Wikipedia talk:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report

Some thoughts

I unexpectedly was gone from almost all Wikipedia for almost the entire month of March. I never regained my initial enthusiasm for the WG. There are several factors for this, but the most significant for me was a complete loss of faith in the Arbitration Committee. I do not believe the current arbitrators are a competent body with the ability to affect positive change on this project. And without such a body I don't think any substantial change is possible. I won't go on about Giano, IRC, MM, etc, etc, as you've all heard it before. (Suffice it to say my opinion is significantly lower after the embarrassing SV/FM/Cla/JzG omnibus case where the ArbCom's only "remedy" has been to fire their best clerk.) Eh, I will say that it's unacceptable for the ArbCom to maintain the lie that their mailing list is confidential. I have read an in camera case that has been published off site. If the Arbitrators had integrity, it would be clearly disclaimed that the ArbCom is unable to maintain the confidence of their list, although I'm not about to get all-activist about it. Of course, and ironically, if they had that collective level of integrity the list wouldn't have leaked to begin with.

In hindsight, I think we should have perhaps attempted to run the Working Group with a publicly archived mailing list, or even on Wiki. I agree a formal coordinator would have been valuable. I don't mean to be a nihilist about this, and I apologize to those on the WG that I let down. I should have asked to be removed from the group once I reached the conclusion that--at least for now--the encyclopedia functions despite the Arbitration Committee, rather than because of them. --JayHenry (talk) 01:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Would you like to be listed as "withdrawn from group"? Or we could list you as, "Declines to endorse report"? Either way is fine. --Elonka 14:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Reminder

The purpose of this final report is for it to be delivered to the Arbitration Committee for review. I believe the initial intention was to utilise our findings in future arbitration cases, with regards to rolling out new approaches to cases that involved cultural or ethnic edit warring (in practice, that means using our plans to work on new types of remedies to pass in such cases).

Is our final report substantial enough to continue to fill that role, or has it now passed over to something of a general reflection on ethnic edit warring? Anthøny 12:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

In the "recommendations" section, there are specific suggestions for future cases, such as "authorize topic-wide discretionary sanctions". I hope that the Committee will also give careful thought to the idea of authorizing discretionary sanctions to certain articles that are in a state of chronic dispute, so that uninvolved admins can help stabilize things before the dispute has to rise to the level of an ArbCom case. --Elonka 14:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Announcement

Anyone have a preference on how exactly we announce the "final" report? My own thoughts are:

• Move this page to Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report
• Post a link to it on the WP:WORKINGGROUP page
• Announce it at the talkpage
• Post a note on the talkpage at WP:ARBCOM (message sent to the list)
• Perhaps post a couple notes on the talkpage of specific arbs who were involved with the forming of the group, such as FT2 (message sent to the list)
• Post at WP:AN, and perhaps at the ethnic/cultural noticeboard

Any other ideas? --Elonka 16:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps email to Arbcom-l? Otherwise, that seems a fairly exhaustive list, and I cannot think of anything that has been omitted. Anthøny 18:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Announce it on the Signpost? I expect at least one of the more active members might be asked/volunteer to appear on Wikipedia Weekly. -- llywrch (talk) 23:53, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, announcements posted, and I added a blurb at the Signpost tip line as well. Not sure about Wikipedia Weekly, but if someone wants to pass information along to them as well, please feel free. --Elonka 19:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Wg: sessions

If the instances under Observations of files in the wg: space are intended to be part of the final report, they should be generally accessible. If they are not going to be generally accessible (which may be just as well), the links should be moved here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Second.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Tag teams

It appears that the definition of a tag team is one of the main contributions of the workgroup. I have to say that this is a good definition, very reminiscent of the "traveling circus" discussed at User:Folantin/Userspace Folantin5. I have run into "tag teams" several times, and can think of at least two still active. Figuring out how to deal with them would be a great boon for the project. Currently, even identifying one is problematic, as if you do so, you are likely to get accused of "personal attacking/name-calling" in return... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it appears to me that the definition of a tag team is one of the least constructive contributions of the workgroup, at least as interpreted by a certain member of the workgroup. She seems to have identified certain WikiProjects as tag teams.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Piotr, a very real problem at Wikipedia.--TheNautilus (talk) 04:35, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I'd like to thank all of you who participated in this. I am active in a number of contentious areas which are subject to endless edit wars and lots of talk page nastiness, and really hope that this marks the beginning of a new way of doing things on these types of articles. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, I guess, so for now, I'm simultaneously skeptical and hopeful. But whether it works or no, your efforts are much-appreciated. IronDuke 22:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I feel too this Working group is important.

I have participated myself in IPCOOL and we worked on some difficult issues.

But I have to say I lack confidence in the sincerity of IronDuke here, who, from my point of view but I may be wrong, is part of a group of editors who at best try to attrack the sympathy of the editors who want to deal all these issues a neutral way.

WP:CIVIL is one principle important for collaboration but the real issue will still remain WP:NPOV, WP:V for content dispute resolution.

This is not a personal attack. I may be wrong and I just hope that future edits and interaction will prove I am !

Ceedjee (talk) 08:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, writing "this is not a personal attack" doesn't make it so. In fact, that's just what it is. Please refactor. Thanks. IronDuke 22:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It is sad you think that way. Consider this as a notification that some editors consider you behaviour as inappropriate. And let's move to something else. Ceedjee (talk) 06:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Stay on-topic. Take your petty squabbles elsewhere. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 15:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I wish this wasn't happening. IronDuke 15:40, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

How helpful!

