Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,
The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia community in recent months.
For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules. Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current issues regarding the project.
[2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3]. After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and sitenotice.
[4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of his colleagues. The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of the community would be respected.
For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a general rule they contain little niceties.
If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project. As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to resolve the problems without your assistance.
And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future. Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped, and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as reflective of the entire Wiki project’s quality.
Please, lend aid any way you can
Dalibor Bosits
[1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87 [2] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedl... [3] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedl... has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop the voting) [4] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administr...
It has been very sad learning of the problem you have had and to follow the discussion you have had on meta.
I think, though, that you in this extremely tough situation has handled it very competently and in the tradition of the wikimedia culture.
As I understand it, you have now also identified the root of the problem and started a good process to tackle it, where you have full support from your community
I would recommend you to not stop at his stage, for any reason, but to get to the result that seem the best (to block some admins)
If you find some extraordinary procedural problem in the process, do not forget ''Ignore all rules". Why not identify the admin with most credibility from all and get him/her to block the admins, and afterward go through the voting?
Anders
Dalibor Bosits skrev 2013-10-28 18:38:
Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,
The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia community in recent months.
For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules. Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current issues regarding the project.
[2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3]. After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and sitenotice.
[4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of his colleagues. The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of the community would be respected.
For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a general rule they contain little niceties.
If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project. As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to resolve the problems without your assistance.
And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future. Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped, and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as reflective of the entire Wiki project’s quality.
Please, lend aid any way you can
Dalibor Bosits
[1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87 [2] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedl... [3] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedl... has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop the voting) [4] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administr... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Dalibor,
Could you describe what type of aid you are looking for, and how you think it fits with the overall governing ethos of Wikimedia projects? (For example, if you ask for WMF staff to intervene, would you argue that the WMF can and should intervene in project disputes when one side makes a request?).
Thanks, Nathan
This is a sadly common pattern among smaller WMF sites: a single editor or a group of self-supporting editors gains a foothold in the power structure and abuses the trust we put in admins. Just as in real life, this is typically accompanied by a xenophobic push, and a snowballing effect that ensures a grip on power.
This degradation of the original wiki ethic is all too evident in at least one of the smaller English-language sites, so just what we might expect to find if we were to lift the linguistic veil over the many small sites in other languages makes one's spine shiver.
Per Nathan, yes, specifics need to be stated, and as far as possible without emotion ... just the facts, and as briefly as possible.
Understandably, the Foundation will try to stay out of any community "dispute" unless it becomes so toxic it can't be ignored in an interwiki sense. However, I think there's a role for WMF community relations staff to advise distressed parties and to be made aware of major conflicts on WMF sites – aside from anything else, we have yet to see legal action by a party who claims to be injured by other editors on a site, and that's something we would all like to forestall.
Tony
On 29/10/2013, at 5:12 AM, Nathan wrote:
Hi Dalibor,
Could you describe what type of aid you are looking for, and how you think it fits with the overall governing ethos of Wikimedia projects? (For example, if you ask for WMF staff to intervene, would you argue that the WMF can and should intervene in project disputes when one side makes a request?).
Thanks, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
Hello there,
I can not tell you right now what kind of assistance is needed as I do not know what actions are available in the first place. Similarly, I do not know who is in charge in such extreme situations. Currently the discussion on the ongoing issues has mostly moved to the meta pages[1]. As far as the proposed block is concerned, you can expect more on that topic from an admin (Argo Navis) who was in that capacity in 2005-2009.
Dalibor
2013/10/29 Tony Souter [email protected]
This is a sadly common pattern among smaller WMF sites: a single editor or a group of self-supporting editors gains a foothold in the power structure and abuses the trust we put in admins. Just as in real life, this is typically accompanied by a xenophobic push, and a snowballing effect that ensures a grip on power.
This degradation of the original wiki ethic is all too evident in at least one of the smaller English-language sites, so just what we might expect to find if we were to lift the linguistic veil over the many small sites in other languages makes one's spine shiver.
Per Nathan, yes, specifics need to be stated, and as far as possible without emotion ... just the facts, and as briefly as possible.
Understandably, the Foundation will try to stay out of any community "dispute" unless it becomes so toxic it can't be ignored in an interwiki sense. However, I think there's a role for WMF community relations staff to advise distressed parties and to be made aware of major conflicts on WMF sites – aside from anything else, we have yet to see legal action by a party who claims to be injured by other editors on a site, and that's something we would all like to forestall.
Tony
On 29/10/2013, at 5:12 AM, Nathan wrote:
Hi Dalibor,
Could you describe what type of aid you are looking for, and how you
think
it fits with the overall governing ethos of Wikimedia projects? (For example, if you ask for WMF staff to intervene, would you argue that the WMF can and should intervene in project disputes when one side makes a request?).
Thanks, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
I think that the problem is not present only in hr.wikipedia but it's present in several projects and mainly in en.wikipedia and in fr.wikipedia.
I know this problem and I faced it directly several years ago, so it's an old problem, and I have seen several people leaving Wikipedia projects for this reason or to be blocked because in opposition of this group of users.
The discussions were very much difficult because they disagree with "official" sources saying that they are non neutral sources (even if they are official documents of the European Union or well know encyclopedias). It was sufficient to have a small source in Croatian language to forget all other sources.
Any escalation was really difficult because into the group of administrator there was an impartial support and several editors knew it and tried frequently to put it in evidence with the result to be blocked.
Even if Wikipedia is not primary source, the justification to keep some content not modified was always that to have en.wikipedia as primary source, basically the editors said that en.wikipedia defines the nationality, so in other wikipedias (like fr.wikipedia) the content has to be kept as it was in en.wikipedia.
An example is here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Francesco_Laurana
The support of this discussion is that en.wikipedia defines a nationality (en.wikipedia used as primary source) and that Italy is a concept born in XIX century, even if there is a kingdom of Italy still in the X century.
These arguments have been widespread in all Wikipedias except in the German one.
This is only one example, I suggest to have a look in other sources not derivative of Wikipedia and to check what is happened after the 2006 with sources derivative of Wikipedia.
Someone may call it "Croatization".
I suggest to have a look in any Wikipedia articles involving people born and in the history of the current territory of Croatia before the XIX century.
Regards
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Dalibor Bosits [email protected]wrote:
Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,
The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia community in recent months.
For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules. Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current issues regarding the project.
[2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3]. After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and sitenotice.
[4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of his colleagues. The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of the community would be respected.
For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a general rule they contain little niceties.
If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project. As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to resolve the problems without your assistance.
And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future. Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped, and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as reflective of the entire Wiki project's quality.
Please, lend aid any way you can
Dalibor Bosits
[1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87 [2]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedl... has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop the voting) [4]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administr... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe