arb elections + arb list 'leaks'

well the elections came and went - it was fun to be involved on the periphery, but other stuff has largely distracted me since....

now the news of the day is that kelly martin, an ex-arb, and now wiki apostate, is in the process of setting up a project publishing emails from the arb list from a period a few years ago - citing public interest / general public good as the rationale for breaching the expectation of privacy..... it's an interesting one for sure.. maybe interesting enough to warrant further comment, who knows......

arbcom elections

so I'm standing... really in the hope to try and get some attention for some ideas. In some ways it's hard to see wiki actually improving at the mo..... :-(

Anywhoo... I just published today my '5 big ideas' as the central planks of my campaign! I have zero chance of success in the election, but hope someone will notice what I hope are good ideas......

In other news Lar and I have a 10 buck bet on the outcome of the election - $140 for me if I'm on the money.... I think the old 'red, black, black, red' combo probably is a more reliable way to get 16 to 1 (well Lar's offered me 14....) but we'll see how it goes :-)

Vote for me, and if you don't vote for me - vote for the folk on my list!

things that go 'bump' in the night....

how cool is this pic? Happy Halloween folks,

I'm hoping to be able to add a thousand or so others to Commons before too long, and am enjoying learning how.....

at some point I may write up something about recent wiki times - what I've been up to, and why I'm considering running for the arbitration committee....

chapcom, wikiversity, mentoring, and 6 unanswerable questions

here's an update for my poor neglected blog.... a few of the goings on lately...

I've been asked to help out the WMF Chapters Commitee with communications - I'm pretty interested and excited about that, and am currently finding out more! (I think I 'slowpoked' them into it - by volunteering to answer emails and just generally keep focus on outstanding issues etc. etc. - still it's kinda cool, no?).

I remain under mentorship at en-wiki in the BLP area, and there was a bit of a broo ha ha with a request I made for admin.s to review long-term-blocked User:Moulton's situation, which resulted in my mentors extending the process - the arbs got involved, and I'd say it's now settling down a bit - though whether or not the path forward is clear is anyone's guess :-)

Wikiversity has been hit rather harder by growing tensions, with the community sort of half eating itself, and not a gruntle to be seen (Jimbo even popped in with a ban). It's a very 'mellow' place though (and that word has particular connotations in the wiki-verse) - and in some ways the drama there is rather more akin to an argument between church wardens when the choir have their end of year party, and someone forgot to order biscuits, as oppose to the cagematches the en-wiki goes for .....

the 6 unanswerable questions are wiki related, and after recent events, I'm rather glad I didn't post them to either en or wikiversity, for reasons I might discuss in another post.... I'll write them up here at some point - so you'll have to pop back ;-)

asking for restrictions to be lifted.....

to edit BLPs or not to edit BLPs... that's the question rolling around some pages of the english wiki at the moment - and the question which has brought me back to this poor neglected blog. (are there any blog protection services? - I'm sure I'm negligent in many ways, and would probably face charges....)

So I asked arbcom if I could be allowed to edit BLPs again - and now it's sort of grown into a wiki-constitutional discussion in some places (can this be discussed at the Village Pump? AN? RfAr pages only? - is 'the community' actually empowered to make any decision? offer comment? etc. etc. - oh, and where does Jimbo fit in to all this?) - as well as a sort of open review of my editing.... or perhaps more acuarately an opportunity for people to pass comment about their impressions of what's been going on - I think some folk could do with taking a a closer look at some diff.s etc. - or just ask me a question! - I won't bite! :-)

Perhaps the discussion is now at the petering out stage (I've been told in the past that persuading three arbs to actually comment on a request is pretty good going!) - which may or may not bring us back to this point at some point in the future... we'll see how it pans out....

wikipedia, scientology, and 'anonymous'

Bumping around the wiki a couple of months or so ago, I came across the whole series of articles on scientology - including several related 'featured' articles on pop culture topics, like Battlefield Earth 'the movie' (must check that out one day - can it really be worse than my personal worst film of all time 'Licence to Kill'?)

Anywhoo... to cut a long story short, I've now browsed around the subject online fairly extensively, and found some interesting stuff, in a sort of 'a few threads coming together' sort of way.... hence this post (which as ever is largely for my own edification, and as an aide-memoire).

I think it was Kelly Martin's blog (now a new look, and no wikipedia stuff) where I first read a mention of the connections between anti-scientology activists, and the english wikipedia - from memory, referring to David Gerard having done so much fighting one cult (Scientology) and now supporting another (Kelly's interpretation of Wikipedia at the time). I've also got half a memory of reading that a few more of the wiki 'old guard' were active on the anti-scientology newsgroups back in the day - can't back that up at all at the mo, so I don't know if it's received wisdom, or one of those things that someone tells you that turns out to be not so reliable..

Anywhoo... the final piece of the thread was this youtube video;

which I noticed randomly the other day, on one of my 'fairly extensive' browsing expeditions.... as you can see, the video has been removed, the user account closed, and the pages all gone from youtube's public site - the link above is to the Google cache. I saw the clip the other night (well, it was just a still picture, and an audio file) - and made a mental note to check out what it was saying - though it was a bit fishy. I got in touch with one of the named people from the audio, and sure enough, they knew nothing about it at all...

In the audio, which was purported to be a leak from a Scientology official, it was claimed that the Wikimedia foundation was financially supporting the 'anonymous' movement, and that various wiki luminaries were to be declared 'SPs' (suppressive persons) - a decleration which seems to have led to some rather obnoxious harasssment in the past from various scientology organisations. It was also claimed that Scientology will be sueing the wikimedia foundation in some way at some point for some thing (it wasn't very clear on that point!).

I thought these threads coming together was a bit of a coincidence, and that's why I'm commenting here..... if you can handle conceptual hyperbole, there really are some fascinating analagies to be drawn between Wikipedia and Scientology - which makes it all the more interesting if the two organisations become antaganistic. In some ways Wikipedia is a cultural product of 'anonymous', and as such represents a tangible target, I guess..... or not... maybe.....

anyways.... there are no doubt several books to be writ on related subjects in due course, and there's only a small chance that I'll return to blog about this before one of them is published..... cheers chaps.....

this month....

I have mostly been thinking about foundation issues - you know - stuff about the elections to the board of trustees... I've been trying to record brief conversations with each candidate... I'm gonna 'publish' as many as I can complete by the 6th June - and I'm hopeful we'll get at least half done....

you know where to find me if you'd like to!