of a formal balloting process.
I'm not sure how much WP as a whole needs to get involved. It might be sufficient just to announce that projects are free to have "leads", let them each experiment, and then later recommend to all projects what seems to work the best.
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
Ah, a bit of a misunderstanding there. I thought you were referring to different Wikimedia projects, and not WikiProjects. I still think having a general "lead editor" to break the deadlock would be a good idea, though. Jimbo and Angela used to play this role on en until their fundraising and PR work to them elsewhere. I think my proposal would be applicable here, especially as the "lead editor" would be the board's representative for the project, allowing him to make the tough calls Jimbo, et al used to make but no now longer can't. This devolution of power might be a feasible idea, as right now, our wild and woolly way of resolving content disputes, etc. just isn't working, as UninvitedCompany has pointed out - at some point, we'll either have to find a better way than calling a vote, or just have the project break down into anarchy.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
uninvited@nerstrand.net (uninvited@nerstrand.net) [060112 10:00]:
One thing that is clear is that the community can't make any nonincremental changes to policy itself without solid leadership, and there are any number of contributors with social insight who have quit even discussing meaningful change (as well as those who have quit the project entirely) because of the impossibility of accomplishing it.
Voting on everything has become a policy disaster. That in particular needs to be strongly discouraged. "The community" as expressed through polls is showing itself to be on crack far too often.
- d.
On 1/13/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Voting on everything has become a policy disaster. That in particular needs to be strongly discouraged. "The community" as expressed through polls is showing itself to be on crack far too often.
- d.
I did find away round this. Have a deadline. Start discusing ten minutes before the deadline. Quite diffcult to hold a vote under those conditions. -- geni
uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote
There's no one minding the store anymore: Jimbo, Angela, and Anthere have minimal engagement with the community itself, having instead chosen to look outward and emphasize publicity and financial matters.
I don't think that's right. There is a structure, though you might say there is a gap in it.
- Authoritarian: ArbCom
It would be quite wrong to describe Jimbo as disengaged from this. The ArbCom scales or not? Depends on the workload, really. Certainly after I was elected I went _at least_ once a day for a whole month, to vote on a case, as we cleared the legacy backlog. Since it seems that many cases are 'routine' (falling within our now worked-out parameters), the criticism shouldn't really apply except for those cases found tough to arbitrate
- Strategic and Financial: Wikimedia Foundation
Well, the site runs faster, and the Alexa 'share of web pages' figure is at an all time high. We are closing up on the Microsoft site. This is all down to having enough servers. So something is heading in the right direction.
- Prudential: Office
We have to stay away from defamation and copyvio. Obviously.
What that leaves is no clear "Deliberative Function". That seems to be the missing constitutional jigsaw piece, for enWP. This list and various places on the site itself are partial answers to the need to discuss policy and other matters.
Charles
charles matthews wrote:
<snip>
What that leaves is no clear "Deliberative Function". That seems to be the missing constitutional jigsaw piece, for enWP. This list and various places on the site itself are partial answers to the need to discuss policy and other matters.
Charles
I think that's what those of us bitching about Jimbo's ostensible abandonment of involvement in the wiki have in mind. There's nobody on Wikipedia who can absolutely put his or her foot down on something and say, "Stop it you f*ckfaces, that's just wrong". Some members of the arbcom could theoretically do that, but at the risk of eroding what authority and semblance of impartiality they have. IMO, a number of major disputes related to the userbox wars, wheel warring, etc. could probably have been resolved with less acrimony had Jimbo, Angela or someone else with their level of authority stepped in. As things stand, there's a lot of confusion and ill-will within the community, still breeding and stagnating.
Hopefully this all part of the wiki process, and we'll manage just fine without Jimbo. Still, I have my doubts about how much longer we can continue to scale the old model.
John
On 5/11/06, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I think that's what those of us bitching about Jimbo's ostensible abandonment of involvement in the wiki have in mind. There's nobody on Wikipedia who can absolutely put his or her foot down on something and say, "Stop it you f*ckfaces, that's just wrong".
A lot of the problems however were caused people people trying to do exactly that,
On Thu, 11 May 2006 14:33:51 +0100, you wrote:
I think that's what those of us bitching about Jimbo's ostensible abandonment of involvement in the wiki have in mind. There's nobody on Wikipedia who can absolutely put his or her foot down on something and say, "Stop it you f*ckfaces, that's just wrong".
