Wikipedia talk:Spam/arbcom elections

Election Campaigning - What is the Spam Threshold?[edit]

I am looking for other contributors to offer their guidance about how strong of a previous affiliation one must have with another user, to rise above the "spam" threshold when campaigning on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate for the December 2004 Arbitration Committee Election.

For example, surely I can not contact every user who is active on Wikipedia with my campaign messages, as the vast majority of the recipients would have no clue who I was, and would likely regard my campaign message as spam.

However, what about all of the contributors who have worked on an article with me since I started? Some, perhaps most, of those users will likely have some recollection of my user name, and so they might regard a campaign message from me as either somewhat worthwhile to read, or at least simply be slightly bemused.

One scheme that is used in America for direct marketing, is that users may declare that they don't want advertising sent to their home, but lacking this declaration, it is OK to send such materials (negative opt out). This system is in place for both mail and telephone direct marketing. (However I believe there is an exemption for campaign literature.)

And there are even those whose definition of privacy is so restrictive, that they would only allow campaign messages to be sent out to those users who have actively declared their willingness to receive such messages (positive opt in).

Any guidance on this issue will be helpful for establishing the ground rules for proper campaign conduct in this election, and to help establish precedent for future elections.

Regards,

--DV 09:47, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about others, but I've not seen any of this form of campaigning - either this time or last time, and am thankful that this is so. Each candidate has their statement, their reputation, and an avenue for inquiries from potential voters. That's enough, in my opinion. Ambi 11:30, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. It seems you want a passive campaign that potential voters somehow find out about on there own initiative. I was really hoping for an active campaign, wherein potential candidates and their partisans can bring a message to potential voters to increase the voter turnout and the Wikipedia community can then benefit from the wisdom that will inevitably arise out of the diversity of that turnout. (Assuming you believe in the wisdom of a large voter turnout?)

Would you endorse a feature that would allow you to opt-out of campaign messages? I asked Tim Starling if it would be possible to add a feature to the user preferences to allow users to control whether they receive campaign-related messages. This probably can't be done in time for this election, but this feature would give you that control in the longer term.

Personally, I think the candidates should be able to publicize their campaigns to the general electorate, otherwise the outcome of the vote will be determined by the few zealots on either side who choose to congregate in the administrative areas of Wikipedia. Out in the real world, low voter turnout by zealots on both sides ends up creating a negative, polarizing effect.

By allowing the candidates to make themselves known to a wider electorate, there should be a larger voter turnout, the diversity of which will easily neutralize any zealotry by the hardcore policy wonks who may not be as in touch with the needs of the general electorate.

Ambi, if you either like to make up your own mind without anyone trying to influence you, or you have an agenda that is served by certain candidates, great, you should ignore the campaigning and vote according to your own agenda. But my sense is that the larger electorate is not so informed, and may not have their own agenda (other than wanting to contribute to articles that interest them), and those potential voters may not realize the benefits of voting for certain candidates, unless a message is provided to them to help them become aware of their choices in the election.

I hope we can both agree that active campaigning on behalf of the candidates is part of free and fair elections. If you feel otherwise, why not just ask Jimbo to appoint some friends and avoid all the hassle of an election? I would endorse Jimbo simply making appointments if the election is really just a facade with no active campaigning allowed.

To sum it up, if most of the potential voters don't even know there is an election, much less who is running and what they stand for, what is the point of an election? --DV 12:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To sum it up for me, if any candidate is abnoxious and stupid enough to spam me on my user page seeking my vote ... they will not get it. I would take that as an indication that the candidate did not understand Wikipedia. If anyone spams me on my user page about supporting a particular candidate, I will instruct that candidate to openly reprove the person who sent the message on the peron's talk page and tell them to stop, or that candidate will certainly not get my vote. I am interested in unbiased information (and even biased information). But this is the web and Wikipedia within the web. I can look at endorsement pages when I choose. I don't need someone pushing their POV at me. I would not object to a short general boilerplate announcement of this election being sent to all user pages now, and at the begining of the vote, and two days before the end of the vote, with links to appropriate pages. But is even that necessary, when the election could be mentioned prominently both on the main Wikipedia page and prominently on the User portal page?

Jallan 19:35, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree fully with Ambi. Let's not make this any more political that it absolutely has to be. -- sannse (talk) 00:25, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jallan and Sannse, the problem is that the election is not being publicized. I only found out about it by happenstance. Most editors don't lurk on the administrative pages to find out what the insiders are doing behind the scenes.

This election is not being publicized on the main page, and no user pages have any messages that an important election is about to take place.

I understand that some folks are very independent, and like to make up their own minds without any outside influence. That's great! But if you don't even know that an election is taking place, much less who is running in it, you can hardly make up your own mind, can you?

As a compromise, I have created a neutral "Get Out the Vote" banner with some appropriate links, that I think could be shared without offending anyone.

Check it out below. What do you think?

--DV 03:02, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The election is not being publicised because it hasn't actually started yet. What's the point in telling people about an election that they can't vote in yet? I'm sure it'll get much more publicity from dec 3. Having said that. I quite like you banner. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 09:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are you serious, or are you now pulling my chain? If so, you've trolled me good, and I'm quite the fool now.

In every country that holds elections, that I am aware of, the voters are given advance notice of the election. It would be silly, and grossly unfair to both the candidates and the voters, to begin telling the voters about the election the day it started.

Unless this election is just an "elaborate political simulation", to quote another one of the insiders, the potential voters must be made aware of the election in advance. To seriously propose otherwise defies credibility.

How is anyone to campaign if the voters are not to be made aware of the election? I'm sorry, but announcements on administrative pages where the insiders congregate will not cut it.

I've just started to make a good effort to try and participate and get out the vote, but if this is the response I am going to get from the insiders, it will be quite the story to tell, won't it?

I really should stick to editing articles, and let the grown ups run things, shouldn't I?

Scratch that. I will now re-double my efforts to help insure there is record turnout for this election. Your kafka-esque pronouncements aren't fooling this voter into letting the insiders control this election.

I wasn't born yesterday,

--DV 12:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) Exercise your right to VOTE

This is just an unfortunate fact of Wikipedian "politics", DV. We don't run active campaigns; instead of going to users, we let the users hunt for us. It's just convention, and anyway, what difference does it make when the election is publicised? There will be 12 days for users to campaign. During the 12 day voting period, users who have already voted can still change their votes, so there's no harm done. That's how elections are run here. And in any case, what campaigning is there to do? Johnleemk | Talk 15:15, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Who is "we"? Not me. But that's not important. Is this "we" referring to a majority of the voters? How do you really know this. A spot poll where a few people show up? Has any mass polling really been done on this question?

Do you really think that most people think elections should be run passively? Show me one election in modern times where instead of going to the voters, the voters were left to their own devices to try and find out what the heck was going on? I think my point is made. --DV 22:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

David I've answered on Jimbo's talk page, but let me just reiterate. I wasn't making a kafka-esque pronouncement I was just stating my opinion. I'm not an "insider"; this is a wiki and you are of course free to publicise the AC election in any way you see fit. Just as others are free to revert you. But I will not revert you - that would be innapropriate as I am a candidate. I do however reserve the right to state my opinions on talk pages (including this one). As for "let the grown ups run things" I am truly sorry if you feel my remarks were intended to make you feel like that. That was absolutely not my intention at all! I respect your right to argue you case here as i hope, when you have calmed down, you will respect mine. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 20:17, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Of course I will listen to your opinion - your history here demands it. Please see my additional comments in my reply on Jimbo's talk page for some follow-up points when you have a chance. Thanks. --DV 22:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think folks reading this may be interested in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/IZAK/Proposed decision. A real-life election has far-reaching consequences. By contrast, arbitration rarely effects normal users. Martin 22:57, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My experience contradicts that. The lack of arbitration has effected quite a few of the most experienced editors on this site. Hence the importance of getting as many fresh new faces (even if some of them are "insiders" themselves, who simply haven't had their turn at bat yet) as possible into the starting line up, to see if improvements can be made.

