Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2009-03-09

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9 March 2009

News and notes
Commons, conferences, and more

In the news
Politics, more politics, and more

Dispatches
100 Featured sounds milestone

WikiProject report
WikiProject Christianity

Discussion report
Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

Features and admins
Approved this week

Technology report
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation

2009-03-09

Commons, conferences, and more

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By Phoebe and Sage Ross

Commons reaches 4 million files

Commons reached 4 million files on March 4, 2009, less than eight months after it reached 3 million. This makes Wikimedia Commons currently the fastest growing Wikimedia project.

The 4 millionth file is an image of mountains near Masca in the Canary Islands, and was uploaded by Kallerna. The photo is released into the public domain.

In December and January, Commons received a significant boost from the Bundesarchiv project, in which nearly 100,000 donated images were uploaded. Commons reached 2 million files on 8 October 2007 and 3 million on 16 July 2008.

Developer meetup planned for April

A MediaWiki developer meetup is planned for April 3-5 in Berlin. According to the project page, the meetup is for anyone "who works on MediaWiki, writes extensions, builds bots, writes scripts for the toolserver, or is otherwise interested in the technical aspects of Wikimedia." The event will be run as a barcamp, with a loose schedule.

The meeting will be in parallel with a Wikimedia Foundation Board and Chapters meeting.

Attendees are asked to pre-register by March 20th; details are here.

Wikimania bidding cities

The bidding cities for Wikimania 2010 have been announced; they are Amsterdam, Gdańsk and Oxford. The next stage is a month-long period where bids may be improved; this will be followed by a public meeting on March 30 and a two-week judging period by the Wikimania jury.

New usability team members and testing

Naoko Komura, leader of the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, has announced that three new people have joined the usability team: Arash Boostani, Parul Vora and Trevor Parscal. Boostani is formerly of Genentech, and joined the project as Senior Software Developer. Vora was formerly a designer at Yahoo! and a researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, and brings user interface design experience to the team. Parscal is a current member of the Wikimedia tech team, who is transferring to the usability team as software designer. The usability team is also currently interviewing for a second software designer position.

Usability testing as part of the Usability Initiative is also now underway. According to Komura, a CentralNotice (image) aimed at recruiting Wikipedia readers in San Francisco for the tests has been running this week, and in-person and remote testing will occur on March 24, 25 and 26. The target audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no experience in editing articles. The banner is displayed within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and is set to be disabled on March 12.

Flagged revisions proposal

Briefly

The Wikimedia Foundation has released a video called "Inside Wikimedia", highlighting the people and work of the Foundation. Links to the video are in a WMF blog post.
The basic structure of the Chemistry Manual of Style has been ratified; this gives a guideline for chemistry-related articles, which can be applied as articles are assessed.
On March 5th, the Pontic Greek Wikipedia was created, resolving an open request. Pontic Greek is spoken by about 324,000 people.
The total number of Featured Articles, Featured Lists, and Good Articles passed 10,000.

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2009-03-09

Politics, more politics, and more

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By Cryptic C62 and Sage Ross

UK politics an area of contention

Brian Wheeler of BBC News examines the relationships between British politicians and their Wikipedia articles in "UK politicians' Wikipedia worries". Wikipedia plays a similarly significant role in British politics as in American politics; the article notes that "In the 2008 US primaries, candidates' Wikipedia entries ranked higher on Google than their own websites for 25% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans, according to research by the Tech President website."

Wheeler reports that "In the UK, the main parties all monitor Wikipedia for errors and bias - but they are reluctant to criticise something which is generally seen as a force for good." However, many individual politicians found fault with their own entries, which are often subject not only to perennial vandalism, but also to more subtle issues of imbalance and misrepresentation. Still, according to a spokesman for the the Liberal Democrats, "Wikipedia is probably more prone to errors than other sources, but it is also much more prone to correcting errors."

Controversy over Barack Obama edits

Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily [http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114 reported] several instances of what he believed to be entirely unjustified instances of content being removed from Barack Obama. On multiple occasions, editors attempted to add sourced information related to Jeramiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and concerns over Obama's eligibility to serve as president of the United States. According to Klein's article, those edits were quickly reverted and, in some cases, resulted in the author being blocked. Klein described the Barack Obama article as being "heavily promotional toward the U.S. president." Long time editors of the Barack Obama article meanwhile have countered that this was a content decision made with the consensus of editors involved with the article.

