Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-10-10
BREAKING NEWS: Two new arbitrators appointed
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
In a mailing list post today, Jimbo Wales appointed two users to the Arbitration Committee: Mindspillage (a.k.a. Kat Walsh), and Kelly Martin (a.k.a. karynn).
Mindspillage made her first edit in June 2004, and was made an admin in April 2005. Kelly Martin first contributed in December 2004, becoming an administrator in June 2005. Jimbo referred to both users as "highly recommended".
Some users expressed dismay at the use of temporary appointments. Talrias, a candidate for the December ArbCom elections, said "I disagree with the principle of Jimbo appointing people to the arbitration committee rather than having elections. The Committee was originally set up with the idea that arbitrators would be elected by the community - in fact, there was a special election when two original members resigned." Jguk agreed, but said "The reason for an appointment is that it is temporary, will only last for two and a half months, and is easier at present...really, we need rules in place to provide for what we do with vacancies."
Most users, however, were decidedly in support of the appointments. Hamster Sandwich said, "I agree with the process of appointing ArbCom members. It ensures a higher standard of accountability to the editing community at large, in that appointees can be revoked with out a complicated process if they act in bad faith or contrary to the letter and spirit of WP process."
Both Mindspillage and Kelly Martin's terms will expire on 31 December, 2005. Neither have officially announced their candidacy for another term.
In other news, Jimbo announced that plans are in the works for "a new election process for the arbcom which I hope will deal, in some small way at least, with the unpleasantness of last year's process." No further details are yet available.
Also announced in the post was the appointment of James Forrester to the position of Chief Research Officer, replacing Erik Möller, who resigned on 17 August (see archived story).
Quality of Wikipedia writing questioned
Last Monday, an essay critical of Wikipedia prompted Jimmy Wales to raise the issue of how to improve the quality of writing in Wikipedia articles, conceding that there were significant problems in some areas.
The essay in question was posted by business journalist and author Nicholas Carr on his blog 3 October. Its focus was actually on the Web 2.0 concept, and Carr gave it the title, "The amorality of Web 2.0". His reflections were prompted by media coverage leading up to this past week's Web 2.0 Conference, and the idealistic notions of people like conference organizer Tim O'Reilly. Carr argued that although the technology behind the Web is fundamentally amoral, the glowing rhetoric around it is creating a quasi-religious fervor and contributing to the "cult of the amateur".
As an example of this phenomenon, Carr turned to Wikipedia, saying, "If you read anything about Web 2.0, you'll inevitably find praise heaped upon Wikipedia as a glorious manifestation of 'the age of participation.'" His own assessment: "In reality, though, Wikipedia isn't very good at all." To support this, he quoted passages from the articles on Bill Gates and Jane Fonda that he described as "an incoherent hodgepodge of dubious factoids", adding that these were representative of much of Wikipedia's content.
Wales observed that while he generally disagreed with Carr's argument, the Fonda and Gates articles "are, quite frankly, a horrific embarassment." He opened a mailing list discussion exploring how this type of situation can develop and what could be done to correct it. This prompted a variety of responses: Stan Shebs commented that some well-meaning contributors make edits that, while not vandalism, aren't improvements either, and this sometimes causes articles to deteriorate over time; Charles Matthews highlighted the point that Wikipedia's policies for fostering more professional writing focus on factual disputes (neutral point of view, no original research, and citing sources) rather than "style crimes".
The discussion broadened to cover the challenges of producing featured articles (see related story). One observation made was that it seems easier to develop a quality article about an esoteric subject than a general one. Wales also clarified that his goal is for Wikipedia to be better than the Encyclopædia Britannica, period, and that being free is not a justification for inferior quality.
On Thursday, Carr followed up his original post by quoting a message from David Gerard, which conceded much of Carr's criticism but arguing, "if we want a good encyclopedia in ten years, it's going to have to be a good Wikipedia." Carr closed by saying, "as I feel we're mainly in agreement, I'll leave it there."
Criticism of the ArbCom
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
This week, the Wikipedia Signpost examines criticism of the ArbCom and the proposed reforms.
The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee has been criticized from its beginnings, and the discussion regarding reforms is ongoing.