Please don't take this as putting you down. Maybe the existing administration did as good a job as was humanly possible. That still doesn't discount the possibility that fresh faces with fresh ideas might do better.

And if you don't think Wikipedia will have far-reaching consequences if it is eventually successful at what it is purporting to do, you are greatly underselling what is being accomplished here and its ramifications.

This election will have far-reaching consequences. Laugh all you want, but that's my prediction. --DV 23:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No offence taken. Wikipedia will have far-reaching consequences. I predict this election will not, but I may well be wrong. I agree that the slowness of arbitration has negatively effected quite a few of the highly active editors, these weren't the folks I was thinking of when I said "normal users". I'm sure that al the highly active editors will hear about this election one way or another.

Can we take this to Wikipedia talk:spam? I've added a modest proposal to wikipedia:spam... Martin 23:38, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've posted a notice on my user talk page that says "General notice: I've been following (although mostly in "lurk mode") the ArbCom election. Please don't post any campaign notices on this page." I'd submit that if a user puts a similar notice on their user or user talk page, that would be the Wikipedia equivalent of a "do-not-call" registry. I see nothing wrong with trying to get people more active and voting, but if somebody is clearly paying attention to the ArbCom vote, they shouldn't be pestered. --Goobergunch|? 03:24, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Election Campaigning - What is the Spam Threshold?[edit]

Please, could you offer some guidance about how strong of a previous affiliation one must have with another user to rise above the "spam" threshold when campaigning on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate for the December 2004 Arbitration Committee Election?

[...]

--DV 09:42, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, traditionally we have always had a very open policy about what sort of things can be posted to user talk pages, because it's a big part of the open discussion and debate that characterizes our decision making around here. So, I don't think you'd be violating any rule if you did this.

As the same time, it sounds absolutely horrible, and I recommend strongly against it. From a social point of view, it seems like a good way to lose the election. I would hope so anyway.

I strongly agree with those who say that the ArbCom should not become politicized. The important thing is to make thoughtful and kind decisions, carefully balancing all of the competing pressures on such a body in a way that will hopefully protect good users but also will protect legitimate dissent. The ArbCom should ultimately focus on simple matters of courtesy and respect, and for this, the best candidates are those who best exemplify courtesy and respect for others. Going around spamming people's talk pages doesn't quite fit that, I think. Jimbo Wales 20:31, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do you think my signature goes too far? If so, I'll change it (of course). [[User:Sam Spade|Sam Spade Arb Com election]] 20:50, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jimbo, thanks for your timely reply.

The problem is that the election is not being publicized. I only found out about it by happenstance. Most editors don't lurk on the administrative pages to find out what the insiders are doing behind the scenes.

This election is not being publicized on the main page, and no user pages have any messages that an important election is about to take place.

I understand that some folks are very independent, and like to make up their own minds without any outside influence. That's great! But if you don't even know that an election is taking place, much less who is running in it, you can hardly make up your own mind if you are unaware of it.

Merely letting people know that an election is about to take place, and that they are eligible to vote in it, is hardly "politicizing" the election. If you really feel this way, then why not just appoint folks, since you find campaigning so distasteful?

If there is no campaigning, the electorate will be largely unaware of what's going on, and then the election, to put it in Ambi's words, becomes just an elaborate "political simulation". I want this election to be real. It can't be a real election if only the insiders who lurk on the administrative pages know about it and discuss it with their cronies.

As a compromise, I have created a neutral "Get Out the Vote" banner with some appropriate links, that I think could be shared without offending anyone.

Please check it out below. What do you think?

--DV 03:20, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spam is in the eye of the beholder[edit]

Now that I've been "subpaged" into oblivion, I guess I will still make a good faith effort to try and continue the dialog:

Campaign advertisements would not be used if they didn't work.

"Get out the vote" drives have a time-honored tradition behind them. There is nothing "spam"-like about receiving a notice in the mail that an election is coming up and that the listed candidates have qualified to run.

As a matter of fact, a quick look at my recent edit history shows that a number of individual contributors were more than happy to place "get out the vote" banners on their user pages, when they were asked in a personal manner.

