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2010-10-25

Mike Godwin leaves the Foundation, ArbCom election announced

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By Resident Mario, Skomorokh and Tony1

General counsel Mike Godwin leaves the Wikimedia Foundation

Mike Godwin, July 2010.

On October 19, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner announced that Mike Godwin, long standing general counsel to Wikimedia, would be leaving the Foundation on October 22. Gardner described Godwin's departure as a "confidential personnel issue" and said that "we want to handle this kind of thing with respect for people’s privacy and dignity, and we are hopeful we can do that in this instance," stressing that his departure is neither "because of a change in direction or policy, related to our legal context" nor "over a point of principle" nor "because he did something egregious" ("The Wikimedia Foundation believes Mike has always acted in what he believes to be the Wikimedia Foundation's best interests").

Mike Godwin was hired on July 3, 2007, less than a week after Sue Gardner (see Signpost coverage). Before working for the Foundation, he had 17 years of experience as a technology and free speech lawyer, some of which resulted in his 1998 book Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age. He is also credited with the invention of "Godwin's law," a whimsical adage on Internet discourse, which states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." He has edited Wikipedia as User:MGodwin.

The General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation is in charge of the day-to-day legal issues within Wikipedia. During his time on the Foundation staff, Mike Godwin had been involved in several important legal issues, including the introduction of employee background checks after the case of former COO Carolyn Doran, the 2008 privacy and data retention policy updates, the 2008/2009 license migration and the August 2010 FBI seal issues. While the Foundation has chosen not to reveal the details of his severance package, Sue Gardner did say that he will remain available to Wikimedia for several months longer. The Foundation is currently seeking for a replacement for Godwin through its employment agency m|Oppenheim, and is expecting to fill the position by January. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed by senior WMF staff. In the interim, an outside counselor will fulfill the Foundation's day-to-day needs. In the announcement's Q&A (described as "cryptic" by law blogger Rober Ambrogi), Sue Gardner said about Godwin's future prospects that


Among the Wikimedians commenting on Godwin's departure was Board member Kat Walsh (User:Mindspillage), who thanked him for his work noting that

Ten ArbCom seats up for grabs

The official Arbitration Committee logo, which has been used since the start of 2010
Preparations are under way for the eighth election of the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). By tradition, the elections are run by the community without the involvement of the Committee itself. Provisional election pages have been set up based on the model of the 2009 election, which was conducted using the SecurePoll secret ballot system. There will be a 10-day nomination period (14–23 November), followed by two "fallow" days for the completion of technical tasks; the 10-day voting period (26 November – 6 December). If the SecurePoll system is adopted, the vote will then be audited by independent scrutineers and announced on the election page, as for last year. Jimmy Wales is aware of the schedule and has confirmed his availability to formally announce the appointments after the audit. A large community RfC in 2009 established the Committee's numbers as 18, with a maximum two-year term for incoming arbitrators. This time, there are 10 seats to fill, with terms starting on 1 January 2011.

Until the call for nominations starts on 14 November, the parameters of the election are open to community feedback. There is a draft set of nine questions for all candidates (discussion here); voters will also be able to ask a unique question of each individual candidate on the public pages, and any number of questions on candidates' user talk pages. Editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators.

The Arbitration Committee is a critical part of the English Wikipedia; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing for election.