A major criticism of the ArbCom centers around the speed and efficiency of the proceedings. The multi-step process, described in detail last week, elongates the process. A typical case takes weeks, if not months, from the time it is brought to the conclusion of the case. Often the delay in closing the case results in justice being denied for that period of time. In addition, disputes taken to the ArbCom are often aggravated during the time the ArbCom is considering the case.
Most cases, in fact, take months to conclude. The recently concluded ArbCom case involving Cool Cat, Davenbelle, and Stereotek, took exactly three months to finish. The case was first brought to the ArbCom on 5 July, 2005, and was closed on 5 October, 2005. The case is not an exception; the vast majority of arbitration cases are extended over multiple months.
Because of the length of the cases, backlogs often develop at requests for arbitration. Multiple requests are listed, but weeks often pass before the cases are either accepted or rejected. Currently, several cases have stalled at the requests page, lacking the adequate number of votes to accept or reject the case. For example, the case filed against Willmcw and SlimVirgin by Rangerdude has been listed since the middle of August, but with only three votes to accept the case, cannot move on to the evidence stage. The last vote by an Arbitrator was nearly a month ago, and no further discussion has taken place since that vote.
The backlogs at the requests page contribute to the amount of work each Arbitrator is required to do. Many have criticised the current system as being inadequate; the critics claim that the ArbCom is overworked. With disputes often skipping steps in the dispute resolution process, such as mediation and requests for comments, the ArbCom is burdened with a large number of cases. With less than ten active Arbitrators usually, the ArbCom becomes inefficient and risks "burning out" Arbitrators. The high rate of resignations or inactivity is pointed to as evidence that the workload is too high for the ArbCom.
In addition, many have criticised the twelve member Arbitration Committee, claiming that it resembles a cabal. Despite advocates of the ArbCom claiming that there is no cabal, critics point to the temporary appointments of Fennec, JayJG, and Jdforrester as proof that an "elite society" exists. The three temporary appointments were made by Jimbo after many members of the ArbCom resigned earlier this year. The three Wikipedians were not the next three in terms of the number of votes in the 2004 elections, so questions were raised by critics about the appointments. "I remember the [December 2004] election perfectly well. In fact, I myself was a candidate. If [the temporary appointments are] just about votes, why don't we have another vote? Or we should go straight down the line and appoint the next two, who were Mirv and Cecropia. I thought the idea was that uncontroversial people were supposed to be appointed as placeholders until the next election," commented Everyking. Echoing Everyking, -Ril- stated, "Jimbo Wales has publicly announced that he doesn't support democratic elections, and would rather have arbitrators that he is friends with, than those with popular support in elections. He has also, in the announcement, stated that his appointment of (temporary) arbitrators has more to do with his favouring of their judgements in preference to those that might be made by editors such as User:Mirv (the next in line in the prior election)."
However, many others supported Jimbo's decision. "The arbitration committee made a short list of people we thought would make good arbitrators (based on our previous experiences with them), and Jimbo took our recommendation and appointed arbitrators from our short list," said Raul654, in response to -Ril-'s statement. "So no, he did not appoint them because he is friends with them; as Jimbo put it so succintly, he appointed them because we told him we think they would make good arbitrators (and he trust our judgement)." Pcb21 also voiced his approval of the process, commenting that he wished "best of luck to all new arbitrators. I am sure you will all easily prove why this trust has been placed in you." In addition, Jimbo defended his actions, saying, "The fundamental job of the ArbCom is to defend the community so that we can get our work done. This is a touchy and difficult job requiring difficult judgments."
More criticism has also been voiced regarding the process and jurisdiction of the ArbCom. Currently, the ArbCom "primarily investigate(s) interpersonal disputes", according to the Arbitration policy. This effectively means that most pure content disputes are rejected by the ArbCom, though cases involving point of view pushing have been accepted recently. 172 states, "The Arbcom still focuses too much on personality instead of the merit of the edits, and too much on process instead of product."
Next week — An in-depth look at the current members of the ArbCom, and their opinions of it.
Note: Reforms of the ArbCom will be written about at a later date.
Candidates join the race for ArbCom
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
This week, 172 created the candidate's statement page for the upcoming December 2005 elections. Other users agreed that with less than two months before voting, that the time was ideal for candidates to start listing themselves.
