Wikinews talk:Arbitration Committee/2014 election/Nominations and voting

Active

How many of the nominees are actually active here? Not many, by the look of it. Does this matter? Is it a good thing to have inactive arbitrators on the basis that in the unlikely event of something needing Arbcom's attention there's less chance of them having been involved in it? Or does a lack of active contributors willing / able to stand indicate a problem? Bencherlite (talk) 17:21, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

All the nominees have either self-nominated, or responded to inquiries as to whether they'd stand. That's a meaningful measure of their availability if needed for an ArbCom case.

As for a problem, all of the Wikimedia sisters have an activity problem. I've been realizing recently that, gradually over the past several years I've been a wikimedian, there's been a distinct drop in activity on all the sisters I follow (not just the ones I contribute to). It's taken me a while to fully understand that the problem is radiating outward from Wikipedia; I now have, I think, a fair understanding of the systemic problems of Wikipedia — so far, a useless understanding, I've no idea what to do with it, as I don't even know how to articulate it in a way that wouldn't be interpreted as unconstructive.

My hope is, and has been for several years now, that by making wiki markup effectively more interactive, one could enable each wiki community to build wizards to help its members, veteran newcomer and future, to perform expert tasks more easily — and that, frankly, if review is thus made easier, and the quality of submissions by newcomers is thus raised, that would allow us over time to increase our output, and attract more contributors, in a positive feedback loop. At any rate, it seems to me this sort of wizard construction is a necessary component of a solution, and I figure we can judge what further steps to take once we have the enabling interactive tools to work with. --Pi zero (talk) 18:13, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

There's some big differences between Wikipedia and Wikinews that make it much harder for someone to contribute to Wikinews. On Wikipedia, new editors can work as "gnomes", making small changes to articles before moving on to creating articles. Most never make the transition; less than 4,000 of them are active in creating content. This isn't possible on Wikinews, where an entire article has to be created. There is much less flexibility in writing articles, and article writing as practiced on Wikinews resembles nothing that the editor is likely to have ever encountered before. Thus, Wikinews has a very steep learning curve. It is true that the technical environment is also harder to use than Wikipedia, but you asked me to turn in my accreditation out of fear that I might raise the matter with WMF. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:54, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

<material redacted> Suffice to say, the matter of your accreditation concerned your personal conduct. You seem, above, to be suggesting some bizarre (and, from the sound of it, unethical) political motive; if so, you're kidding yourself.

There certainly is a difference between Wikinews and Wikipedia. We have many of the same technical challenges as Wikipedia, but in much, much more intense form, so that we are, on a regular basis, contending with stuff Wikipedia hasn't realized it too needs to contend with. However, we and all the other sisters are primarily sinking under the weight of the community-dynamics problems of Wikipedia, which result in an increasingly socially-toxic and non-fact-based atmosphere over there. --Pi zero (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I did nothing wrong and you know it. It was a mean-spirited personal vendetta and you misused your position to bully me for your own ends. You need to take some responsibility for the socially toxic and non-fact-based atmosphere you created here. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:45, 21 July 2014 (UTC)