My questions are kind of nitty-gritty, but I'm not looking for really specific answers as much as trying to see your thought process and approaches to the issues.
1. What is your philosophy on how to handle edit warriors? Under what circumstances should the Committee ban users who continually edit war, and when should they use lesser sanctions, such as paroles or editing restrictions? What factors should the Committee consider in deciding what sanctions are appropriate?
2. What about uncivil editors (including those making personal attacks)? What factors should the Committee consider in deciding whether and how to sanction them?
3. When should an administrator be desysopped? In particular, how should a sysop's failings be weighed against his or her useful administrative actions, and when do the failings merit removal of adminship? When, if ever, is it appropriate to use a temporary suspension, such as was used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jeffrey O. Gustafson?
4. Under what circumstances should the Committee consider an appeal of a community ban?
5. Two recent cases, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Allegations of apartheid and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/THF-DavidShankBone, were dismissed with no decision made after the Committee had been unable to come to a decision concerning wrongdoing or sanctions. In both cases, the arbitrators seem to have felt that the cases' issues were no longer current, either because the community had resolved the issue or because a participant was no longer active at Wikipedia. Now, consider a similar situation in which the Committee cannot agree on finding concerning user conduct or on appropriate sanctions, but in which the case issues are clearly current. What should be done in such a case?
Thanks for your consideration. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, east.718 at 23:59, 11/4/2007
Based on ‘Request for comment on user conduct’ processes that you have followed closely, how would you rate them in terms of fairness to the accused?
Thanks, Wanderer57 01:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Best wishes in your candidacy, and in your tenure on the committee should you be elected. I'm asking this question to most of the candidates, so I apologize in advance if you've already answered a similar question from another editor.
Some background. I was an avid reader of the encyclopedia until December 2005, when I decided to begin editing. I had started to delve into the workings of the project, reading about AfD's and the ANI and, most interestingly, the work of the Arbitration Committee. When elections came around in December 2005/January 2006, I thought that a fresh perspective might be of value to the committee. So, in my haste to pitch in, I made my 13th edit (!) by nominating myself to the Arbitration Committee.
Needless to say, it did not go well.
However, I did find some editors who supported my candidacy on moral grounds, offering encouragement and concuring that a different perspective was of value in the committee's work. Looking back, it got me thinking, as this round of elections begins: What is the most valuable trait for an arbitrator? Your statement and answers to other questions will address this at length, I'm sure, but if you had to distill the essence of being an effective arbitrator into one word, what would that word be? ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 02:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
In the Wikipedia context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?-- ragesoss 03:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
These are generic questions, so apologies if you've answered them elsewhere :)
Thanks for your time. Majorly ( talk) 09:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there any dispute resolution involvement that you could link to? A user conduct or article RfC, a mediation case, or even a wikiquette alert? Thanks! Addhoc 13:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Are you still using a bot logged into your sysop account to mass-delete images? Neil ☎ 13:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Marudubshinki ( rfar) and Betacommand ( rfar) were both desysopped in part for running unauthorized adminbots; the latter case includes a principle that explicitly forbids such bots.
In looking at your contributions, I see that you've done an exceptional amount of good work in the area of administration of the project. Have you significantly edited any articles that are currently at Good or Featured Article status? Cla68 06:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
A few questions from me. I'm asking all candidates the same thing. I don't think anyone's asked these yet but I they have, feel free to just point me to a previous answer.