The suggestion made by Martin that "five page essays" are not necessary when passing along what he characterizes as "internal spam", and that a quick one line link would do, appears to be the suggestion of someone who doesn't have very good people skills. (Sorry, no insult meant.)

Anyone would prefer a personally addressed message that touches on some personal interaction between the sender and the recipient. This is simply a matter of interpersonal relationship building, something it seems Wikipedia is sorely in need of improving.

Perhaps some of the trolls around here would probably do better if they were mentored in people skills and showed how to be part of a team. Not everyone is taught these skills in real life, and those skills are essential for one to contribute on the more team-oriented articles on Wikipedia.

There are a sufficient number of experienced editors who are regularly expressing their displeasure and high stress levels with the current process that is in place for managing multiple article authors.

Many authors who do not have confrontational personalities, simply shy away from working on articles they know the "edit warriors" will participate in. This reduces the overall quality of that class of articles on Wikipedia.

The current administration has simply failed to adequately address the ongoing productivity issues. This may be through no fault of there own - many of them make super-human efforts. But the best intentions cannot justify this failure.

Fresh faces and fresh ideas are needed to keep developing new solutions to these problems that have not been thought of by previous administrations.

The only way to bring in fresh faces and fresh ideas is to dramatically increase voter turnout and participation in elections, starting with the Arbitration Committee Election.

As a closely related issue, if the judicial nature of the Arbitration Committee is to be strictly enforced (i.e., no legislating from the bench or activist judges), then perhaps a legislative body should have more day-to-day interaction to drive policy.

Random polling of whichever users happen to be lurking on the administrative pages is not representative. Is there an elected legislative body?

Spam is in the eye of the beholder. Some people really do enjoy getting that Publisher's Clearing House envelope in the mail and applying the stickers in all the right places. Some people really do read the entire voter information booklet from front to back. If you are a sophisticated voter who always takes your own initiative and doesn't want that - good for you! But I've got news for you, the vast majority of people don't feel this way, and if you think otherwise, I dare you to sanction a mass test message of just the "get out the vote" banner on every user page with these two short questions:

"Please let us know if you found this message useful?"

"Would you be interested in receiving such annoucements in the future?"

I dare you. I predict that you will be shocked to find the following results:

The small number of people who will get cranky about receiving such messages will be Administrators who think they already know what is going on, and feel insulted to receive such messages, and certain types of nihlists and privacy zealots who don't want to be bothered about anything other than what is on their personal agenda.

A majority of users will answer "Yes" to both questions.

That's my two cents. If anyone manages to navigate to this subpage and actually read any of this, I would be encouraged to hear from you.

Cheers,

--DV 02:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

With this kind of logic, the 50 million people on the National Do Not Call Registry are all "nihlists [sic] and privacy zealots". The bright "You have new messages" link triggered by posting to a user talk page is a lot more like a phone call, and far more intrusive than the snail mail being used as the basis for most of the examples here. Maybe it works for you, but I suspect that most people, when they get a recorded phone message from their local politician, are not that thrilled about it. Wikipedians have a history of responding negatively to large-scale spam about things like requests for adminship, even though they appreciate the principle of freedom of speech that is behind political mobilization. --Michael Snow 02:39, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And what is the population of the United States again?

Besides, there is an exemption in those registries for campaign messages and polling.

Is this major imposition that you keep alluding to really more evil than having a large portion of the community kept un-informed?

Your claims of Wikipedians having a history of responding negatively to "large-scale spam" (as you put it), is not borne out by my test run of sharing the ArbComElection tag with a good number of folks. Just click the tag and check it out for yourself. I received nothing but pleasant replies. Where is your polling data to back up your claim?

Also, are you seriously suggesting there is not honor and a fine tradition behind get-out-the-vote drives? It may be a bit annoying to some individuals to be reminded of an election, but it's part of our civic duty to vote. Shouldn't it be part of the "civic duty" of all Wikipedians to participate in, or at least be good-humored about messages to help them become aware of, the elections that determine how their community shall be run?

Do you have anything to say about how the lack of fresh faces and fresh ideas impacts the leadership's ability to to succeed and improved the editing environment at Wikipedia?

