Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2015-11-18

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-11-18. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Ban Appeals Subcommittee goes up in smoke; 21 candidates running (17,334 bytes · 💬)

I'm rather concerned about the manner in which Arbcom has handled the BASC issue. Or rather, I'm concerned that the way in which they've handled the BASC issue is probably about come down like a ton of bricks on the unsuspecting UTRS system and its users. Community consensus in a recent discussion was in line with "disband BASC, pass appeals to UTRS", but noted that there needed to be further discussion about "if/what conditions may be applied by the UTRS-reviewing admin." UTRS currently has no workflow for handling appeals of community bans, long-term indefs where no admin has been willing to unblock, cases where the user has been banned from UTRS for misusing the system, etc. In fact, their current workflow for these consists of "redirect user to BASC".

Arbcom, rather than waiting for community discussion to happen after the RfC close (the motions to disband/modify BASC were begun literally one day after the community RfC was closed with a requirement for further discussion), apparently decided to just take the opportunity to divest itself of BASC without waiting around for the community to sort out how it would do that work instead. It's entirely possible that eliminating BASC was the right call, but I have to question the haste with which Arbcom did it and the apparent lack of concern they showed for the fact that they were leaving the community, particularly UTRS, in the lurch. The result of this rushed motion, I suspect, is going to be a period in which UTRS and the community scramble madly to figure out some way to handle these cases, and quite likely a period in which the users who are under this type of now-the-community's-problem ban/block will simply slip through the cracks and have no functional route of appeal. We're all volunteers, balls sometimes, get dropped, I get it. But in this case Arbcom seems to have decided it was tired of holding the ball and just chucked it at the community's face. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:24, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Good riddance. More transparency is needed. At least in a typical ArbCom proceding, the discussion, including accusation, evidence, and rebuttal, is laid before the appellate decision, unlike the BASC ban appeal procedure as I knew it. Which is extremely important when we have incompetent CheckUsers. Int21h (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

But you are not gaining any transparency but sending ban appeals through UTRS rather than BASC. It's just shifting the workload without consulting the UTRS admins about whether the system can handle another 100 ban appeals a year. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 08:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

As I understand the change, there are now two classes of block-n-ban-appeals: the non-public sort, which are non-transparent by necessity (checkuser blocks / oversight-related blocks / and other "not suitable for public consumption" stuff), are handled either by UTRS via email, which is like the {{unblock}} thing in that a single admin, or by appeal to the full arbcom via email (but instead of using the now-historical BASC mailing list these will now go through the main arbcom mailing list and be considered by all arbs rather than a subset thereof). So just like in the past, it is still the case that in a checkuser-block, for instance, the blocked wikipedian can appeal via UTRS email, and then get a "last resort" appeal to the full-arbcom-fka-BASC email, and then get a "godking deux ex machina" appeal to Jimbo via email.

  There *is* slightly more transparency, though, in theory, because now arbcom has reached consensus that the full committee ought to consider such checkuser-related appeals, which means that a checkuser appeal which formerly would have gone to utrsEmail/bascEmail/JimboEmail -- and from the comments by Beeblebrox and Courcelles were treated somewhat haphazardly in terms of participation-per-BASC-case by the sitting arbs -- will now go to utrsEmail/arbcomEmail/JimboEmail, and presumably the appeals will get treated to a broader (amongst arbs! but still broader) procedure with respect to gathering evidence, asking for rebuttals, and all that sort of stuff. So yes, it just shifts responsibility from BASC to the full arbcom, but that does mean that checkuser unblocks that go through arbcom *will* be considered (at least in theory) by all sitting arbs, from now on, not just the subset that happened to be participating in BASC at the time of the appeal.

  So that's the non-transparent-all-done-by-email class of block-n-ban-appeals. As for the second category, the public kind where on-wiki transparency is not problematic, that are presumably the majority of the 100 appeals per year guesstimate. Since there is (by definition) purely "suitable for the public" stuff involved in this kind of appeal-category-two, the procedures are slightly different for block-n-ban appeals: {{unblock}} on usertalk, followed by a request at WP:AN or WP:AN/I, followed by a "last resort" request to arbcom (but performed by filing an on-wiki request for an arbcom case or an on-wiki request for an arbcom clarification to the full committee -- as opposed to the former mechanism which was sometimes utilized, namely contacting BASC via email), and then finally the "godking deux ex machina" appeal to User_talk:Jimbo_Wales. Now, because of WP:NOTBURO, it is still *possible* for wikipedians who are under a category-two 'public' block to use the category-one 'private' infrastructure for their appeal-requests. Instead of talkUnblock/AN[I]/arbcomCase/Jimbotalk, it is also permissible for such a "suitable for the public" appeal to still go through the email channel, if the wikipedian in question prefers that for whatever reason. So really, what can happen in category-two 'public' appeals is talkUnblock_or_utrsEmail, AN[I], arbcomCase_or_arbcomEmail, Jimbotalk_or_JimboEmail.

  And that's the normally-transparent-and-done-on-wiki-but-sometimes-also-by-email class of block-n-ban-appeals. In the end, note that there is no shifting-of-workload here, away from the arbcom-infrastructure: if a category-two-appeal fails at the talkUnblock_or_utrsEmail, then fails at AN_or_AN/I, that wikipedian can still seek their "last resort" appeal at arbcom... but instead of opening an arb-case or emailing BASC, they now must open an arb-case or email the full ARBCOM. After which, Jimbo is the last-last-resort, as always. Now, although it is not explicitly stated, in the decision to disband BASC, the vibe I got was that arbcom *may* reply to category-two emails about suitable-for-the-public last-resort-appeals, with instructions to open an arb-case. In which case, there *is* a shifting of workload, from the arbs to the arb-clerks! Hi, Liz.  :-)

  Nutshell: in the case of category-one 'private' appeals, there is a shift in workload from the BASC-subset-of-arbs, to the full arbcom. In the case of category-two appeals, there is a shift in workload from the BASC-subset-of-arbs, to the full arbcom (and if they wish to reject some or all of the email-based appeals which can be handled perfectly well via on-wiki arb-cases... then some additional workload is shifted from the full arbcom to the arb clerks). Long story short, I do not believe the arbs are shifting the workload onto UTRS or the noticeboards: as I understand it the arbs are shifting the workload from email-the-BASC to either file-an-on-wiki-arb-case-or-in-special-cases-only-email-the-full-arbcom. Hopes this makes sense, sorry it took so long to explain. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:27, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

You're overlooking couple things in the case of "suitable for the public" blocks, 75.108.94.227. First is that these users are blocked, and by definition cannot open a discussion on, say, AN, or ARCA, or Jimbotalk. Second is that many - I would venture a majority of - people under community bans or long-term indef blocks do not have access to their talk pages, access having been revoked at some point in the past for anything from abusing other editors to posting too many block appeals.

