[Wiktionary-l] What happens when democracy fails..

...or meritocracy, too, or any other form of spontaneous self-organizing structure, when the number of contributing members involved doesn't really exceed the necessary threshold imposed by the premises of non-ad hominem reasoning. You most likely end up in a situation similar to that of my request for adminship on Croatian Wiktionary, where users who cumulatively had <50 edits in the main namespace prior to the moment of my request (made 5 days ago) cast all of a sudden opposing votes [1], which is for each of them the very first sign of activity in that project after months and months of absence [2]. The only two users who are real and active contributors with no personal bias are supportive of my request. I've created an account on Croatian wiktionary in April, when I started adding declensions and meanings for 100 or so nouns. Recently I started contributing on English wiktionary too [3], and returned to Croatian Wiktionary about a week ago, after having been acquainted with en.wikt's policies on article layout, non-manual categorization and other template tricks (context labels!), eager to backpropagate them to hr.wikt. Facts, such as that at the moment of my return there hasn't been a single declension/inflection template made for any language (I made all of them, even the basic ones like hr-noun, and have been making a few new ones every day since), or that the only currently "active" administrator made the last edit 1.5 months ago [4], or that the sitenotice message [5] was (and still is!) set to Wikimedia Board of Trustees election (which ended months ago) - all of them speak for themselves. Approximately 2/3 of currently present lexemes need either quick deletion, or relocation to other projects (Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikipedia), as they surely don't belong to wiktionary. The category of articles awaiting administrator's deletion [6] is growing bigger each day, as there is noone to clean it up. Moreover, I also invited two friends of mine to accompany me in that brave conquest of the forsaken project [7] - those are the ones that voted supportively; each of us has added to hr.wikt more quality content than all other registered users altogether ever since the project started 2 years ago (Polish user Pomarancza is the only notable exception). The conclusion is quite straightforward: current admin voting rules (that is, the complete lack of them!) clearly are not beneficial to the project. They are set to validate all votes cast, regardless of valuable voters' contributions, or personal grudges the voters might have with the requester. Users who have shown complete disregard for wiktionary for years and let it stagnate indefinitely (and it was stagnating prior to my arrival - there were no quality edits for > 1 month) now are popping out of nowhere (and some users [8] are registering for the sole purpose of this voting occasion), all for the sake of disabling a user they label as "persona non grata" becoming an administrator, even though it is evident that the project is in desparate need of a leader. I've intentionally left out "highlights" of some of /personal/ disputes that took place in other hr.wikiprojects (I'm willing to provide them, upon request, by non-public means), which render understandable otherwise seemingly legitimate (yet clearly ill-motivated) opposing votes. The sheer fact that none of the opposers mentioned any concrete reason for me being incompetent, or unsuitable, speaks also for itself. Too bad that labeling someone as "inopportune" can't really be an argument, can it. What can do one confronted with such sheer manifestations of bias and malevolence? I am urging the responsible stewards to render invalid the votes of those having < 50 edits at the moment of my request (21:43, 20. 8. 2007.), as soon as I post my request on meta a few days from now (the project doesn't have any bureaucrats ATM), as it is the general voting rule on other, more civilized wiktionaries. Please don't let all of this pass unnoticed. Ivan Stambuk. * Some of /personal/ disputes (for which I'm not listing the details, being ready to provide them by non-public means) originate from other hr.wikiprojects. The sheer fact that none of the opposers mentioned any concrete reason for me being incompetent, or unsuitable, speaks also for itself. Too bad that labeling someone as "inopportune" can't really be an argument, can it. [1] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wje čnik:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_administratore#Ivan_.C5.A0tambuk [2] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Donatus http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/MayaSimFan http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/West_Brom_4ever http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Roberta_F. http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Treecko http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Ante_Perkovic [3] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ivan_Štambuk [4] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Luka_Krstulović [5] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice [6] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kategorija:Članci_predloženi_za_brisanje [7] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Sanja_Simat http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Kasandra [8] http://hr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Posebno:Contributions/Pantana