THC Science

Candidates are advised to answer each of these questions completely but concisely. Candidates may refuse to answer any questions that they do not wish to, with the understanding, however, that not answering a question may be perceived negatively by the community.

Note that disclosure of your account history, pursuant to the ArbCom selection and appointment policy, must be made in your opening statement, and is not an optional question.

General questions[edit]

What skills and experience, both on Wikipedia and off, will you bring to the Arbitration Committee if elected?
I've been an arbitrator, in 2005, and a functionary 2006-2010. I've been on Wikipedia since 2004 and created quite a bit of what is now accepted as basic structure here, including co-writing WP:BLP (with SlimVirgin). I've been a press volunteer for Wikipedia, WMF and WMUK since 2005. Listmod on the wikimediauk-l and wikien-l mailing lists. Used to have a pile of others, actively divested myself of most.

Basically, I've been around, think I reasonably have the feel for the place, have done quite a lot of the jobs, know what is involved in this one.
What experience have you had with the Wikipedia dispute resolution processes, both formal and informal? Please discuss any arbitration cases, mediations, or other dispute-resolution forums in which you have participated.
I was an arbitrator in 2005, a functionary 2006-2010. I'll go through the archives and put the list in in a while.
Every case is evaluated on its own merits ... but as a general matter, do you think you would you side more often with those who support harsher sanctions (bans, topic-bans, desysoppings, etc.) against users who have misbehaved, or would you tend to be on the more lenient side? What factors might generally influence your votes on sanctions?
Case by case. I suspect it's easier to avoid gross injustices with weaker sanctions.
Please disclose any conflicting interests, on or off Wikipedia, that might affect your work as an arbitrator (such as by leading you to recuse in a given type of case).
I have a day job, which I'm not naming here because I actually have crazy stalkers who would love to mess up my life (see Outing question below). I can't see that coming to a case though.
Arbitrators are elected for two-year terms. Are there any circumstances you anticipate might prevent you from serving for the full two years?
Not that spring to mind.
Identify a recent case or situation that you believe the ArbCom handled well, and one you believe it did not handle well. For the latter, explain what you might have done differently.
Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) was decided pretty much entirely correctly IMO, though it would be good if that one could have been dealt with before reaching arbcom.

Bad case: I thought the Manning case resolution was an unmitigated disaster, but of course I would say that. The Tea Party case is an example of a case where the arbcom stopped the noise, but by a process of completely abandoning even the illusion of bothering with justice, and blanket-topic-banning everyone within range. This has created considerable community rancour, and made the arbcom look even more capricious and dangerous to go within a mile of than it did before. That the arbcom seemed to get away with it led to the ridiculously kangaroo Manning case, which has actually damaged the BLP policy, and Wikipedia and Wikimedia's public reputation.

Those two terrible, terrible cases, and the paucity of candidates when I nominated, are basically why I'm running - we really can't continue having the arbcom be the cobalt bomb of dispute resolution.
The ArbCom has accepted far fewer requests for arbitration (case requests) recently than it did in earlier years. Is this a good or bad trend? What criteria would you use in deciding whether to accept a case?
The community mechanisms have evolved as Wikipedia collectively gets a better idea of what it's doing. In 2004 it took an arbitration case to ban a disruptive IP, for example. I see this as a good thing. Unfortunately, it leaves only the worst, most rancorous and tangled cases for the arbcom, and trying to sort those out is definitely the worst part of the job.
What changes, if any, would you support in ArbCom's procedures? How would you try to bring them about?
The Workshop pages are a poisonous swamp. Many arbitrators don't even read them, the clerks don't police them. I suggest they be eliminated as a serious net negative.

The arbcom is capricious as hell. This is not workable and promotes fear in the community. Even the functionaries have said the 2013 arbcom has been unusually unpredictable and induces fear in them. This is due to literally no supervision, per next question.

More generally, it's time the arbcom gave justice consideration, rather than mere expediency. Shooting the hostage does solve the noise problem in a manner of speaking, but I think it's proving a terrible general approach. I fully realise just how much work this will involve - nobody really wants the cleanup bill to land on their desk - but I also feel it's time.
What changes, if any, would you support in ArbCom's overall role within the project? Are responsibilities properly divided today among the ArbCom, the community, and the WMF office? Does the project need to establish other governance committees or mechanisms in addition to ArbCom?
The biggest problem with the arbcom is that it runs entirely without supervision. There is literally nobody watching the watchmen. This has led to capricious and abusive behaviour. It is not helped by the arbcom's functional role, which is as the closest en:wp has to a governing body; so anything that resembles a governing function lands on them, so the visible capricious behaviour is only a small part of the activity beneath the surface.
It is often stated that "the Arbitration Committee does not create policy, and does not decide content disputes." Has this been true in practice? Should it be true? Are there exceptions?
The arbcom has historically been terrible at content decisions, and I haven't seen anything to suggest to me that this will change.

There is so much policy and guideline on Wikipedia that it's highly susceptible to reading what you were first thinking of into it. So there's little need to create fresh text to argue over. In practice, it has to set policy and interpretation of policy.
What role, if any, should ArbCom play in implementing or enforcing the biographies of living persons policy?
They should actually enforce it. Their recent neutering of it has been a concern in various Wikimedia movement bodies, who actually get the calls from people with bad bios. The most frequent question I get doing press, after the microphones are off, is "About my article, it's terrible ..." I used to be able to tell them "don't worry, we take living bios very seriously, contact us and it will be dealt with", etc. I can't honestly say that any more, and that's an extremely serious problem for Wikipedia - I don't think people appreciate the degree to which we are tolerated by those with platforms or in power, and how much it relies on us being able to assure them that we will do the right thing and demonstrably do so. I would hope it can be repaired without actually having another Seigenthaler incident.
Sitting arbitrators are generally granted automatic access to the checkuser and oversight userrights on request during their terms. If elected, will you request these permissions? How will you use them?
I'd expect to use oversight if something clearly oversightable came to my personal attention - speed being of the essence. Checkuser I'd generally farm off to a functionary with checkuser, it's way less urgent in general and arbcom is quite enough work. I doubt I'd want to keep either after my term was up.
Unfortunately, many past and present arbitrators have been subject to "outing" and off-wiki harassment during their terms. If this were to happen to you, would you be able to deal with it without damage to your real-world circumstances or to your ability to serve as an arbitrator?
Been there, done that. See below re: outing. We have some nasty banned users, and I've happily served the role of lightning rod before so others don't have to.
Should the Arbitration Committee retain records that include non-public information (such as checkuser data and users' real-life identities) after the matter the information originally related to is addressed? Why or why not?
Anything discussed by email or in IRC should be assumed to be in the archives of anyone who's seen it (as the many public dumps of arbcom-l traffic show) - so it's unclear the extent to which a ban on retention could be enforced. That said, any formal repository of such should be purged regularly.
Under what circumstances, if any, should the Arbitration Committee take action against a user based on evidence that has not been shared with that user? That has not been shared with the community as a whole?
We do actually have stalkers, paedophiles attempting to edit, etc; there are extreme cases where the arbcom needs to be able to act quietly. This does, however, require a formal supervisory body to report such cases to. In the general case, however, accusations and evidence should be as public as is reasonably feasible.