Let's assume the best-case scenario for a user who would be relying on this previously-BASC-but-now-not workflow, a scenario in which they still have access to their talk page: if this person wanted to appeal their block/ban, this would mean posting a request on their talk page and hoping a sympathetic user is willing to open a discussion on AN. This is an unreliable strategy, because:

• In general few people are going to open a discussion saying "Let's discuss unblocking user:X" if they don't support, or at least have some interest in, user:X getting unblocked.
• The user is relying on the hope that anyone is even going to see a request on their talk page for a discussion to be opened (success rate would increase if they thought to use the {{admin help}} template, but my guess is that a minority would)
• People watching the user's talk page are likely to be the ones who were aware of or involved in the events that led to their block/ban; as a result, the first people to any appeal discussion - or talk page discussion about appeal discussion - will be the most involved

Now let's take the somewhat-more-likely (to my mind) case where the user does not still have access to their talk page. They therefore can't post on their talk requesting an AN review. So what are their options?

1. They can submit an appeal to UTRS. Currently UTRS has no process for handling "I'd like my community ban lifted", however.
   • Best case scenario for a UTRS appeal of one of these blocks is that a sympathetic and proactive admin happens to pick up their appeal there and proxies an appeal to AN
   • Worst case scenario is that because UTRS is a single-admin review system, a single admin reads their appeal, goes "nah, not convinced" and declines it out of hand. The user now has two choices:
     • Accept that their appeal has been declined despite not having been heard by the community, or even multiple administrators
     • Submit another appeal - and continue to submit appeals - to UTRS until one of two things happens: they are lucky enough to find an admin who is sympathetic and willing to proxy an appeal to AN for them, or the list of their continued appeals to UTRS becomes so long that they are temporarily banned from that system for flooding it
   • The most likely scenario currently is probably neither of these, though; it's that the admin who happens to pick up their appeal is unaware that BASC is not an option anymore, and they simply reply to the user with what has been, until now, the standard for these cases: an informational template declining to handle their appeal and explaining how to send a request to BASC. They now have the same two choices as above: either accept that they've been directed into the circular file, or continue re-submitting appeals until they get lucky or get banned from UTRS
2. If they don't want to use UTRS, their only remaining option with BASC out of the picture is to privately contact one or more administrators off-wiki (email, IRC, etc).
   • Best case scenario for off-wiki contact: They know of a friendly admin, contact only that admin, and that admin opens a discussion on AN for them. This has happened in a few cases in the past; it's not an impossibility.
   • Worst case scenario for off-wiki contact: They mass-mail a number of admins requesting appeal and become known as "that guy who's spamming admins". Someone removes their access to email because they're using it to "be disruptive".
   • Most likely scenario for off-wiki contact: They email a couple of admins and either get no response or a "no, I'm not comfortable opening that discussion". Their appeal has now been quasi-declined, but there is no public record of that and no on-wiki discussion of how the decision was made. The user is still indeffed and has no clear idea of what to do next to change that.

So in short, (too late, I know!) almost all routes of appeal now open to community-banned or long-term indeffed users lead to either their situation worsening (banned from UTRS, known as "that blocked guy who spams admins") or their appeal never being even seen, let alone discussed, by the community that Arbcom claims to be passing this responsibility back to (talk page request goes nowhere, single-admin UTRS decline, directed to nonexistent BASC, multiple email declines). The routes that don't lead there are entirely dependent upon the existence of a single sympathetic and extremely up-to-date editor/admin who knows that BASC no longer handles appeals and is willing to go out of their way to open an AN proposal they may not support personally, or might even personally oppose. Some days, one of those admins will happen to be around when the blocked user needs them. Most days, I venture to say, one won't be in the right place at the right time and the blocked user will be worse off than they were until now.

These aren't insurmountable issues - I don't think it would be too much work for the community to put together a workflow for how UTRS appeals of community bans, etc should be handled - but the fact is that right now they haven't been surmounted, because the community hasn't even had time to realize they're pressing issues, let alone to reach consensus on how to fix them. And until they do get discussed and consensus reached, most people who want to appeal this type of block are going to find themselves out of luck. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:10, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know enough to disagree with you substantively.  :-)     My belief is that you are incorrect, that the UTRS people will tell the person to try BASC, and since there is no BASC, the person is thus stuck in a kafkaesque bureaucratic limbo. Instead, I think what is now supposed to happen is that the UTRS admin will direct the person to 1) email the main arbcom list with their appeal, which is specifically for checkuser and oversight and other sensitive types of matters, or 2) file an on-wiki request with the arbs via the usual channels, which is specifically for non-checkuser non-oversight not-particularly-unsuitable-for-the-public types of matters. Now obviously, if the username in question *is* indef-blocked, hard-blocked, etc, or has had usertalk-access revoked, they will have to go through some hoops to actually *get* their on-wiki request to the arbs filed. Maybe the UTRS admin will grant a temporary conditional unblock, for the purpose of filing the arb-case? Or maybe the person will email the main arbcom list, an an arb-clerk will help them file the on-wiki stuff, without anybody needing to resort to evasion? Not clear to me. Mayhap one of the arbs, or the arb-candidates, will comment here on what the new procedural expectations are.