Thanks for your time and good luck. WjB scribe 23:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
In light of the recent ruling in the French courts re WMF:
The servers for English Wikipedia are hosted in the United States, and the WMF is incorporated in the United States (Florida, specifically). But Wikipedians can access and edit Wikipedia from anywhere in the world (with the possible exceptions of China and Burma, maybe, but that's neither here nor there). Given that, as an ArbCom member, you might be dealing with issues such as possible legal threats against Wikipedia, whose laws does Wikipedia need to follow? What should be done if there is a legitimate concern raised by a Wikipedian that an article may be in violation of US law? What about law of a country other than the US? - Revolving Bugbear 16:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
When I first came on to Wikipedia a year and a half ago the project was more centered around "Just the facts" - articles were more crafted around the who, the what, the when and the where, with some emphasis on the why. Of late, the why has taken on a dominant role in articles on contentious issues, with each side in the political spectrum putting forth their own "notable" mouthpiece to spin what the who, the what, the when and the where means. Do you think this is a positive development? Do you think this is educational, or do you think it makes Wikipedia another platform for the dichotomized public debate--that there are two sides to every issues, and two views--that is prevalent in American society?--David Shankbone 18:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
What do you want Wikipedia to be ten years from now? Marlith T/ C 01:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Arbitration is the last step in dispute resolution. However, first and foremost, we are here to work on an encyclopedia. Editing and adding to the project should be everyone's first priority. Can you point out some of your recent mainspace contributions that you are most proud of? AniMate 12:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. -- Rschen7754 ( T C) 06:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
How do you think your extensive knowledge of the technical side of Wikipedia can contribute to arbitration cases involving a non-technical subject? User:Krator ( t c) 14:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal at the Village Pump (Policy) that policies be protected from free editing [1]. Amongst the reasons for this suggestion is to prevent parties from revising policy in a way that favours their point of view, to prevent edit wars on active policies, and to maintain a stable policy base so that users can rest assured that they are staying within policy. Do you believe that this is a good course of action for the encyclopedia? Please respond from your perspective as a prospective member of Arbcom who would be responsible for interpreting policy (but feel free to add your opinion as an editor as well). I will be asking this question of all candidates. Thank you. Risker ( talk) 01:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
-- Blue Tie 13:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
How would you vote on this proposed principle: "While anyone may edit Wikipedia without the need to register, that meta-editing activities such as voting in an ArbCom Election are best protected by registering than by sleuthing". SilkTork * SilkyTalk 17:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
The questions below refer to the issues of ArbCom's integrity and transparency that needs to be maintained despite the universally accepted view that certain things should remain private.
Arbitrator's private mailing list, known as Arbcom-l and the arbitrators only IRC channel may obviously include information that cannot be made public under any circumstances. Additionally, being aware of the intra-ArbCom communication may give case parties an obvious advantage over their opponents. Who do you think should have access to such a list besides current arbitrators whose community trust has been confirmed in election that took place within the last 3 years? Should it include users that where never voted on? Should it include users who were voted 4, 5 or more years ago? Should users who are parties of the case, comment on the case, present evidence on the case, be allowed to have read access to the list where the case is discussed by the decision makers?
What is your opinion about the parties of the case (or anyone) contacting arbitrators privately about the case? This is not an hypothetical issue and it has been brought up in past cases. The obvious drawback is that if charges are brought secretly, the accused cannot see them and respond. Would you support an amendment of the arbitration policy that would prohibit parties from writing to arbitrators privately in relation to the cases? Giving evidence that has to be private due to its sensitive nature would of course be exempted but should this be the only exception?
Arbitrators who are parties of the case or have an involvement with the case parties that can reasonably be considered to affect their impartiality are expected to recuse. What involvement constitutes the ground for a recusal has traditionally been left to the arbitrators' own discretion, except for obvious cases when arbitrators themselves are case parties. While recused arbitrators, especially the case parties, are allowed to take an active part in cases, collect, present and discuss evidence at the case pages, the same way as ordinary parties, they retain the opportunity to read the thoughts of other arbitrators at Arbcom-L and respond to those privately. It is technically difficult to exclude arbitrators from communication on a case they are involved. But would you support a prohibition for such arbitrators to discuss the case with other arbitrators through the private communication channels, except when submitting evidence whose nature warrants non-publicity?
Policies are written by the community and not by the ArbCom. However, at some point the ArbCom made it clear that the arbitration policy is exceptional in this respect and that the ArbCom intends to control the main policy that governs its own action rather than be governed by the policy written by the community. Would you support returning the control of the ArbCom policy back to the community or should the ArbCom write its policy itself?
