Talk:Portuguese Wikipedia governance issues

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This page is divided in two main sections, one in English, to open the discussion to the wider Wikimedia community, and another in Portuguese (Português), for those who lack enough command of the English language to participate in the broader discussion. Vapmachado 17:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

English

Theme always in vogue

Stewards' noticeboard: Please advise (2010 04 04 to 07)
- Request to undelete (2010 12 24)

Articles

Guerrilla Wikipedians rate rival's chances (2006 09 23)

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 04:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Voting in the XXI century

The more I think about the prevailing requirements to vote on Wikimedia projects, the more I associate them with the past. A time when only men could vote, or whites, or people who could read and write, or had a certain number of school years. I believe that now the most common requirement is to be an adult. I wonder what requiring being and adult with an university degree would do to the number of eligible voters on Wikimedia projects. Would it also have an effect on the quality of the decisions made? I wonder.

No. I'm not proposing or even suggesting any of that. I thing it is very valuable for children of any age, and adults of any background (being able to read and write should be a given here, although sometimes I wonder...) to participate in one of the most democratic practices: voting.

People who started some of the policies on Wikimedia projects must have been dazzling brilliant, or baffling BSers. Or they might have just lacked the right age, knowledge, experience, and/or, sadly, not enough drive, curiosity or whatever to even look around them, watch some TV, movies... Maybe they came from outer space...

You see, when you look at voting in civilized societies the first thing you run into is voter registration. On countries where that is not possible, what you have is some system (paint on a finger) to ensure that nobody votes twice. Another thing is that the way you vote is nobody's business but yours. Voting is by secret ballot. Voicing your opinion is one thing, but when it comes to voting, if you are a candidate, who do you vote for: you or one of your opponents (if there is one or more)? Who knows?

Nobody here votes by raising his or her arm, colored card in hand or not, a popular system in certain environments and assemblies. The medium doesn't facilitate that. However, it allowed for another very specific voting method to take hold: signing or signing and justifying. This raised another problem: making sure that the same person is not voting more than once using different signatures, since no voter registration exists and for other reasons.

Another important and area of concern is electronic voting, this being about virtual communities who work collaboratively. By necessity, votes need to be cast by computer.

The challenge then is to implement a voting system that's only accessible to eligible voters, whose votes are secret, and ensures that they only vote once in any particular issue.

Since the issue is who might be eligible to vote, I'll venture into that. We have unified login don't we? So, once you have an account with Wikimedia, what is the problem with a registration to vote on any Wikimedia project? What do you need to register? What is always and everywhere required? You need to identify yourself to some body responsible for running the elections. Then you get some sort of access number or whatever that lets you vote once and only once on each election.

Can it be done? I'm sure it can. Gentlemen, we can rebuild this voting system. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first community fool proof electronic voting system. Wikimedia projects will be those communities; better than they were before. Better, fairer, faster. Your mission, should you decide to accept it will be to design such voting system. As always, should you or any of your IM force be hired or contracted by some private business, the Wikimedia will disavow any knowledge of your actions, and claim the work was done by unidentified Wikimedia contributors. This comment will eventually be archived and forgotten.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 17:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Minors

50px	As of 11 April 2007, CheckUsers must be at least 18 years of age, of legal age in their place of residence, and willing to provide identification to the Wikimedia Foundation in order to qualify. [1]

Access to nonpublic data policy
- Resolution:Access to nonpublic data policy update
- Resolution:Access to nonpublic data

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 18:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Wish list

The current election policies have run it's course. Electing people on any Wikimedia project based on number of edits and percentage of votes has failed, and in no way helps the healthy development of those projects.

Anybody that is willing to run for election and/or be elected should make it's real identity known.

Elected user should possess a wide range of qualities and qualifications, that would make them a real asset to the project has to reduce to the possible extent the risk of becoming a immediate liability, and a major obstacle to civility, growth and development both in the short and medium range.

Human qualities and project quality must take precedence over quantity and number of edits.

No minors should be eligible for any position whatsoever.

Technical tasks should be carried by those technically qualified, but under the direct supervision of editors with much more broader qualifications.

No one should have more that one position at any given time.

Separation of powers, main activities and responsibilities are a must on any project.

Everybody should be elected for a limited term, with suitable but also limited reelection rules.

Projects without enough editors to fill all necessary positions, should be smaller partners of a larger project or recruit enough people on other projects to fill all open positions

This surely is a very incomplete and poorly organized list. I'm sure that there are people more qualified than myself who could present a well structured and coherent system that Wikimedia projects urgently need to put in place if they really aspire to become what they are supposed to be.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 18:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

How bureaucracy works: the example

If I understood well, Americans don't have such bad feelings toward the word "bureaucracy" and its derivatives. In Europe it is different. When I tell to Gerard that he is better bureaucrat than me, he feels offended; although I thought about specific virtues, not defects; and although I've defined myself a number of times as a Wikimedia bureaucrat.

