Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-12-18/News and notes

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• Seven of the nine I endorsed in my guide were elected. (I didn't check anyone else's guide.) Hot Stop 06:55, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• I'm pretty sure, like the other appointed arbitrators, I'm an administrator too! AGK [•] 06:56, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Fixed it. Hot Stop 07:13, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• I'm pretty sure Risker wasn't on the Election Commission... — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 08:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Right, fixed. It's been so hard to locate the personnel list. I think it should be linked to at the top of the election page in future years. Tony (talk) 09:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• You really should not call Persian "Farsi". Most Persian language scholars would tell you that referring to it as such is wrong. RGloucester — ☎ 15:33, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• Why? Tony (talk) 03:36, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• The language's official regulatory body implores English writers to use "Persian" instead of "Farsi" because the former conveys association with historical Persia and its associated allure. Personally, I nonetheless subscribe to the view that, when appropriate, the native term (e.g., English, Deutsch, Farsi) should be preferred because a panlingual approach contributes to international accessibility.   — C M B J   10:05, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• That explains why I got a very bad reaction from a Farsi/Persian-speaker I was working with when I referred to the language as "Farsi"—but in the absence of an explanation I found it hard to assess that reaction. Tony (talk) 10:10, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• I've added a couple of links to the Mechanical Curator note, as it seemed strange not to link to the collection! Andrew Gray (talk) 17:16, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• The transfer of the Toolserver from Germany to U.S. servers is of grave concern to those who in the past might have edited articles on sensitive topics and who could now see their edit histories widely available, not only to the WMF employees and presumably now the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but also to religious police of various areas who might be in charge of enforcing the local laws against witchcraft and homosexuality, as well as to international criminals and terrorists. This has a particularly chilling effect for those who try to edit "under the radar" from inside a country where internet access is controlled by a coercive government and emails are monitored by government security services. These users are certainly not in much of a position to say anything about this new use of their personal data without compromising their safety.

For those who wish to sign the petition and do not read German, the petition has not yet been translated into English, but Google Translate gives a reasonable enough approximation. Regards, —Neotarf (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• From the article: 'Just why voting intensity should have consistently been the inverse shape of the relative numbers of voters year by year is difficult to explain.' Actually, it's pretty easy to explain. It seems logical to me that as voter turnout increases, the number of abstains should rise, because the marginal voters being added would be those who don't care so much about the candidates. That is, with a low turnout election, only those with strong feelings about the candidates participate (because they always participate), so there are few abstains. With a high turnout election, you get more votes from more casual users with weaker feelings and less knowledge about the candidates. I would imagine that you would find this phenomenon in offline elections as well. Robofish (talk) 00:24, 21 December 2013 (UTC)