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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Xchrisblackx (talk | contribs) at 17:28, 18 August 2006 (→‎Advocee: Good!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

style="background:#dfffdf"| This is the AMA Meeting board for August, 2006. Since actually getting members together on an IRC chat may tend to be akin to herding cats, this might work out for us a bit better.

The following items are up for discussion by anyone and everyone, but only AMA Members may vote. Please leave your signed comments in the appointed areas:

New Coordinator Election

We really need to officially elect a Coordinator, but as of now there is only one candidate. If anyone else wishes to step forward and nominate someone or nominate themselves, please do so in this section. After nominations are finished we can hold elections.

Nominations

Advocacy Handbook Rewrites

There are two major documents that we need to look over:

Along with another document that is currently under construction:

We need to get some editors in there to contribute and even things out as well as add personal experiences and examples. Any volunteers?

Volunteers list

  1. User:Pedant tonight I did some fairly extensive work on Wikipedia:Guide to Advocacy and Wikipedia:AMA Handbook, would someone else like to look it over? I don't want to speak for the whole group if my thoughts aren't in line with the group consensus. I'd appreciate any comments about anything that seems wrong, or just fix it. I tried to condense some of the more verbose sections. It seems to me that there is a lot of duplicated material on the two pages, and maybe it might be worthwhile to merge them? Unless I am not understanding the point of the two pages... User:Pedant 02:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Right now the FAQ (4 questions I think) that Steve mentioned is in my userspace at User:Pedant/AMA FAQ and I encourage anyone who feels like it to take a look and make a note on anything you don't like or edit it however you see fit, I'll dig some old questions out of some emails, maybe you can get some together, we all get asked question I'm sure, so lets get them together and decide what the group consensus is on the answers. I'm NOT encouraging more process or instruction creep, just its nice to be able to easily welcome new advocates and to have a place for the community to get a better picture of our 'advocate philosophy'. Personally, mine is maybe more informal than Steve's, I think. But it's nice to have a mix in the group, and I think Steve's doing a great job formalising what needs to be formalised. Anyway, comments from any of the rest of you are encouraged. User:Pedant 20:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hehe, the only reason that I'm a bit more formal is the organizational aspect of the Coordinator position. I personally feel that there should be just a bit more formality in Advocacy as there is between as big brother and a younger sibling: Rules bend when they need to, and nuggies are administered to keep the peace (well, not that we'd give out nuggies; the actual point is no "hard retribution"... but I digress :-) ). Instruction creep is a dangerous thing, and one that I'd like to avoid at all costs so as an ironic guideline: There should be as few guidelines "set in stone" as possible.
But now on to the documents: These should be chock full one one thing: Experiences. Experiences with dealing with Advocees is important to pass on to future generations (masses? hordes?) of Advocates. We should include case studies that outline and examplify how to deal with tricky situations as well as a bunch of advice that just "tends to work." Overall we should also make it blatantly obvious that the document is just that: Stuff that "tends to work" and is not a steadfast standard procedure that one must follow. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 14:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of case studies. Maybe kinda hard to keep the anonymity. I've asked my current advocee to keep our discussion on his talk page, to keep it together -- with a casual comment that our discussion might help someone else in the future (I was thinking along the same lines as Steve)-- and I usually copy everything relevant to a huge.txt file ... I think those would need to be edited down to something short and snappy. I haven't ever had what I would call a difficult case though, and I think maybe we might need some examples of one of those. Maybe some examples of nightmare cases where nothing went right too, if anyone has one of those to share. User:Pedant 07:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

a comment on the section header 'discussion'

I'd like to suggest we stop using *Discussion* as a section header and try to use a more meaningful phrase, so that on recent changes we can see 'what discussion' the edit in question relates to User:Pedant 07:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advocacy Alerts

The new AMA Alerts page has been implemented. Are there any suggestions on how to make it better? Questions? Comments? :-)

Discussion

  • Can you design it so it will say New Messages? Geo. 19:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that's possible, since the actual text of your page doesn't change. --\/\/slack (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't really get how the available/unavailable thing works, so I'm not using it, if it were easier to understand what goes in the template and where you put it and what it does I think it might be better. It would also be nice if the Alert banner disappeared when there were no messages. It increases my heart rate when I see it. Wslack explained it to me, I'm happy now. User:Pedant 20:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I does disappear for me. --\/\/slack (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I could muck around with the template and find out some way that you can tell it to go away when you've read the alert and pop back up if there is a new one, but that would take time and a large amount of jiggery-pokery. Alas, it will have to be a future project (or at least one once I get internet into my new apartment). אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 14:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

System of Accountability

The AMA needs a system of accountability so that we can track the progress and details of how an Advocate handles a case as well as provisions to handle if or when an Advocate or the Advocated does not act in good faith.

Discussion

  • Ideally I would think this should include some sort of survey with a few likert scales to quantify their experience, and possibly we should have them filled out by both Advocate and the Advocated. Perhaps we should also put together a system of awards to encourage good behavior, as well as a method to create a comittee when necessary to investigate problems? We need system in place before we can "formally" look into UCRGrad's complaint (however, I believe that the measures that have been taken so far adequately deal with his issue). אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 15:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe a Review Board could do the trick. If no one objects i will make one Geo. 19:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems a good idea, but there are a few practical questions to consider. How will its members be selected? Will its proceedings be in private? If so, how - e-mail seems a bit unweildy. --David Mestel(Talk) 20:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another thought - perhaps it would be a good idea to draw up a written code of conduct for advocates, to provide a frame of reference for any disciplinary board. I'll start work on one, and you can see what you think. --David Mestel(Talk) 20:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I argee, and also I have learned a few things since then. He seems to be the only one who is trying to keep the problem going when everyone else as eithe rlearned form it or has moved on. Æon Insane Ward 21:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WHOAAAA, hold on hold on !!! Important point: If we make a bunch of rules on conduct first, they will be ex post facto and I'm not comfortable judging actions based on subsequent formation of rules to govern those actions. I am in favor of determining guidelines for future conduct, separately from the complaint, and I do agree that past conduct needs to be accountable to at least the informal standards that were in place at the time of the offending conduct. On the UCGrad complaint I don't think we need a comittee to deal with it. We could just as easily open it as a topic right here on the meeting page, present the complaint, and decide if "the actions were unbecoming of an Advocate" based on our present status. I don't think we need any privacy for this at all, the complaint is already a part of a permanent archive, (the bell cannot be unrung) and proceeding in private, in y opinion would taint the proceedings. We don't need to expose anything that should be private, just deiscuss the behavior in general terms. If it becomes necessary for a private meeting we can arrange it when it's needed. User:Pedant
I'm not liking the idea of a review board. The rule I believe should be that an advocate must stop advocating when the Advokee/Advocee requests it. The only process I see happening is an advocacy complaints page where grievances may be aired. The coordinater should act on these as he or she sees fit. Key part: only non-advocates and the coordinator could post on the page. That way people can still vent, and an abusive advocate (if there is one, which I very much doubt) would be pointed out by the general community. Thoughts? --\/\/slack (talk) 21:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not against a review board per se, but I feel that we are pretty busy as a grou already and maybe a more straightforward solution could be best for us in the long run. Things are only going to get busier. How about 'an advocate must include a reference to an archived complaint against the advocate in their member statement'? Kinda like your eBay reputation, people could read the complaint and decide for themselves whether to use the advocate or not? It would motivate advocates to be absolutely scrupulous in their behavior. Point 2: I think that advocating implies a permanent obligation to the advocate, at least to the point of respecting their wish to keep some discussions with their advocate private. (to clarify, in reference to an advocate must stop advocating when the Advokee/Advocee requests it: meaning that I think that even though you are no longer their advocate, you still should keep private anything you would keep private if you were still their advocate.) Also, some advocacies can take months to resolve, and I think it would be pretty uncool to dump your advocee just because the job is taking too much time, they would have gone through all the effort they went through with you and then need to start over. If you need to abandon someone before a resolution is reached, you should at least assist them in transitioning to another advocate if you can. Just my opinion User:Pedant 22:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On Point 2: Yes some do take along time but I have never heard of an Advocate dumping someone has that happened recently? Usually if I know I can't keep up with the case I relist it back on the Request page so another advocate can take it. Æon Insane Ward 23:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not aware of anyone dumping an advocee, no. Just talking hypothetically since we seem to be establishing First Principles here. I'm just saying it's a good thing to not leave your advocee hanging once you have agreed to help, just as you have an obligation, if you were administering First Aid to continue treatment until relieved by competent relief.User:Pedant