Individual questions[edit]

Please ask your individual questions here. While there is no limit on the number of questions that may be asked, please try to keep questions relevant. Try to be as clear and concise as possible, and avoid duplicating questions that have already been asked.

Add your questions below the line using the following markup:

#{{ACE Question |Q=Your question |A=}}

Question from Mark Arsten[edit]

What do you think is the most striking difference between this current Arbcom and the ones we've had in the past? Please be as specific as possible.
I was particularly struck in the recent Phil Sandifer banning how Beeblebrox stated that the functionaries were in actual fear of the arbcom. That's one I hadn't seen before.

The systemic problem is that arbcom is frequently a horrible and depressing job. So it selects for politicians, who feel the job entails holding on to power. The 2013 arbcom's capriciousness appears to be at an all-time high; and blithe unconcern for even the semblance of justice saves a lot of time, but is poisoning the entire process and the legitimacy of arbcom.

Questions from Collect[edit]

I also use these questions in my voter guide, and the latter four were actually general questions asked in 2012, which I asked be used again.

An arbitrator stated during a case "I will merely say that now arbitration of the dispute has became necessary, it is exceedingly unlikely that we would be able to close the case without any sanctions. Problematic articles inevitably contain disruptive contributors, and disruptive contributors inevitably require sanctions." Do you feel that once a case is opened that impartial arbitrators will "inevitably" have to impose sanctions?
No, that's expediency over justice. The arbcom is at the stage where it does actually have to start thinking about justice, as much work as that will be.
Do sanctions such as topic bans require some sort of finding about the editor being sanctioned based on at least a minimum amount of actual evidence about that person, or is the "cut the Gordian knot" approach of "Kill them all, the Lord will know his own" proper?
The "cut the Gordian knot" approach saves a lot of time, but is poisonous to the community and to trust in the legitimacy of the arbcom at all..
Do you feel that "ignoring evidence and workshop pages" can result in a proper decision by the committee" (I think that for the large part, the evidence and workshop phases were ignored in this case is a direct quote from a current member about a case) Will you commit to weighing the evidence and workshop pages in making any decisions?
Evidence, no. Workshop, as stated above I think that page has outlived its usefulness and is now a net negative to the project.
Past Cases: The Arbitration Committee has historically held that prior decisions and findings were not binding in any future decisions or findings. While this may have been wise in the early years of Wikipedia, is any avoidance of stare decisis still a valid position? How should former cases/decisions be considered, if at all?
It's the same problem as working to policy and guidelines - there's so much of it that you could construct any precedent you felt like. However, breaking expectations is bad, so some attention to past findings, or reasons for deciding otherwise, would be an improvement.
The "Five Pillars" essay has been mentioned in recent discussions. Ought it be used in committee findings, or is it of explanatory rather than of current direct importance to Wikipedia?
This is a question about the degree to which this is the set of principles underlying policy; analogous to a constitution. I remember when it came along, and am slightly surprised at the degree to which it's treated as a constitutional document these days. I would certainly feel that using its wording for principles in cases would be entirely appropriate.
Biographical articles (not limited to BLPs) form a substantial part of conduct issues placed before the committee. Without getting the committee involved in individual content issues, and without directly formulating policy, how should the committee weigh such issues in future principles, findings and decisions?
Not neutering WP:BLP would be a good start, per above. Non-living bios are much like any non-bio article; do you have any particular examples in mind?
Factionalism" (specifically not "tagteam" as an issue) has been seen by some as a problem on Wikipedia (many different names for such factions have been given in the past). Do you believe that factionalism is a problem? Should committee decisions be affected by evidence of factionalism, in a case or around an article or articles? If the committee makes a finding that "factions" exist as part of a conduct issue, how should factionalism be treated in the remedies to the case?
The problem here is that every functioning anarchy has an old-boy network at the core, and that people who aren't in a given group are shocked, shocked to find that other editors know each other. Because some people will never admit they were wrong or incompetent; it must have been a conspiracy against them.

It's an irregular verb: I work with colleagues I trust; You are in a faction; They are in a TAG-TEAMING CONSPIRACY.

I've met a lot of other editors in my nearly ten years on Wikipedia. In my experience, getting to know other editors as people is an unmitigated good - because it reminds you that they are humans worthy of human consideration, not just non-player characters in the Wikipedia MMORPG, and by extension that people you haven't met are also humans worthy of human consideration. I'm all for it and think it should be encouraged as much as possible.

I realise the troll sites' contributors frequently hold that any editors who know each other to any degree online or offline should be assumed to be in a malicious conspiracy unless and until proven otherwise ... but I'd hope sensible people could assume slightly better faith than that.

Thank you. Collect (talk) 20:46, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions by Gerda Arendt[edit]

Thank you for volunteering! I didn't have the pleasure of meeting you so far. For fairness, the same three questions as for the others:

Please describe what happens in this diff. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It appears the infobox is being shifted to top-right, where it conventionally goes. It was a cited example to sanction Pigsonthewing, and I think it was bad evidence for a bad decision. - What were the other two questions?
You are well informed ;) - I ask one after the other, depending on the answer. No. 2: Imagine you are an arb on a case, and your arb colleague presents the above diff as support for his reasoning to vote for banning the editor, - what do you do?
I would question whether that was actually good evidence and question the reasoning that led to considering such.

