OK. It's been a month now. Has anything actually happened? -- Folantin ( talk) 09:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't log in. I can't even request a new password; in both situations I just get "Error". Any ideas? Daniel ( talk) 05:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi. i have a small question. is there any way to still apply to be involved in any way with this group? I have a few ideas which i would like to gradually offer. I didn't know about this group until just now. sorry to bother you. appreciate any help. thanks. -- Steve, Sm8900 ( talk) 19:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Along those lines, it has been about a month since I applied. Soon afterwards I was informed that there was an early positive reception on the group wiki, and I have not been able to receive any updates since then - perhaps somebody could look into it and see if there is any consensus / need for further discussion? Thanks, -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Let me try to succinctly describe my long experience with Piotrus. This is really a long time story.
As I'm graduate in humanities (Lithuanian history), so I supposed that I'm able to put something worthy into this project. I do not go into fields, I do not have a slightest idea about. But oh my, how much was I wrong. You can see, thet every single article about Lithuanian people before born before 1918 turns into a batllefield, every single Lithuanian-Polish encounter turns to a massive search for references most popular of them "who is guilty".
As a matter of fact I do avoid Piotrus (and 2 or three of his friends) as much as possible, to the point I've almost completely ceased editing two times. After some attempts to find a way to cooperate I've failed every single time. After my edits were reverted and my provided references were assigned as "not reliable", I've began to discuss things on talk pages. It didn't help, as the discussions tend to end into a kickstand without a possibility to find compromise.
I did try to stop editing articles and turned to categorizing them, later I've participated creating WikiProject Lithuania. Well, this turned out to be a bad idea, because it was used as a new way to track all Lithuania related articles, and "correct" them in the same manner. The same happened with my contributions list. See reaction to my latest activity, and here, [1] Now I'm forever stuck on talk pages, and short edits correcting obvious mistakes, as most of Lithuanian editors are, because a single improvement in articles costs weeks. I do not mind them having their opinion, but well, I do insist, that mine opinion (referenced) should be heard also.
I do not want to go into further dispute who began it, how did it aggravate, I just want to note, that it is a tremendous waste of time and energy.
Please note, that I did not participate in any RFC, mediations and all that stuff involving Piotrus, but this did not save me from being accused on various occasions, being called troll by Piotrus (including behind my back at IRC), accused of sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry.
The numerous diff's form my last editing encounters will be provided on request. (in a day or two, because of my RL workload).-- Lokyz ( talk) 22:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
As an user with both Polish and Czech national/ethnic experience I found Piotrus many times very polite and respectful to views of other ethnic or even minority groups. He always tried to know stances of all involved groups before making some decision or judgement. He's a cool guy, very reasonable in editing controversial articles, therefore I can only recommend him for this working group. It would only benefit from Piotrus' inclusion. - Darwinek ( talk) 22:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
For the public record, Bastique and HG have been granted observer status on the cultural edit warring working group, and now have active accounts on the group wiki. Discussion is ongoing with regards to the additional requests to join. Regards, Anthøny 17:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
A frequent problem in topics discussed on ethnic and cultural issues is the incivility towards other editors, which leads to nonproductive arguing and tensions. Perhaps and advisable measure would be to set-up a board where incivility would be harshly treated and offenders subject to short term blocks. Thus would allow to create more productice atmosphere and improve quality of Wikipedia.-- Molobo ( talk) 01:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, it's a month since I last asked and there's still no sign of any progress report...-- Folantin ( talk) 14:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
For those who are watching this page, we could use some help in data-gathering. What we're looking for right now isn't specific examples of disputes, but very high-level "birds-eye view" analyses of the common patterns in disputes. For example, what are the "flashpoints" that cause an article to suddenly "blow up" and become unstable? These are elements that we've come up with so far. Could folks look at these and think about disputes you've seen, and whether or not they fall into one of these categories? If there's something we've missed, please bring it up, thanks.
