Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Candidates/Newyorkbrad/Questions

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Arbitration Committee Election 2010 candidate: Newyorkbrad

Arbcom election questions from Rschen7754

Due to the changed format of this year's election questioning, I have removed all the questions that are covered by the general election questions (but please be sure to answer those thoroughly!) If you wouldn't mind answering the following brief questions that evaluate areas not covered by the general questions, that would be great!

What are your views on a) WP:COMPETENCE b) WP:NOTTHERAPY?
A. Both essays make valid and valuable points, but the principles underlying them need to be applied in a sensitive and humane fashion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do a group of editors focusing on a specific style guideline or convention have the ability and/or right to impose on other groups of editors their particular interpretation of the style guideline, or their own standardized convention, even if there is significant opposition?
A. It depends on the nature of the guideline or convention. There are some issues as to which it is acceptable for styles and conventions to be non-uniform throughout Wikipedia. An example is the choice between American English and British or Commonwealth English; if we took a poll and 60% or even 80% of editors favored one of the two varieties, this would not be a good basis for proscribing use of the other. On the other hand, there are some issues where consistency of style is important and it may be more important that an issue be settled rather than to leave it under discussion indefinitely and allow it to become a time-sink and a distraction. As the old saying goes, it is fine to have everyone drive on the left, and it is fine to have everyone drive on the right; but to allow some people to drive on the left while others drive on the right is a very bad idea.

In any event, though, the Arbitration Committee would generally wade into issues such as this only in cases of prolonged disputation and tension (the Date delinking case is one example). We aspire to a Wikipedia on which at some point, editors whose views are in the minority accept that consensus is against them and accept that consensus, unless there are significant reasons not to. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Rs chen 7754 07:08, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Lar

Note to readers: This is a copy of User:Lar/ACE2010/Questions. These questions were taken from last year and the year before and modified to fit changes in circumstance.

Notes to respondents

In some cases I am asking about things that are outside ArbCom's remit to do anything about. I am interested in your thoughts even so.
Note also that in many cases I ask a multi part question with a certain phrasing, and with a certain ordering/structure for a reason, and if you answer a 6 part question with a single generalized essay that doesn't actually cover all the points, I (and others) may not consider that you actually answered the question very well at all.
It is also Not Helpful to answer "yes, yes, no, yes" (because you are expecting people to count on their fingers which answers go with which questions...) go ahead and intersperse your answers. We'll know it was you. No need to sign each part unless you want us to know which parts you answered when.
For those of you that ran last year (or the year before, etc.), feel free to cut and paste a previous year's answers if you still feel the same way, but some of the questions have changed a bit or expanded so watch out for that.
Where a question overlaps one of the standard questions I have tried to note that and explain what elaboration is desired.

The questions

Is the English Wikipedia's current BLP approach correct in all aspects? Why or why not? If not, what needs changing? In particular, how do you feel about the following suggestions:
a) "Opt Out" - Marginally notable individuals can opt out, or opt in, at their request. If it's a tossup, the individual's wishes prevail, either way. George W. Bush clearly does not get to opt out, too notable. I (Lar) clearly do not get to opt in, not notable enough.

b) "Default to Delete" - If a BLP AfD or DRv discussion ends up as "no consensus" the default is to delete. A clear consensus to KEEP is required, else the article is removed.

c) "Liberal semi protection" - The notion that if a BLP is subject to persistent vandalism from anons it should get semi protection for a long time (see User:Lar/Liberal Semi ... we were handing out 3 months on the first occurance and 1 year for repeats)

d) "WP:Flagged Protection" - a trial, which ended up being called WP:Pending changes instead. Please comment on the trial results as they specifically relate to the BLP problem. (there is another question about revisions generally) Would you do anything different in the actual implementation?

e) "WP:Flagged Revisions" - the actual real deal, which would (presumably) be liberally applied.
A. I've been concerned about Wikipedia's approach to biographies of living persons almost since I became an editor. In the past four years, the written BLP policy and its implementation have improved in a number of respects. There is still ample room for further progress, though.

As I've discussed both on-wiki and elsewhere, what is sometimes referred to as "BLP" or "the BLP issue" actually involves a whole series of related issues. One is the insertion of outright falsehood and defamation into articles, either as prankish vandalism or as a form of harassment. Second is the creation of articles with undue negative weight for political, ideological, financial or similar reasons. Third is the existence of articles with no or insufficient references for controversial propositions, or at all, making it impossible to verify whether the article content is accurate ("no unsourced negative information" is probably the core of the BLP policy, though it shouldn't be thought of as all of it). Fourth, and an aspect that I have focused a great deal of attention on personally, is the effect that Wikipedia articles may have on the privacy of article subjects: even a statement that is reliably sourced and undisputedly true may nonetheless not belong on Wikipedia, simply because its inclusion is likely to significantly harm the subject of the article, without much if any encyclopedic purpose.

I can't possibly say everything here that I have to say about these BLP issues. I've written about them on-wiki several times over the years (my first substantive contributions were probably the February 2007 Brian Peppers DRV, the "lost laptop" AfD and DRV and AfD again, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Doc glasgow#Outside view by Newyorkbrad, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/QZ Deletion dispute#Outside view by Newyorkbrad, and the Hornbeck-Ownby deletion discussion (please see the DRV log for May 28, 2007; I don't seem to be able to link directly to the discussion). I've continued to speak up on these issues from time to time, not only on-wiki, but also elsewhere. When I guest-blogged last year about Wikipedia on one of the leading law-and-politics blogs, The Volokh Conspiracy (link to the whole series of posts here), three of my posts were about "Wikipedia, the Internet, and Diminished Privacy" and "Wikipedia and the Biography Problem" (parts 1 and 2). Those interested not only in my own views on BLP but the history of the issue on-wiki (as of last year, at least) might want to take a look at those. A few months later, when I was graciously invited to give one of the keynote speeches at the 2009 Wikiconference New York, I chose BLP as the topic of my address. A link to the speech is here (Ogg Theora player required; speech begins about 8 minutes into the video). I plan to give a similar talk at Wikimania next year and to continue promoting high standards in this area.

I think there is an increasing recognition that while the near-universality of the Internet, by no means limited to Wikipedia, has improved many people's lives in a number of ways, it has had a serious and to some people devastating impact on others'. In the Badlydrawnjeff arbitration case (decided the year before I came onto the committee), the arbitrators resolved that Wikipedia articles should not be used so as to continue the victimization of subjects whose notability arises primarily from their having been victimized by the acts of others. (At that stage, whether we could probably consider the well-being of an article subject at all in making a content or deletion decision seemed to be controversial; we seem to have arrived at a consensus that the answer to that one is yes, though there will always be disputes about specific instances.) I have arrived at the very depressing conclusion, though, that while it is critically important for Wikipedia to uphold high standards for inclusion of articles dealing with, for example, the subjects of "Internet memes" that disrupt their lives and the otherwise non-notable victims of crimes, Wikipedia's ability to change the world is limited because so much publicity is on the wider Internet and outside our ability to control. Even such a seemingly unambiguous advance for access to information as the increasing online availability of old newspapers can have a major impact on the life of someone who is mentioned in an unflattering way in an old article—a fact that journalists are just starting to think about (this column by the Public Editor of The New York Times about coverage of a recent court decision involving a 4-year-old defendant contains a recent and interesting discussion). A similar issue is the permanence of revelations and allegations made on social media, as discussed by Jeffrey Rosen in his well-written and memorably titled Sunday Times Magazine cover story "The Web Means the End of Forgetting", which is an excellent analysis, though it messes up some details about Wikipedia itself. (Nor are these new issues; they were raised, though to a lesser extent, by other media long before the Internet and Wikipedia came along, as witnessed by the Sidis and Haynes cases that I discussed in my speech.) Another related phenomenon is that court filings in litigation are now published online immediately in many jurisdictions, although many litigations relate to intensely private matters and even though, by definition, in most cases, not everything that both sides claim in a litigation can be true.

Isaac Asimov predicted in 1956 in "The Dead Past" that advanced technology would devastate individual privacy, although he didn't anticipate the specific form of technology, and I fear that that has come to pass. The fact that Wikipedia, wittingly or unwittingly, plays a part in this is the single most upsetting thing to me about this project that I have come to care so much about. With Wikipedia long since having become a top-ten website, with the realization that a Wikipedia article on any individual will almost invariably become one of the top (if not the top) Google hits on the subject, and with complaints from article subjects coming into OTRS every day, it is of imperative public importance that we continue to be sensitive to the impact that Wikipedia articles have on their subjects' lives.