I will note that one of the most difficult areas of working on the arbcom is the in-committee decision process. Some of the most frankly insane arbcom decisions are formed by taking the pieces of a sensible, nuanced decision and having them mangled in committee. It's an ugly process.
I wonder why that reasonable step was not taken? (I asked the arb.) While voting went back and forth, the description of that diff stayed firmly to the end. - Last question: If you know so much you will also know that the vote to ban was the fifth of eleven arbs, so a sixth would ban. Imagine further that it's now your turn to cast your vote. Assuming you lean towards a ban (or will you never?): will you?
In this case I wouldn't have, as I noted. If my vote were the casting vote on a ban, as you describe, and I thought a ban was the appropriate action, I would vote for that appropriate action. In an ideal world I would also attempt to sway those who disagreed with me, but in practice that's horribly difficult, as I note.

Thank you, go for sensible, nuanced decisions with conviction ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions by Sven Manguard[edit]

The first seven I'm giving to everyone. The last two are just for you.

What is, in your view, the purpose of an ArbCom motion? Under what circumstances, or for what areas or processes, would the use of a motion be your first choice in handling the situation?
To show a decision is that of the arbcom, presumably. It would be the thing to use when a problem can't be handled elsewhere in the community.
When is it not appropriate to start a motion? If the community has reached consensus on an issue, does ArbCom have the right to overrule that consensus with a motion? If the community is unable to resolve an issue for some time, and there is no active ArbCom case related to that issue, can ArbCom step in and settle the issue themselves by motion?
It depends. The community can't legitimately strawpoll to violate core policies, for example. What examples are you thinking of?
Please identify a few motions from 2013 that you believe were appropriate (if any), and a few you believe were inappropriate (if any). Discuss why you have reached the judgements that you did. Do not address the "Phil Sandifer desysopped and banned" motion in this question, it will be addressed in Q4 and Q5.
Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) was decided pretty much entirely correctly IMO, though it would be good if that one could have been dealt with before reaching arbcom.
The "Phil Sandifer desysopped and banned" motion has proven to be hugely controversial. What (if anything) did ArbCom do right in this matter. What (if anything) did ArbCom do wrong in this matter.
The admin bit is arguable; and arbcom does, after all, have the job of regulating admin behaviour. Phil's my friend, but I'd be thinking "ooh, this is not suitable behaviour" and I wouldn't have been comfortable with an active admin doing it. (I'm not sure if that verges into "conduct unbecoming", of which more on that approach's problems elsewhere on this page.)

Calling it an outing is a questionable one, since it happened entirely off-wiki, and Cla68 had been blatantly taking the mickey regarding identity questions, particularly off-wiki. Banning Phil here would logically imply banning about half the regulars on the troll sites, particularly including Cla68 himself, and that was really obvious. Frankly, I think the arbcom telling Cla68 to bugger off and stop trolling would also have been an entirely reasonable answer. The hellbanning, that was ridiculous and outrageous.
In the aftermath of the "Phil Sandifer desysopped and banned" motion, several Arbs laid out their reasoning in extensive detail and debated people that disagreed with their decision. While it is not uncommon for individual Arbs to explain their reasoning in greater detail, it is uncommon for so many of them to do so, to do in the midst of a hostile debate. Do you believe that the ArbCom members' explaining of their position was constructive, or did it only add fuel to an already large fire? Do you believe that ArbCom members should be explaining their reasoning in great detail regularly?
I think it was completely the right thing. The arbcom has, over the past few years, adopted the behaviour of "what happens on arbcom stays on arbcom". I believe this has worked out exceedingly badly in practice; it has led to capriciousness, unpredictability and fear. The arbcom is made of humans with debatable opinions, and in a decision that controversial talking about it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Currently, much of ArbCom business is handled over email, and in other non-public forums. Do you believe that all ArbCom discussions that do not directly concern private information should take place publicly? If so, how? Why or why not?
I certainly believe quite a lot more of them should, and that arbcom list email traffic should be summarised for public consumption to the degree that is feasible. I strongly believe the current procedures have led arbcom to a very bad place, and it will take some fairly radical transparency measures to get it back.
The above question (Q6) was asked to every candidate last year, with several of the ultimately elected candidates pledging to make ArbCom procedures more public, or at least expressing support for such an idea. There has been, as far as I can tell, no progress on the issue.
- If you are a current ArbCom member: What, if anything, has happened on this issue in the past year? What role, if any, are you personally playing in it?

- If you are not a current ArbCom member: If you made a commitment above (in Q6) to bring increased transparency to ArbCom, only to reach the body and find that the rest of the committee is unwilling to move forward on the issue, what would you do?

- All candidates: Do you have any specific proposals that you can offer to address this issue?

I'll certainly be talking more about how arbcom actually decides things in public.
In your statement you indicate a close relationship with WMUK. Please describe your role in WMUK in greater detail, including any leadership positions (official or unofficial) that you have held there and any significant projects you have worked on on WMUK's behalf.
I was one of the founders of WMUK version 1, which failed to achieve charity status (we failed even to achieve a bank account) and died. I'm a volunteer with WMUK version 2, which has been rather more successful, helping with press stuff, visiting them on occasion to chat about stuff and so on. I'm a wikimediauk-l listmod, though that is officially for any UK-relevant Wikimedia-related topics, and is not a WMUK list per se (and this is important to some people).
WMUK has been embroiled in a number of controversies over the past few years. What lessons, if any, can be taken from WMUK's controversies, and/or their handling of controversies, and applied to ArbCom?
I can't think of anything from my own involvement that would be relevant.

Questions from Rschen7754[edit]

I use the answers to these questions to write my election guide. There is a large correlation between the answers to the questions and what the final result is in the guide, but I also consider other factors as well. Also, I may be asking about specific things outside the scope of ArbCom; your answers would be appreciated regardless.

The questions are similar to those I asked in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012; if you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.

