Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2011/Candidates/Kww
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This is the talk page for discussing a candidate for election to the Arbitration Committee. | |||
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Support
I just wanted to drop by to voice my support on the grounds that this is a solid content creator. I urge all voters to click USER CONTRIBUTIONS for each candidate, then to scroll down and take a look at the EDIT COUNT link, which is instructive as to where a Wikipedia participant places their effort. This is a person who does more than half his work in mainspace. There need to be more such individuals on ArbCom, in my opinion, which sometimes seems overly populated by technicians and bureaucratic sorts. Carrite (talk) 18:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
- Why Kww, I never knew.... :) - my opinion of the deletion-inclined is always ameliorated by content work. But seriously, I've found Kww an independent thinker and pretty scrupulous, so I tend to think he'd be a good addition to the arb ranks. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
- I considered replying to this comment, but one of the basic rules of politics is that you don't point out when a supporter is mistaken. I do point out in my Q&A page that the vast majority of my edits are removing edits by banned and blocked editors. That certainly skews my edit count statistics.—Kww(talk) 15:14, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
- Aww, shucks, now I feel like an idiot. Carrite (talk) 18:54, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
- I should note that Kww has a star for Natalee Holloway, shared with me and AuburnPilot, and as a content contributor, I strongly endorse his candidacy. We went through hell on that one; at the time AuburnPilot was the only admin of us (now we all are) and Kww remained calm under tremendous pressure (see here generally and also other threads on the page). Frankly, I think we need to throw the bums out, ArbCom has shown major problems with confidentiality the past year and the decline of the Enabling case showed that they are not responsive to community concerns. Wiki has changed. It is time for new blood, not the same old sigs. Kww will make a fine arb, and remain grounded despite the august position. And I should say I was not prompted in any way for this; I don't think I've had any contact with Kww in six months.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:35, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
- Aww, shucks, now I feel like an idiot. Carrite (talk) 18:54, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Oppose
When Kww was in the large minority that wanted to end Pending changes without further trial in September 2010, He used insulting inflammatory language while insisting that the only way to meet his concerns was for WMF to do exactly as he wanted.[[1]] I consider the quoted diff characteristic of his attitude in the discussion. KWW had a case against Pending changes, he just stated it poorly. He does not show the qualities we need on the Arbitration Committee. Fartherred (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
- That misrepresents events. Would you deny that that trial was anything other than a "clusterfuck of unprecedented proportions"? Colorful language, perhaps, but I don't think it got to the "inflammatory" statge. At what point did I insist on anything other than people living up to their original agreement to have a trial of a specified duration?—Kww(talk) 01:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
- There is nothing colorful in claiming that people lied. People have been killed in duels for such an insult. You made your insult general by not specifying who is supposed to have lied. Now let us consider the truth of the suggestion that your opponents in discussion lied. To lie is to intentionally deceive. Unless you assume bad faith, the most that you can claim of those who did not stop the trial is that they failed to keep a promise. That is a different from lying. So your suggestion was either false or resting on an assumption of bad faith. Notice that I did not claim you lied. I am perfectly willing to believe that you were ignorant of the falsity of your suggestion. A fit candidate for the Arbitration Committee does not casually throw out the term "lied" and does not casually assume bad faith. There were a great many people involved in the pending changes trial, clerks, developers, WMF. Just who is supposed to have made a promise is hard to pin down. Things were not handled as well as they might have been, but there was no call to insult people by suggesting that people lied. Fartherred (talk) 21:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
- What Kww should have done was get rid of pending changes in pages that he was concerned with, state his objections to pending changes civilly, and accept the outcome of the process, even if flawed. He certainly was not using a good strategy for bringing about consensus.