Turning from the general to the specific, I don't think that a universal "opt-in/opt-out" regime would be practicable, but I do favor taking an article subject's preference into account in borderline situations. (I have wondered before, and would be interested in seeing the statistics, whether we receive more complaints by the subjects of articles who want them deleted or corrected, or by the former subjects of deleted articles who want them reinstated. What I have heard suggests the latter, but I'd like to know for sure.) "Default to delete" for BLPs seems a sensible idea, but is controversial because many deletion rationales are not directly related to core BLP issues; at a minimum, "default to delete" needs to be made policy where the article subject's notability is borderline and the article treats the subject in a primarily negative way or where the subject has requested deletion. Liberal semiprotection for BLPs that are the subject of vandalism clearly makes sense and should be implemented in many cases (one downside is the possibility that trolls would intentionally vandalize merely to trigger the semiprotection; another is that we want our highest-profile articles to be editable, so there would be a temptation to exempt the BLPs of the most highly notable figures—but then again, we've had George W. Bush and Barack Obama semi'd for years, and this is still a wiki). The principles discussed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war, in which I wrote the decision, are relevant here (although the "BLP special protection" regime that is cross-referenced in that case has not really taken hold). I'll discuss flagged revisions in response to another of your questions below.

One additional form of protection for BLP subjects that has gained some footing in the past couple of years is the exclusion of many Wikipedia-space (and other non-article-space) pages from indexing by Google and other search engines. For a long time, we might decide to delete an article because the subject was non-notable, only to have the AfD discussion itself (full of comments such as "Delete. This person hasn't accomplished anything.") come up as the top Google hit on the subject's name. We've done a reasonable job at installing the "robots.txt" or "NOINDEX" parameters on pages such as XfD, the noticeboards, the arbitration pages, the BLP noticeboard, and the like to reduce the incidence of Wikipedia metadiscussion showing up as key search results. I was part of a move to expand the use of NOINDEX a couple of years ago, for the benefit of both article subjects and contributors. I don't know that we've finished the job in this area; if anyone knows of a listing of all the pages that are supposed to be NOINDEXed, and all the pages that currently are, I'd be interested in seeing it.

If there are any follow-up questions, please let me know.
Given that it is said that the English Wikipedia ArbCom does not set policy, only enforce the community's will, and that ArbCom does not decide content questions:
a) Is question 1 a question of content or of policy?
A. Some of both.

b) ArbCom in the past has taken some actions with respect to BLP that some viewed as mandating policy. Do you agree or disagree? Did they go far enough? Too far? Just right?
A. The Badlydrawnjeff decision (2007, before I was an arbitrator) I thought was thoughtful, well-worded, and necessary at that moment in time; the Footnoted quotes decision (2008, during my period of absence that I'll be discussing elsewhere) was well-intentioned and I remember thinking from the sidelines that I would have voted for it, but the "special BLP enforcement regime" created by the decision seems not to have become part of the culture of the site; the Sarah Palin protection wheel war case (September 2008; I wrote this one) had a good set of principles, though it is one of those situations where looking back one wonders whether the incident that triggered the case really warranted a six-week arbitration; the unsourced-BLP-deletion motion in January was a measured response to an unusual situation, but I would have waited a little longer before the committee took any action, as there was ongoing and very productive community discussion taking place in a variety of forums at the time. If I've overlooked any other BLP-relevant decisions you wanted me to comment on, please let me know.

c) If you answered question 1 to the effect that you did not agree in every respect with the BLP approach, how would you go about changing the approach? Take your answers to 2a and 2b into account.
A. This is an area where good and thoughtful practice is worth ten thousand rules. There is no substitute for a high degree of sensitivity on the part of our editors. One overriding principle is that if the existence of a Wikipedia article on a person is likely to cause him or her real-world damage or distress, we ought to be pretty darn sure that the article has a good deal of encyclopedic importance before creating or keeping it.
It has been said that the English Wikipedia has outgrown itself, that the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big. Do you agree or disagree, and why? If you agree, what should be done about it? Can the project be moved to a different model (other wikis, for example, use much more explicit voting mechanisms)? Should it be? Consider the controversy around some election provisions... we had an RfC on the topic early this year, but by the election we still didn't have closure on some open questions. Does the recent adoption of Secure Poll for some uses change your answer?
A. I agree with the statement that "the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big," that is, with respect to decisions that are made with input across the entire project. That being said, relatively few decisions are made across the entire project; for 99% of decisions to be made, the decision-makers are a few editors working on an article or a few editors interested in a policy page or perhaps a few dozen editors drawn in by a controversy or an ANI discussion. It is only on the decisions that garner input from hundreds of editors that consensus in the classic sense becomes hard to obtain and harder to evaluate. I don't have any particular solutions to offer to this problem; suggestions that we go to more of a pure voting model (outside the context of elections like this one and a few similar instances), that the Arbitration Committee take on more of a leadership role, or that a new leadership body within the project be created, all suffer from various drawbacks that have already been widely discussed. One observation I would add, though, is that as the number of participants offering pro or con views in a discussion increases, the more likely the discussion is to take on the reality if not the appearance of voting, because as the number of participants increases it becames exponentially more difficult for a decision-maker to divine a result in a holistic fashion rather than by merely counting heads.
Please discuss your personal views on Sighted/Flagged revisions/Pending Changes. What did you think of the trial? Should we ultimately implement some form of this? What form? Do you think the community has irretrievably failed to come to a decision about this? Why? What is the role, if any, of ArbCom in this matter? What is the reason or reasons for the delay in implementing?
A. I have very mixed views on this whole issue. Unfortunately, the trial seemed in some ways to have petered out without providing as many editors as we'd hoped with interaction with the new system that might help them to gauge its acceptability. I almost had the sense that the community's energy on this issue was used up for awhile in the long debates about whether we should have a new system and how it should be configured and what articles it should apply to and how long the trial should be—and then there was a much lesser focus to the nitty-gritty of how the new interface affected the editing experience for both new and experienced editors, and whether (to the extent one could tell form the limited sample) it helped to reduce the problems it was designed to reduce. A serious concern was that only a few administrators seemed to get heavily involved in the trial; from the numbers I've heard about, I think that one administrator (my arbitrator colleague Risker) may have been as responsible for adding articles to the FR list as everyone else put together.

The pros and cons of FR remain what they always were, including on the pro side the opportunity to screen out blatant defamation and nonsense and some assurance of quality control; on the con side the possibility that vandalism will just become sneakier (no reviewer can spot everything, or even nearly anything, beyond the blatant) and the potential that hourslong delays in approving proposed edits will turn off would-be new editors. I honestly don't know what the next step is here, in the absence of a governance process that we all stand behind. I do not anticipate that the Arbitration Committee will have a role in making this decision.
Wikipedia was founded on the principle that anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, is OK. You do not need to disclose your real identity, if you do not wish to, to edit here. You are not forbidden from doing so if you wish.
a) Do you support this principle? Why or why not?
A. I support this approach both as a matter of principle and as a matter of practicality, and feel strongly that our current approach is correct.

b) If you do not support it, is there a way to change it at this late date? How? Should it be (even if you do not support it, you may think it should not be changed)?
A. Not applicable, as I think the current policy that permits each editor to make this choice is appropriate.

c) With anonymity comes outing. Lately there has been some controversy about what is outing and what is not... if someone has previously disclosed their real identity and now wishes to change that decision, how far should the project go to honor that? Should oversight be used? Deletion? Editing away data? Nothing?
A. Reasonable steps should be taken as appropriate to the specific case. Deleting old versions of a userpage is a relatively easy step; renaming of course is possible where desired; revdeleting or oversighting should generally be reserved for situations where they are proportionate, such as where the editor is being subjected to serious acts of harassment, or where the editor is a minor. A related situation in which we should be liberal in accommodating requests, because no actual data is being lost, is where an editor created his or her account as User:JohnSmith (but with a much less common name than "John Smith") and now realizes with consternation that his or her first three hundred Google hits are random posts on Wikipedia talkpages.

