Candidates are advised to answer each of these questions completely but concisely. Candidates may refuse to answer any questions that they do not wish to, with the understanding, however, that not answering a question may be perceived negatively by the community.
Note that disclosure of your account history, pursuant to the ArbCom selection and appointment policy, must be made in your opening statement, and is not an optional question.
As an administrator on other projects and serial commenter in general, I might also be able to bring differing perspectives and ideas to the table, while still maintaining a firm ground with the ideals and process of the English Wikipedia itself - cases tend to wind up before the Arbitration Committee because the main channels have failed to resolve them, so this would be the place to consider more unusual solutions.
Usually I try to just work issues out on a talkpage, or over IRC or email if such a channel seems better suited, but sometimes that just doesn't work.
Seriously, though, I'd rather leave those to folks with whom the community has already entrusted the rest of the relevant tools unless a specific need arises, as they'd have a better idea of how to use the whole pile anyway.
Please ask your individual questions here. While there is no limit on the number of questions that may be asked, please try to keep questions relevant. Try to be as clear and concise as possible, and avoid duplicating questions that have already been asked.
Add your questions below the line using the following markup:
#{{ACE Question
|Q=Your question
|A=}}
I use the answers to these questions to write my election guide. There is a large correlation between the answers to the questions and what the final result is in the guide, but I also consider other factors as well. Also, I may be asking about specific things outside the scope of ArbCom; your answers would be appreciated regardless.
The questions are similar to those I asked in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012; if you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.
If they have a conflict with the greater community, they should resolve it with the greater community same as any other random pile of people resolves something with the greater community - by discussing it, throwing cats at each other, and generally escalating it out of control. I mean, not escalating it out of control. That would be ridiculous; folks should be prepared to back down in light of opposing consensus even if they are an expert, or right, or what have you. They can still be correct about something even if the article says something else, because Wikipedia follows consensus - of users and sources - not what may or may not actually be right or true.
As for OS, or at least its successors revision deletion and suppression, I have seen some problems with it on Commons due to the very nature of these tools preventing community oversight of actions, including actions hiding other actions. Like eek.
Different people often believe different things, and thus they do not feel that they should back down, because they are not wrong and other parties have failed to convince them of such. Thus we get disputes that cannot be easily resolved. It's headology.
Thank you.
Rs
chen
7754 02:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I also use these questions in my voter guide, and the latter four were actually general questions asked in 2012, which I asked be used again.
On the other hand, other people won't stop even if you sanction them, ban then, rangeblock them, and create a group of abusefilters to keep them away.
Thank you. Collect ( talk) 01:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
If this is happening, those involved should simply learn to recognise it and prevent it from becoming a trend.
In that vein, while I would say that it would be nice if more arbcom-related discussion were made public, this only really leaves on-wiki discussions. Because such tend to be much slower and less convenient in a lot of cases than a mailing list (and having a separate public mailing list wouldn't really be practical), I find it unlikely that the amount of non-public vs public business is likely to change any time soon, though the deployment of Flow may be what eventually brings this change.
Thank you for volunteering.
Unfortunately, as much as this is a common problem on the front end of MediaWiki projects, there is no simple answer as to how to fix it - not with how to detect it (that part would be fairly easy), but how to possibly display such changes in an adequate manner given the linear nature of the text and changes themselves and the 2-dimensional media on which it's displayed. I supposed it'd need a lot of arrows or something. And layers.
Given that the case in question was apparently about infoboxes, however, I'm not sure what difference it makes where in the article the infobox happens to be. There doesn't seem to be anything in the dispute about that much, at least, though perhaps I'm missing something? I can't seem to find where in context it was brought up in the case, and it's really the context that makes the difference with most of these.
Thank you, passed, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 23:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
More or less to the point, while it all seems fairly reasonable, I'm not sure what it'd actually solve. There is always ambiguity, but trying to write things down to be less so doesn't necessarily mean people will do better about it because it still comes down to the same base thing - the people themselves and the choices they make.
As for trying to repair the reputation, I, er... wouldn't, really. Why should topics be special, even if they have been blundered over in the past? What a topic is really shouldn't be important at all, for the most part; it's how folks are conducting themselves around it that matters, and that conduct, for ill or not so ill, should have the same general standards anywhere. Trying to fix things for a specific group of people is more likely to just make matters worse, either by encouraging bias in an opposite direction, or even just complicating the editing process in general.