  p.s. I do agree that for folks that are stuck in the wheels of the byzantine bureaucracy related to appeals, things are NOT simple, and sometimes any action seems filled with perilous unknowns. So on that count, we are on the same page -- it would be nicer if there was a simple straightforward set of easy to follow steps, plus a nice AJAX dashboard giving the wikipedian's current position in the queue and such, at WP:FriendlySanctionsDeEscalationPage. But I think that eliminating BASC, and replacing it with the full arbcom (via email or via on-wiki arb-request), is neither a huge mis-step, nor a giant leap for wiki-kindness. It *is* one less thing for folks to worry about, which is good; the transition might be a little rocky, though, since it was fairly abrupt. With luck, most of the UTRS volunteers are reading this conversation.  ;-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 17:16, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• I guess I'm the one who got the ball rolling on this, but this was not exactly the result I had hoped for. Although it doesn't seem to be happening just yet, I share Fluffernutter's concern about UTRS getting overwhelmed and would encourage my fellow admins to sign up for it. If you can review on-wiki unblock requests you can do this, in fact I find the process is actually simpler, often involving only a single click in less complicated cases. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:26, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion report: BASC disbanded; other developments in the discussion world (1,800 bytes · 💬)

BASC

• This is a curious move. The Committe is alwys complaining about being overworked, yet it abolishes it's subcommittee. Sympathy lost. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC).
  

Non admins on Arbcom

The story should have said non-admin ArbCom Members, despite the signpost no one is suggesting that we should dish out admin rights to all and any ArbCom candidates. Though that could flush out dozens more candidates and it would certainly solve the longterm decline in admin numbers if anyone who ran for arbcom automatically made admin. ϢereSpielChequers 23:35, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Changed it. — Earwig ^talk 09:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks ϢereSpielChequers 12:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

MEDRS

The proposal to expand MEDRS to cover anything health related seems to have failed, but a related discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Unsourced factual claims OK on policy pages?. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

In the media: Icelandic milestone; apolitical editing (1,030 bytes · 💬)

• Bassel Khartabil what can we do to help? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:08, 22 November 2015 (UTC).
  
• This story should be higher up on this page and more prominent in this edition generally. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

• In the "in brief" section, we've traditionally put stories in chronological order. This important matter deserved a full story as opposed to an "in brief", but I regret I did not have the time to do it myself. We'd like to have more volunteers writing here so all such stories can get fuller treatment. Gamaliel (talk) 00:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Special report: ArbCom election—candidates’ opinions analysed (49,651 bytes · 💬)

Thanks for the survey. I would imagine most candidates had issues with the wording of the questions, and would welcome detailed discussion - I know I did, and would. For example transparency is one of the subjects on which I have made not a few commitments - and yet I accept that (contrary to some previous practice) it is not a good idea for ArbCom to "out" people, any more than if anyone else is doing it. Therefore even my strong agreement with the question on all evidence being on-wiki is hedged around with exceptions.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:43, 21 November 2015 (UTC).

• Yes, at least one of the people listed here has withdrawn from the race entirely, and another of those listed has (unofficially at least) withdrawn their response to the survey. Which questions were asked of the candidates, the long form, or the short form, or both? I would also like to see the discussions that led up to the formation of the questions, if those are available. If I understand the rationale for doing otherwise, it was to get the honest ("non herding") responses of the candidates, without them being able to see how other candidates were responding? But this assumes that none of the candidates were communicating with each other, and of course, tends to look non-transparent in terms of the election-outcome, when the good-faith intent behind the secrecy was just to avoid messing up the validity of the survey-outcome. I also wonder whether the off-wiki-email-approach was technologically simpler, for proceessing the survey-data, somehow? Methodologically flawed, though, or at least, flawed from the "social" perspective of damping drama with objectivity. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 23:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

In the real world, my local newspaper serves a valuable role in summarizing events and local meetings that citizens are unable to personally attend. On wiki, The Signpost has a long tradition of identifying, collating, and summarizing real world activity related to Wikipedia; this is especially helpful since some such content is paywalled. In fact, I quote a 2012 signpost article on the importance of informal dispute mechanisms in my candidate statement. However, as the election RFC has provided a mechanism for the community to ask questions of candidates, it's unclear what "value added" a secretive email survey provides. I personally find the notion of a herd mentality ridiculous; as candidates we all have reasonably long track records on wiki, the electorate would spot pandering to the crowd instantly. (Also, while I'm not really a centuries old treelike creature living in a forest, I am also not a cow or bull.) In any event, when I received the signpost email I knew within 45 seconds I would not be participating, given the ridiculous bias of the question set. For the sake of clarity, I fully support the right of the signpost to ask what they want. NE Ent 23:55, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• I did not participate in this survey, despite what has been presented here. I submitted a preliminary response, but withdrew it after comments made by Signpost staff indicated that the Signpost's process for developing questions and evaluating responses was substandard. Despite publicly stating that the response was withdrawn, and notifying Signpost staff my email within their timeframe for responding, the Signpost has elected not only to publish the withdrawn response but to omit any mention of the fact that I had withdrawn it. The Signpost's behaviour shows a lack of journalistic competence, ethics, and integrity -- a conclusion reinforced by the fact that Tony D, who communicated with candidates on behalf of the Signpost, has accused one candidate critical of the survey of dishonesty and engaged in what an experienced editor described as a "gratuitous personal attack". I've worked in real-world politics over many years and have never seen an ostensibly journalistic enterprise engage in behaviour like this. It's disturbing if not outright disgusting. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 23:59, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

