User talk:Opabinia regalis/Archive 11

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Archive 15

Hi there Opabinia, YGM! TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:16, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

@TylerDurden8823: Hmmm, looks like it landed in the bit bucket again. Others have emailed me through Wikipedia recently without problems, and there's nothing in the spam folder... are you getting the copies you can send to yourself? Anyway, I'll try emailing you instead. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:40, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

OK, I just sent you an email and did receive the self-copy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:44, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I received the email you sent. I'm not sure why it hasn't been working the other way around but at least we established contact. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 07:30, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @TylerDurden8823: Problems of this sort usually come down to "what is the sender's email provider?" see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Is "Email this user" on the blink? and the threads linked back from there, also phab:T66795. It mainly affects Yahoo, and the recipient's email address has little to do with it. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:44, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not using yahoo and the feature was working for me before. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 14:54, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Hiya, I have a question for you. On Oct 23 (and the 24th) there are a ton of TfDs regarding Episode count. I think this is some incredibly shifty editing by the user - they substituted/removed all of the transclusions of the templates, and then claimed that they were unused and thus unnecessary. I'm in the process of reverting those edits until the TFDs are closed, but is there anything that should be done other than that? Primefac (talk) 02:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Never mind. The multiple-transclusion removal was only on four templates (Simpsons, South Park, Spongebob, and Aquateen), so it's not quite as bad as I originally thought (all the others had only one transclusion). Primefac (talk) 02:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

@Primefac: Oh good, glad it was sorted out. I don't know about these in particular, but usually AussieLegend is pretty good at keeping the TV articles and related templates under control, which otherwise tend toward the entropic. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, looking at their edits it appears they know what they're doing. I think in this case they just got a little ahead of the game by changing things before a decision was formally reached (I know I've done that a time or three). Primefac (talk) 04:14, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

As I've explained at the TFDs, there are 36,000+ articles using {{infobox television}} and these templates are used in only a handful of articles. These templates are also contrary to WP:TG, which says that templates should not be used to hold article content as this makes it more difficult to edit the content. All these templates do is hold an episode count that is transcluded to articles and there is a much easier way to do what these templates do, simply by editing the articles in the normal manner. I removed them from articles because they were completely redundant, as my edits demonstrated. There is nothing wrong with making a template redundant and then nominating it for deletion. I could just as easily have made the templates and not nominated them for deletion at all, but I decided to do the right thing. We don't have to wait for a TfD outcome before fixing things, especially when we're talking about pretty ridiculous templates that do exactly what they shouldn't and reverting constructive edits that were made to 32 pages with the aim of reducing redundancy, complying with the MOS and making things easier for editors, as Primefac did, simply because the templates are under discussion, is really inappropriate. Primefac's efforts may have derailed attempts to improve the encyclopaedia and calling my edits "shifty" beggars belief. It now looks like I'm going to have to raise the matter of such templates at WT:TV, which I can't do now until after the current TfDs have ended. --AussieLegend (✉) 06:13, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I see that a bunch of these have been closed; it's awfully convenient if you're offline for a while and someone solves your problem in the meantime :) AFAICT, Aussie's original changes did not affect what was displayed in mainspace, so there was no compelling reason to revert them, but there are a lot of repetitive TfD nominations with short rationales, and it might have been less confusing to bundle them and explain the background behind the removals in more detail.

I guess it's the standard on the TV articles, and it makes sense to remove an infrequently-used alternative system, but I have to admit that transcluding the main series page just to extract the episode number isn't terribly intuitive to me. I initially thought Primefac was reverting because the alternative solution was to have each individual article's text contain the number, which seemed very difficult to maintain. I don't know the answer to this offhand, and maybe it's better discussed elsewhere, but is Redrose64's comment here correct that there's a performance issue with transcluding the whole series page? Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I would guess so (and would also explain why it was so dreadfully slow when I was reverting the original removals), since it has to go through the entire page just to find the <onlyinclude>. Definitely something to bring up on the TFD itself. Primefac (talk) 20:55, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The MediaWiki transclusion mechanism works by transcluding the whole page, after which it strips out anything outside <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> (and anything enclosed by <noinclude>...</noinclude>). This means that when you use {{:The Simpsons}}, which has no <noinclude>...</noinclude> and only one <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>, something like 140,732 bytes must be processed even though the net effect is that just three bytes are transcluded. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:13, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Redrose64, to answer your question, see here. Basically when two people try to add a paragraph in the same place at the same time, the software will (sometimes?) just put one after the other, rather than announce an edit conflict. (And thus, previewing an edit is no longer sufficient; one must "post-view" to check that a silent edit conflict hasn't destroyed the context of one's post </rant>.) Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 22:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Right, so it should be slow to edit/save, but presumably not for readers to load, since the page would then be cached, yes? I don't have a ton of time right now, but probably this problem should be sorted out at WT:TV rather than on that one TfD. Do any other wikiprojects use this system? Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Trains has a series of templates to give passenger usage statistics, for example {{Tubeexits2011}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:31, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

(ironic edit conflict with Adrian) That could work, but it seems like AussieLegend was trying to get away from storing this data in a hard-to-find place - makes sense to keep things simple since the editors in this area tend toward the younger side. Having a separate "episode count" template for every TV series doesn't seem like a good solution either, though.

Just a quick note, I just deleted a bunch of these from the discussions that were closed earlier. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

You've hit the nail square on the head - Many TV editors simply have no clue when it comes to editing. They generally want to change something about their favourite TV program and don't necessarily understand policies, guidelines or even how to properly edit. We therefore need to make editing easier for them. As I explained at the TFDs, and above, we now have 36,212 articles using {{Infobox television}} and, at least in 36,202 of those articles, enter the raw episode count in the num_episodes field. To do things differently in only 10, or rather 2 now that the other templates have been deleted, is inconsistent and confusing for inexperienced editors. We do have a core group of experienced editors watching various articles but most of these don't understand templates or tables either. We do regularly transclude season articles to List of episode pages in the manner described at Template:Episode list/doc#Sublists so editors understand that it works, but not how it works. The non-template method of transcluding the episode count is consistent with the way that we transclude season articles and with the way that we include episode counts in the main series articles so it is far less confusing for editors, especially the younger ones. As for having individual templates for each series, normally the episode count only exists in 2 places, the main series article and the List of episodes page and the figures are normally not transcluded from/to either, so there is no need for separate templates for each series. The train type templates that Redrose64 mentioned would be absolutely useless for the TV project. They contain a lot of information and work well for trains, but all we are transcluding in the TV project is a single 3 digit episode count from only 2 articles. If we combined them for South Park and The Simpsons the counts would be constantly corrupted by well meaning but (for want of a better word) "clueless" editors who don't understand how templates work. --AussieLegend (✉) 06:24, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, viewed from the outside, this system does look kind of clumsy and inefficient. But since it doesn't affect readers, and the editors of these pages are apparently comfortable with it and are not complaining about slow editing, I think WP:PERF says forget this thread ever existed :) @Primefac and Redrose64: you've both made comments about efficiency at this TfD, one of the last two remaining; what do you think? Opabinia regalis (talk) 16:32, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

{{The Simpsons episode count}} was being transcluded on ten pages, which shows that it is widely used. Just because we don't have an episode counter for every series does NOT mean that we can't have one episode counter for a VERY popular series. Looking at the edit history of the template, it has been regularly updated with (apparently) no fuss or complaining. Why fix what isn't broken? Primefac (talk) 16:45, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

As a note, I can agree that the fact that we're transcluding an entire article for three characters isn't breaking anything, but it's still inefficient and unnecessary. Primefac (talk) 16:52, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Ten episodes is hardly widely used and at least one of the uses was problematic. At Fox cartoons on 24 October 2015 the text originally said As of 2014 a total of 578 episodes of The Simpsons have aired, the series is currently airing its twenty sixth season. However, as of the end of 2014 only 561 episodes had aired and, as of 24 October 2015, the series was currently airing its 27th season. This is really an article that should be manually updated to ensure currency. At Wikipedia:Fancruft#Popularity the templaate was used simply to keep the number updated in a sentence that reads Debates often arise between contributors who point out that the topic on which they are writing is popular (and thus important) and those who believe that, regardless of a fictional universe's popularity, having 578 articles devoted to specific episodes of an American animated television series and a single article on Paradise Lost makes Wikipedia appear biased towards pop culture and against "serious" subjects such as the Western canon. There is absolutely no reason why the template should be used here. A phrase such as "over 500", or "nearly 600" could easily substitute for the template, it's not a figure that needs to be precise when it's being compared to a single article. Other articles using the template really need to be reviewed for the necessity to actually transclude the episode count at all. As for inefficiancy, WP:PERFORMANCE says, You, as a user, should not worry about site performance. In most cases, there is little you can do to appreciably speed up or slow down the site's servers. The software is, on the whole, designed to prohibit users' actions from slowing it down much. The "in a nutshell" comments also says Server performance is very important, but it's taken care of by the sysadmins, who know what they're doing. Try not to make policy decisions based on your understanding of performance issues. In other words, the efficiency is not something we need concern ourselves with. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Primefac, if the episode count system the TV project is using isn't breaking anything, then why does it matter if it's inefficient and unnecessary? :) In fact I'm doing something inefficient and unnecessary at work right now, but sparing myself five minutes to catch up on Wikipedia isn't worth the development time, so I'm not fixing it. 00:24, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Despite the TfD on this closing as no consensus, it's fairly clear from this discussion that keeping the template makes no sense due to the overwhelming desire to transclude the article itself. Rather than go through the TfD process all over again (since the outcome is guaranteed), is it possible for you to just reverse your original ruling and simply delete these two templates (South Park and Simpsons)? Primefac (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I personally remain skeptical that this is a better solution:

• It's esoteric. Why might you expect a change in one article to affect another? Why would transcluding an article by its name give us a number? What does this number even mean? There's no label anywhere.
• It's fragile. Somebody accidentally backspaces into the angles, and all of these pages break. You might argue that this could also happen with templates, but there people know they're dealing with code and are extra vigilant. In articles, the tags are strewn in with the text of the article and could be easily overlooked.
• It's obscure. For instance, if people do notice the tags, they might think that they're there by mistake.