City councilman struggles with his biography

Genevieve Bookwalter of the San Jose Mercury News reports that a "Battle for control of Santa Cruz councilman's Wikipedia page persists". Bookwalter writes that "what once seemed like hip political strategy has become a headache as [Ryan] Coonerty, 35, engages in an ongoing struggle to control his online image on Wikipedia".

Finkelstein: Deletionism is about money

Seth Finkelstein, a long-time critic of Wikipedia and its connection to the for-profit company Wikia (founded by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board chair Angela Beesley) has a column in The Guardian, "Inclusion or deletion? In the end, it's actually about money". Finkelstein argues that deletion of detailed popular culture content pushes contributors from "the relative prestige of Wikipedia" to "being digital sharecroppers on an electronic plantation of user-generated advertising revenues" (i.e., Wikia wikis).

WikiRank soon to go online

WikiRank is a new analysis tool for Wikipedia. The tool, similar to Google Analytics, offers detailed statistical analysis and information regarding Wikipedia article traffic. Unlike toolserver-based traffic counters, WikiRank will also provide "a list of the most dramatic traffic shift in popularity in the last 24 hours." WikiRank is expected to launch in late March 2009.

Briefly

Jimmy Wales was interviewed by BBC World Service regarding Wikimedia's fundraising and financial situation.

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2009-03-09

100 Featured sounds milestone

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By X!

On February 27, Featured sounds reached 100 Featured sounds, through the promotion of six sounds. While no one sound was declared the 100th, the six sounds that were promoted were:

Rigoletto: "Bella figlia dell'amore"

nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.

Il trovatore: "Stride la vampa"

nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.

2002 State of the Union Address

nominated by Zginder.

Tear down this wall

nominated by Durova.

Gerald Ford Vietnam clemency remarks

nominated by Durova.

Carmen: Chanson du toréador

nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.

A Featured sound is a sound file that is of such quality that it can represent some of Wikipedia's best work (see related story). In order to be featured, it must meet the criteria for Featured sounds. These criteria includes high encyclopedic value, combined with good quality for the time period in which the sound was recorded.

Two parts of the criteria are not as recognized, but are as important as quality and encyclopedic value.

Free license

All featured sounds must be under a free license. Just as Featured pictures must be under a free license, sounds cannot be under Fair use. Many Featured sounds are licensed under either {{PD-old}} or {{PD-USGov}}. Sounds which are older than the life of the author plus 100 years can be licensed under {{PD-old}}. This includes sounds that have been digitally restored from a form of media which would satisfy {{PD-old}} in itself. Some Featured sounds are recordings of US presidential speeches. Because they are a work of the US federal government, they can be licensed under {{PD-USGov}}.

Sound description page

Every featured sound must have a well documented description page that explains the sound in detail. It must include:

A brief description of the subject. A sentence or two is usually sufficient, but there should be enough information to adequately identify both the recording and what the recording is of.
The date and venue of the recording, where known.
The name(s) of the recordist(s), producer(s), and/or record company, where known.
Where known, a list of any editing that has been applied to the excerpt that was not in the original, such as noise reduction or click removal (obvious fade ups and fade downs at the start and end need not be listed).
For a musical performance, the name and years of the composer (and the arranger, where relevant), the year of composition (and the arrangement, where relevant), the name(s) of the performer(s) or, for an ensemble, the name of the group and, where relevant, the conductor and soloist.
The name of the original owner and the date of release/transfer, if this information is recoverable.

While the Featured sounds process has received more attention in the past few months, it is still in need of both contributors and reviewers. In order for the process to grow, a larger community is required. Low numbers of reviewers have occasionally caused long delays—sometimes months old. Nominations are being made fairly steadily, but most of them are made by people who have been active in the process for a long time. In order for the process to flourish, new input is necessary. There are multiple ways you can contribute.

Review some sounds – Most nominations receive 2–4 comments. More reviews would help establish stronger consensus.
Nominate sounds – It is easy to find free sound files on the Internet. Sites such as millercenter.org, various presidential archive sites, and archive.org all provide sounds which are released under a free license. Or, if you have old records laying around your house, see if you can find a person in your town who can make old forms of media into digital files. To convert them to Ogg, there is a free program called Audacity which makes the process easy (and can also provide certain aesthetic effects).
Help with sound restoration – Contact Shoemaker's Holiday, who can get you started.