I am told peach pie can be delicious but I've never actually had any that was; I made an excellent apple pie once but then failed to repeat the excellence every time I tried later; and I'm not sure what a boston cream pie is, but I bet it's easier to make, so I'll go with that.
(Note borrowed from Rschen7754): The questions are similar to those I asked in 2012. If you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.
Following the proposed, I suppose an interaction ban is to a restraining order what a full site ban is to conviction and imprisonment? Deportation is a closer parallel, but that only applies if they're not a citizen, as a nation chucking out its citizens is a lot weirder than a private entity revoking a person's membership. Something about scope.
As something of a tangent, it may also be worth noting that people are more inclined to stick around if they have an emotional investment in the project, and having to fight to stick around does create such an investment if it doesn't drive them off first. I'm not advocating blocking people for the sake of making them have to fight to stick around, of course - that's crazy and the sort of bad idea an uncyclopedian might have, in that it is a bad idea a bunch of uncyclopedians had awhile back - but it is an interesting thing to note.
I would like to point out that these days a formal education can have a lot less real meaning than it used to, however, especially in some fields. I know I didn't learn diddly squat of value, at least. Nothing pie-related at all.
Thank you, -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Calling a male editor 'cute' is acceptable. Thus it should be that calling a female one 'pretty' should also be acceptable. Now doing either of these may not be entirely constructive in most circumstances, but if random compliments are truly disruptive, especially when they are meant only as compliments, does this sound like a very welcoming environment to you?
Why do our female editors need to be protected from the same things that we simply accept for our male editors? Why are we special? How is it that if we are 'pretty' we're being sexualised and yet if MZMcBride is described as literally 'sexy' it isn't necessarily sexual at all? Would it be sexualising Seraphimblade to say he is handsome and I don't think his userpage photo does him justice? And, for that matter, would it be necessarily be bad? We're human - we're sexual creatures and it affects everything we do, one way or another. Out of respect we take care with our words and actions to not go too far, but it is also entirely possible to go too far with that as well, and I would argue that applying different standards to men and women is exactly that, going too far. It devalues the individual to nothing more than how they were born or what they identify as, regardless of who they are or what they themselves make of themselves. It's like the difference between not calling Malleus Fatuorum names because he'll just respond in kind and piss off a bunch of other people, and not calling me names because I'm a female editor and we don't have enough female editors. In this scenario Malleus is recognised for his choices and I'm only recognised for my gender, and as much as we do this sort of thing with the best intentions, it is frankly bloody insulting if you stop to think about it.
I cannot reconcile with the WMF's attempts to close the gender gap, because I disagree with the very premise. Women and men are different, and tend toward different things, and trying to go against that just harms both because if someone isn't genuinely interested in being somewhere, they won't stick around, and in the meantime it takes away resources from those who are. If the nature of the projects appeals more to most men, this is not inherently a bad thing, it simply means that those of us who are here are here because we are genuinely interested in being here. So it should be for everyone, male, female, dog, or what have you. But this is also not to say that the projects cannot be made more inviting in general, and to less common personality types, and indeed the Teahouse was a lovely step forward in that direction - it's just that making it about relative numbers of men and women (which is all the 'gender gap' actually is) is not the right way to go about it. We're here because of who we are, the choices we make, and what we have to offer the project. This is our value as editors. Ain't nobody should take that away by being sexist about it, and bringing sex/gender into it as a determining factor is the very definition of sexist.
Now I appreciate that these probably aren't the most popular views, but this is what I think, and I think it needs to be said. The funny thing about it is that as much as I probably should recuse from anything involving sexual harassment because I feel so strongly about it, the fact of the matter is that I only feel so strongly about it because so rarely do people seem to care or even notice when the discrimination goes in a different direction than what is politically correct. It shouldn't matter who is being discriminated against - male, female, cis, gay, blind, polish, wtfbbq - because we shouldn't, as a community and as other editors, be discriminating against anyone. We all deserve to be treated with dignity and the assumption of good faith, and we all deserve a fair hearing if something comes up.
That's teamwork. And you ask only about direct contributions to the articles themselves?
Also, do you think committee members should at least have free access to fresh baked pies?
Pies can make good breakfasts and desserts, and making them can be an effective destresser, but unfortunately I don't see the feasibility of that either. In conclusion we're all doomed. Doomed. Dooooomed.