A lot of the problems however were caused people people trying to do exactly that,
Including Jimbo.
The fundamental problem in my view is that some people think their right to free speech somehow trumps policy, and that policy should not in any case be interpreted to include how users interact with each other.
Guy (JzG)
"Guy Chapman aka JzG" wrote
The fundamental problem in my view is that some people think their right to free speech somehow trumps policy, and that policy should not in any case be interpreted to include how users interact with each other.
I've not actually read a fundamental analysis that I have found convincing; and some of the things being written here strike me as back to front.
Can one actually draw a line betweeen bumper-sticker-sans-vehicle loudmouth talk (e.g. annoying userbox I saw about intolerance of Commonwealth English), and identity politics, which at worst is highly divisive and at best puts partisan editing further up the agenda than it needs to be? It's tricky to do so.. And yet there is an inverse proportion going on, where it is arguable (in the real world) that it is more important to have the right of self-declaration and mutual recognition.
The fundamental problem we know about is that there is a real world, off-wiki, and it keeps on intruding. Because WP is now media as well as 'pedia, its content affects the real world, implying a responsibility. It is a bit odd that the 'defining issue', since the January elections, is not to do with article content. I suppose if it were, we'd be worse off, since no one wants to see central control of article content.
Charles
On May 11, 2006, at 7:26 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
The fundamental problem in my view is that some people think their right to free speech somehow trumps policy, and that policy should not in any case be interpreted to include how users interact with each other.
I have observed that behavior in many contributors (asserting a right to free speech, to bypass policy), newbies and experienced editors. That is one of the myths that we need to clarify once and for all.
-- Jossi
John Lee wrote:
I think that's what those of us bitching about Jimbo's ostensible abandonment of involvement in the wiki have in mind. There's nobody on Wikipedia who can absolutely put his or her foot down on something and say, "Stop it you f*ckfaces, that's just wrong". Some members of the arbcom could theoretically do that, but at the risk of eroding what authority and semblance of impartiality they have. IMO, a number of major disputes related to the userbox wars, wheel warring, etc. could probably have been resolved with less acrimony had Jimbo, Angela or someone else with their level of authority stepped in. As things stand, there's a lot of confusion and ill-will within the community, still breeding and stagnating.
Hopefully this all part of the wiki process, and we'll manage just fine without Jimbo. Still, I have my doubts about how much longer we can continue to scale the old model.
I agree that having someone on hand who can make these decisions is important. Obviously Jimbo can't do it all himself, because he can't be everywhere at once or spend the time needed to fully understand the specific disputes. It's not at all a question of the positions that he supports or what articles he would choose to delete. When he only occasionally steps in it makes matters worse because those appearances are unpredictable, and it leaves offenders with the hope that he will somehow step in and take their side.
The authority of such a person would be separately determined for each sister project. The issue really breaks down to what kind of person would be suitable to the task. 1. The person must have the Jimbo's trust to the extent that Jimbo will not override his decisions without first discussing the issue fairly but not necessarily publicly with him. 2. The person must have the broad trust of the community even when he takes unpopular decisions. 3. The person must be seen as more a conciliator than one who insists that there is only one solution for every problem. 4. The person must be capable of finding a balance between public consensus and established policy. There are times when rigid adherence to policy is completely wrong, and other times when public consensus fails to consider the broader implications of that consensus. 5. The person must accept that he will sometimes make decisions that will incur hostile responses. 6. The person needs to be appointed rather than elected. The risk in an election is that it leaves a minority that may not feel represented by the person. 7. Etc.
Ec
On 5/12/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The authority of such a person would be separately determined for each sister project. The issue really breaks down to what kind of person would be suitable to the task. 1. The person must have the Jimbo's trust to the extent that Jimbo will not override his decisions without first discussing the issue fairly but not necessarily publicly with him. 2. The person must have the broad trust of the community even when he takes unpopular decisions. 3. The person must be seen as more a conciliator than one who insists that there is only one solution for every problem. 4. The person must be capable of finding a balance between public consensus and established policy. There are times when rigid adherence to policy is completely wrong, and other times when public consensus fails to consider the broader implications of that consensus. 5. The person must accept that he will sometimes make decisions that will incur hostile responses. 6. The person needs to be appointed rather than elected. The risk in an election is that it leaves a minority that may not feel represented by the person. 7. Etc.
Gosh, do you have to be so obvious when you're describing me?
I'm blushing!