d) If someone has their real identity disclosed elsewhere in a way that clearly correlates to their Wikipedia identity, is it outing to report or reveal that link? Why or why not?
A. It is usually inappropriate to make such a link on-wiki unless it is known that the user in question does not object. I can imagine exceptions, but they would be rare. In general, where an editor believes that the identify of a psedonymous editor raises an issue and knows that the identification should not be posted on-wiki, the Arbitration Committee should be consulted. This most frequently arises in alleged conflict-of-interest situations; as we have noted in several decisions (this was originally Fred Bauder's formulation), the policies discouraging conflicts of interest and permitting anonymous editing create a tension that of necessity is imperfectly resolved. We attempted to refine this somewhat this past year in the Gibraltar case, but didn't get as far as I might have liked.

e) Do you openly acknowledge your real identity? Should all Arbitrators openly acknowledge their real identity? Why or why not? If you are currently pseudonymous, do you plan to disclose it if elected? (this is somewhat different than Thatcher's 1C from 2008 in that it's more extensive)
A. At this time, it's widely known that my real name is Ira Brad Matetsky and that I'm a lawyer in New York. (I'll have some related thoughts in one of my responses on the main questions page.) I don't think any arbitrator, or anyone else, should be required to disclose his or her identity. I don't think I'm any different as an arbitrator because my name has become public, and I'm not sure that anyone else would be either, but we would probably lose some people who at least want to make an effort to keep this information private.

f) Does the WMF make it clear enough that pseudonymity is a goal but not a guarantee? What should the WMF be doing, in your opinion, if anything, about loss of pseudonymity? What should ArbCom be doing, in your opinion, if anything, about loss of pseudonymity?
A. I think Risker's essay on this subject should be required reading for anyone seeking advanced permissions. I'm not sure that there is much more the Foundation could do besides publicize facts such as those mentioned in the essay. (Do you have a suggestion?) The Arbitration Committee can, and does, sanction editors who reveal identifying information about other editors without permission.

g) If an editor clearly and deliberately outs someone who does not wish to be outed, what is the appropriate sanction, if any? Does the question differ if the outing occurs on wiki vs off-wiki? (this is somewhat similar but different from Thatcher's 1D from 2008)
A. We have banned people for intentionally revealing identifying information about other editors, particularly where it is obvious that the purpose is malicious, and I expect we will continue to do. This is so even where the information is posted on other publicly visible websites. A lesser sanction might be in order if the outing occurred inadvertently, or in a borderline case (there are instances in which it is an "open secret" among some group who an editor is in real life, and someone doesn't realize that the information hasn't been released on Wikipedia itself).
Stalking is a problem, both in real life and in the Wikipedia context.
a) Should the WMF be highlighting (disclaiming) the possible hazards of editing a high visibility website such as Wikipedia? Should some other body do so?

b) What responsibility, if any, does WMF have to try to prevent real life stalking? What aid, if any, should the WMF give to someone victimised. Balance your answer against the provisions of the privacy policy.

c) If someone has previously been stalked in real life, what allowances or special provisions should be made, if any?

d) What special provisions should be made, if any, to deal with stalkers who are using Wikipedia to harass victims? Consider the case where the stalkee is a real life person and the harassment is done by manipulating their article, as well as the case where the stalkee is an editor here.

e) Where is the line between stalking or harassing an editor and reviewing the contributions of a problematic editor to see if there are other problems not yet revealed?

f) Are there editors who overplay the stalking card? What's to be done about that?
A. The question correctly posits that "stalking, both in real life and in the Wikipedia context," is a serious problem (obviously, an order of magnitude more serious if it has off-wiki overtones than if it just involves fiddling with someone's edits). The good news is that significant stalking and off-wiki harassment incidents originating from Wikipedia are relatively rare; the bad news is that when they do occur, some of them have been gravely serious (including several that the Arbitration Committee has had to discuss confidentially). An editor facing any form of harassment is entitled to full support from the rest of the community, including the Arbitration Committee where the committee is able to help in any way, although there is always a judgment to be made about how much publicity one gives to a given situation (as sometimes publicity is exactly what the harasser is seeking, and there is always a fear of copycat incidents). In a given case, appropriate steps to protect a harassed editor might include oversighting or rev-deleting harassing posts appearing on-wiki, protecting or closely watching a given page, imposing sanctions against the harasser, and in an appropriate case facilitating contact with the Office if the Office is in a position to provide advice about further measures.

With regard to subquestion (e), again, it's a case-by-case call, but to a certain extent we have to rely on what we can tell about motive, and it is also important to see whether the review of an editor's contributions is motivated by a genuine and significant problem, as opposed to a trumped-up or exaggerated one. With regard to subquestion (f), in a number of arbitration cases we have cautioned that exaggerated, overly quick, or (sadly in one case) delusional allegations of harassment or stalking are not acceptable; it's a serious charge, and needs to be backed up by serious evidence before it is made.

I don't know that the problem presently rises to the level where an "editing Wikipedia may make you a target of disgruntled people" disclaimer ought to appear on the bottom of the edit box, but I do think it's a good idea to advise new users (as we do to some extent) to consider the possibility when they choose a username or decide how much personal information to provide on their user page. In the special case of editors who are minors, especially younger minors, cautioning these editors not to give out identifying information was one of the reasons I drafted the page Wikipedia:Guidance for younger editors; some of the advice there about the information that is out there about everyone on the Internet these days applies equally to us older editors as well.
A certain editor has been characterized as "remarkably unwelcome" here, and the "revert all edits" principle has been invoked, to remove all their edits when discovered. In the case of very unwelcome and problematic editors, do you support that? What about for more run of the mill problem editors? What about in the case of someone making a large number of good edits merely to test this principle? Do you think blanket unreverting removed edits is appropriate or would you suggest that each edit be replaced with a specific summary standing behind it, or some other variant?
A. I don't regard the individual you are referring to as an "editor"; he is a dangerously mentally ill criminal and stalker (physical stalker, not "wikistalker") and should be treated as such. My personal view is that the Foundation should have obtained a court order years ago barring him from editing on any project. Needless to say, this individual reflects an extreme situation (some of you reading this will know who and what I am talking about, and unfortunately I shouldn't tell the rest of you). For more routinely banned editors, I think common sense needs to be used: if a banned editor sees "teh" and fixes it to "the", I don't feel any obligation to change it back again.
What is the appropriate role of outside criticism:
a) Should all discussion of Wikipedia remain ON Wikipedia, or is it acceptable that some occur off Wikipedia?
A. I think most discussion by Wikipedians is best conducted on the site, but it's certainly acceptable for editors to comment elsewhere as well. I've referenced this in decisions I've written for the committee, such as here.

b) Do you have a blog or other vehicle for making outside comments about Wikipedia? If so what is the link, or why do you choose not to disclose it? Why do you have (or not have) such an individual vehicle?
A. I don't have my own blog. The closest I've come to this is the week of guest-blogger posts about Wikipedia I wrote last year on The Volokh Conspiracy, which I've linked to above.

c) Please state your opinion of Wikipedia Review and of the notion of participating there. Describe your ideal outside criticism site, (if any)?
A. I was asked this question during the 2007 election. Part of my answer then was this:
Wikipedia Review is a forum of varying quality, just as one would anticipate given the wide variety of people who contribute to it. From time to time, WR has offered reasonable, or at least arguable, criticism of Wikipedia and its editors. Other times, some of WR's content has been seriously off-target and misguided, containing too many threads replete with factual errors coupled with hatred, anger, and vitriol. One of the reasons WR is so uneven is that its contributors include both individuals who acknowledge Wikipedia's role while seeking to improve specific aspects of our policies or performance, but also include others who are outright hostile to the existence of Wikipedia and would support doing virtually anything to promote our destruction. [I then went on to suggest that WR would enhance its credibility if some of its participants discontinued the practice of exposing identifying information about Wikipedia contributors.]