It's not like Uncyclopedia. There, someone sends someone a long description of how they know exactly who we are and how they intend to rape and murder one or more of us, and we just spend the next few days mocking them for caring that deeply and being that angry about some backwater humour wiki. Dunno that any of us have ever been subject to offline crap, though. Well, that wasn't perpetrated by another Uncyclopedian, at least. Never invite an Uncyclopedian to your house, see. Terrible idea.
But Wikipedia... Wikipedia is serious business.
The number of Active Editors on EnWP has been in decline since 2007.
This decline has been documented extensively:
This raises several questions:
I suppose I take a similar view to WO and the like here as we try to take on Uncyclopedia regarding users who vandalise other projects or harass folks off of the project. Basically, it's two-fold: are they acting as representatives of Uncyclopedia in any way when doing so, or are they are bringing it home to Uncyclopedia by mentioning, linking to, or generally bragging about improper behaviour elsewhere? An example of the former might be if someone is vandalising wikipedia and proudly says they're an uncyclopedian or that uncyclopedia sent them and thus suggests we endorse the behaviour (which we definitely do not), and for the latter, suppose an uncyclopedian is vandalising wikipedia without indicating where they came from, but then comes back to Uncyclopedia and brags about it on a forum. In either case, they will be banned.
Now problems we have here with WO can be far bigger - outing, long-term harassment, and what have you - but I think the same principles apply, and they do mark a decent boundary of when to act and when to ignore. There are issues with when multiple parties are involved, such as if one person outs another user, and then someone else links it back here, but these perhaps scale as well - in such a case both parties would be subsequently responsible, though the context of why it's linked back could make a bit of a difference.
So I reckon that is what I think ArbCom should generally act upon - what comes home and how.
Perhaps life needs an EULA or something.
The present situation is described as User:Wikid77#Wiki opinions continued says: "some acting as "inter-wikicity gangs" with limited civility (speaking euphemistically)...Mob rule: Large areas of wikis are run by mobocracy voting. Numerous edit wars and conflicts exist in some highly popular groups of articles, especially in recent events or news articles. In those conflicts, typically 99% of debates are decided by mob rule, not mediated reason...Future open: From what I've seen, the Wiki concept could be extended to greatly improve reliability, but allow anonymous editing of articles outside a screening phase, warning users to refer to the fact-checked revision as screened for accuracy (this eventually happened in German Wikipedia"
At the moment there is no treatment of those little crimes. i.e. deleting while cheating, lying, arguing for a view with no support at all against a well supported opposite view, war of attrition tactics, deleting a supported sentence, etc. The result is distorted articles and some fed up editors who discontinue to edit. I can provide examples, if asked for.
In my view, each of these small scale problems does not worth a sanction , but the there should be a counting mechanism, such as a user who has accumulated a certain amount of them, should be sanctioned. What is your view?
The issue is discussed her: [1].
In my opinion, the view that every post should be neutral leads to a built in absurd. Suppose that the best Wikipedia editor is editing a group of biased articles. He is doing a great job and the articles become neutral. The editor should be sanctioned because every single edit (as well as the pattern of edits) is biased toward the other side. !
e.g.
I can show that those 2 rules were ignored in the wp:arbcom but those are just an example. There are more ignored rules. So, Should we change the rules or try to enforce them? how?
Wait, what?
Candidates are advised to answer each of these questions completely but concisely. Candidates may refuse to answer any questions that they do not wish to, with the understanding, however, that not answering a question may be perceived negatively by the community.
Note that disclosure of your account history, pursuant to the ArbCom selection and appointment policy, must be made in your opening statement, and is not an optional question.
As an administrator on other projects and serial commenter in general, I might also be able to bring differing perspectives and ideas to the table, while still maintaining a firm ground with the ideals and process of the English Wikipedia itself - cases tend to wind up before the Arbitration Committee because the main channels have failed to resolve them, so this would be the place to consider more unusual solutions.
Usually I try to just work issues out on a talkpage, or over IRC or email if such a channel seems better suited, but sometimes that just doesn't work.
Seriously, though, I'd rather leave those to folks with whom the community has already entrusted the rest of the relevant tools unless a specific need arises, as they'd have a better idea of how to use the whole pile anyway.
Please ask your individual questions here. While there is no limit on the number of questions that may be asked, please try to keep questions relevant. Try to be as clear and concise as possible, and avoid duplicating questions that have already been asked.
Add your questions below the line using the following markup:
#{{ACE Question
|Q=Your question
|A=}}
I use the answers to these questions to write my election guide. There is a large correlation between the answers to the questions and what the final result is in the guide, but I also consider other factors as well. Also, I may be asking about specific things outside the scope of ArbCom; your answers would be appreciated regardless.