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2009-03-09

WikiProject Christianity

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By Cryptic C62

The Signpost recently interviewed Itaqallah of WikiProject Islam. This week, we continue our coverage of the major religions by interviewing WikiProject Christianity. WikiProject Christianity is one of Wikipedia's larger WikiProjects with more than 275 members and over 26000 articles under its scope. Here to tell us more about the project is Secisek.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history here on Wikipedia?
I work in Illinois state politics and while I am not notable, I work with many people who are. My interests include history, religion, music, and politics. I have edited here since 1 June 2007. While I edit across subjects, I have worked largely on articles related to Christianity with a focus on Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism.
How did you become interested in Christianity articles?
I first became aware of WikiProject Anglicanism shortly after I began editing. After improving the Anglicanism project and creating the Anglicanism Portal, I began updating a number of the other Christianity-related projects, with the hope being that I could identify GA and FA material to feature on the related portals. Christianity and Anglicanism are now both Featured Portals and I believe the Saints Portal is close as well.
While the project does have an impressive 63 featured articles, none of the major denominations of Christianity nor Christianity itself are featured. Why is that? Is this something you would like to see the project members collaborating on in the future?
Christianity was GA for a time and it was demoted under rather unfortunate circumstances. An editor just resolved to delist the article - and did so even while major work was ongoing. That demoralized the effort and I don't think there has really been a big push there since then. I think the sheer scope of an article concerning an entire branch of Christianity is foreboding to some and the fragmented nature of Christianity itself makes collaboration difficult on such articles. There are many great editors involved with Christianity articles, however they tend to be from diverse backgrounds. I think that is why the FA focus is more on subjects with wide-reaching cross-over interest, such as John Calvin, William Wilberforce, or the Second Crusade - rather than on Protestantism or the Christian Church as such. That said, the Roman Catholic Church is very close to FA and work continues on that front. I would rather see all of the project's Top priority article reach GA, rather than focus all efforts into making one or two articles FA. In other words, I think we are on the right track.
In our recent report on WikiProject Islam, Itaqallah discussed the issues of POV and working with contentious, highly-viewed content. To what extent do these issues affect Christianity-related articles?
I would imagine we experience the same problems they do. That said, given that the entire English-speaking world has some notion of Christianity, we may have even larger issues. I find that very seldom a disagreement will break out between a "believer" and a "non-believer" over POV. We are all editors here and attempts at beginning such disputes are rightly ignored as trolling or vandalism. No serious editor is going to attempt to rewrite an article to read, "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world" or "Jesus is unimportant because there is no real proof he ever lived." In the case of the first, it would be fair to say that some Christians "believe" that and, in the case of the latter, the existence of an historical Jesus has no bearing on his importance. I think most editors "get it".

On the other hand, highly contentious POV disagreements break out often between Christians of different stripe over the smallest bits of minutiae or about one schism or another that took place 500, or 1000, or 1800 years ago. Sure, some times you will run across an editor who genuinely does not understand how the Trinity fits in with Monotheism but, more often than not, a POV arguement centers around an editor who thinks an article about a denomination should be written from that denomination's POV - as in the manner of the old Catholic Encyclopedia:

"This article is about us, so it should reflect what we say about ourselves. By the way, we are the true Church that Jesus founded."

-Can you cite that?

"Sure, here it is in a tract published by our denomination in 1859. It says so right here."

-Britannica and the Oxford University Press both agree that the denomination in question was founded in Pittsburgh in 1908 by a man named Larry Frankel.

"That is just the opinions of schoolmasters. Who cares what they think."

-Oi.

