Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-03/News and notes

News and notes

Mediation changes

In the wake of criticism that the Mediation Committee was falling behind on their caseload, a wave of sweeping changes were made. Two new mediators, Redwolf24 and Flcelloguy, were admitted to the committee; in addition, there are also five new applicants wishing to join the committee. Redwolf24 also took over as temporary committee chair, replacing MacGyverMagic, who has temporarily become inactive due to scheduling problems. The requests for mediation page's backlog has now cleared, and new cases are being actively assigned and mediated. Redwolf24 commented that the Mediation Committee hopes to take work off both the mediation cabal, which has been mediationing in a unique manner while the MedCom was bogged down, and the arbitration committee, which is at present overwhelmed with cases. Since the reorganization of RFM, seven cases have been assigned, one to each active mediator.

In addition, the chair contacted each inactive mediator, inquiring if the mediator would be returning anytime soon. Redwolf24 was also criticized for assigning all the active mediators a case before taking on a case himself; however, Redwolf24 states that he mediated a case on IRC. Improv is doing an email mediation, and the other disputants have chosen to do their mediations publicly. All the cases are moving forward without problems at this time.

Wikiversity vote continues

The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, started a vote on 15 September to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will last until 1 November. Currently, the vote is about 76% in favor of the project (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period).