- There is nothing colorful in claiming that people lied. People have been killed in duels for such an insult. You made your insult general by not specifying who is supposed to have lied. Now let us consider the truth of the suggestion that your opponents in discussion lied. To lie is to intentionally deceive. Unless you assume bad faith, the most that you can claim of those who did not stop the trial is that they failed to keep a promise. That is a different from lying. So your suggestion was either false or resting on an assumption of bad faith. Notice that I did not claim you lied. I am perfectly willing to believe that you were ignorant of the falsity of your suggestion. A fit candidate for the Arbitration Committee does not casually throw out the term "lied" and does not casually assume bad faith. There were a great many people involved in the pending changes trial, clerks, developers, WMF. Just who is supposed to have made a promise is hard to pin down. Things were not handled as well as they might have been, but there was no call to insult people by suggesting that people lied. Fartherred (talk) 21:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
- Once upon a time there was a six year old girl who wanted a pony. After considerable effort on her part her father said, "Well, we'll see." He fully intended to get a pony, or he would not have said that. However, a director of operations for his company in a distant city had a heart attack and had to be replaced. The girl's father was the replacement and the pony plans had to change. The girl said, "You promised me a pony. You promised. You promised." Throwing tantrums, misrepresenting another's position, and making nonnegotiable demands of people from whom you have no right to make such demands are perhaps excusable in a six year old girl. Those things are not excusable in a candidate for the Arbitration Committee. Fartherred (talk) 23:27, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
- However, there were no such changes or extenuating circumstances. The consensus was for a trial of a fixed duration. The fixed duration had passed. People were refusing to end the trial. What's the polite word for someone that refuses to honor an existing agreement when there are no extenuating circumstances? What should I call the people that attempted to claim that an agreement for a two-month trial didn't include an agreement to stop the trial after two months? You seem to see bluntness as an inappropriate quality for the Arbitration Committee. I strongly disagree. There was no consensus to continue the trial, and most everyone involved recognized that. Refusing to end the trial at that point was dishonest, deceitful, and shameful. There's no reason to be gentle about that.—Kww(talk) 04:22, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- OK. Let us be blunt. Who promised and when that the decision to end the trial of Pending changes or continue would require a consensus to continue but only a large minority to end? Is reneging on a promise the same thing as lying? Should someone carrying a grudge against WMF be on the Arbitration Committee? Fartherred (talk) 14:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- One more thing: If you are elected to the Arbitration Committee, do you plan to call anyone who disagrees with your personal definition of terms a liar? Fartherred (talk) 14:46, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- The convention that a lack of consensus leads to a maintenance of the status quo is so standard throughout Wikipedia that to repudiate or ignore that principle would be unprecedented. I will generally claim that anyone that refuses to honor the terms of their agreements is dishonest, and, if I believe they intended to do so when they entered the agreement, the word "liar" is appropriate. I'm not sure why you think I nurse a grudge.—Kww(talk) 15:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- Where did you get the idea that "status quo" is specially protected in decision making on Wikipedia? Did you make that up? Read WP:Consensus. See if you can find "status quo" mentioned at all. Editors are invited to make changes boldly and then discuss any disagreements that might arise seeking a consensus. Nowhere does it say that the original form is favored. I disagree with you on the meaning of trial. You say the trial was not ended at the agreed upon time. I say the trial was ended because pending changes was no longer being considered for a future poll on its merit in the form that it had after the poll. It remained implemented in software for the convenience of implementing planned changes to be the subject of a future trial. There were two trials, implementation continued between the two trials. Having the software implemented in the intervening time did not injure you at all since the software could be dropped from any page where it was seen to cause problems. No one ever promised you that there would need to be 2/3s support to continue pending changes. This is the way things really are: WMF can do anything it likes with the Wikimedia software, with or without consulting users. Users were consulted in the pending changes straw poll just to see what people's feelings about the software were, so that WMF could avoid alienating the contributors on whom the expansion and currency of Wikipedia depends. This is why it was called a straw poll and not an election. Look up straw poll in a dictionary. As it turns out the consulted opinion of editors turned against pending changes and it was dropped because WMF respects the editors' opinions.
- Are you unsure what causes me to think you have a grudge against WMF? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is someone else that you have a grudge against. Since we are being blunt, I would like to know exactly who you consider "dishonest, deceitful, and shameful" for refusing to end the trial? Is it WMF, Jimbo Wales, the developers, the 407 users who voted to continue implementation against the 217 who like you and me voted to disable the feature entirely, or some combination of the preceding. You cannot claim to be truly blunt if you keep refusing to specify the target of you insults.