Briefly

  • Mailing list dispute: Heated arguments have erupted on the Foundation-l mailing list last week over the blocking of Greg Kohs, owner of MyWikiBiz (who had been previously discussed and blocked on Wikipedia (The Signpost article); discussions regarding him spilled over to an IRC meeting last week) and moderation of Peter Damian (who has been banned from Wikipedia for insistent disruption and sockpuppetry), which has been summarized here. Editors have been arguing over whether or not the actions were "just," and in particular over how blocking the editors deprives them of their voice and self-preservation in the matter.
  • RecentChangesCamp: RecentChangesCamp 2011 has been announced. RecentChangesCamp is set to have two venues: the University of Canberra in Australia, returning there from this year's event, and Boston, Massachusetts. The "unmeeting" is meant for "discussing the past, present, and future of the technology and collaborative method that is wiki", and has taken place every year since 2006. RCC is an open space event, with no agenda, so visitors participate in ad-hoc discussions and make up their own schedule at the meeting. The Canberra event, taking place 28–30 January 2011, will be the first full-sized three-day RCC meeting outside of the US or Canada to date.
  • New wiki news: Four new wikis, the Banjar Wikipedia, Hill Mari Wikipedia, Komi-Permyak Wikipedia, and Persian Wikinews, have been approved and founded. In related news, a possible new project, "WikiFix," has been proposed.
  • New Wikimedia research: Diederik van Liere, the research consultant recently hired by the WMF, has "posted a wiki [sic]" on the Strategy wiki about a new "Editor trends study", which is aimed at a better understanding of developments in the number of active and very active Wikipedians. In related news, meta:Research/Projects was recently announced "as a new canonical tracking page for [Wikimedia-related] research projects that are either currently underway, or that have been recently completed."
  • Europeana conference: Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) has blogged about his opening keynote at the Open Culture Conference held earlier this month in Amsterdam by Europeana, an EU project. He speculated that "Europeana will become possibly the most important force in Europe for advocating for a free-culture future" and described several areas of possible collaborations between Europeana and Wikimedia projects, which were discussed during his two-week invited stay at the institution.

This week in history

2010-10-25

Good faith vs. bad faith, climate change, court citations, weirdest medieval fact, brief news

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By Lumos3 and Tilman Bayer

Good faith vs. bad faith debated

Last week, an online editorial in The Atlantic asked "In rancorous times, can Wikipedia show us how to all get along?" (also featured on Slashdot). Based on Joseph Reagle's new book "Good faith collaboration: the culture of Wikipedia" (cf. Signpost review and Reagle's response) and his observation that the founders of Wikipedia had tried to avoid the problems of USENET culture, it mused that "obviously, Wikipedia has a slightly smaller mission than world peace, but perhaps some of the lessons about good faith the site teaches us can be applied to other realms.... Maybe this period of extra nasty divisiveness in politics will push us out of the USENET phase and into a productive period of Wikipedian civility." The Atlantic article was written on the occasion of a talk by Reagle at Harvard University's Berkman Center (video and audio recordings and slides).

Like the book, the presentation featured several quotes from Raul's laws and Wikipedia:WikiSpeak. Opening the discussion after the talk, Charles Nesson asked Reagle about his reaction to the (thus far only) customer review of the book on Amazon.com, by indefinitely blocked Wikipedian User:Thekohser (owner of MyWikiBiz), who admitted not having read it beyond the freely available first chapter, but nevertheless recommended against buying because "the entire work regurgitates the tired old public relations pablum that the Wikipedia organization sputters forth on the Internet and on the increasingly uncritical media". Nesson called this a "bullying tactic" and an example of bad faith that stood in contrast to the good faith culture of Wikipedia postulated by the book. In response to a question by Clay Shirky, Reagle mentioned the recently concluded Climate change arbitration case. He answered a question from User:SB Johnny (relayed by indefinitely blocked User:Moulton) about how communities like Wikimedia projects could overcome a "founder effect" with regard to Jimmy Wales. On October 21, Reagle gave another presentation about the book in the form of a webcast on Red Hat's site Opensource.com (recap and slides).

Global warming skeptics react to Arbcom decision

Besides being mentioned by Reagle, the Arbcom decision regarding the climate change "battlefield" (see last week's Signpost coverage) generated coverage in blogs opposing the mainstream scientific view on global warming, and news media from the North American political right. Most of them commented favorably on ArbCom's sanctions against User:William M. Connolley (William Connolley), whose earlier conflicts as a scientist with global warmings skeptics had been highlighted in Nature, The New Yorker and Journal of Science Communication as an example of the problems that experts can face when contributing to Wikipedia (see Signpost coverage: "Role of experts on Wikipedia and Citizendium examined"). A comment in the Wall Street Journal ("WikiPropaganda – Wikipedia bars a global warming censor from editing its pages", paywalled) said that "last week Wikipedia acknowledged it had been hijacked by global warming alarmists who squelched dissenting science ... It is censorship, and Wikipedia deserves credit for finally, if belatedly, stopping it." The Canadian global warming skeptic Lawrence Solomon, who had been criticizing Wikipedia's climate coverage and attacking Connolley in several earlier comments published in the National Post, likewise showed satisfaction with ArbCom's ruling ("Global warming propagandist slapped down"): "William Connolley, arguably the world’s most influential global warming advocate after Al Gore, has lost his bully pulpit." Connolley retorted, pointing out factual inaccuracies in Solomon's article. Bloggers Anthony Watts[1] and Luboš Motl[2] appeared to welcome the ArbCom decision as an opportunity for global warming skeptics to re-engage in the topic on Wikipedia, although the latter expressed disappointment that his first attempts to do so were stopped by two admins whom he suspected to be sockpuppets of Connolley.

But Connolley was only one of many users topic-banned from climate-change articles, several of whom had been engaged on the other side of the "battlefield" to advocate a global warming skeptic viewpoint. On his "The Wikipedian" blog, William Beutler (User:WWB) discussed the focus on Connolley in the coverage, noting that "he is among the most carefully-scrutinized Wikipedia editors – the discussion page associated with his account is the 11th-most 'watchlisted' Talk page outside of a couple technical pages and those belonging to Wikipedia’s best-known contributors."

Indian Supreme Court and US court base judgments on information from Wikipedia

The Supreme Court of India has cited information taken from the Wikipedia article Common Law Marriage as the basis for a judgment. The ruling has shocked the orthodox among the Indian judicial community. Based on the article, Justice Markandey Katju listed four conditions a couple must satisfy if they are to get the benefit of such a marriage: they must hold themselves out to society as being akin to spouses; they must be of legal age to marry; they must be otherwise qualified to enter into a legal marriage, including being unmarried; and they must have voluntarily cohabited and held themselves out to the world as being akin to spouses for a significant period of time. See "Can Wikipedia be the basis of SC ruling?" in The Times of India and "Government counsel takes exception to use of word ‘keep' in judgment" in The Hindu.

In similar news from the US, a column in the The Huffington Post by Josh Sugarmann, "Activist judge rules against Wisconsin's CCW ban, cites Wikipedia, ignores facts", criticized a decision of a Wisconsin Circuit Court that overturned the state's ban on carrying concealed handguns in public, for citing the Wikipedia pages List of fatal cougar attacks in North America and List of fatal bear attacks in North America as evidence for the necessity of guns for "the outdoors person".

The two decisions add to a long list of uses of Wikipedia as a court source. According to a database search conducted by Legally India ("'Offensive' SC judgment cites Wikipedia to define legal term"), Wikipedia "has been cited as a source at least 63 times by Indian courts".

The "Nábrókarstafur" or "necropants" symbol

"Necropants" win "weirdest medieval fact on Wikipedia" contest

As reported in the Signpost, the blog "Got Medieval" recently announced a humorous contest to find "the weirdest claim about the Middle Ages on Wikipedia", with both true and false statements eligible, selected by a jury of bloggers and rewarded with a $75 gift certificate to Costumes, Inc. The winning statement, announced last week, comes from the article about Icelandic magical staves (rune-like symbols), explaining one such symbol, the "Nábrókarstafur", as "Necropants, a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead man that are capable of producing an endless supply of money". It is sourced from galdrasyning.is, which describes itself as the website of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, whose extended description of the necropants adds the caution that one has to get permission to use the man's skin before his death in order for the magic to work, and further explains that "a coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper" to activate the garment's revenue-generating functionality.

Briefly

2010-10-25

Nightmare on Wiki Street: WikiProject Horror

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By Mabeenot


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein
Edgar Allan Poe liked to write tales of the macabre
The Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho

This week, we took a look at a spooky project that dates back to 2006. WikiProject Horror covers novels, films, and other media that fit in the horror genre. As a result, many of the project's articles also fall into the scope of WikiProject Novels, WikiProject Films, WikiProject Television, WikiProject Video games, WikiProject Media franchises, and WikiProject Biography. Activity at WikiProject Horror has waxed and waned in the past year, although members have continued to produce featured and good content at a steady rate. The project is currently home to 27 featured articles, 3 A-class articles, and 68 good articles. Members are currently working on one featured article nominee (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and four good article candidates. The project maintains a portal, a cleanup listing, watchlist, and a task force covering the Saw franchise.