Does that pretty much cover everything? Or what other broad categories can be added? -- El on ka 08:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
As I noted below, there are some academic studies of this issue. Sorting through Category:Wikipedia essays would also be useful - it has long been on my 'to do' lists, alas, I barely have time to maintain WP:ACST. I will agree with Folantin, though: we have enough essays and such, what it all boils down to is people not following policies and our inability to make them do so. My personal "favorite" is users who see themselves as unbiased and neutral, refusing to acknowledge that they have a POV of their own (usually ethnic/national) that needs to be moderated in order to reach a consensus. Such righteous editors are a source of many, if not most, of the largest "ethnic and cultural edit war" I have seen.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It has been noted by several editors (I am sure others will be able to provide many links) and even Jimbo Wales himself that a serious problem is the usage of historic resources from XIX century. Particularly XIX century sources from countries that talk about those countries conquests are problematic. Imperial German, Tsarist Russia, Soviet and Nazi sources about their enemies and conquests are seen as problematic by many editors.-- Molobo ( talk) 22:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
May I contribute a few observations from my experience? One is that seems to me to be only tangentially addressed in the summary list above is contention over what precisely constitutes a “reliable source” for a particular article. I don’t mean the situation where a source is attacked as controversial in its own right, but rather those in which a particular source is deemed by one side in a dispute as “not reliable enough.” This can be an approach employed by POV-pushers, but in my experience is more often an honest disagreement by good-faith editors. This is less a problem with academic, formally peer-reviewed sources than it is with what I might call sources of “middle reliability” which are known to have internal editorial standards such as newspapers, news journals, and topical magazines or other publications oriented toward the general public.
The addition or removal of information from a “controversial” source is always problematic (and they are the flip sides of the same “flashpoint”, not two separate ones). I would hope that WP:SLR’s use of “qualified sources” would draw close study by this group. Controversial sources can be extremely reliable sources for some purposes (such as the representation of one party’s POV and their critiques of their opponents claims/views) while being semi-reliable or unreliable for other citation purposes. I strongly feel this innovation of identifying “qualified sources” is something that should be further and more broadly developed on Wikipedia.
Another particular flash point is the misuse of infoboxes for (unconscious or calculated) POV-pushing. Because infoboxes lack sufficient space to include context, they have become magnets for POV-pushers. Those editors who make good-faith changes can often be successfully encourage to make their (sourced) point within the article and in context instead; however, some extensive meat-puppetry can be encountered where the POV-pushing is an intentional abuse. While such situations often give rise to suggestions of removing the infobox altogether, that approach goes against the efforts of the constructive editors to elevate the quality of the article to higher standards such as GA and FA, where their absence is counted against the article.
A final area that truly needs further development relates to the issue of “ truth”. The subject has long been cavalierly handled (at best) and repeated attempts to encourage explicit and clear explanation of why – and the value of – Wikipedia advocates verifiability over “truth” within WP:V get squeezed out and neutered to the point of there being no useful guidance to a new editor upset over the issue. Currently, “verifiability, not truth” is addressed solely as a matter of “the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia”. Not only is there no discussion of why this should be so, but it doesn’t even inform editors that the pursuit of “truth” is discouraged and rates getting the editor censured for being disruptive when they’re only trying to do their best to make Wikipedia articles the best. (Furthermore, “WP:NOTTRUTH” is only a redirect to WP:V itself, not to an explanation of the why’s and why-not’s.) Not having this issue clearly discussed has caused more than a few frustrated editors to leave the project. It really is worth addressing, and not just because it offers a way to reduce the frequency of one type of disruptive conflict.
