It’s election season again: voting will soon open for the 13th annual election of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. In a repeat of last year’s election, there are nine vacant seats on the 15-member committee, eight of which will carry two-year terms and one a one-year term. Following two withdrawals, there are 22 candidates, up on last year’s 18; five of them have already served on the Committee for at least one term: LFaraone, GorillaWarfare, Kirill Lokshin, Thryduulf, and Casliber. Many eyes will be on the number of voters, which last year shrank precipitously by more than a third, from 923 to 593.
This year has marked one of the most fractious in the history of the Committee, in which judgment voting patterns have at times shown mild evidence of the formation of blocks of arbitrators, depending on the theme. There were several drama-infused cases, including the Gamergate case, which attracted unfavourable outside press coverage; gender-related cases appear to be a point of divergent viewpoints among the arbitrators. The current election will influence whether the Committee can regain cohesion and weather external shocks, including emotionally charged cases and critical coverage by external news outlets.
Excerpts from candidate statements:
Am I suitable to work here as an arbitrator? I have no idea.
Well, this is about the last thing I ever thought I’d do here.
Fuck it, I'll be the first to throw my hat in.
I don't want ArbCom to be regarded as a death panel.
So I was an editor, if not a very hardworking or ambitious one.
We must clean our house, lest those who could advise and assist us dismiss Wikipedia as a nest of boobies.
ArbCom has encrusted itself in mock-judicial trappings.
My opinion of the current committee’s Infamous, Thoughtless, Careless and Reckless handling of Gamergate received some attention.
ArbCom requires more innocent merriment, and I’ll do my level best to supply it.
I consider myself pretty up on cultural differences, having spent extensive time working in ... Canada, US, Australia, and Mongolia.
As well as reading the candidate statements and question pages, community members have written 15 voter guides, almost as numerous as the candidature. Against this, however, the Signpost is providing a different angle by presenting the results of an emailed survey to candidates on both their personal qualities and their views on ArbCom-related issues. This is the methodology we have used twice this year in our coverage of WMF Board and FDC elections. With so many candidates, it is a way to provide voters with comparative data gathered on a large scale in isolation, eliminating the "herd" effect in which candidates' responses are influenced by those of their colleagues. This is at the expense of reducing candidates' views to numbers, so we invited short statements to give respondents the opportunity to state more nuanced views—taken up by only a minority. The survey and the writing of this story was designed and supervised by the Signpost's Editorial Board; editor-in-chief Gamaliel was excluded from the process because he is standing in the election.
There are several findings of interest. The candidates overall think that cases take too long, that case procedures should be streamlined, and that it's too hard for community members to extract the important messages from ArbCom’s judgment pages. They are satisfied with the voting system in the election, and believe the WMF should take more responsibility for minor issues. There is mild consensus that ArbCom's scope to manage excessive behaviour should not be widened, and that off-wiki outing is never acceptable. Consensus is less clear on transparency issues. The candidates are significantly divided on Gamergate and gender treatment.
We received 18 responses; one candidate, Kirill Lokshin, did not respond; Kelapstick apologised that he's "in a jungle" with bad connectivity; two more refused to participate on the grounds that the questions "require candidates to reveal information that they chose to withhold in their nominations or chose not to reply to the users' questions" (Kudpung), and were not "transparent" (NE Ent). Hullaballoo asked to withdraw his responses well after the announced copy-deadline, and after the data analysis had been done, a request we declined. One of the candidates who responded, Samtar, has since withdrawn.
We used a seven-number Likert scale, exploring a six-point response space from 1 to 7:
Each candidate was invited to put a number against each of 20 propositions, and were informed that blanks would be counted as "4" for statistical purposes (these are marked red in the table). We have abbreviated candidates' usernames for reasons of space; those who have served on the Committee are marked with an asterisk. The full wording of the propositions appears at the bottom of the story. Averages and standard deviations appear first;1 then net positives (5–7) and negatives (1–3), which disregard the strengths of the responses to focus merely on which side of neutral candidates lie as a whole.