Alakzi (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, I was hoping the consensus fairy would come by the TV project for the general approach rather than individual TfDs :)

Personally, I agree with you guys that this system is clumsy and abstruse, but with this particular population of editors I'd be inclined to trust experienced people who work in the area on what's usable to them. A technically more robust solution that the users don't want or can't figure out isn't much of an improvement. *Glances at work stuff on other monitor, notes apparent hypocrisy* I don't have the time right now but it should be easy enough to pick a few frequently edited TV series and look at a sample of recent revisions to see if things get broken often enough to be a problem. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:11, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I just looked at the old discussions list to see if there were any more in this series. I see the list is a lot shorter than last time I looked and apparently it's because Primefac has been doing all the work around here. Thanks! :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:26, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Alakzi, I completely agree with you on all points, but WP:TV has reached a rather clear consensus. I think Opabinia regalis' point about checking for instances when this method breaks is a good idea, but (for me at least) would take much more effort (and the ensuing head-butting should we be right) than it would be to just trust WP:TV to manage this method properly.

Sure, but maybe we can think of something better next time it crops up. Alakzi (talk) 23:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

So, what was he thinking [1]?

BTW, I used to live wit a 23-pound Maine Coon Cat, so that lovely little kitten who watched me post was not particularly intimidating. You've never enjoyed a meal until you've been glared at by a hungry coon cat while you eat carry-out sashimi. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:58, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

It sure is something, from the author of stuff like When God Writes Your Love Story. I was going to add an ironic quote from that article, but it's impossible to pick just one. I guess JC's Girls must've been fun to write.

23 pounds of cat! I bet that's a handful. You think I need an upgrade? How about this one? She looks like she has something to say about humans who don't share their sashimi ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:46, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

I recall getting into a bit of a quarrel when I removed a bunch of images from JC's Girls, complaining that Wikipedia was not the Daily Star ... maybe I should have just focused on cats. Oh yes, I did. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:01, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh wow, and now we have the commons categories. Yuck. Given this, I can only imagine what categories he'd put poor DN's girl in.... Forcing oneself to resist premarital sexual and romantic temptations is torturous, but...listening to God's plans makes waiting much easier. Indeed. That and thousands of naked pictures on commons.

Ritchie, you forgot something important in that pink cat article. How the hell did anyone get a cat to sit still to be dyed? If I tried it, I guess they might get a little pink from me bleeding on them. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

One time total emersion dip, while wearing protective garments, outdoors of course. Where no one will mind forever pink splatter in the grass. Simple; like bathing a feral... Fylbecatulous talk 14:40, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I wonder why the smart one is giving me that suspicious look he usually saves for the times the big vacuum or the cat carrier emerge from the closet... Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:54, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

After about nine years, my cat had learned that the carrier could mean any of three things: to the vet, on holiday, or back home. Since he learned not to fear the vet after his dislocated jaw had been put back in at about age six, and he stopped fearing travel once we cut out car journeys over hills (which always made him throw), he would obligingly walk right into the carrier when I opened its door. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:06, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

My former 23-pound coon cat roommate (now deceased) loved to go for Jeep rides, and would hang his head and paws out of the passenger side window. He would greet other drivers at traffic lights, etc., with a deep, friendly MEOW! A lot of folks could not believe he was a real cat (at least until they got close). I stopped using the cat carrier for him at some point because he enjoyed the Jeep rides so much. He did get bored with long interstate drives after a couple hours, and would curl up under one of the Jeep seats and sleep until it was time for a gas station break. Never saw anything like the spastic, panicked, in-car behavior described by other cat owners. Then again, coon cats aren't really like other domestic cats. More like a dog in a lot of ways, and as big as the K-cat was, he always acted as if he were even bigger. Completely fearless and comfortable around large dogs. Good breed to have if you also have large dogs in the house; they fit right in. Of course, I was raised by German shepherds, so I'm biased. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:11, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

OR, my new favorite article creation: Chimney breast. I had no idea what I was going to find when I clicked that link, half expecting some medical condition with which I was unfamiliar. But we can't say his interest in "breasts" isn't comprehensive. LOL Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:11, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Damn, if I ever saw a 23-pound cat hanging out a car window meowing at me I'd fall off my bike. (Yes, I'm some kind of useless treehugging hippie; what of it? ;) Sounds like a fun travel buddy; sorry to hear he's gone.

I'm jealous of all these calm cat stories. One of mine is the terrified-quivering-lump type and the other needs to stick his nose in everything everywhere and therefore meows like he's dying if confined in any way.

Chimney breasts, huh? Welp, I learned something new today. It hadn't occurred to me that that part of a chimney had a name at all. I checked, out of morbid curiosity, and found myself a little disappointed that chimney booby et al. have never existed. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I learned some interesting comments to my two questions from the arb candidates. I had tried not to mention people, but met one person who said "that's me". I gave him a different question ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

All of these cat stories are reminding of the one time I took my cat on an airplane. It was the early 1990s and back then, flying was more relaxed and planes would often be half-full. So, I took a seat in the last row of the plane and after a half-hour, when my cat was in the carrier under the seat ahead of me, I took him out and he slept in my lap for the rest of the trip until we started descending and the stewardesses and other passengers were cool with that. My how times have changed. I can't remember the last fight I was on where there was one free seat on the plane. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:23, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Wow! Redrose's cat gets in the carrier without complaint, Liz's gets out in a roomful of strangers, and Dirtlawyer's doesn't need one at all. A few years ago I flew with cats for the first time - I made the vet give us cat drugs, and they slept the entire time. Lucky beasts; the humans had to settle for overpriced airport beer and crap in-flight drinks. Did they make you take the cat out of the carrier at security back then? Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:27, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

This was 20 years ago! I think you just walked up to the gate and there was no security. I could be wrong but I don't remember any metal detector or security gates. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:42, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Big Kitty: [2]. The coon cat in the video appears to be an exceptionally large male of about 25 to 27 pounds. It's tough to gauge their weight accurately sometimes because they all look 4 to 7 pounds bigger than they are with their uncut coon cat coats when compared with ordinary house cats. That's how most stories of "30-pound cats" got started. They're big, just not THAT big. For the very few that legitimately break 30 pounds, most are overfed and severely overweight. OTH, the former Guinness world record-holder (measured by length, not weight), was a red tabby Maine coon named Leo who weighed 35 pounds: [3]. And, no, the picture of Leo being held by his 6-foot tall veterinarian is not photoshopped. The current world record-holder is a brown tabby coon cat named Stewie: [4]. Stewie is two inches longer than Leo, but probably 10 pounds lighter. I've never seen one in person bigger than 24 pounds. In order to understand the typical personality, you have to imagine a house cat that is smart and easily trained, doesn't mind being bathed, loves people and is extremely social, comes when you call them, has a high tolerance for small children and big dogs, and is absolutely fearless when confronted by aggressive behavior by other animals. Oh, did I mention they talk -- a lot [5]? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Big floofy fuzzy chatty kitties! (ahem, https://xkcd.com/231/ applies...) I always like the little fur-tips on the ears. Can you actually train them to do tricks and things or is that still beneath their dignity? :) You know, even with a warning I still clicked on the talking link with the sound on and treated my coworkers to cat chatter. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Yup: [6]. Most of them are very trainable. I've even seen examples of MCCs that can be walked on a leash and/or have been trained to use the commode in lieu of having a litter box (they're big enough to straddle the hole in the seat). No word yet on whether they can be trained to flush. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:10, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Impressive! I bought Babou a harness but it didn't take him too long to tell me what he thought of that plan. I did somehow convince my fat cat to stand up on his back legs like a meerkat as a way to beg for treats, but that's the best I've managed. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:32, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Opabinia regalis. A proposed decision has been posted for the Genetically modified organisms arbitration case, for which you are on the notification list. Comments about the proposed decision are welcome at the proposed decision talk page. Thank you. For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:05, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

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Thanks for this article Victuallers (talk) 12:01, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

... for the line "It's about making sure we treat the other human beings who have volunteered their time to the project with equal amounts of kindness and respect." --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:28, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Kitten!! Aww, thanks! Did you notice that someone put a kitty picture on their questions page and it wasn't me? :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Fellow kitten-loving scientist friend! :) Keilana (talk) 21:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The Cat Scientist Cabal :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:16, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

That just made my day. (I'm now thinking of the hilarity/disaster that would ensue if I let my cat in my lab. On the one hand, she might sleep, on the other....there's fire. And bugs. And chemicals.) Keilana (talk) 22:59, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

This makes me glad to be a pure dry lab person (well, that and a thousand other things, starting with the fire, the bugs, and the chemicals). On the other hand, I had to get a userscript to keep one of the cats from rollbacking because he misunderstands the concept of a "laptop".

Oh! And having caught up with all of the questions, I finally started reading some of the others', and I'm afraid I don't like you anymore. Sorry. It's the pizza thing. Irreconcilable differences ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:29, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Heh, my cat often tries to make her own edits to Wikipedia and I'm afraid she's not very good at it. She seems to think this "laptop" thing is a combination cat bed/cat toy.... As for pizza, I can't believe you're a pizza heretic. Hmph. ;) Keilana (talk) 19:17, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I think you should strongly consider running for ArbCom. That said, like most people who are sensible enough to make good Arbs, you probably realize that no sensible person would ever want to be on ArbCom. :) MastCell ^Talk 00:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@MastCell: You know, I keep trying to type something like "Well, thank you for thinking I'm sensible" but it keeps coming out as "Are you crazy? Why would you wish that on me? What did I ever do to you??" ;) Besides, if I wrote the decisions they would all say "User X is advised to grow a clue. User Y is recommended to stop F5'ing ANI and get a hobby that involves going outside. User Z is topic banned from drama, broadly construed." Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:43, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Which would all be lovely, especially going outside. Four-hours hike here, almost to top of relief, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Beautiful! Much better way to spend some time than commenting on arbcom nonsense :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:18, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Frankly, most ArbCom decisions boil down to "X is instructed to grow a goddamned clue" or "Y is topic-banned from drama", although they're dressed up in pseudo-legalese and take 3 to5 months to produce. I think your approach would be significantly more economical. :) MastCell ^Talk 03:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

My approach would be to ignore arbcom, not encourage people to nominate themselves, vote only for trusted candidates (which may be zero), oppose all others. Write articles on women instead of complaining about a gender gap and expecting arbcom to fill it. I am known for my dangerous dreams ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:37, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

My method is more economical, sure, but it doesn't provide a handy isolation chamber for the parties to hang out in and fling mud at each other for months.

