ArbCom Vacancy

Wherefore "justice"?
(as if!) Image via
Wikimedia CommonsI think the little corner of the blogosphere that I (and presumably, many of my readers) hang out in has discussed the departure of Newyorkbrad from the English Wikipedia project, the events leading up to it, the events surrounding it, and so forth, quite a bit, so I'll skip the background.

But the departure leaves a hole in the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee. Brad was widely regarded as a very good arbitrator.

So now what. As the picture says, wherefore justice? (recall please that I feel that Wikipedia is not a government or experiment in justice or social systems, and that arbcom is designed to solve things, not dispense justice)

Traditionally, Jimbo does sometimes appoint to fill vacancies.

And speculation about who he might or might not appoint is already running at a fever pitch. Some speculate that the next people in order from the 2007 election, Rebecca and Raul654, are the most likely appointees.

Well, while they might be the most likely, and while they might not be "bad" arbitrators (both have experience), I think a better idea is to make a radical pick, one that shows some new thinking.

So obviously, I'm stumping for Giano. (you saw that coming, right? grin!) He is 3rd on the list when sorted by percentage, but first, when sorted by number of supports received. (and he got a LOT!) My reasons given at the time
are just as valid as ever, in my view.

What do you think? Am I crazy? If so, tell me! Am I spot on? If so, tell Jimbo! :)

Throwing myself to the wolves?

Some time ago Giano opined that any Wikipedia administrator worth listening to should have at least one Featured Article (FA ... "Wikipedia's Best Work" ) under his or her belt, if not actually produce one per year. That suggestion was not met with universal acclaim. :) But there's some merit to it, nonetheless... or at least to the notion that everyone seeking any extra permissions, should have at least some experience with actually writing the encyclopedia.

While I have written some 25+ DYKs 3 of which are Good Articles, I don't yet have a Featured Article to my credit, and I've been maneuvering to get one to the state where it might be a candidate for some time.

So, armed with a lot of help, including the sage advice given here, I've launched a Featured Article Candidacy for SS Christopher Columbus, which is of all the articles I've written, perhaps my all time favorite. There are those that deride the FA process as overly "fussy" or bureaucratic, but I am not sure that's so... so far the suggestions I've gotten have almost all been actionable and were, for the most part, things I'd missed that really did need sorting. Extra eyes do wonders at spotting things needing fixing.

We shall see how it goes. I'm hoping for smooth sailing. Wish me luck!

Procrastination

I like to write Wikipedia articles. I highly recommend it, in fact. Namespace shift, the tendency of people as they get more involved in wiki projects, to move away from writing, means that like so many others, I write less articles than when I first started. But it's refreshing to do so, it is a reminder of why we are here, and after the sturm und drang of AN/I (the administrator's incident notice board), RfAr (the requests for arbitration page), etc., it's nice to create something. If you're down and burnt out a bit, you too should try it.

Now, I'm no SimonP, author of thousands of articles and subject of his own article, or even a Giano, with dozens of FAs (Featured Articles, considered by many as among Wikipedia's best work). But I do pride myself on article creation. I even keep a todo list of stuff I'm working on so I don't forget. I work on stuff in my user space so when it goes live, via move, it's fully fleshed out and not likely to get nominated for deletion... it also means that I can take my time to work on it, and then nominate it for DYK (Did you know, Wikipedia's newest articles), free of any worry it's not new enough.

But sometimes I don't go back to that list as often as I should. Ah, the dangers of procrastination...

Example in point. U.S. Army Transportation Museum ... I had a stub of an article on that in my user space for ... 2 years, just about! I visited the museum while on a family vacation (for some reason I could not persuade anyone else to go with me to spend an entire day looking at vehicles of various sorts, go figure!) in spring of 2006... I drew up a fancy map (with some help from TIGER ). I have shedfuls of pictures I need to upload (hey maybe I'll do that soon!) to commons and categorize. But one thing and another always seemed to interfere with finishing the article off. Procrastination at its finest.

Well, when I went back to work on this, I found that a real article has been there since November 2007.. my procrastination meant someone else did the article after all. I did improve it a bit (from 1 to 8.5K) but I shouldn't have procrastinated. The project could have had an article way sooner than it did.

There are other examples on my todo list ... guess I better get busy.

Hey you, stop reading blogs and go write an article!

:)

Giano stands up for Jimbo

Many of you know who Giano is, but for those of you that don't, he is one of the English Wikipedia's more prolific writers, with many Featured Articles to his credit. Giano has always been unafraid to speak his mind.

Giano stood for ArbCom in the 2007 elections and I was a strong supporter. Although he garnered a lot of votes, he was not among the candidates selected by Jimbo.

Concurrently with the election, the ArbCom IRC case came up and Giano found himself sanctioned by ArbCom, placed on a civility parole for a year, and Giano said he would not be back.

Recently, Giano returned. What brought him back? The current (ongoing?) scandal involving Jimbo, Rachael Marsden, and allegations of impropriety. So did Giano take some potshots at Jimbo in retaliation for Jimbo's chiding him? No. Instead Giano posted a long and heartfelt defense of Jimbo.

What happened next is probably predictable... there was a lot of back and forth, someone tried to take it off the page before discussion finished, harsh words were exchanged, and so forth. But that's not the point.

The point is that Giano, the candidate who detractors said held grudges, acted like a child, would be a bad influence on the project, and on and on... that candidate had the strength of character to stand up on behalf of what he believed right. Not on behalf of a friend, which is admirable, but on behalf of someone who had done him few favours.

That's the sort of person ArbCom needs. That we did not choose him is our loss.