What is your view on the length of time that it took for the case Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree shaping?
Three months seems a long time for a case (and would have felt like an eternity for the participants, waiting for the hammer to fall); ideally it should have been far quicker. That said, looking at it I can see exactly how it took that long.
What is the purpose of a WikiProject? b) What is the relationship between stewardship of WikiProject articles and WP:OWN? c) What should be done when there is conflict between WikiProject or subject "experts" and the greater community?
General encyclopedicness is a greater community issue; formatting is a greater community issue; expertise on content is something that should reasonably strongly consider the views of those with the knowledge, including what constitutes a good source, though the greater community may reasonably decide, with due procedure and consultation, "hell no". This can only be reasonably addressed case-by-case.
Does the English Wikipedia have a problem with "vested contributors"? Why or why not? If there is a problem, what is to be done about it?
Being around a long time isn't a licence to be a dick. OTOH, anyone in a conflict thinks the other guy's being a dick.

A problem I have directly observed is when an arbcom won't act because of on-wiki political considerations; i.e., that they perceive someone to be a vested contributor that they might lose votes by sanctioning even when they totally deserve it. (I'm thinking in particular of a case from 2010 of an admin who was running a sockpuppet to harass and personally abuse people, and the functionaries had to beat the 2010 arbcom into actually acting on the matter.)

This also ties into how functioning anarchies actually work, as noted above: every functioning anarchy has an old-boy network at the core, and that people who aren't in a given group are shocked, shocked to find that other editors know each other. I've seen arbitrators express their upset that someone's in an old-boy network they're not in, and need "taking down a peg". It's a knotty problem from both sides.
a) Do you believe that "it takes two to tango" in some circumstances? In every circumstance? b) Would you consider mitigating the sanctions on one user given the actions of another? Eliminating them entirely?
Mitigating circumstances are what admonishments are for. The balance fallacy is real at arbcom, however - see the Tea Party case for an egregious example.
zOMG ADMIN ABUSE!!!!!!! When do you believe that it is appropriate for ArbCom to accept a case, or act by motion, related to either a) abuse of the tools, or b) conduct unbecoming of an administrator?
Abuse of the tools is pretty decidable. "Conduct unbecoming" is really way too squishy to apply unless it's really clear there needs to be a rule. The case where the 2013 arbcom deadminned Ironholds on the completely novel charge of "conduct unbecoming a staff member", as if that's in any way in arbcom's remit, was particularly egregious - I'd think it's an abuse of the arbcom's platform to directly attempt to get a particular WMF staff member fired.
What is the relationship of the English Wikipedia (enwp) ArbCom to other Wikimedia sites, "Wikimedia" IRC, and so-called "badsites" or sites dedicated to the criticism of Wikipedia? Specifically, what do you define as the "remit" of ArbCom in these areas?
A lot of the problem with arbcom in the past few years is that arbitrators actively participate on the troll sites - founded and run by justifiably-banned users - to the point of mistaking them for their constituency. I believe this is a gross error, and directly led to the recent ludicrous spectacle where a dedicated stalker and troll, who had written how-to guides on stalking and outing Wikipedians to get your way, got the arbcom to act for him crying "outing" when he'd been ridiculously public off-wiki, and trolling on-wiki, about his identity and affiliations. And the arbcom, unwilling to admit it had been trolled hard, doubled-down, refusing to admit error, even abusing oversight of a link to pretend it was dealing with a weighty problem. These people are not arbcom's constituency.

More generally, the arbcom behaves as if it has parliamentary privilege. I have had one (current) arbitrator seriously tell me that the arbcom had remit over my work on the 2009 National Portrait Gallery problem - which happened entirely on Commons - because en:wp includes images from Commons. This is ludicrous overreaching. It's not as if there isn't work to be getting on with.
What is your definition of "outing"?
The English-language sense and the Wikipedia sense are closely related, but not identical. To answer the question in Wikipedia terms is fraught - I could say "revealing personal information about an editor in an attempt to harass or to influence Wikipedia activity", but that's not quite detailed enough to form a rule, and attempts to do so have led to ludicrous circumstances as noted in the previous question.

I will note that I have experience of people attempting to make me the target of such for my on-wiki activities, including banned users phone me during dinner attempting to harass me, and trying to intimidate me by talking about family members. (My partner, Arkady Rose, was in the Territorial Army, so in such a circumstance I'd sit back with popcorn.) I'm reasonably privileged in my own life and have happily acted as a lightning rod for these people before, but I'm fully cognisant that not everyone is in such safe circumstances, and that vicious nutters targeting innocent users for innocent edits is a problem we have.

The trouble is that trolls see rules as playground equipment. The case described in the previous question is an example.
What is your opinion as to how the CU/OS tools are currently used, both here on the English Wikipedia, and across Wikimedia (if you have crosswiki experience)?
I have no recent experience with which to address this question. I've spoken to Ombudsman Committee members, and have been greatly reassured as to the quality of the supervision process.
Have you been in any content disputes in the past? (If not, have you mediated any content disputes in the past?) Why do you think that some content disputes not amicably resolved?
I've argued at length with people on talk pages, though nothing in the past few years that springs to mind as going further. I've occasionally successfully come up with a compromise wording that works well for both sides in a dispute, though again only at the talk page level. (If there's bigger content disputes from further back that anyone still particularly remembers, please mention them on the talk page.)
Nearly 10 years from the beginning of the Arbitration Committee, what is your vision for its future?
It's the closest English Wikipedia has to a governing body, and needs to get better at it - it's somewhat comparable to a semi-competent charity board attempting to professionalise and increase its competence. The problem in arbcom's case is that it doesn't scale well, and that's led directly to recent performance problems. However, I'm not sure adding more process will actually help - or how much substantial change in its remit and functions will be accepted by the community.
Have you read the WMF proposal at m:Access to nonpublic information policy (which would affect enwiki ArbCom as well as all CU/OS/steward positions on all WMF sites)? Do you anticipate being able to meet the identification requirement (keeping in mind that the proposal is still in the feedback stage, and may be revised pending current feedback)?
I'm already identified to the WMF, so I don't anticipate any problems. I wonder at the threat model they're attempting to address, and have asked several times over the years just what the threat model is and had no clear answer. I don't see the requirements as onerous, however.

Thank you. Rs chen7754 02:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why you thought I wouldn't answer the questions (I'll get to the content one later). Hope that informs.