Support no one, I like it. What if they had an arbcom and nobody came? Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:18, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

In the last election, I think I supported a total of only 3 or 4 candidates, and opposed or was neutral on the rest. I'm not sure that sort of voting accomplishes anything, other than lowering the threshold for getting elected. I think the problem on the Committee mirrors the problem with Wikipedia in general: our systems depend on the assumption that sensible, sane people outnumber clueless ones by a significant margin. When this assumption no longer holds true, then our systems break down. I've been editing controversial content (medical, political, etc) for almost 10 years now, and every year the atmosphere gets worse, because we continually lose the stabilizing ballast of clueful editors. I suspect that the same process has affected ArbCom, since the Arbs are, after all, drawn from the community's shrinking talent pool. I am too old (in wiki-years) and cynical to change that, but I thought maybe I could pawn it off on you. :) MastCell ^Talk 17:02, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Happy day: a clueful editor returned, see my talk (and the sad list)! In case you didn't see my template inviting to create content instead of complaining:

.

Popcorn and others to follow, I'm in the mood ;) - Last election, I supported eight of those who answered my question well, was neutral on the others who answered well, and opposed the rest. It was an AE question, and sure enough several on the real AE thread had said that was a clear violation of the restriction. It wasn't, but kept three noticeboards busy for a month, and we had a female arbitrator less after the ordeal. (Sounds familiar?) Imagine all this writing skill had gone into articles! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:57, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

help yourself

The original message was 'tis the season. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:15, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Mmmm, popcorn! Do I have to write two articles now, because my last one was about a man? :)

The current arbcom seems to be suffering from a bad case of "none of us is as dumb as all of us". I notice I actually registered before you, MastCell, so I think that means you're it ;) Of course you actually stuck around all this time and I wandered off to do other things for a while, so I guess I'm guilty of contributing to the collective clue reduction. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:14, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Being on Arbcom appears to be something like a cross between the Government and Saddam Hussein's defence council. You only get horrible problems thrown at you, and whatever you do will upset a large cross section of people (either you're "draconian" or "pussy footing", sometimes both at the same time by different people). Consequently nobody who's any good at the job will want to do it. The proper answer is to have paid staff as arbs (as the old saying goes, "where there's muck, there's brass"), but I fear that's about as likely to happen as next month's "RfC to create new 'vandal fighter' role" to pass with an overwhelmingly strong support. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

So which arb is Baghdad Bob? ;)

I can only imagine that when WMF paid employees - fresh out of the latest gender-gap indoctrination workshop, no doubt, and under orders to clear out white males in order to keep the diversity numbers looking good - start voting amongst themselves on whether to ban Eric Corbett, actual WMDs might come into play. It's hard to tell what exactly is taking up so much time, but the job has evidently expanded beyond a time commitment that volunteers can reasonably keep up with. Since at least the Lightbreather case they've looked overwhelmed, like there's too many moles to whack to actually think about each one. How many ban appeals can they really be getting that require an answer other than "no"? Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:39, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The e-Cigs case has certainly ground to a halt, all drafting arbs have vanished, and one longstanding editor who was a named party has retired. Perhaps we need to take up my suggestion on WP:WORLDSEND and get everyone to look at a nice picture of a kitten instead. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:08, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

OR, your good judgement would be a useful addition to AC, but since I like you, I have to recommend in the strongest possible terms that you not run for AC. It is soul-crushing. @MastCell: You have good judgement too, but since I don't like you quite as much, I think you really should run. Of course, we wouldn't need an ArbCom if we all just followed my brilliant advice from many years ago: WP:SOLVED. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:19, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I seriously think the project would be better without arbcom, at least looking at what I saw of it. They tried to solve the infoboxes war by banning one user, and when it didn't work put him under absurd restrictions. They tried to solve gender gap issues by banning one user, and when it didn't work put him under absurd restrictions, and banned some women. In the e-cig case, a clueful user was banned, - all a tremendous waste of time, and kafkaesque. Does anybody of you who are here for a long time remember anything good ever coming from arbcom? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:20, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

That settles it then. MastCell for ArbCom! First act: motion to disband.

In the old days I apparently had more self-restraint, so I mostly didn't touch arbcom nonsense. But I did vaguely recall providing a trivial amount of evidence in an old case so I dug it up: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CoolKatt number 99999. No wonder there were 116 cases in 2006 if they were taking this kind of glorified ANI nothingburger as a five-week-long case. Has arbcom ever not sucked?

Ritchie, I've got the cat pictures covered ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:16, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

It's your lucky day OR, Cats and the Internet has just hit the main page! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:42, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Kitteh can haz DYK! My boys are proud. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• Hey, I did my part: I actually ran for ArbCom a scant 8 years ago, when I was much more naive. It was a different time, when candidates only had to answer a dozen or so questions, rather than the hundreds they're asked these days. (Looking through my answers to those questions, it would seem I haven't changed much). Voting was done in the open back in those days, which makes interesting reading, especially at this remove. I remember being mildly to moderately annoyed by some of the opposes, but actually I was much more heartened by a lot of the support (I still get a warm, fuzzy feeling re-reading votes like this).

  It's interesting to look back at that election: Brad was elected, and of course he's been a model Arb, but otherwise it was sort of a disaster. Two of the other appointees were basically AWOL non-entitites, another brought a serious amount of bad press down on Wikipedia because of his egregiously poor judgement, and as for FT2... well, the less said, the better. In any case, looking back, I think that not being elected in 2007 was the single best thing that's happened to me on Wikipedia. You should totally run, though. :) MastCell ^Talk 16:17, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

So I should run but be very careful not to win? ;) I'd be useless as a doctor, lawyer, or congressperson, so you're already way ahead of me.

Now there's an interesting bit of history. I was active at the time and didn't vote; I really was smarter back then. I wondered what the questions for NYB would look like: 54 entries, some with multiple subparts, 168k of text, even then! Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

A kitten and moar, help yourself, and I will add the women's heart also to Crying out loud. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:26, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

ps: look at my evidence if you can't imagine - if it's still there that is, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:27, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

So far so good! But I wonder how my real-life experiments would turn out using the standards of evidence the arbs seem to be applying here. I haven't found the motivation to wade back into that mess yet. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:58, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I stay. Did the same in the infoboxes case and got restricted, as the nurse on the battleground ;) - Standard of evidence then: an arb (who no longer is one) presented a diff, was "deeply concerned" and voted #6 to ban the user, reaching the majority. None of his colleagues looked at the alleged evidence, or they would have noticed that it was harmless to even helpful. The user was not banned because another of the then arbs changed his vote because he didn't want a prolific user banned on such a small margin. A year later, the user was honoured by Jimbo. We will have to wait for a similar picture with Eric ;) - Seriously: the whole AE procedure should be reflected as a party, as the title correctly says, but can't be because they all involved. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:14, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• (Hello kitten) I too think Arbcom needs to change radically, and I would definitely vote for you. Please run. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

  You first ;)

  There's at least four former arbs telling people it sucks, don't do it. Two of the current batch have quit. I mean, who wouldn't want to run for arbcom? Sounds like a glamorous job with pay to match. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:55, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for finding a way to mention in and edit summary "thoughtful, considered, and mature", in a thread related to arbcom, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:52, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I have never been U :-) ... that it sucks is one of the reasons it needs a new broom or 9. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:19, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Mature indeed. Maybe if all the decisions had a lolcat summary, they'd make more sense?

That's funny, to my American ears both sides of that table sound posh :)

Now where do we find people who don't suck, who are willing to spend the next two years doing something that sucks? Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:16, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect ArbCom to change radically if "our people" got elected. It's worth examining to what extent the mess we're in is institutional, and to what extent it is personal. Alakzi (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

And no female candidates so far, eh? I thought maybe we could encourage some people, but that would be a lot like campaigning for universal conscription. Alakzi (talk) 19:52, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Lord help me, I wrote a statement. If I actually post it someone hit me with a brick.

I expect you're right; the basic problem is the institution, and individuals with various combinations of ego, enthusiasm, and stubbornness arrive with big piles of reform ideas, quickly discover that getting anything accomplished is like trying to punch mud, and either quit in disgust or give up and wallow in it. The problem seems to be that it's almost impossible to make that argument effectively without having actually seen the behind-the-scenes work, and everyone who's seen it is too burned out to do anything about it. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:44, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I would be happy to give you a little of my perspective from my time in purgatory, if it would help you decide. On- or off-wiki. Only if desired, it's not really about me. As mentioned above, you'd be great, but (I think) would probably hate it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I sent you an email. Can you email a brick? Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:19, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

 Done. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Everyone in this thread is a jerk. Just sayin'. :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 09:33, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

((ec)) Best edit conflict ever! Blows my mind also. Remember though that no good deed goes unpunished. But I can guarantee that you won't be bored. Doug Weller (talk) 09:43, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! Yngvadottir (talk) 12:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Here's another. Thank you! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:36, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

And another. Glad to see you are running. Altamel (talk) 18:10, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks all!

*peeks at questions page* Ouch, this'll be tough right after taking a brick to the head :) People were not kidding about the actual process of running being a time sink in its own right. Better get typing... Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:51, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I've emailed you on a matter relating to your election candidature. Tony (talk) 06:18, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

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St Cecilia's Day

A Boy was Born

Music for you, in a box, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Excellent music, excellent box :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Wish to see the image back in the article (which I started 2 years ago, on the boy's centenary), but it's asking too much. (To have Britten's title again even more so.) I hear so much about the principal editors making editorial choices ... - Here's something angelic, including war in heaven, ah battleground ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:42, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

ps: did you know that the angelic article is a teamwork of three? That's why it has that compromise of an infobox, which is possible! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:23, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanksgiving

Shout for joy

moar excellent musicbox for your enjoyment ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:23, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Good luck in the election! Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:06, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Axl! Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

[7] Welcome in pocket any time, improve conversation in Victorian Parlour! bishzilla _ROARR!! 01:40, 27 November 2015 (UTC).

