THC Science

Opabinia regalis[edit]

Well, this is about the last thing I ever thought I'd do here.

My qualifications for the job consist almost entirely of being a level-headed, deliberative, analytical person who is usually pretty good at connecting to the human beings behind the pixels on the screen (despite being an extinct invertebrate). I'm an admin, though not of terribly long standing (ahem, I'll spin this as "unique perspective"). I have no other special permissions and am not important in any ~~other~~ way. I work on articles about biochemistry and think of myself as primarily content-focused (though that damn pie chart has been making a liar out of me lately). My day job is scientific research, and I think the habits of mind that come from digging through a mountain of complex and inconsistent evidence in order to parse out reasonable conclusions are fairly transferable skills. I'm part of this project because I believe in the mission of providing widely accessible, freely licensed content to the public; if I have a "platform" here, it is to center arbcom's activities on supporting that mission.

I'm also a woman in a predominantly male STEM field. The topic of Wikipedia's "gender gap" has been very fraught lately and is full of heated rhetoric on all sides. In a related but distinct development, the problem of harassment of Wikipedia volunteers has become a major issue recently. I think we could really benefit from hearing more women's voices on the committee regarding these issues.

I'm putting my name in now because a) we don't yet have any female candidates, and I hope more will join me; and b) I'd like to start taking questions this weekend. As a note, I'm traveling for Thanksgiving and then again for a long-planned work event the first week of December. On that topic, all else being equal, I think it's good for positions of wiki-responsibility to include people with diverse off-wiki lives and obligations, and it's important that arbcom tasks be structured to make effective use of available volunteer time. Where work can be given back to the community, we all win: perceived power is decentralized, decisions can be made more transparently, and arbcom can concentrate on its core functions.

Mandatory stuff:

I meet the criteria for access to non-public data and am willing to sign the confidentiality agreement.
I have two alternate accounts: a non-admin account Opabinia externa that I occasionally use on my phone, and an old test account Opabinia robotus originally intended for a bot that never materialized.

Individual questions[edit]

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Question from Rcsprinter123[edit]

In your own words, please explain the purpose of the Arbitration Committee and why its existence is necessary. And what, if any, changes or reforms would you support regarding the structuring and processes of Wikipedia's arbitration system?
Currently I see arbcom's jobs as 1) resolving otherwise intractable disputes; 2) handling matters involving private information; and 3) miscellaneous other things glommed onto arbcom because there was no other logical place to put them. It's sort of by historical accident that 1 and 2 are handled by the same committee, but since many disputes do involve private information, I think this is reasonable. As is probably obvious from the description, I would be happy to see the back of any task in category 3 that can reasonably be given back to the community, so that arbs can concentrate their efforts on the tasks where they're most effective. For example, I'm not entirely sure why the logjam on BASC has just now finally broken, but I'm glad to see it; finding another avenue for appeals not involving private information was going to be one of my recommended reforms and then the current arbs got to this issue first.
As for restructuring, I think I'm not the only one who sees the current procedures as too bureaucratic. There's too much paperwork and too many ways to make mistakes. More broadly, I think this past year has shown difficulties with communication between arbs and parties - a lot of cases have been decided very slowly, without much reliable information to the parties on when things might be resolved, possibly because arbs were buried in non-case-related off-wiki work. Being involved in an arbcom case is already stressful enough; this kind of indeterminate delay can be alienating and can make people who put their time into gathering and presenting evidence feel that their efforts weren't valued or respected, even if the cause is an unremarkable logistical problem. I don't have a magic bullet for this one, but I do hope that streamlining arbcom's internal procedures (for example, by moving to a CRM system) and moving some tasks back to the community will give arbs more time to work productively on resolving cases. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Yash![edit]

In the past couple of years, the ArbCom has closed various cases, passed motions, and such. Is/Are there any outcome/s that you disagree with? If yes, which? And, what result/s would you have rather preferred? Ya sh! 12:06, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is a really broad question, and I'd wonder about the sanity of anyone who said no, they didn't disagree with any recent cases :) The series of cases broadly related to the "gender gap" and to the treatment of women on Wikipedia - GGTF, Gamergate, Lightbreather, AE1, and now AE2 - have generated a lot of project-wide dispute. I don't want to comment on the ongoing AE2 case, but I do think this series of cases has become a source of discord in its own right. Most of the individual decisions and remedies from this series make sense in a "seemed like a good idea at the time" kind of way, but looking back through the retroscope, they collectively suggest a sort of myopic, whack-a-mole approach to a complex systemic problem. I think I've commented elsewhere that this looked like a lack of strategic thinking, but I'm not sure if it's that or if it's just that 15 strategies can't all be pursued at once.
In any case, those are divisive and complicated issues, so to answer your question I'll pick some more focused examples:
1) I wish the recent amendment to the Richard Arthur Norton case had been handled differently. The community had found a reasonable approach that would have allowed restricted, supervised content creation on his part, with a willing and capable volunteer to do the supervising, and instead he was asked to invest some time pushing a boulder up a hill. There is certainly a "natural consequences" internal logic to the decision that RAN should make efforts on his CCI before creating new content, but I don't think it was the most practical approach to the longer-term goal of getting copyright-violation-free content into the encyclopedia. (As a side note, the extremely industrious CCI volunteers deserve a lot of thanks for their work, but the process is slow and tedious manual labor and seems like the sort of thing that could really benefit from more technical support.)
2) The recent Neelix case was sort of a bureaucratic mess, even if we got to the right place in the end. I would've wanted to start on that issue by having a quiet word in private before doing anything on-wiki, but of course I don't know if that happened or not. (And about the "Super Mario" concerns, I would've said the same about any established editor regardless of which user rights they have.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:30, 15 November 2015 (UTC) Note: edited to copyedit first paragraph Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:41, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Gerda Arendt[edit]

Thank you for stepping forward! A woman who will pass kittens and cookies!

Arbitration findings and the wishes of principal editors govern the use of infoboxes in articles. If you want to win my "neutral" please say how you would close the discussion at Talk:Joseph (opera)#Restore infobox?
Ah, I think you've shown me that discussion before :) I don't see that this particular discussion can be reasonably closed in favor of returning the infobox to the article, although that is my personal preference, and in my view those in favor have stronger arguments. The infobox disputes have caused a lot of "article ownership" debates, perhaps inevitably if the matter has to be decided case by case and article by article but the participants and their preferences are relatively stable. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:20, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am getting really tempted to put a plate of cookies up here near the top of the page, so people have something to snack on while they read all this stuff :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:52, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has been blocked for a month in the name of arbitration enforcement for having said that he creates half of his featured content with women. I find it kafkaesque and remember the opening of The Metamorphosis for an analogy. If you want to win my "support", please - on top of #1 - suggest improvements to get from arbitration enforcement ("not a fun place") to arbitration supervision, where such a thing would not happen. I offered some thoughts, wishing to see Floquenbeam's "no foul, play on" more often, or Yunshui's "The edit was unproblematic and actually made Wikipedia better."
This one's about a current case that I've already commented in - in fact, I think I also used the word "Kafkaesque" about a related matter - and I'd prefer not to comment further here, since having candidates backseat-driving current cases from the elections pages is probably distracting to the current arbs.
On the general topic, I don't like the use of "escalating" blocks for non-escalating breaches of restrictions. This produces a ratchet effect that eventually results in a sanction too disproportionate not to draw a backlash. I do wish for more common sense when it comes to enforcement requests - the first bullet point on your template is good to keep in mind. Basically I would like people to do more nothing when they find the opportunity. Doing nothing is a valuable skill. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:20, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Collect[edit]