As a member of ArbCom, would you place more emphasis on content or behavior? For example, in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/SevenOfDiamonds case, there is voluminous discussion on whether SevenofDiamonds is really NuclearUmpf, but no discussion on what got NuclearUmpf banned in the first place. If SevenofDiamonds=NuclearUmpf, then this is a behavioral problem but doesn't have to be a content problem. If SevenofDiamonds edit was reasonable (I have not researched it) would it make a difference?
The above may not be the best example but it's one that I recently saw because I can't remember the parties involved in similar cases. On occasion, I have seen an editing admin block someone because of a dispute in editing an article that both of them are editing and the block seemed questionable because there is no overt POV. The blocked editor then probably feels the block is unjustified and creates a sock. Many times, people running for WP office will cite a clear cut case of someone with bad editing and bad behavior. However, what if there is good editing and improper block (which would point to admin misconduct about content), followed by sock creation justified because the block was improper (which would point to editor misconduct about behavior)? Does the first crime excuse the second? Or is the second one crime much more serious and punishable? (This is not an easy question because excusing the first crime by the admin would tend to increase the workload of ArbCom because it allows admin to do a lot with less oversight. However, excusing the second crime might seem to encourage socks). Mrs.EasterBunny ( talk) 20:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
What is your position on the following?
wbfergus Talk 15:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a community that produces and maintains a (still-nascent) encyclopaedia. This community has particular social and political structures that define it and that, presumably, affect the character, quality, and depth of its encyclopaedic output. Can you briefly summarise some political and social aspects of the Wikipedia community that you consider important or noteworthy, that perhaps need to be challenged or developed? How does the structure of Wikipedia encourage or inhibit access to decision-making and issues of power/control? Or does any of that matter? And what are the implications for the Arbitration Committee and its members? Pinkville ( talk) 22:12, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
My questions are kind of nitty-gritty, but I'm not looking for really specific answers as much as trying to see your thought process and approaches to the issues.
1. What is your philosophy on how to handle edit warriors? Under what circumstances should the Committee ban users who continually edit war, and when should they use lesser sanctions, such as paroles or editing restrictions? What factors should the Committee consider in deciding what sanctions are appropriate?
2. What about uncivil editors (including those making personal attacks)? What factors should the Committee consider in deciding whether and how to sanction them?
3. When should an administrator be desysopped? In particular, how should a sysop's failings be weighed against his or her useful administrative actions, and when do the failings merit removal of adminship? When, if ever, is it appropriate to use a temporary suspension, such as was used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jeffrey O. Gustafson?
4. Under what circumstances should the Committee consider an appeal of a community ban?
5. Two recent cases, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Allegations of apartheid and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/THF-DavidShankBone, were dismissed with no decision made after the Committee had been unable to come to a decision concerning wrongdoing or sanctions. In both cases, the arbitrators seem to have felt that the cases' issues were no longer current, either because the community had resolved the issue or because a participant was no longer active at Wikipedia. Now, consider a similar situation in which the Committee cannot agree on finding concerning user conduct or on appropriate sanctions, but in which the case issues are clearly current. What should be done in such a case?
Thanks for your consideration. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, east.718 at 23:59, 11/4/2007
Based on ‘Request for comment on user conduct’ processes that you have followed closely, how would you rate them in terms of fairness to the accused?
Thanks, Wanderer57 01:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Best wishes in your candidacy, and in your tenure on the committee should you be elected. I'm asking this question to most of the candidates, so I apologize in advance if you've already answered a similar question from another editor.
Some background. I was an avid reader of the encyclopedia until December 2005, when I decided to begin editing. I had started to delve into the workings of the project, reading about AfD's and the ANI and, most interestingly, the work of the Arbitration Committee. When elections came around in December 2005/January 2006, I thought that a fresh perspective might be of value to the committee. So, in my haste to pitch in, I made my 13th edit (!) by nominating myself to the Arbitration Committee.