We interviewed four active members for this week's article. Bignole is a fan of slasher films from the 80s and 90s. He can appreciate "more intellectual" films like The Ugly, but he also enjoys "watching stupid teenagers run around and get their heads chopped off." TaerkastUA (The Taerkasten) is also a fan of horror films dating back to "one of the greatest and most controversial horror films of all time, the legendary cult classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, whose sheer influence cannot be emphasized strongly enough." Kaguya-chan grew up on "far too much 19th-century horror literature and Castlevania for my own good." Her favorite survival-horror video game is Silent Hill 2, prompting her to ask "is there anything scarier than Pyramid Head?" Andrzejbanas began working on Wikipedia in 2006 and found his calling adding infoboxes and theatrical posters to film articles. He became interested in horror and other pulp genres because "they usually have interesting posters." His favorite horror film is Night of the Demon which "has all the best (and worst) features of pre-60s horror films."

Have you contributed to any of the project's 27 featured articles or 71 good and A-class articles? Are you currently working on bringing any articles up to FA or GA status? Has there been a push to create articles to run in Did you know in time for Halloween?

Bignole: I am the primary contributor to many horror-related articles. I rewrote the Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Friday the 13th franchise, Halloween franchise articles, getting Jason to FA status and the rest to at least GA status. I have also done significant work for the Rob Zombie Halloween articles, along with the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street remake articles. I am in the process, when my real life slows down from time to time, of rewriting the original Friday the 13th articles and bringing up them up the same condition as my other GA and FA articles.
The Taerkasten: Since May/June 2008, I have been working to bring The Texas Chain Saw Massacre up to FA standard, it went through 3 prior failed FACs and is now at FAC once again, in the hope of becoming one of the best horror articles around. Once that is achieved, I will probably be aiming to bring the rest of the Chainsaw films up to scratch.
Kaguya-chan: I have contributed to five of the project's good articles. Currently, I'm working on bringing Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: Rondo of Blood up to GA status and Pyramid Head up to A-class status and eventually FA status.
Andrzejbanas: My first good article was the horror film Eyes Without a Face. Since then I've made a total of four horror related articles into GAs. I've made the suggestion in the project to try and push some horror related articles and I've got the article for Death Bell 2 on there it seems!

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is currently a featured article candidate and three articles (Inseminoid, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 film), and Anandabhadram) are good article candidates. Have you been following these FA and GA nominations? Do members of the project help tweak an article that is going through the FA or GA process?

Bignole: I have been following the Texas Chain Saw Massacre FAC, and have contributed to the discussion on improvements which eventually led to my support of the article for FA status. I am keeping an eye on the Inseminoid article's GAC, while I personally nominated the Nightmare remake article for GA status. Thus, I'm hoping others will eventually take a look at it and tell me what they think needs improvement. That said, it is not uncommon for any editor of a WikiProject to come in and help tweak or restructure articles when they are under review. I think when it comes to the Horror WikiProject, you will typically find the same few editors scrambling about to help an article achieve Wiki-greatness.
Andrzejbanas: I've been adding these articles to our GA noms page on WP:HORROR. I'm trying to bring more attention to these nominations to our members as I did with the nomination for Saw VI. I think little by little members are getting more into making sure these nominations are up to snuff.

What are some of the difficulties associated with keeping a project active? Do you have any plans to build membership at WikiProject Horror?

Bignole: The problem with keeping a project active is based primarily on how many members you have that are still editing. Many of the WikiProject Horror members no longer edit on Wikipedia, or simply do not edit for extended periods of time. Horror is a very special field, and one not as many people have a taste for. Thus, something as broad as "Film" is easier to keep active because it covers so many different forms and genres and thus attracts a more diverse field of editors who have an interest in those topics. As much as horror extends beyond simply horror film (e.g., books, games, etc.), the reality is that the primary coverage this project has provided. It's the area that garners the most attention, as I said before, because film is a very popular medium. Just, finding active editors interested specifically in the horror aspect of any medium can sometimes be difficult. At one time the project has had upwards of 200 members, but even quite a few of the ones currently listed as "Active" have not truly been active editing any article for over a year. So, staying active in general is probably one of the biggest difficulties to keeping this project active. Though, like any great horror villain, this project seems to refuse to die and drags itself out of the mud every so often for a few more scares.
Andrzejbanas: The community needs a bit of a boost to keep it going. Currently I'm trying to make the talk page more active to boost communication and interest in the project. There are a lot of people on wikipedia who do focus mostly on horror related topics but are not on the project.