Can a case be opened without presuming that sanctions will be necessary? Do you feel that once a case is opened that impartial arbitrators will "inevitably" have to impose sanctions?
Yes and no, respectively. The first stage of a case is gathering evidence for a reason; if the evidence doesn't substantiate the need for sanctions, so be it. That being said, a case wouldn't be ripe for arbitration if it appeared at the outset that no sanctions would result. (The exception being an AE1-style case constructed to clarify procedural matters.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If an administrator states (hypothetically) "You will vote however you like, and I am frankly not interested in changing your mind, but you should at least be honest about why you are opposing me. At the moment, you are not", would that administrator be considered "involved" or "impartial" in any way with the editor in whose talk space he made such an edit?
In the hypothetical situation where this is actually a hypothetical, the answer would be "it depends on the context" :) In isolation that sounds reactive and a little thin-skinned, but it's impossible to judge honesty out of context. Of course it's not really a hypothetical, and I don't see much use in commenting on the real situation at this point. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are arbitators under any reasonable obligation to afford editors who are out of the country on a trip, or have other substantial reasons for absence from a case, any delays in considering cases concerning them? If such a person is given only 1000 words to rebut 1000 words from each of five or more "evidence providers", is that a reasonable limit to place on the defendant, or ought the limit be raised to allow rebuttal of each such section?
As indicated in my statement, I am generally inclined to accommodate editors' real-life obligations to the greatest reasonable extent. Opening a case is rarely a matter of extreme urgency, especially if framed around one party and that party is temporarily unavailable. However, it's just not practical to schedule cases to the personal satisfaction of everyone involved. At some point the argument that real life comes first starts to favor going on with the case to get the wiki-business settled, since the person with the scheduling conflict has more important things to do in any event.
I'm also inclined to be relatively flexible with word limits; where a case clearly has "sides" with unequal numbers of parties, it's reasonable to give an extension to the outnumbered party if they need it (though a 5-fold increase is unlikely). But constraints can be liberating; the inclination to rebut every allegation by every person on the other side would be very unlikely to produce an effective presentation of evidence. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Guerillero[edit]

Thank you for running for the hardest and most thankless job on the project. Many of these questions are sourced from actual cases, discussions, and problems over the past year. Enjoy!

Subcommittees[edit]

The Audit Subcommittee was created in 2009 to investigate improper tool usage of our Check Users and Oversighters. Currently, neither the community nor the committee can decide how to handle it. There have been calls to completely disband the subcommittee, transfer its role to the functionaries en banc, and extend it for another year. The current auditors terms expired on 1 October, 2015 and they have been continuing in their roles without formal authorization. What would you do about the subcommittee if you were elected to ArbCom?
I have to admit this is not a matter I'm very familiar with, since I'm neither a checkuser nor an oversighter. In particular, I don't know what the typical AUSC workload looks like, or how much time is needed to resolve a typical request for review. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect the current members to continue on indefinitely without a plan to resolve the issue. I'd be somewhat hesitant to endorse the "en banc" solution, since that's not a task the existing functionaries were selected to do, but since I can't think of a better idea I'd probably call that my first choice. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Ban Appeals Subcommittee exists to hear appeals of community bans and long-term blocks. There have been moves to divest this role from the committee. What would you do about the subcommittee if you were elected to ArbCom?
Looks like there is already momentum on this - as I said above, I'm not sure exactly what is breaking the logjam here or why it happened now, but by most accounts this process has been a low-yield time sink. I'd personally be satisfied to see it abolished as an entity (sounds like it was a largely notional one in the first place), with the committee continuing to review matters specifically involving private information. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Current Disputes and Cases[edit]

What are your standards for banning someone from the project compared to a topic ban or some lesser sanction?
Committed, productive volunteers are critical to the success of the project and the most important factor in considering a site ban is respecting their safety, their time, and their contributions. I mention safety first because there should be no leniency for harassment, abuse, threats, doxing, outing, and other behaviors that compromise the well-being of volunteer contributors.
When it comes to time and effort, it's more of a balancing act. I'd support a site ban for cases of paid or unpaid advocacy or POV-pushing where the editor shows no inclination to edit other topics, causes conflicts with many neutral editors in a topic area, and where a topic ban hasn't been successful - we just can't be wasting volunteer time on cleaning up after people whose content contributions are unusable and embarrassing. A similar argument applies to egregious or repeated behaviors like abusive sockpuppetry, copyvios, BLP violations, and so forth, though many of these issues get handled by the community. On the other hand, for that category of people who are prickly or volatile or otherwise considered difficult to work with, but who are themselves good contributors, I'm very much inclined to find alternatives to a site ban. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nearly every case involves violations of the civility policy in some way. At one time, a remedy call a "Civility Parole" existed but it fell out of vogue. Today, the only tools in the current Arbitrator's toolboxes to deal with civility issues are interaction bans, topic bans, and site bans. What new and creative ways would you bring to the table to solve this problem?
Well, sometimes the civility problems are the problem and sometimes they're a symptom of a different problem. So I don't agree that these are the only tools in the toolbox; in some cases incivility is secondary to another issue - e.g., frustration from dealing with POV-pushing or trolling or harassment - and dealing with the source of the frustration may improve the editing environment without the need for specific civility-related remedies.
Even where there isn't a specific obvious cause, most incivility on the project is reactive, because someone was angry or upset. And then there's the "incivility" that comes in the form of superficially civil baiting and insults, which tends to fly under the radar due to not producing a single spectacular curse-word-laden diff. It's not exactly creative, but my best suggestion is to make sure arbs have enough time to dig deep enough into the evidence to understand the context behind instances of incivility and figure out whether remedies and restrictions can address the underlying problem.
I've also noticed a few proposals recently on using technical rather than social tools to implement behavioral restrictions. IIRC there was one for technical implementation of a topic ban, and there's a current one on filtering talk page abuse. Right now we have very blunt instruments available for stopping problematic behavior that is isolated to a particular article or topic: you can protect a page so no one can edit it, or you can block a user so they can't edit anything. I think we'd benefit from exploring more fine-grained technical measures. They'd have downsides of their own, but at least the endless wikilawyering about "broadly construed" could be controlled. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you believe that the Super Mario Problem exists? How would you fix it?
This doesn't have to be a matter of belief, does it? One could look at the parties to past cases, check who was an admin at the time of the case, throw out the cases exclusively about use of admin tools (because there's no equivalent behavior for "regular Mario" to be sanctioned for), and look at the remaining pool of desysopped admins to see if similarly experienced editors in similar cases were banned or subject to stricter sanctions. I bet this is a pretty small set and there's no real pattern in it. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you see value in Admonishments and Warnings as remedies at the end of a case?
I'm of two minds on that one. They serve a purpose in formally communicating to an editor that they need to change their behavior, and are sort of the equivalent of getting written up by the boss - but, you know, bosses write people up in order to have a paper trail to justify firing them later, and I suspect the communication part often gets overshadowed by the threat part. I guess another useful function is a compromise solution when there's no consensus among arbs for a strong sanction but the most sanction-happy aren't satisfied with nothing. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Insider Baseball[edit]