I hope these comments help to further advance this group’s efforts. Askari Mark (Talk) 04:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
We'd like to get some quantifiable data from places where disputes are reported. For example, we have years of archives of ANI available. Does there exist anywhere a summary of what kinds of things are reported at ANI? For example, how many reports are overflows of content disputes (especially ethnic disputes), how many are urgent calls to deal with serious policy violations, how many are user conduct issues, how many are bad faith requests, how many are calls for review of admin behavior, etc. Or if such a report doesn't exist yet, would anyone be willing to try and make one? Again, we're not looking for specifics, we're looking for the broad patterns, at places like ANI and RfAr. Thanks, El on ka 08:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
From the world of education. When I was in elementary school the student-teacher ratio was about 35:1; when my kids were, the ratio was about 22:1. There was a tremendous difference in the amount of conflict and in the speed with which conflicts were resolved. This personal observation is supported by the 1978 Safe School Study Report to the Congress: "there is a relationship between smaller class size and lower levels of violence and vandalism." [10]. (Hope no one is offended by the analogy.) No reference for this, but you'd imagine that the less homogeneous the student body, the more oversight is needed to prevent and resolve conflicts. And no place is less homogeneous than WP.
But since there are a host of non-ethnic conflicts here as well, you get into resource allocation issues. How to enlist more trusted community members in a more structured way? (I would argue that structure is crucial). Send invites to all admins? Currently the conflicts are addressed at a number of places, as Elonka has mentioned - naming conventions, reliable sources, conduct problems, etc. A more centralized noticeboard? Novickas ( talk) 14:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Just an update, I'm pushing through a proposal to have posted on enwiki, updates on what's happening on the WG wiki. This is in response to some comments on this page, that folks are getting curious as to our progress :) I am still awaiting final approval from the rest of the members, but I'm aiming for the status reports to be here within a week or two.
Additionally, I'd like to confirm that the various Requests to Join are still being processed, and haven't been forgotten ;) Apologies to all those that are being left to wait, but our time is somewhat spread pretty thin at the moment :-) More to come soon, folks. Cheers, Anthøny 00:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if workgroup wiki archives will be made open at some point, to aid researchers/curious editors/etc.? A big strength of wikis is transparency, and the fact that workgroup discussions are not transparent is slightly worrisome to me. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
As a reminder, new applications to join the working group are still welcome. Relevant information on what is hoped for in candidates is available on this page. If you have previously applied, perhaps directly to the Arbitration Committee via their mailing list, and have thus far not received confirmation as to your application being received, I would encourage you to refile it.
Future applications can be emailed directly to any working group member. I have personally received a number; any re-sends of applications previously filed with the Committee, as well as any further expressions of interest, are more than welcome in my inbox. For information on emailing me via both on- and off-Wiki mediums, check out this page.
The working group has a preliminary deadline to report back in roughly one month's time, so I would imagine that many work group members are contributing with a view to "wrapping up". Having said that, perhaps now more than ever is an appropriate time for "fresh blood", particularly in an observer status; if you believe you have something to contribute to the working group, please do get in touch.
Although it is obviously not my place to reveal discussions taking place on the work group wiki, I will note that a number of candidates are undergoing discussion. If you have previously filed an application, and wish to know whether you are being considered, you are welcome to contact me or any other member/observer. Once again, any new candidates, and old candidates that have not yet received a confirmation, please (re-)send to any working group member.
Finally, a note that the "status reports" are still in the making. Hopefully, they will come soon enough to be useful. More on this soon.
Thanks, Anthøny 22:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
One of the work group members, inquired about flash points and edit wars. Recently there was quite heavy flash point on Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, additionally see here for deeper insight. Perhaps this will be useful as case study. Cheers, M.K. ( talk) 10:55, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Just discovered this working group. How nice.
First with the introductions. I'm an editor working within the Military History scope of articles, specifically on the articles dealing with the Eastern Front during the Second World War. I have a degree from an Australian university half of which was economic history. I have had some 20 years of research in the area (though never published).
So far, since commencing on my project to expand the range of articles on the subject, and to expand existing articles, I have encountered opposition at every turn from what I can only call "national pride" mentality. Naturally this is not unusual, and I am certainly not lacking in the pride for the history of the Australian forces, but here it has gone way over the top.