Key to the abbreviations of the candidates' names in the first row of the table below:
| Proposition | Avg. | StDev | Net pos. | Net neg. | OR | TT | M | G | CL* | W | Cal | KG | MB | K | D | GW* | LF* | H | RF | T* | HW | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (A) I have a record of minimising drama | 4.9 | 1.6 | 13 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 |
| (B) I favour strong over light sanctions | 3.4 | 1.3 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| (C) I'm prepared to manage difficult editors | – | – | – | – | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| (D) Drafting judgments in plain, simple language is my strength | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| (E) ArbCom's scope to manage excessive behaviour needs to be widened | 3.1 | 1.7 | 5 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| (F) All case evidence should be on-wiki | 3.4 | 2.1 | 7 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| (G) Arb discussions on cases should be on-wiki | 3.7 | 1.7 | 6 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 5 |
| (H) Arb burnout is a major problem to address | 4.9 | 1.3 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 |
| (I) Judgment pages: easy enough for community to get the messages | 3.0 | 1.6 | 5 | 13 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 3 |
| (J) Accept fewer cases, leave more for AN/I etc | 4.3 | 1.6 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| (K) Cases need to take less time | 5.7 | 1.2 | 16 | 2 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 3 |
| (L) Case procedures need streamlining | 5.2 | 1.4 | 13 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 3 |
| (M) ArbCom was at its worst in handling Gamergate | 4.2 | 1.6 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| (N) I was satisfied with the Gamergate judgment | 3.4 | 1.5 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| (O) ArbCom should disregard off-wiki evidence | 3.3 | 1.7 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| (P) Off-wiki outing never acceptable | 4.7 | 2.1 | 11 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| (Q) ArbCom has treated men more sympathetically than women | 4.6 | 1.8 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 2 |
| (R) The WMF should take more responsibility for minors issues | 5.8 | 1.4 | 14 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| (S) I'm happy with Audit Subcommittee arrangements | 3.1 | 1.5 | 2 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| (T) I'm satisfied with the ternary voting system for ArbCom elections | 5.4 | 1.5 | 14 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 7 |
| Proposition | Avg. | StDev | Net pos. | Net neg. | OR | TT | M | G | CL* | W | Cal | KG | MB | K | D | GW* | LF* | H | RF | T* | HW | S |
Our motivation was mainly to survey attitudes to ArbCom-related issues by the group as a whole (this is a highly relevant cross-section of the community—those who put themselves forward for election). However, before they cast their votes, editors may be interested in scrutinising the responses of individual candidates.
Data interpretation can never be 100% objective, and the Signpost welcomes critical comments and discussion on the talkpage below. Propositions C and D we regard as likely to attract a higher level of public-relations calculation by candidates, which explains the narrow, positive range (who would admit they're unprepared for managing difficult editors or can't write clear judgments?); statistics are less relevant here and are not included. Proposition A might have been in the same class, except that the focus is on evidence (candidates' "record"), with responses ranging from 1 to 7. B is the hanging judge question, which might attract more scrutiny from voters: eight favour light over strong sanctions, four sit on the fence, and six favour strong sanctions (not surprisingly, only one of them going beyond mild agreement).
Let's deal first with the five propositions on which there appears to be clear consensus among the candidates:
On four questions there is only a modest consensus:
Consensus is less clear in two related questions about transparency, especially the second one:
On five questions, the candidates show no consensus:
The two-week voting period will open at midnight on Monday 23 November (although some voters may be confused as to whether this refers to midnight start or end of Monday). Voters are advised that the arithmetic of the ternary system means that opposing all candidates they are not supporting, rather than voting neutral for them, is a more powerful confirmation of their supports. An election feedback page has been established.
1 Standard deviations are a measure of spread. They can be roughly visualised as the space that contains a third of responses above the average and a third below it. If 5.0 were the average and 0.5 were the standard deviation, two-thirds of responses, roughly, fall within the range 4.4–5.5. The larger the standard deviation, the more divergent the candidates' views.