Does the workshop serve as a useful portion of a case?
I'm closely paraphrasing myself in a recent post, plagiarizing some forgotten second source: the workshop mostly seems to be a place for editors to demonstrate the behaviors that got them dragged to arbcom in the first place. Probably from the same source: it's also a good place for editors to fling mud at each other without getting it all over the rest of the encyclopedia.
I'm joking, sort of :) I think it's useful in principle, because a) it's a chance to solicit input from the parties and interested observers about what they think a workable solution would look like; and b) it alleviates the waiting-for-Godot feeling of anticipating a proposed decision. In practice, it seems awkward at best, like a mini-thunderdome at worst, and soaks up a lot of clerk time. I wonder if dropping the "write a proposed proposed decision" format and just inviting brief statements from each party on what they hope to see in the final decision might make the whole thing less of a mudslinging match. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:16, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Smallbones[edit]

Wikipedia is starting to have a reputation for bullying and misogyny, see, e.g the recent article in The Atlantic by Emma Paling, "Wikipedia's Hostility to Women”.
Are you willing to take serious steps to stop bullying of editors on Wikipedia? especially bullying directed toward women editors? Is this one of your top 2 priorities? What would you consider to be a more important priority than stopping the bullying? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:25, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, top-line response: the fact that Wikipedia is a disproportionately unsafe place for women to participate is one of my top concerns, is a major reason I returned to the project earlier, and is a major reason I put myself on this page in the first place. I am certainly committed to doing what I can to make the project a safer place.
That being said: I'm not convinced the problem is most usefully analyzed using the concept of "bullying". In order to really make progress here, we're going to have to start being more specific about the behaviors and actions we want to change instead of trying to stuff a whole parade of horribles into a black box with a label like "bullying" or "incivility". (Never mind the mixed metaphor... ) I described some thoughts on the matter here in what was probably way too long of a post for a Signpost comment, but I think the distinctions drawn there are important. Harassment and abuse are not the same problem as "microaggressions", or the accumulating irritations of individually ignorable but collectively exhausting minor misjudgments. Conflating the two problems alienates those in the second group who can be persuaded to change their behavior by implying they're no better than the jerks in the first group.
I'm also not sure that making a ranked list of priorities is a useful exercise as a candidate for a committee whose job is primarily reactive. Arbcom can't "take charge" of some community issue or another, no matter how strongly individual arbs may feel about it. Nevertheless, within the limits of what arbcom can do, I consider it critical to make sure that women and members of other underrepresented groups feel as safe as anyone else participating in the community and using its dispute-resolution processes.
Oh, and as long as we're here: that is very much not a platform of disrespecting or devaluing the contributions and commitment of people who happen to be in majority demographics - I too am objectively very privileged and in any case this isn't social justice bingo. It's about making sure we treat the other human beings who have volunteered their time to the project with equal amounts of kindness and respect. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:37, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from RGloucester[edit]

As I'm sure you are aware, there is much talk of reform of the Committee in this election, and there has been in previous elections. It is very rare for anything to come of this talk. There is a certain intransigence that is inherent in this body, which leads to the like of the electronic cigarettes case, which has been open since August without an appropriate resolution. This intransigence is a curse on the Wikipedia dispute resolution process. One of the main problems stems from a failure amongst Committee members, many whom claim to have a drive for reform, to work together in a collaborative manner. If there is such collaboration, the community sees no evidence of it in public spaces. As such, I have a few questions. Firstly, do you agree with the principle of bringing more of the arbitration process into the public eye? If so, do you have any proposals as such? Secondly, if you are elected, what will you do to ensure that intransigence does not once again entrench itself within the Committee? Will you act to collaborate with your fellow Committee members, so that reform of the arbitration process can occur? Thirdly, how do you feel about removing the arcane pseudo-legalist language that is currently present in both the actions of the Committee and the regulations of the arbitration process? I am much obliged for your candidacy, and await your response. RGloucester — ☎ 16:42, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
1) I suggested way up above somewhere that communication between arbs and parties seems to have been a real problem this year, and the e-cigs case is an excellent example of it. I hope that streamlining or reducing off-wiki tasks will enable more time spent on cases and more opportunities for keeping the parties in the loop in case of delays. But I'm not sure that I can make specific proposals at this stage to change how arbs communicate with each other, without knowing the existing patterns of off-wiki communication.
2) I am not by nature intransigent at all, and take a very practical approach to reform proposals; I think I'm personally unlikely to contribute to stalled reforms out of stubbornness. I'd try to nudge anyone who's dug their heels in by showing evidence in favor of whatever reform was being proposed; sometimes things can be argued about in the abstract near-indefinitely but the impasse breaks with convincing data.
3) I may be long-winded, verbose, and prolix, as well as wordy and loquacious, but I still can't stand that stuff. I'd like to see a lot of the procedural fluff trimmed. First on the chopping block: the terms "Level 1/2 desysop". That's not even English, dammit. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:49, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Biblioworm[edit]

Do you have any experience in successfully resolving disputes, either on-wiki or off-wiki?
Well, scientists do tend to be a contentious bunch. At the risk of oversimplifying, though, the disputes I get into in real life are usually resolved by someone collecting more data. I have tried to bring that kind of empirical sensibility to some frequently discussed topics on Wikipedia, for example at WT:RFA, where conversation can spin around in circles of ever-expanding hypotheticals unless someone presents graphs and statistics.
I won't make you go look in the Wikipedia:Great Dismal Swamp for examples, but I try to be a moderating influence when I come across an interpersonal conflict, and prefer to nudge people toward a resolution on the substance of the dispute rather than focusing on surface qualities like who cursed more or used a shouty edit summary or whatever. There's a tendency in some parts of the project to react to people who are frustrated and venting by quoting wikipolicy at them, which doesn't generally make people more civil or less frustrated.
You could also take a look at the current operations at TfD, where I'm usually the most active admin at the moment and have been a sort of pseudo-project manager (you know, the person who supposedly has more power but isn't really doing very much of the work? ;) following an RfC about six months ago enabling non-admin delete closures there, which we now have a handful of very experienced and productive people doing. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Antony–22[edit]