There was nothing "preliminary" about your response. And so you thought you'd withdraw to make some political point after all of the stats and interpretation had been done? No thanks—it's a huge amount of work to process, and we don't unravel and start again to suit the whims of candidates who then try to bargain with us (post online or I withdraw). Who is "Tony D"? Now, on the personal attacks, don't worry, we published in full expectation of them. Tony (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Please do not misrepresent my statements or actions. I did not make any attempt to bargain with you. My statement was unequivocal; I stated quite clearly that "this survey was not properly thought out and is not likely to be appropriately presented". All you're achieving by attacking not only candidates but one of the election coordinators is to undermine your own credibility. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 01:22, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• This was the exact concern that I was trying to raise on my talk page. "Don’t know or can’t decide" is not "neutral". Mike V • Talk 00:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Certainly is neutral statistically. You're supposed to be running the election, not blasting out your personal opinions on related issues. Tony (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Statistics compiled from flawed questions are not inherently neutral. To be concrete, here is question#F: "Case evidence should always be onwiki for the sake of transparency." If the candidate agrees to this poorly-posed question, they are saying arbcom should WP:DOX people, because arbcom accepts privacy-related information, and has access to checkuser evidence. Note the keyword 'always' in the question. Of course, if the candidate disagrees to this poorly-posed question, they are saying arbcom should be a secretive star chamber which encourages poison-pen evidence, right? Or maybe, they just disagree with the 'always' keyword... but how can anybody know that? The only suitable response is to refuse to answer the poorly-posed question, but in that case the candidate is *still* marked down as having answered something nonsensical, namely "neutral" as if they do not even care about the issues of transparency and privacy! The question itself is inherently non-neutral, because the candidate cannot give their actual answer, and whatever answer they do give is bound to be mis-interpreted by somebody in the arbcom electorate. That goes double, when the question is shortened to elide the transparency bit, and switches from 'always' to instead 'all' terminology, which is what is shown in the table: "All case evidence should be on-wiki." 75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:09, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Really? If you say so. Tony (talk) 01:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Yup, pretty clearly a question which cannot be answered meaningfully, and any numeric answer can easily be misinterpreted. Are you okay, then, Tony, with me removing question F from the columns in the table? Some people will have already read the information, of course, but better to fix it late than never. Or we could temporarily remove it, reformulate the question with a qualifier like "case evidence that does not violate WP:OUTING/WP:BLP/WP:NLT should..." phrasing instead of that which was originally used, and then add the revised info back in, once the 16 survey respondents had replied. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"Don’t know or can’t decide" is not "neutral": That's why those responses are marked in red. Does that not make the candidate's (preference not to give a) response transparent to the reader? Moreover, there are only six such responses in the entire table. Andreas JN466 01:28, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Jayen466: An answer marked in red was for an omitted response, to which the signpost editors defaulted to a value of 4. A response of don't know/can't decide would mean that the candidate does not have an opinion on the issue. A neutral response would mean that the candidate has evaluated both sides of the question and determined there is equal enough strength to the sides that they would consider themselves in the middle of the road. When a candidate responded with a 4, they stated they were undecided on the issue. However, the signpost article portrays these editors as neutral on the issue. For example, Off-wiki outing is never acceptable. 11 positives (four strongly); 5 negatives (three strongly); 2 neutrals. In these statements, neutral should be replaced with undecided to properly reflect the candidates' stated positions. Mike V • Talk 01:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

If a candidate didn't know or couldn't decide, they had the option of not leaving a response for that statement. Does this not seem reasonable? It seems natural not to attempt an answer if you don't know it, or can't decide on one for whatever reason, or have a problem with the way the question is phrased. The table makes those cases visible; a red 4 is the functional equivalent of a "don't know/can't decide/question doesn't make sense to me" response. I read the existing black 4s as a candidate saying, "Well, there are arguments on both sides and they roughly balance each other out; it depends, so I can neither agree nor disagree in general", and I read the red 4s as saying "I can't or won't comment on that statement (for whatever reason)". This is by no means anything specific to this survey; it's part and parcel of working with a Likert scale. If you look at the relevant literature, for example, you'll quickly notice that there are ongoing differences of opinion among researchers in the social sciences as to whether an explicit "don't know" option should be provided or not, whether it should be distinguished from neutral responses or not, etc., but these differences of opinion notwithstanding, the Likert scale in its various forms, including the one used here, is a standard tool in survey work. No one has gone about reinventing the wheel here. Andreas JN466 02:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• So 17 candidates among 21 have answered by a Lickert grade to the sentence "I favour strong over light sanctions". And now, the voters should ask themselves what answer they were expecting from a next to be Arbitrator. For myself, I was expecting: this depends on the case. There is a time for medicine, there is a time for surgery. Do I really want Arbitrators that will be 'light' or 'strong' without considering the merits of the case they are arbitrating? By the way, I really appreciate the apology about being "in a jungle with bad connectivity": don't tell a journalist that his question is a random stuff because he will probably retaliate by a non random story. Pldx1 (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Individual sanctions naturally depend on context, but if you look at arbs' voting records over the years you'll see distinct trends among them on the light–heavy scale. Tony (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
• Similar to many other candidates, although I support all possible discussion being held on-wiki, there are some issues (like a Wikipedian being stalked by a fellow Wikipedian irl) that simply cannot be discussed explicitly on-wiki, so my answers on questions of arbcom transparency are really 'Arbcom should be completely transparent except in cases where it can't possibly be transparent due to the details of the situations involved, or because they could be handled without drama in two emails or turn in to a full blown months long arb case." Obviously, we can't dox people. The question I chose not to answer I chose not to answer because I imagined either way would be held over my head, and in terms of harsh vs light sanctions, I geerally support light sanctions, but support strong, surgical, immediate sanctions where the details or nuance of the case require it. I had issues with a few other questions too, mainly because the available answers lacked nuance. I don't believe that a fast-moving generally transparent arbcom that tends towards light sanctions but can act with strong but humane force is an inherent contradiction. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:58, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

If you think that the due answer to a question is not a number, is it that difficult to answer NaN, instead of answering by a number ? Pldx1 (talk) 02:18, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The thought bluntly hadn't occurred to me, but you're probably right. The survey included room for 75 words per candidate where I voiced most of my last post, though it noted that not all commentary would be publshed. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I repurposed "4" as mu :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:58, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

(EC)There's a grand tradition among candidates and politicians of blaming everything on the press. Sometimes they (intentionally ambiguous) are correct. I don't think it does any good though for candidates to blame the press - the press does what they have to do, the candidates should do what they have to do. The press, as seen in this case, tries to nail down the candidates' positions, and sometimes the candidates don't like it.