That will make you want to turn off the PC and leave the house. That said, the real theological debates, when there are genuinely honest and supported POVs in conflict - those discussions are great and often both sides end up with a much improved article. You try to keep a cool head and walk away when ever you can. There are many sets of eyes on these articles and consensus on most things can be formed rapidly. I recently found an article about a bogus Ancient Egyptian God that had stood at WP for three years. That would never have happened in a Christianity article, high traffic has its advantages as well as its challenges.
For those not interested in such debates, WikiProject Christianity also offers a lengthy to do list. The requested articles section of the list is significantly larger than the rest of the list, which may indicate that the project has moved away from rapid expansion and towards the slower improving of individual articles. Is this the direction you would like the project to be moving in?
I had not noticed that, but it does not surprise me. Yes, almost any article now created would be of low importance to the project. We now cover 26,000+ articles and that does not include thousands of articles which are tagged with only a subproject's banner. Most of what we "need" is here already. I would much rather see improvement in high and top priority articles than see the generation of obscure stubs.
Finally, do you think WikiProject Christianity's biographical pages would benefit from having flagged revisions turned on?
I would go further. I think, even more controversially, a huge part of the problem could be solved by not allowing IP edits and cracking down on SPAs. If you are going to edit Wikipedia, you should have an account. Nobody should be able to edit anonymously. It would still be the encyclopedia anyone could can edit. Everyone should be expected to take two minutes and set up an account. They also should crack down on SPAs. One article about a saint was held hostage for 2+ years by a single purpose account - it was even delisted from GA over the issue. I won't mention which one, as the situation was only recently, quietly, corrected. There is no reason why an SPA should be allowed to stone wall the entire community as one did there. The article is close to GA, but nobody will go near for fear of touching the whole thing off again. All that said - on the whole - Wikipedia works I think.

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2009-03-09

Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Hermione1980 and §hep

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Centralized discussions

Discussions on the use of A-Class and the grading scheme

Following the creation of an Assessment working group, multiple discussions have ensued covering the use of A-Class and the grading scheme in general. The first discussion revolved around the usefulness and possible restructuring of A-Class. Another discussion emerged regarding the possibility of reorganizing the assessment scale, the discussion has resulted in multiple proposed solutions, none showing strong support. A third section was started with aims to determine if there is consensus that there is a need - or not - for A-Class, if such a need is established, if it requires WikiProject-based peer reviews and what type of review process would be appropriate, and how to get WikiProjects to use A-Class in a way that is useful and productive for the projects and the wider community. Currently there is no clear consensus to abolish A-Class, but there is an impression that A-Class is unsuitable for many smaller projects. It has also been suggested that Peer review may be able to help smaller projects with A-Class review, though reviewers state that they do not issue assessments and only comment on how to improve the article. An extended summary is available here.

Proposed WikiProjects

Propositions have been brought before the WikiProject Council requesting the ability to create Wikiproject Children, which would focus on articles about minors with biographical articles; Wikiproject United States courts and judges (Proposed page), which would focus on consistency in the type and style of information presented on judges and judicial districts; Wikiproject Wikipedia-Books, which would support the creation, maintenance, and continuity of Wikipedia:Books; Wikiproject Ernest Hemingway project, which would improve content related to the life and works of Ernest Hemingway; and Wikiproject File Name Extensions, which would document and expand various file name extensions such as .png, .ogg, and others.

Proposal to deprecate GFDL 1.2-only templates

It has been proposed that the templates {{GFDL-1.2}} and {{GFDL-1.2-en}} be deprecated from further use. It was stated by Kaldari that these templates do not follow the GFDL standardization Wikipedia underwent in 2007, these files cannot be migrated to CC-BY-SA, it would follow a change already made by the German Wikipedia, and that if a photographer still wanted to use GFDL 1.2-only those files could be uploaded on Commons, among other points. While there is general support for the move, it has been suggested to wait to make any changes until the Board of Trustees makes a final decision on relicensing by the end of April; this point has been argued against and argued for by different parties.

Proposals

Proposal to reorganize the village pump pages

A discussion is underway regarding whether to rename the Village pump pages from Village pump (section) to Village pump/section. Supporters have noted that such a hierarchy would be consistent with common practice on Wikipedia (pointing especially to the Incidents Noticeboard, which is located at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents instead of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard (incidents)), while opponents say that there is no compelling reason to undertake the renaming due to the large amount of effort that would be required to move the archives and various subpages to the correct location. The majority of users who have commented are in opposition to the proposal.

Proposal to enable double redirects

Double redirects, which were recently enabled on the English Wikipedia due to a bug in r17570, are currently being discussed at the Village pump (proposals). There is a consensus at this point to ask the developers to enable double redirects permanently, though opponents have expressed reservations that such a feature would allow more opportunities for subtle forms of vandalism.

Proposal to create a namespace for Wikipedia:Books

With the activation of the Special:Book function, Cenarium suggested that there should be a Book: namespace created to help track and maintain the creation of books, arguing that such a namespace would allow for easier patrolling using Special:NewPages. Supporters have said that this would make the regulation of books easier, but opponents have stated that such regulation would be just as easy whether the books were in a separate namespace or not. Opinion is evenly divided on this proposal.