In general, does enforcing civility harm free speech? Does it help it?
These two things are not really related. This is a private website and "free speech" doesn't apply. (XKCD has it right.) I think you might be getting at something like: reducing incivility makes otherwise marginalized voices more likely to speak up, resulting in an overall increase in "freedom"/diversity of ideas expressed. It's a nice thought but I'm not sure there's really any evidence for it, especially for the wikipedia-idiosyncratic definition of "civility". Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:05, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's been pointed out that incivility and harassment are not precisely the same thing. What is the line between incivility and harassment? How much does incivility, when it doesn't cross the line into harassment, affect our ability to retain editors, including but not limited to its effects on the gender gap?
Not precisely the same thing? They're not at all the same thing. Most incivility is not harassment, and it's perfectly possible (in fact, often quite effective) to harass someone in a superficially civil way. I said this in more detail in response to Smallbones' question, breaking these concepts down in a slightly different way, but I'll say it again here: I really think that conflating incivility and harassment has had a major role in contributing to the polarization surrounding this issue.
As for how much incivility alone affects editor retention, and to what extent that effect is gendered, these are empirical questions that I don't know the answers to. I do believe that the general discourse environment on Wikipedia can be off-putting to women, but that's not quite the same question as whether the Wikipedia-idiosyncratic concept of "civility" is a factor. It should come as no surprise to hear that I am in favor of data-driven decision-making, and I would prefer to see data on the effects of specific behaviors on editor retention rather than trying to use the umbrella description of "incivility". For example, automated and bureaucratic-seeming notices are a known issue in retaining new editors, and the proliferation of those notices is arguably an effect of an environment built largely by well-educated men who disproportionately come from the technology industry, but this isn't a matter of "civility" the way we usually think of it.
If I can be a bit of a hypocrite here and mention my personal anecdata-driven opinion: when we lose good long-term contributors for Wikipedia-culture-related reasons rather than real-life reasons, it usually seems to be the effect of someone feeling that their contributions were disrespected. Disrespect and incivility aren't quite the same, and focusing too narrowly on the latter in editor-retention efforts would be a mistake. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:32, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbcom's actions have come under scrutiny from the outside press lately. Do you think the Arbcom has a role in educating reporters about cases when they come under such scrutiny, to reduce the factual inaccuracies that sometimes creep into these articles? For example, do you think that releasing statements, such as been done once on a previous case, should be considered in the future? If so, how could they be made more effective?
I think arbs have enough on their plates already without adding press secretary to their list of jobs. I wouldn't categorically rule this out, but that's mostly on 'never say never' grounds. Writing for the press is a very specific skill that we don't ask or expect arbs to have. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:32, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This question is optional, since candidates don't necessarily like to talk about current cases. But imagine that you are a current member of the Arbcom and you are delegated the task of writing a succinct, neutral primer for the press, of no more than a few paragraphs, on the circumstances leading to the current case Arbitration enforcement 2. Write that primer below. Do not cover or express an opinion on the proposed or actual decision, but concentrate on how you would help a reporter understand what happened before the case was filed.
Not only is this a current case, it's one I've commented in already, so I'm skipping this one. Furthermore, I think this would be a bad choice of case to try to explain to the press. Even though the specific events leading to the case arose from an article in the press, the case scope is pretty inside-baseball. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:32, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One last question. Wikipedia relies primarily on volunteer labor, and many are attracted to Wikipedia in part due to its countercultural, even transgressive nature of subverting traditional gatekeepers to knowledge. Recently there has been increasing participation by professionals from academic and cultural institutions. This is perhaps causing some angst that the community and its interactions may become "professionalized" to the exclusion of established editors. Do you feel this fear is warranted? How can volunteers and professionals with different standards of conduct be made to coexist on Wikipedia with the minimal disruption to our existing contributor base?
Interesting question, but I'm not sure I agree with the premise. I haven't seen much (any?) angst over professional contributions in my content areas. Maybe you could link to some? In fact, editors in biomedicine have been making a lot of progress in improving engagement with professional organizations. There have been some plans to get articles peer-reviewed by named academics, and on that specific topic I've expressed some mild reservations about using academics' personal reputations as local signifiers of article quality - but that is mostly because I have a low opinion of how academic reputation works, not because I think it's bad for Wikipedia.
Anyway, I think there's at least two groups of editors to which your question might apply. The first is people who are here as volunteers but are contributing in their areas of professional expertise. The second is people who are paid for their work on Wikipedia, spanning the range from part-time Wikipedian-in-Residence positions to chapter staff to WMF employees, who have varying levels of experience as volunteers here. And then there are full-time staff at academic and cultural institutions whose duties involve Wikipedia, who I suppose have a foot on both sides of the fence.
We've had plenty of people in the first group for a long time, and I'm not really sure if there has been a recent increase. The biggest challenge for this group is acculturation. They're often very self-confident about their contributions but also easily frustrated by not knowing how to use the software, and they don't react well to Randy in Boise telling them off about unsourced edits or poor formatting or possible COI. I wrote some thoughts for new expert editors here awhile back, and while the original purpose of that piece didn't pan out, I still think it's good advice. The second category of "professional" I have very little interaction with, other than some excellent WiR contributors in biology and chemistry, whose positions as far as I can see are not controversial at all.
I definitely don't think I've seen any difference in standards of conduct following patterns of "professionalization" the way you describe. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't motivated by specific incidents so much as a general sense that civility enforcement is more controversial than it should be, and I'm guessing that resistance to it might be in part because of fear that if workplace standards of decorum are enforced on Wikipedia, existing editors will be driven out. So the question is whether you think this fear is valid, and how can we keep editors when Wikipedia is a countercultural hobby for some and a workplace for others. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 19:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I'm not actually sure that there's much connection between the participation of "professionals" of various kinds and their expectations for conduct. I know I've commented elsewhere - though I forget where now - about the tendency to react to purported incivility with arguments like "that wouldn't be allowed in a real job!" (Come to think of it, almost never by people who are "professionals" in your sense.) First of all, by "real job" people usually mean a white-collar office job in a first-world country, and imposing those standards of conduct is a kind of systemic bias in itself. Second of all, white-collar office jobs are no strangers to "incivility" in the form of passive-aggression and power games - not standards of conduct we want to emulate. Third and most importantly, Wikipedia isn't a job. You can't manage a large online project of volunteers who work on whatever they like whenever they like with the HR Department handbook written for a physical office full of people with specific tasks to accomplish. It's true that a big part of the original sense of countercultural transgressiveness has been co-opted following the evolution of other online projects that will happily accept your cognitive surplus - many of which are much more effective for people who want to use their spare time to build up a reputation with professional benefits. (Hmm, now that I've written that it sounds icky, but I'm referring to things like stackoverflow, or the proliferation of opportunities to contribute to open-source software. Worth noting that almost all such places have a "gender gap" at least as big as ours, even though we're less directly dependent on the tech field where women are underrepresented.)