My core, basic issue, is that serious authors who have not yet chosen to participate in Wikipedia will never do so in the current editing environment. If you really think I'm on the wrong track, please, dish out some clever ideas to make the editing environment better. Because for a large class of articles, the editing environment is broke as far as I and many others are concerned. --DV 03:05, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would you support me starting a "Do not vote" campaign and using similar tactics? I ask this because I think it's important to seperate your belief in the worth of your messages from the tactics you're employing. Shane King 03:11, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

That remark makes me wonder about you. I'll give you that much.

A "Do Not Vote" campaign? What crazed mind would do such a thing?

If you really think increasing voter turnout by sharing a tasteful banner with fellow contributors I've worked with in the past to be "the tactics I'm employing", I guess I will have to take a step back to try and understand your perspective a bit better.

So far, all the negative opinions about turn out the vote efforts have come from Administrators.

All the individual contributors I shared my effort with were either friendly, receptive, or even had a small story to share.

I'm saddened that you appear to be so disconnected from the common contributor that you see me as "employing tactics" while individual contributors only see something that is right and good.

--DV 03:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For the record, I'm just a "common contributor", not an administrator. So you can spare me the rhetoric about how disconnected I am.

There might be a number of reasons why people might want to encourage people not to vote. Maybe they feel that a voter boycott would be a display of non-confidence in the whole Arb Comm process? Who knows, it was just an example I picked to be completely the opposite of what you're doing.

Personally, I think putting mass messages on talk pages is a bad precident. I certainly don't want to be "informed" about everything that someone decides is important. That's why I'm asking you to step back and consider the practice outside of your enthusiasm for this issue. I'm making no argument about the Arb Comm, I'm saying that I do not want spam to become an accepted practice. I don't want people to spam my talk page and then point to what you're doing as justification that it's OK. Shane King 03:33, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a creative line of thought.

I'm surprised that you considered running for the Arbitration Committee without first becoming an Administrator, I guess a few others are doing that as well, so no big deal.

Wonder if only officially santioned messages, approved by the community leaders, (either a group of admins, or the Arbitration Committee - is there a legislative body on Wikipedia?) could be "broadcast" to user pages?

Any broadcast of non-official messages could be harshly santioned (blocks, bans, etc.)

I am a little taken aback that a community minded person like yourself, who briefly considered running for the Arbitration Committee, would not feel some civic sense to at least humor messages that pertained to the entire community. Would it really be so evil if you were to receive announcements of upcoming elections?

If Jimbo or the Arbitration Committee decided to send out a small monthly notice link to a status report or "what's happening", in an attempt to keep more of the community informed, I would feel a bit ungrateful telling them to piss off and not bother me, but then I feel the right to communicate with the community comes with the Administrator and Arbitrator positions, and would not find announcements from the Admins or Arbitrators to be an invasion of my privacy in any way.

One way to settle this once and for all would be to conduct a one-time poll asking all users if they would like to receive future messages from the leadership concerning elections and major policy votes. If this poll failed to pass with a majority, I would quickly put my tail between my legs and go back to strictly editing articles.

But alas, there is a catch-22 because it appears that you and most of the administrators I have discussed this with are dead set against any type of broadcast type messaging, preferring to leave community members to their own devices to find out what the heck is going on.

By the way, a lot of my initial concern arose out of the happenstance way I found out there even was an election. If I had kept my head down in articles instead of reading someone's talk page, I might have never found out about the election.

ShaneKing, I will have to agree to disagree with you on this topic, but I respect your right to privacy.

For the longer term, I asked Tim Starling if a "opt-out" check box could be added to the user preferences for broadcast messages. Perhaps that technical solution could be utilized to make this entire question a moot point? --DV 04:06, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I guess the problem is that conceivably everything that is on the village pump someone might think important enough to broadcast to people. The village pump is long and unweildly and I doubt anyone wants their talk page to end up looking like it. Hopefully at some stage in the future the village pump will be cleaned up a bit with a change to the software, becoming more like a message board, and then we might get more people reading it and finding out about what's happening.