I will not rehash the issues that I encountered, the second of which ended with my 24 hour block and a name on the infamous Eastern Europe block list I was not aware of, not surprisingly for incivility when I was protesting somewhat forcefully the use of Google hits as a substitution to reading books in justifying a certain name of an article title.
My suggestion to solving this issue is rather simple, and is already in part supported by the Wikipedia policy on Verifiability, and that is, that anything and everything Wikipedia presented to the reader must be well referenced to reputable sources that directly support the claims being made. In all five cases that I had come into an editing conflict, I found that the greatest issue was lack of, or misuse of sources. In fact I am currently involved in just such a dispute. Quite simply the criteria for the sourcing of statements in articles related to this contentious region has to be much tighter then elsewhere.
Good luck on your deliberations-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 14:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
(db)It is disingenuous to suggest the move is "settled" where the move was never made for reasons of sources, but because it "looked lousy". Where else do you find research on Soviet military operations, but in Russian sources?! The use of Great Patriotic War in relation to the Second World War was discussed and settled long ago, and has little to do with the issue of reliable sources. Glantz may be the only source that uses the correct name, but his are also the only books that describe the entire operation! Not one of the 239 sources you cited actually says anything more than a cursory mention of the date and place! None can be used for the article citations! Glantz does refer to the event as "Soviet invasion" ONCE in a book titled The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945! This appears as a header on EVERY page! I suspect you have no idea what either "operation" or a "battle" mean because they are not interchangeable and synonymous. Operation Sealion (in English) is a code name or cryptonym, and not a battle, even if it had been executed. The confusion arises in English where the same word is used in different sense of meanings. I sense that you purposely obfuscate the issues because of your pursuit of English purity agenda where everything needs to be reduced to 19th century usage-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
OK, it's been four months now and there's been no sign of anything, not even a progress report. Is the "working group" working? -- Folantin ( talk) 09:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
And no report. -- Folantin ( talk) 13:26, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Again, I wonder, how many of the projects members are still active and are hoping with the draft? I will bet there is at least one who has not been active ever. And I am also pretty sure that data will not be made available. Ah, the beauties of non-transparency... PS. To be clear, I have nothing but respect for the active project members like Anthony. I do however am increasingly convinced that the entire "privacy" experiment resulted in worse, not better, performance, than average (fewer eyes to catch the bugs...).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
The working group on ethnic and cultural edit warring will terminate its operations in four days' time, on 6 August, 2008. The group is currently completing the development of a "final report", which will be delivered to the Arbitration Committee (per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Working group) shortly. I do hope that this report will be made available to the english wikipedia community at the same time, or at least shortly after the Committee has had time to "digest" and, if necessary, act upon our report. Only time will tell, of course.
I would like to personally like to thank the folks who have been visiting this page, getting involved and poking for updates: it still irks me, that we haven't managed to get a status report out to you folks in the six months we've been active... But, we didn't expect to achieve everything. I can assure you that progress has been made, although we have certainly been hampered by a low volume of participation at certain junctures of our activities. Such is the way of volunteer-driven projects, however.
Further information to come,
Anthøny 15:24, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
A Request for Comment has been launched on my own administrative conduct, as regards my judgment in imposing discretionary sanctions, and managing articles in a state of dispute. Since this is directly related to some experiments that I was running, in experiment with new methods of dispute resolution, I invite anyone here who wishes to offer an opinion, to do so: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Elonka. -- El on ka 18:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
The final report is now live, at Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report. -- El on ka 19:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
There's a proposal here that might be of interest to you. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 19:39, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure whether people are still active here, but you may be interested in this request for Arbcom to get involved relatively early in a content dispute. Comments welcome at the request page.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 22:11, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Please comment at Historic designation of the Palestine region. Chesdovi ( talk) 15:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Asking for a friend. :-) -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 02:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
OK. It's been a month now. Has anything actually happened? -- Folantin ( talk) 09:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't log in. I can't even request a new password; in both situations I just get "Error". Any ideas? Daniel ( talk) 05:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi. i have a small question. is there any way to still apply to be involved in any way with this group? I have a few ideas which i would like to gradually offer. I didn't know about this group until just now. sorry to bother you. appreciate any help. thanks. -- Steve, Sm8900 ( talk) 19:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Along those lines, it has been about a month since I applied. Soon afterwards I was informed that there was an early positive reception on the group wiki, and I have not been able to receive any updates since then - perhaps somebody could look into it and see if there is any consensus / need for further discussion? Thanks, -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Let me try to succinctly describe my long experience with Piotrus. This is really a long time story.
