Contents
- 1 Introducing the new WikiProject Ghana!
- 2 Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Catflap08 and Hijiri88
- 3 A barnstar for you!
- 4 Precious anniversary
- 5 Q re: a Negro league edit from l-o-o-o-ng ago
- 6 Lá Fhéile Bríde Sona Daoibh!
- 7 Notification
- 8 This week's article for improvement (week 15, 2016)
- 9 ArbCom reform proposal
- 10 DRN help needed and volunteer roll call
- 11 Request
Introducing the new WikiProject Ghana!
Greetings!
I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Ghana! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 3,474 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in Ghana.
- Browse the new WikiProject page
- Become a member today! – members have access to an opt-in notification system
Hope to see you join! Harej (talk) 20:48, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Catflap08 and Hijiri88
You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Catflap08 and Hijiri88. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Catflap08 and Hijiri88/Evidence. Please add your evidence by November 4, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Catflap08 and Hijiri88/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz Read! Talk! 18:14, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks. I was kind of wondering what the apparent delay in notifications was, although not knowing all the tasks involved I didn't want to say anything and maybe once again prove how stupid I can be. John Carter (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
Thank you for your kind comments about my Quality improvement efforts to Wikipedia, at my appeal request to work on Quality improvement for an article I'd previously brought to WP:GA quality, Typewriter in the Sky.
You didn't have to go over there and put yourself on the line like that and comment on my behalf, but you did anyways, and I thank you for it. I'll continue to strive to better Wikipedia by engaging in the Quality improvement process, and bring articles to WP:GA and WP:FA quality. I'll work with my mentor The Rambling Man and do my best to learn from his example and guidance. |
- Cirt, believe me when I say that you don't have much that you need to learn from anyone around here, and I sincerely hope that the Arbs come to realize that soon. Your contributions are some of the most consistently impressive we have around here, and it is an honor to be able to help out in a small way someone who has done as much as you have, over as long as you have been here, and still has the spirit and drive to improve this site that you have. John Carter (talk) 18:14, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you, John Carter. I hope, in time, your views regarding my Quality improvement efforts will be shared by more editors within our Wikipedia community. Hopefully someday. :) But for now, I'll go back to attempting to improve the articles that I can — to higher levels of quality including WP:GA and WP:FA. If you've got any advice on how to bring about the change in perspective you wish for, above, John Carter, I'd appreciate it. — Cirt (talk) 19:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
A year ago, you were recipient no. 1068 of
Precious, a prize of QAI!
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:29, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Q re: a Negro league edit from l-o-o-o-ng ago
Hello, John Carter! Back in 2007, you added this [1] to the Harrisburg Giants and this [2] to the American Negro League. The source you used was Loverro, Thom. The Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball, but no page number. I do not have access to that book, but I can't find any other mention of the H-burg Giants operating after 1927 nor competing in the ANL in 1929. Could you confirm if this is the exact same team or some reincarnate, and why did they join but not compete in the ANL in 1929. I see you are semi-retired, so let me know if you are unavailable. I have a dynamic IP that changes when I log off, but I check WP regularly and will watch here for a response. Rgrds. --64.85.217.106 (talk) 06:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
- I found no other sources supporting this, and I was unable to locate a copy of The Encyclopedia at local libraries, so I removed the statements for now. Rgrds. (I'm the same dynamic IP as the above IP.) --64.85.217.184 (talk) 14:23, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Lá Fhéile Bríde Sona Daoibh!
I was looking for some information on Our Lady of Consolation and was redirected to the Basilica page. The redirect says "This is a redirect from a title that potentially could be expanded into a new article". The information on OLC now exceeds that for the Shrine. I'm not clear on whether it should be sent to the redirect page or not. (or for that matter how to do it.) I don't want to tag it for a separate article lest someone miss that there had already been a previous one back in 2008. Any assistance you could provide would be appreciated it. I will continue to work on it. ---(I was particularly interested to find there was an Our Lady of Consolation Fireworks Factory.) Thank you for your time. Mannanan51 (talk) 06:27, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Notification
This is to notify you that you are hereby banned from posting on the talk page of Hijiri88 under pain of a block. Such ban applies whether you are logged in or not. The only exception is that you are permitted to post any notification required, such as informing them of an issue at WP:ANI that involves them. Mjroots (talk) 22:03, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 15, 2016)
Various foods in a delicatessen in Rome, Italy The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Pecan pie • Gates of hell Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:08, 11 April 2016 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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ArbCom reform proposal
Just thinking here. Maybe one way to revise things might be to create an umbrella entity, perhaps a Dispute Resolution Committee, which might be eligible for election.
At least in my eyes, one of the big reasons for the problems of the ArbCom last year was that both User:Newyorkbrad and User:Kirill Lokshin were gone, and there were no immediately obvious replacements for them. User:Doug Weller and User:DGG, the two members of the board who would at least strike me as being the leading candidates for the sage positions vacated by those two, were both new that year, and, given the greatly reduced number of cases lately, it took a while for them to know the ropes and the others to learn how they work. The reduced caseload and possible/probable loss of institutional memory with the loss of old hands could well have been one of the big problems then.
I know a hell of a lot less about MedCom and other entities, but I think maybe one way to ensure that we don't lose the institutional memory aspect might be to create a DRC from which the arbs for any individual case can be drawn. Granted, I don't expect Brad to want to join every case after retirement, God knows I wouldn't want to, but it could very easily be very beneficial for the other members of the committee to have access to him for a particular case, maybe even in a "rotating chair" or something like that.