Question from Tryptofish[edit]

What are your views about possible changes to procedures concerning the confidentiality of communications on the arbcom-l e-mail list, as proposed at the bottom of this draft page and in this discussion?
I largely concur. In particular, I have no qualms about naming which arbitrator was responsible for pushing a particular decision or for a particular phrase or sentence. The present arbcom omerta is a bad thing.

I must note that arbcom-l emails leak regularly. Anyone who posts to arbcom-l assuming it will never be revealed is demonstrably misinformed. Previous leaks have been of email from arbitrators rather than from worried users emailing the arbcom, though of course this is no guarantee for the future, given a sufficiently rogue arbitrator.

Question from SirFozzie[edit]

You are one of not many people to have advanced permissions (that is CU/OS level permissions) removed involuntarily after a past incident. What is your view of that incident, and what have you learned from it?
That the arbcom does not, in fact, have parliamentary privilege or anything resembling it, despite ongoing (and recent) careless defamatory statements about people. Per second-last question (below), I probably can't answer in a lot of detail, sorry.

I note that you were an active arbitrator at the time, so should be fully informed on the incident and the settlement. Check your email archive. HTH!

Question from Sceptre[edit]

Between allowing a fringe POV pusher to roam free in Sexology, the massive embarrassment of the Manning dispute, and ArbCom instructing admins to undelete libel (see Jimbo's talk page), how would you seek to repair Wikipedia's reputation amongst LGBT–especially transgender–lay-readers?
That, of course, is a question I've had people asking me since the Manning case. Non-straight readers (not just trans ones) have been universally unimpressed that the WMF has not acted to rein in the arbcom (despite what we know of the internal political feasibility of such) and there have been credible threats of fundraiser boycotts (as the WMF takes credit for en:wp in its standard fundraiser text). Other Wikimedia organisations and their staff have been disgusted and horrified by the decision and wonder what the hell they can actually do. There is a WMF blog post about LGBT and Wikipedia coming up, which may or may not address the issue.

If I had a handy solution I'd have applied it. I do intend to push for the worst bits of the decision to be reversed. This case may also further progress towards adult supervision of the arbcom, which is something it sorely needs.

Question from Piotrus[edit]

(Note borrowed from Rschen7754): The questions are similar to those I asked in 2012. If you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.

when would you see a full site ban (full block) as a better choice then a limited ban (interaction, topic, etc.)?
When an editor is clearly irredeemably terrible and will not be a net plus to the encyclopedia - a history of malice or irredeemably not getting it would be examples.
Numerous ArbCom (also, admin and community) decisions result in full site bans (of varying length) for editors who have nonetheless promised they will behave better. In essence, those editors are saying "let me help" and we are saying "this project doesn't want your help". How would you justify such decisions (blocking editors who promised to behave), against an argument that by blocking someone who has promised to behave better we are denying ourselves his or her help in building an encyclopedia? What is the message we are trying to send? (You may find this of interest in framing your reply)
This follows from the previous question on when an editor is irredeemably terrible. Limitations on editors have worked well in practice in recent years, whereas several years they would have just received a years' ban. This has helped in practice with the concern of denying ourselves their help. OTOH, sometimes we're just better off.

OTOOH, I think we're at the stage where the arbcom's blithe unconcern for even the illusion of supplying justice is becoming a problem - and I'm quite aware that the blithe unconcern for justice came about because the AC is very busy, and aware of how much work it would be to supply such a thing.
to an extent we can compare the virtual wiki world to the real world, what legal concept would you compare a full site ban to? (As in, an interaction ban is to a restraining order what a full site ban is to...?)
It's not clear the concepts map very well. Wikipedia isn't a country. Formal expulsion from an organisation would be the closest match to my mind.
The United States justice model has the highest incarceration rate in the world (List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate). Is something to applaud or criticize?
It's entirely unclear to me that this is relevant to running for the Arbitration Committee. Please do clarify.
a while ago I wrote a mini wiki essay on when to block people (see here). Would you agree or disagree with the views expressed there, and why?
The meat of that section appears to be "think about its effect on the encyclopedia process", which I concur with. I disagree that the math is mostly or always going to be simple.
I respect editors privacy with regards to their name. I however think that people entrusted with significant power, such as Arbitrators, should disclose to the community at least their age, education and nationality. In my opinion such a disclosure would balance the requirements for privacy (safeguarding Arbitrators from real life harassment), while giving the community a better understanding of background and maturity of those entrusted with such a significant power. Would you be therefore willing to disclose your age, education and nationality? If not, please elaborate why.
David Gerard, 46, several unfinished degrees, Australian citizen with British right of abode living in the UK (and all of that's already public knowledge). See above re: outing, though, for excellent reasons why we have arbitrators with undisclosed names - there are actual crazy people devoted to the task of messing with people's lives, and arbitrators have a great big target painted on them. I'm fine personally, but I think we do need arbitrators from demographics where they don't feel required to have their lives on display.

I do appreciate how and why this seems a reasonable thing to ask of arbitrators - the Essjay case got its own article - but I also have good reason to think it wouldn't work out well in practice if enforced. Arbitrators being who they are known to be by their on-wiki behaviour hasn't been a problem with the resulting decisions, I think.

Thank you, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Question from User:MONGO[edit]

Please detail your most significant Featured or Good article contributions. GAN, FAC or even Peer Review contributions qualify as evidence of teamwork in bringing an article(s) to a higher level of excellence.
I haven't done the FA circuit in several years. I pushed X Window System, Xenu, GNU/Linux naming controversy and Space opera in Scientology doctrine through FAC back in the day, though only Xenu remains one.

I recently took OpenOffice.org to Peer Review (where it got a good and helpful review, and where I reviewed a few others), GA (where it went unreviewed for weeks; functionally, approximately nobody cares about GA, which has a several months backlog, and admittedly I didn't help the process by not revewing any other GAs myself) and FAC (where it got some very useful fixing-up, but the last review was sufficiently unhelpful that I just thought "this is ridiculous" and decided I had many other things to turn my attention to; FAC also suffers from such a degree of standards creep that it now has a severe lack of reviewers willing to jump through all the hoops, per recent talk page discussion).

I suspect there's a serious problem to be solved here, and it comes down to a question of what the FA/GA process is for and how to make it work for that. The GA process presently pretty much doesn't actually work at all. Obviously, this is outside arbcom's remit. But I am indeed a fan of quality content.

