ArbCom fumbles the ball

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

This has been an interesting day on Wikipedia, to say the least.

First, arbitrator FT2 made a post to the admin noticeboard, mentioning that "A large amount of work has been in progress by the Arbitration Committee, in the background, for a considerable time, to look at a number of systemic problems deemed of importance, and possible solutions," before unveiling a hidden arbitration case where Orangemarlin has been sanctioned in absentia. FT2 also created a June 2008 announcements page, covering proposals including a new ban review group delegated by arbcom, activation of a new view-deleted-pages userright, the potential appointment of new checkusers, clarifications of the committee's role, an unfinished work on the BLP enforcement guidelines, and pages on old problems regarding skilled edit warriors and the consensus process.

This was sure to make some waves, all by itself. Kirill Lokshin, another arbitrator, made a post to the admin noticeboard several hours later:

The announcements made today by FT2 (including both the Orangemarlin issue and the various other matters) were posted without the approval or prior knowledge of the Committee as a whole. Further, no formal proceeding, secret or otherwise, has taken place regarding Orangemarlin or any other editor named in that particular statement.

As far as I'm concerned, these announcements have no authority or binding weight whatsoever.

Obviously, at least one of these fine gentlemen is wrong. After a brief attempt to archive the thread, pending news from the committee, the frenzied discussion moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Orangemarlin and other matters. Given the unfortunate lack of concrete information, many confused and upset users immediately leapt into the fray with supposition and guesswork. Popular theories have supposed that one or both arbitrators have gone rogue, or that some effort is underway to destroy FT2's credibility. My theory is that we have a serious failure of communication.

This would not be the first time arbcom's penchant for private discussion and decision has been problematic. Just recently, arbitrator emeritus Raul654 filed a request to give Kingturtle checkuser access, on behalf of the committee; the issue was challenged, and then up in the air until FT2 offered some blunt clarification. It's been my experience that it's regularly difficult to tell whether an action is being undertaken by a single arbitrator, or the committee as a whole -- they sometimes seem to take advantage of this confusion. Often the only clear issues are those in which the committee has taken a formal vote on the wiki, and those are unfortunately quite rare; in many cases, it's difficult to tell even what the committee has or hasn't considered. It's a black box model at its worst.

Here, today, we have FT2 saying that there was a clear consensus supporting his announcement, and Kirill suggesting in reply that there was little or no discussion. It's hard not to be reminded or the arguments following Durova's block of !!, based on another private mailing list. I expect the committee will be discussing this extensively, but I find it disturbing that none of the other arbs have yet seen fit to make any prominent announcement to the effect of "We're looking at it, please stand by." No doubt they are currently unavailable, simply haven't thought to, or wish to avoid the storm of insistent messages any such statement would surely bring; it would take a certain strength of character to ask an angry mob to wait. Outside of FT2 and Kirill, do we have arbs of such character?

FloNight and Morven have both posted something to this effect, but I fear they'll be lost in the crowd. Still, they have my sincere thanks for saying something.

Obviously this is going to need clarification. We need word from the committee; silence simply will not do. Between FT2 and Kirill, the situation is chaos. In the short term, are these announcements valid? Are the decisions binding? What happened, here? In the long term, how can we avoid these problems in the future? Is there some way to make agendas or votes public, without necessarily revealing entire discussions? Do we need new policy or cultural reform, to deal with this?

If nothing else, communications breakdowns like this one can strike serious and unfortunate blows to the credibility of the committee and its members, and to order within the community. This confusion is damaging to the project. Perhaps it's past time that we as a community insisted on clarity from this committee regarding its decisions and operations.

BLP special enforcement

Note: this was originally posted to wikien-l in this thread, but as I'm having technical difficulties (post keeps getting truncated), I'm posting it here and linking to it. For reference, it discusses the BLP special enforcement provision of the Footnoted quotes arbitration.

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 8:26 AM, Sam Blacketer wrote:

It is headed 'special enforcement' rather than 'special policy', and I think the distinction is more than merely terminological. The policy basis is WP:BLP which has been in place for some time and has wide acceptance; I agree it would be wrong for Arbcom to change that policy.

From our own article on the subject: "A policy is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s)."

The distinction you mention is semantic and academic at best. We have here a committee which is not only manifestly decreeing policy in a way that toys with the philosophical foundations of this project, but even preparing itself to make content decisions, both things the committee was and is (supposedly) not supposed to do. I welcome you to make your case, but to pretend this isn't a big deal is an insult to the intelligence of the community that you represent -- it is a very big deal.

Administrator status is "not a big deal" precisely because we can self-police amongst ourselves. Reprehensible actions are less problematic on a wiki precisely because they can, in most cases, be quickly reversed. This ability of anyone to edit, more than anything, is what makes a wiki a wiki. Obviously, with blocking and protection, we have made necessary concessions to the reality that too much chaos can be damaging. As a community, we expect that consensus will show us a proper path, further reducing chaos. But here and now, we're providing an avenue by which adminship is absolutely a "a big deal" because any admin will, for any reason, be able to take any action of any kind against any user or article, without any need for petty things like consensus or discussion, and without any easy way to reverse that action. It takes that pesky "wiki" process out of the picture; so much easier to run the project when people can't easily edit, no?

We're even threatening dire consequences for any user, admin or not, who dares to challenge one of these actions without filling out the proper paperwork to request permission to do so. "Be bold!" we say -- just not if you're the second person on the scene. Specifically, I see a lot of mention that we should trust the good judgement of administrators, and yet this policy decree seems to do the exact opposite.

Where are the consequences for abuse or misuse of this power?

We as a community should be very careful when erecting systems which will inevitably become barriers to the creation of content and the free editing of the wiki, or which will enable users acting unilaterally to create such barriers arbitrarily and without easy oversight or accountability. We as individuals should be very careful to scrutinize the Arbitration Committee when it seems to overstep its bounds, as many users seem to think it has here.

The remedy is, as of yet, untested, and I believe predictions of impending doom are a bit overblown, but the fact remains: this is not a minor issue and should not be dismissed as one.

Metapedian, 2008-06-16

Board elections are open for another few days, if you hadn't been aware. You'll have until the end of June 21 to review candidates and submit any votes. Votes this year are being counted using the Schulze method, which allows voters to rank candidates according to their preferences -- a touch more robust than the approval voting used last year.

At the close of the "Footnoted quotes" arbitration, the Arbitration Committee has authorized administrators to apply new "special enforcement" provisions with regard to biographies of living persons, including the use of "any means at their disposal," and requiring appeals of any such action be directed to the admin noticeboard or the committee directly. Associated policy proposal is here. Many users are concerned by what seems to be a concentration of power, either into the hands of administrators or the committee.

On a somewhat similar note, the committee is currently voting 6-3 not to propose a "sourcing adjudication board" in the Homeopathy arbitration.

After a recent poll, the requirements to become an autoconfirmed user have changed: users will now need an account that is 4 days old with 10 edits. A new poll aims to increase the requirements to 7 days and 20 edits.

A new draft of the Wikimedia privacy policy is in the works at meta. Trimmed drafts are available on the talk page; other discussion is available there or on foundation-l.

The global sysops proposal (formerly Anti-Vandal Fighter) is currently up for polling at the metapub. Extensive discussion here.

Several users have begun an in-depth review of the requests for adminship process, and are currently seeking users to fill out a questionnaire.

An Ethnic and cultural conflicts noticeboard has been opened.

New page countdown

Many users are aware of and make good use of Wikipedia's Special:NewPages feature, but there is a problem that's recently come to my attention: pages will only be listed for 720 hours (30 days), and dozens of pages are at risk of "slipping through the cracks" without ever being looked at.

A page which goes past this point is very difficult to track, until it shows up as again as a problem for recent changes patrollers, OTRS responders, or manages to attract enough attention to get some (most likely negative) media coverage. We shouldn't let this happen. DragonflySixtyseven has been working hard to patrol pages at the back of the queue, and to enlist the help of others, but he can't go it alone. Links like this one will show you the last 150 pages in danger of slipping off the list.

Currently, pages are coming within just a few hours of falling off the back end of the log. Help is needed.

I've long felt that patrolling deeper into or at the back end of the new pages log should be the default behavior for many users; when we're not screaming for deletion seconds after a page is made, we're that much less likely to bite (or argue with) newcomers. If we're going even thirty days after the fact, most POV-pushers have left the site and many diligent newcomers who've stuck around will be more likely to understand WP's policies and actually cooperate reasonably. To me it certainly feels less rushed, and I've actually had time to improve a few pages.