Needless to say, it did not go well.
However, I did find some editors who supported my candidacy on moral grounds, offering encouragement and concuring that a different perspective was of value in the committee's work. Looking back, it got me thinking, as this round of elections begins: What is the most valuable trait for an arbitrator? Your statement and answers to other questions will address this at length, I'm sure, but if you had to distill the essence of being an effective arbitrator into one word, what would that word be? ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 02:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
In the Wikipedia context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?-- ragesoss 03:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
These are generic questions, so apologies if you've answered them elsewhere :)
Thanks for your time. Majorly ( talk) 09:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there any dispute resolution involvement that you could link to? A user conduct or article RfC, a mediation case, or even a wikiquette alert? Thanks! Addhoc 13:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Are you still using a bot logged into your sysop account to mass-delete images? Neil ☎ 13:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Marudubshinki ( rfar) and Betacommand ( rfar) were both desysopped in part for running unauthorized adminbots; the latter case includes a principle that explicitly forbids such bots.
In looking at your contributions, I see that you've done an exceptional amount of good work in the area of administration of the project. Have you significantly edited any articles that are currently at Good or Featured Article status? Cla68 06:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
A few questions from me. I'm asking all candidates the same thing. I don't think anyone's asked these yet but I they have, feel free to just point me to a previous answer.
Thanks for your time and good luck. WjB scribe 23:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
In light of the recent ruling in the French courts re WMF:
The servers for English Wikipedia are hosted in the United States, and the WMF is incorporated in the United States (Florida, specifically). But Wikipedians can access and edit Wikipedia from anywhere in the world (with the possible exceptions of China and Burma, maybe, but that's neither here nor there). Given that, as an ArbCom member, you might be dealing with issues such as possible legal threats against Wikipedia, whose laws does Wikipedia need to follow? What should be done if there is a legitimate concern raised by a Wikipedian that an article may be in violation of US law? What about law of a country other than the US? - Revolving Bugbear 16:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
When I first came on to Wikipedia a year and a half ago the project was more centered around "Just the facts" - articles were more crafted around the who, the what, the when and the where, with some emphasis on the why. Of late, the why has taken on a dominant role in articles on contentious issues, with each side in the political spectrum putting forth their own "notable" mouthpiece to spin what the who, the what, the when and the where means. Do you think this is a positive development? Do you think this is educational, or do you think it makes Wikipedia another platform for the dichotomized public debate--that there are two sides to every issues, and two views--that is prevalent in American society?--David Shankbone 18:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
What do you want Wikipedia to be ten years from now? Marlith T/ C 01:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Arbitration is the last step in dispute resolution. However, first and foremost, we are here to work on an encyclopedia. Editing and adding to the project should be everyone's first priority. Can you point out some of your recent mainspace contributions that you are most proud of? AniMate 12:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. -- Rschen7754 ( T C) 06:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
How do you think your extensive knowledge of the technical side of Wikipedia can contribute to arbitration cases involving a non-technical subject? User:Krator ( t c) 14:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal at the Village Pump (Policy) that policies be protected from free editing [1]. Amongst the reasons for this suggestion is to prevent parties from revising policy in a way that favours their point of view, to prevent edit wars on active policies, and to maintain a stable policy base so that users can rest assured that they are staying within policy. Do you believe that this is a good course of action for the encyclopedia? Please respond from your perspective as a prospective member of Arbcom who would be responsible for interpreting policy (but feel free to add your opinion as an editor as well). I will be asking this question of all candidates. Thank you. Risker ( talk) 01:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
-- Blue Tie 13:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
How would you vote on this proposed principle: "While anyone may edit Wikipedia without the need to register, that meta-editing activities such as voting in an ArbCom Election are best protected by registering than by sleuthing". SilkTork * SilkyTalk 17:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
The questions below refer to the issues of ArbCom's integrity and transparency that needs to be maintained despite the universally accepted view that certain things should remain private.