So, as a sort of proposal, have elections every year to elect a largish number of members of DRC or similar. Say, for instance, 60 members. All qualified editors are welcome to sign a predetermined number of petitions for candidates, up to and including "draft" petitions, and those which get sufficient signatures are on the ballot. Then, allow each qualified editor to vote, preferably for only a smaller number of candidates, for instance 30. The top 60 votegetters are determined, and then those 60 individuals cast the final, deciding, public votes for who are the 12 individuals on the "standing" ArbCom, MedCom, ArbCom clerks, AE enforcers, and the like. I figure only about half of those 60 would actually get "standing" positions, which is really what I would want. This would give the bottom 30 finishers a chance to maybe take one a case or two to see if they really want to do that. preferably with the help of an old hand, and maybe more actively seek a "standing" position in a following year if they want to take that role on regularly.
But, if all 60 were, at least theoretically, capable of filling any of the positions for a given year, we might have a much better chance of avoiding the discontinuity of community memory and leadership which I think happened when Kirll and Brad left the ArbCom.
Anyway, any ideas? John Carter (talk) 18:14, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- 1) Arb com is complicated enough already.. We should be looking at procedures to simplify the process.
- 2) Perhaps I have a prejudice here, but the difficulties last year were not due to lack of experience of myself or the other new people. If anything, perhaps there were last year altogether too many people on that committee whose long experience led them to an apparent commitment to entrenched ways of doing things; I at least certainly felt difficulty in getting an effective voice, especially in internal discussions. But the real difficulties were due to the unfortunate but unavoidable situation that several major cases had no really satisfactory solution. DGG ( talk ) 18:33, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Well, you, having been there and all, would probably know a hell of a lot more about it than me, who wasn't there. :) But, maybe, the "entrenchment" you speak of might be a symptom of loss of earlier leadership, I dunno. Regarding simplification, I think in a sense this might be a bit simpler. One of the problems that several have commented on is that few people really read the questions to candidates, and the sometimes questionable nature of the questions, and act however they would anyway, generally based on possibly questionable opinion they have as outsiders to the system who know the system even less than well than I might. Creating a publicly seen final discussion among the electeds might make it easier for at least that select group to deal with what they might see as real issues involved. And, a proposal like this, of the House/Senate type, sort of, might be a bit easier for a lot of people in the US anyway to understand, although I admit it might be harder for non-US people or people who don't have a bicameral system to follow. John Carter (talk) 19:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I'm not quite clear on your proposal: how are the 48 members not on the standing sub-committee "drawn" to participate in an arbitration committee task? Are you envisioning that for each task, be it a case, an appeal review, responding to incoming email, and so forth, that X number of people be drawn from the pool of 48, and added to those from the standing sub-committee who are also participating in the task? On a side note, I don't see how this relates to a bicameral system, where there are two separate deliberative bodies, and they act as a balance for each other. (Unless you are suggesting that any task be replicated by the standing sub-committee and the rest of the larger committee, independently?) This is more like an organization forming a sub-committee with a set of standing members and a set of rotating guest members. isaacl (talk) 03:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- First, I think it worth noting that the proposed board is where not only the ArbCom itself would be drawn from, but also maybe the MedCom, the Arb clerks, the regular AE enforcers, and other similar functionaries be drawn from. Basically, if something like this were done, the 60 or so would elect all the holders of those positions, which would probably be about 30 or so people. The other 30 who aren't selected and haven't yet filled such functions could, at request, if they wanted to, maybe ask to take part in specific processes (individual Arb cases, Med cases, clerking for a single case, etc.) which more or less requires selection of some sort, as either an observer or additional member of the "team", under the supervision of an existing "team" member to see if they might think they want to more actively seek such a post in the future. And, yeah, you're right, it is more like legislative committee appointments and officer selection than a bicameral legislature. John Carter (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
DRN help needed and volunteer roll call
You are receiving this message because you have listed yourself on the list of volunteers at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Volunteering#List of the DRN volunteers.
First, assistance is needed at DRN. We have recently closed a number of cases without any services being provided for lack of a volunteer willing to take the case. There are at least three cases awaiting a volunteer at this moment. Please consider taking one.
Second, this is a volunteer roll call. If you remain interested in helping at DRN and are willing to actively do so by taking at least one case (and seeing it through) or helping with administrative matters at least once per calendar month, please add your name to this roll call list. Individuals currently on the principal volunteer list who do not add their name on the roll call list will be removed from the principal volunteer list after June 30, 2016 unless the DRN Coordinator chooses to retain their name for the best interest of DRN or the encyclopedia. Individuals whose names are removed after June 30, 2016, should feel free to re-add their names to the principal volunteer list, but are respectfully requested not to do so unless they are willing to take part at DRN at least one time per month as noted above. No one is going to be monitoring to see if you live up to that commitment, but we respectfully ask that you either live up to it or remove your name from the principal volunteer list.
Best regards, TransporterMan (talk · contribs) (Current DRN coordinator) (Not watching this page) Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Request
There is an important discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention about possibly finding a way to salvage Single-purpose editors and transforming them into positive WP collaborators in the general mainspace. I'm sure you run in to many of them as you wander around WP. I'm also sure that every now and then one of the SPA editors rises above the crowd and seems worthy of more of your time and effort. Your personal insight and experience would be appreciated. WP:WER has become a relative ghost town (and I may be one of the few ghosts left in town) and User:Robert's idea may be just the boost the Project needs to revitalize. It's an opportunity for the Project to actually do something beyond handing out awards. I think Dennis Brown would like it. Buster Seven Talk 14:15, 14 April 2016 (UTC)