Stacks are simple, yes, but leave the bottom of the pile to rot and fester. Let's try a queue and mind the back, first, when we can -- it's not going to stick around much longer, after all.

If you already do work with new page patrol, consider looking at the back of the list from time to time; if you haven't worked in this area, consider taking a few minutes to try it out, and you may just find it can be quite rewarding. One more time, this link shows the pages in greatest danger falling off the list.

Wikipedians are not neutral

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia only ArbCom can edit?

Are we working on a neutral encyclopedia, or aren't we? Sometimes I wonder.

Time and again, the question comes up. Usually it's asked in the context of outside influences "pushing" a point of view on some page or another; all too often, a POV is pushed from inside our community, subverting the neutrality content for our own ends.

In February, after questions arose regarding the relationship between the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and for-profit Wikia, Wikimedia UK chair Alison Wheeler created a template called "Wikia is not Wikipedia," a large banner linking the WMF's official press release on the matter,
and placed it atop Wikipedia's article on Wikia while making other "corrections" to footnotes. It's worth noting the template included lots of scare text insisting it couldn't be removed from any article without approval from the WMF Communications Committee. Several users questioned this, pointing out that it was hardly a neutral content decision and that no other article subject would ever be allowed such latitude. The template was removed and nominated for deletion, as it should have been. Alison's response? Rolled back the edit as vandalism and issued block warnings so stern the user was scared off the project. It took an angry mob at TfD to get the template deleted. She claimed to be acting on behalf of the Foundation itself, and ominously threatened to take the issue "higher up."

Not to worry, even though the template was deleted, Alison kept trying to insert it. Fortunately she dropped the ridiculous block threats, in later episodes.

Eventually, WMF chair Florence Devouard had a try at it.

This isn't the only time the Wikimedians have interfered with article content for their own ends. Take as another example the never-ending "sole founder" debate at the article on Jimmy Wales. Jimbo also appears to have successfully agitated to have his date of birth removed from the article about him. It's not clear to me whether WMF deputy director Erik Möller had a hand in anything similar, but it may be worth noting his date of birth is likewise absent at that article.

More recently, in March, advertising firm Modernista! implemented a rather minimalist website, one which simply placed their main menu around the page currently being viewed. One "about" link from this menu likewise sends readers to Wikipedia's article on the firm. Some readers apparently were confused by this, and thought Modernista somehow controlled the article. Initially, Jimbo asked them to stop, but soon enough other solutions were in the works: a technical solution might break out of the frame and subtly solve the problem; a big red banner would explain what was going on, but would get us into the business of trying to embarrass companies into doing what we want by leaving nasty notes on articles about them. Guess what happened? Alison Wheeler returned again to toss up another banner.

The latest episode I find troubling is at the freshly recreated Encyclopedia Dramatica article. There's a big hubbub about whether or not the ED website should be linked from the ED article. Never mind that we regularly link to a whole variety of websites with hateful content, as in articles on Stormfront or the Westboro Baptist Church, or iffy copyright status, as in articles on Pirate Bay, Youtube, or 4chan, apparently we plan on diverging from the common-sense rule applied at pretty much every article on the site because ED and Wikipedia don't get along well. What does this accomplish, exactly? We won't stop anybody from finding the site, we won't even deny them a PageRank boost, we'll just look incredibly petty by refusing to place a blatantly relevant link right where it so obviously belongs. What message are we sending, here? It's okay to break the law, but not WP policy. It's okay to harass people, as long as they're not Wikipedians. Way to establish our priorities.

A bit of explanation, the editors who want the link excluded are claiming that prior decisions of the arbitration committee in the MONGO and Attack sites cases support their position (they don't). They're also citing WP:BADSITES a lot, even though the "policy" was quite clearly rejected after a very long and painful argument. They'll just keep pushing until people are tired of arguing about it, I guess. Currently there's a painfully redundant request for clarification: can we link to ED at the ED article? Thank the heavens that arbitrator Kirill Lokshin displayed a hefty amount of clue when suggesting the prohibition on links to ED made a lot more sense when there wasn't an ED article. Too bad Wikipedians aren't listening to him. Administrators MBisanz, Hu12, and Sandstein have worked to keep the link out of the article. Even David Levy, who supports inclusion of the link and is doing his best to mediate the discussion fairly, seems to insist we cannot add the link without approval.