Question from User:Worm That Turned[edit]

Firstly, please accept my apologies for adding to the list of questions! I'm one of the less controversial arbitrators but even I have had my writing twisted, my honesty questioned, my personality derided. I've been the target of unpleasant emails and real life actions. Other arbitrators have been subject to much worse. Have you thought about how being an arbitrator might affect you and what have you done to prepare?
Been there, done that - remember I was on arbcom in 2005. I occasionally make the mistake of reading the troll sites, and always come away feeling dumber. They've written an entire Kremlinology of my history on Wikipedia which appears to have been constructed by a process of "make up nonsensical idea, if it can't be proven false assume it's true, extrapolate from it assuming bad faith" and bears no relationship to reality.

Question from User:Nobs01[edit]

Have you had Checkuser privileges before? If so, when and why were they revoked?
I was the first Checkuser. It was revoked 2010 (though I hadn't used it for most of 2010, except for tracking one particulary nasty troll). The matter is the subject of an agreement to settle between myself and the 2010 arbcom brokered by Wikimedia legal at the time, which involved the arbcom agreeing to completely oversight its statements about me, so I can't actually go into detail myself. They didn't like something I wrote offsite. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Please provide a list of all current and past alternate accounts you avowed to use.
I'm not sure on the construction "avowed to use", but the only registered alternate I have is User:Querulous, who's made one edit ever. I just edit as me.

Questions from Newyorkbrad[edit]

You allege in your candidate statement that current arbitrators have engaged in the "abuse of powers (including oversight) to suppress criticism of their decisions." I am unaware of anyone attempting to "suppress criticism" of the ArbCom, nor of any arbitrator deluded enough to imagine that this were possible, let alone desirable. What are you talking about?
AGK's use of oversight on links to Phil Sandifer's blog post on the part of Wikipedia Weekly, to try to make the claimed threat look bigger. BADSITES is a failed policy proposal. I expect nothing to be done about this, but it's still pretty clearly abuse of the oversight mechanism.

This was in the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Phil_Sandifer_desysopped_and_banned ... which was just under three weeks ago, and you were an active participant in that discussion, so I would expect you would already know the answer to your question.
Do you think that the level of civility and decorum you have maintained in discussing Wikipedia-related controversies both on- and off-wiki over the past several years is consistent with your former role as a "functionary" and the position you seek as an arbitrator?
I would suggest that the arbcom has serious problems, and that slapping another layer of decor on top of the process when unpleasant things are already breaking through the veneer is not, in fact, the correct approach. The arbcom approach to "decorum" has, in practice, been to pretend all is well, even when it's clearly not, and actively intimidate those who point out the problems.

The meat of your question's assumptions is "I don't want you running", which is fine as an opinion but not as an assumed factual finding.

Brad, you're renowned as a careful and thoughtful arbitrator. Please try to take an outside view for a moment. Somehow, through small reasonable steps, in good faith, you've ended up in a place where your own functionaries are afraid of you. How did you get there?
Do you consider it appropriate to have overtly promoted your candidacy in this election today on your Twitter feed?
This is the election of the governing body for the #6 website in the world; it is a matter of public interest, and should be more widely known; it arguably should have been publicised.

My friends are interested in my candidacy, so I'm hardly going to pretend I'm not running.

It is literally impossible to sway the vote with a sockpuppet army by publicising the vote, so the only effect would be that ... entirely eligible voters may, in fact, vote. I'd hope you didn't consider that intrinsically problematic.

Question from User:HectorMoffet[edit]

The number of Active Editors on EnWP has been in decline since 2007.

This decline has been documented extensively:

In our own "Editor Trends Study"
In popular media ("Nobody wants to edit Wikipedia anymore")
In scholarly literature ("How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline")

This raises several questions:

Is this really problem? Or is it just a sign of a maturing project reaching an optimum community size now that the bulk of our work is done?
I think it's a problem. This is a highly-examined matter, as you can imagine. The interesting thing is comparisons to other Wikipedias - that have experienced a similar decline in the same years, despite not being at the same stage as en:wp. This suggests it's more than just a systemic problem on en:wp. Though anyone can think of quite addressable systemic problems on en:wp, of course.
In your personal opinion, what steps, if any, need to be taken by the EnWP Community?
If I had a programme I thought would work, I'd be putting it forward already.

This is a problem I've applied thought to: what repels editors? Perceived deletionism is a big one to people I speak to; those of us inside the project think of it as managing a firehose of rubbish, but when someone adds something they've worked on and it gets deleted, they take it personally. Not biting the newbies is something we seriously need work on. Wikipedia's rules are arbitrary and confusing.
In your personal opinion, what steps, if any, need to be taken by the Foundation?
This is something they have a serious interest in and are devoting resources to, and I'm not going to joggle their elbow.

I think the Visual Editor will be fantastic ... when it works properly. At present I'd call it a really nice beta. I think this will seriously increase the number of casual editors e.g. fixing typos.
Lastly, what steps, if any, could be taken by ArbCom?
I've previously thought the power of civility enforcement would be effective (enforce it on admins, which the arbcom can in fact do, and they will enforce it on everyone else), but I'm no longer sure this would work out well.

The arbcom's behaviour is arbitrary and confusing and lately odious. This has negative effects in the wider world and repels people from even trying to contribute. Repairing appearances here requires repairing functionality, which won't be a very fast process.

Questions from John Cline[edit]

Do you agree with the factual findings[1] placed against you, and the remedy they engendered[2] in the "Manning naming dispute" case?
No and no, oddly enough. The talk pages, workshop pages, etc. contain extensive details of my opinions on the precise topic. The finding there was in fact a compromise finding from Salvio deciding, at Cla68's suggestion, that I had actively conspired beforehand regarding the Chelsea Manning article, and then explicitly requiring me to prove the negative, which was of course impossible (both philosophically and because it didn't happen).
If you had not recently been embroiled in the "Manning naming dispute" case, would you still have nominated yourself for an Arbcom seat on this election cycle?
I think that was one of several last straws. I'd previously thought the Rich Farmborough and Pigsonthewing cases were terrible decisions that were directly damaging to the encyclopedia; the Tea Party decision was a clear dereliction of duty; the Manning case was jawdropping; and hellbanning Phil Sandifer was the arbcom clearly utterly losing it in public. I decided to run when I saw there were nine nominees for nine positions, realised I was quite capable of doing a couple of years' arbcom slog and that I probably needed to run, because the 2013 arbcom had behaved in such a directly damaging manner and work needed to start on fixing it.
If an amendment of the "Manning naming dispute" case or a request for clarification of the same was brought before The Committee, and you were a sitting arbitrator, would you recuse?—Why or why not?
I would probably recuse from the voting, but not from discussing the matter. The Manning decision can only be described as broken, stupid and damaging; it would be a dereliction of duty not to attempt to fix it.
If the same request described in Q3 was before The Committee, and you were not a sitting arbitrator, would you participate in the discussion?—Why or why not?
Of course I would.

