Wobbly start to ArbCom election, but turnout beats last year's: At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
Leaks and last-minute panics give way to a successful election process
The cumulative total of unique voters. Black is for this year; red for last year; green for 2010 (ten days only); and purple for 2009. ACE2012 had a total of 858 voters, comfortably more than last year's record low.Day-by-day numbers of unique voters, showing the characteristic surges at the start and finish of the voting periods. This year in particular, voters came out in force on the first day.
Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers:Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia;Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia;Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; andMardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them.
Good and bad aspects
A three-member electoral commission was charged with mediating any disputes and making decisions on unexpected issues. The commission comprises three trusted members of the community:MBisanz,Happy-melon, andLord Roem. MBisanz and Lord Roem told theSignpost they felt that the format of the elections has generally run smoothly; Lord Roem highlighted theSecurePoll voting interface, which has been tweaked to include links to candidates’ statements and their responses to questions, "making it easy for voters to do last-second research". MBisanz was pleased that "all the candidates readily complied with the required statements and voters have thus far been helpful in flagging ineligible votes". He also thankedDeltaQuad for coding a reliable bot for the election in under 90 minutes.
We asked MBisanz and Lord Roem about the downsides. Both commented on the lack of technical preparation, requiring Bugzilla requests to be filed to alterSecurePoll; and there was a five-day hold-up in the appointment of the commissioners. The result was a 24-hour delay in the start of the election. Stressing that this is a personal opinion, MBisanz was critical of "the misuse of the questions pages as a forum to re-argue or advertise prior disputes, as opposed to discovering the views or opinions of the candidates". Lord Roem said, "Next year, we definitely need to organize the technical side a few weeks in advance to avoid the scrambling of looking for a developer the day before."
Leaks
Aside from these technical and procedural hitches, this year's election was not without controversy. Shortly before the start of voting, emails regarding controversial arbitratorJclemens from the off-wiki arbitratormailing list (arbcom-l) were leaked to a community member.Elen of the Roadsconfirmed to the committee that she had shared at least some of the emails with an editor with whom she is associated. They then forwarded them to some current candidates, includingNuclearWarfare, who notified the committee of the breach of confidence. The situation deteriorated quickly and led to amotion to suspend or expel Elen of the Roads, under the "conduct of arbitrators rule", which would include removing her checkuser and oversight flags, her access to all mailing lists associated with ArbCom and those flags, along with her access to the ArbCom and Checkuser wikis. However, the required two-thirds majority of all sitting arbitrators to take this action was not achieved. While five arbitrators supported and only one opposed, the number of recusals – partly comprising arbitrators who were standing for reelection – made it impossible to pass.
This is not the first time that emails from the committee's mailing lists have been leaked: messages fromarbcom-l were disclosedin 2009, andin 2011 where the entire list appears to have been compromised going back to July 2005 ina series of releases on theWikipedia Review.
Calls for early release of unaudited votes
Every year frustration boils over in candidates and others who watch the election closely. This time, there was a plaintive attempt to release the unofficial results as soon as possible, to which Happy-melonresponded, "All community members ... are entitled to a secret ballot. Please sit back and continue to chew your fingernails patiently." The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of theSignpost.
Editor's note: Seven years ago, theSignpost ran a17-part series on the 2005Arbitration Committee ("Arbcom") elections. This surprisingly extensive coverage was understandable, since ArbCom at that stage was still a relatively new phenomenon, still finding its feet, and rapidly becoming more complex, with more than 20 open requests for arbitration when the 2005 arbitrators took office (see theSignpost's "History of the Arbitration Committee"). The second half of 2012 has been a study in contrasts: there has not been an arbitration casesinceFæ in July. Given that ArbCom's role has become more settled from year to year, our coverage nowadays is somewhat less than 17 articles.
In brief
The new logo of Wikivoyage, Wikimedia's new travel guide project.
Indian Wikipedia summit scholarships: Editors interested in participating in the firstWikipedia Summit India, hosted by the volunteers of theWikipedia Club Pune, can apply forscholarships. The application period started on December 1 and the deadline is December 15.
South African campaign for free mobile access to Wikipedia: On December 10, the news portal news24.comreported on a campaign by South African educators for free mobile access to Wikipedia. The model pointed to is the WMF'sWikipedia Zero initiative.
New Wikivoyage logo: The community contest determining the logo for Wikimedia's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage, established a clear winner. The original proposal of the first roundwon with 68 votes.
WMF restructure: On December 7, the WMFannounced the first phase of its restructure, which aims to improve support for core tasks such as a better software interface for Wikipedia. While the final decision on the structure of the tech department will be taken early next year, the current broad working management structure of the global development department (renamedGrantmaking and Programs) has been made permanent.
WMF audit report 2011–12 published: On December 10, the Wikimedia Foundation published itsaudit report 2011–12.KPMG states in the document that it represents the financial position "fairly, in all material respects" and that the year ended in "conformity with US generally accepted accounting standards".
WMF board minutes published: Minutes of the WMF board of trustees October meeting have beenpublished. The meeting focused on administrative business and theLegal Fees Assistance Program,.
English Wikipedia miscellanea
New administrator:Harrias, a British editor based inSomerset,passed RfA this week with strong consensus, marking the 27th new administrator this year—a total far below that ofprevious years.
Final pending changes update: Level one of the controversialpending changes tool, which affects only new and unregistered editors, has been enabled across the English Wikipedia.
My experience has not found paying / offering to pay people to edit is effective. WikEmerg was paying $600-1000 per article and had limited success. See here for further details[1]Doc James (talk ·contribs ·email) (if I write on your page reply on mine)23:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding from very limited German and a Google Translation is that the project is to explore how to help the community deal effectively with paid editors, rather than develop ways to enable paid editing with donor funds. The commentary in the Signpost was a little vague I think.Steven Walling (WMF) • talk23:28, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, the evaluation is wide-ranging and one of the explicit goals is for example that at the end "a written handout for various stakeholders (Communications agencies, GLAM cooperation partners, communications experts of businesses) how and to which extend they can operate in Wikipedia" (no. 10) has to exist and there is also a workshop to bring paid editors and the community together (no. 4). both are also explicitly included in the evaluation framework and there is a Euro15,000 budget for the "get together"-workshop. Therefore, I think the Signpost got "evaluating" quite right - after all, it is not claimed to solve the issue once and for all, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk)06:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really the case that "every year frustration boils over in candidates and others who watch the election closely"? If so, those people need to go for a walk around the block! ;)Nick-D (talk)07:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
" KPMG states in the document that it represents the financial position "fairly, in all material respects" and that the year ended in "conformity with US generally accepted accounting standards"." This is not news; ALL US audit reports say this, except the ones that don't - now they are news. Reporting on these matters is a legal requirement, and this is "dog bites man". Put something, anything, in instead, like a couple of key figures.Johnbod (talk)12:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