The questions are similar to those I asked in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012; if you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.
If they have a conflict with the greater community, they should resolve it with the greater community same as any other random pile of people resolves something with the greater community - by discussing it, throwing cats at each other, and generally escalating it out of control. I mean, not escalating it out of control. That would be ridiculous; folks should be prepared to back down in light of opposing consensus even if they are an expert, or right, or what have you. They can still be correct about something even if the article says something else, because Wikipedia follows consensus - of users and sources - not what may or may not actually be right or true.
As for OS, or at least its successors revision deletion and suppression, I have seen some problems with it on Commons due to the very nature of these tools preventing community oversight of actions, including actions hiding other actions. Like eek.
Different people often believe different things, and thus they do not feel that they should back down, because they are not wrong and other parties have failed to convince them of such. Thus we get disputes that cannot be easily resolved. It's headology.
Thank you.
Rs
chen
7754 02:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I also use these questions in my voter guide, and the latter four were actually general questions asked in 2012, which I asked be used again.
On the other hand, other people won't stop even if you sanction them, ban then, rangeblock them, and create a group of abusefilters to keep them away.
Thank you. Collect ( talk) 01:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
If this is happening, those involved should simply learn to recognise it and prevent it from becoming a trend.
In that vein, while I would say that it would be nice if more arbcom-related discussion were made public, this only really leaves on-wiki discussions. Because such tend to be much slower and less convenient in a lot of cases than a mailing list (and having a separate public mailing list wouldn't really be practical), I find it unlikely that the amount of non-public vs public business is likely to change any time soon, though the deployment of Flow may be what eventually brings this change.
Thank you for volunteering.
Unfortunately, as much as this is a common problem on the front end of MediaWiki projects, there is no simple answer as to how to fix it - not with how to detect it (that part would be fairly easy), but how to possibly display such changes in an adequate manner given the linear nature of the text and changes themselves and the 2-dimensional media on which it's displayed. I supposed it'd need a lot of arrows or something. And layers.
Given that the case in question was apparently about infoboxes, however, I'm not sure what difference it makes where in the article the infobox happens to be. There doesn't seem to be anything in the dispute about that much, at least, though perhaps I'm missing something? I can't seem to find where in context it was brought up in the case, and it's really the context that makes the difference with most of these.
Thank you, passed, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 23:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
More or less to the point, while it all seems fairly reasonable, I'm not sure what it'd actually solve. There is always ambiguity, but trying to write things down to be less so doesn't necessarily mean people will do better about it because it still comes down to the same base thing - the people themselves and the choices they make.
As for trying to repair the reputation, I, er... wouldn't, really. Why should topics be special, even if they have been blundered over in the past? What a topic is really shouldn't be important at all, for the most part; it's how folks are conducting themselves around it that matters, and that conduct, for ill or not so ill, should have the same general standards anywhere. Trying to fix things for a specific group of people is more likely to just make matters worse, either by encouraging bias in an opposite direction, or even just complicating the editing process in general.
I am told peach pie can be delicious but I've never actually had any that was; I made an excellent apple pie once but then failed to repeat the excellence every time I tried later; and I'm not sure what a boston cream pie is, but I bet it's easier to make, so I'll go with that.
(Note borrowed from Rschen7754): The questions are similar to those I asked in 2012. If you've already answered them, feel free to borrow from those, but make sure the question has not been reworded.
Following the proposed, I suppose an interaction ban is to a restraining order what a full site ban is to conviction and imprisonment? Deportation is a closer parallel, but that only applies if they're not a citizen, as a nation chucking out its citizens is a lot weirder than a private entity revoking a person's membership. Something about scope.
As something of a tangent, it may also be worth noting that people are more inclined to stick around if they have an emotional investment in the project, and having to fight to stick around does create such an investment if it doesn't drive them off first. I'm not advocating blocking people for the sake of making them have to fight to stick around, of course - that's crazy and the sort of bad idea an uncyclopedian might have, in that it is a bad idea a bunch of uncyclopedians had awhile back - but it is an interesting thing to note.
I would like to point out that these days a formal education can have a lot less real meaning than it used to, however, especially in some fields. I know I didn't learn diddly squat of value, at least. Nothing pie-related at all.