Oh, a nice cozy... waaaaait a minute. What's this about liking the Jurassic? We Cambrian critters did all that evolving and what did it get us? Eaten and squished! Don't trust zillas bearing gifts! Oh, but I see you have coffee... Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:35, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we need a Trillazilla.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:24, 27 November 2015 (UTC) Is that second trilobite deceased or simply getting a little cardio by doing the backstroke? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:56, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• [Darwinfish daringly considers creating twin socks: User:Trilobite and User:Trilobyte.] One cute little cambrian critter and one clever game developer, both calling me daddy! Hehe! (Trying to rescue little disappeared Casliber also.) darwin^fish 20:51, 27 November 2015 (UTC).

• Don't listen to him, he knows we're not allowed to create socks! Family keeps growing, drives Bishonen crazy! darwinbish ^BITE ☠ 20:54, 27 November 2015 (UTC).

I squished Cas?? Hrm, well, see how you like it, vertebrate.

Do all of you live in Bishzilla's pocket? Well, I was gonna bring a bottle of wine, but it looks like I might need a whole case! Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:47, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Don't know if the two mentioned here drink? Send them to Sibelius, radio full of the name, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:00, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

ps: ... and gender gap was also mentioned --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

It sucks when a cool username is taken by a dag account...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:10, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

← I know that I encouraged you to run for ArbCom, but I didn't think you'd actually do it. :) I think you'll be elected handily; I just hope you don't hate it. Best of luck! MastCell ^Talk 00:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I tipped over the edge when I saw 10+ candidates and no women. Luckily I wasn't the only one for very long. If I get elected and I hate it I'll know who to blame :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

You are invited! Join us remotely! World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Religion

Dates: 5 to 15 December 2015 Location: Worldwide/virtual/online event Host: Women in Red (WiR): Did you know that only 15% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you! Event details: This is a virtual edit-a-thon hosted by WiR. It will allow all those keen to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women in religion to participate. All levels of Wikipedia editing experience are welcome. RSVP and learn more: →here← --Rosiestep (talk) 05:37, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Not sure what possessed you to do this [8], but it goes without saying I support your candidacy. Your circumspect perspective, even when I don't agree with all of your conclusions, is one I try to emulate. Go get'em, girl. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:47, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I blame the jerks in the thread up at the top of this page that stubbornly refuses to archive. Sure you don't want to join me? ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Why would I want to go through that and lose? You're actually qualified. Of course, the only thing worse than losing may be winning. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. My only concern about your running is a selfish one: after a year on Arbcom, I don't want to lose you as an admin. You're one of our best. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:33, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

two years on arbcom, with kittens and cookies and knowing when better to do nothing ;) - did you know that you now can get precious for doing nothing? ("I thanked six arbitrators today - 28 Oct - for doing nothing. I can't talk to the others without being unkind.") --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:56, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I appreciate it :) Of course I'm probably the least objectively qualified viable candidate, due to doing too much nothing, and one of the first things I recommend is doing more nothing. New campaign slogan, closely paraphrased from inspired by Floq's slogan: "Vote for me, I'm adequate!" Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I vote for you for doing nothing and propagating the idea. Imagine if people had done nothing in response to this! Project offers a new option, option is implemented, click thank-you. (Well, this was before the time of those clicks.) Campaign slogan: "better do nothing". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:46, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I haven't yet (by a long road) decided which candidates I'll be supporting, but I wanted to thank you for running as an openly-female candidate. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 18:11, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Good advice for all undecided: go by User:Bishzilla/Vote ACE 2015, "Disregard the commandments herein at your peril." - this is from my favourite essay on arbcom which I should have known sooner, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Writing as someone who used to count votes for a living, I would say you're not doing badly so far. Of the ten voter guides that have explicitly endorsed one or more candidates, 8 have endorsed you, one has taken a neutral stance, and one remains undecided. And several of them have said some fairly kind things about your judgment, temperament and perspective. That said, my only concern is your [user] name identification -- even though you're an administrator, a lot of the rank and file are not going to recognize your name. The flip side: as far as I can tell you have not seriously offended anyone, which several of the other well known and "popular" candidates cannot say. Speaking as your volunteer consultant: try not to p@#$ anyone off between now and Election Day. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:15, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the analysis, Mr. Politico :) I hadn't been reading any of this stuff till nominations were over, but I think I am kinda caught up now (ugh, those questions pages...). Reading some of those guides makes me wonder who it is they've confused me with! I'd guess it is pretty easy to mis-predict these things based on all the early commentary by insiders, especially since there's a plan underway this year to mass-message everyone who's eligible to vote. At least the job of being inoffensive for Election Two Weeks is partly done for me, since I'll be out of town doing real work for the second week :) Ooh, I've got another slogan: "I'm mostly harmless!" Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

A user whom I trust has you as one of 4 candidates to absolutely support, - I will listen, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Tell your trusted friend he should fill a few more slots ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:40, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I will have to tell a respected user to fill more than two, Cas and you, but hate to tell people what they have to do ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I can't see any obvious candidates on my list to promote from "weak" to "definite". This year has a very sorry crop of candidates, and in a normal year my three "weak support"s would all be neutrals or oppose as well. Only one or two candidates being elected wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing; a lot of the current problems with Arbcom derive from it being too large (ever tried to have a fifteen-way conversation by email?). ‑ iridescent 11:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

You are right, but I personally want more weight - and eyes - of new people. Both last years my simple question pointed at arbs not looking at one diff, in 2013 not even when it decided ban or no ban, depressing. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:55, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt, "new people" is good in principle, but "new people at any cost" isn't. The candidates this year include some of Wikipedia's most notorious weirdos; there's at least one permutation of nine from this year's candidates whom, if they managed to win, would probably lead the WMF to shut down Arbcom and impose direct rule by office action as an emergency measure. Because this proposal has been railroaded through, this election will be different to every other; normally, arbcom elections are decided by those who are familiar with the people and the issues involved, but this time around there will be an unknown number of voters who have been canvassed to participate, who aren't familiar with what Arbcom does and think they're electing the Wikipedia Parliament, and who aren't familiar with the people or the issues involved. Consequently, this election is likely to be won by the candidates who are most vocal and self-publicising, rather than those who are most thoughtful and analytical. ‑ iridescent 12:19, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

That makes me wonder, what do you think is the right number of arbs? The coordinating-by-email thing is a problem, but especially over the last few months it's seemed like there weren't enough of them who were active enough to do the work. Maybe they were all busy reading their email. (If I'm sentenced elected and there's still no CRM by the end of my term, everyone come throw tomatoes at my talk page or something.)

I supported that mass-message proposal in principle, but it looks like they underestimated by an order of magnitude how many messages would be sent. It'd be smart to have an "exit poll" of sorts asking voters whether they became aware of the election from the mass message, the watchlist notice, noticeboard posts, or something else, to see whether it actually does anything, but that's probably too much planning to ask for at this point. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Two committees with mutually exclusive membership, each with seven members and a quorum of three; Committee A with the sole authority to issue binding closures to RFCs providing the RFC in question met a minimum number of participants and to set appropriate sanctions for breaching whatever decision was made in said RFCs; Committee B with the sole authority to deal with user conduct issues and to mediate interpersonal disputes and issue binding settlements if agreement can't be reached. In approximately six weeks time, you'll be able to see for yourself just who was responsible for shooting down that particular proposal and condemning Arbcom to four years of aimless drift.

Anyone could have told them that mass-message proposal was a fiasco waiting to happen, but there are too many people with an agenda who thought it would give them an opportunity to carve out power-bases. Wikipedia elections aren't like real-world general elections—if 95% of the voters in a US election had no idea what the purpose of Congress actually is and just voted for the candidates with the most colorful leaflets, no sane person would consider the result valid—but instead are akin to internal candidate selection within a political party, where the likelihood of participation is directly related to investment in the process. In the climate the supporters of that proposal are hoping to create, even that "known for her large natural breasts" guy who always used to run in arb elections would have a genuine shot of winning, since we're going to be inviting 100,000 people to participate who have no idea what Arbcom does and think they're appointing a Legislative Council. Plus, mass participation makes it impossible for candidates to meaningfully engage with the 'electorate', since there's no way you (plural) can engage with individual voters' concerns on that scale, and thus the winners will be those who can spout the most inviting-sounding platitudes. ‑ iridescent 00:09, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I like the binding-RfC committee, though my first thought is that all the "incivility vs POV-pushing" disputes would end up doing a lot of asking the other parent.

I'm as much to blame as anyone else in that mass-message thread for not thinking hard enough about how many messages that would entail - I think I would've guessed 10,000ish if asked. I may be similarly wrong about the likely effects, but I have to think the likelihood of people voting because of a mass message - when they wouldn't have thought to do so based on sitenotices or noticeboard posts or talk-page conversations or general clued-in-ness - is pretty low, and drops off really fast the more people you message. Even just reading the statements page to find the best platitudes involves an off-puttingly long plod through a boring stream of tldr. So I'm not sure there's much risk of anything more than adding some extra noise to the process.

But more importantly: large natural breasts guy? Does he know about all the redirects we deleted? Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

We'll see; my gut feeling is that well-intentioned but unfamiliar with Wikipedia culture noobs (of the type who nominate themselves at RFA after two weeks) are precisely the people most likely to be flattered at receiving a talkpage message and thus feel they ought to do their bit, whereas the old sweats who've been here long enough to have a healthy contempt for arbcom will just ignore or delete the message. Consequently, I suspect this will lead to a statistically significant number of voters who really have no idea what they're voting for or why but feel they ought to take part regardless; bear in mind if just one percent of the recipients of that email turn up, that would be almost double the number who took part in the whole of last year's election.

"Large natural breasts guy" was a real person YOLO Swag AKA NWA.Rep AKA Certified.Gangsta AKA Freestyle.king AKA Bonafide.hustla, a significant proportion of whose contributions consisted of adding "she has notably large natural breasts" to female biographies (example; they've all been long since reverted, but you can still get a feel for the trail of boobery he created through the talkpage discussions), and ultimately led to one of the most peculiar RFARs in Wikipedia history. He somehow managed to persuade 77 people to support him in the 2011 elections. IIRC Bishonen had a soft spot for him, and may be able to tell you what became of him. ‑ iridescent 22:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I do have a sort of soft spot for Certified Gangsta. There's something well-meaning about him, and something really... young. But I haven't heard from him for some time. Bishonen | talk 23:59, 22 November 2015 (UTC).