As you might expect, the article was put up for deletion the moment it saw daylight. I could go either way as far as having an article or not, but if we're going to have an article at all, we should be doing it right. We're after NPOV, not WPOV.

So I ask again: are we working on a neutral encyclopedia, or aren't we?

--

Edit 1, 2008-05-15: Had posted this, the other day, but apparently it got lost somewhere along the line, for reasons I don't quite follow. Worth noting the link is currently present but still being argued over.

Edit 2, 2008-05-16: NonvocalScream is not currently an administrator. He is a former admin. Pointed out by a few readers, thank you.

Edit 3, 2008-06-01: NonvocalScream contacted me to let me know I'd misstated his position, when I said he opposed the ED link. He did strongly advocate waiting for a go-ahead from Arbcom, but he also supported inclusion of the link. I've removed the brief mention of him above. My apologies once more, NVS.

Picture if you will

Picture, if you will, a scenario where a young man is walking through an apartment complex on a Saturday night while carrying the following: a spare coat, a laptop, assorted half-empty bottles of booze, and... a bright plastic plunger.

Noticeboard bloat, part two

Last year, I wrote about the rapid proliferation of noticeboards on Wikipedia. Shortly after that, the Editabuselinks template got trimmed down a bit. Unfortunately, the bloating has continued since then. Compare if you will between the 5 July 2007 and 28 March 2008 versions.

The linked July version sports two sections: Editing abuse, including Administrator intervention against vandalism, the 3RR noticeboard, WikiProject on open proxies, Long term abuse, Suspected sock puppets, Abuse reports, Requests for checkuser, and Usernames for administrator attention; and Noticeboards, including the Administrators' noticeboard, Incidents noticeboard, Community sanction noticeboard, Arbitration enforcement noticeboard, Biographies of living persons noticeboard, and Conflict of interest noticeboard.

Today's version has exploded into four sections: General help, including the Help desk, Department directory, Media copyright questions, Image copyright help desk, WikiProject User Page Help's own help desk, the New contributors' help page, and Village pump assistance subpage; Report abuse, including Administrator intervention against vandalism, WikiProject Spam, the 3RR noticeboard, Usernames for administrator attention, WikiProject on open proxies, Suspected sock puppets, Copyright problems, and Long term abuse; Request assistance, including Requests for page protection, ISP Abuse reports, Requests for checkuser, Requests for arbitration, Requests for mediation, the Mediation Cabal, and Requests for comment; an,d Noticeboards, including the Administrators' noticeboard, Incidents noticeboard, Arbitration enforcement noticeboard, Checkuser clerks noticeboard, Bot owners' noticeboard, Conflict of interest noticeboard, Biographies of living persons noticeboard, Fiction noticeboard, Fringe theories noticeboard, Original research noticeboard, Neutral point of view noticeboard, and Reliable sources noticeboard.

Notice a trend? From 14 to 35 pages linked, in about half a year. What once took two rows of text now takes at least five or six, depending on your display. Previously I mentioned a 60% increase in link count in roughly a year; here we're looking at 250% in half that time.

Looking at the template history, links added are rarely removed or get replaced in short order.

What's good about this growth? It allows people to focus on topics they're interested in, and as such may allow return users to address complex issues. The topical archives produced by subject-based pages may be easier to browse, when dealing with issues that come up repeatedly. Consensus on a given area of policy may become more clear if discussions are kept together.

What's bad about this? Because it's so hard to watch (or search) an ever-increasing number of pages, large portions of the community are effectively excluded from discussion at these boards. Where one perspective might see a group of experienced users addressing complex issues, another perspective might see a cabal or posse dominating a particular area by virtue of being the only users regularly active on a page. I worry newcomers will be overwhelmed -- I imagine the difficulty of figuring out where to go only grows as the option count increases, and I'd bet the rate of growth is more than linear. Consensus on a given area of policy may become less clear if discussions exclude a large number of users.

Do we have other options? I'd be curious about finding a happy medium, here, something that allows for quick temporal awareness of current discussion and topical browsing of pages and their archives. Even something simple like a list of thread links, sorted by topic, could be a great step in that direction. Efforts like Eagle 101's AN archive search tool or Messedrocker's RFC bot are definitely a help, here.

Mostly, though, I don't think this rapid proliferation of noticeboards and overcrowded navigation templates is any sort of indefinite solution.