Hi all,
It's been one month since Jimbo Wales edited the Arbitration Committee elections page for this December (now just a few days away) to change the procedure, adding some brainstormed thoughts. Those thoughts are still all the information we have on the procedure, and we're almost in December.
A number of potential candidates have said they don't wish to put their name forwards if they don't know the election procedure, yet recently a member of the current Arbitration Committee said that all Wikipedians wishing to become arbitrators should put their name forwards immediately.
This is really a terrible state of affairs for a number of reasons:
Firstly, we have no idea how the new Arbitration Committee is going to become the new Arbitration Committee at all. Not even the current arbitrators say they know how it's going to be done.
Secondly, it has been almost a year since the last elections, and there has been plenty of community discussion about what was good and bad about the procedure, and action has been taken on this by the community (for example, the deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page).
Thirdly, Jimbo has been deathly quiet. These are probably the most important positions in the Wikipedia community and the process deserves to be discussed openly. Yet all we've seen are some brief thoughts from Jimbo. He hasn't responded to other suggestions or to criticism of his thinking.
Come on Jimbo, sort it out! It's been almost a year since the last elections, there has been plenty of discussion from the community (including the current arbitrators) on reform of the system, but all we've heard from you is a "current line of thinking". Yes, we know you have other things to do, such as the incredibly important role of getting funding. However, the encyclopaedia project relies on its community to exist and we have to get this right. Please join in the discussion and make your thoughts clear.
Chris
On 11/28/05, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Hi all,
It's been one month since Jimbo Wales edited the Arbitration Committee elections page for this December (now just a few days away) to change the procedure, adding some brainstormed thoughts. Those thoughts are still all the information we have on the procedure, and we're almost in December.
A number of potential candidates have said they don't wish to put their name forwards if they don't know the election procedure, yet recently a member of the current Arbitration Committee said that all Wikipedians wishing to become arbitrators should put their name forwards immediately.
This is really a terrible state of affairs for a number of reasons:
Firstly, we have no idea how the new Arbitration Committee is going to become the new Arbitration Committee at all. Not even the current arbitrators say they know how it's going to be done.
Secondly, it has been almost a year since the last elections, and there has been plenty of community discussion about what was good and bad about the procedure, and action has been taken on this by the community (for example, the deletion of the endorsements/disendorsements page).
Thirdly, Jimbo has been deathly quiet. These are probably the most important positions in the Wikipedia community and the process deserves to be discussed openly. Yet all we've seen are some brief thoughts from Jimbo. He hasn't responded to other suggestions or to criticism of his thinking.
Come on Jimbo, sort it out! It's been almost a year since the last elections, there has been plenty of discussion from the community (including the current arbitrators) on reform of the system, but all we've heard from you is a "current line of thinking". Yes, we know you have other things to do, such as the incredibly important role of getting funding. However, the encyclopaedia project relies on its community to exist and we have to get this right. Please join in the discussion and make your thoughts clear.
Chris
Hmm technicaly the above could be summerised as "Jimbo Wales is dissrupting the opertation of wikipedia".
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
-- geni
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the willingness of the admins and the community in general to implement the decisions it comes up with. If we're willing to forgo the use of the formal voting software, there's nothing stopping the community from running its own ArbCom election.
-- [[User:Carnildo]]
On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the willingness of the admins and the community in general to implement the decisions it comes up with. If we're willing to forgo the use of the formal voting software, there's nothing stopping the community from running its own ArbCom election.
-- [[User:Carnildo]]
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the servers).
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the willingness of the admins and the community in general to implement the decisions it comes up with. If we're willing to forgo the use of the formal voting software, there's nothing stopping the community from running its own ArbCom election.
-- [[User:Carnildo]]
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the servers).
However servers and fundraiseing are not the concern of arbcom.
-- geni
Oh no -- it's the 'One Crown or Several?' debate all over again -- this time in the context of Wikipedia.
Stevertigo
--- geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com
wrote:
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer
is there a reason why we
could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect
arbcom whatever?
The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the
willingness of the admins
and the community in general to implement the
decisions it comes up
with. If we're willing to forgo the use of the
formal voting
software, there's nothing stopping the community
from running its own
ArbCom election.
-- [[User:Carnildo]]
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as
President of the Wikimedia
Foundation. The "community" can run its own
election if it wants, but
Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds
of the foundation
and how to administer the property of the
foundation (such as the
servers).
However servers and fundraiseing are not the concern of arbcom.
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the willingness of the admins and the community in general to implement the decisions it comes up with. If we're willing to forgo the use of the formal voting software, there's nothing stopping the community from running its own ArbCom election.
