Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/News and notes

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• On the one hand, the incident raises questions about the effectiveness of Wikipedia's internal mechanisms in ensuring that ArbCom members adhere to the standards of confidentiality and integrity that their roles demand. On the other hand, the suspension of Beeblebrox underscores systemic issues that resonate with many other editors' experiences (myself included) of unfair sanction by the same committee, where the rationale for the sanction seemed obscure and possibly influenced by factors not entirely rooted in community policies and guidelines. The handling of Beeblebrox's case, especially the ambiguity surrounding their alleged misconduct, mirrors these concerns regarding the fairness and clarity of ArbCom procedures. The nature of Beeblebrox's suspension, stemming from their off-wiki activities and discussions on a forum that criticizes Wikipedia, further complicates the issue by introducing potential bias or conflict of interest. The decision to suspend them could be perceived as an attempt to silence or punish a member for participating in critical discourse about the platform, raising questions about the committee's tolerance for dissent and its capacity to remain impartial. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Normchou ^💬 17:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  None of the information revealed was critical of ArbCom at least not from my read of it. I have left a criticism of this year's committee as part of a question to every candidate running from ArbCom this year and no one has come to me with any objections. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:36, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• There's at least one more resignation in the past that was at least a little similar to the Alex Shih situation, but I suppose I'm not allowed to say anything about that either. I could have resigned and kept this quiet, but I chose not to because I felt that the committee needed to either publicly proclaim a total code of absolute silence on every single detail of every email thread, or to accept that maybe there were exceptions to this code of silence. And here we are. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 20:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

• Beebs has posted a lengthy timeline of this pathetic "issue" on Wikipediocracy, currently in the area of the site blocked from web-crawlers and accessible only to registered accounts. So register an account and read it already, don't be a baby. It makes very clear what a bunch of petty, weak, group-think-intoxicated bureaucrats have congealed on En-WP's Arbcom and how utterly baseless their argument against him is. Why anyone would reward members of this crew with re-election, such as current candidates Wugapodes and Cabayi, boggles my mind. Carrite (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Carrite Good to see we're getting into borderline-uncivil accusations of bad faith right off the bat. Good for you. Cremastra (talk) 20:09, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy to help. Thanks for your passive-aggressive contribution to the workplace. Carrite (talk) 02:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. This reminded me of Cato. Anyway,

  Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

  — Isaiah 5:14

  ---Lemonaka‎ 11:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• It seems to me that when you have a 11-0 vote against you, (1) you're seriously in the wrong; or (2) the Arbcom is a totalitarian organization. I don't see much middle ground between those two explanations. Smallchief (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Commenting on something other than Beeblebrox... Is Kathy Collins' appointment the first time someone from academia has been appointed to the Board of Trustees? Might it indicate the beginnings of a shift from an emphasis on technology to one on content? (I know nothing about Collins beyond what's in the article linked.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  She doesn't seem to have ever been a professor - her positions in academia have all been "VP for Finance" and she previously worked for the United States Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget. Not that any of that is "bad" experience, just not the sort that's going to lend itself to a focus on content. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!} 12:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  Oh well. One can always hope that someone outside of the STEM environment might be appointed to the Foundation Board, thus giving the humanities some influence on the projects. -- llywrch (talk) 22:23, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

• What Smallchief said. If there were serious doubt here, it wouldn't have been 11-0. ArbCom has enough problems agreeing with each other on other issues, but this one got them all in agreement, which in itself is noteworthy on such a controversial matter. --Elonka 00:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)