Resigning arbitrator slams Committee

Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. In a strongly worded statement posted both on his talk page and the arbitration noticeboard, he claimed that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for". Coren accused arbitrators of "filibustering and tactical maneuvers to gain the upper hand" and of "bickering about the 'image' of the committee with little or no concern for the project's fate". "Trying our damn best to do the Right Thing", he charged, "has been obsoleted in favour of trying to get reelected."

Arbitrator Worm That Turned answered Coren's claims, writing on the ArbCom noticeboard: "Personally, I find the statement from Coren to be rather unfair, ... I do give a damn what the community thinks. I consider the repercussions carefully and try to minimise the controversy surrounding events. I also care about the image that the committee portrays, as without the community's respect, the committee is nothing. I'm sure it's not only me that Coren's statement is reflecting, if it was I would be roundly ignored, but I believe I'm the most vocal about it. The leap that I cannot accept is that I'm doing this to be re-elected. ... I see no reason why we cannot do the right thing AND keep the community on side. If that's playing politics, then so be it."

Coren (Marc André Pelletier) is no newcomer to either the English Wikipedia or the Wikimedia movement as a whole. He served on the Arbitration Committee from 2009 to 2011, and was elected to a second term starting January 2013. Had he stayed on, his total service would have amounted to five years. In 2011, he ran for election to the WMF's Board of Trustees. On 25 February 2013, Coren took up a 12-month contract with the Foundation, joining the Engineering and Product Development Team; his primary focus will be to assist community developers to leverage the new Wikimedia Labs infrastructure for their tools, especially applications that are migrating from the toolserver.

Asked about the future of the Arbitration Committee on his talk page, Coren stated, "there is nothing wrong with the basic operation of the Committee when its members actually work towards the right objective – this is what I saw in 2009–2010 for instance. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that some of mechanisms in place that make it work right fail in catastrophic ways when things go wrong." He then delivered a harsh accusation against the current Committee: "What I mean by 'politicized' was that decisions are not being argued around 'what is best for the project' but 'what will make [the committee] look good'. Add to that stonewalling, filibustering, and downright 'bullying' from those who aren't getting their way – to the point of having arbitrators being ... creative ... with ethics in order to get the upper hand".

The Signpost asked Coren to explain where he saw a conflict between caring about the image of the Committee and doing the best for the project.

Coren did not respond to the Signpost's subsequent request to clarify what he meant by "breaking rules", or which cases involved whining and yelling.

Hersfold, who resigned from ArbCom the week before, echoed Coren's criticisms in general terms: "Unfortunately, I was hoping [that Coren would] be one of the ones to lead the charge against such politicization ... I noticed a steadily increasing emphasis from several arbitrators on avoiding actions that would look bad for the Committee's image or otherwise cause undue amounts of drama". When we invited him to be more specific, Hersfold told the Signpost, "I have no further comment."

Arbitrator AGK took strong exception to Coren's statements: "I consider Coren's resignation to be the rankest drama-mongering. ... throwing the toys from the pram because the community has moved on and the arbitrators who now staff the committee were not quite willing to go along with his extreme views on running ArbCom."

Invited to explain his views further, AGK told the Signpost:

Markus Glaser has been elected as the new chair of the chapters association. He replaces Ashley Van Haeften (Fæ), who had faced controversy after his unopposed election as chair with little substantive discussion during Wikimania 2012. Van Haeften attempted to address these concerns before the election:

In the election, Glaser beat the English Wikipedia's Kirill Lokshin and Lorenzo Losa, who started as an editor on the Italian Wikipedia, although that "now takes only a small part of [his] Wikimedia-related time." Glaser, who began as a developer and came to the association as the representative of Wikimedia Germany, downplayed the powers he would have as chair, stating that he would favor forming an executive committee to make major decisions. He believes that the committee should:

The troubled history of the chapters association was covered by the Signpost in June 2012 and in brief updates since then, such as February 2013. More information is available on Meta—the coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement—under the proposed name of the organization – "Wikimedia Chapters Association"; however, the Foundation has declined to recognize that name on the basis that the inclusion of Wikimedia is inconsistent with its trademark policy. The next meeting of the association will be in April, at the annual Wikimedia Conference in Milan, Italy.

• WMF monthly report: The Wikimedia Foundation's February 2013 report has been published on Meta.
• Wikipedia Zero: The WMF has announced that Axiata has become the newest partner in its Wikipedia Zero program, which aims to provide mobile users in developing countries free access to Wikipedia articles. The partnership marks the fifth Foundation–company partnership in this respect, and adds about 80 million people to the program. The number of people already covered varies depending on the source (the Q&A page states that there are 483 million users as of November 2012, but the WMF's blog post on the last partnership gave 330 million). In unrelated news, Wikipedia Zero won the activism award from South by Southwest (SXSW). Kul Takanao Wadhwa, the WMF's Head of Mobile, said: "We are honored that Wikipedia Zero won at SXSW and we appreciate the validation the award conveys to our efforts. But this is only the beginning. Activism is step one. Next stop, accelerating this program so it becomes a movement to benefit all of humankind."
• Governance review redux: The WMF's general counsel, Geoff Brigham, has published a blog post highlighting several practices he thinks are worth following by all Wikimedia-related organizations. The Signpost covered the Wikimedia UK governance review, which these practices are drawn from, in February.
• Community logo: The Wikimedia community logo, designed in 2006 by WarX and released into the public domain, became the topic of discussions this week on the Wikimedia-l mailing list and on Meta, both revolving around the WMF's attempt to trademark it. The WMF's deputy general counsel, Luis Villa stated that the attempt was part of a broader effort to trademark these sorts of logo, so that the WMF would be able to take action if someone chose to abuse them. As it was part of this broader action, the WMF did not communicate with the community on this specific logo, a minor oversight that Villa apologized for not seeing sooner.
• Want to learn how to edit Wikipedia?: A free online open educational resource class is being offered on p2pu.com. Titled "Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond", it is the brainchild of Pete Forsyth and the Communicate OER project.
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators: Shirt58 (RfA), RockMagnetist (RfA), and Tokyogirl79 (RfA).

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