- This is my take: You just imagined a promise to stop the implementation of pending changes with less than consensus for it then you imagined that those who made the promise did so in bad faith then you called them "dishonest, deceitful, and shameful". Beyond that, you are too cowardly to say who it is that you are insulting. You are absolutely the most poorly qualified candidate for Arbitration Committee that I have ever had the misfortune to examine. Fartherred (talk) 20:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- Fine: the users, WMF, and Jimbo Wales all had varying degrees of culpability, ranging from being actively deceitful (Jimbo, when he claimed that describing a trial as a two-month trial didn't mean that the trial would end in two months), to simply not caring what the original agreement had been (shameful behaviour, but not actively deceptive). The developers are just code writers: they aren't responsible for the decision to turn a feature on or off. I have no idea what a "two-month trial" is if isn't a trial that ends after two months. It certainly isn't a trial that continues forever until there's a consensus to turn it off. If you think that believing that "two months" meant "two months" is imagining things, I think your definitions are a bit off.—Kww(talk) 22:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- The convention that a lack of consensus leads to a maintenance of the status quo is so standard throughout Wikipedia that to repudiate or ignore that principle would be unprecedented. I will generally claim that anyone that refuses to honor the terms of their agreements is dishonest, and, if I believe they intended to do so when they entered the agreement, the word "liar" is appropriate. I'm not sure why you think I nurse a grudge.—Kww(talk) 15:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- However, there were no such changes or extenuating circumstances. The consensus was for a trial of a fixed duration. The fixed duration had passed. People were refusing to end the trial. What's the polite word for someone that refuses to honor an existing agreement when there are no extenuating circumstances? What should I call the people that attempted to claim that an agreement for a two-month trial didn't include an agreement to stop the trial after two months? You seem to see bluntness as an inappropriate quality for the Arbitration Committee. I strongly disagree. There was no consensus to continue the trial, and most everyone involved recognized that. Refusing to end the trial at that point was dishonest, deceitful, and shameful. There's no reason to be gentle about that.—Kww(talk) 04:22, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- Once upon a time there was a six year old girl who wanted a pony. After considerable effort on her part her father said, "Well, we'll see." He fully intended to get a pony, or he would not have said that. However, a director of operations for his company in a distant city had a heart attack and had to be replaced. The girl's father was the replacement and the pony plans had to change. The girl said, "You promised me a pony. You promised. You promised." Throwing tantrums, misrepresenting another's position, and making nonnegotiable demands of people from whom you have no right to make such demands are perhaps excusable in a six year old girl. Those things are not excusable in a candidate for the Arbitration Committee. Fartherred (talk) 23:27, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
I am continually surprised by your concepts of the definitions of English words. How can you consider that trial and implementation are synonyms. Even if someone said a trial would end in two months, that does not mean the implementation of the software would end. You constantly ignore that there is no policy requiring consensus for change but not requiring consensus for the status quo. You would have forced the status quo on the majority who wanted to continue implementation in complete violation of settling disputes by consensus. How could anyone vote for a candidate that not only has no respect for consensus but no understanding of it? Fartherred (talk) 23:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- And you continue to amaze me: when did I ever ask for the implementation of the software to be removed? When did I treat the trial and the implementation as synonymous? All I ever asked was for the trial to end on schedule. I have a full grasp of consensus,. The trial was supposed to end after two months. There was no consensus to extend the trial beyond that point. Therefore, the trial should have ended on schedule. That didn't mean to rip the software out of MediaWiki, and I've never claimed that there was any need to do so. The software lingers today, and I don't raise a fuss or consider it to be a problem. I'd have a grave problem with any admin that put an article on pending changes today, but that's a different thing. An enormous part of ruling by consensus is the ability to trust the other side of a dispute to abide by their word, and to do the things they agreed to do. In this case, they didn't. You, by the way, seem to have "consensus" confused with "majority rule". That's not how Wikipedia works. By nose count, support never crossed the 60% margin, and there are very few vote-based decisions where a 60% is considered consensus. By strength of argument, the normal measure of consensus, the supporters of PC were never able to demonstrate that the trial version of the software had any noticeable impact on the problem they were attempting to solve. Consensus for PC simply didn't exist. Consensus for ending the trial at two-months was generated when the trial was set as being a two-month trial, and there was never a consensus to change that.—Kww(talk) 01:01, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
- What you fail to see is that the trial of pending changes as it was at the time did end on the 27th of September 2010. The result was temporary continuation of pending changes. The purpose of the temporary continuation was keeping those in practice using PC who were willing to use it so a new version could be tried later. A minority, including Kww, insisted that it required a clear consensus to continue using the software anywhere on Wikipedia after the trial. That was never promised. If you are familiar with articles for deletion discussions, there has to be a consensus to delete the article. If there is no consensus, the article remains. If the pending changes trial were handled the same way, it would take a clear consensus at the end of the trial to get rid of pending changes. However pending changes was not an article for deletion. We had a trial and the outcome, after consideration of a straw poll, was determined by WMF which had full authority to do so. Their determination was a temporary continuation. The idea that you were promised that pending changes would not run anywhere on Wikipedia after the trial without full consensus in favor at that time was just something you made up. There is no evidence of any kind that you were promised that. Your continued insistence on that is simply irrational. Fartherred (talk) 04:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
