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Journal mindspillage's Journal: So as not to take the main thread even further off topic... 15

Journal by mindspillage

orthogonal writes: "But the deletions were not done by process, but instead by the fiat of a heretofore unheard of "Front Office", an end-run around the community consensus that wikipedia presents as its public face."

Damn straight. Because the community processes were failing, and we must have some way to correct for that. Wikipedia is first an encyclopedia project, and only second a community.

So, about the clerks? You know what they do?

They open cases. And they close cases. Sometimes they nag people to vote when there are not enough people chiming in to close a case. This is more of a pain in the ass than one might think. Occasionally they will write summaries of evidence (though not always or even often) or will beat evidence and workshop pages into something resembling a proper format. The committee reads the evidence for itself, writes proposals, decides the case; the clerk position has in my experience had no effect upon the actual nature of the job.

How were the clerks chosen? People the arbcom trust and think would be good at the job, usually because they've had experience working with cases. (Yes, orthogonal, insert obligatory reference to Snowspinner^w Phil Sandifer here.) Their task is primarily in interfacing with the arbcom, not with the community; their positions exist to make our jobs easier and should not have any effect on the process as seen from the community side.

If a case goes wrong, blame the committee, not the clerks; it's our responsibility, not theirs.

(I'm sure I've written something very like this on the talk page of the Clerks page somewhere, but I won't bother to look it up and likely you won't either.)

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So as not to take the main thread even further off topic... More

So as not to take the main thread even further off topic...

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  • Thanks (Score:2, Troll)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 )
    So how were the clerks selected?

    As an Arbitration Committeeman, did you have a part in that or not?

    You say the clerks are people the Arbitration Committee trusts, but the results of the lection show that the community as a whole doesn't trust them much at all (one is even apparently a mass vandal of user pages, and strongly disliked for that).

    What input, if any, came from outside the arbitration Committee?

    How is it that the arbitration Committee and the community in general have such a divergence in trust?
    • Yes, the committee had some input, and yes, we considered outside concerns. We ultimately chose who we thought would be best for the job. And for that matter, I haven't been disappointed with the clerks' office by anything but the fact that Kelly resigned. (Like her or not -- and yes, she is often more abrasive than necessary -- she does know what she's doing.)

      And on the contrary, I find that in general the committee and the community are generally in sync. Actually, most of the actual Wikipedia community d

      • Re:Thanks (Score:1, Troll)

        by orthogonal ( 588627 )
        Actually, most of the actual Wikipedia community doesn't know and doesn't care what the AC does, nor do they know or care about most other Wikipolitics, and that's how it should be. A small intensely political and vocal group, not representative of most of the community, does not a great schism make.

        But it's the same small group that overwhelmingly elected you.

        If most editors shouldn't care about "Wikipolitics", how is it that you do? and how is that you rose so quickly to the Arbitration Committee, after l
        • How is it that of all the editors of Wikipedia, the three picked for clerk are among the least trusted and most abrasive?

          I don't know precisely which three you're referring to, but as one of those chosen as a clerk (I'm Tony Sidaway) I can say that there were six clerks, and when Kelly resigned as head clerk this left five of us.

          All of the clerks are editors with bags of experience, who are trusted by the Arbitration Committee. But most of all, we're willing to do the job. We volunteered and we're doi

  • Arbcom (Score:2)

    by KDan ( 90353 )
    I won't dip even a toe into the actual discussion here because I really don't particularly care one way or the other. I read it out of interest, to see how the political processes work in wikipedia.

    I'd like to point out one thing. There's a precedent to abbreviating the names of committees, ministries, etc. I'm sure you've heard of it. The four examples that come to mind are minitruth, minilove, minipax and miniplenty...

    Such abbreviations/obfuscation are often a sign of some form of newspeak going on. N
    • Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to lazy typists. Do you know how many times I end uphaving to type that damned phrase? :-P

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