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Revision as of 15:31, 12 December 2017

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Doc James, Pundit and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Support and Safety is Maggie Dennis.

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Last day for ArbCom elections

Sunday (until midnight UTC -about 26 hours from now) is the last day to vote in the WP:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017. Please do vote, if you're eligible, and haven't already voted. There was a bit of a glitch in getting the talk page notices sent out this year, but that was worked out early this week and now it doesn't seem to have affected the overall turnout. There have been about 1,860 voters this year compared to 1,950 total last year (with about 75 voting on the last day). In some ways the glitch was a good experiment, we can now state with some confidence that the talk page notice accounts for approximately 75% of the turnout. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:02, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder, have voted. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:03, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

We could only "state with some confidence that the talk page notice accounts for approximately 75% of the turnout" if we did a paired comparison to rule out the very likely possible tendency for many voters to just leave it to the last minute, whether they are "reminded" or not? But of course any such deliberate comparison would be open to the charge of being undemocratic. Voting at RfA is public. Why is voting for ArbCom not public? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

There are records for who voted (and how many voted of course) but not who they voted for, in the voters log for each year.

• With a couple of hours to go 2017 had 1,976 voters (note that the talkpage announcements were made this last Monday (double check needed))
• data for 2014 (no tp announcements) 594 voters
• data for 2015 (tp announcements made a few days late) 2,674 voters
• data for 2016 (tp announcements a few days late if I remember correctly) 1,950 votes

Just eyeballing the data - most votes are cast in the first few days after the start of the vote, or the first few days after the tp announcements. Comparing 2014 to 2015 - more than 4 times the vote with a tpa. I didn't record my count of this years before and after tpa vote totals, but I recall something like a 4 times jump. So just eyeballing the data 75% of turnout attributable to tp announcements looks pretty good. Feel free to use the data to prove me wrong. There may be a simpler and better way to get your estimate, but I'll suggest a dummy variable regression with each days turnout as a function of dummy variables for (days 1-5 after start of election) and (days 1-5 after tp announcement, plus another dummy for days 6+ after tpa). Happy computing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:13, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Hey, dude. Who are you calling another dummy?? But thanks. I agree the data suggest an effect, although I'm not sure just one instance of no tp allows for a statistically robust conclusion. Perhaps a question for Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Mathematics! Martinevans123 (talk) 12:51, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

That's an old joke of course :-b , but I might as well include some links Dummy variable (statistics). ANOVA should give identical results and may be more familiar to folks. Multicollinearity is a problem if you have too many dummies in the regression. But it's not a question here of not having enough data. I'm just too lazy to clean the stricken votes (including folks who voted multiple times consistent with the rules and had their earlier votes stricken) from the data, then do the counting and regressing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:12, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

"Vote early and vote often" as they used to say in Chicago. I'm too lazy to do the ANOVA. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: ArbCom elections have used SecurePoll since the December 2009 election; see the links from there about the discussion of the change from a public voting system to a private one. Graham87 06:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks, Graham. I will consult with interest. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:51, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Beyond reproach?

TL;DR: Admin appears unwilling/unable to hold self to standards set for others. Seeking peer(s) of comparable rank and status to, please, attempt to mentor him regarding such.

Jimbo, awhile back while looking into the desysopping of Dangerous Panda I noticed you'd weighed in before things had been allowed to pile up to folks making broad at-wit's-end pleas for relief to ArbCom. I'm hoping you'll find some way to express opinion and offer mentorship in circumstances I'll present surrounding Drmies as well. I'd like to see him encouraged to voluntarily rein himself in – to preclude problematic attitudes and behaviors escalating to a level of community disruption requiring formal intervention.

Yesterday I posted the following to a talkpage thread (context addresses the reversion en masse of 12 edits by ~6 editors going back 29 days):

11 minutes later Drmies removed the passage (while leaving preceding comments) and left in its place:

... with an edit summary of:

I'm hoping that other editors of comparable rank and social status might find a way to convey to Drmies as to how his recent conduct—relating to thewolfchild as well as to myself and to general concerns of behavior befitting a WP admin—might be seen as problematic and unbecoming to his position so as to encourage better care and consideration in the future.

