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The Bugle: Issue LXXVII, August 2012

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)

Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.

Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow

In this issue:

  • Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
  • Research: The most recent DR data
  • Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
  • Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
  • DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
  • Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
  • Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?

--The Olive Branch 19:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Military history coordinator election

The Military history WikiProject has started its 2012 project coordinator election process, where we will select a team of coordinators to organize the project over the coming year. If you would like to be considered as a candidate, please submit your nomination by 14 September. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the current coordinators on their talk page. This message was delivered here because you are a member of the Military history WikiProject. – Military history coordinators (about the project • what coordinators do) 09:05, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Project-specific image filter

Hi. I saw your recent comment on a WikiEN-l thread about Fox News's kind offer. Can I point you to this proposal? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

That appears closed now, but some feedback...
As a concept to conduct an experiment, I understand. That sounds not unreasonable. Practical question however - what does it do to the interface to put the "report and hide" button in the caption, and what do you do where there is no caption? I can imagine some articles will get noticeably bigger and uglier with this. Will that turn people off from the experiment and from clicking it even if they would otherwise want to?
Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:42, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #2)

To add your named to the newsletter delivery list, please sign up here

This edition The Olive Branch is focusing on a 2nd dispute resolution RfC. Two significant proposals have been made. Below we describe the background and recent progress and detail those proposals. Please review them and follow the link at the bottom to comment at the RfC. We need your input!

View the full newsletter
Background

Until late 2003, Jimmy Wales was the arbiter in all major disputes. After the Mediation Committee and the Arbitration Committee were founded, Wales delegated his roles of dispute resolution to these bodies. In addition to these committees, the community has developed a number of informal processes of dispute resolution. At its peak, over 17 dispute resolution venues existed. Disputes were submitted in each venue in a different way.

Due to the complexity of Wikipedia dispute resolution, members of the community were surveyed in April 2012 about their experiences with dispute resolution. In general, the community believes that dispute resolution is too hard to use and is divided among too many venues. Many respondents also reported their experience with dispute resolution had suffered due to a shortage of volunteers and backlogging, which may be due to the disparate nature of the process.

An evaluation of dispute resolution forums was made in May this year, in which data on response and resolution time, as well as success rates, was collated. This data is here.

Progress so far
Stage one of the dispute resolution noticeboard request form. Here, participants fill out a request through a form, instead of through wikitext, making it easier for them to use, but also imposing word restrictions so volunteers can review the dispute in a timely manner.

Leading off from the survey in April and the evaluation in May, several changes to dispute resolution noticeboard (DRN) were proposed. Rather than using a wikitext template to bring disputes to DRN, editors used a new javascript form. This form was simpler to use, but also standardised the format of submissions and applied a word limit so that DRN volunteers could more easily review disputes. A template to summarise, and a robot to maintain the noticeboard, were also created.

As a result of these changes, volunteers responded to disputes in a third of the time, and resolved them 60% faster when compared to May. Successful resolution of disputes increased by 17%. Submissions were 25% shorter by word count.(see Dispute Resolution Noticeboard Statistics - August compared to May)

Outside of DRN other simplification has taken place. The Mediation Cabal was closed in August, and Wikiquette assistance was closed in September. Nevertheless, around fifteen different forums still exist for the resolution of Wikipedia disputes.

Proposed changes

Given the success of the past efforts at DR reform, the current RFC proposes we implement:

1) A submission gadget for every DR venue tailored to the unique needs of that forum.

2) A universal dispute resolution wizard, accessible from Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

  • This wizard would ask a series of structured questions about the nature of the dispute.
  • It would then determine to which dispute resolution venue a dispute should be sent.
  • If the user agrees with the wizard's selection, s/he would then be asked a series of questions about the details of the dispute (for example, the usernames of the involved editors).
  • The wizard would then submit a request for dispute resolution to the selected venue, in that venue's required format (using the logic of each venue's specialized form, as in proposal #1). The wizard would not suggest a venue which the user has already identified in answer to a question like "What other steps of dispute resolution have you tried?".
  • Similar to the way the DRN request form operates, this would be enabled for all users. A user could still file a request for dispute resolution manually if they so desired.
  • Coding such a wizard would be complex, but the DRN gadget would be used as an outline.
  • Once the universal request form is ready (coded by those who helped create the DRN request form) the community will be asked to try out and give feedback on the wizard. The wizard's logic in deciding the scope and requirements of each venue would be open to change by the community at any time.

3) Additionally, we're seeking any ideas on how we can attract and retain more dispute resolution volunteers.

Please share your thoughts at the RfC.

--The Olive Branch 18:41, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

Proposal to close

I have once more made a good faith proposal to end the seemingly never-ending dispute at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents Self-determination. I have made some extensive research which I have detailed in my request to close and I respectfully ask that you consider it. I have been here some years now and never been blocked and after reading ALL of the material, I am convinced there is no other alternative than the one I proposed in view of the negative past histories between parties, especially User:Gaba p, and more than enough prior attempts have met with Wikipedia:IDONTLIKEYOU. I respectfully request that you consider the proposal I have laid out there. Thank you. Mugginsx (talk) 07:42, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

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