Not. This doesn't really seem to mean very much, or indeed anything at all. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 15:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

What do you think would have been better? --Elonka 15:16, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It's fine as far as it goes. It just doesn't really go far enough. Nor does it provide me with much "help" in the form of concrete advice as regards what to do with nationalist conflicts. Or not even advice - we know what works, broadly speaking - I just need some help, and this report doesn't provide a way for me to get any. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 15:42, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

What else do you think that the report should have done? What "help" do you think it could have offered? Personally, I think there are several concrete things that were done. We have better training for admins on how to deal with disputes, we now have the Ethnic/Cultural conflicts noticeboard, we strongly support the concept of discretionary sanctions, and so forth. Granted, we can't wave a magic wand and "make nationalism go away", but there are clear techniques for dealing with the related problems. Or let's get more specific: When you say that you "need help", what are you referring to? Can you point me at a specific article or situation that is "stuck" and needs help? --Elonka 15:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:New admin school/Dealing with disputes actually gives out wrong advice. It sends out the message that the best administrator to deal with disruption is one who knows nothing about the topic at hand, when in fact the reverse is the case. It also conflates the roles of mediator in genuine disputes (which anyone can do, and need not be the job of an admin at all), and preventor of disruption (which is the job of an admin).

"I need help" is fairly obvious. When the 2008 South Ossetia war kicked off there was nobody but Neil, myself, and Papa November keeping things vaguely under some semblance of control, which isn't really adequate. It proved to be completely so. Thank heaven the fighting "stopped" (sort of) when it did. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 16:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and the Ethnic Wars noticeboard was the product on an on-wiki debate and was set up by...oh, me. Nothing to do with the WG at all. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 16:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

In no way was I trying to diminish your accomplishment with the noticeboard. It is A Good Thing.  :) We were planning on recommending one, but you beat us to the punch. I think I did give a goahead somewhere along the line, when an editor (Folantin I think) asked if we were going to recommend a noticeboard, and I told him that if he wanted to go ahead and create one, to do so.[1] But that was about the limit of our involvement. --Elonka 16:25, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Would like to read the full report, but, alas, cannot

I have been frequently involved in discussions on Middle Eastern subjects, and started researching on my own the dynamics of dispute generation and resolution in politically sensitive issues in wikipedia. I discovered this working group quite by chance, and would be very interested in reading the full 2008 report (including all the links to Gathered Data and Observations). However, I see I need your permission to do so. Would that be possible?

I would, of course, be interested in contributing to this WG if that is still relevant. --Ravpapa (talk) 14:03, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your question.  :) The Working Group is currently dissolved, since we had only a six-month mandate, but thanks for your offer to join. :) You might also wish to set a watch on the main page at Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars, since my guess is that if a new group forms, it will be mentioned or at least linked there.

In terms of the Middle Eastern discussions, we didn't really have one page to discuss just that topic area. Mainly we compiled a list of the related ArbCom cases, so that we could go through them and read the history of disputes. We also took a look at the cooperation board, as we reviewed "best practices" that had helped to resolve any disputes. The list of Middle Eastern pages that we reviewed was as follows:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration started January 2008
• Palestine-Israel articles January 2008
• PalestineRemembered July 2007
• Zeq-Zero0000 June 2007
• Deir Yassin massacre October 2006
• Israel-Lebanon September 2006
• Israeli apartheid September 2006
• Zeq March 2006
• Yuber October 2005
• RK 2 April 2005
• IZAK January 2005
• HistoryBuffer and Jayjig January 2005
• Alberuni January 2005
• Lance6wins November 2004
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/RK October 2004

We also had a list of "miscellaneous" cases, some of which were loosely related to Middle Eastern topics. I don't recall which ones mentioned the Middle East and which ones didn't, so here's the complete "Misc" list:

• Franco-Mongol alliance, February 2008
• Waterboarding (American) February 2008
• Dbachmann December 2007
• Allegations of apartheid October 2007
• Liancourt Rocks (Japan-Korea) October 2007
• Catalonia September 2007
• TingMing (Taiwan) June 2007
• Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram (Taiwan) July 2007
• E104421-Tajik (Perso-Turkic) June 2007
• Falun Gong May 2007
• Kven (en:Kven?) November 2006
• Ulritz (German/Dutch) November 2006
• Aucaman (Iranian) April 2006
• Stereotek (Turkish-Kurd) October 2005
• Jimmyvanthach (Vietnam)

Other pages that you may find of interest:

• User:Moreschi/The Plague
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies

--Elonka 15:04, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, tnx, --Ravpapa (talk) 04:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting page up for deletion

Please see: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Tag team. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:37, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it probably should have been noted here. My opinion redacted. See the comments there, if interested. 18:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Ravpapa

I thought I saw somewhere a place for nonmembers to comment, but now I can't find it. Anyway, I wrote a rather longwinded page that might be of interest to members and others. It is at User:Ravpapa/The Politicization of Wikipedia. Thanks, --Ravpapa (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Biophys

Endorse in general. The concept of "tag team" is very helpful but needs some refinement based on this excellent essay by Moreschi. I think one should mention manipulations with sources by the nationalistic teams. For example, "The absolute rejection of all scholarship not coming from authors of the same nationality that our nationalist is whitewashing." and "Removing references to peer-reviewed books by reputable academics in favor of random blogcrap off the internet". Biophys (talk) 02:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)