As I'm graduate in humanities (Lithuanian history), so I supposed that I'm able to put something worthy into this project. I do not go into fields, I do not have a slightest idea about. But oh my, how much was I wrong. You can see, thet every single article about Lithuanian people before born before 1918 turns into a batllefield, every single Lithuanian-Polish encounter turns to a massive search for references most popular of them "who is guilty".
As a matter of fact I do avoid Piotrus (and 2 or three of his friends) as much as possible, to the point I've almost completely ceased editing two times. After some attempts to find a way to cooperate I've failed every single time. After my edits were reverted and my provided references were assigned as "not reliable", I've began to discuss things on talk pages. It didn't help, as the discussions tend to end into a kickstand without a possibility to find compromise.
I did try to stop editing articles and turned to categorizing them, later I've participated creating WikiProject Lithuania. Well, this turned out to be a bad idea, because it was used as a new way to track all Lithuania related articles, and "correct" them in the same manner. The same happened with my contributions list. See reaction to my latest activity, and here, [1] Now I'm forever stuck on talk pages, and short edits correcting obvious mistakes, as most of Lithuanian editors are, because a single improvement in articles costs weeks. I do not mind them having their opinion, but well, I do insist, that mine opinion (referenced) should be heard also.
I do not want to go into further dispute who began it, how did it aggravate, I just want to note, that it is a tremendous waste of time and energy.
Please note, that I did not participate in any RFC, mediations and all that stuff involving Piotrus, but this did not save me from being accused on various occasions, being called troll by Piotrus (including behind my back at IRC), accused of sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry.
The numerous diff's form my last editing encounters will be provided on request. (in a day or two, because of my RL workload).-- Lokyz ( talk) 22:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
As an user with both Polish and Czech national/ethnic experience I found Piotrus many times very polite and respectful to views of other ethnic or even minority groups. He always tried to know stances of all involved groups before making some decision or judgement. He's a cool guy, very reasonable in editing controversial articles, therefore I can only recommend him for this working group. It would only benefit from Piotrus' inclusion. - Darwinek ( talk) 22:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
For the public record, Bastique and HG have been granted observer status on the cultural edit warring working group, and now have active accounts on the group wiki. Discussion is ongoing with regards to the additional requests to join. Regards, Anthøny 17:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
A frequent problem in topics discussed on ethnic and cultural issues is the incivility towards other editors, which leads to nonproductive arguing and tensions. Perhaps and advisable measure would be to set-up a board where incivility would be harshly treated and offenders subject to short term blocks. Thus would allow to create more productice atmosphere and improve quality of Wikipedia.-- Molobo ( talk) 01:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, it's a month since I last asked and there's still no sign of any progress report...-- Folantin ( talk) 14:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
For those who are watching this page, we could use some help in data-gathering. What we're looking for right now isn't specific examples of disputes, but very high-level "birds-eye view" analyses of the common patterns in disputes. For example, what are the "flashpoints" that cause an article to suddenly "blow up" and become unstable? These are elements that we've come up with so far. Could folks look at these and think about disputes you've seen, and whether or not they fall into one of these categories? If there's something we've missed, please bring it up, thanks.