Mass message delivery didn't get much testing before deployment, I see.

I was catching up on WP stuff earlier while at the grocery store and laughed out loud in public when I got to the trail of boobery. Now some people picking up their Thanksgiving turkeys think I'm crazy. I sure do hope this turkey has large... oh, come on, it's just too easy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 09:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I voted. It was surprisingly easy after reading all of the "voter guides" -- even deciding which voter guides to disregard completely. I'm pretty confident that 7 of 9 of the candidates for whom I voted will prevail, with a couple on the margins because of past controversies. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

So now you're ready to write a guide to guides, right? :) Ironically, I haven't fully decided yet.

Interestingly, given the turnout numbers so far, I was probably completely wrong about the mass message thing. Why again does anybody think I'm right about stuff or good at making decisions? ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Dip-sampling the names in the voter log thus far, I think well-intentioned but unfamiliar with Wikipedia culture noobs (of the type who nominate themselves at RFA after two weeks) pretty much nails it (and I don't think the mass-mailing is even ¹⁄₁₀ complete). There's a full guide-to-guides here, if you feel the need. ‑ iridescent 11:22, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Facepalm Wow, you are right. And at their current rate they're never going to get the messages out before the voting period is over (which may turn out to be an interesting natural experiment, but is no way to run an election). Oh well, I tossed one more informed vote into the abyss. I wonder how well you can predict the results based on the list of voters. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

At a guess, a huge number of voters who either support everyone or oppose everyone, spikes in support for Kirill and Mark as they're the only two candidates to have blocks of bolded text in their statements so will be the names voters are most likely to remember, a spike in support for you because you have the most unusual username, and strong support for Keilana and Marensingha because people are more likely to think positively of candidates whose name ends in "a". (Go back and add a spot of red to your candidate statement—find some pretext to refer to a redlinked article—and you'll come top.) A while back, I said half seriously to Newyorkbrad that I could see the day coming where the rational course of action is for admins to disregard Arbcom en masse on the assumption that they can't desysop 'em all, and I suspect that's closer to being a rational position than it's ever been since 2006–07. ‑ iridescent 21:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Spot of red offered, with thanks for the secret slogan "Readers come first", --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Damn. Mention women in red, with a conspicuous redlink. Where was all this political consulting genius two weeks ago? ;) MastCell, Floquenbeam, everybody else up there in that other thread, you're all fired!

As for the readers, I should keep my mouth shut. I don't remember the last time I created an article with traffic much above background-noise levels. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Not really my impression, but there were a number of "well-intentioned but unfamiliar with Wikipedia culture" oldies - people whose few hundred edits stretch back to 2013, 2008 or even 2004. Presumably their talk page messages get forwarded by email. Example: User talk:Carminowe of Hendra, Johnbod (talk) 02:52, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I see a bunch of those too. I was wondering how I managed to be so wrong about this plan, but I see the original proposal specified contacting eligible voters who had been active in the last three months. The long-term inactive users and occasional dabblers who for some reason get emails for every talk page message (there are really people who use that option??) weren't originally supposed to be part of the message distribution. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:29, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

There are a number of comments about who was messaged (in some cases twice) at User talk:Mdann52#ArbCom election notice. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:42, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

But nowhere is it explained how we got from "Message those who have recently been active" (which I still don't agree with, but is at least a defensible position, as those recently active can be presumed to have an interest in the current management of Wikipedia) to "Message every user in the history of Wikipedia with 150 edits", which looking at the original discussion I can't see suggested anywhere, and which appears to have been a unilateral decision by ErrantX and Mdann52 which is (as mentioned above) seriously distorting the voter base.

You only have to look at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Feedback and Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates to see that doing this is attracting large numbers of people to participate who think Arbcom is some kind of Wikipedia Parliament. This matters because they'll be voting on the principle of "which candidate's views most closely match my views?", rather than "which candidates do I trust to act impartially?". Pinging Kevin Gorman as a courtesy, since this was originally his proposal and he may know if "extend the mailshot to inactive users" was actually discussed anywhere. ‑ iridescent 10:34, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge this was a decision made by the election commissioners after I decided to run as a candidate myself and a number of people thus felt that I should not be independently involved in the process of actually implementing the proposal I suggested. One of my fears about mass-messaging literally the entirely available electorate was that we'd likely be blasting out emails to a large number of people who became inactive when Ed Poor was still a bureaucrat, and would likely be unaware of the current state of the wiki and of arbcom's recent activities, policies, and procedures, etc. Please ping me again if my further input is needed here because although I have the page watchlisted, given the state many discussions are currently moving at it's not unlikely I'd miss further comment. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 10:46, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

(adding) Aah, found it—it looks like we have Casliber to blame, of all people. ‑ iridescent 10:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Aaah well, all I meant to do was query Kevin's arbitrary 3 month modifier...oh well....this could be....interesting......Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, hmm well to be clear; I closed the discussion as successful with some comments about the communities feeling of what would be appropriate and then notified Kevin of the closure. I was then aware that he wouldn't be implementing it because of running as a candidate. Other than that I wasn't involved until it started running and I saw some questions (and felt it was useful for me to comment, because I like to be helpful). Not worming my way out of anything; but Mdann52 is, I believe, responsible for the final implementation. FWIW I agree that it would have been best to filter for recently active editors (recalling the AN discussion from my shoddy memory, that wasn't really discussed in any detail though). It's good to see voter turnout which seems to be driven by the massmessage (to be honest; when I saw the proposal I wasn't sure it was a good idea)! I can appreciate above the concerns about it bringing voters with limited engagement with the area - I can take responsibility for that; it was discussed at WP:AN and there was no consensus that this was a bad thing. --Errant ^(chat!) 11:28, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

To be clear on my opinion; the community as far as I could judge agreed to the idea and showed they thought that Kevin would do it right (obviously, with implicit implementation details that weren't explicitly shared in the AN question) with a particular caveat that the implementation should honour opt outs like nobots (it doesn't, in fact, which I'm a little disappointed about). From catching up on how this moved, I think that when it was handed over some of that implicit understanding may have been lost leading to this notification of significant numbers of inactive users. I fully agree this is not in the spirit, if not the letter, of what was agreed to. I've said as much already in a couple of venues; my feeling is that this should be put down in retrospective to influence next year (it's possibly too late to do anything now). --Errant ^(chat!) 11:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

And now I am facepalming because I've spotted the ambiguity between the precise wording of my close and the precise wording of Kevin's list. Damn. Wasn't my intention, I'll have to hold my hand up to that. In defence, I suppose it would have seemed obvious to me that Kevin would implement as proposed. --Errant ^(chat!) 12:17, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

You Australians and your compulsory voting. I suspect your penance will imposed by election to the committee, Cas, whatever it turns out to look like. Choess (talk) 18:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Yep, this is it. Looks like your sentence is community service. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:12, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

• I'm really not sure what to do best at this point. I had originally intended to implement the list myself, with all respect possible for nobots and other opt out flags as well as a three month limitation so we didn't wake the dead, but decided to run at a point when we had considerably fewer good candidates than we do now, and asked Mdann52 if he felt comfortable running with it, while offering to help him with anything he neeeded help with. However, I've gotten several private and public complaints about offering to help every time I've done so, by people uncomfortable having a candidate trim down the list. I doubt I'll win but don't really want to withdraw my candidacy at this point anyway - but I think we may have woken enough ancient Wikipedians to make this election kind of unique in not paying much attention to the modern state of the wiki even i we either stopped the massmessage effort or threw on appropriate filters at this point. I'm not honestly that personally concerned about the failure of the list to respect nobots, although I guess I'll go ahead and transclude the list of nobots users in Mdann's optout filter, but I don't have the access necessary at this point to trim the list down to those recently active, as I had originally suggested, and there are a ton of voters who qualify from the far distant past - and they generally outnumber the pageviews to candidate guides, statements, etc, so I'm not really sure what they're basing their votes on. I'm not sure how to repair damage from the large number of very old accounts that were accidentally resurrected - this may be one of the situations where @Jimbo Wales: direct feedback would be useful on, since arbcom pages do still generally recognize him as the authority from which their power stems. Maybe a rapid arbcom motion supported by Jimbo and all currently active arbitrators to reset the election counter to 0 would be recognized by enough of the community to be useful? Otherwise, I really have no idea what this arbcom is going to look like, other than maybe users who were active in the distant past, or simply few if anyone successfully receiving 50% support? Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:11, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

• Just realized I'm not at all sure how to even transclude the list of nobots=all users on to the opt-out page as long as it's using massmessage and not a genuine bot (or even AWB.) Craaaap. Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:35, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Strikes me that that is very unworkable (reset the election) in any form. Especially because the Arbcom election rules are very clear that all of these accounts are allowed to vote. The three-six month limit was an artificial construct (arguably, it's biased by us being within that set). Bringing those users in to vote may have been unintended but nothing restricts their actual right to take part (whether or not we consider their opinion invalid). The only solution, really, IMO is for next year's rules to consider a start as well as an end date for edits (e.g. min 150 edits between X & Y). But this might not be a discussion for Opabinia regalis' talk page :) --Errant ^(chat!) 15:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

So I just wish to comment on a few comments above:]

• I was under the impression that the massmessage tool does respect nobots - I apologise if it turns out that it doesn't, but there's little I can do now, and nothing I could really do before (obtaining a dump of all the pages trancluded to no bots and removing them from the list would have taken me far too long, as I would have had to script that...). However, this did respect the mass messaging opt-out, so there was a way to opt-out without commenting on the signup page.
• Restarting the election is fairly pointless - the accounts have been notified, and they know about it, and are just as likely to vote anyway. Changing the eligibility requirements is something to discuss next year.
• As for the point of "which candidate's views most closely match my views?" by iridescent above, well in my personal view, this will already be happening anyway, so it's unlikely to be a major issue. Mdann52 (talk) 19:15, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Mdann52. I wouldn't have thought about the difference between nobots and no mass messages either. At this point, IMO, the only thing to do is continue what's already started and use the opportunity to collect some data. (I do wonder how long it's going to take to complete the bot run?) It would be interesting to see the distributions of edit count and date of most recent edit for this cycle's voters compared to previous cycles to get a sense of the size of the effect, and whether any substantial number of these long-term inactive returnees stick around again. Hey, I can sympathize with returning from long inactivity because of something arbcom-related... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:12, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Bot run was completed around 36 hours back, so wait and see I guess :). Mdann52 (talk) 06:52, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Mdann52! While waiting for the turkey, I took a look at the timing of events from the voter logs. I think Iridescent's hypothesis is correct :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:04, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, I think that much of the discussion here (and also over the original proposal is quite insufferably elitist. And it's alarming to see some of the people taking these positions.