Three years later, and after some participation in WR of my own, my answer would still be about the same. There is some valuable content on Wikipedia Review, and some criticism of us that I respect but disagree with, and then there is a certain amount of what can only be described as hatred and lashing out and at times craziness. I do give WR credit for helping to identify some aspects of the BLP problem facing Wikipedia before everyone here fully appreciated them. (Of the ten people who have written most eloquently about Wikipedia-related BLP issues in my experience, two are current or former WR moderators, and another three are Wikipedia administrators who also post on WR.) It is a shame that useful and important WR threads on issues such as this are sometimes drowned out by what I shall simply describe, without further adjectives, as some of the other content on the site.

d) Do you think it appropriate or inappropriate for an editor to participate in an outside criticism site? For an admin? For an Arbitrator? Why or why not (in each case)?
A. As reflected in my own occasional participation in WR, I don't have an issue with anyone's participating in a criticism site. Although other sites have their own policies about their content, I would hope that such participation would be constructive and would not be consistent with the overall values that we expect from Wikipedia contributors.

e) Do you have an account at an outside criticism site? If it is not obvious already, will you be disclosing it if elected? Conversely, is it acceptable to have an anonymous or pseudonymous account at such a site? Why or why not? Assuming an arbitrator has one, some folk may try to discover and "out" it. Is that something that should be sanctioned on wiki? (that is, is it actually a form of outing as addressed in question 5?)
A. I have an account on Wikipedia Review, under the same username of Newyorkbrad. I will add that I was as surprised as anyone when I first found myself with such an account; I had never intended to register there, although beginning around mid 2007 I did monitor the discussion on the publicly available portions of the site. What happened was that a banned user who was referenced in an arbitration decision I wrote e-mailed me and opined that it was unfair that I could not hear his side of the story because he was banned, and I responded that I'd be glad to hear account elsewhere, and the next thing I knew he signed me up for a WR account (I remember an e-mail from one of the WR moderators quizically wondering if their new member was actually me). I lurked on the site for awhile, and then I started posting (and thereby hangs a tale, which I'll be covering in one of the individual questions on my other page). Since then I've chimed in in WR discussions from time to time—sometimes to offer information, sometimes to give my opinion on an issue, sometimes just in banter—although my participation has tailed off in the past year or so, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that I've said much of what I have to say there, and also because there are a few members of the site who seem to be hostile to me and other Wikipedia "functionaries" whenever we post on the site. (Not to speak for them, but I think they see a danger that there is a tipping point at which their criticism site would become an annex to Wikipedia discussion, rather than a true criticism site.)

f) How has this (the view of outside criticism) changed in the last year? Has it changed for the better or for the worse?
A. About the same.
Does the English Wikipedia have a problem with vested contributors? Why or why not? What is to be done about it (if there is a problem)?
A. I don't find the term "vested contributors" to be a particularly useful one, partly because its meaning is opaque at first glance, but as I have stated in another answer, experienced editors, including administrators, should be expected at least to comply with the same behavioral standards that we expect from other users, and ideally to set an enhanced example of good behavior on-wiki. I've noted this more than once in arbitration decisions I've written; see for example Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/C68-FM-SV#Consistent standards (that's principle 13 of the decision, and principles 17 and 18 are also relevant).
Does the English Wikipedia have a problem with factionalism? Why or why not? What is to be done about it (if there is a problem)?
A. I think there is one group of editors who believe there is a problem with factionalism, and another group of editors who strongly believe there is no such problem, and the two are constantly at odds with each other. First of all, for someone reading here who doesn't click the links, it should be noted that WP:FACTION is a redirect to Wikipedia:Tag team. I haven't encountered that shortcut before coming to this question set, and had expected the link to be to an essay about nationalist and similar disputes or something of that nature, rather than this. As for tag-teaming, I think it is a problem in some instances, but as the essay points out, it often is quite possible that two or more editors have the same views regarding an issue of article content or policy, and I think that is much more common than tag-teaming of a problematic nature. I think much of the guidance offered in this essay for identifying this problem and dealing with it when it occurs seems reasonable.
What is your favorite color? :) Why? :) :) If you answered this question last year, has your answer changed? :) :) :) If so, why? :) :): ): :)
A. Blue. No, green! No ... aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!

Submitted at 19:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC) by ++Lar: t/c

Followups

These are both related to the CC case

What was the point of the principle about factionalism that was passed if you didn't then use it for anything?
A. It's good to see such attention to detail about the wording of a case; I know that when I draft a decision on my own, I do my best to ensure that there is correspondence between the principles and the findings and the remedies. The correspondence may be a little less direct when we have a decision written (literally) by a committee, as this one was (paragraphs of the final decision were drafted by seven different arbitrators, and the order in which arbitrators voted does not necessarily correspond to which was which). I assume that by "the principle about factionalism," you are referring to principle 4, "Collective behavior of blocs of editors." This principle should be read in conjunction with principles 5 and 21, "Wikipedia is not a battleground" and "Battlefield conduct," and with the next few paragraphs after no. 5. The findings of fact contain some reference to factionalism as impairing the editing in the Climate change topic area (finding 1.1, last sentence), and finding 2 is also relevant (and see my comment on it on the proposed decision talkpage, which I thought a statement of the indisputable, but which drew heavy criticism from both sides). Regarding the findings and remedies regarding individual editors, which are always the main "takeaway" from a case for many people no matter how elegant the principles and background findings might be, we found that a dozen editors had chronically engaged in "battlefield conduct" or conduct reflecting a "battleground mentality" (see WP:BATTLE). Remedies were then adopted with respect to each of these editors. Although "battlefield editing" might not be the precise phrase I might have chosen if I'd written every word of the decision, it is a descriptive one, and directly ties in to the factionalization of some editors in the topic area. Therefore, I don't see the basis for your premise that we didn't follow up on the principle regarding factionalism. In fact, that "factionalism" and "battleground" are two sides of the same coin is inherent in your own proposals on the workshop, where you cited "factionalism" to "WP:BATTLEGROUND." To the extent your proposed findings and remedies grouped a number of editors together as part of a "faction" and sought to sanction them on that basis, I found the wording we used in the decision preferable.
What was the point of asking what everyone's concerns were and then ignoring the input, even when asked what you planned to do with it?
A. At the outset of the case, as is true with many cases, the precise scope of the case was unclear. The main one of the three requests for arbitration that were consolidated into the case (which as I indicated in my response to another question, didn't work out well) was particularly broad. Therefore, it occurred to me that we might get useful input by asking the parties and other interested editors what issues they might like to see addressed. Unfortunately, the list of potential questions we received was even broader and more diffuse than the original case itself. The various parties posted a total of one hundred forty-five such questions, many of which were clearly not suitable for resolution by the ArbCom, and others of which were worded unhelpfully. It therefore was manifestly not practicable to respond to the questions by answering each one of them directly, or anything like that. Still, I did carefully review them and I believe that other arbitrators did as well. A great number of the suggested questions were indeed addressed during the case, either in the decision itself, or in arbitrator comments on the proposed decision.

Submitted 02:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC) by ++Lar: t/c

Questions/comments from Ncmvocalist and responses from Newyorkbrad

If it's not inconvenient for you, I'd like it if you could respond directly under each question/comment. Thank you in advance. Ncmvocalist (talk)

OWC

Q1. The mailing list existed for arbitrators to discuss matters which are sensitive or private. For example, if an user had to say something which could not be revealed in public, the only way to convey it is through (what should be) private & secure off-wiki communication ('OWC'). However, there have been several occasions where there is no specific 'need' for arbs to use OWC to discuss comments/votes amongst each other (in fact, such comments/votes could have been made on-wiki). Which parts of this statement are incorrect (if any) and why? Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:02, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A. The mailing list is used for several purposes, including addressing matters that need to be kept confidential, but also for internal coordination and discussion among the arbitrators. The nature of the committee's work is such that not every comment needs to be posted on-wiki, where it will become part of the eternal record of one of the world's top five websites. That being said, the basis for the committee's decision-making needs to be clear on-wiki (except in the rare case where confidentiality or similar considerations supervene). I think the arbitrators are agreed upon this. I have never seen an example of back-channel "deal-making" among arbitrators or quid pro quos or anything of that nature, for example. Looking back, I can think of a couple of instances where the Arbitration Committee's intent to do something could and should have been announced on-wiki earlier in the decision-making process than it was, but I can't think of very many such instances, nor can I think of an instance in which private discussion among the arbitrators led to substantive unfairness in the outcome of a case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Followup from Anythingyouwant

Your answer included this: "[I]f the allegation is poor behavior such as chronic edit-warring or incivility over a long period of time, then 'a boatload of diffs' may be an important part of the evidence. There have been cases in which a large number of problem edits or posts resulted in sanctions, even though no one specific one would have brought the editor to arbitration."

I think you misunderstood the question. I agree 100% that in such cases a boatload of diffs may be an important piece of evidence.

What I'm asking is, why is it not appropriate to focus on a particular example, even if everyone agrees that that example alone would not be enough for sanctions (and would not have brought the editor to arbitration). After all, the "defendant" may be contending that a huge portion of the boatload may be not a collection of minor violations, but rather a collection of instances that can each be completely justified if properly contextualized. (N.B. A thousand zeroes does not add up to anything significant.)