WikiProject Horror is home to the Saw Task Force and was once home to a newsletter and a collaboration of the month. Do you foresee these elements of the project coming back to life if more members join the project? Were they worthwhile endeavors when the project was more active?

Bignole: These elements were worthwhile, but it would take a serious amount of life to be enfused into this project to bring them back.
The Taerkasten: I agree with Bignole, it would take a great amount of effort to revive those, but it would be great for them to be brought back.

Has the project formed ties with any other projects? Are there projects which significantly overlap WikiProject Horror?

Bignole: I think the WikiProject Films is probably the biggest overlapper for this project. We do have a few members in this project who came over because they were members of WikiProject Films and they had an interest in working on horror films for our project.
Andrzejbanas: We mostly overlap with WikiProject Films as Bignole mentioned, but I'd like to promote that our last three articles that passed for their Good Article Review were more related to WikiProject Video games.

How can a new member help today?

Bignole: The best thing any new member can do today is look over any active FA or GA candidacies and support those articles in their growth. Because horror is such a specialized interest, it can often get the cold shoulder when it comes to community reviews as many editors have no interest in reading about horror topics. They do not enjoy the films or the novels, and thus do not have an interest in reviewing such articles. So, they can sometimes sit in the GA nomination pages for months, or have their FAC closed prematuraly because there were not enough editors commenting on the discussion page.
Andrzejbanas: Agreed with Bignole. I've found pages on other topics that complain that there is not enough information about a certain film "but there's a ton of information about Halloween". More people in the project and more discussion on the talk page would make everything work much better in the project.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Bignole: PLEASE COME REVIEW THE HORROR ARTICLES UP FOR "GA" AND "FA" STATUS!!!
Kaguya-chan: Absolutely agree with Bignole. There are simply not enough reviewers at GAN or FAN, so please stop by—read though and understand the criteria first, please—and review an article. You'll make somebody's day just by reviewing, regardless of your decision on the article. Your input is wanted!
Andrzejbanas: I encourage any interested fan of horror fiction to join this project. We are always looking for new members and are glad to help with anyone who needs assistance on any horror article.


Next week, we'll try to defend against a power play. Until your time in the penalty box expires, entertain yourself with some old reports from the archive.

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2010-10-25

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
Featured picture Choice of the week: the first page of the autograph manuscript of Chopin's well-known Polonaise in A flat for piano (1842). Scholars can work back from such evidence as the strike-throughs, the handwriting, how the ink dried, and the spacing of the chords and bar-lines, to reveal aspects of how the composer conceived and penned the music. The "shadow" of an adjacent page pressed against this one can be seen.
Polonaise No.6 in A-flat Major, Op. 53
A live concert performance 11 months ago by the Georgian pianist, Giorgi Latsabidze (7 m, 10 s)
Problems playing this file? See media help.

New administrator

The Signpost welcomes Vejvančický (nom) as our newest admin. Vejvančický, from the Czech Republic, has more than 16,000 edits and two and a half years' experience in a wide range of areas, including new-page patrolling, and our currently backlogged speedy deletion and AfD processes. He has an impressive list of mostly Czech-related pages he is working towards creating at the English Wikipedia.