There is no other election that I know for which it would be permitted for the election organizers to inform (or to go to greater lengths to inform) some of the eligible voters but not others about the basic fact of the election taking place. Indeed, such hijinks led to the civil rights movement in the American South. Likewise, the argument that "a well-informed vote is worth a thousand ill-informed votes" is precisely what delayed women's suffrage until the early twentieth century. Each vote should be regarded as worth exactly the same as any other. Just because people don't vote according to the rationale that you see fit, doesn't and definitely shouldn't make them ineligible to vote or require us to somehow seek ways to dissuade them from voting. That way autocracy lies.

Finally, the fact that this discussion is taking place while the election is ongoing, and that election candidates are not only taking part in them but even proposing to intervene in the running of the election, is something that, as a democrat, I find horrifying.

If the end result of all this is that not all the slots available are filled, then so be it. Que se vayan todos. I would hope that people would get the message, rather than return to gerrymandering the system to get the result that they happen to prefer. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 03:52, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

We can bitch about the mailing list selection criteria as well as the delivery rate of the messages, but over three times as many users have voted to date in the 2015 Arbcom election as the total who voted in the 2014 Arbcom election, and there are still nine days remaining to vote in 2015. Unless you believe that this year's Arbcom issues and candidates are three times more compelling than the issues and candidates of 2014, clearly the mass-messaging has had a significant impact on voter turnout. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 09:13, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

We're voting for volunteers for a dispute-resolution group on a website, not for GovCom. Analogies to real-life suffrage are tempting but don't hold up well.

The messages have all been delivered, so any proposals to intervene in the process are now moot. All we can do is watch what happens, and we might as well watch carefully to learn what we can about the practical effects of how this was ultimately implemented. Dirtlawyer is right, it's clear that the messages attracted many more participants than expected. And, though one would have to look at past voter logs to be sure, the evidence as it stands pretty strongly suggests that there are significant numbers of participants who are relatively inexperienced/inactive and who were motivated to vote by the mass message. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:33, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Agreed; complaints of "elitism", or comparisons to real-world general elections, are missing the point. "Anyone can edit" doesn't translate into "everyone should have an equal say in everything"; this is an election to a very specific dispute resolution role, but it's clear from commentary that some of those taking part are under the impression they're electing some kind of governing council. (If you do want to make comparisons to real-world elections, a better comparison to the current situation would be as if a poorly-considered change to US law intended to broaden participation, led to the situation where anyone who'd visited the US at any point in the last decade became eligible to vote in Federal elections.) ‑ Iridescent 13:14, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The solution, dear friends, is two-fold: first, in the selection criteria for the recipients of the election notice (e.g., total of 2,500 edits, minimum of 500 in past year), and second, in recognizing that one of the basic functions of any election is education. If you are unwilling to engage in educating your voters, then we should surrender the pretense of a democratic election and let a panel of "wise men" (e.g., the WMF, Jimbo Wales, all active administrators, etc.) appoint the members of Arbcom. I, for one, think that would be a horrible idea, but your mileage may vary. If one or more fringe candidates are elected in 2015, your case might be stronger, but in the mean time, I suggest you read The Wisdom of Crowds. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:30, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

On hearing somewhere else that 2,500 votes had already been cast I came here to make a comment. After reading the entire thread(s) here again I find that absolutely everything that Iridescent has said on this page is totally spot on. There is nothing left for me to add. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:08, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Assuming the Voter Log is accurate, just over 2,100 users have voted to date. My rough count was achieved by setting the view function to 100 voters per displayed page of the Voter Log and then counting the number of pages. If someone wants to get a more accurate count, you may do the same thing and then reduce the total by the number of duplicate votes and ineligible votes that have been struck. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:53, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

As of about 20 seconds ago: 2108 entries in the log, 2003 unique names. Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:59, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

BTW, Opabinia, if you have reviewed the data on your own voting plot chart above, you will take note that only about 400 of the 2000+ total voters are "low edit count" voters, virtually all of whom voted between 1600, 24 November, and 1600, 25 November, following the second cluster of mass messaging. Reasonable questions to ask would be: what was the criteria for the second cluster of mass messaging, and how was the second cluster different from the criteria for the preceding mass messages? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:18, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that second batch definitely drew in a lot of low-edit-count participants - and with a weirdly short time lag, too. People got the email and voted within a couple of hours, apparently. Mdann52 would know how the lists were assembled. (I believe the list was generated by the Foundation and then chopped into batches for distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if the original list was ordered by edit count.) Here's the distribution of edit counts for the data in the earlier graph - interpretation depends on what you consider a "low" edit count, I suppose. (Under 10K? That's me! :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:44, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure how the list was assembled - however, it seemed to have a mix of names I recognised throughout, so I don't think it was that even (for example, Rich Farmbrough was nowhere near the top, despite their edit count). I think it had more to do with account ID, that arbitrary random number assigned to every editor by the software - because accounts like Magnus Manske were right near the top of the file). Mdann52 (talk) 18:53, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, that makes more sense, thanks.

I had a little bit of time so I looked at previous years' edit-count distribution. Wow. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:53, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, OR, you seem to have access to greater voter profile details than I have seen posted elsewhere. Quick queries: how many 2015 voters have (1) 0 to 500 total edits, (2) 501 to 1,000 total edits, (3) 1,001 to 5,000 total edits, (4) 5,001 to 10,000 total edits, (5) more than 10,000 total edits? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't have access to anything fancy, I just grabbed the voter logs (eg [9] - set the limit to 5000 if you want them all on one page, retrieve with pandas for easy data processing) and then used the API to get edit counts. I'm in the middle of fiddling with real data anyway :) Of course there are loads of caveats with the year-on-year comparison - those are current edit counts, not counts at the time, and to properly compare you'd need to normalize to a background distribution among active editors at the time of the vote, but I think the pattern is clear enough that a very rough analysis makes the point.

Here's your preferred set of bins - 20 usernames didn't return a count, probably because they have special characters I didn't handle properly. (150 edits is the minimum for eligibility.)

Edit count	Number of 2015 voters
150-500	383
501-1000	228
1001-5000	467
5001-10000	158
10000+	645
Unparseable	20

Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:47, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Whichever way we analyse and look at it (thank you again Opabinia for your excellent skills with graphs) I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that the election has been seriously compromised by the mass mailig project. It makes a mock of, and renders totally useless all the nomination, question, and discussion pages, voter guides and ill thought out polls for 'Signpost' which is now also all but useless. I have an idea for next year's election - which will also force a real life meet up:

• get a large crowd of Wikipedians together in Hyde Park, Governor's Island or some such suitable outdoor venue (invite them by mass mailing and give them a WMF scholarship to travel there)
• lay on punk, hip hop, rap, and house music. Very loud.
• provide bunting, paper party hats, tea, cakes, booze, and barbecue
• provide playpens for the younger uses
• notify the press, preferably the Redtops
• notify the owners/moderators of WikiPediocracy
• select at random as many users as there are candidates.
• write the name of a candidare on a brick
• wrap each brick in brown paper
• get each user to select a brick at random
• on the starting gun, users throw their bricks as far as they can.
• Gather the nine bricks that were flung furthest, unwrap the brown paper, and hey presto we have our new Arbcom members.

We also have a successful event that clearly demonstrates ONCE MORE how seriously the world's largest encyclopedia is run. No one was uncivil and nobody was personally attacked. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a party! I was expecting the poor suckers who get hit by passing bricks to be the ones who end up on arbcom. Good training, probably. Fine, as long as we can all break out the booze before the brick-flinging.

I still think someone (election commissioners? Signpost?) should drop a note to everyone on the voter list after the scrutineering is over asking them what motivated them to vote and what material they used to choose their candidates. Obviously this is a group of people who respond well to surveys, after all. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Bricks?? How ridiculous. Could we please use female dwarves. That way we can also address gender gap and inclusivity issues at the same time. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:33, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that would be a very good idea. Be best use SurveyMonkey which we usually use for big polls. I'm absolutely certain that Opabinia could do a brilliant job of the extrapolations and their graphik displays. Desgning a poll however is not something for amateur - we saw that already. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

How did you decide which candidate to vote for gives an idea for the poll choices.-gadfium 19:35, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello Opabinia, your idea of an exit poll is a good one... and I work for the Signpost so I'd be happy to help make it happen... but apparently, you haven't yet seen Mdann52's usertalk, where several of the 100k people who got mass-message-spammed were complaining vociferously?  :-)     There is no way that we should be sending out ANOTHER automated spam to the 2k+ people that bothered to actually vote. I suggest we pseudorandomly sample 5% of that electorate, which is somewhere north of 100 people and somewhere south of 200 people, small enough that the exit-poll-request can be "hand delivered" to their userpages, but large enough to have a reasonably small margin of error statistically. Does that sound worthwhile?

  p.s. If you are still taking requests, I'd like to know how many usernames of each of Dirtlawyer1's subcategories were new-in-2015, new-in-2014, and so on back to 2001... which could give us an indication of how many people were specifically making accounts with an eye to influencing the recent arbcom-related-scandals, err, controversies, incidents, uhhh, stuff. Besides the age-in-years of the electorate histogram, I'd also like to see other indicators, but I'll save that begging for a future usertalk request.  ;-)     p.p.s. Just so you know: there was a kitten watching me post this. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:50, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that if you message 100k people and only get that many complaints back, that was a pretty successful spam! Personally I don't think 2-3k for a one-off thing is an unreasonable number - how many get the signpost on their talk page every week? - but you shouldn't listen to me in any case. I'm going to be out of town all next week with minimal time for wiki business, so you'll all have to decide without me :)

I also don't have time for further data digging, unfortunately, but I can tell you that if there was any funny business going on it wasn't with newly registered accounts. The Nov 23-26 list only contains 87 accounts registered in 2015. The big spikes in voting came from older accounts, and the batches in which the messages were sent out clearly were correlated with registration date (not sure if it was sorted by reg date or userid, which are obviously correlated with each other). The distribution of reg dates among the low-edit-count voters is actually pretty uniform for 2006 and later. The overall voter list is heavily enriched in 2006 registrations (as is the active community IIRC). By the time I get back voting will be over, so I'll probably look more closely at the full list then, unless someone else jumps in. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:01, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

p.p.s. The kitten is in charge of my talk page this week :)

Spot on - the script went through via. user ID. tosses some chocolate to the kitten :P Mdann52 (talk) 07:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Opabinia, thanks, the count of 87 tells me all I needed to know: too small to screw anything up in a significant fashion. Which is good. Mdann52, no chocolate, surely you meant freshly-caught goldfish? "Some human foods are toxic to cats; for example chocolate can cause theobromine poisoning, although (unlike dogs) few cats will eat chocolate."