Anyway, I'm not sure that I have a cohesive position on this; I'm just thinking out loud. It's an interesting thought but my personal experience of the wiki doesn't quite match up with your premise. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Optional Question from Pharaoh of the Wizards[edit]

Is Terms of Use a policy ? Do you believe that ArbCom can sanction undisclosed paid editors if there is evidence that they violated TOU ?
I view the TOU as the foundation's business, though local policy like WP:PAID derives from and supplements the TOU. I'm open to persuasion on the matter of paid editing in general, which is not a problem I've spent much time on. In principle, I want to say that outside motivations don't matter and the quality of the content is all we should be judging, but I think that works better in principle than in practice, and I don't like to see volunteers' time wasted by people being paid to stonewall them. But if an arb case involved an editor accused of violating the TOU in a way that was too subtle or complex to be handled by the community, I'd probably want to see evidence that the violation caused damage on-wiki, and would prefer to use the damage rather than the TOU violation by itself as the motivation for any sanctions. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:04, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Pldx1[edit]

Dear candidate. As you probably have noted, an user describing himself as a Grammar Badguy asked the question he asked to the 11 first nominated candidates. In my opinion, the way each candidate answered this question is an important criteria of choice. Since you were not one of the 11, I think it could be fair to give you an occasion to comment. Pldx1 (talk) 10:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I share the interest in seeing more diversity on arbcom, but I think that question wasn't posed effectively - asking people to classify themselves based on an arbitrary selection of demographic categories doesn't really capture the aspects of "diversity" that are actually interesting. That said, to spare you all the extra click I'll post here what's already on my userpage: I am a bisexual woman. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Worm That Turned[edit]

Hi, I'm Dave, I was on Arbcom between 2013 and 2014. I can tell you now that being an arbitrator is tough - you become a target. Comments you make will be taken out of context, your motives and abilities will be insulted, you may be threatened or harassed. Have you thought much about the "dark side" of being an arbitrator? How have you prepared for this?
Of course this is a particularly salient problem for female candidates - as GorillaWarfare recently described in detail elsewhere. Harassment is a problem no matter who the victim is, but online harassment of women has a specific, gendered pattern that can be very distressing and disruptive. I didn't arrive on the internet yesterday; I've been harassed online in this way before - fortunately relatively briefly, and with no real-life consequences, though it's interesting to find total strangers who have no idea who you are, but simultaneously think that you're probably ugly and fat and that you need to hurry up and [ahem, this is a family-friendly election]. Of course, that sort of nonsense does put the occasional frustrated "fuck you" in perspective. As a matter of temperament I'm pretty low-key, and I'm not usually susceptible to accidental troll-feeding. When I see venting and insults and whatnot in response to an on-wiki event, I generally try to focus on whether there's a real problem buried under the rhetoric instead of reacting to the way it was expressed.
One thing I did think carefully about before deciding to run is the history of outing/doxxing of sitting arbs, since I think I'm one of the few still-pseudonymous candidates, and I'd prefer to keep it that way as a combination of principle and stubbornness. But I'm really very boring and unimportant in real life, there's very little hay to be made from discovering my identity (headline: "employee of educational institution occasionally works on educational project at work!"), and overall it'd be kind of a nuisance but not inherently a problem. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from GrammarFascist[edit]

Please divulge as much of your demographic information as you are comfortable making public. Specifically: your gender, including whether you are cis, trans or other; your sexual orientation; your race and/or ethnicity; where you live (feel free to specify you live in Triesenberg if you want, but a country or continent will do just fine — even just "Southern Hemisphere" or "Western Hemisphere" is helpful); whether you have any condition considered a disability (even if you're not so disabled you're unable to work) including deafness, physical disabilities, developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, again being only as specific as you wish; and what social class you belong to (e.g. working class, middle class, etc.). ¶ If you prefer not to answer any or all of those categories, I won't count it against you. My intention in asking for this information is not to out anyone or try to force affirmative action. However, when deciding between two otherwise equally qualified candidates, I would prefer to be able to vote for more diversity on ArbCom rather than less.
See above answer to Pldx1, who ~~stole~~ borrowed your question :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please list at least one pro and one con of having non-administrators serve on ArbCom.
Well, the obvious pro is the difference in perspective and the obvious con is practicality. Like it or not, not being an admin is a very different experience of the project and its power dynamics. On the other hand, there is the possibility of a new type of power dynamic developing within the committee if not all members have access to the same tools or the same "social license" to use them. In principle, I'd be very enthusiastic about having non-admins on the committee, and this might well be the first year it happens. I'm a little less convinced on the practical side, though I suppose that depends on the outcome of the RfC. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for responding, Opabinia regalis. It's a bit late for me to ask now, but what do you think a more effective version of my question would have been? —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 01:32, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Brustopher[edit]

Hi, and thank you for running for Arbcom. These questions focus on WP:OUTING. For the purposes of these questions please assume the editors' usernames are far more distinct and unique than the ones I have given.

User:Foo get's into an edit conflict on Wikipedia with User:Bar, and end up as parties to a large Arbcom case. Soon afterwards on reddit someone going by the username Bar begins posting lots of critical and disparaging threads about Foo. In these threads they claim to be Wikipedia user Bar. The Bar account on Wikipedia is older than the Bar account on reddit by several years, however the Wikipedia account had only really begun active editing a few years after the reddit account had been created. Foo notices these posts and complains on Bar's talk page and ANI. Bar responds by accusing Foo of WP:OUTING and claims that the account might not even be his. Is it OUTING to connect the Bar reddit account with the Bar Wikipedia account?
This sounds like a not-so-hypothetical hypothetical related to gamergate, but I'm not closely familiar with the events of that case. There's not really enough context left here to say definitively what should be done; in particular, it matters if the Bar account on reddit is itself linked to any real-world personal information. Notable missteps over the last year notwithstanding, the best first step is generally to email the committee with any information that is material to on-wiki events but may raise privacy concerns if posted publicly.
In a general sense, I think it's important to maintain a robust local culture of protecting anonymity. This is a systemic bias issue; members of socially marginalized groups often prefer to interact anonymously online and are more protective of their privacy. (There was a lot of discussion about this in various tech fora when the Google+ service launched, initially requiring the use of real names, and it's one of many reasons you might be reading this parenthetical and thinking "Google+? Is that even still a thing?") It's also a standards-of-evidence issue, in that it can be very difficult to rule out mistaken identity and intentional impersonation/joe jobs when issues arise outside of Wikipedia. Very obviously, based on the Lightbreather situation, we haven't really found the right balance yet. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:11, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:Alice is a party in an Arbcom case. She is browsing the internet one day and decides to google her Wikipedia username. She finds that somebody has uploaded naked photos of another woman to a pornsite and labelled them "Alice of Wikipedia." She looks into the account that has uploaded these files and comes to the conclusion that it is owned by Wikipedia User:Bob, an editor she had clashed with heavily on wiki. In the process she also finds out his real life identity. She emails her evidence to Arbcom. Alice then decides to go to Wikipediocracy's forums, and makes a thread informing them of this porn site account. She asks them if they can guess which Wikipedia editor is behind it, and mentions that she also knows his real life identity. They independently come to the conclusion that it is User:Bob and figure out his real life identity without Alice giving the game away. Alice confirms that this is the case. Nobody in the forum finds it remotely questionable that Bob owns the account in question. In such a situation is it appropriate for Arbcom to pass a finding of fact stating "Alice posted inappropriately to an off-wiki website apparently with the objective of having the participants identify a Wikipedia editor by name." Furthermore is it appropriate for them to then use this supposed violation of WP:OUTING as part of their justification for site banning Alice?
This is even less hypothetical, to the point that I don't understand the point of presenting it as such. There's a lot of things I found unsatisfying - to be polite - about the Lightbreather case, and on re-reading I still agree with everything I posted at the time here. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:11, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question by Müdigkeit[edit]