That said, I don't think that questions like A, B, C, D, H, I, K, and L give us a lot of information. But sometimes, you just have to guess what questions will draw people out and produce disagreement. I much prefer the questions later in the alphabet, the ones on the issues.

Hullabaloo - there's a rule for anybody who deals with the press: never give them anything in writing that you wouldn't want to see in print; or if you do, at least start the private sections with [This section not for quotation] and end with [You can quote me again after this]. If the journalist doesn't understand what info you give them is for publication and what isn't, it's not his or her fault - it's your problem - sometimes a very serious problem. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Smallbones. The email clearly stated "on the record" at the top. On the propositions, it wasn't the Board's intention to aim solely for those that might draw differences among the candidates. It's useful to see consensus among them, too. On the value of the individual questions you specify, take L, for example ("Case procedures need streamlining"); of the four with ArbCom experience, one mildly disagreed, one was neutral, and two agreed; yet there was strong consensus overall, including three 7s. Tony (talk) 02:52, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"single-item questions pertaining to a construct are not reliable and should not be used in drawing conclusions." NE Ent 03:56, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

References

Pardon my snobbery, but it's just an unpublished paper that was presented to a conference 12 years ago ... the 2003 Midwest Research to Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing, and Community Education. Tony (talk) 04:26, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"Despite some limitations, Cronbach's coefficient alpha remains the most widely used measure of scale reliability.". So, did you calculate one? NE Ent 11:47, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Are you saying you would have happily responded to a questionnaire with about ten times as many questions as this one, because it would have given you more confidence in the statistical analysis? I'm afraid that would have been quite out of scope, both from the point of view of candidates' time, and the point of view of the Signpost's time. This was a very simple survey, as I'm sure readers can readily appreciate and allow for, and you along with one or two others didn't want to take part. I don't think there is more to it than that. Andreas JN466 15:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Dark red = 1 (disagree), dark blue = 7 (agree), white = 4 (neutral/no response/mu).

I find this big table kind of hard to read, so here's a matrix/heatmap version, sorted by the standard deviation for each question. I left off Hullaballoo (who withdrew from the survey) and Samtar (who withdrew from the race). Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:58, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@Opabinia regalis: I love this graphic! Thanks for creating it. --Rosiestep (talk) 05:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks to the Signpost for this analysis, and it looks like we're going to be in for a very interesting election cycle. While I've taken the time to read some of the candidate statements (and will be getting to their questions), this analysis really helps like it did for the Board election last May.

That said, I'm disappointed though that of the 22 candidates running, only one is not from the the Anglosphere. That to me is a travesty, and one that I hope the ArbCom will seek to address in future elections. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 15:03, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• You mean me, cause I live in Alabama? We can talk proper around here if we try. Drmies (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
  • @Drmies: Having talked with you a lot, I understand that you were trying to joke ... but Alabama, despite the cultural backwardness the name implies, has a very different outlook of the world than someone from (say) the Philippines. That said, Sky Harbor, the Anglosphere dominates everyone else when it comes to the number of first-language English speakers, so it stands to reason that the geographic diversity of those running will almost always be suboptimal. It's not ideal, but we're imprisoned by the language. Open to other opinions, though, especially if we can do more to encourage non-Anglosphere candidates to run. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
    • Ed, you know I'm Dutch, right? I'm not sure User:Sky Harbor know. I don't think we're "imprisoned" by language--it stands to reason that those who are better at language x will have an easier time getting around in x-Wikipedia.

      In general, though, I think most Wikipedia readers and editors couldn't care less about these elections; I'm sure they are not sure about what ArbCom does, and if they are, I venture to guess that many of them think this is just another popularity contest between insiders. Drmies (talk) 01:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

      • With all due respect, Drmies, Alabama (and the Netherlands, by extension) is still a world's way's away from the places where our efforts to improve geographical diversity in the movement's power structures are lacking. The fact is, it's really a chicken-or-egg scenario: users from developing countries, even those from countries where we have large English Wikipedian communities because of their exposure to English (like mine), don't feel compelled to run because they don't see any inherent motivation to do so, and we're rarely engaged with as it is when it comes to dealing with things of importance on the English Wikipedia. But at the same time, you have users from this part of the world who feel that the culture is stacked against them and that they are being driven out by those who look at things from a developed world view (ergo, most people on Wikipedia who are in positions of authority), and they can't do anything about it. If they do run, there's a snowball's chance in hell that they'll get elected.

        I should likewise point out though to Ed that we had at one point three ArbCom candidates from India in this election—two decided to pull out because there were other, "better" candidates. I don't think it bides well for the governance of the English Wikipedia, which by virtue of it being the first mover of our movement happens to also be the most international of all of them, if all the members of the ArbCom happen to look at things from only one world view while ignoring everything else. That said, I do think we're spoilt for choice regarding excellent candidates in this cycle, but if we're going to do something about making the project more inclusive and accepting of our movement's own diversity, I certainly would like to think that we can do more, because it seems to me that we're doing nowhere near enough. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 02:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but there is no way in which the Netherlands is part of the Anglosphere, and Alabama and the NL of course have nothing to do with each other; there's no "by extension" there. Neither do I accept, without qualification, this developed world vs. the rest of the world view: on the Internet, in a community like Wikipedia where so much depends on the quality of one's writing, linguistic competency is one of the most important factors. Being good at English does not, of course, mean that one is good at being an admin or on ArbCom or something like that, but since all this communication takes place via writing, one should not be surprised to find that those who are good at English have better odds in such races. The good news? Anyone can learn English and get quite good at it, better than most native speakers if need be. So while you're right on the general point, not many representatives from non-English speaking countries are running, this forum isn't the best place to get anything done. If you want to increase the number of non-English people running for ArbCom, consider nominating such candidates for adminship since many think that's a kind of necessary step for running for ArbCom. Best, Drmies (talk) 03:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Drmies: I did know that. I should have generalized to the west in general. :-) Regarding imprisoned, that's exactly what I meant—I'm sorry that I didn't state it clearly enough. And Sky Harbor, we agree, although I only see two candidates from India and neither of them have over 7,000 edits. Why do you think quality users from outside the global north don't feel the need to run? We do need more from the global south, but if the only editors nominating themselves don't have the resumes to win the election ... Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