This photograph of Sid Barnes at the age of 16 is from featured article Choice of the week, Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948
Six articles were promoted to featured status:
  • "No Rest for the Wicked" (Supernatural) (nom), the third-season finale of the television series Supernatural. (nominated by Ophois).
  • Jersey Act (nom), an attempt by the English thoroughbred-breeding establishment to ensure the "purity" of their breed. However, it never really worked as they intended (Ealdgyth and Malleus Fatuorum).
  • George Macaulay (nom), a Yorkshire cricketer in the 1920s and 1930s who managed to offend important people and never fitted with the cricket establishment because of his aggression and hostility (Sarastro1)
  • Nguyen Chanh Thi (nom), a South Vietnamese general who tried and failed to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem in 1960, and escaped to Cambodia. He was responsible for three months of riots and mutiny in South Vietnam (YellowMonkey).
  • Francis Tresham (nom), who, according to nominator Parrot of Doom, is considered by many to be "the dirty little sneak who wrote the Monteagle letter, a piece of evidence which allowed the government to find Guy Fawkes sitting in the dark, waiting to light the fuse which would have blown up the House of Lords, and killed the king and all those with him."
  • Andrew Johnston (singer) (nom), which nominator J Milburn previously nominated for deletion. He asks whether this is the first such victory rescued from the jaws.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Jimfbleak to select the best newly promoted article from this week's offerings, together with the four promotions last week.


From FL Choice of the week: Competitors ready themselves for the Gordon Bennett Cup 2007 in Belgium

Ten lists were promoted:

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator AngChenrui for his choice of the best:



New featured picture mentioned by the judge: PET is a nuclear medicine imaging technique that produces a 3D image of functional processes in the body. But is the body turning clockwise or anticlockwise? Can you switch your perception from one to the other?
Five images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

Choice of the week. Nergaal, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost: "A good variety of pictures was promoted to featured status this week, but in the end, the choice is a pretty obvious one. It is rare that the project receives a donation of a high-quality artefact such as a copy of the original 1842 manuscript of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat, Op. 53, for solo piano. It is a high-quality scan of the score of one of the most popular compositions by Chopin. The composer's own autograph is visible in the top right corner of the page. Notable mentions are well deserved by other two promotions: the colorful animated projection of a whole-body PET scan, as well as another historic image, taken by Voyager in 1986 of the seventh planet."


New featured picture: the marine creature, the West Indian Sea Egg


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2010-10-25

So what is being an arbitrator actually like?

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By Skomorokh and Tony1
Arbitrators Risker (top) and Kirill Lokshin at Wiki-Conference New York 2009
With the annual elections to the Arbitration Committee ("ArbCom") due to start in just over two weeks (see this week's News and notes), The Signpost interviewed three arbitrators and one former arbitrator about their experiences on the Committee and how it has evolved in the seven years since its inception.

Historical context and evolution

Having handled hundreds of cases, the Committee is one of the most public faces of the English Wikipedia. ArbCom has been examined in research on dispute resolution, and its decisions and role in Wikipedia-related controversies have been reported in the mainstream media (two notable examples from last year are a story by Noam Cohen in The New York Times, and a send-up by political satirist Stephen Colbert). In the early days of Wikipedia, the project's serious disputes were dealt with by Jimmy Wales personally, but the burden soon proved too much for one person to handle—so in December 2003, he created ArbCom to share the load. There have since been gradual but significant shifts in the Committee's relationship with both Wales and the community. At first, the status and future of the Committee were uncertain; in January 2004, Wales even declared that he reserved the right "to dissolve the whole thing if it turns out to be a disaster." But in 2005, a community referendum ratified the current Arbitration policy, and in April 2007, Wales confirmed that ArbCom can overturn any decision he makes in his traditional capacity within Wikipedia.

Arbitrator Roger Davies says the Committee's role has evolved significantly as the structures of the English Wikipedia have matured. "Until a couple of years ago, ArbCom was taking maybe four or five new cases a month, usually disputes between two or three editors. Since then, the landscape has changed a lot. The community is handling more and more of the routine stuff at noticeboards like AN/I. So these days, it's mostly intense, hard-core disputes that end up with ArbCom—the things the community isn't really set up to handle. So the cases ArbCom hears have become bigger, nastier and much more complex. Good examples are the Scientology, Climate Change, and Israeli–Palestinian disputes. One of the greatest challenges we face is the need to pore over large amounts of evidence from these types of cases to extract the essentials, while keeping up with talk page discussions. We are always looking for better ways of handling such cases, and different lessons can be learned from each of them."