To the extent of my knowledge, an Advocate has never actually dumped an Advocee (so that's something good :-) ), however, it would be good for us to come up with a provision to pass a case off to another Advocate if there are any number of problems (which could range from exhaustion, to wikibreaks, to emotional stress, to sudden disappearance, to obstinance, etc.). It should be fairly informal, and could simply be as easy as asking the Coordinator or a fellow available Advocate. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 14:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking in terms of five volunteers who could recommend disciplinary action against a advocate, final decision would stay with the Coordinator. Any objections to me creating a beta page? Geo. 00:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I have no strong objection. I would prefer to have more than 5 though in this case, since we don't have established guidelines. I think it would be fair to use as many Advocates as would be willing to participate in this case, to insure that we have a consensus on what is or isn't acceptable Advocate behavior and what would be appropriate disciplinary action. I also don't feel right putting the 'final decision' on Steve, I think it would be best if he merely helped evaluate what the consensus of the group is and facilitated discussion when necessary. He didn't volunteer to be a judge. If in the future we choose to have that be one of the Coordinator's duties, okay, but we need to keep in mind that the complaint is about something that happened before we had established guidelines and for justice's sake we should really be especially scrupulous in our decision and the process by which we reach that decision. As an alternate proposal: (and just for this one single case we have outstanding) I propose we all discuss this right here on this page, since we have a lot of us here already. (It may be too much to hope that we can avoid complaints by behaving in such a way that there is nothing to complain about, but lets work towards that. )
For the short term: I personally think that UCRGrad's complaint is dealt with, for all intents and purposes. Aeon is an excellent Advocate, and one snafu with a very difficult advocee should not merit anything more than taking a small break (which he did, himself), looking back over things (which he did, himself), and getting back out onto the field (which he's on now). :-)
For the long term: Why not something as simple as a 360-degree review from the Advocee and other Advocates? We can make an announcement over AMA Alerts and have a page outlining the complaint so each responding Advocate can do their own research and ask questions? Heheh, also I agree with Pedant about ex-post facto resolutions. Furthermore, benevolent dictatorships have the potential to be dangerous (Er.. I hope that Jimbo isn't watching ;-) ~joking joking~). Since we are all volunteers to this group, I'd think that all of our opinions would have equal weight when it comes to our Association peers. The Coordinator position at this particular point doesn't merit me a gavel, it merits me a mop. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 14:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, anything drawn up could not be ex post facto applicable. On reflection, a code of conduct seems a bit over-formal, and I wonder whether it wouldn't in fact be better just to use our discretion and good judgement. --David Mestel(Talk) 15:22, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Which I also see as the one requirement for being an Advocate -- the ability to use good judgement. I'd be quite happy with a very bare minimum of rules, since we already have all of the wikipedia policies to guide us in our use of good judgement. We would be an excellent group if we could operate on just our excellence alone, and enforce that excellence using a Peer Review as suggested by Steve. (I'm not joking: try to calculate the man-hours of Mediation and Arbitration that have been avoided just through your own personal efforts) Remember, our Advocates actually are among the best members of the community in terms of behavior, and I'm sure we are each even more scrupulous when acting as an advocate, and probably even more so when called on to judge the merit of a complaint. Personally I'm counting on each of us to make that last statement true. User:Pedant 07:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Notes on the above (filling out forms)

I really don't want to fill out forms each time I advocate for somebody, I think I give my time as generously as I am able to this project, and don't want to take from that time to fill out forms. I feel its process creep. As advocacy is an unofficial process, I believe the lack of precise guidelines is an advantage to our ability to effectively advocate, and I am pretty much guided by

if you decide to advocate for someone, it is your job to help them to express their side of the problem to whoever they have a conflict with, whatever their side is, right or wrong. I feel that wikipedians in general owe it to each other to listen with an open mind, but that when things go wrong, requesting an advocate is the one way to quarantee that someone will listen to whatever crazy idea you have, with an open mind, try to understand you, get a real good grip on what you are trying to say, and then help you to say it, to act as a friend would, to help you keep from getting riled up, and to have patience with you, and to not tell anyone anything which is said in confidence.