We should mention that there is at least one Antipodean running. While it is clearly part of the Anglosphere, unless Australia has moved to the other side of the equator, it would not be fair to consider it part of "the global north".
Additionally, the "Anglosphere" and "Global North" have, by virtue of mass migration, incredible variety in their cultures - to consider the cultures of Berlin, Birmingham, Dunedin, Durban, Melbourne, Paris, San Francisco and Saskatoon to be the same would be strange. I believe that there is sufficient variety in the lived experience & worldviews of a small group of persons from those places to provide a sufficiently varied, and balanced, set of views.
We should much prefer an ArbCom with a diverse set of views than a diverse set of identities for its own sake.
I do appreciate aspects of Sky Harbor's initial point; content remains, in places, incredibly US-centric, and, in places, supportive of a limited range of viewpoints. This is in part due to the wider community; in part due to the availability of English-language sources; but I cannot concur that it is because of the demographics of our final dispute resolution body. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 08:13, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Ryk72: To refute one small point—Australia and New Zealand are part of the Global North under the WMF's definition (see right). On the rest of the point, Arbcom diversity is an ideal to strive towards. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ed, I stand corrected on the intended meaning of "the global north", and thank you for that correction.
For the main point, I am, of course, not opposed to an ethnically, or otherwise, diverse ArbCom, but do suggest that of the qualities we would wish an ideal ArbCom to possess, diverse would fall far behind clear, communicative, consistent, efficient, and (above all) effective.
I am strongly supportive of the representation of more diverse, more global viewpoints in our articles; and while I might personally consider that ArbCom should be judged not by the colour of their skin, or the shape of their genitals, but by the content of their character, I am happy that editors have a view that a diverse ArbCom is an end goal.
I would, however, ask "Why?".
By this, I do not mean to belittle the idea, but to better understand the perceived benefit to the project. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 10:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

See also, the movement of Iceland into the western hemisphere, for troop-deployment purposes within the newly-redefined letter of the law. I believe User:Samtar was pegged as being from India, or maybe User:Salvadrim, by Sky Harbor? Also ping User:Iridescent, who had some specific thoughts about how to better deal with proportionality, and sees the voting-system as presently defined, being a hurdle thereto. Personally, I would be shocked if non-English-speaking people were not elected to the enWiki arbcom, which is how I originally took the "Anglosphere" bit of the comment. That very much includes candidates the ilk of User:Drmies... and by the way, all your Hollands are belong to us, doktor!  :-)     But as is becoming apparent, the point User:Sky Harbor is trying to make has more to do with first-world economic status, the hegemonic discourse, and that sort of thing, where the normal meanings of 'north' and 'Anglo' do not necessarily apply. It is certainly true that anyone can edit is more of a slogan we strive towards, than an on-the-ground truth in the trenches. Reasonable level of internet access, free time to devote to a website, and a decent skill level in reading wiki-reliable English-language sources, plus writing neutral boring plain just-the-facts English-language sentences... those are not a terribly high bar, but they are quite far from Anyone Can Edit^TM no matter how you slice the mango. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Not from India here 75.108 :) I hail from Cornwall, UK samtar ^{t} 15:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

To drive home the point that I am making here: a lot of decisions being made on the English Wikipedia that affect the entire community are done so from an obvious Global North/developed countries/Anglosphere lens, and more often than not those who do not come from that point of view are simply expected to blindly follow. The fact that oral citations didn't pass community scrutiny because of concerns of reliability, despite the fact that oral citations are arguably the only effective way to document certain kinds of information in the developing world, is an example of this bias. Or how some editors would nominate articles about developing country topics en masse for deletion because they supposedly don't meet the notability criteria—something that relies heavily on a printed record that for many countries simply doesn't exist to the extent it does in the developed world. A lot of the things we do on the English Wikipedia, and in the movement at large, is by and large decided by a majoritarian point of view that, while capable of expressing the sentiments of our largest communities, is incapable of encapsulating the other large communities of non-Anglosphere/developing world English Wikipedia editors that exist here as well.

That said, I have a hard time agreeing with Drmies and Ryk72 that being a good Wikipedian is enough, and that their character is enough for them to be given the respect they deserve by the community. We may have some semblance of equality of opportunity (all you need is to write well to catch people's attention, and that's enough), but in reality I'd like to contend that Wikipedians outside our core editing communities (which, in the context of the Wikimania discussion has since been framed to mean the U.S., Canada and Western Europe, plus Australia and New Zealand for our purposes) will have a harder time on the English Wikipedia. They may be editors, but that's it—very few editors from those outer regions actually get a stake in shaping the culture we want to build as a community (the "hegemonic discourse" that 75.108.94.227 points out). The ArbCom's composition may be a symptom rather than a cause, but I hope this serves as a wake-up call for English Wikipedians to recognize that we exist too. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 15:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

There are many legitimate criticisms that can be made of Arbcom elections, ranging from "the voting system used magnifies systemic bias" to "the demands placed upon those running are unreasonable and discourage the best potential candidates from applying", but "too many of the candidates on the elections for a position which requires deep experience of an exclusively English-language project live in English-speaking countries" is not one of them. Do you likewise complain that a disproportionate number of arbs on de-wikipedia live in Germany, Austria or Switzerland? (Coren, FayssalF, Kirill Lokshin, Mailer diablo, Salvio giuliano and YellowMonkey have all been long-serving arbs in the past, as well as others I've probably missed, so it's hardly as if the committee is an Anglosphere stitch-up.) ‑ iridescent 16:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