At press time, thirteen candidates had listed themselves: 172 (statement), Ambi (statement), Carbonite (statement), Everyking (statement), Filiocht (statement), Ilyanep (statement), Jtkiefer (statement), Luigi30 (statement), Merovingian (statement), Ral315 (statement), Redwolf24 (statement), Snowspinner (statement), and Talrias (statement).
Though Redwolf24 withdrew from the election after being criticized for a joke that some felt was disruptive, he decided to run again after receiving large amounts of support.
At first, an endorsements page (now deleted) was created for users to list votes of approval and disapproval; however, this was soon shut down amid calls for reform. The endorsements and disendorsements page was heavily criticized last year, and Jimbo even pleaded that the pages not be used. Consequently, the endorsements page was closed, and a subpage for each candidate where Wikipedians can ask questions to the candidate was created.
Also this week, current Arbitrator David Gerard announced that he would not be running for re-election, citing work pressures and burnout. This brings the total number of Arbitrators who have announced that they will not be returning to office to three: Gerard, Nohat, and Maveric149.
News and notes
French contributor dies
Treanna passed away on 18 September 2005. With over 30,000 edits, of which about 25,000 were in article space in just two years, Treanna was the most active contributor of the French Wikipédia. Aged 31, he had just started to contribute again after a coronary incident which had landed him in the hospital in July. The french speaking community was informed of his condition thanks to one of his sisters, Anne, by email and on this page, throughout the summer. Treanna will be remembered as a great contributor in all domains, but especially in the domains of history, archeology, genealogy, palaeography and related topics. The French Wikipedia community has decided to honour him in working together on a WikiReader about the Middle Ages, a part of Wikipédia to which he has greatly contributed. According to Myriam, his youngest sister, the WikiReader could "help us, his family, to better realise the extent of what he knew and loved to share... the knowledge he did not have time to teach us". Many contributors have expressed their condolences to the family here.
Article rescue contest
An "article rescue contest", modeled after Danny's contest, has started. The goal is to salvage articles nominated on AFD that otherwise would get little attention, and that merit an article. Entries can either be rewrites of kept articles, or recreations of deleted articles with significant new information. The deadline for entries is 23:59 UTC on 22 October.
Esperanza update
Esperanza, the new community group within Wikipedia (see archived story), has enacted sweeping changes and initiated Advisory Committee elections. The group, which has faced some controversy for its perceived bureaucratic-style setup, has focused on welcoming new users, and helping out users dealing with WikiStress. Redwolf24 says of the group, "The number one benefit I personally have gotten from Esperanza is that I've made a lot of new friends. It's a pretty fun, rather fraternal community."
Wikiversity vote continues
The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, started a vote on 15 September to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will remain open until 1 November. Currently, the vote is about 69% in favor of the project (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period).
Briefly
- The Croatian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The German Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
- The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 100 articles, about 10 days after being created.
- The Friulian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
In the news
Wales joins Socialtext board of directors
The Socialtext wiki company announced on Monday, October 3 that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had joined Tim Draper, Joi Ito, and Ross Mayfield on the Socialtext board of directors. ([1], [2])
Sergey Brin lecture
Sergey Brin, multi-billionaire co-founder of Google, was a surprise guest speaker at UC Berkeley associate professor Marti Hearst's "Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business" class on Monday, October 3. He remarked on Wikipedia: "This is a simple idea – one you would assume would not work, but it does, One reason is scale: it taps the power and potential of a global audience." (press release, link to video)
American national radio show
Newspaper columnist and radio commentator Craig Crossman recently interviewed Jimmy Wales on his nationally syndicated radio talk show on computers. On October 6, he wrote New Wikipedia truly the ‘encyclopedia of the people’, a glowing review of the site and a discussion of the ease of editing an article about his talk show, Computer America, while that show was on the air.
Article quality criticisms
Wikipedia was the center of a blog discussion started by Nicholas Carr (see related story). [3]
A related discussion on "Nitpicking Wikipedia's Vulnerabilities" was started by editor CowboyNeal on Slashdot on October 6. [4]
Wikipedia eats Google?