Arbitrator's private mailing list, known as Arbcom-l and the arbitrators only IRC channel may obviously include information that cannot be made public under any circumstances. Additionally, being aware of the intra-ArbCom communication may give case parties an obvious advantage over their opponents. Who do you think should have access to such a list besides current arbitrators whose community trust has been confirmed in election that took place within the last 3 years? Should it include users that where never voted on? Should it include users who were voted 4, 5 or more years ago? Should users who are parties of the case, comment on the case, present evidence on the case, be allowed to have read access to the list where the case is discussed by the decision makers?
What is your opinion about the parties of the case (or anyone) contacting arbitrators privately about the case? This is not an hypothetical issue and it has been brought up in past cases. The obvious drawback is that if charges are brought secretly, the accused cannot see them and respond. Would you support an amendment of the arbitration policy that would prohibit parties from writing to arbitrators privately in relation to the cases? Giving evidence that has to be private due to its sensitive nature would of course be exempted but should this be the only exception?
Arbitrators who are parties of the case or have an involvement with the case parties that can reasonably be considered to affect their impartiality are expected to recuse. What involvement constitutes the ground for a recusal has traditionally been left to the arbitrators' own discretion, except for obvious cases when arbitrators themselves are case parties. While recused arbitrators, especially the case parties, are allowed to take an active part in cases, collect, present and discuss evidence at the case pages, the same way as ordinary parties, they retain the opportunity to read the thoughts of other arbitrators at Arbcom-L and respond to those privately. It is technically difficult to exclude arbitrators from communication on a case they are involved. But would you support a prohibition for such arbitrators to discuss the case with other arbitrators through the private communication channels, except when submitting evidence whose nature warrants non-publicity?
Policies are written by the community and not by the ArbCom. However, at some point the ArbCom made it clear that the arbitration policy is exceptional in this respect and that the ArbCom intends to control the main policy that governs its own action rather than be governed by the policy written by the community. Would you support returning the control of the ArbCom policy back to the community or should the ArbCom write its policy itself?
As a member of ArbCom, would you place more emphasis on content or behavior? For example, in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/SevenOfDiamonds case, there is voluminous discussion on whether SevenofDiamonds is really NuclearUmpf, but no discussion on what got NuclearUmpf banned in the first place. If SevenofDiamonds=NuclearUmpf, then this is a behavioral problem but doesn't have to be a content problem. If SevenofDiamonds edit was reasonable (I have not researched it) would it make a difference?
The above may not be the best example but it's one that I recently saw because I can't remember the parties involved in similar cases. On occasion, I have seen an editing admin block someone because of a dispute in editing an article that both of them are editing and the block seemed questionable because there is no overt POV. The blocked editor then probably feels the block is unjustified and creates a sock. Many times, people running for WP office will cite a clear cut case of someone with bad editing and bad behavior. However, what if there is good editing and improper block (which would point to admin misconduct about content), followed by sock creation justified because the block was improper (which would point to editor misconduct about behavior)? Does the first crime excuse the second? Or is the second one crime much more serious and punishable? (This is not an easy question because excusing the first crime by the admin would tend to increase the workload of ArbCom because it allows admin to do a lot with less oversight. However, excusing the second crime might seem to encourage socks). Mrs.EasterBunny ( talk) 20:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
What is your position on the following?
wbfergus Talk 15:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a community that produces and maintains a (still-nascent) encyclopaedia. This community has particular social and political structures that define it and that, presumably, affect the character, quality, and depth of its encyclopaedic output. Can you briefly summarise some political and social aspects of the Wikipedia community that you consider important or noteworthy, that perhaps need to be challenged or developed? How does the structure of Wikipedia encourage or inhibit access to decision-making and issues of power/control? Or does any of that matter? And what are the implications for the Arbitration Committee and its members? Pinkville ( talk) 22:12, 12 December 2007 (UTC)