  As for the exit-poll, in my book 2k-3k messages for an exit poll is a two-off spam not a one-off spam (voters already got at least one unsoliticed usertalk message about the election and in some cases that please-vote message was unintentionally double-sent). So I'd rather do sampling with hand delivery to start with, and expand later perhaps. To my knowledge, Signpost-spam is opt-in, you have to sign up, which is a different kettle of goldfish... there are at least 1k subscribers, in round numbers. p.s. There is griping about the mass-message on more than just Mdann's usertalk, for instance see the volumnious thread at User_talk:Dennis_Brown, though mostly it is not rooted in spam-like-complaints but concerned with other issues. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Just curious - how did you obtain the data for the graphs? Almost started making my own before I saw yours, but not familiar with how to collect this kind of data beyond doing it manually. Sam Walton (talk) 14:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

talkstalk sayeth: Samwalton9, although I note you did NOT bring a treat for the page-notice-kitteh, for shame, I'll by WP:NICE and quote the important bit from above:

I don't have access to anything fancy, I just grabbed the voter logs (eg [10] - set the limit to 5000 if you want them all on one page, retrieve with pandas for easy data processing) and then used the API to get edit counts. I'm in the middle of fiddling with real data anyway :)

Opabinia is a programmer, not just a prehistoric creature!  :-)    75.108.94.227 (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Eh, in the context of 100k messages, 2k seems like a piddle, but I thought the signpost and other newsletter things had a bigger distribution. Anyway, I'll leave the survey design and distribution to people with more time; I'm popping in from the plane :) I'll take that chocolate, while I'm here... kitteh can have the goldfish.

I'm not really a programmer, just a scientist who can't avoid it (and scientific software is notoriously terrible). I'm surprised I haven't seen more people playing with this data, actually. I haven't had time to look at how many voters would have met the 'edited within three months' criterion, but maybe I'll look next week at the full list, unless the data fairy shows up in the meantime. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:32, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, here's a surprise. I had a little more time/internet than I expected, so I checked out the dates of voters' contributions. Only 162 people would have been filtered out by the three-month criterion. Looking at users' most recent contribution before Nov 23, the clusters associated with mass messages do have more scatter in the dates, but less than I expected. Of those who fail the 3-month criterion, ~10% are former highly-active users and the rest look like dabblers. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Opabinia, as of today, more than 2600 votes have been logged in the 2015 Arbcom election (based on rough page count). That includes duplicates and other disqualified votes, so the number of unique voters is probably closer to 2500. That's about four times as many as voted in 2014. I am much more sanguine about this increase in participation than other commenters on this thread, but I will be very interested to see a statistical breakdown of all voters after the election is over, with particular attention to practical experience (edit count), recent activity levels, and registration dates. When you get home from your travels, we can talk more about suggestions for how the data should be broken out. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I am also relatively optimistic. But I suppose one thing we will never get is a comparison between how the "old" and "new" voters voted. Much of this is very familiar to those of us who followed UK politics in 2015, though I hope the outcome will be rather better. Johnbod (talk) 16:04, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Johnbod, I strongly suspect that when the dust settles on the 2015 elections, the primary net effect on the outcome will be more voters with very few (if any) differences in the candidates actually elected. I seriously doubt whether any "fringe" candidates will be elected as a result, although there may have been a greater reliance on the various voter guides (completely unprovable, except by proper polling of a randomly selected and statistically significant sample of voters). Based on my own voting habits as a newbie, I also suspect that there will be fewer voters who vote affirmatively to fill all nine openings on the board because some newbies and less active editors will only vote for (and sometimes against) those candidates with whom they are personally familiar. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:18, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

For those playing along at home: 2846 votes, 2674 unique. Looks like ~90% of votes are typically determined to be valid, so expecting around 2406 valid votes, 4x as many as last year.

A few people have been talking about doing an exit poll of sorts, but I'm not sure if it's going to happen or what kind of questions they're asking. I'll try to do some stats on the final voter list when I get home, feel free to post suggestions in the meantime. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Exit poll is happening. For "final" draft of the questions to be asked, please see User:GamerPro64/ACE2015_exit_poll. Expect we will be putting rolling results into WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-09/Arbitration_report, that will despite the name *begin* to be composed Wednesday the 9th, and actually *published* to the Signpost readership Saturday the 12th. Any way to improve the questions? Any questions not being asked, that ought be? WP:BEBOLD. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 07:15, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't have time to write any detailed analysis right now, but for those who care, here's the above graphs re-computed with the final list of voters. 2674 unique voters, of whom 273 have not edited in the last three months, 128 registered in 2015, and 625 have under 500 edits.

Ah, it looks like you are doing a 'real' exit poll, about the actual substance of the matter! :) I was originally thinking of looking at the mechanics of it - i.e. two questions in a check-all-that-apply format: 1) How did you find out about the election? Talk page message, watchlist notice, noticeboard post, discussion with others on wikipedia, discussion or announcement off-wiki, other; 2) What materials did you use to decide who to vote for? Candidate statements, candidate questions pages, candidate discussion pages, voter guides, discussion with other users, off-wiki discussions, personal experience with the candidate, other. Or something. You probably shouldn't listen to the candidates about how to run your survey and you definitely shouldn't listen to anyone who's been traveling all day and whose brain is as fried as mine is :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Could you please do a research about the electorate as opposed to voters. I'd like to know how we can cut a staggering number of 110k electorate down a lot. Use these proposed criteria. Thanks you. 4nn1l2 (talk) 17:14, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Also I'd like to know how many of the voters were qualified according to my proposed criteria? 4nn1l2 (talk) 17:34, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@4nn1l2: What I've done so far involves querying the API with a defined list of usernames. What you're suggesting has a different scope, and would require database queries - m:Research:Quarry might be helpful to you. I'd be happy if any proposed changes to voter eligibility criteria were made in a data-driven way, but I think that's probably better discussed somewhere other than a current candidate's talk page :) Maybe we should wait for the scrutineers to finish their work and focus on learning what we can from this year's data before moving on to proposing specific changes. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:43, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Note for searchers: if you don't want to read all this, see User:Opabinia regalis/ACE2015 voter data for a quick summary version. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Opabinia regalis,
I am finally going through all of these ACE candidate guides and am so impressed at the wide level of support you have received...I counted 21 guides that Supported your candidacy, 1 that Opposed you and 2 that were Neutral. Only Cas Liber received stronger support and he is a former arbitrator. That you could come back to Wikipedia after such a long absence, pass an RfA and get such a high level of support in an arbitration committee election really speaks to your contributions, diplomacy, competency and genuineness that comes across to editors with such a variety of perspectives and range of experiences on Wikipedia. I'm not sure what the results of this election will be, given the unprecedented rate of voting, but I think you should be proud that your fellow editors hold you in such high esteem! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:28, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah I am happy that folks have been impressed by common sense comments rather than...other stuff in years past...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:09, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Liz! Certainly not the trajectory I was planning for when I decided to fix a couple of enzyme articles while I was here last year :) I'm sure, if I get elected, I'll be a meanie and a power-monger and an incompetent loser and just generally the worst thing that's ever happened to the wiki soon enough. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

You are the best "thing" happening to me in this project. (Last time I said that was about Alakzi, and too late. It was also the first time.) - I mentioned a concept on the decision page that may also be a "novel idea" (as "Readers come first."): forgiveness. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

You're very kind, Gerda :) It's sort of depressingly ironic (ironically depressing?) that I most likely wouldn't have given any thought to running, or been in a position to, if I'd never crossed paths with Alakzi. Whatever the result, I hope 2016 is less fractious. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:28, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi! I am a bit confused by your graph. What are the axes representing? I would guess that the X axis is number of votes (or voters? I hope they're the same!), but can't figure out what the Y axis represents. Some form of time? Not days; maybe hours? Maybe you could include axis labels on a new version of the image; it would help tired and puzzled editors like me. Cheers!