Question from Carrite[edit]

Sorry that this comes so late in the game. What is your opinion of the website Wikipediocracy? Does that site have value to Wikipedia or is it an unmitigated blight? If it is the latter, what do you propose that Wikipedia do about it? To what extent (if any) do you feel that abusive actions by self-identified Wikipedians on that site are actionable by ArbCom?
As I've answered at length above, I think a site run by and populated by justifiably-banned spammers, trolls and nutters is not arbcom's constituency. Thinking that it is is a large part of the problem with the 2013 arbcom. Every time I make the mistake of looking at it I feel stupider afterwards. Wikipedia in general should basically ignore them. "Don't feed the troll."

Thank you. Carrite (talk) 03:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Cla68[edit]

Who was it that made the request to block the Overstock.com and Wordbomb's hometown's IP ranges? If you weren't the one who range blocked Wordbomb's hometown, who was it? In retrospect, do you feel that it was a good decision on your part to participate in those actions?
Is it acceptable to call a living person by name on WP or one of the publicly available Wikien mailing lists and tell them to "F-off?"
Were you a member or recipient of any of the mailing lists hosted on Wikia or other external sites that were administered by Wikipedia administrators around the 2006-2007 timeframe? If so, were those mailing lists ever used to coordinate editing, votes in RfAs, deletion discussions, or content RfCs?
I've noticed that you sometimes reference items that have appeared on Wikipediocracy. Although you say that you don't value the site, you appear to be consistent reader of it. How many times in a week would you say you look at Wikipediocracy?
Do you believe that someone who has successfully submitted over 20 articles for Featured Article is here to help write an encyclopedia?
Should Wikipedia take a stand or take a side on transgender or LGBT issues?
Phil Sandifer mentioned in his blog that two individuals provided him with off-wiki links that enabled him to identify my employer and place of residence. Were you one of those two people he was referring to?
I was going to ignore these, per the principle noted in the previous question, but there are answers to be given that would be useful to other readers.

1. I don't recall in detail - this was 2007 - but I was leading the investigation on that one, so probably me. It would have been a desperation move in a serious case; we have finer-grained approaches these days.

Considered retrospectively, the Overstock.com case, in which agents of a commercial entity (overstock.com) worked very hard to stack Wikipedia content and viciously harass Wikipedia contributors for commercial advantage, is an early example of a present concern: hidden corporate influence on Wikipedia content. This is a matter that Wikipedia contributors are mild on - I remain surprised just how vehemently Wikipedia's non-editing readers object to the slightest taint of corporate influence on Wikipedia. As such, I would say, given examples like the Wiki-PR case, it would likely be even more appropriate in 2013 than it was at the time, and suspect that in the present day Wikimedia legal would be taking a direct interest.

2. It would, of course, depend entirely on the case. I'd probably attempt to be diplomatic these days and in extremis go as far as "bugger".

3. See 7 below.

4. Maybe once every six months or so. I did in fact look today and see you preparing these questions, for what that's worth.

5. This is, again, a matter to consider case by case. If said FA contributor - who should indeed be lauded for their efforts - were also engaged in stalking and outing other contributors for advantage in disputes, even writing guides to doing so, and behaved sufficiently as a net negative and indeed were repeatedly sanctioned and blocked for precisely this, I suspect I might well come down on the side of deciding that the contributor's poisonous effects on the operations of the community were not outweighed by their content contributions.

6. The Foundation, of course, has done precisely this - note reference to users. So then the question is how to respond when the governing body of a Wikimedia community defies this, openly or through selective enforcement.

3, 7. No and no (and no). These questions are a good example of the bad reasoning skills favoured by Wikipediocracy regulars: come up with a ridiculous accusation without evidence and demand it be proven false, per above. Because, per above, some people cannot accept their own incorrectness or incompetence and immediately assume opposition must be a conspiracy, because they naturally assume everyone else is already behaving as badly as they would given the opportunity.

Thanks for the questions, and I hope readers will understand if I don't reply to any further questions from you here. The talk page remains available.

Additional questions from Cla68[edit]

For the record, if you were an Arb during the Manning case, what sanctions would you have proposed? Specifically, who would you have voted to admonish or ban?
You refer above to revoked Checkuser privileges being subject to [3] "an agreement to settle between myself and the 2010 arbcom brokered by Wikimedia legal". Did you make a legal threat? Who has the authority to make this agreement public? Would you be willing to state you favor having it public?

Questions from Letsbefiends (talk)[edit]

Will you keep transparency, justice, civility and neutrality as central principles during your term at ArbCom? If so, how will you go about it?
I think they'd make a necessary change, as outlined above at length.