Sunir Shah posted on the Socialtext website on September 30 about the increasing dominance of Wikipedia in Google search results. This prompted a flurry of blog responses, some critical of Shah's conclusions, including Steve Rubel, Brad Hill, and Elliott Back.
Citations
- Manila Bulletin, Philippines on Nautilus [5]
- The Gateway on pork barrel and Louisiana Purchase (in the context of Hurricane Katrina infrastructure repair) [6]
- The Villager on Cindy Sheehan [7]
- Daily News and Analysis, India, on Skunk works [8]
- Stockton Record on gorillas [9]
- CIO Asia on dual-core processors [10]
- Weekly Davespeak (Dave Matthews Band newszine) on DRM [11]
- Kenya Times on Dutch referendum on the European Constitution [12]
Featured article production dropping
The declining pace of new featured articles was a focus of considerable attention this week, prompting debate and activity in other projects and on the wikien-l mailing list about how to address the situation.
Six articles were promoted to Featured status this week: Mercantilism, French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, W. Mark Felt, Richard O'Connor, Peterborough Chronicle, and Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me). The pace of new featured articles has fallen just under one per day; while a significant backlog of featured articles has not appeared on the Main Page yet, the decreased production has given cause for concern.
Earlier, Featured Article Director Raul654 had noted that the ratio of featured articles to other articles in English Wikipedia was about to fall below 1:1000, or 0.1%. Toothpaste called this event "a sad day in Wikiland." [13]
This led to an extended discussion about the causes of the problem, including debate about the value of the featured article process itself. Tony Sidaway expressed the opinion that many featured articles had managed to get through the process in spite of being badly written. The criticism also ties in with the complaint of a business journalist who commented on the poor writing in two other (non-featured) articles (see related story).
In an effort to compensate for the problems with both quality and quantity, several projects are underway. The Collaboration of the Week project and the Peer review process are two efforts that have been particularly productive in generating successful featured article candidates. Talrias expressed concern that the activity level on the Collaboration of the Week "has fallen quite considerably" in recent months, and called for ideas on how to reinvigorate the project. Also, the Featured Article Drive, designed specifically to help guide articles through the process, was re-launched this week by Rob Church.
Administrators
This week, thirteen users gained administrator status: Gyrofrog (nom), Durin (nom), Kwamikagami (nom), OwenX (nom), NicholasTurnbull (nom), Nabla (nom), 23skidoo (nom), Graft (nom), Brian_Kendig (nom), Mairi (nom), DragonflySixtyseven (nom), RoySmith (nom) and BillyH (nom).
Other featured content
One list gained featured status: Northwest Territories general elections
One photo gained featured status, while Image:Mark 48 Torpedo testing.jpg was demoted.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week; one against User:Cool Cat (a.k.a. Coolcat), and another against Yuber and Guy Montag.
Cool Cat
A case against Cool Cat has closed. The ruling prohibits Cool Cat from mediating or restructuring talk pages, and puts him in a one year mentorship. Complaints about Cool Cat's ineffective informal mediation came about when he unsuccessfully tried to mediate a number of articles where he had an editing dispute. Mark Ryan, Tony Sidaway, and MacGyverMagic will be his mentors. Davenbelle, Stereotek (a.k.a. Karl Meier), and Fadix were warned to let other users handle disputes with Cool Cat; they had been criticized for wiki-stalking.
Yuber/Guy Montag
A case against Yuber and Guy Montag has closed. The dispute was mainly over articles involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both users were put on one year probation. In addition, Yuber was restricted to editing only under that account, and Guy Montag was banned from Israeli-Palestinian conflict-related articles for three months. Jayjg was also warned against edit warring.
Other cases
Cases against -Ril- (user page), an IP dubbed DotSix, 12.144.5.2 (user page, a.k.a. Louis Epstein), Rktect (user page), DreamGuy (user page), Ultramarine (user page), Keetowah (user page), Maoririder (user page), Onefortyone (user page), BigDaddy777 (user page), Zephram Stark (user page), and numerous editors on Bogdanov Affair are in the evidence phase.
Cases against Stevertigo (user page), Rainbowwarrior1977 (user page), and Instantnood (user page) are in the voting phase.