How many hours per week do you plan to work on the Arbitration Committee?--Müdigkeit (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The workload seems to vary quite a bit, both in volume and in the balance between things that can be done in otherwise spare moments and things that require large blocks of time. I'd say I'm offering 10-15 aggregate hours per typical week. It remains to be seen what happens post-BASC, but to the extent that more time is needed on a regular basis for things other than core functions of the committee, I would encourage streamlining internal processes and delegating inessential tasks, which I am willing to put some up-front time and effort into if needed. (*cough* CRM *cough*) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question by Atsme[edit]

What were you thinking?!! 👀 Doesn't matter - good on you. I'm elated that you took the plunge. Ok, so what are your thoughts about WP:POV_railroad, and how would you respond to it if you saw diffs demonstrating repeated aspersions cast against an editor by a group of editors aligned with each other (patterned behavior) to get that editor site banned or blocked? --Atsme^📞📧 03:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, but thanks :) Arbcom may be one of those "running for office makes you unqualified for it" kinds of jobs!
Thanks for the pointer to that essay, which I actually hadn't seen before - looks like a good companion to the one I usually think of at WP:CIVILPOV. The railroad essay is thoughtful and has some good suggestions for how to navigate the personal side of this type of conflict. If I were going to edit it, I'd add to the list of recommendations another suggestion to try to resist being railroaded by keeping the focus of conversation on sources. This can be a slow and tedious way to edit, but the best approach to a POV-related dispute is to be extremely careful about how sources are selected and used. This allows someone to defuse the "focusing on the editor" aspects of the "railroading" dynamic (or, alternatively, makes that dynamic much more obvious to outside observers when the matter goes to a dispute resolution process).
As for responding to evidence of this behavior, I think it can be very difficult to demonstrate some of the things you suggest - e.g. that editors are aligned with or coordinating with each other, or that they have a specific goal of running someone else off the site. If I were evaluating evidence of this in a case, I'd like to see the evidence presented in terms of the effects of the behavior, with a minimum of discussion of motivations unless the motivations themselves are stated and diff-able. People who have been involved in a long-running dispute sometimes get tunnel vision and focus too closely on the individual editors they've come to think of as unpleasant obstructionists, when the central question for an arbcom case of this type should really be about how to improve the overall editing environment in the topic area, not just how to make sure specific people are appropriately sanctioned for their possible past misdeeds. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:05, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Johanna[edit]

Could you elaborate on your general philosophy with regards to dispute resolution? If elected, how would you apply these tenets to the Arbitration Committee?
That's a pretty broad question, but I'll take a shot.
- Readers come first. The mission here is to create a freely licensed reference work, and all of our back-office processes and procedures exist to facilitate that goal. I view disruptive behavior that damages articles and subverts that mission as qualitatively different than disruptive behavior that takes place behind the scenes or as the result of a conflict about how best to serve that mission.
- We're all human beings. Dammit, there goes the bot vote ;) We may have goofy usernames and interact mostly through pixels on a screen, but we're still real people. Editors deserve to be treated with respect, even when they're doing human things like making embarrassing mistakes or losing their temper; in my view effective collaboration requires taking a generous view of others' foibles, because your own will make themselves known sooner or later :) We can do what needs to be done to keep disruption to a minimum without unnecessarily hurting or embarrassing the person causing it.
- Volunteer time is the most important resource we have. People are choosing to invest their spare time and cognitive surplus here, instead of doing any one of the thousand other things they could fill their time with, and that usually means they're investing a lot of effort and personal pride in their work here. We all owe it to each other to respect each other's time and contributions, but that's especially true of those of us involved in administrative parts of the project. That means both taking a generous view toward good-faith contributors' minor misdeeds, and taking prompt action to protect those contributors from trolls and harassers.
Now, almost nobody is going to enjoy their encounter with arbcom or walk away thinking that was a good time and we should see each other again next week. A lot of people will be dissatisfied with the outcome of the case they're involved in, frustrated by restrictions imposed, disappointed that the other side didn't get sanctioned as severely as they'd hoped, and so forth, but I think we can do a better job at not sending people away feeling powerless and disrespected. A lot of that is about communication, rather than dispute resolution itself - making case participation less bureaucratic, communicating more clearly about timelines, etc. would go a long way toward improving the environment once a problem has become a case, and these are relatively straightforward changes that seem (based on observations from the outside) like they'd benefit from reducing the number of non-essential and distracting tasks arbs have to handle outside of case work.
Bearing in mind that problems get to arbcom because there aren't any obvious good solutions, a not-bad solution to an otherwise intractable dispute is ideally forward-looking and pragmatic, and focuses on improving the environment around the source of the dispute rather than making individual people eat their ration of crow. Focusing on individuals at the expense of the broader context seems to be a feature of arbitration cases that is long-standing and difficult to avoid, and I'm not sure I have any brilliant ideas in that respect, but if I get elected and make this mistake you'll all have this diff to point me to, at least :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say that I am quite impressed with your answer. It really seems like you've thought about it a lot, and I enjoy your analytical approach to things while still adding a spice of humor in there and giving us some perspective. :) Best of luck! Johanna (formerly BenLinus1214)^{talk to me!}_{see my work} 18:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from SageRad[edit]

Hi, Opabinia regalis. Thank you for running for the position, i know it takes a lot of personal time and effort.