-- [[User:Carnildo]]
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the servers).
Only in a legalistic sense. The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
-Mark
On 11/28/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the servers).
Only in a legalistic sense. The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
-Mark
And the community would be completely useless without the servers. Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached. The community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support of the community.
Anthony
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
And the community would be completely useless without the servers. Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached. The community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support of the community.
We need consensus? Let's hold a two-week, site-wide vote with Concorcet (sp?) voting. And it's going to be binding.
-- Sam
On 11/28/05, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
We need consensus? Let's hold a two-week, site-wide vote with Concorcet (sp?) voting. And it's going to be binding.
[[m:Voting is evil]]
Kelly
On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
[[m:Voting is evil]]
Kelly
The alturnatives are worse-Churchill
The voteing softwear avoids a lot of the normal downsides of voteing by not revealing who has voted for what. There is also the issue that with hundreds of people wanting to have a say it is the only real way to gage final opinion. -- geni
On 11/28/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
[[m:Voting is evil]]
Kelly
The alturnatives are worse-Churchill
The voteing softwear avoids a lot of the normal downsides of voteing by not revealing who has voted for what. There is also the issue that with hundreds of people wanting to have a say it is the only real way to gage final opinion.
I think Kelly's point loses a lot when taken out of context:
On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/05, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
We need consensus? Let's hold a two-week, site-wide vote with Concorcet (sp?) voting. And it's going to be binding.
[[m:Voting is evil]]
Kelly
and my email was in response to
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
And the community would be completely useless without the servers. Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached. The community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support of the community.
So you appear to be arguing under a misconception. Kelly may think voting for ArbCom members is evil. However, she didn't say so, so don't put words in her mouth.
-- Sam
--- Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
[[m:Voting is evil]]
Only to the aristocratic minded.
Stevertigo
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 11/28/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the servers).
Only in a legalistic sense. The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
-Mark
And the community would be completely useless without the servers. Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached. The community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support of the community.
Anthony
For the record, there is also a french arbcom, and its organisation has been entirely set up by the french community. All members have been 100% elected by the editorship.
ant
Anthere wrote:
For the record, there is also a french arbcom, and its organisation has been entirely set up by the french community. All members have been 100% elected by the editorship.
And there is, in German Wikipedia, no arbcom at all. Bans are voted upon directly.
There is no simple right way to do this, and the history and processes of each community are going to vary slightly for a number of perfectly valid reasons.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
For the record, there is also a french arbcom, and its organisation has been entirely set up by the french community. All members have been 100% elected by the editorship.
And there is, in German Wikipedia, no arbcom at all. Bans are voted upon directly.
There is no simple right way to do this, and the history and processes of each community are going to vary slightly for a number of perfectly valid reasons.
--Jimbo
Fully agree. There are even other communities where such decisions are rather left in the hand of the adminship collective.
Methods used here might appear strange there, but if they work... that is good :-)
Delirium wrote:
Only in a legalistic sense. The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
Exactly. And I consider my leadership of the community to be a more or less entirely separate matter from any legal arrangements of any kind. For example, I would imagine that if the foundation were to fall prey to some extremely unjust lawsuit or political action, I could successfully lead the community to another place under another name.
Leadership of a volunteer community doesn't come from power, it comes from having the cautious wisdom to lead the community where it wants to go. I am not perfect, but I try.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Only in a legalistic sense. The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
Exactly. And I consider my leadership of the community to be a more or less entirely separate matter from any legal arrangements of any kind. For example, I would imagine that if the foundation were to fall prey to some extremely unjust lawsuit or political action, I could successfully lead the community to another place under another name.
Moses leading his people out of Egypt! :-)
Leadership of a volunteer community doesn't come from power, it comes from having the cautious wisdom to lead the community where it wants to go.
Even when it doesn't know where it wants to go.
I am not perfect,
That's disappointing.
but I try.
There's still light at the end of that 100 year long tunnel.
Ec
geni wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
You could try, but generally speaking we operate under a longstanding set of carefully grown and slowly changing conventions. At least to date, my method of listening very carefully and working very hard to try to bring together a very broad consensus about a way forward means that my special role in the 'constitutional framework' of Wikipedia has proven to be more often useful than not, and of course I intend to do my best to continue to the best of my abilities with good faith and concern for all.