...Oh, I almost forgot the treat! I brought a toy for your cat. — Gorthian (talk) 03:38, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Ooh, that's a good toy; thanks Gorthian! Kitteh was going to answer questions about graphs but is now busy chewing mouse ears, so I guess I'll have to do it... ;)

The one you linked is a histogram of the edit counts of all the voters, so no time axis - the x-axis is a log scale of edit count bins and the y-axis is the number of editors with counts in that bin. File:ACE2015 voter logs.svg shows trends over time through Nov 26. I'll update both when I get a chance now that the votes are all in. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:14, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for posting so quickly. You must have heard happy kitteh sounds. ;-) I saw that graph in the Signpost out today. I'm still unsure how editors get "binned" in a graph like that. I do look forward to the updated version of the second graph. — Gorthian (talk) 06:25, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Shows how much I know, I didn't even realize this was linked in the signpost. The bins are evenly spaced on a log10 scale (numpy.logspace, if you're interested). It's just a histogram, but it's unreadable without the log scale. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:03, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Famous.  :-)     WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/News_and_notes#High_voter_turnout_at_ArbCom_elections Oh, is Kelapstick gonna be jealous!  ;-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• Every time you don't label an axis, God kills a kitten. MastCell ^Talk 18:22, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, made my day - which was a bit tense after the Sibelius celebrations started early, so I had to improve an article in no time which I hoped to see tomorrow! - We have two related DYK now but will have none tomorrow - teh rulez, teh rulez, we have the TFA, we can't have DYK also. Plus we still have this "ongoing" infobox "discussion" on his talk, even after Softlavender's wisdom. Off to rehearsal, thanks for the axis ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:34, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Just looked at the front page (which I normally never do), very nice article! :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:06, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

By then the small articles I wrote were already archived (one pictured, one quirky, with James Bond). Thank (mostly) Brianboulton for the FA and (mostly) Ipigott, and curse teh rulez which demand that they can't both appear today, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:54, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

One axis labelled, God has to ponder: [11]. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:53, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh no, not the talk-page kitten! The new version has labels; have I made up for my sins? :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:32, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Wow, looks like Manhattan at dawn! Martinevans123 (talk) 23:41, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

For the 2013 and 2014 numbers, did you use 2013 and 2014 edit counts or 2015 edit counts? Thanks, Samsara 03:16, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@Samsara: 2015 edit counts. Those are very easy to retrieve from the API, whereas "edit count as of some previous date" is not. There's a comment somewhere upthread on the possible confounding effects of this, but the fact that less than 5% of the 2015 voters first registered in 2015, combined with the lack of evidence of wiki-life-cycle-related differences between the 2013 and 2014 distributions, makes me think this is a relatively small effect. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:33, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Unbelievable: you got elected although I campaigned for you ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Enjoy the fun of ArbCom issues!Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2016 Arbitration Committee. A few moments ago, you should have received an email from me asking you such simple questions as what email address you want to use for committee business. Welcome! Courcelles (talk) 19:50, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations, Opabinia regalis! Enjoy the holidays because then the work begins! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Congrats! :-) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:09, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Courcelles: Got it, replied, thanks! @Everyone else: thank you! Many thanks to everyone who participated in the election, especially fellow candidates :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations! I'm happy for you! --Rosiestep (talk) 03:09, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

...to this wonderful news. For the record, I always thought of you as highly clueful and just a pleasure to work with. I know you'll do well on ArbCom. Cheers, --ceradon 07:12, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Ceradon, and I'm glad to see you back! Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:59, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

On 10 December 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Kathryn Ferguson Fink, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that biochemist Kathryn Ferguson Fink developed radiolabeling techniques that were used to study the success of chemotherapy? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Kathryn Ferguson Fink. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Gatoclass (talk) 12:01, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations!!! I know you'll make a positive difference. HAPPY HOLIDAYS Atsme^📞📧

Thanks Atsme! (And your elf is super cute!) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congrats. :) --Tito Dutta (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Congrats on the result. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:46, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congrats! I knew you'd get elected, but didn't dream you would top the bill. Well done! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:52, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

(Sorry Kuddy, but I wasn't top!) But warm congrats to you too! (you are lucky) Martinevans123 (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, technically, you were edged out of top spot by the Support percentage but you received the greatest number of Supports. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:52, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Blows my mind too, either way you look! I'll admit my very first reaction was "oh shit, what have I done?" :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:54, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Pile on congratulations. Mkdw^talk 20:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations/commiserations. :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congratulations! Don't get too burned out. Mz7 (talk) 21:49, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congratulations Opabinia regalis :). –Davey2010^Talk 21:58, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not actually sure if we've met before, but congratulations nonetheless. I was impressed with your statement and question responses, so I supported. Best of luck! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congratulations. The recent election has made me more optimistic about the next few years. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:16, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oh wow, all of this optimism and enthusiasm and stuff. *blush* Everybody hold that thought and come back and repost it, say, 6-9 months from now ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
• Although we've been at odds over the admin activity requirement thing, for the record you did get my vote and I think you'll be a fine addition to the committee. Look forward to working with/for you as a functionary. (I hope you're ready for having to slog through 12-45 emails every day for the next two years, it's one of the things we don't really tell the new arbs until it's too late.) Beeblebrox (talk) 00:47, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • This would be an awfully boring place if we all agreed with each other! Thank you. Didn't anybody make any graphs of their email flux over time? Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
• In keeping with your interest in data visualization, I plotted each candidate's Support percentage against his or her cluefulness (measured on a well-validated scale from 0 to 1, corresponding to the probability that the candidate would make the same decision I would in a given situation). Simple linear regression indicated a fair, although imperfect, correlation between support percentage and cluefulness (R²=0.653). I was going to post the graph, but then I figured that candidates would be identifiable by their support percentage (and thus linked to their cluefulness rating), and then it just felt mean. Anyhow.... congratulations! Do good work. MastCell ^Talk 01:15, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Add some noise as a fudge factor ;) Remember, if anyone finds me dead under a mountain of angry email, it's all your fault! Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
• Please accept my sincere condolences and this heartfelt advice: be careful what you wish for. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• P.S. May I suggest you get a more fiercesome-looking talk page kitteh to oversee irate Arbcom-related comments. Grrr, kitteh. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• How about this guy? If you're here about science articles, deletions, or other routine business, see the kitteh. If you're here about arbcom business, talk to the lion first. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• I weigh 18 pounds, and I don't even have to hiss or bare fangs to make my point: [12]. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• He's perfect! If only he were CC-licensed... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congratulations. Just please remind yourself from time to time whom you are representing. It's the editors, not your fellow arbitrators. Best of luck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.250.156.188 (talk) 08:17, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
• Nice job in the election! I knew you could do it. I'm pretty happy with the results, and it's nice to see that most of my top candidates made it, you included ;). Here's to a great ArbCom this year and I trust you'll do well! Johanna^{talk to me!}_{see my work} 03:11, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Op, it is my understanding that many of the FPs are scans of art but I'm unfamiliar with the process. How were the paintings actually scanned? Were they scanned from images in books? Atsme^📞📧 15:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Atsme: Many of them are from the Google Cultural Institute. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:10, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

@Atsme: I'm glad a friendly stalker knows, because I don't have a clue! My only interaction with the FP process ever has been the nomination of that DNA clamp image back in 2006, which I had completely forgotten about until I stumbled across it in an article and then nominated it for delisting. High-quality images of artwork are definitely not my area of expertise around here :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

They are now mostly by the Google Art Project (if that's what it's called), and previously were museum-derived ones, or sometimes amateur efforts. You might well ask if there is much point to the process for the google ones. Books give very poor 2nd scans. The source should be clear from the image file. Johnbod (talk) 19:47, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

All very good information to know, thank you Nikki and Johnbod, and thank you Op for having knowledgable tps. 😉 I'll add that Nikkimaria is our Wikipedia Library Coordinator (and my tutor there which is why I didn't want to impose further), a citation expert, FAC reviewer, FAR coordinator and a talented individual overall. Atsme^📞📧 20:49, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello Opabinia regalis, congratulations on your appointment to the WP:AC. I am sure that you will serve the committee to the best of your abilities. Keep up the good work. Cheers, Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 17:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, AKS.9955! Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:00, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• Kudos Lamerkhav (talk) 22:44, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Opabinia regalis,

We are writing to let you know about the 3rd annual Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, taking place over the weekend of March 4-6, 2016. Last year, over 1500 participants at more than 75 events around the world participated in the second annual Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, resulting in the creation of nearly 400 new pages and significant improvements to 500 articles on Wikipedia. Active editors like you were key catalysts for actualizing edit-a-thons; we though perhaps you would like to participate in the 2016 event? If you would like to learn more, you can reach us at: info@art.plusfeminism.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

All best wishes,

@Siankevans, Failedprojects, and Theredproject:

@Failedprojects: hope your username isn't a prediction... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:34, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

There's no art without failure, no learning, either. Try again, fail again, fail better! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Failedprojects (talk • contribs) 19:46, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi! I wondered if you'd be willing to have a look at the Wiki Education Foundation's draft of a guidebook for genes and proteins articles? Any insight you have would be deeply appreciated! Thanks in advance. Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:42, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

@Eryk (Wiki Ed): Commented on the talk page, at greater length than originally intended, sorry :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:53, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

For this. :D Cheers =) --slakr^\ talk / 05:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Slakr: The retired user who created the editnotice gets credit for the idea; I just picked the kitten. I really want to put a rotating selection from commons:Category:Fighting cats in the ANI notice next... :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:26, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Love it, waiting for the image(s) for arb clarifications. Next year, see? I laughed loud when I saw the second ibox ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:35, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

LOL. I'll have to build up my stockpile of cat pictures ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:43, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Was just forced to watch this Friskies commercial before playing Bing Crosby's "White Crosby" on Youtube: [13]. Made me laugh, immediately thought of you. Best wishes for a Merry Christmas. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:04, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Aww, I love that series. Thanks, merry Christmas to you too. Looks like I've got some decorating to do... :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:47, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, need cat cheers, read in today's paper that one of my inspiring conductors died. - Try to ignore. - Decoration was done before, won't take it down, fear not, - did you know that I didn't find a single image on the commons of "our mouth full of laughter"? I love the scheduling of a TFA for 1 January: Falstaff, ending on "we are all fools". On the German Main page, I have hope to ring a peace bell 31 December into the new year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that, Gerda. Tough time of year for a death. I do like all of your holiday decorations. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:55, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for understanding! To cheer me up further, would you have a facial expression for "Ban. This concerns me deeply."? Or "crystal-clear violation of his restriction"? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:39, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a tough one. Commons needs commons:Category:Cats by facial expression, the better to make memes with. Sometimes I think this is the behavior being sought... Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:11, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your support and kind words at my RfA. Feel free to clobber me if I screw up at TfD but otherwise I look forward to helping mop up. Barnstars for votes is probably a bad idea so have this cute cat instead :) Happy holidays to you! BethNaught (talk) 21:00, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

@BethNaught: Congratulations! That was a nail-biter there at the end... ;) I'm sure you'll continue fine work at TfD but now you don't have to listen to complaining about NACs! Happy holidays to you too And I'm totally stealing that invisible barnstar. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:18, 20 December 2015 (UTC)