The most important things also tend to get plastered on top of recent changes. The assumption is that most people check RC fairly often, but that may only be true of a certain class of contributors.

The basic problem is that the project is very big and there's lots of stuff going on. All of that stuff is important to some people, but nobody is able to keep track of all of it. Having someone decide what's really important and putting it on people's talk pages strikes me as a fairly crude way to overcome that.

I appreciate your efforts in trying to generate community involvement. I'm just not sure that this is the right way to go about things. The timeframe also means that we may not see any code based changes being done before the election, so we may be stuck with the software we've got. That's unfortunate, as the circumstances of this election make it pretty massive (potentially 9 of the 12 AC members). Then again, people not getting to vote in it may not be the end of the world either. Given the growth we're seeing in the number of users, by the time people's two or three year terms on the AC are up, chances are the majority of the wikipedia population wont have even been registered at the time they were elected. Any democractic process with such a dynamic population as we have here is always going to be far from perfect.

I'm not sure what my point is, other than to say this is still a very young project that hasn't got everything worked out yet. Things done now will set precidents for how they're done in the future and we should be mindful of that. Shane King 04:34, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

I've already told you, David — during the election period, the election is heavily publicised (perhaps you weren't around at the last arbcom election?). There's no use informing users about the election before it starts, because when it does start, they will be informed through the community portal and the recent changes page. There is absolutely no harm done by delaying, because users will be able to vote for the two weeks that the election is publicised. Instead of telling them one or two weeks before, why not tell them when it begins? They'll still have another couple of weeks to make up their mind. There's no reasonable rationale for publicising the election before it begins, because voting is spread out across two weeks, not one day. Johnleemk | Talk 05:47, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

True, as long as all editors who might want to participate in the election as candidates knew of the election before it started. — David Remahl 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, the election is already publicised at the community portal. Any potential candidate who doesn't visit it sufficiently often to know about the election probably shouldn't be running. Johnleemk | Talk 13:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Johnleemk, this constant pointing to pages such as "community portal" and "recent changes" as sufficient venues for important annoucements is curious.

What percentage of editors routinely check "community portal" and "recent changes"? I'm really curious to find out. Do you have traffic stats to back up your claim that those pages are sufficient conduits for important announcements such as pending, or even ongoing elections?

I for one would easily have missed the election if I hadn't seen an offhand reference to it on someone's user pages. I simply don't lurk on Recent Pages, nor in the Community Portal. And I want to know what percentage of editors share that traffic pattern.

If a sizable number of editors rarely lurk on those pages, then again, I have to ask, what would be so bad about sharing a gentle, non-intrusive announcement that an election is coming up?

The annoucement doesn't have to be a pretty banner. It could even just be a small non-intrusive text-only link that says: "Friendly reminder: An Arbitration Committee Election is taking place on December 1st-15th."

I would have found such a small un-intrusive link, posted on my user talk page, to be a friendly service.

I just have a hard time understanding why this would constitute the federal crime of "spamming" and invading someone's privacy, given how freely and openly everyone modifies everyone else's user talk pages for a thousand other reasons.

Thanks for participating in the discussion. It's encouraging to see other users venturing forth onto this subpage to offer their various viewpoints on this subject.

--DV 09:36, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The idea of Wikipedia is to centralise such things. While I have no statistics, I can assure you that decentralising election publicity would be the last thing many of us, including me, would accept. Users are expected to visit the community portal and recent changes page to be aware of this. Instead of promoting the election, why not promote the community portal (since there's a heck of a lot of other things besides elections which are just as if not even more important that are publicised there)? That's where I believe our efforts should be going to. I have not discussed whether an announcement about the election would be spam, because I see no point in it, much like how I see no point in advertising the election on several thousand user talk pages when one could be advertising the community portal instead. However, I certainly feel that there are very few users who meet the minimum voting standards for this election who will not be aware of the election. If you want some rough statistics on how many users follow the recent changes page and community portal, check out the voting tallies for Preliminary Deletion and Managed Deletion. Johnleemk | Talk 13:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