( added afterwards by Pldx1 (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC): what follows is not a reply to User:Iridescent)
From a web source, Latin America accounts for 8.6% of the world population. So what? Should we require that 8.6% of the candidates belong to a "Latin America" category, i.e. 1.81 of them? Or should we require that 8.6% of the Arbcom body belong to the category, i.e. 1.29 of them ? Or should we count the heads and see how many registered users belong to the category? And then? Should we mimic the ratio among users, or apply an affirmative action factor? And perhaps augment the size of the elected body to minimize rounding problems? And deal with all these horrible questions about where is the boundary of the category? As soon as you think that people will act according to the categories you think they belongs to, you are not describing a cooperative process that can be ruled by arbitration. In other words, we should either abstain from categorizing or replace Arbcom by some Govcom (first choice being listed first). Pldx1 (talk) 16:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

If that's a reply to me, you're seriously misrepresenting my words to the extent of reversing their meaning. I'm saying that English-language Wikipedia is inevitably going to have a disproportionate number of its members from English-speaking countries, and that "non-English-speaking editors are under-represented" is never going to be a legitimate complaint. ‑ iridescent 16:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent, it is a legitimate complaint when in my comments I specifically mention English Wikipedia editors from countries that have large English Wikipedia communities, but are significantly underrepresented in the project's politics. Not once did I mention non-English speaking Wikipedians in my comments; I specifically refer to Wikipedians in places like South Asia (India, Pakistan, etc.), the Philippines (where I'm from), Malaysia and Singapore, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and the like, where there are large communities of English Wikipedia editors and can be reasonably deduced as being "English-speaking countries", but are nowhere near as being socio-politically influential on the English Wikipedia as are editors from the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 17:03, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Statements

Candidates were also asked to submit a 75-word statement. This was almost as silly as the Lickert Scale questions, for some of which (as @Kevin Gorman: and @Hullaballoo Wolfowitz: have said) a Lickert Scale was clearly inappropriate. However, none of the candidate statements appear to have informed the article. It’s interesting that nearly half of the pull quote of candidate statements was drawn from one candidate -- me -- who stands no chance of election but who also takes some care when writing these thing, despite the absurd restrictions. My 75 words were as follows:

Wikipedia must confront the widespread harassment and extortion which endanger our project. We must prevent anonymous trolls from using off-wiki harassment to gain on-wiki advantage. The encyclopedia is besieged by outside interests, agencies, and conspiracies that use Wikipedia for ends inconsistent with its mission; brats and cranks are no longer our chief care. ArbCom must acknowledge the shameful damage done to Wikipedia’s victims and should, when it can, protect and aid them.

Editing is seldom held in high regard, especially here at Wikipedia where everyone is an editor. Yet it's pretty clear that when an old, experienced and talented editor steps away for a moment to do something like run for ArbCom, the consequences are plain to see.MarkBernstein (talk) 02:34, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Although it doesn't address all my concerns in the comings years, I wholeheartedly endorse this statement. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
• I, too, endorse Mark's statement. While I'm not entirely comfortable with some of the undertones of the term "conspiracies", I don't have a better word to describe organized efforts with intentions to subvert important principles. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 15:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to balance nuance and firmness in 75 words!

Seriously, the absurd fixation with tired old inside baseball and with who’s been pals with whom for how many years, does the project no credit. Wikipedia faces real challenges, and this election ought to have concerned those challenges. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi again, User:MarkBernstein, did you mean to say Wikipedia's victims, as in, real-world-victims of BLP-attack-pages in mainspace? Or are you talking about on-wiki-victims at WP:AN/I when sanctions get out of hand? Or just on-wiki-victims of snark and sniping in talkspace and userspace? I'm having trouble squaring your last sentence with your first sentence, which seem to be talking about different things (off-wiki and on-wiki incidents respectively). Definitely agree with your third sentence, but in some cases, there is little that wikipedia can do beyond what we are already attempting to do... I work the political articles an computer articles mostly, and there are a lot of political staffers, and a lot of computer corporation employees, who edit here. But I don't consider politicians as a broad class to be in a conspiracy to subvert wikipedia, for instance; they have bigger fish to fry, they are trying to subvert entire governments.  :-)     Can you clarify your statement please, so I can see where you are heading, in terms of the prioritization of issues that arbcom ought to be aiming to address? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

My first concern is -- as yours should be -- the damage done to real-world victims by scurrilous use of Wikipedia pages, both in mainspace and elsewhere. I believe you will also share my concern over extortionate behavior on Wikipedia and the use of off-wiki threats to gain on-wiki advantage. 75 words does not allow much scope in which to address the project’s urgent problems, but even that was too much for Signpost. I’ve written more on my candidate page, though even there we are only allowed 400 words. This helps to trivialize the election, reducing it to a shallow popularity contest; that was presumably the reason for these silly restrictions and procrustean process. A reasonable starting point for my broader concerns over Arbcom's shameful treatment of Wikipedia and Wikipedians might start with my writing about Wikipedia and Gamergate: http://www.markbernstein.org/Wiki.html

An inside-baseball concern that I might mention to you, 75, is simply this: when I see a ping notification from an IP editor now, I cannot help but cringe. For the past year, I've been hounded here and elsewhere by scurrilous and outrageous anonymous trolls, many of them vile. Off-wiki, I get stuff like '“MarkBernstein = Evil Corrupt Jew. He must be stopped. He must be killed” in response to my candidacy. The systematic use of IP and throwaway accounts to annoy and disparage editors makes Wikipedia worse. Is there a way to retain IP accounts and also to restore the civil, collegial, and productive atmosphere necessary for encyclopedic work? This is not the right place for this discussion, but I think I owe it to you, 75, to tell you what so many people experience when they see anything here with a numeric signature. MarkBernstein (talk) 16:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, zeroth of all, I think you ought to keep going, and live.  :-)     As for primordial issues, to be perfectly frank, my first concern is off-wiki, of course; wikipedia is Just A Website^TM, whereas real life is more, well, real. But as for my on-wiki concerns, I most definitely have a special place in my wiki-heart for WP:NICE and pillar four generally (which includes the rules about WP:BLP and WP:HARASSMENT and such as especially-crucial subsets), second only to my love of WP:IAR. If we cannot have a wiki-culture of respect for each other, as humans not just as 'contributors' that are vast cogs in some byzantine wiki-bureaucracy, we are lost! As I see it, the pragmatic reason for the word-limits, is that the dedication of each candidate to the project of building an encyclopedia, is measured more by the quality of their time here, and by the quality of their edits while here, than it is by their candidate-statement (or their response to a signpost survey). It is also a test, of sorts: can you summarize a complex platform, into a few short sentences? If you can, probably you will be decent as an arb, where complex solutions to complex problems are summarized as tersely-worded ennumerated principles/findings/remedies, backed up by bangvotes with *extremely* terse rationales. There is little room for speech-making; simply on practical grounds, of dealing with 14 other arbs and hundreds of parties and peanut-gallery-members at the arbcom case-pages, arbs must master the art of omitting needless words. That's not enough to be an efficacious arb -- which requires ability to *solve* seemingly-intractable disputes whilst damping drama -- that's a bare minimum required not to be a hindrance to the rest of the arbs!  :-)     It is always permissible to leave a longer platform-statement on a subpage of one's userpage, or similar location, and wikilink to it. But with 20-something candidates, and 2000-some voters in the arbcom electorate, the maximum value is to be found in the keen-ness of the candidate's tersely-summarized candidacy-statement (secondarily), and in the insightfulness of the candidate's project-contributions (primarily).