Nature of the work

Kirill Lokshin says that while formal arbitration proceedings are probably the most visible element of the Committee's work, they are only the tip of the iceberg. "An ever-increasing fraction of our workload consists of 'behind the scenes' work—hearing appeals, responding to questions and complaints, investigating allegations of sockpuppetry. Managing this is less visible and glamorous than case work. Many new arbitrators come in thinking their main task is voting on proposed decisions, and are surprised by how little of that actually takes place." FloNight (arbitrator 2007–09) says, "the 24/7 nature of Wikipedia results in a constant flow of issues that need prompt attention. Behind the scene discussions are mostly related to ban appeals, and serious privacy- and harassment-related issues." Being an arbitrator also involves a considerable amount of correspondence. For Roger, "the variety of this work is challenging and engaging—each matter needs to be handled in different ways, with different degrees of diplomacy and sensitivity." One aspect of the workload arbitrators often struggle with, according to Kirill, is meeting expectations for the timely resolutions of tasks: "ArbCom has traditionally been quite bad at keeping to deadlines, self-imposed or otherwise. If there's one thing we perpetually need more of, it's arbitrators who can keep processes running and up to date."

The diverse nature of ArbCom's work benefits from the range of skills and interests among the individual arbitrators. In Kirill's opinion, "a group made up of editors with overly similar experiences would limit our ability to come up with new approaches to problems; we need members from all parts of the Wikipedia community to be successful." Risker agrees: "Far from being some sort of monolithic creature, one of ArbCom's greatest strengths is its diversity. Arbitrators' varied editing backgrounds and personalities have a significant impact on our ability to understand issues and anticipate the effects of decisions. Since the Committee's role is now more complex and its membership larger, different arbitrators tend to gravitate to specific roles. For example, this year one arbitrator has done much to coordinate the Ban Appeals Subcommittee and ensure timely responses; two arbitrators have focused on working with the checkuser and oversight teams. Probably the greatest challenge for us is to try to keep up with the information load. For a large or complex case, it's not unusual for arbitrators to review dozens of talk pages, archives and articles through their revision history; the evidence given by interested editors can often be just the starting point. Arbitrators who also track the oversight and checkuser mailing lists can easily find 100 new messages in their inboxes on any given day; it can be difficult to sort the chaff from the grain."

Rewards of the role

Despite the stress and acrimony that accompanies much of the work of ArbCom, the arbitrators find that it is not without recompense. FloNight says "the most rewarding aspect of the job was knowing that ArbCom was fairly addressing concerns that could not be resolved by the community alone. Despite the heavy criticism that ArbCom gets from parties in cases, positive remarks from the overall Community shows general support of ArbCom's work." Risker says, "One of the more rewarding aspects for me personally is when we have been able to identify that an editor or administrator is encountering significant difficulty, and defusing the situation before it has a disproportionate effect on either the project or the editor. It's far more healthy for the project as a whole to treat our volunteers with dignity and respect—particularly when they're not at their best than it is to have showcase discussions about all of their personal weaknesses."

For Roger, it's the complexity and variety that are rewarding about being an arbitrator, even though it can be stressful. There are some community debates he would like to participate in, but feels unable to because of the need to maintain the neutrality of his role. "The best part of it is where you occasionally see someone's attitude towards their own behaviour turn around during or after a case. That's when you feel you're really making a difference."

Reader comments

2010-10-25

Case closes within 1 month

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, but closed one, leaving none open.

Closed case

Stevertigo 2 (Week 4)

This case concerns accusations of wiki-hounding and disruptive editing, and was filed by Stevertigo, a Wikipedia editor since 2002. He alleged that several editors deem his editing to be "disruptive" or "in need of banning" because they "still hold the grudge that previous cases did not find in their favor regarding [Stevertigo]". He also alleged that he "largely won" an argument against two editors in relation to the Time article, and that those two editors began editing the Punishment article due to an undue interest in Stevertigo's editing rather than due to an interest in the article. The case moved to the proposed decision phase during the week, and within 48 hours, 11 out of 12 active arbitrators finished voting on the decision. The case was closed shortly thereafter.

