[Wikimedia-l] Attention needed for Croatian Wikipedia issue

[Dalibor Bosits]

Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,

The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the
pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of
Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia
community in recent months.

For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language
Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of
members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings
difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has
been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator
privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules.
Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of
the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those
who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the
three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current
issues regarding the project.

[2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose
privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported
for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative
tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting
process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3].
After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed
their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their
opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and
sitenotice.

[4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and
privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are
members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a
process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering
opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use
orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation
of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough
votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to
disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of
his colleagues.
The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to
vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on
the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the
process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of
the community would be respected.

For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The
administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of
the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are
harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a
general rule they contain little niceties.

If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not
immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project.
As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their
capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to
resolve the problems without your assistance.

And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it
has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal
with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on
Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required
strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would
spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of
encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future.
Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated
problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the
administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain
articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall
soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be
attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear
that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped,
and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as
reflective of the entire Wiki project’s quality.

Please, lend aid any way you can

Dalibor Bosits

[1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87
[2]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_ukidanje_ovlasti/SpeedyGonsales,_Kubura_i_Zeljko&oldid=4190612
[3]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_ukidanje_ovlasti/SpeedyGonsales,_Kubura_i_Zeljko&oldid=4190722(SpeedyGonsales
has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop
the voting)
[4]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administratora