In my opinion, the central and non-redundant postings to the Current surveys page provide all the functionality that uninvited messages to any TalkPage would provide. Furthermore, central postings to Current surveys would avoid what I agree with Michael Snow would be wasteful distractions--both on UserTalkPages and on all other TalkPages--of any kind of "getting out the vote" messages. Nevertheless, in recognition of the importance of "getting out the vote" on all Wikipedia issues as so thoughtfully brought to my attention by DV, in thinking about it, I realize that I would welcome one posting every three months to my UserTalkPage, of a reminder that all "getting out the vote" is to be done on the Current surveys page so would I please remember to check there regularly. :)) By the way, I arrived here as a result of DV's thoughtful posting to the User talk:Jimbo Wales page and hereby suggest that DV should make use of the Current surveys page to invite people to come here to write their community-service essay. :)) ---Rednblu | Talk 09:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll refer you to my just posted answer to Johnleemk just above your post. But I like your idea as a bare minimum compromise if that's all folks will agree to. --DV 09:36, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this important issue to all of our attentions! ---Rednblu | Talk 09:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, the current surveys page *is* meant for centralising the publicising of all polls, surveys and elections. Secondly, the community portal and recent changes page provide a selected listing of polls from there. Thirdly, the three formerly mentioned pages are meant to centralise the dissemination of information about Wikipedia-related internal matters. Lastly, if you need a reminder every three months just to do this... I'll refrain from saying anything else but... I would not avail myself of such a service, and I think that most users should just remind themselves to visit the community portal everyday, and follow the links to related pages if they want a full listing of current discussions or polls. Johnleemk | Talk 13:39, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

what he characterizes as "internal spam"

You used the word "spam" yourself, DV, in the initial comments above - it's hardly fair to start complaining that I've borrowed your terminology. :)

Anyone would prefer a personally addressed message that touches on some personal interaction between the sender and the recipient.

I agree, but I don't think that precludes a one-line-link (or maybe two lines...). My point was that it is poor style, on a wiki, to copy and paste the same five page essay to a hundred places. Cf Meatball:LessRedundancy.

What percentage of editors routinely check "community portal" and "recent changes"?

If we know, it'll be somewhere in Wikipedia:Statistics. Sorry I can't be more help than that - you'll have to go hunt, I'm afraid. I do know that the level of advertising for similar elections in the past has typically been sufficient - by which I mean that we've not had anybody (that I know of) getting cranky that they didn't find out about it till too late.

The current administration has simply failed to adequately address the ongoing productivity issues.

The current administration of Wikipedia is the Wikipedia community. All of us. Including you. There is no elected legislative body. See meta:power structure. The arbcom are a quasi-judicial body that is one mechanism by which community-made policy, guidelines, and common practice is enforced. It does not administer Wikipedia. It does not create policy. It does not develop the Mediawiki software. It does not resolve content issues. Heck, it doesn't even enforce its own rulings - that is left to "sysops" (wikipedia:administrators) and normal editors.

You seem to regard a fresh arbcom as the solution to Wikipedia's woes. I think your hope is misplaced. More important is people like you proposing new solutions. They can be software solutions, in which case you need to become a developer and start coding them up (I've no experience of this myself, btw). They can be policy solutions, in which case you need to propose them, lead discussion on their pros and cons, modify them, and attempt to win a rough consensus in their support. There's also a lot of stuff that can be done "on the ground" - editing articles, leading discussion, and so forth.

Anyway, I hope this helps somewhat. I've been reading your discussions with Jimbo, elsewhere - in due course, I think it would help if they also were moved here - that way, people reading this discussion will be able to see it all at once. I'm also going to add some links on the top of this page to related discussions. Martin 22:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A technical solution to the issue of campaign messages[edit]

Please vote at Software and features, to approve an exciting new feature that allows users to control whether or not they receive campaign message. --DV 10:46, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If it turns out to be too technically cumbersome to modify the software to support this feature, but you still want to indicate your willingness to accept campaign-related messages on your user talk page, please feel free to copy the {{AcceptCampaignMessages}} tag onto your own user talk page. --DV 13:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)