Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Template has wrong nomination dates

Someone should fix this. I don't know how. Jd2718 (talk) 01:15, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Here's what the template says: "The nomination period is running for 10 days: from Saturday 00:01 UTC, 12 November until Monday 23:59, 21 November.

Please go here if you are interested in running for ArbCom for 2012." But the article says November 11 - November 20. Jd2718 (talk) 01:16, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Template says 2011 instead of 2012

When I created my candidate profile just now, the links to my statement, questions, and discussion pages were broken. Apparently, the template still says "2011" in a couple of places, whereas it should say "2012". I fixed this in my own profile, but someone should fix the template. — Richwales 06:02, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I think I found the source of the error, and it should be corrected now. Monty₈₄₅ 07:47, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

It is not. "Vote" link leads to Special:SecurePoll/vote/240 - should be 259  The Steve  12:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Duplication in general questions

(Cross-posted from the questions development talkpage.) As a potential candidate I haven't said too much about the question set, but I just noticed that general questions 5(b) and 5(d) overlap significantly. It might be worth combining them—but it should be done quickly, before candidates start answering them. Sorry not to have pointed this out sooner. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Discrepancy needing fixing

The banner at the top of the project page says "The nomination period is running for 10 days: from Sunday 00:01 UTC, 11 November until Wednesday 23:59, 20 November." However, 20 November is Tuesday, not Wednesday. This needs to be fixed ASAP, either by changing "Wednesday" to "Tuesday" (and hoping that no one who read it said to himself or herself "great, I'll post my candidacy on Wednesday"), or by changing "20 November" to "21 November." Sorry not to have noticed this sooner. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

There were actually several errata in the dates; I've had a clean-up. Happy‑melon 15:42, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Guides not showing up

I'm not sure if this is a problem for anyone else, but the last two guides added to {{ACE2012/Guides}} (Collect and Reaper Eternal)aren't displaying on the template. Hot Stop (Talk) 15:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

They wrongly wrote "{{{" for the needed "({{". The risk of this error could be dramatically reduced by the use of a structured-programming coding-style. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Userspace template

• Template:RfX-notice

I updated the template and its log help page to include ACE. - jc37 21:51, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Ineligible candidate/spam?

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/Zoran Georgiev was created by Zoki75 (talk · contribs), an editor with only 20 edits. Plus it reads like a resume. Hot Stop (Talk) 04:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, we're just going to leave it for now and probably toss it under the elections since it's not been transcluded. --Rschen7754 04:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

It reads like it was roughly copy-pasted from somewhere, with the random words like "Edit" and "Add a position" inbetween the actual content. It might be a copyvio from something, maybe a website such as LinkedIn. - SudoGhost 04:26, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

That was my impression as well, though the copy past of it from there includes the edit button text, which suggests to me that it may be the original author who copied it to wikipedia, which is the only reason I didn't tag it G12. Unless someone wants to delete it on the copyvio grounds, my position is it should just be left there untranscluded in the interests of transparency. Monty₈₄₅ 18:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Just found 2 more: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/ --Rschen7754 02:16, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Your link above doesn't show any specific candidates. Which ones did you mean to show? Lord Roem (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

That's because I already deleted the page and replaced it with something else... sorry :( --Rschen7754 04:53, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

• Blade and I tripped over each other deleting Zoran's page. I don't see any similar pages at Special:Prefix; perhaps someone already deleted them. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Candidate guide

Not sure if the editor who started it is waiting for nominations to close, or intends to complete it later in the week, but I thought it might be worth pointing out here Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/Guide which was started earlier today. Carcharoth (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Is this ok?

Just for the sake of exploring a hypothetical situation, let us say that a candidate added a nomination at the last minute. And let us further presume that their candidate statement consisted of a a link to project they started attached to the words "vote for me" and nothing else of substance, including the required statements regarding identifying to the foundation and disclosure of accounts. And let us further presume that said candidate was already warned, by a sitting arbitrator no less, about canvassing for their pet project in inappropriate ways, and that this candidate has already stated quite openly that they do not believe they have a realistic chance of being elected. What, if any, action is warranted in reaction to such a scenario? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

In such a situation, hypothetically, the election administrators should be dealing with this. However, unfortunately we don't have any yet. --Rschen7754 21:48, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