In other words, the "defendant" may assert that a large group of diffs show not just a lack of severe problem editing, but instead a lack of any problem editing whatsoever. So why isn't it a fair request for the "defendant" to ask that one or a small group of diffs be identified from among the boatload, so everyone can focus on whether that particular example shows any problem editing whatsoever? Otherwise, the defendant is in the impossible position of having to concisely explain and contextualze a huge number of diffs, when instead everyone could stipulate that a much smaller group of diffs are typical, and focus on them. If analysis of the example shows no real problem, then the defendant is presumed undeserving of sanctions; but if they show a low level problem that accumulates to a large problem in combination with similar edits, then sanctions would be appropriate.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you make a valid point, and suggest an approach that could be useful in some cases. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:25, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks Brad. Sorry for the abundance of words.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of question by Moni3

Well, I'm not sure my question was clear. Or rather, you answered something but not what I was looking to read. I'm looking for arbs to be able to realize that they may play a more active role in setting the often dismal tone of communication at various forums. Not necessarily to create more jobs for themselves--I do appreciate that you are a busy lot--but be able to determine and hopefully persuade Wikipedians to use a professional register, keep content and integrity in mind. Beyond setting an example, that is. Setting or participating in a campaign? I don't know. Do you see this within the scope of your duties or influence? No set government is apparently leading to an exhausting amount of pointless posturing and bickering. It's not really a community that I want to be a part of. Not like this. Surely someone somewhere agrees or sees my point. And I'm not belittling myself here. Wikipedia in theory and practice illustrates the need for editors to have no identity or self-importance. I have to be responsible for my own happiness. If removing myself from Wikipedia means one less editor is in the squabbling cacophony, then it helps, no? --Moni3 (talk) 00:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hate pointless posturing and bickering, absolutely hate it. I even dislike posturing and bickering that has some point, because I am confident that the point can usually be made without the posturing and the bickering. I understand your point that leaders of the community—and arbitrator is in some respects, though not all, a leadership position—should try to tone down nastiness wherever it appears. We have a few arbitrators who try to do that from time to time, myself being one. On the other hand, it doesn't always work: "civility police" has become a term of disdain; we have a handful of valuable content contributors who incorrectly think that it enhances their charm and the force of their arguments when they call other editors by various names; and if the Arbitration Committee were to try to do more to set policies and government ... well, let's just say that for better or worse, prior attempts by the committee to take baby steps in that direction did not work out well. Non-administrators sometimes resent when they think that admins are trying to throw their weight around, and this is so threefold for arbitrators, no matter how often I explain that I am not speaking on behalf of the committee or anyone other than myself unless I say so.

I have mentioned before, perhaps the first time I ran for arbitrator, that my initial introduction to editing Wikipedia was a very positive one. Soon after I made my first registered edit I received a welcome message; soon after I made my first substantial contribution to an article I received a nice note on my talkpage thanking me for improving the article; when I had some newbie questions, I posted them to the help desk and received courteous and useful responses; everyone seemed to be kind to everyone else. Within a few weeks, of course, I had come across RfA and the arbitration pages and I realized that all was not sweetness and light with the wiki; but still, a first impression is a first impression, and I think that impression is part of both why I stuck around editing, and why I evolved into the editor I became. I desperately wish we could reduce the bickering and the name-calling all over the wiki. But how do we do it? Civility blocks have, rightly or wrongly, fallen into disfavor except in pretty clear-cut cases; polite requests that people clean up their act are too often ignored, sometimes with pride; ironically, ANI and the Wikiquette alerts page, two pages created in large measure to address this type of issue, are sometimes the two least civilized pages in all of Wikipedia. I would welcome, on my talkpage, thoughts about how we can improve this problem.

As a final point: Moni3, your departing from Wikipedia would not solve, and would in fact worsen, various problems, so please don't do that. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Sven Manguard

I decided to ask these questions after reflecting on an hour long conversation over the IRC with an editor that I hold in very high regard. I intermixed her concerns with my own concerns to form this short list of general questions. Please answer them truthfully, and draw upon whatever experiences or knowledge you possess. I apologize in advance for all the questions being compound questions. Thanks in advance, sincerely, Sven Manguard _Talk

What is the greatest threat to the long term survivability or viability of Wikipedia? If the threat is currently affecting Wikipedia, what actions can be done to limit it? If the the threat is not yet affecting the project, what actions can be taken to keep it that way? What is the overall health of the project today?
A. The key question is whether we will maintain and expand our base of contributors. The novelty of Wikipedia as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit has worn off, so we will attract new editors—both as content contributors and as future administrators, functionaries, and wikiproject leaders—only if we maintain an environment that is inviting for new editors who are thinking about joining us, and for new editors who do join us. The statistics say that our participation levels have flattened after having grown exponentially for a number of years, and clearly we have fewer editors wanting to become administrators, etc., than we did awhile back. And the attrition rate among all sectors of the community continues to be high. I think this is our biggest challenge, and our most important, because with enough high-quality editors we can accomplish great things, and without a reasonable number of high-quality editors we can't accomplish anything.
What are the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of the project? What processes do we do well, and what processes fail? What content areas do we excel at and where do we need to improve?
A. Strengths include some of the article content (the best of the best, whether or not designated as FA or not), many of the images and other files, our diverse and talented base of editors with skills in so many areas, the collaborative atmosphere found in many (though by no means all) topic areas and processes, the technical infrastructure, and the synergistic effort of the project's success in enticing new readers and editors. Weaknesses include the less well-developed among the articles (not stubs labelled as such, but content that is problematic in other ways), the occasional attack page still masquerading undetected as a BLP, the hostility we express toward each other from time to time, the inhospitability (actual or perceived) of the project to experts on a given topic, and the increasing complexity of our various rule-sets that make it impossible for a new or even an experienced editor to become familiar with all the policies and guidelines and instructions governing a given issue. As to content, I'd like to see more and more detailed coverage of legal topics (although this is difficult because the legal system varies dramatically from one jurisdiction to the next, so it is often hard to write these articles from a global perspective).
What is your view on the current level of participation in Wikipedia? Does Wikipedia have enough active contributors today? Does it have too many?
A. Please see answer 1 above. We can always use more good contributors to all aspects of the project.
Does Wikipedia do a good job at retaining its active contributors? What strengths and weaknesses within the project can you point to that affect retention? Are recent high profile burnouts indicative of a problem within the project or are they unfortunate but isolated events?
A. We could do better. The attrition rate on all areas of the project is enormous (just pick a random RfA or other discussion from two or three years ago and scan the list of participants and see how many are still around). What I don't know is whether this is something unique to Wikipedia or whether it is just part of the online world as a whole—people come, people go. As I wrote above, I consider the rate at which we burn out some of our best talent to be a very serious problem. My own effort to ameliorate this problem is to approach editors who seem to be unhappy or have stated they are thinking of no longer editing, and see whether the issues that are troubling them can be addressed. When I write an arbitration decision, the first principle often defines the Purpose of Wikipedia: "The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of cameraderie and mutual respect among the contributors." The second clause enables the first, and it implies that we care about one another and we try, when we can, to solve the issues that lead people to consider leaving.
Do you believe that the project should prioritize on improving existing content or creating new content. Is there an ideal ratio of creation:improvement? For the purposes of this question, assume that you have complete control over where the community as a whole focuses their efforts. This is, of course, a hypothetical situation.
A. I apologize for temporizing, but both are important. There will always be new articles to written; we will stultify if we stop new creation. But we also need to get away from any mindset that might still exist that creating a new article is, by its nature, more important or more interesting than improving an old one. If anything, the opposite is the case.
Do you believe that Wikipedia should allow people to contribute without making accounts?
A. Yes, the current policy of allowing IP editing should continue. I understand the view that a high proportion of IP edits are unproductive, and could live with increased use of semiprotection (see my answer to Lar's BLP question above). However, allowing IPs to edit is a key part of the process for recruiting new editors, many of whom then go on to register accounts and become long-term Wikipedians. I rely on my own history as an example; I first edited Wikipedia, as an IP, because I discovered an error in an article, and I saw that anyone could edit the page, and I decided to fix the error, and I did. After a few more instances of that, I decided to register. But there is little if any possibility I would have bothered registering to fix that initial error, so I count myself as among those whose entire Wikipedia career was facilitated by the fact that editing by unregistered users is allowed.
If you could make one change to Wikipedia, what would it be, and why?
A.~~I would prohibit asking ArbCom candidates more than six questions in a row, especially when the candidate is answering them at 2:30 a.m.~~Two thoughts here. On the editorial side, I would enhance our efforts to address BLP related problems. On the community side, I would have us be kinder to one another, both for its own sake and to improve our rate of retaining contributors.

