User:The Devil's Advocate/Good PR
Posted: 27 January 2015
This text was approved by le me by motion via my thinker organ.
For Wikipedia to be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, it is essential that it is treated as a reference work and not a battlefield. In recent months, the atmosphere surrounding the Gamergate controversy article on the English Wikipedia has resembled the latter. This atmosphere has been disruptive to the experience for editors and was damaging to the English Wikipedia project as a whole. The English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee accepted a case examining user conduct in the Gamergate controversy article and related articles, including biographies of those related to the topic, in an attempt to reduce the level of disruption around the topic on Wikipedia. There have been a number of articles about this case in the press of late, some of which mischaracterise the Committee, its process, and outcomes of this case. We would like to clarify the Committee’s preliminary findings, process, and purpose.
Last Monday (19 January 2015), a subset of Committee members posted a proposed decision on the case. This proposal was not a final decision and is subject to being revised, expanded, or restructured entirely. Sanctions in the proposed decision do not take effect until the Arbitration Committee votes to close the case, at which point the passing principles, findings, and remedies are posted in the final decision section. Contrary to what has been reported, the Arbitration Committee frequently hears and approves appeals of sanctions and other remedies when they are found to no longer be necessary. Our investigation and findings do not pass judgement on the content or quality of the articles in question, nor on broader issues such as the Gamergate controversy itself. Findings of the Arbitration Committee do not consider editor opinion, identity, affiliation, or beliefs, nor do they take into consideration an editor’s actions or affiliations outside of their participation on English Wikipedia, unless those actions are directly related to facilitating disruption on the encyclopedia.
The Committee is aware that many involved in the controversy on various sides, as well as editors from this site on various sides of the dispute, have been subjected to harassment and threats. We express our deepest sympathies to those who have suffered distress due to these events and the members of the Committee personally condemn any act of harassment against any person. Harassment of editors and defamation against living subjects are matters the Committee takes very seriously and seeks to address to the full extent of its authority.
Explanation of preliminary decision
The Committee’s preliminary findings have been represented in some media stories as targeting all feminist editors involved in the topic and attempting to prevent their contributions to gender-related topics, while only sanctioning "throwaway" accounts representing an opposing perspective. This is incorrect. A subset of editors on various sides of the dispute, most with extensive editing histories prior to the controversy and many with past sanctions from unrelated disputes, have had sanctions passed against them in the proposed decision for misconduct ranging from misuse of sources to treating Wikipedia as a battleground. No editor was sanctioned for correcting errors in good faith or for isolated acts of misconduct, but persistent behavioral issues. This is in addition to other editors who have been sanctioned through community processes since the beginning of the dispute.
An accurate characterization of the Arbitration Committee’s preliminary decision is as follows. The Committee found that editors on various sides of the discussion, most with significant editing histories outside the dispute, violated community policies and guidelines on conduct. The Committee’s preliminary decision currently includes broad recommendations for, and endorsements of, community sanctions and topic bans for editors on various sides of the dispute. These include:
- 11 topic bans applied to editors on various sides of the dispute,
- an endorsement of 40 or so existing community sanctions on combative parties on various sides,
- roughly 100 community warnings/notifications,
- an extension of all community topic bans and restrictions from editing articles related to the Gamergate controversy article to include restriction from participation in any gender-related dispute, for editors on various sides, and
- the introduction of discretionary sanctions for any gender-related dispute, which can be imposed by any uninvolved administrator when useful for stabilising a topic, empowering the community to deal with disruption quickly.
The current majorities on the proposed decision are not in favour of banning any editors from Wikipedia.
Content disputes
The Arbitration Committee does not address the content of Wikipedia articles. As such, the preliminary decision by the Committee is not a referendum on the content, perspective, or neutrality of the Gamergate controversy article. The Committee does not endorse or censure the content in the article in question.
However, the Committee understands that the editor conduct issues under review are related to efforts by those with conflicting opinions of the topics relating to the Gamergate controversy article to influence the content of related Wikipedia articles. The English Wikipedia has robust policies and guidelines designed to address precisely such situations. The preliminary findings of the Committee reiterate the existence and importance of these existing policies and guidelines, and invite the participation of neutral editors and administrators in the maintenance and development of the articles in question.
These include:
- a reminder to editors about existing provisions of the English Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons, for the purpose of addressing "drive-by" abuse,
- an invitation for neutral editors to participate in the topic,
- an invitation for uninvolved administrators to participate in dispute resolution, and
- a reminder for administrators on appropriate actions pertaining to biographies of living persons.
Systemic bias
Reports and social media commentary have focused on the make-up of the current Committee and the Wikipedia community as giving rise to bias with regards to this decision. As previously stated, the Committee focuses on conduct and uses its authority to sanction editors engaged in serious misconduct regardless of identity or ideology. By extension, the Committee supports any editors who are willing to contribute quality content to the project in a spirit of civility and collaboration regardless of identity or ideology. It endorses efforts to address perceived systemic biases by bringing in more editors and developing any subject that may be under-represented. Any outside observer who feels Wikipedia fails to address a subject in an unbiased or comprehensive manner is invited to contribute so long as they are willing to respect the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia.
About the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
The Arbitration Committee deals with editor conduct on the English Wikipedia. Its members are volunteer editors elected by the Wikipedia community. The role of the Committee is to restore normal, amicable editing processes when those processes have been disrupted by disputes. It does so through hearing cases and issuing rulings, and when appropriate, removing disruptive parties.
The mandate of the Arbitration Committee extends only to editor conduct. Wikipedia policies prohibit the Committee from making editorial decisions about article content. When deciding cases, the Committee does not rule on the content of articles, or make judgements on the personal views of parties to the case. Although sometimes described as Wikipedia’s Supreme Court by the press, the Committee applies Wikipedia policies and guidelines rather than legal principles.
Please direct press enquiries about this case to the Arbitration Committee via email. For the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation that hosts and supports the projects of the Wikimedia movement, see their press room.