Does that pretty much cover everything? Or what other broad categories can be added? -- El on ka 08:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
As I noted below, there are some academic studies of this issue. Sorting through Category:Wikipedia essays would also be useful - it has long been on my 'to do' lists, alas, I barely have time to maintain WP:ACST. I will agree with Folantin, though: we have enough essays and such, what it all boils down to is people not following policies and our inability to make them do so. My personal "favorite" is users who see themselves as unbiased and neutral, refusing to acknowledge that they have a POV of their own (usually ethnic/national) that needs to be moderated in order to reach a consensus. Such righteous editors are a source of many, if not most, of the largest "ethnic and cultural edit war" I have seen.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It has been noted by several editors (I am sure others will be able to provide many links) and even Jimbo Wales himself that a serious problem is the usage of historic resources from XIX century. Particularly XIX century sources from countries that talk about those countries conquests are problematic. Imperial German, Tsarist Russia, Soviet and Nazi sources about their enemies and conquests are seen as problematic by many editors.-- Molobo ( talk) 22:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
May I contribute a few observations from my experience? One is that seems to me to be only tangentially addressed in the summary list above is contention over what precisely constitutes a “reliable source” for a particular article. I don’t mean the situation where a source is attacked as controversial in its own right, but rather those in which a particular source is deemed by one side in a dispute as “not reliable enough.” This can be an approach employed by POV-pushers, but in my experience is more often an honest disagreement by good-faith editors. This is less a problem with academic, formally peer-reviewed sources than it is with what I might call sources of “middle reliability” which are known to have internal editorial standards such as newspapers, news journals, and topical magazines or other publications oriented toward the general public.
The addition or removal of information from a “controversial” source is always problematic (and they are the flip sides of the same “flashpoint”, not two separate ones). I would hope that WP:SLR’s use of “qualified sources” would draw close study by this group. Controversial sources can be extremely reliable sources for some purposes (such as the representation of one party’s POV and their critiques of their opponents claims/views) while being semi-reliable or unreliable for other citation purposes. I strongly feel this innovation of identifying “qualified sources” is something that should be further and more broadly developed on Wikipedia.
Another particular flash point is the misuse of infoboxes for (unconscious or calculated) POV-pushing. Because infoboxes lack sufficient space to include context, they have become magnets for POV-pushers. Those editors who make good-faith changes can often be successfully encourage to make their (sourced) point within the article and in context instead; however, some extensive meat-puppetry can be encountered where the POV-pushing is an intentional abuse. While such situations often give rise to suggestions of removing the infobox altogether, that approach goes against the efforts of the constructive editors to elevate the quality of the article to higher standards such as GA and FA, where their absence is counted against the article.
A final area that truly needs further development relates to the issue of “ truth”. The subject has long been cavalierly handled (at best) and repeated attempts to encourage explicit and clear explanation of why – and the value of – Wikipedia advocates verifiability over “truth” within WP:V get squeezed out and neutered to the point of there being no useful guidance to a new editor upset over the issue. Currently, “verifiability, not truth” is addressed solely as a matter of “the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia”. Not only is there no discussion of why this should be so, but it doesn’t even inform editors that the pursuit of “truth” is discouraged and rates getting the editor censured for being disruptive when they’re only trying to do their best to make Wikipedia articles the best. (Furthermore, “WP:NOTTRUTH” is only a redirect to WP:V itself, not to an explanation of the why’s and why-not’s.) Not having this issue clearly discussed has caused more than a few frustrated editors to leave the project. It really is worth addressing, and not just because it offers a way to reduce the frequency of one type of disruptive conflict.
