...or meritocracy, too, or any other form of spontaneous self-organizing
structure, when the number of contributing members involved doesn't really
exceed the necessary threshold imposed by the premises of non-ad hominem
reasoning. You most likely end up in a situation similar to that of my
request for adminship on Croatian Wiktionary, where users who cumulatively
had <50 edits in the main namespace prior to the moment of my request (made
5 days ago) cast all of a sudden opposing votes [1], which is for each of
them the very first sign of activity in that project after months and months
of absence [2]. The only two users who are real and active contributors with
no personal bias are supportive of my request.
I've created an account on Croatian wiktionary in April, when I started
adding declensions and meanings for 100 or so nouns. Recently I started
contributing on English wiktionary too [3], and returned to Croatian
Wiktionary about a week ago, after having been acquainted with en.wikt's
policies on article layout, non-manual categorization and other template
tricks (context labels!), eager to backpropagate them to hr.wikt.
Facts, such as that at the moment of my return there hasn't been a single
declension/inflection template made for any language (I made all of them,
even the basic ones like hr-noun, and have been making a few new ones every
day since), or that the only currently "active" administrator made the last
edit 1.5 months ago [4], or that the sitenotice message [5] was (and still
is!) set to Wikimedia Board of Trustees election (which ended months ago) -
all of them speak for themselves.
Approximately 2/3 of currently present lexemes need either quick deletion,
or relocation to other projects (Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikipedia), as they
surely don't belong to wiktionary. The category of articles awaiting
administrator's deletion [6] is growing bigger each day, as there is noone
to clean it up.
Moreover, I also invited two friends of mine to accompany me in that brave
conquest of the forsaken project [7] - those are the ones that voted
supportively; each of us has added to hr.wikt more quality content than all
other registered users altogether ever since the project started 2 years ago
(Polish user Pomarancza is the only notable exception).
The conclusion is quite straightforward: current admin voting rules (that
is, the complete lack of them!) clearly are not beneficial to the project.
They are set to validate all votes cast, regardless of valuable voters'
contributions, or personal grudges the voters might have with the requester.
Users who have shown complete disregard for wiktionary for years and let it
stagnate indefinitely (and it was stagnating prior to my arrival - there
were no quality edits for > 1 month) now are popping out of nowhere (and
some users [8] are registering for the sole purpose of this voting
occasion), all for the sake of disabling a user they label as "persona non
grata" becoming an administrator, even though it is evident that the project
is in desparate need of a leader.
I've intentionally left out "highlights" of some of /personal/ disputes that
took place in other hr.wikiprojects (I'm willing to provide them, upon
request, by non-public means), which render understandable otherwise
seemingly legitimate (yet clearly ill-motivated) opposing votes. The sheer
fact that none of the opposers mentioned any concrete reason for me being
incompetent, or unsuitable, speaks also for itself. Too bad that labeling
someone as "inopportune" can't really be an argument, can it.
What can do one confronted with such sheer manifestations of bias and
malevolence? I am urging the responsible stewards to render invalid the
votes of those having < 50 edits at the moment of my request (21:43, 20. 8.
2007.), as soon as I post my request on meta a few days from now (the
project doesn't have any bureaucrats ATM), as it is the general voting rule
on other, more civilized wiktionaries.
Please don't let all of this pass unnoticed.
Ivan Stambuk.
* Some of /personal/ disputes (for which I'm not listing the details, being
ready to provide them by non-public means) originate from other
hr.wikiprojects. The sheer fact that none of the opposers mentioned any
concrete reason for me being incompetent, or unsuitable, speaks also for
itself. Too bad that labeling someone as "inopportune" can't really be an
argument, can it.
[1] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wje
čnik:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_administratore#Ivan_.C5.A0tambuk
[2] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Donatushttp://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/MayaSimFanhttp://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/West_Brom_4everhttp://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Roberta_F.
http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Treeckohttp://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Ante_Perkovic
[3] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ivan_Štambuk
[4] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Luka_Krstulović
[5] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
[6] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kategorija:Članci_predloženi_za_brisanje
[7] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Sanja_Simathttp://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Kasandra
[8] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Pantana
Please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki.py/Wiktionary_functionality_discus… for complete information. The dicussion page on Meta is intended to provide a space for folks from every wiktionary project to discuss and decide upon the behavior and features of the interwiki links bot (RobotGMwikt); until now, there has been no such mechanism. Besides your participation, we also need folks who are able to help translate the dicussion on an ongoing basis as appropriate.
Thanks.
Ariel Glenn