Questions from BorisG

As requested, please comment on Iridescent's views regarding your attitude and stance on Wikipedia as given on her candidate discussion page. Thanks.
A. Thanks for the question. I was ready to answer it immediately after you proposed it, but I realized that the answer I'd formulated in my head would run on much too long, and since that's part of Iridescent's critique of me, it would be foolish of me to feed into it more than I can help.

When I saw Eva Destruction's initial comments about me on Wikipedia Review (quoted now in the discussion you link to), I thought they were terribly unfair to me as a description of the work I'd done in my (then) two years of arbitrating. My response at the time on WR was:
"I generally prefer to let my work as an arbitrator speak for itself, and I respect everyone's right to an opinion about it, but I am honestly startled by the vitriol of this [post]. Putting aside subjective points of disagreement, I would note, among other things, that: (1) I can't think of anyone, "friend" or "enemy" or otherwise, for whom I've ever voted "the harshest punishment" (or even a mildly harsh punishment) for "trivial errors" or anything other than fairly serious misbehavior; (2) I almost always explain my reasons for voting as I do when it is not obvious, perhaps more frequently than any other sitting arbitrator; (3) none of my "real-life buddies" even edit Wikipedia, much less have they been involved in arbitrations in which I could "back them up" (unless this is merely a reference to people I've met occasionally at meet-ups, but I don't recall even any of them as parties to ArbCom cases); (4) far from uniformly supporting consensus as it emerges, I've almost surely cast more dissenting votes in my two years on the committee than has anyone else; and (5) my average edit length is at least six percent shorter than FT2's."

I also sent a PM to ED/Iridescent, and without divulging anything that was written to me privately, I think that I was able to address some of Iridescent's concerns about specific cases, and I also got a better sense of what was troubling Iridescent about my arbitrating, which basically corresponds to Irisdescent's comment about me now. Specifically, I note Iridescent's description of me as someone who "sees Wikipedia's primary purpose as the advancement of the community with the improvement of the content secondary, while [Iridescent sees] its primary purpose as the advancement of the content and the community side only important insofar as it advances that." That is not a correct statement of my wiki-worldview and it never has been. Here's a key paragraph from what I wrote to Iridescent at the time:
"You say that I promote Wikipedia as a social network rather than an encyclopedia. Since I came to Wikipedia to write articles before some of my attention got diverted to adminning and arbing, that is a significant charge. The fact is, of course, that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia written by volunteers, many of whom are looking for some form of validation or enjoyment to induce them to stick around. Your comment here resonates with Kelly Martin's critique of me, which is that I privilege the community over the encylopedia. My response is that I promote the community both for the happiness of its members but also for the long-term health of the encyclopedia, which is built and maintained by the individuals that sustain it; I don't see "the encyclopedia versus the community" as a meaningful distinction. My standard introduction to arbitration cases, the "Purpose of Wikipedia" clause, reads: "The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of comaraderie and mutual respect among the contributors." I do not consider that the last few words are superfluous."

In other words, I have never accepted the distinction that some people attempt to draw between "those who believe the encyclopedia is more important than the community (or the contributors)" and "those who believe the community is more important than the encyclopedia." It's a false dichotomy: we have no encyclopedia without the community and its members who create and edit and support and nurture it; and we have no community without the encyclopedia project that defines us. This has been my opinion since I first starting thinking about meta issues in 2006; it remains my opinion, and I think any other analysis is ultimately a short-sighted one.

(And I expect that, upon thinking about it, Iridescent would not completely disagree. If one takes a look at User talk:Iridescent (maybe not this week, when it is full of election-related posts, but ordinarily), one will find lots of content-related discussion, but also plenty of banter and chitchat among Iridescent and Iridescent's wikifriends. There's nothing wrong with that; it's part of what a user talkpage is for, and I do plenty of it myself; the point is that yes, there is sometimes a bit of a social aspect to what we do here: we praise each other, we support each other, and we do it because no one is going to contribute to Wikipedia, at least not for the right reasons, if they are not having fun. As another example, I recent posted to the talkpage of a particular user who had been blocked indefinitely and had just been unblocked, cautioning him to behave appropriately if he wanted to stay unblocked. This was not an editor who spends his wikilife creating mounds of content; he contributes from time to time, but his main role has frankly been to provide some amusement. I intervened as I did, quite intentionally, because I thought this was a more interesting place with him in it and I wanted to steer him away from the edge. It may even have worked. Was I wrong to do that?)

There are two ironies here. The first is that, for a time, I was told that some people considered me too dry, too humorless, too "serious" a persona. That was never a fair critique either, if I say so myself, but I took it to heart anyway. Perhaps I overcompensated a little. I don't think I did so in any way that affected my arbitrating.

The second irony is that it has become clear that I have a higher opinion of Iridescent than Iridescent has of me. During the course of this election, partly as a break from my own process of answering candidate questions and partly out of curiosity about my (if I am reelected) future colleagues, I have been following the other candidates' answers to the questions they have been asked. There are several candidates who have given good answers to the question sets, and I consider Iridescent's to be among the best (and I can only envy the pithy writing style). This is clearly someone who has thought seriously about what this project is and how well we are doing what we do; and (to answer a question that Iridescent was asked and that I anticipate I might be asked), I envision no problems working collegially alongside Iridescent if both of us are elected. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry here is another tough one (time permitting). A major criticism of the current arbitration (and governance) system is that it focuses too much on conduct at the expense of content, which is, arguably, the goal of the whole enterprise. This is summarised nicely in essay on the Arbitration Committee|Heimstern's essay. Do you agree there is a problem? What needs and can be done about it, if anything? Can ArbCom do anything in particular. - BorisG (talk) 03:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A. It's a good essay. I do think there is more of a realization nowadays that POV-pushing is POV-pushing and fringe-advocacy is fringe-advocacy, even if the editor steers away from personal attacks and four-letter words. I'm perfectly open to sanctioning such users in appropriate cases: there comes a point where adding inappropriate content does become a user-conduct issue. However, for better or worse, I think that arbitrators would be strung up from lampposts if the Arbitration Committee were to announce a new system for resolving content disputes, and the bodies would be set afire before we were quite dead if we had announced that we would be resolving the content disputes ourselves. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from EdChem

1. In this comment, Arbitrator Roger Davies was responding to criticisms of the findings of fact in the recent Climate Change case. He wrote that: "Their purpose is not to build a watertight case against someone, nor to convince the sanctioned editor of the errors of his/her ways, but to give other arbitrators a flavour of the problem." Do you agree with this comment? To what extent should Findings of Fact be persuasive of editors watching a case, the editors directly involved, and the non-drafting Arbitrators? Is it sufficient for non-drafting Arbitrators to base their views primarily on the drafted Findings? Please note, the intended focus of this question is not the specific Findings about which Roger was being criticised but rather the general issue of your view of the purpose of Findings of Fact.

A. I understand the point that Roger was making, in that when a finding is based on an editor's behavior over a long period of time, it's not practicable to include every diff that might support the finding. However, it will usually be good practice to include at least a truly representative sample, or alternatively to link to a section of evidence that does include them. This is especially important when the arbitrators disagree about whether there is sufficient evidence to support a finding. You will have seen instances in which I initially express reservations about a particular finding and then more to support (or don't as the case may be) as additional evidence is added to it. As for the role of non-drafting arbitrators, my practice is to carefully review the evidence and workshop submissions just as I would in a case I was writing, but not necessarily to review every diff (or at least every diff that might be relevant) as I would in a case on which I was primary drafter. Whether or not I am the drafter, I also carefully follow responses (by arbitrators, parties, and others) to proposed decision paragraphs, on the workshop or on the proposed decision talkpage, and these are important in identifying findings that might not have adequate support, in addition to my own individual analysis.

2. There have been situations during cases where groups of editors have been calling for, or even pleading for, clarification of arbitrators' views. Some examples include:

In Mantanmoreland, when it was unclear whether statistical evidence was persuasive, and whether further evidence would have been useful.
In Climate Change, when it was unclear whether arbitrators recognised the flaw in the statements relating to Scibaby false positives.
In Matthew Hoffman, when it was unclear how arbitrators viewed the controversial actions of some of their colleagues.
In the OrangeMarlin incident, where a desire to provide a unified ArbCom position left the community unclear on the views of individual arbitrators.