  p.s. My apologies about causing a cringe by pinging you, and I thank you for being honest about the preconception -- but as you likely realize by now, I am also a bit of a stubborn-ish person on-wiki, seeking to prove by example that not all anons are high school vandals, darker-parts-of-the-internet trolls, nor generally-speaking-bad-for-wikipedia. I'm strongly committed to the idea that wikipedia is an encyclopedia where anyone can edit, which means I'm particularly interested in the recent arbcom decisions which compromise that with WP:HIGHSCORE-based rulings, naturally (cf WP:ARBPIA3). But in a broader sense, I'm trying to widen the bell curve, and show folks that sometimes anons *are* okay, if a bit, um, weird perhaps.  :-)     In that spirit, ping MarkBernstein once again, my suggested solution -- weird by wiki-traditional standards but perhaps so crazy it just might work -- to restoring the productive/collegial/civil atmosphere, where wikipedians must respect other wikipedians (and humans other humans), revolves around wiki-jury-duty implemented as a mass-message function. And yes, in my hypothetical scheme, anons would be eligible for wiki-jury duties.  :-)     Right now, we have ad hoc self-selected wiki-juries, at the noticeboards like AN/I, where admins can sometimes help out, albeit often only after dramahz have been ongoing for some time. We also have arbcom as the court of appeals, and User_talk:Jimbo_Wales as the high court of Appeal Unto Le Roi. What we don't have is any equivalent of the neighborhood watch, nor the citizen's arrest. There are not enough active admins to help keep the project from being gamed, and rather than lower our standards for admins (let alone for checkusers/arbs/oversighters/etc who have direct access to highly sensitive data), I'd like to instead empower us non-permbit-holding regular editors to help those folks out, using a kind of wiki-jury in which 12 quasi-randomly-selected editors can impose "non-admin blocks" (up to and including IP range-blocks) as well as "non-admin deletions" (up to and including salting and abuse-filter regex). Admins could overturn these wiki-jury decisions, and arbcom could overturn those admins, and Jimbo could overturn *them* if the issue was serious enough, of course.

  There is not a silver bullet here, though: we need an arbcom willing to truly enforce WP:NICE, we need more admins willing to fight hard to uphold WP:BLP in mainspace, we need the WMF willing to use the legal department to reach out to ISPs and get internet access shut off for the most serious troll behaviors (up to using throttling or outright refusal of maispace-content to that ISP to give our troll-patrol-requests teeth if necessary), we need more good potential admins running for RfA, and we need wiki-juries to take some of the load off our active admins in the obvious cases (so they can concentrate on the trickiest cases). Plus we need more pumpkin pie for everybody and for WP:ANYONE, and down with the pecan!  ;-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• For the record, as much as I wish I had nothing to do with it, the GamerGate case was decided in 2015 but the case was primarily handled by the 2014 committee. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:19, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

The study is hopelessly flawed, to the degree that the results are invalid. Rating scales (not Likert scales, but never mind, no one ever gets that right), in this case a scale of agreement with each of the statements, measure one continuous variable. Therefore the semantics of the scale should be constructed so as to measure a continuum from the greatest degree of agreement to the greatest degree of disagreement. Someone, who clearly knew nothing about research methodology, continuous v. categorical variables or scale construction, planted a term mid-scale that broke the continuum and invalidates the survey. Any survey using an odd-numbered rating scales anchored with "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" must have "neither agree not disagree" as its mid-point anchor statement in order to maintain the continuum. By planting the opt-out/neutral/I don't know point in the center of the scale (which anyone who's had even the most basic course in statistics or research methods would know not to do), the scale is now rendered as two scales: 1-3 measuring disagreement, and 5-7 measuring agreement. There is no way to compare, the two, so what we have here, in simple terms, is garbage. Or as we say in academia: garbage in/garbage out. (For next time, a separate data point "no response" that is off the scale is the correct way to allow a respondent to opt out.) Worse, the practice of counting blanks as a four, rather than leaving them blank, further skews the results. What a waste of time; I hope no one makes a decision about a candidate based on this tripe. --Drmargi (talk) 21:52, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Traffic report: Darkness and light (1,919 bytes · 💬)

• "not known as titans of the filmmaking world"? *glare* ;o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:02, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

For the record, I do live in London. I'm not speaking from ignorance; the British film industry isn't doing too well at the moment. Serendi^podous 23:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment

It's great to see Hedy Lamarr receive 2.7M views in one week, that is remarkable. I'm glad more people know about her inventive achievements. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Veteran's Day

I'm thrilled to see Veteran's Day on the list, all the more so since these days no one takes the time to celebrate anything in the month of November in the US - its straight from September/October to Christmas. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanksgiving? Dalliance (talk) 13:16, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Not death metal

Must point out that Eagles of Death Metal are not a death metal band. Montanabw^(talk) 02:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)