What is the effect of the decision and what does it tell us?
  • Stevertigo is banned from Wikipedia until 24 October 2011.
    • Even if no other bans are in force, or if the ban expires, Stevertigo is not allowed to edit Wikipedia without appealing to the Committee. Upon making an appeal, he will be offered probationary conditions by the Committee which he will need to accept in order to edit Wikipedia. Should he reject the conditions, the appeal will be unsuccessful. He can make an appeal no more than once every 6 months.
  • Stevertigo is indefinitely subject to a special editing restriction – he must cite a published source for any material that he adds to any article.
    • Where he does not do so, any editor may remove the added material; removal of such material will be considered as ‘reversions of obvious vandalism’ for the purposes of revert limitations or restrictions.
    • If he cites a source that is subsequently determined not to support the material added, he may be blocked for up to a week for each violation.
  • Users who have been sanctioned for improper conduct may be subject to increasingly severe sanctions if they do not improve their conduct.
  • Articles need to comply with core policies concerning verifiability, reliable sources, and original research.

Other

Earlier in the week, the Committee made an announcement that sparked a brief controversy. The Committee confirmed that Polargeo was the subject of several investigations, and that he requested for his tools to be removed earlier this month. It also stated that "Polargeo has created and/or used at least ten alternate accounts in a manner neither consistent with Wikipedia's policies nor meeting the minimum standards expected of administrators." The Committee's decision was that Polargeo will need to make a successful request for adminship if he wishes to regain his administrator tools.

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2010-10-25

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250 and Aude

Pageview counts inflated; CentralNotice blamed

About a week ago, significantly inflated pageview counts began to be noticed in Wikimedia's official statistics (for example, see Gerard Meijssen's blog post). Was it the result of some new technology directing users to WMF sites? Or just a technical glitch? Upon further investigation it (unfortunately) proved to be the latter, the result of requests to the new "Extension:CentralNotice" fundraising banner campaign. The statistics software was logging requests to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BannerController as it would log requests to a "useful" page that should be logged, such as articles and some special pages. The current convention, it was discovered (since, as Rob Lanphier noted, it had not been documented anywhere) was that requests of the "pretty" format /wiki/ would be counted, and that requests that ought not to be logged should use the alternative format /w/index.php?title=. Discussion then centred on whether this was a sustainable format or not, with a number of alternatives proposed, but no agreement was reached on the wikitech-l mailing list.

How and when should new versions of MediaWiki be released?

As reported last week, there has been a lot of discussion about getting the MediaWiki software onto a more useful development cycle, both for WMF purposes (potentially very regular updates, but of potentially imperfect software) and for that of third parties (releases months apart but thoroughly checked for bugs). Staff developer Roan Kattouw outlined his plan for getting the development cycle back on track (wikitech-l mailing list):

This week, Rob Lanphier opened a discussion on the topic in response to "a number of calls to make the release process more predictable (or maybe just faster)". In understanding how best that could, and whether it should, be implemented, he asked first whether contributors felt "release cadence" (shipping to a specified deadline, regardless of how many features actually got released) or a feature-dominated release (shipping X, Y and Z features however long it took to develop them) was preferable. For the former, should writers of features not ready at a given date be prepared to see them cut? For the latter, how far in advanced could the list of features be reliably drawn up? And how deep is the belief that deployment to WMF sites must precede a release to third parties?

The resulting discussion was wide-ranging. Why shouldn't a new version just be released when it would be useful to release one, rather than at a specific point, some asked. Ultimately, the sentiment that garnered most support was a strong "yes" to the last question, and that the best way to implement this would be to get back to having a very fast turnaround on deploying to WMF sites (the "weekly deployments" of Roan's post, if not faster; Flickr, as Neil Kandalgaonkar pointed out, often deploys multiple times a day). "Wikipedia", wrote volunteer Aryeh Gregor, "is a great place to test new features, and we're in a uniquely good position to do so, since we wrote the code and can very quickly fix any reported bugs."

Hack-A-Ton DC

Hackers hard at work on Sunday at Hack-A-Ton DC.

Wikimedia tech staff, contractor developers, and volunteers gathered this past weekend in Tysons Corner, Virginia (in the Washington, D.C. area) for Hack-A-Ton DC. (TechBlog post) The focus was on fixing bugs and reducing the backlog of fixmes in code review, but there also was discussion of operations issues, and on moving forward in implementing some maps features. Naren Datha of Microsoft gave a demo of the WikiBhasha translation tool, and Jan Paul Posma demoed his student project, Sentence Level Editing. On Saturday evening, hackers joined DC-area Wikipedians for DC Meetup #12.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

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