For me those are the rules, and if I can't advocate by those rules and still be a part of the AMA, then it would be important enough to me, that I would feel that I have to go back to doing this unofficially. I prefer a minimum of rules, as far as that is feasible.User:Pedant

I agree I give as much of my time to Wikipedia as I can and about 50 to 70 % of it is Vandal Fighting. For me having to fill out forms would take up a lot of the time I could be doing things for the CVU, Esperanza, MEDCAB and other projects. Æon Insane Ward 23:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe, yeah I realized as soon as I hit "submit" that I just suggested that Advocates fill out paperwork and going down that road may lead to ~twitch~... bureaucracy... ick... Perhaps we could put together some sort of Advocate review and leave any sort of "filling out" to the recently advocated (ask them to express appreciation, etc., by filling out a survey to help us better serve them or find more compatible Advocate/Advocee matches in the future)? אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 14:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

here is the case I'm on now. I've summarised the dispute fairly completely with a paragraph. Once resolved, I could summarise the key steps that led to resolution. This wouldn't be much effort and I find it helpful to use an initial summary to help me "wind up for the first pitch". With an initial summary and a final summary, all that it would take to make this a fairly good record is to include a brief account of the dialogs involved in the 'key steps'. A simple search and replace to the names of people involved and voila! -- a rudimentary anonymous case history. I'm not sure I'd want to do this, make it presentable and all, but just saying something like this could be done without that much effort. A really well-composed survey might be of some use... I like the survey idea, but I don't know how helpful it would be, usually the advocee has no real clue how I 'solved' their 'problem.' If they did, they probably could have done it themselves. I'm really not wanting to make this a part of our process just occasionally certain cases might make a useful enough example as to be worth the effort. User:Pedant 07:47, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Standard terminology

Since Advocates are not really lawyers, the AMA has traditionally avoided using the term "client" to describe those who request Advocacy as it generally has caused problems (people assuming a lawyer/client relationship, a "right" to be the client of an Advocate like the US' "right to an attorney," etc.). It would be nice, however, to have consensus on a standard term to use.

Poll

Please feel free to add on additional terms and sign under each term that you'd support. :-)

Ward

  1. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 15:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would object to using this one. The context is usually "ward of the state", refering to the inability of a person to take care of themself, and usually used for mental patients. -Royalguard11TalkMy Desk 17:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object per Royalguard. --David Mestel(Talk) 20:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
don't want to be a warder, Object to this one User:Pedant 21:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Charge

  1. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 15:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

#I support this one. -Royalguard11TalkMy Desk 17:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC) [reply]

I'm changing my support to oppose based on the comment below. -Royalguard11TalkMy Desk 21:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose this one on the grounds that it is rather patronising, implying that the advocee cannot in general look after themself. --David Mestel(Talk) 20:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advocee

  1. Out of all of our options I seem to like this the best. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 15:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. This one sounds good too (the typical adding of the extra "e") -Royalguard11TalkMy Desk 17:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  3. I agree - not over-formal, but not patronising either. --David Mestel(Talk) 20:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  4. I like this one, it is the best term for it Æon Insane Ward 21:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  5. support this one Advokee, (I prefer this spelling) advocee seems to me to be unique enough as to have no contextual connottation, so the connotaion of the word naturally develops with use. (deleted portions for readability) User:Pedant 21:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)google prefers advocee, FWIW, 106 hits, 1 hit (a post on the AMA requests page) for advokee ick, seems like my spellinig is not the preferred spelling User:Pedant[reply]
  6. Agreed per above: has the same significance without the liguistic baggage. I don't care about the spelling, but it shoudl be consistant. --\/\/slack (talk) 21:28, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Sounds good to me --C.Black 17:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Client

Discussion

Other business

Is there anything else that we need to discuss that has been left out?

Discussion
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