That isn't quite right. As of ACE 2011 there were five groups of election volunteers: coordinators; scrutineers; election administrators (as opposed to general Wikipedia admins); miscellaneous Foundation sysadmins/MediaWiki developers (ask Happy-melon to explain the difference sometime, I don't recall) mostly Tim; and random functionaries (mostly MuZemike). Coordinators were self selected from the community; scrutineers were stewards recruited by the aforementioned random functionaries to validate election results; election administrators were also recruited by random functionaries to help coordinate between the community and the scrutineers and had the same technical access as scrutineers; miscellaneous Foundation sysadmins/MediaWiki developers set up the SecurePoll interface; and random functionaries help coordinate the whole thing. As you can see from this list, it is very much not actively organized.

As of now, that same division of responsibilities can still be true, with the exact same oversight, which is to say none. In addition, there is an Election Commission past due to be appointed that has a mandate to solve election related disputes. It is not a body meant to "run" the election so much as a place to solve problems if and when the other people running the elections have a problem they cannot solve by themselves, especially in time sensitive situations. By the wording of my proposal, the Election Commission can choose, if they wish, to take on more responsibility and hoard day to day responsibilities, but in the meantime there is nothing stopping the rest of us from keeping calm and carrying on.

My original plan was to be as silent on election procedures as possible (I also had planned to write a voters guide this year). I believed the Commission would be appointed on time or close to it, and they should have the right and responsibility of figuring out how they want to organize themselves and their relationship with the other election staff. The Commission has still not been appointed. Now, it seems that we have to run the risk of handing them a broken system fait accompli, because many people are impatient and a few people are behind.

Unless there is some serious objection in the next few hours I will do the following:

• I am going to get the e-mails of everyone who ran and did not withdraw from the Electoral Commission and get them talking so they are prepared to hit the ground running on their appointments. They will be looped in on any e-mails I'm sending
• I am going to recruit coordinators by general announcement, and by hunting down the people who have done this before and have proven they have good sense. Once we have a few, we will decide amongst ourselves how to fix the not at all hypothetical situation you've presented us.
• I am going to contact Tim Starling so we can see how long we have before access permissions to SecurePoll need to be set in stone, which will give us a deadline to decide whether or not the EC makes Election Admins superfluous.
• I should be finished sometime Thursday morning, which, for those of us in the United States, is a day generally reserved for family.

If anyone has any objections to my game plan, feel free to speak up, but I am pretty certain that what I am doing is both in line with past practice and to the Electoral Commission proposal.--Tznkai (talk) 23:35, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a fine plan. BTW, I think the solution to the non-hypothetical hypothetical situation is to (a) insist on the statements about ID'ing to the foundation and other accounts, with removal from the ballot if this isn't done, and (b) not worrying about the rest of it, as the results of the election will take care of it for us. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks all for your replies. I had not really been following the coordination aspects while I was pondering running myself so I was not up to speed on those matters. I hope I did not come across as demanding or impatient, in all honesty I have not paid much attention to the opening stages of this process in the past, I generally would just look it all over when it was time to vote and make my decisions then. So, no real hurry, was just curious as to the appropriateness of such a candidacy. Thanks to all who put their time into this running this process, it looks like a lot more work than I had previously realized. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:15, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I've left notes to the two candidates who don't have statements, the rest have either statements that comply, or that at least arguably do. Hopefully they both just add the statements, and we don't need to decide anything further. If they don't, someone will need to decide by the poll finalization deadline what happens, but I don't think the candidate's motivation or goal in running should be considered. Monty₈₄₅ 00:35, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree. So long as they comply, there won't be an issue. It may have just been an oversight. -- Lord Roem (talk) 00:42, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure that Jimbo wouldn't appoint anyone who refused to identify, but I hope it wouldn't go that far. --Rschen7754 00:56, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

David Fuchs is a sitting arb, who's already identified to the foundation, and who made their "ain't got no socks" statement in 2010: [1]... And the concern is not that Jimbo would appoint someone who refused to ID to the foundation, the concern is that such a statement has been required for a while, and has kept others off the ballot before. No sense wasting everyone's time voting for/against someone who won't make such an assurance. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:24, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