--Jimbo
On 11/29/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
You could try, but generally speaking we operate under a longstanding set of carefully grown and slowly changing conventions. At least to date, my method of listening very carefully and working very hard to try to bring together a very broad consensus about a way forward means that my special role in the 'constitutional framework' of Wikipedia has proven to be more often useful than not, and of course I intend to do my best to continue to the best of my abilities with good faith and concern for all.
--Jimbo
Disscussion of changes to election procedures were held at [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Proposed modifications to rules]]. In the spirit of slow change those were started in august. you now appeart to be trying to rush thing through in about 48 hours. If you want to refore the system why can't you wait for next years elections like everyone else?
-- geni
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
geni wrote:
Disscussion of changes to election procedures were held at [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Proposed modifications to rules]]. In the spirit of slow change those were started in august.
Curious. I was under the impression that those were essentially a joke. The last time I looked, not one of the proposals wasn't (a) already discussed at length and, by consensus, dismissed, and (b) made in any sort of constructive way - most of them were proposed changes on what the Committee was, rather than how to help it do its job effectively, and there was no differentiation between changes to the voting system and changes to the system being voted upon.
I do note, looking at it now, that on both these points the discussions seem to have improved to an extent, but it's disheartening in the extreme to see that no-one has attempted to refactor the page for usefulness (for example, proposals 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, and 11, at the very least, seem to have been rejected by most participants, yet they remain on the page, just the same as all the others).
We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in the past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must point out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness of a set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.
Yours, - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com
On Nov 29, 2005, at 9:31 PM, James D. Forrester wrote:
We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in the past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must point out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness of a set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.
In practice? Probably not.
-Phil
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Snowspinner wrote:
On Nov 29, 2005, at 9:31 PM, James D. Forrester wrote:
We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in the past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must point out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness of a set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.
In practice? Probably not.
Ha. Well, even so, I would like to apologise for that rant of mine. It was foolish of me to post it; I would like to blame it on being both very tired and greatly distressed by the sudden rise in people who are interested in the rather tricky matter of how to chose the appointments to the Committee as compared to the past year as I've been talking to people and trying to find someone, anyone who actually cares, but that would be ducking the blame, and I wouldn't want to do that.
I'm sorry, especially to anyone who might have felt that I was attacking them. That was not my intent, and certainly is not my motive in general.
Yours sincerely, - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com
Jimbo recently asked those on the arbitration mailing list (current and former arbitrators) to give him feedback regarding the listed candidates. This was done. If someone wants to be considered they should probably list themselves and also contact an arbitrator and ask that their availability be forwarded to the list.
Jimbo will probably appoint a list which will have to be confirmed by the community, probably with a vote of more than 50% approval for each candidate.
Fred
On Nov 28, 2005, at 11:45 AM, Chris Jenkinson wrote:
Hi all,
It's been one month since Jimbo Wales edited the Arbitration Committee elections page for this December (now just a few days away) to change the procedure, adding some brainstormed thoughts. Those thoughts are still all the information we have on the procedure, and we're almost in December.
A number of potential candidates have said they don't wish to put their name forwards if they don't know the election procedure, yet recently a member of the current Arbitration Committee said that all Wikipedians wishing to become arbitrators should put their name forwards immediately.
This is really a terrible state of affairs for a number of reasons:
Firstly, we have no idea how the new Arbitration Committee is going to become the new Arbitration Committee at all. Not even the current arbitrators say they know how it's going to be done.
Secondly, it has been almost a year since the last elections, and there has been plenty of community discussion about what was good and bad about the procedure, and action has been taken on this by the community (for example, the deletion of the endorsements/ disendorsements page).
Thirdly, Jimbo has been deathly quiet. These are probably the most important positions in the Wikipedia community and the process deserves to be discussed openly. Yet all we've seen are some brief thoughts from Jimbo. He hasn't responded to other suggestions or to criticism of his thinking.
Come on Jimbo, sort it out! It's been almost a year since the last elections, there has been plenty of discussion from the community (including the current arbitrators) on reform of the system, but all we've heard from you is a "current line of thinking". Yes, we know you have other things to do, such as the incredibly important role of getting funding. However, the encyclopaedia project relies on its community to exist and we have to get this right. Please join in the discussion and make your thoughts clear.
Chris _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
To sum up: I guess we can now delete WP:TINC
Stevertigo
--- Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Jimbo recently asked those on the arbitration mailing list (current and former arbitrators) to give him feedback regarding the listed candidates. This was done. If someone wants to be considered they should probably list themselves and also contact an arbitrator and ask that their availability be forwarded to the list.
Jimbo will probably appoint a list which will have to be confirmed by the community, probably with a vote of more than 50% approval for each candidate.
Fred
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