Updates on the discussions covered in the last discussion report:
In this week's Arbitration Report: one long-running case is finally put to rest, a Subcommittee is disbanded, and candidate-nominations are closed for the Arbitration Committee Elections, with voting for up to nine new arbitrators to begin 23 November.
On 17 November, over three months after the case was accepted by the committee, the E-cigs case has been closed. In the committee's findings, despite application of general sanctions to the Electronic cigarettes topic, disruption still continued. Thus, the first remedy in the case is that general sanctions are rescinded, to be replaced with discretionary sanctions going forward. Furthermore, some discretionary sanction extensions were added, with one extension specifying that uninvolved administrators may topic-ban or block (up to indefinitely) single-purpose accounts in the topic area. The other extension encourages uninvolved administrators to monitor articles that are covered under the sanction. A warning for QuackGuru covered topic bans and restrictions from alternative medicine. Also, a warning for CFCF covered participation in multiple edit wars, leading to a 72-hour one-revert Restriction in the topic area.
The committee made an 8–4 decision to disband the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. Formerly, this subcommittee (BASC) handled appeals via email, from users who had been community-banned (or blocks of long to indefinite duration). However, BASC was only intended for use in certain "last resort" circumstances, for users who had already appealed their block (via {{unblock}} on their talk page), and usually also via the UTRS interface. That was the primary function; BASC was not utilized for appeals of short blocks, topic bans (and other sorts of non-site-wide restrictions), nor ArbCom rulings.
The decision to disband BASC was actually arrived at during a discussion of how to reform BASC, which ended in a split 6-6 decision. The intent of the reform-proposal was to reduce the workload BASC was responsible for (one arbitrator estimated that BASC had received nearly 100 appeals in 2015 so far), by limiting the types of appeals that BASC would consider. Specifically, the reform proposal was for BASC to henceforth only hear appeals from editors who were subjects to an {{OversightBlock}}, a {{Checkuserblock}}, or other bans/blocks involving material "unsuitable for public discussion" (for instance privacy issues, harassment, and legal issues). Other appeals, not specifically needing such discretion, would henceforth be handled via UTRS, AN/I, or {{unblock}} reviews, should the proposed BASC reform succeed. In the end, rather than keep the separate BASC mailing list for handling this more limited set of appeals to BASC, it was decided to have the full ArbCom consider such appeals (along with their existing work hearing appeals to AE blocks and ArbCom remedies), and disband BASC outright. As of 16 November, all pages having to do with BASC have been marked historical, and the mailing list has been shut down.
Finally, self-nominations for this year's Arbitration Committee elections were closed as of 17 November (at 23:59 UTC). There are currently nine open seats, due to the unexpected retirement of one sitting arbitrator. Wikipedia has 21 candidates standing for election at this time; one candidate withdrew during the nominations-phase, then two more withdrew 20 and 21 November. Eligible voters (requires 150+ mainspace edits and must not be blocked at the time) are invited to review the statements of candidacy by the hopefuls, and discuss the election. Several voter-guides by individual Wikipedians have been categorized, and in some cases advertised. Candidates are taking 'official' questions throughout the election-period; voting begins 23 November (at 00:00 UTC), and ends 6 December (at 23:59 UTC). Best of luck to all the candidates running this year. During 2016, those elected will join six sitting arbitrators who are not up for re-election this cycle: Courcelles, DeltaQuad, DGG, Doug Weller, Guerillero, and Salvio giuliano.
Six featured articles were promoted this week.
Ten featured pictures were promoted this week.
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)
Summary: The tragedy in Paris, of course, had an impact on the list this week, with three slots in the top 10. Nonetheless, there is some nobility in the fact that, rather than let the nightmare top the list, we instead gave it to Hedy Lamarr's unsung contribution to the development of wireless technology, and that we didn't let current conflicts affect our annual commemoration of those who have died in past ones. It seems only fitting that the Hindu festival of Diwali, which signifies the victory of light over darkness, made its annual appearance this week. The very predictability of its return became an act of defiance.