Thanks for your time and attention, (and thanks for your efforts in offering the world an amazing public resource) ––A Fellow Editor– 10:54, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps also Doug Weller and some of his fellow Eguor admins might be willing to pull Drmies aside and offer some guidance? Or maybe some of the current ArbCom candidates—on this the last day of elections—might wish to take this as an opportunity to show the community their position on holding themselves and others with elevated privileges to offering at least the same standards of best practice as to which the community-at-large is held? While perhaps also addressing the expectation that those with elevated powers and responsibilities exemplify best practices themselves? ––A Fellow Editor– 11:33, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Drmies has blundered into my userspace—after requesting I avoid his—to edit in my personal archive User:A Fellow Editor/Archive/Drmies talk, December 2017.

Relevant diffs: .

One might be inclined at this point to take this as a further demonstration of the present scope of his tact and prowess. ––A Fellow Editor– 12:19, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

The parent controversy seems more entertaining. Apparently The Evergreen State College has some very peculiar liberal traditions, like encouraging all the minority students and professors to skip class one day in order to make them more academically equal. Then someone hit on the notion of "encouraging" the white students and professors to skip out instead... much hilarity ensued. On Misplaced Pages, this manifests in muted form as edit warring. It looks like DrMies was involved in trying to suppress the very best of this comedy gold here - if this is supposed to be reason why citing primary sources is "problematic", it is also a great example of why primary sources are so valuable. Watch this weirdness at , though to be sure, this really isn't primary enough, too many cuts.

So far my best explanation is North Koreans already released the brain-destroying virus, presumably after sticking a special bonus into their own citizens' mandated vaccination schedule. But hey, maybe I'm wrong ... we'll see. Wnt (talk) 18:53, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

@A Fellow Editor: I've been an admin for a long time and I've seen a lot of people posting verbose complaints about admins who criticised them using unkind terms. They almost invariably result in increased scrutiny of the complainant, which I've never seen anyone welcome and which rarely has a happy ending. I strongly suggest you find something else to do. Misplaced Pages has 5.5 million articles and counting and just off the top of my head I can think of dozens more it's lacking. I mean this as a kindness: I guarantee you that you will be a much happier Wikipedian if you find some neglected articles to work on and let the drama pass you by. I won't comment further on this thread so please don't ping me. Unless you're looking for article suggestions, in which case ping away. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

As a decently long-standing admin, I echo HJ Mitchell's sentiments above. ceranthor 17:03, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Speaking as just some guy, Category:WikiProject prospectuses contains at least a few pages listing topics covered in specialist reference sources. Many of them still don't exist here yet, and there are numerous other potential articles which could be based on encyclopedia-type works a available at Internet Archive and elsewhere. Believe me when I say that there are many, many articles, some rather important, which don't exist here yet or are in a rather poor state. John Carter (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:07, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Question

Hello, Jimbo. Sorry for open proxy, but I have to use it. there is no arbitration committee in Bulgarian Misplaced Pages and I am writing here. can information be added in city articles about which radios are being accepted because administrator Iliev rubs this information backed by a source and blocks me. 2001:AC8:23:A:303:200:0:18B4 (talk) 12:22, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Radio stations are certainly allowed on enWiki, and I don't see any reason that they shouldn't be on the Bulgarian Misplaced Pages (but please don't make them into advertisements - just note and cite that they are there), Unfortunately, I doubt that Jimmy can do anything about community rules or rulings in the Bulgarian Misplaced Pages. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:45, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

can he? probably eys. will he? most likely not. it would essentially be an office action, and I rather doubt that jimbo would create such a mess unilaterally, unless absolutely necessary. you might be better off gettin in contact with a Bulgarian 'crat. -- Aunva6 16:13, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• Note: I initially reverted this for being an open proxy, but I appear to need glasses as I was told open proxies can edit Misplaced Pages (despite reading the policy before). Nonetheless, this is probably PavelStaykov, or maybe even the recently blocked TishoYanchev. !dave 16:26, 11 December 2017 (UTC)