- "Irrational" is the word I would use for claiming that a two-month trial permanently modified the default state of Wikipedia's configuration and policies. It didn't: the non-trial configuration had no pending changes, and, failing consensus, that's the state it needed to return to. Note the text at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Trial:"The trial will last for two months and then a community discussion will decide the future of the implementation, the default being deactivation." There's no clearer way to say that the trial would last for two months (i.e. stop after a two month interval), and, subseqent to that, we would have a discussion. Failure to reach consensus in that discussion would result in deactivation of the feature. At the end of the trial, supporters of the feature changed the rules, used the same distorted logic you are using that the default was to have a trial, and continued the trial. Even when Nov 9 came and went (the final date of the extension by Jimmy's fiat), feature supporters wouldn't agree to allow the trial to end. It wasn't until May 22 that the trial finally gave to an end. I'm sorry that you don't believe that moving the goalposts is dishonest, and I'm even more regretful that you consider it a bad thing for an Arbcom candidate to condemn dishonest behaviour. If you would prefer to vote for people that endorse dishonest behaviour, go ahead. You deserve the governance you receive as a result.—Kww(talk) 04:45, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
- What you fail to see is that the trial of pending changes as it was at the time did end on the 27th of September 2010. The result was temporary continuation of pending changes. The purpose of the temporary continuation was keeping those in practice using PC who were willing to use it so a new version could be tried later. A minority, including Kww, insisted that it required a clear consensus to continue using the software anywhere on Wikipedia after the trial. That was never promised. If you are familiar with articles for deletion discussions, there has to be a consensus to delete the article. If there is no consensus, the article remains. If the pending changes trial were handled the same way, it would take a clear consensus at the end of the trial to get rid of pending changes. However pending changes was not an article for deletion. We had a trial and the outcome, after consideration of a straw poll, was determined by WMF which had full authority to do so. Their determination was a temporary continuation. The idea that you were promised that pending changes would not run anywhere on Wikipedia after the trial without full consensus in favor at that time was just something you made up. There is no evidence of any kind that you were promised that. Your continued insistence on that is simply irrational. Fartherred (talk) 04:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
- And you continue to amaze me: when did I ever ask for the implementation of the software to be removed? When did I treat the trial and the implementation as synonymous? All I ever asked was for the trial to end on schedule. I have a full grasp of consensus,. The trial was supposed to end after two months. There was no consensus to extend the trial beyond that point. Therefore, the trial should have ended on schedule. That didn't mean to rip the software out of MediaWiki, and I've never claimed that there was any need to do so. The software lingers today, and I don't raise a fuss or consider it to be a problem. I'd have a grave problem with any admin that put an article on pending changes today, but that's a different thing. An enormous part of ruling by consensus is the ability to trust the other side of a dispute to abide by their word, and to do the things they agreed to do. In this case, they didn't. You, by the way, seem to have "consensus" confused with "majority rule". That's not how Wikipedia works. By nose count, support never crossed the 60% margin, and there are very few vote-based decisions where a 60% is considered consensus. By strength of argument, the normal measure of consensus, the supporters of PC were never able to demonstrate that the trial version of the software had any noticeable impact on the problem they were attempting to solve. Consensus for PC simply didn't exist. Consensus for ending the trial at two-months was generated when the trial was set as being a two-month trial, and there was never a consensus to change that.—Kww(talk) 01:01, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Summary of opposition
After first basing his argument on the wholly imagined principle that "a lack of consensus leads to a maintenance of the status quo", Kww managed to document a reasonable expectation that the pending changes question would be decided by community discussion. According to WP:Consensus, closers of debate in "determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments...". WMF closed debate and apparently considered the quality of Kww's arguments. They had the authority to do so. Kww disagreed but lacked the authority to have the closure determined as he favored. Wikipedians ought to be used to it. People do not always get their own way and calling people liars is not apt to help one advance a point of view in any helpful way. Kww wrote above that there were "no extenuating circumstances" causing the trial to be closed as keeping pending changes temporarily. I ask you to consider WMF's position that there was a prospect of getting software changes to address the concerns of people who disliked pending changes. Developers suggested that removing the software and putting it back for a second trial would be more trouble then just letting it run until updates could be added. Kww may not consider these extenuating circumstances or good arguments for keeping a form of pending changes, but he lacked the authority to determine which arguments were high quality arguments. One might disagree with WMF on what constitutes consensus, but legalistically, Kww's argument of lying does not have a leg to stand on. However, I would rather appeal to human tolerance. WMF was trying to do something good by their lights and it failed. They hoped the upgraded software would win a consensus for permanently keeping it by its working well, satisfying most complaints, and being removable from any page where it still caused trouble. Jimbo and WMF made Wikipedia possible as it is today. It is ingratitude not to give them some consideration in human imperfections. Kww shows no sign of being ameanable to seeing anyone's point of view but his own. He assumed bad faith on the part of WMF. He said that he considers it appropriate to use the word liar if he thinks someone intended to not honor agreements. His judjement about people having followed agreements and about people's intentions is certainly questionable. He has quoted a completely false notion of policy in this discussion. Do not send him to the Arbitration Committee. Working on sock puppet investigations he might still provide valuable service, but in the Arbitration Committee he would be like a fish out of water. Worse, I believe he would be an obstacle to the efficient governing of Wikipedia. Fartherred (talk) 19:50, 6 December 2011 (UTC)