For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of November 8 to 14, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hedy Lamarr | 
|
2,744,601 |  |
I have to say, before researching this entry, my knowledge of this multitalented screen goddess began and ended with a running gag in Blazing Saddles. Despite living almost into the current century, she had basically retired before I was born and so never connected with my generation. Still, she was a remarkable woman; not only pioneering sexual content onscreen in the 1933 film Ecstasy but also inventing a forerunner of Bluetooth and wireless technology that was employed by the US military in the Cuban Missile Crisis. This unsung achievement was celebrated in a Google Doodle on her 101st birthday on 9 November. |
| 2 | November 2015 Paris attacks |
|
1,237,935 |  |
This event is moving at the speed of news, and so what I write will be obsolete by the time it is published. Even now though, the facts are staggering. The first suicide attack in French history; their worst mass killing since World War II; the worst attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings more than a decade ago. Despite it bearing all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack, the killing has been "credited" to the murderous quasi-state ISIL. If that is true, then that is dark news indeed; it means they have managed to project themselves far beyond their claimed borders, and can draw other nations into their nightmare at will. France have already escalated their war in Syria in response, much, I am sure, as ISIL expected. Whether they or anyone else can finally put an end to the horror is still unknown. |
| 3 | Spectre (2015 film) | 
|
1,199,500 |  |
This article held steady at #3 for a third week, with an 11% jump in views. The British are not known as titans of the filmmaking world, but they have staked their claim with this latest in their defining James Bond series. The budget, topping $300 million, makes this the most expensive film ever made without the words "Pirates of the Caribbean" in front of it. After the last Bond film made over a billion dollars, it seems the proudly British producers have confidence enough to stand apart from Hollywood, premièring the film in six national territories—but not the US. That's not to say it didn't do well when it finally opened Stateside; it has held on to the top spot in its second week, and has, as of November 17, made almost $550 million worldwide. |
| 4 | Diwali |
|
1,002,136 |  |
The Hindu festival of light, which draws attention to the inner light beyond the material body, the Atman, has had to coexist with some fairly grim events of late. Last year, it was beaten to the top spot by the West African Ebola outbreak, and this year saw it shadowed by the Paris terror attacks. Still, we would, I am sure, appreciate a light for those we've lost as the Western world enters its own holiday season. |
| 5 | Prem Ratan Dhan Payo | 
|
920,622 |  |
Salman Khan (pictured) is having a good year. His Eid opener Bajrangi Bhaijaan is currently the second-highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time, and now this Diwali event film has beaten that film's record-breaking opening day, taking Rs 400 million ($6.1 million). |
| 6 | Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant |
|
896,501 |  |
If they are to be believed, the repellent non-state has finally managed to extend its war beyond its shredded borders and into the heart of the West. This is an unprecedented escalation from them, but then, if there's one thing they've proven themselves good at in the last few years, it's unprecedented escalation. Some see it as desperation; ISIL have suffered numerous substantial losses from bombing and Kurdish incursions. Others have pondered if it marks the first shot in a new generational conflict. |
| 7 | Eagles of Death Metal |
|
887,314 |  |
The morbid fantasies of death metal came too close to reality this week when this Californian band found itself at the epicentre of the worst of the Paris attacks, at Le Bataclan club. While the band members made it out alive, one of their employees was among the dead. |
| 8 | Fallout 4 |
|
880,018 | Bethesda Softworks' hugely anticipated continuation of their darkly humorous post-apocalyptic open world role-playing video game series sold over a million copies (to a tune of roughly $750 million) in its first 24 hours of release. | |
| 9 | Deaths in 2015 | 
|
591,281 |  |
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died. Numbers this week are unusually high, however; perhaps death is in the air. |
| 10 | Veterans Day |
|
581,396 |  |
The eleventh day of the eleventh month, when peace was declared after the hell of World War I, has been recognised for decades as a time to remember the dead of war. In the US, it is known as Veterans Day, while in the Commonwealth, it is known as Remembrance Day (which was number 11 in this week's Top 25 – together these two articles had 1,099,647 page views). |
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg){kind=link}
_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg){kind=link}