What is your take on bullying that happens on Wikipedia? What would you think of stronger guidelines about bullying behaviors, and an anti-bullying task force made up of volunteers as a way to curb long-term problematic bullying behaviors? Do you think that civility can be restored in a deeper way than just "no cuss words" to bring more integrity to editing?
Well, see my answer to Smallbones' question for a partial response on the matter of bullying (which I still don't think is a great term for the problem, but whatever works). I certainly agree that we need to think more deeply than "bad words" in handling incivility.
I'm going waaaaay back in history here, but I think the project doesn't have a great history with groups of users self-organizing around their personal beliefs about civility and user conduct. A lot of the historical mechanisms for soliciting feedback about user behavior - like Wikiquette alerts and RFC/U - have been deprecated, for good reason but with the effect of leaving relatively few options if the problem is behavioral rather than fundamentally about a content issue. ANI is too unstructured and invites too much distracting drive-by commentary to really be useful in addressing low-level but persistent behavior problems, and it tends to exacerbate volatile situations where someone is angry or upset - so I do see the value in having a more structured and deliberative way to address a behavior problem, especially when the complainant has or believes they have less "power" than the person whose behavior they object to. However, I can't off the top of my head design a new solution where so many previous attempts have failed, and in any event this is a matter for the community to handle. Arbs can certainly take a close look at any evidence that arises in cases about bullying and related behavior, but moderating things at the community level where possible would be a better approach. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious what your username means to you. An extinct 5-eyed arthropod. Thanks.
To be honest I don't remember why I chose this critter in particular! I'm a biochemist; you'd think I would've chosen an enzyme or something. I don't use this username anywhere non-Wikipedia-related (smart decision, 2006 me). But I do have a set of little Cambrian figurines from the Royal Ontario Museum staring at me with their various numbers of eyes while I work :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Ryk72[edit]

Thank you for stepping forward; your commitment to serving the community is greatly appreciated.

Please accept my apologies for the lateness of these questions.

The en.Wikipedia community has been likened to that of a gaol (US:prison), with members of various gangs aggressively supporting each other in disputes, which are policed by trusted inmates. Do you agree with this view? If so, why so? If not, why not? To what extent are the behaviours which lead to this view enabled by AN/I, AE & ArbCom?
Honestly, I don't think there are enough similarities to sustain a critique of this analogy. We're not inmates; we're volunteers. We can leave. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you believe that our current processes & procedures encourage adversarial methods of dispute resolution? If so, is this a good or bad thing? If bad, what role should ArbCom play in addressing this?
Well, I don't think comparisons to real-world judicial systems are generally all that useful. I'd say disputes themselves are usualy adversarial, which carries over into how people use the processes and procedures. Many arbcom cases have a de facto defendant, and others have two groups with battle lines drawn. By the time disputes get to arbitration these dynamics are usually pretty well developed, so I'm not sure arbcom has a role per se in dealing with those patterns; earlier and simpler forms of dispute resolution at the community level might be able to more effectively interrupt those behaviors. In terms of arbitration procedure, I think AE is often the tattletale department and case workshops are often mudslinging matches, but I suspect those are symptoms rather than causes. I understand there's some discussion about how to reorganize the workshop phase of a typical case and that might be a good place to start at redirecting parties' energy from fighting battles to doing something more useful. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What are the advantages and disadvantages of WP:BOOMERANG? Would you support it's retention, restriction or abolition? Why?
Anyone who brings a complaint to the community's attention should expect to have their argument scrutinized, so yes, sometimes there will be a boomerang on the complainant if their argument is specious. In some cases, someone (usually a newbie) naively presents a bad argument and gets an unexpected smackdown, and in others someone presents a reasonable argument in an aggressive or obnoxious way and gets a response to the tone rather than the substance. ANI being what it is, people will sometimes anticipate the arrival of a boomerang with a little more enthusiasm than is really necessary. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We see regular use of WP:DUCK/WP:SOCK to justify indefinite blocks of new editors entering contentious topic spaces, without those editors being explicitly linked to banned accounts. Is this use justified? If so, why so? If not, why not?
To be honest I haven't found the standards of evidence for socking accusations to be particularly consistent across the project, though SPI isn't my area and I realize there are dozens of routine and uncontroversial cases for every disputed one. Some topic areas really are beset with sockpuppetry and outside organizing and it's not reasonable to expect long-term editors in those areas to tolerate endless streams of rehashed arguments, trolling, and abuse. I certainly don't think it's necessary to link an account that's being disruptive in a way that suggests sockpuppetry with some prior disruptive account before blocking the new one. I do think it's necessary to be very circumspect when considering possible socking involving established users. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_3#Remedies, ArbCom implemented a "500/30" limit on edits to the Palestine-Israel (the 3rd topic space in which this remedy has been used). What are the positives & negatives of this remedy as written? Would a more technical/formal implementation (akin to semi-protection) be an improvement? What other improvements, if any, might be made?
I consider this still an experimental approach, and none of the areas in which it currently applies are areas I'm active in or especially knowledgeable about. So I don't have a lot of substantive suggestions at this stage, and if I wanted to develop some I'd start by soliciting feedback from people who work on affected topics. I don't think a technical implementation would be warranted until we have a better sense of how well it works and where the failure points are. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A hypothetical editor, involved in a contentious topic space, regularly derails Talk page discussion with personal views on the subject, anecdotes of their off-Wiki involvement in the topic, epistemological first principle reasoning for exclusion of material, "hatting" of discussions, and snide attacks on new editors. Administrators have failed to address this editor's behaviour; WP:AE has failed to address the editor's behaviour. What should be done?
This doesn't sound like it's shaping up to be an arbitration case, really, unless all of this is taking place in the context of some broader dispute. (You mention AE, so maybe your hypothetical editor has already been part of a case?) If this person is doing good work in article space, they'll eventually get a topic ban of some kind intended to stop the soapboxing and personal attacks; if they're as much of a mess with content as they are in other areas, they'll eventually get indeffed or formally community-banned. If it does come to arbitration and nothing the community has tried has been effective but there's been no appetite for a ban, I suppose I'd vote to take the case, but I think the community is usually not bad at handling isolated cases like this. Problems are more likely to arise when the behavior is happening as part of a larger dispute in a topic area where the environment is already fraught. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Would you be prepared to recuse from 1/3rd of cases, and encourage other Arbs to do likewise, so that each case might be addressed faster, and by fewer Arbs?
Recusal isn't the right way to do this. As I understand it, there have been many variations on proposals to split arbcom into smaller rotating panels or into distinct committees with different scopes, and none have gained consensus. If I were going to propose anything along these lines I'd first look through prior discussions e.g. in the mailing list archives to get a sense of why there was opposition in the past. However, I think some streamlining of existing workflows would be a simpler approach, so in terms of workflow management I'd rather start with less drastic changes. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks in advance for any answers. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 15:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from PizzaMan[edit]

1. You mention your gender in your introduction. Do you think it should weigh in the decision for people to vote for you? 2. On your scientific merit: can you give an approximation of your H-factor? PizzaMan (♨♨) 21:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
1. I think people should choose who to vote for based on whatever criteria they think are most important. Personally, I think the relative lack of diversity on arbcom has demonstrated itself to be a problem in the recent past, much as lack of diversity elsewhere in STEM, in open-source communities, etc. can be. If you ask why there aren't more women on, say, a panel of speakers at a scientific conference, you often hear that no women's names came to mind as invitees, that not enough women were qualified, that those who were invited declined, and so on. So if you do think that diversity is an important criterion, that's less of a limitation here; three women have volunteered and you can judge us by whatever is important to you.
2. The relevant part of my CV is here :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your answers. I'm not a proponent of positive discrimination, the question was perhaps trickier than it seemed, but well answered. Diversity is definitely needed for any team to function well. You have my vote. As for scientific merit: mine is limited too, i'm still struggling to finish my PhD. But if you ever come across an arbitration case (or article) on neuroscience or medicine in general, which is in dire need of expertise, feel free to leave me a note.PizzaMan (♨♨) 07:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from User:Blackmane[edit]

