Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee

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NOINDEXed-ness

Why is the ArbCom page NOINDEXed? I get why the various case and request pages are, but it seems unusual to hide a page of direct importance to many. It's easy to imagine situations where someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia could have information of importance to the Committee, so hiding the page from the Google rankings strikes me as doing more harm than good. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 13:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

• Everything related to the committee seems to be on MediaWiki:Robots.txt. I think this page is there so as to noindex any subpages it might have, but, well, that's one MediaWiki page I don't fully understand how to operate. Courcelles 19:12, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm pretty sure that the slash there means that only subpages get NOINDEXed by robots.txt. (Though, like you, I'm no expert on the workings of that page.) What is definitely true is that this page is NOINDEXed through its transclusion of {{ArbCom navigation}}. If it's further removed from search engine results by robots.txt, well, something can be done about that too, I imagine. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:00, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I have trouble imagining a scenario where someone with information pertinent to the Committee would be at a loss due to the NOINDEXing of the main ArbCom page. Making the page appear in search engines may or may not be benign, but I don't see any practical advantage to doing so. PinkAmpersand, is your concern based on a real situation of someone having trouble finding the ArbCom page, or is it a hypothetical obstacle? alanyst 21:12, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

• Just a hypothetical. I was looking at the page and happened to notice the hidden category at the bottom, got curious about it. As for such an example... I acknowledge it's not the most likely scenario ever, but if an admin were trying to sell their account, or otherwise using their status to work against the project, I could picture a good Samaritan becoming aware of it, doing some quick Googling to try to figure out who to notify, but losing interest when no answers come up.

  Perhaps the more important point here is that this seems like needless secrecy that could serve to reïnforce the notion of a shadowy mysterious cabal governing the Internet's top reference source. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:50, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Needless secrecy? Is there no end to the conspiracy theories? Seriously, the internal search engine pops out anything one needs. Why in heaven's name should every case and every user who's been subject to it have to have it pop up as one of their top Google hits? Google is actually the reason that no-indexing is required, because they highly rank every indexed Wikipedia page, not just the articles. They're part of the problem, not part of the solution. Risker (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't trying to conspiracy theorize, Risker, though in retrospect I see how my comment could come off that way. I'm in the silent majority who think that 80-90% of the criticism that ArbCom gets is utter nonsense, and that most of the remainder is vastly overblown. Anyways, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we un-NOINDEX the case pages and such. Just Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee specifically, as the Committee's public landing page. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:20, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)There will be no end to conspiracy theories (but I suspect that was a rhetorical question).

The google search bots / algorithms are pretty soulless machines ; unless there's evidence google is ignoring directives it's really our problem to set the pages correctly. NE Ent 22:26, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

We have an article Arbitration Committee (English Wikipedia) which appears in Google results, and a hatnote which directs pretty clearly to the insider stuff. NE Ent 22:31, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

RFC: Should the committee have at least the proportion of females as the readership?

Should the Arbitration Committee have at least as many female members as would meet or exceed the proportion of females in the project readership? What other requirements, if any, should the Committee meet? And if so, how should the committee meet such requirements? EllenCT (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Survey

• Yes, because "males are somewhat less likely to reach agreements than females"[1] and the Committee's process of group decision making requires reaching agreements over the internet. Also the Committee should have at least 20% statisticians because the Committee's decision making process would benefit from greater utilitarian focus on traditional decision support methods. Jimmy Wales should appoint females and statisticians to the committee from the highest ranked such vote-winners in the most recent Arbcom election, or from administrators or other functionaries in good standing, at his discretion. EllenCT (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
• No, for all the reasons already discussed at length on Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013, where these proposals have been discussed at length and have drawn virtually no support at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a link, please? Search is unhelpful. EllenCT (talk) 02:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Link added. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:09, 23 December 2013 (UTC)