My general opinion is that anyone who meets the basic eligibility criteria (500 edits, no siteban, willing to ID, willing to declare socks) gets to run, regardless of how meritless their statement is or certain their defeat is. Among other things, the community didn't direct higher eligibility thresholds at the RFC, letting people with no shot run has little chance of harm because they will lose, and letting people with no shot run deprives them of the argument that they would have won but for the removal of their candidacy. I do think that in the future the community might consider a restriction along the lines of "If a person obtains less than 33% in a given election, they are precluded from running in the next subsequent election." Someone doing that poorly in an election probably needs more than a year to fix whatever flaws the community found. MBisanz ^talk 02:23, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree. While the community's determination that as many candidates as possible should have the opportunity to miserably fail never ceases to amaze me, the community very clearly is determined that that should be the case. Happy‑melon 11:58, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

It's ok, and next year we'll do a lot better! Count Iblis (talk) 23:59, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Election Staff coordination, recruitment

In an effort to get us ever so slightly more organized, I've set up Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Coordination, listing all of the staff and their roles, and the corresponding talk page so that election staff can be quickly contacted, and the staff can coordinate among themselves. If you want to be an election coordinator, just go ahead and sign up. We should probably also consider centralizing some of the talk pages at /questions /candidates to this talk page.--Tznkai (talk) 17:56, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Typo in questions

I presume that there is a typo in question 3.d.ii.

It should be (i) and not (a)? : )

Anyone want to be helpful and fix that in everyone's questions? - jc37 21:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The Template:ACE2012 is wrong

It's one full day off the time when voting is scheduled to begin. Can someone fix it please? Risker (talk) 00:59, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Actually, having a countdown in the template strikes me as too cutesy, but I guess I'll choose my battles and not argue about it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

SecurePoll

Hi everyone, we have just under 36 hours before voting starts. Do we have a link to the SecurePoll page yet? I'd like to put it in the watchlist notice nice and early - at the moment the notice will appear on the watchlist on Monday but the link to the voting interface will be broken. Does anyone know what the status of the SecurePoll setup is, and whether it will be ready on time? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 12:22, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The election coordinators sent an email but haven't heard anything back yet. Conversation is at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Coordination#Status of setting up SecurePoll. 64.40.54.65 (talk) 14:06, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the update. I've commented out the watchlist notice until we can be sure that the system is working. I figure that no notice at all is probably better than a notice with a broken link. If the link becomes available, you can start a new edit request at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details, and leave a message on my talk page. Or if you happen to be an admin, just add it. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 16:20, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Statement regarding recent leaks from arbcom-l

The Arbitration Committee has recently been made aware that information posted to its arbcom-l mailing list was inappropriately shared outside of the Committee this month. The disclosures involved posts made to the mailing list by arbitrator Jclemens on November 6 and 7 (UTC), and pertained to some of his positions in the coming Arbitration Committee election. These posts were themselves considered by several arbitrators to be inappropriate and contentious, with some viewing them as attempts to intimidate sitting arbitrators from seeking re-election. The unauthorized disclosures were reported to the Committee separately by two non-arbitrator candidates in the current Arbitration Committee elections, and our understanding is that other candidates and other editors have also received correspondence repeating some or all of the information.

Arbitrator Elen of the Roads has confirmed that she shared information, including direct quotes from the mailing list, with two non-arbitrators within 24 hours of Jclemens' original posts. This information was subsequently shared with other parties, including at least some of the current candidates. The Committee was made aware of this on November 13. On polling the arbitrators, Elen of the Roads disclosed that she had released a portion of one email to non-arbitrators, and denied sharing any further emails. She subsequently clarified on 25 November that she had released information from two separate emails, including the full text of one.

In addition, an email written by Jclemens was copied and sent to at least some current candidates on November 19 from a Gmail account. There were certain modifications made to the email that do not match the original or the information shared by Elen of the Roads. All arbitrators have been polled, and all have denied sharing that post with anyone outside of the Committee.

Arbitrators supporting this statement: Casliber, Hersfold, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Roger Davies, SirFozzie
Arbitrators recused from voting on this statement: All current candidates (Elen of the Roads, JClemens, Newyorkbrad)
Arbitrators inactive on voting on this statement: Xeno

For the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:27, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Discuss this statement

Wrong real-time voting log

On the voting page, the first link to the real-time voting log is OK, but the second link (in the "You may change your vote by starting over" bullet point) is a link to last year's log. Deor (talk) 00:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 00:56, 27 November 2012 (UTC)