Requests for comment

Proposal to disallow the uploader of a file to remove a disputed fair use rationale tag

Stifle suggested that the disputed fair use rationale template should not be removed by the uploader of the picture, similar to the policy on not removing speedy deletion tags. The uploader would then have to make a case for the image to be kept on the image's talk page. Jheald objected, stating that "the uploader should have the right to consult the wider community at IfD". Little discussion has, as yet, taken place.

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2009-03-09

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Three editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mufka (nom), Admiral Norton (nom) and Valley2city (nom).

Bots

Twelve bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Erik9bot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request), DustyBot (task request), SoxBot (task request), Polbot (task request), DumZiBoT (task request), Addbot (task request), AfDStatBot (task request), BHGbot (task request), SPCUClerkbot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request) and Erik9bot (task request).

Featured pages

Eleven articles were promoted to featured status this week: Bride of Frankenstein (nom), Kylfings (nom), Heinrich Bär (nom), SMS Moltke (1910) (nom), Tom Derrick (nom), History of the National Hockey League (1967–1992) (nom), Kirsten Dunst (nom), Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall (nom), Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (nom), William Henry Harrison (nom) and Kinzua Bridge (nom).

Seventeen lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2002 (U.S.) (nom), List of Numb3rs episodes (nom), Yeah Yeah Yeahs discography (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Scissor Sisters (nom), System of a Down discography (nom), List of Pittsburgh Penguins head coaches (nom), List of United States Naval Academy alumni (Astronauts) (nom), List of Cincinnati Reds managers (nom), List of Los Angeles Kings head coaches (nom), Arnold Schwarzenegger filmography (nom), List of winners of the Chicago Marathon (nom), List of Philadelphia Phillies no-hitters (nom), List of Olympic medalists in speed skating (nom), List of United States Naval Academy alumni (Chiefs of Naval Operations) (nom), List of Vancouver Canucks captains (nom), Rufus Wainwright discography (nom) and Ashlee Simpson discography (nom).

One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Gaylactic Spectrum Awards (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Vithoba, Hurricane Linda, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Saxbe fix, Luc Bourdon, Harriet Tubman and Greece Runestones.

Former featured pages

One article was delisted this week: Plug-in hybrid (nom).

No lists or topics were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Palais Garnier, Rhône Glacier, Panorama of Mikumi National Park, Duck and Cover, Woodblock print in the Ukiyo-e style, Solar eclipse of August 1, 2008 and Swamp milkweed.

No media files were featured this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Twenty-one pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.

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2009-03-09

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that some changes described here have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.2 (8fd6c9c), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Fixed bugs

The revision suppression feature had a bug where the suppressed edit summaries were still being displayed on Special:DeletedContributions. That bug has now been fixed, and the servers are synced to include this bug fix. (r47930, bug 17755)
The ability to suppress the first revision of a page has been added. (r47946, bug 17761)

New features

The new magic word {{REVISIONUSER}} has been added, which can be used to show who last edited a page. (r48149, bug 10336)

Other news

The 'hideuser' right was added to oversight group, allowing oversighters to hide a user or IP from the block log, the active block list, and user list when carrying out a block. [1]
The 'developer' user rights group has been removed, as it was obsolete. [2]
Database dumps are once again running on srv31, and the developers are working on reconfiguring the dump system to run on multiple servers so that large dumps are better able to work. The developers are also looking into possible format changes, to see if they can improve the performance and reliability of the database dumps. [3]

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2009-03-09

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By seresin

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, and closed one, leaving six cases open.

Evidence phase

West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.
MZMcBride: A case brought after administrator MZMcBride deleted numerous "secret pages". This case is reviewing administrator conduct by MZMcBride only, and is not ruling on the appropriateness of the pages themselves. MZMcBride was admonished for his administrator actions in a previous Request for Arbitration.
Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.
Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved.
Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.

Voting

Ayn Rand: A case about editorial behavior, such as alleged POV-pushing and bad faith, in relation to the Ayn Rand article. The Arbitration Committee accepted the case as they found that all other avenues of dispute resolution had failed to resolve the dispute.

Closed

SemBubenny: SemBubenny was admonished not to delete articles that do not meet the speedy-deletion criteria, and to discuss and explain his administrator actions.

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