I hope these comments help to further advance this group’s efforts. Askari Mark (Talk) 04:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
We'd like to get some quantifiable data from places where disputes are reported. For example, we have years of archives of ANI available. Does there exist anywhere a summary of what kinds of things are reported at ANI? For example, how many reports are overflows of content disputes (especially ethnic disputes), how many are urgent calls to deal with serious policy violations, how many are user conduct issues, how many are bad faith requests, how many are calls for review of admin behavior, etc. Or if such a report doesn't exist yet, would anyone be willing to try and make one? Again, we're not looking for specifics, we're looking for the broad patterns, at places like ANI and RfAr. Thanks, El on ka 08:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
From the world of education. When I was in elementary school the student-teacher ratio was about 35:1; when my kids were, the ratio was about 22:1. There was a tremendous difference in the amount of conflict and in the speed with which conflicts were resolved. This personal observation is supported by the 1978 Safe School Study Report to the Congress: "there is a relationship between smaller class size and lower levels of violence and vandalism." [10]. (Hope no one is offended by the analogy.) No reference for this, but you'd imagine that the less homogeneous the student body, the more oversight is needed to prevent and resolve conflicts. And no place is less homogeneous than WP.
But since there are a host of non-ethnic conflicts here as well, you get into resource allocation issues. How to enlist more trusted community members in a more structured way? (I would argue that structure is crucial). Send invites to all admins? Currently the conflicts are addressed at a number of places, as Elonka has mentioned - naming conventions, reliable sources, conduct problems, etc. A more centralized noticeboard? Novickas ( talk) 14:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Just an update, I'm pushing through a proposal to have posted on enwiki, updates on what's happening on the WG wiki. This is in response to some comments on this page, that folks are getting curious as to our progress :) I am still awaiting final approval from the rest of the members, but I'm aiming for the status reports to be here within a week or two.
Additionally, I'd like to confirm that the various Requests to Join are still being processed, and haven't been forgotten ;) Apologies to all those that are being left to wait, but our time is somewhat spread pretty thin at the moment :-) More to come soon, folks. Cheers, Anthøny 00:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if workgroup wiki archives will be made open at some point, to aid researchers/curious editors/etc.? A big strength of wikis is transparency, and the fact that workgroup discussions are not transparent is slightly worrisome to me. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
As a reminder, new applications to join the working group are still welcome. Relevant information on what is hoped for in candidates is available on this page. If you have previously applied, perhaps directly to the Arbitration Committee via their mailing list, and have thus far not received confirmation as to your application being received, I would encourage you to refile it.
Future applications can be emailed directly to any working group member. I have personally received a number; any re-sends of applications previously filed with the Committee, as well as any further expressions of interest, are more than welcome in my inbox. For information on emailing me via both on- and off-Wiki mediums, check out this page.
The working group has a preliminary deadline to report back in roughly one month's time, so I would imagine that many work group members are contributing with a view to "wrapping up". Having said that, perhaps now more than ever is an appropriate time for "fresh blood", particularly in an observer status; if you believe you have something to contribute to the working group, please do get in touch.
Although it is obviously not my place to reveal discussions taking place on the work group wiki, I will note that a number of candidates are undergoing discussion. If you have previously filed an application, and wish to know whether you are being considered, you are welcome to contact me or any other member/observer. Once again, any new candidates, and old candidates that have not yet received a confirmation, please (re-)send to any working group member.
Finally, a note that the "status reports" are still in the making. Hopefully, they will come soon enough to be useful. More on this soon.
Thanks, Anthøny 22:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
One of the work group members, inquired about flash points and edit wars. Recently there was quite heavy flash point on Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, additionally see here for deeper insight. Perhaps this will be useful as case study. Cheers, M.K. ( talk) 10:55, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Just discovered this working group. How nice.
First with the introductions. I'm an editor working within the Military History scope of articles, specifically on the articles dealing with the Eastern Front during the Second World War. I have a degree from an Australian university half of which was economic history. I have had some 20 years of research in the area (though never published).
So far, since commencing on my project to expand the range of articles on the subject, and to expand existing articles, I have encountered opposition at every turn from what I can only call "national pride" mentality. Naturally this is not unusual, and I am certainly not lacking in the pride for the history of the Australian forces, but here it has gone way over the top.