I could list other examples, but these are sufficient (I believe) to illustrate my questions, which are: how should / do arbitrators go about handling the need to reveal information that is in the community's interests to know as opposed to information that is instead only of interest to the community. How would you respond to the idea of a mechanism by which questions could be posed to the committee where arbitrators would be obligated to provide a direct and timely response?

A. I'll discuss the specific examples and then the general question. In Mantanmoreland, when the proposed decision proved so controversial, I posted an extremely (in retrospect, overly) long explanation of how we got to the decision we did on the proposed decision talkpage. The bottom line in that case was that some arbitrators found the statistical evidence in that case compelling and others found it unconvincing, so it was not possible to articulate a committee position on the issue. My own view is that such evidence can be extremely useful but only in conjunction with other evidence (which amply existed in Mantanmoreland). In Climate change, we ultimately eliminated the 20-40% reference from the adopted finding because of the expressed concern that it was either incorrect or ambiguous, which I think makes it clear we recognized there was an issue with it. It is awkward for me to comment on Matthew Hoffman, because my term as an arbitrator began right in the middle of the case, but I think I did have some comments at the time of the case about various aspects of it. (Something interesting I've just noticed in skimming the proposed decision talkpage in that case is that some issues about blocking and unblocking protocols in that case strongly parallel those in the recent MickMacNee request that we recently considered). I was not an active arbitrator when the Orangemarlin incident happened (see answer to question 3 just below), so I didn't have a role on that one.

More generally, I do think it is important that arbitrators respond to reasonable inquiries from parties and others, at least so long as they are good-faith inquiries and do not cross the line into repetitious venting at a decision one doesn't agree with (I don't mean to suggest that any of the instances you mention above crossed that line). I do my best to do so, on workshops and proposed decision talkpages; this may be more clear on smaller cases (where a few arbitrator comments stand out clearly on a workshop) as opposed to in the enormous cases, where any number of comments may be swallowed up in the overgrown workshop or the proposed decision archives.

3. You were an arbitrator at the time of the OrangeMarlin affair, which FT2 has described in his extended statement (User:FT2/ACE2010 extended statement under "The OrangeMarlin debacle (long)"). That statement raises issues of judgment about both FT2 and the rest of the Committee at the time. Do you have any comment to make, either on the accuracy of FT2's account from your perspective, or on your own involvement?

A. The Orangemarlin incident in the summer of 2008 occurred while I was not editing or arbitrating and had announced that I was retired (see response to Chaser's individual question above)—as discussed above, a one-time situation. During this period of time, I was still subscribed to the arbcom-l mailing list, as my colleagues were trying to talk me into returning to Wikipedia: they soon succeeded, as I was quite miserable at having had to depart in the way I did; and in fact, seeing the Committee struggling with not just the Orangemarlin matter but others as well was one of the reasons I returned. But I was not reading every post at the time, although I believe I did have some internal comments about how the mess might best be cleaned up. I won't say that if I'd been an active arbitrator at the time, I would have stopped what occurred; on the other hand, I'd like to think I might have. In any event, the lesson that "silence does not equal consent on an active mailing list, except perhaps for minor or ministerial matters as to which it would be unreasonable to wait for everyone's input" has been learned, and I don't think we'll see anything like this happening again.

4. In the fallout from the Randy outing accusations and the subsequent AUSC report, Giano was blocked by Coren and quickly unblocked by John Vandenberg. In the RfAr that followed, JV wrote "As other members of the Committee know, there have been prior incidents of Coren taking action without strong Committee backing. It is my opinion that this most recent block of Giano was another such example of poor judgment on Coren's part." and also that "Coren wisely does not want to name me as part of this "spat", and would like us all to disregard the context. That is not going to happen folks." This clearly adds to the perception that ArbCom closes ranks to protect its own. Have there been situations (to do with the Randy incident or otherwise) where you felt that the community had a right or need to know something, but that has not been disclosed for reasons of protecting an individual arbitrator or ArbCom as an institution? How important is protecting the reputation of ArbCom itself?

A. The sight of arbitrators bickering and calling each other names is as unedifying to me as the sight of other editors bickering and calling each other names; part of the ethos of Wikipedia is supposed to be that we work colleagially and respect one another and one another's contributions. That being said, I have seen plenty of instances on-wiki, and more off-wiki, where we criticize each other's views and approaches and actions with respect to cases. Since I probably have cast more solo dissenting votes in the past couple of years than anyone else, I've received my share of these. There is a natural instinct for people in the same group not to be unnecessarily controntational toward one another, especially when they are going to be working together for a long time: this is one reason why if administrator A reverses a block that admin B has imposed, A will write in the unblock message, "I think that this block is an overreaction so I have unblocked you", rather than "sorry about that block I've just lifted, but Admin B was being a dumbass again." Of course, we do have some people who would write the latter, and there may be rare circumstances where (with some editing) it would be the right thing to say, but not usually. There is also the complicating factor that in some instances, an arbitrator's action is (rightly or wrongly) based on non-public information, so either Arbitrator X can't fairly criticize Y without revealing the non-public information, or X knows that if he criticizes Y, Y would be unable to fairly defend himself without doing so.

In incidents of really serious problems, I think the committee has done what needed to be done: I don't think FT2 believes he was exempted from criticism during the Orangemarlin situation, or thereafter; Sam Blacketer's resignation was accepted immediately after we found out what had occurred (that revelation truly shocked me, as Sam had been a good arbitrator); and so on.

The "Randy in Boise" fiasco involved an almost comical misinterpretation of innocuous remarks, brought about partly because a couple of arbitrators and functionaries were unfamiliar with a particular trope, and partly because when an editor develops a reputation for sardonic and sarcastic observations, an expectation may be created that his every comment is in the same vein, which is not the case. Given that one of the parties is no longer participating in the project, let's leave it at that.

5. In the Climate Change case, you asked that questions to be addressed be suggested. In an answer above, you have noted the breadth and tone of those questions as being problematic. I thought the innovation was a good idea, and was disappointed that it wasn't apparent how it influenced the case. Perhaps if requesting questions during the evidence phase became a standard part of a case, before the workshop opens the arbitrators could go through and provide a list of (say) five questions that they see as being raised by the suggestions and the evidence and amenable to ArbCom resolution. This list would not mandate what happened afterwards, but could both guide the contributions on the workshop phase and indicate where the evidence was seen as being substantial and insubstantial. From your experience with cases, does this sort of approach seem practicable?

I still do see it as being useful if we have other cases where (i) the scope of the case is not entirely well-defined at the outset, and (ii) the level of acrimony among the parties is not such that questions list will be full of queries along the lines of "Should User:X be taken out and shot?" I think I've mentioned elsewhere that I was planning to try a variation of it in the MickMacNee case, when it looked like we were going to take the case and I would be one of the drafters. Another variation is for arbitrators to ask parties and commenters to be more specific about what issues they think a decision might address, in their statements at the accept-or-decline stage.

Follow-up questions from Carcharoth

A few follow-up questions, some related to your answers to the existing questions:

In your candidate statement you say: "The community was extraordinarily kind to me in the 2007 election". This was three years ago. Given the changes in Wikipedia and its community over those three years, how valid do you think that mandate is now, given that some of those voting then may no longer be active on Wikipedia?
- A. That mandate is about to expire, along with my term of office. The question for the voters now is whether to give me a fresh one.
In your candidate statement, you also refer to: "the outside public who rely on Wikipedia millions of times every day". How relevant do you think ArbCom is to the outside public?
- A. The Arbitration Committee has virtually no relevance to the general public if one asks whether the typical reader, or even the typical editor, has ever heard of it or dealt with it. (The press coverage of our decision in Scientology was a rare exception.) The committee's relevance to the general public is in its role in contributing to a culture throughout the site and the community that encourages high-quality contributions by knowledgeable, mutually respectful contributors.
In your answer to general question 3c, you say: "it has now been incorporated into the relevant policy page, which is probably the best sign that a principle initiated in one of our decisions has received acceptance in the broader community" Have you checked to see whether the wording in question was added following a well-attended discussion, or was it added by someone citing the ArbCom case and meeting no objections?
- A. There was discussion of the added paragraph at the time (I believe I actually added it myself), and there was consensus to include it. It's also been cited in various ANI discussions since then (sometimes even not by myself), which again confirms that it is useful. The principle was motivated in part by a concern that in general, ANI discussions of "this user made a legal threat" situations have sometimes been too simplistic, focusing on whether what the user said technically was or was not a legal threat and should or should not therefore be blocked, while ignoring other relevant aspects such as whether the user can be induced to express his or her concern in a more appropriate fashion without being blocked, and whether there is merit to the user's underlying grievance. I think there has been some improvement in this situation recently.
In your answer to general question 5, you say: "I remember at least one time, before I was an arbitrator, when the committee seemingly invented a new policy for the purpose of resolving a case". Can you remember which case this was? You also say that you have included in several committee decisions [...] a remedy calling for the community to revisit a policy or guidelines page with a view toward clarifying unclear and disputed issues". You mention the possible outcomes, but are you aware of cases where such an issue remains unresolved and the issue then came up before the committee again in a future case? If so, should the committee vote through the same proposals from the previous case, or should they reconsider in light of the absence of community discussion on the issue, or should they take a different approach?
- I was referring to the so-called Giano case in the fall of 2006, which I believe introduced the principle that functionaries or administrators who resign their tools are entitled to have them returned upon request, unless they resigned "under a cloud." (The phrase "under a cloud" was later changed to "under controversial circumstances" or "under circumstances of controversy" at my request, as I found the "cloud" wording excessively harsh.) I don't recall any policy or guideline anywhere that had expressed this principle before this case, but it made sense, and no one objected that it represented creation of policy by the Arbitration Committee ex nihilo. As for your second question, a clear example of policy that has remained unclear for years relates to blocking and unblocking protocols: under what circumstances, for example, Administrator A is entitled to unblock a user blocked by Administrator B. (I won't define here all the subissues and permutations, unless someone asks, but they are numerous.) As for your last question, the answer has to be that this is a decision to be made on a case-by-case basis; sorry not to be more helpful than that, but there is no way to respond to that question in a vacuum.
In your answer to general question 7, you say you: "wrote the final decision with participation by SirFozzie". However, SirFozzie's answer to general question 1 says that he was the primary drafting arbitrator of the Alastair Haines 2 arbitration case, along with User:Newyorkbrad". Two questions here: (i) Was there a primary drafter and who was it? (ii) Does it matter who is considered the primary drafter, given that drafts are sometimes reworked at a later stage of the process?
- The structure and substance of the proposed decision in Alastair Haines 2 was the result of collaboration between SirFozzie and me, with supportive input from other arbitrators as well. So, I would say we were both primary drafters. I think I was the one who put most of the words on the paper (well, the screen), but to some extent that's just the scrivener function. It is fair for us to share the credit and/or blame for that decision. And no, I don't think it matters who is the primary drafter of a decision (any more or less than it matters who gets "credit" for any other page of Wikipedia); and yes, drafts are frequently revised from the first one that is posted. (See also answer to next question.)
Related to the above, one of my follow-up questions to SirFozzie related to the practice of how teams of case drafters work in practice. For cases where you worked with a co-drafter (including the case where there were three drafters), could you say how the workload was shared, and how much communication there was with your co-drafter(s)? Do you think for complex cases, co-drafting is the way to go, and would you say that for simpler cases, 'solo' drafting is better?
- It varies greatly from case to case; there is no ironclad rule. A lot depends, quite frankly, on how many arbitrators there are at any one time with the particular drafting skills involved in writing clear decisions and the inclination to spend their arbitration time in this fashion. An arbitrator working behind the scenes to compile diffs may be just as important to the outcome of a case as the one who performs what I identified just above as the scrivener function. Looking over the list of cases in the past three years and identifying the ones I drafted, I see cases in which my draft became the final decision pretty much unchanged (e.g. Jim62sch, R. fiend, International Churches of Christ, Betacommand 2, Sarah Palin protection wheel war, Abtract-Collectonian, MZMcBride, Seeyou), cases in which my proposed decision was outvoted on-wiki in significant part, in retrospect for good reason (e.g. John Buscema, my first decision), cases in which I allowed myself to be talked out of my first draft of the decision and it soon became clear I should have stuck to my guns (Mantanmoreland, Mattisse), and cases in which I added materially to decisions drafted by other arbitrators; every case is different. Co-drafter collaboration can be anything from "you look at this issue and I'll look at that issue" to "here's a draft, let me know what you think," or anything in between. The one thing that it is best to avoid, when the human resources permit, is a situation where one arbitrator has to do substantially all of the drafting in almost every case, as has happened for a considerable part of the committee's existence, but not recently.
Another questions about case management relates to clerking of cases, and I'm asking you because you were a clerk yourself at one stage. Would you be able to provide some thoughts on how clerking of cases has changed over the years, and whether you would push for further change in this, or whether you are happy with the status quo. This question applies particularly for the more complex cases that come before the committee.
- As I've mentioned elsewhere, the sheer number of cases the committee decides, and hence the number of cases to be clerked, has declined radically in the past three years, but the average complexity of each individual case has increased. This means that the Clerk's role has become less of a ministerial one (creating case templates, notifying parties, calculating majorities, etc.) and more of a case-management one (refereeing arguments on the case pages, warning parties who are becoming excessively obnoxious during the case, etc.). There is also an increased number of requests for clarification and amendment that requires the Clerks' attention. The difficult question is to what extent the Clerks should be responsible for (e.g.) telling an editor that he or she is in danger of a block or page-ban for misconduct on an arbitration-related page, and to what extent it is up to the arbitrators to do this. The arbitrators will be perceived as having more ultimate authority on the arbitration pages than the Clerks who are their delegates, but an arbitrator who gets embroiled in disputes within the case risks accusations of prejudgment.
In your answer to ScottyBerg's question, you say: "Second, we took three requests for arbitration and rolled them into one because the subjects were generally related; we might have been better off after all if we'd taken them as three separate cases." How do you think this would have worked in practice, and how would you have handled overlap between the separate cases?
- The two smaller cases could probably have been decided much faster than the main case if they'd been handled on their own, and the outcome might have been clearer. It turned out that there wasn't all that much overlap in the bodies of evidence for the three cases rolled into one; the problem is that this wasn't clearly going to be so when we started. To the extent the evidence did overlap, we could have posted a cross-reference reciting that all evidence presented in the smaller cases would have been deemed as having been presented in the main case as well. This is all 20:20 hindsight, though.
Finally, not questions, but I'm impressed that you managed to refer to an Isaac Asimov short story in the context of an ArbCom election, and I agree 100% with your follow-up reply to Moni3's response to your response to her question (the post you made at 02:02, 20 November 2010, yes I know it would be easier to give a diff!), and I also found your reply to BorisG's first question excellent, even if your reply to his second question was a bit too vivid in terms of imagery for my taste.
- To your first point, thank you (and I've been pointed to a Damon Knight story by way of rebuttal, which I still need to track down); to your second point, thank you again; to your third point, I've been accused (correctly) of an overly flabby and bland writing style, so once in awhile it's fun to surprise people.

Thanks for standing as a candidate in these elections, and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. Carcharoth (talk) 02:34, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Shooterwalker question

Thanks. And to be clear, you think such remedies have been a net positive for the project? And have no further suggestions to ensure their success? (You don't have to take the bait if you don't want to. Just curious.) Shooterwalker (talk) 12:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the remedies have been successful in the limited sense that we don't have people edit-warring over the Ireland or West Bank/J&S article names any more. Whether they were the best possible solutions for the issues they addressed is a different question. (For the record, I was recused in the latter case, so had no responsibility for the remedies in that case.) As a more general matter, I've often thought we ought to have a mechanism for following up on both accepted and declined requests for arbitration a few months after we dispose of them, and check in on whether the underlying issues in the case have been solved, and I do a little spot-checking sometimes, but typically we haven't followed up on the end results of closed cases that unless there is a problem that brings the case back before us with an amendment or clarification request or the like. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Very clear. Thanks and good luck! Shooterwalker (talk) 02:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Offliner

Do you believe the nationalities of Wikipedia's editors are fairly represented in the current ArbCom? Could you please reveal your own nationality? If you do not wish to reveal your exact nationality, could you at least state whether you are from an anglophone country? Offliner (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is always desirable for the committee, as all other aspects of Wikipedia, to encompass a diverse and worldwide group. Of course that is subject to constraints, the most important of which is who chooses to volunteer for which tasks within the project. For my own part, it's generally known that I'm from the United States. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]