Questions from iantresman[edit]

How important do you think is transparency and accountability for Admins and Arbitrators, bearing in mind that: (a) Checkuser and Oversight have no public logs, even though we could say who accesses these features (without necessarily giving compromising information)? (b) ArbCom has its own off-site discussion area.
There's obvious good reason for checkuser and oversight logs not to be publicly available. As I've noted above, I've actually asked ombudsman committee members about this and have been greatly reassured by the answers: they do in fact investigate claims seriously, have had to deal with actual issues and have done so. As I've noted above, arbcom could do with being made more transparent; the present practice of "what happens on arbcom stays on arbcom" seriously needs changing, because I think we can pretty clearly say by now that it hasn't worked out at all well. Admins, every admin action is logged and visible.
I see lots of ArbCom cases where editors contribute unsubstantiated acusations without provided diffs, and often provide diffs that don't backup the allegations. Do you think ArbCom should do anything about it? (ie. strike though allegations without diffs).
It would be nice if arbitrators actually went through the slog of checking the diffs - because frequently, they clearly just do not. As a common platform for spurious allegations, I think the workshop page is a nice idea but has been a dismal failure in practice, and we should get rid of it.
Incivility on Wikipedia is rife. Sometimes it is ambiguous and subjective. But where it is clear, why do you think enough is done to uphold this core policy?
I haven't claimed enough is done to uphold this core policy, and I'm not convinced enough is. I'm not sure of an approach that will work, however, as noted above.
Editors whose username lets them be identified easily in real life, are frequently subjected to "oppositional research" by anonymous editors who can readily achieve WP:PRIVACY. Do you think this double standard is fair, and should anything be done?
As one of the targets of such, it doesn't quite feel fair. I don't have a handy answer that wouldn't make worse problems. As I detail above, many people have good reason not to want to put their lives on display.
I see lots of ArbCom cases where Arbitrators appear to ignore the comments of the editors involved. Do you think that basic courtesies should require Arbitrators to make more than just an indirect statement, and actually address the points being made?
In an ideal world, certainly. But any clearer answer would require actual examples to address.

Questions from Robofish[edit]

Do you consider your behaviour with respect to the Chelsea Manning article, as described by ArbCom here[4], to be compatible with the high standards expected of a person holding a position of trust in Wikipedia?
This was already asked above and answered.

Question from Bazonka[edit]

Wikipedia is largely an on-line community, and some editors prefer their activities to remain entirely on-line. However, other Wikipedians engage in off-line, real world Wikipedia activities, such as Wikimeets, outreach work, or training. How much are you currently involved in these off-line activities, and would this be different if you were or were not on the Arbitration Committee?
Not hugely. As a press volunteer, my phone is of course the world's (it's +44 7733 223 584, if anyone cares; feel free to leave a message), so I expect I'll be answering queries as long as it's in media phone lists. I occasionally go to events representing Wikipedia in some capacity, e.g. in recent times, talking to PR people about how to deal properly with Wikipedia. I expect these will continue at the same infrequent rate. (I do make a point of clearly stating what capacity I'm speaking in, and occasionally it even makes it into the eventual writeup.)

Question from user:Ykantor[edit]

Should "Petit crimes" be sanctioned? and how ?

The present situation is described as User:Wikid77#Wiki opinions continued says: "some acting as "inter-wikicity gangs" with limited civility (speaking euphemistically)...Mob rule: Large areas of wikis are run by mobocracy voting. Numerous edit wars and conflicts exist in some highly popular groups of articles, especially in recent events or news articles. In those conflicts, typically 99% of debates are decided by mob rule, not mediated reason...Future open: From what I've seen, the Wiki concept could be extended to greatly improve reliability, but allow anonymous editing of articles outside a screening phase, warning users to refer to the fact-checked revision as screened for accuracy (this eventually happened in German Wikipedia"

At the moment there is no treatment of those little crimes. i.e. deleting while cheating, lying, arguing for a view with no support at all against a well supported opposite view, war of attrition tactics, deleting a supported sentence, etc. The result is distorted articles and some fed up editors who discontinue to edit. I can provide examples, if asked for.

In my view, each of these small scale problems does not worth a sanction , but the there should be a counting mechanism, such as a user who has accumulated a certain amount of them, should be sanctioned. What is your view?

A minor misconduct counter, may relieve the arbitrators to deal with the "heavy duty" problems. Currently they justifiably sanction a complainant who disturbs with minor claims. As a result, some Complainants may stop editing (I may produce examples).Ykantor (talk) 03:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have much experience of the problem you describe. The way arbitration has previously dealt with it is that when someone who's been a long-running nagging ache comes up before them, they find some justification for the response the subject seems to deserve. But this is less than ideal in many ways. I'm not sure a counting mechanism will do the job the problem requires in a widely usable manner. In an ideal case, an arbitration decision would specifically refer to the years of problematic behaviour. But then, infinite demands for idealism are possible, when the task before the committee is to fix the problem before it. I suppose the key problem is that doing justice and appearing to do justice are going to be a huge amount of extra work. But I fear it's work the 2014 arbcom is going to need to take on.
Does Our NPOV policy mean that an editor is violating the policy if he only contributes to one side?

The issue is discussed here: [5].

In my opinion, the view that every post should be neutral leads to a built in absurd. Suppose that the best Wikipedia editor is editing a group of biased articles. He is doing a great job and the articles become neutral. The editor should be sanctioned because every single edit (as well as the pattern of edits) is biased toward the other side. !

Currently I am compiling a list of problems for the 1948 war article. This partial list highlight some wp:pov against Israel but none against the Arabs. The reason is that the article is heavily biased against Israel. Even an ideal editor would not be able to write for the enemy, because it is already written. Ykantor (talk) 03:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In the general case, Wikipedia:Writing for the enemy is the ideal to work for. I'm not so sure that attempting to enforce it in the general case is such a good idea. In the particular case you reference, Israel-Palestine has been a perennial floating flamewar since I've been on Wikipedia, and the arbcom isn't going to fix it without fixing the world.

So I would consider "write for the enemy" an ideal (so, a guideline) rather than a requirement (policy). Because it's really hard to enforce. But it's one we should all be heeding. I do try to myself.

Questions from user:Martinevans123[edit]

Should articles ever use The Daily Mail as a reference source? Should articles ever use YouTube videos as external links? Is there still any place for a "WP:civility" policy, or does it depend on how many "good edits" an editor makes? Is humour now an outdated concept at Wikipedia? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving it a bit late! 1. With extreme caution (c.f The Register). 2. I certainly know of many cases where they should and do. 3. It would make a nice change. 4. Humour may be confusing; humor tends to get broader understanding, at the expense of subtlety.

The deeper answer for 1 and 2 is: "a detailed thicket of rules is an inadequate substitute for editorial judgement, and complete Taylorisation of Wikipedia processes was never a good idea."

Indeed, but am looking forward to the real Taylorisation of Wikipedia. Thanks for the brevity and honesty. I find your whole approach refreshingly open. You have my vote (well, one of them, anyway!) Martinevans123 (talk) 19:54, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]