This is a hypothetical that is somewhat based on real threads that have occurred on WP:AN and WP:ANI in the past. An editor who self identifies as having a mental disability or disorder has been indefinitely blocked for a variety of violations, take your pick of edit warring, NPA, disruption, CIR, POINT, Godwin's etc, and is now seeking to return to editing. Quite a few members of the community have sought to advise this editor on why they were blocked but struggle to get the editor to understand. I'd like to hear your thoughts about how Wikipedia works with those who suffer from such disorders. This is an open ended, and deliberately vague, question that will no doubt be difficult to answer, but is more for me, and presumably other editors, to get a grasp of your thoughts. Blackmane (talk) 02:06, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's a pretty broad range of possible issues here. I'll say that in general, I think the community is not very good at this.
First of all: Wikipedians, individually and collectively, are not competent to diagnose anyone's mental illness, verify anyone's claim to have one (or not), or provide therapy or supportive care. If someone seems to be in real danger, their needs exceed what amateurs can help with over the internet; that's what emergency@wikimedia.org is for.
For more routine matters, the best approach really depends on what the original problem behavior was. It's important to bring some empathy and sensitivity to this kind of situation, and to know when to step back and let things settle down even if it means tolerating some contained "disruption" in the meantime. There are some common community antipatterns here - for example, if someone's behavior has been conspicuously problematic, instead of thinking "this person seems frustrated/upset/vulnerable" a common response seems to be to arrive on their talk page and tell them they need to be more WP:CIVIL, wikilink and all. Or, three or four different people will turn up with stern words about Stopping The Disruption. This is often perfectly well-meaning, and difficult to interrupt, but it's also generally counterproductive and condescending, as if someone's short-term capacity for emotional self-regulation will change based on whether they've read a policy page. (If that worked, they would've tried it already, right? I mean, if it worked I might even read the MOS ;)
In my view these situations are usually best approached by a responsible admin or a small group, preferably people the editor is familiar with, in private if the situation warrants. Ideally the editor can identify specific behaviors that were problems and have a plan to avoid them - sometimes these conversations put a lot of emphasis on apologies and remorse and I think that's backwards; focus on specifically what should be done in the future, in a way that neither legitimizes further disruption nor stigmatizes the editor. Quasi-forced mentorship is unappealingly patronizing and ineffective, but one approach to supplement a returning editor's efforts might be a less structured agreement with particular trusted users who can recognize the behavior pattern at issue and intervene at the first sign of a problem. No-questions-asked short self-requested blocks might help short-circuit developing problems in some cases. It's hard to suggest particulars out of context, but I think the important common feature is that the returning editor should feel like they're returning to an environment they can trust, not like they're in a fishbowl surrounded by people staring at them and waiting for a violation, and definitely not like their history and/or block log is justification for others to mistreat them.
Now I wrote all that on the assumption that the editor is productive and that their behavior fell within the normal range of Wikipedia problems. Bringing someone back always requires balancing their efforts with the potential harm their behavior might cause to others, and in some cases the problems were so long-standing or extreme that their relationship to the community is just not repairable. That doesn't mean they should be treated unkindly, and being unable to edit the English Wikipedia isn't some kind of moral judgment; it does mean that they should be encouraged to find something else to do.
Oh, one more thing: occasionally we see someone decide to make insulting or disparaging comments about someone else's mental health, seemingly opportunistically when their target is angry or upset. For some reason it doesn't always get much reaction, but that should be just as unacceptable as disparaging commentary based on any other personal characteristic. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from User:Wikimandia[edit]

Many editors were unhappy with the results of the recent Neelix fiasco, in which the AC closed the case as soon as Neelix resigned as an admin, despite the fact that many of the issues brought up in the evidence page had nothing whatsoever to do with misuse of administrative tools or even his redirect spam, including building walled gardens and violation of WP guidelines concerning advocacy in editing. This led to accusations of a double standard for admins and regular editors. (If a non-admin had done the same, there could be no such easy dismissal as we don't have tools to resign). Neelix never acknowledged or agreed to stop any of this behavior, simply (eventually) apologized for the redirects only and then later resigned with no further comment. There was significant support for at least a topic ban at the ANI. Do you believe a topic ban or other measure should have been applied in this case?
Well, Neelix was topic-banned from creating redirects here in an active community discussion, where other topic bans were proposed but did not reach consensus at the time. Your question is structured so that it leads toward a conclusion ("if a non-admin had done the same...") that I don't think is correct; in fact, it's the opposite: Neelix's adminship is the main reason this ended up at arbcom in the first place. Other than the question of desysopping, which was obviated by Neelix's resignation, this situation could be handled and was being handled at the community level. If Neelix returns to editing, any other measures can be discussed at that time. This was a high-profile case and it's unlikely that anything resembling advocacy would be missed by the community if he did return. Opabinia regalis (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jorge Stolfi[edit]

Could you please share some of your feelings about the "articles for deletion" mechanism, notability criteria, article-side editorial stickers ("This article does not have enough references" and the like), and complexity of the wiki markup language and templates? While arbitrators are not concerned directly with those items, I suspect that disputes that will reach the committee will often originate in editor disagreement about those and other editorial issues. Therefore, I would like to have some idea of which side you may unconsciously see as the "good guy" in such disputes. 8-)
Well, I'm not sure what use my unconscious opinions are when I'm happy to tell you my conscious ones ;)
- Notability and AfD: I think we should significantly raise the notability criteria for people, products, and organizations - this would help cut down on the disproportionate maintenance burden of these articles, expedite the removal of promotionalism, and alleviate the pressure on rooting out COI (since many potentially-problematic COI issues arise on articles of marginal notability). This might also have the counterintuitive effect of being less bitey to new editors, many of whom start off with an attempt at a biography. It's kinder to say once, "This isn't even close; try working on something else", than to string people along over multiple AfC attempts, speedy tags, a prod, etc. ending in a twice-relisted AfD that finally closes as delete.
- Cleanup tags: I dislike cleanup tags in general, and I'm not sure if I dislike them more when they're plastered all over a brand-new article or when they've been moldering unattended since 2009. If I were wiki-dictator I'd delete most of them, leaving only a few calling attention to potential inaccuracies, and set up a system of semi-automated worklists on talk pages to hold the minor stuff about formatting and copyediting and so on.
- Wikitext: I'm pretty unconvinced by the arguments that wikitext is too hard for new editors, but I also have no animosity toward VE and use it occasionally for copyediting or adding web references (Citoid is pretty good at this point). On the other hand, my job involves writing a fair amount of code, so maybe I'm not the best judge.