I will not rehash the issues that I encountered, the second of which ended with my 24 hour block and a name on the infamous Eastern Europe block list I was not aware of, not surprisingly for incivility when I was protesting somewhat forcefully the use of Google hits as a substitution to reading books in justifying a certain name of an article title.
My suggestion to solving this issue is rather simple, and is already in part supported by the Wikipedia policy on Verifiability, and that is, that anything and everything Wikipedia presented to the reader must be well referenced to reputable sources that directly support the claims being made. In all five cases that I had come into an editing conflict, I found that the greatest issue was lack of, or misuse of sources. In fact I am currently involved in just such a dispute. Quite simply the criteria for the sourcing of statements in articles related to this contentious region has to be much tighter then elsewhere.
Good luck on your deliberations-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 14:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
(db)It is disingenuous to suggest the move is "settled" where the move was never made for reasons of sources, but because it "looked lousy". Where else do you find research on Soviet military operations, but in Russian sources?! The use of Great Patriotic War in relation to the Second World War was discussed and settled long ago, and has little to do with the issue of reliable sources. Glantz may be the only source that uses the correct name, but his are also the only books that describe the entire operation! Not one of the 239 sources you cited actually says anything more than a cursory mention of the date and place! None can be used for the article citations! Glantz does refer to the event as "Soviet invasion" ONCE in a book titled The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945! This appears as a header on EVERY page! I suspect you have no idea what either "operation" or a "battle" mean because they are not interchangeable and synonymous. Operation Sealion (in English) is a code name or cryptonym, and not a battle, even if it had been executed. The confusion arises in English where the same word is used in different sense of meanings. I sense that you purposely obfuscate the issues because of your pursuit of English purity agenda where everything needs to be reduced to 19th century usage-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
OK, it's been four months now and there's been no sign of anything, not even a progress report. Is the "working group" working? -- Folantin ( talk) 09:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
And no report. -- Folantin ( talk) 13:26, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Again, I wonder, how many of the projects members are still active and are hoping with the draft? I will bet there is at least one who has not been active ever. And I am also pretty sure that data will not be made available. Ah, the beauties of non-transparency... PS. To be clear, I have nothing but respect for the active project members like Anthony. I do however am increasingly convinced that the entire "privacy" experiment resulted in worse, not better, performance, than average (fewer eyes to catch the bugs...).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
The working group on ethnic and cultural edit warring will terminate its operations in four days' time, on 6 August, 2008. The group is currently completing the development of a "final report", which will be delivered to the Arbitration Committee (per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Working group) shortly. I do hope that this report will be made available to the english wikipedia community at the same time, or at least shortly after the Committee has had time to "digest" and, if necessary, act upon our report. Only time will tell, of course.
I would like to personally like to thank the folks who have been visiting this page, getting involved and poking for updates: it still irks me, that we haven't managed to get a status report out to you folks in the six months we've been active... But, we didn't expect to achieve everything. I can assure you that progress has been made, although we have certainly been hampered by a low volume of participation at certain junctures of our activities. Such is the way of volunteer-driven projects, however.
Further information to come,
Anthøny 15:24, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
A Request for Comment has been launched on my own administrative conduct, as regards my judgment in imposing discretionary sanctions, and managing articles in a state of dispute. Since this is directly related to some experiments that I was running, in experiment with new methods of dispute resolution, I invite anyone here who wishes to offer an opinion, to do so: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Elonka. -- El on ka 18:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
The final report is now live, at Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report. -- El on ka 19:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
There's a proposal here that might be of interest to you. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 19:39, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure whether people are still active here, but you may be interested in this request for Arbcom to get involved relatively early in a content dispute. Comments welcome at the request page.-- Peter cohen ( talk) 22:11, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Please comment at Historic designation of the Palestine region. Chesdovi ( talk) 15:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Asking for a friend. :-) -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 02:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)