That difference lays probably in 300 years of different developments of societies. Franz Kafka wasn't living in 18th century, but in 20th. Horrors of bureaucracies wasn't so obvious in 18th century because it is hard to say that any kind of sensible bureaucracy existed then. Arbitrariness of feudatories and rulers was much bigger problem. And at least in the case of bureaucracy, Americans had much more luck.

As you could see I am usually use the "American" meaning of the word "bureaucracy" and its derivatives. Complex societies can't exist without more or less good bureaucracies. Unlike many of my friends, I appreciate good formal bureaucracy. This is the minimum and it is much better to deal with formal bureaucracy than with informal relations. As a user of [social] institutions you can count on formal bureaucracy, while it is not possible with informal relations.

However, to be effective, bureaucracy has to be managed. This is particularly true for very complex bureaucracies, and Wikimedia is already a very complex bureaucracy. And it (bureaucracy) is not managed well.

The main problem with not well managed bureaucracies are not well defined responsibilities. In other words, it is not possible to say that one person or one group is responsible for some malfunctioning. It is the product of the right decisions at the lower level of complexity, which creates malfunctioning at the higher level of complexity.

That means that I am not blaming anyone particularly, but that we have increasing number of the problems of that type; which means that all of us have to think how not to make such mistakes.

[...]

[Foundation-l] Milos Rancic millosh at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 15:53:05 UTC 2010

Português

Façam como eu digo

Votações (2005 01 08 a 2010 05 21)
- Discussão: Votações (2007 01 23 a 2007 07 12)
Consenso (2007 02 17 a 2009 08 03)
- Discussão: Consenso (2007 04 03 a 2008 04 23)

Atenciosamente,

Virgílio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 19:29, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Tema sempre actual

Os debates seguintes passarão, na devida altura, para a secção dos debates arquivados.

Decisão por consenso
- Discussão: Decisão por consenso (2009 05 29 a 07 08)
Indech X MachoCarioca (2009 08 25 a -)
- Discussão: Indech X MachoCarioca
Modificações nas regras para desnomeações
- Discussão: Modificações nas regras para desnomeações (2009 11 25 a 2010 01 04)
Como fomentar um bom ambiente para os usuários (2010 04 30 a -)
Desvincular o estatuto de burocrata do de sysop (2010 06 15 a -)
Uso desnecessário da ferramenta de ocultar edições (2010 07 04 a 06)
- «Tomai cuidado com os falsos profetas. São os que chegam perto de vós sob a aparência de ovelhas mas por dentro, de facto, são lobos vorazes» (Mateus 7:15-16).
  - All public logs Sir Lestaty de Lioncourt
Proposta para a nova Política de Administração (2010 11 21 a -)
- «Tomai cuidado com os falsos profetas. São os que chegam perto de vós sob a aparência de ovelhas mas por dentro, de facto, são lobos vorazes» (Mateus 7:15-16).
  - Discussão das propostas da Nova Política de Administração
Conselho de Arbitragem (2010 11 10 a -)
Possível abuso em verificações (2010 11 27 a -)
- Discussão: Possível abuso em verificações
Nova política de bloqueio para a Wikipédia (2010 12 21 a -)

Atenciosamente,

Virgílio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 04:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Adeus Wikipédia

Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:06

To: wikipt@lists.wikimedia.org

From: "Virgilio A. P. Machado" <vam@fct.unl.pt>

Subject: Mais um «lapso»

As minhas desculpas por, mais uma vez, vir perturbar a «paz podre» desta lista, mas esta é a única via a que tenho acesso para fazer publicamente o seguinte pedido.

Só há pouco me apercebi que, por coincidência (para quem acredita nessas coisas), um dos administradores a que aludi, na minha mensagem de 25 de Março p.p., eliminou certamente «por lapso», a marcação {{ensaio}} de uma das «minhas» subpáginas (minha só porque tem lá o meu nome).

Estou impedido de desfazer estes «lapsos». No meu entender deveria ser o próprio administrador a desfazer o «lapso». Parece não haver muita inclinação para certas pessoas limparem o seu próprio «lixo», por qualquer outro editor poder fazê-lo, tal como acontece com o lixo que atiram para a rua, usando o mesmo raciocínio.

Assim, caso o administrador, não esteja disponível para o fazer ele próprio, muito agradecia que algum editor de boa vontade recolocasse a marcação {{ensaio}} na página

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:Vapmachado/Adeus_Wikip%C3%A9dia

O histórico pode ser consultado para mais detalhes.

Aproveito a ocasião para concretizar que a edição errada do mesmo administrador é esta:

http://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recep%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%28armaz%C3%A9m%29&diff=19412596&oldid=15446090

feita, infelizmente, sem conhecimento da matéria e sem qualquer fonte e deve ser revertida, o que, mesmo que quisesse, estava impedido de fazer pelo CA, a não ser que usasse algum «meat puppet» e já se viu qual é o resultado, quando isso contraria ou questiona as acções de certas pessoas.

Atenciosamente,

Virgílio A. P. Machado

Vapmachado 00:38, 5 May 2010 (UTC)