Thank you, -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Calling a male editor 'cute' is acceptable. Thus it should be that calling a female one 'pretty' should also be acceptable. Now doing either of these may not be entirely constructive in most circumstances, but if random compliments are truly disruptive, especially when they are meant only as compliments, does this sound like a very welcoming environment to you?
Why do our female editors need to be protected from the same things that we simply accept for our male editors? Why are we special? How is it that if we are 'pretty' we're being sexualised and yet if MZMcBride is described as literally 'sexy' it isn't necessarily sexual at all? Would it be sexualising Seraphimblade to say he is handsome and I don't think his userpage photo does him justice? And, for that matter, would it be necessarily be bad? We're human - we're sexual creatures and it affects everything we do, one way or another. Out of respect we take care with our words and actions to not go too far, but it is also entirely possible to go too far with that as well, and I would argue that applying different standards to men and women is exactly that, going too far. It devalues the individual to nothing more than how they were born or what they identify as, regardless of who they are or what they themselves make of themselves. It's like the difference between not calling Malleus Fatuorum names because he'll just respond in kind and piss off a bunch of other people, and not calling me names because I'm a female editor and we don't have enough female editors. In this scenario Malleus is recognised for his choices and I'm only recognised for my gender, and as much as we do this sort of thing with the best intentions, it is frankly bloody insulting if you stop to think about it.
I cannot reconcile with the WMF's attempts to close the gender gap, because I disagree with the very premise. Women and men are different, and tend toward different things, and trying to go against that just harms both because if someone isn't genuinely interested in being somewhere, they won't stick around, and in the meantime it takes away resources from those who are. If the nature of the projects appeals more to most men, this is not inherently a bad thing, it simply means that those of us who are here are here because we are genuinely interested in being here. So it should be for everyone, male, female, dog, or what have you. But this is also not to say that the projects cannot be made more inviting in general, and to less common personality types, and indeed the Teahouse was a lovely step forward in that direction - it's just that making it about relative numbers of men and women (which is all the 'gender gap' actually is) is not the right way to go about it. We're here because of who we are, the choices we make, and what we have to offer the project. This is our value as editors. Ain't nobody should take that away by being sexist about it, and bringing sex/gender into it as a determining factor is the very definition of sexist.
Now I appreciate that these probably aren't the most popular views, but this is what I think, and I think it needs to be said. The funny thing about it is that as much as I probably should recuse from anything involving sexual harassment because I feel so strongly about it, the fact of the matter is that I only feel so strongly about it because so rarely do people seem to care or even notice when the discrimination goes in a different direction than what is politically correct. It shouldn't matter who is being discriminated against - male, female, cis, gay, blind, polish, wtfbbq - because we shouldn't, as a community and as other editors, be discriminating against anyone. We all deserve to be treated with dignity and the assumption of good faith, and we all deserve a fair hearing if something comes up.
That's teamwork. And you ask only about direct contributions to the articles themselves?
Also, do you think committee members should at least have free access to fresh baked pies?
Pies can make good breakfasts and desserts, and making them can be an effective destresser, but unfortunately I don't see the feasibility of that either. In conclusion we're all doomed. Doomed. Dooooomed.
It's not like Uncyclopedia. There, someone sends someone a long description of how they know exactly who we are and how they intend to rape and murder one or more of us, and we just spend the next few days mocking them for caring that deeply and being that angry about some backwater humour wiki. Dunno that any of us have ever been subject to offline crap, though. Well, that wasn't perpetrated by another Uncyclopedian, at least. Never invite an Uncyclopedian to your house, see. Terrible idea.
But Wikipedia... Wikipedia is serious business.
The number of Active Editors on EnWP has been in decline since 2007.
This decline has been documented extensively:
This raises several questions:
I suppose I take a similar view to WO and the like here as we try to take on Uncyclopedia regarding users who vandalise other projects or harass folks off of the project. Basically, it's two-fold: are they acting as representatives of Uncyclopedia in any way when doing so, or are they are bringing it home to Uncyclopedia by mentioning, linking to, or generally bragging about improper behaviour elsewhere? An example of the former might be if someone is vandalising wikipedia and proudly says they're an uncyclopedian or that uncyclopedia sent them and thus suggests we endorse the behaviour (which we definitely do not), and for the latter, suppose an uncyclopedian is vandalising wikipedia without indicating where they came from, but then comes back to Uncyclopedia and brags about it on a forum. In either case, they will be banned.
Now problems we have here with WO can be far bigger - outing, long-term harassment, and what have you - but I think the same principles apply, and they do mark a decent boundary of when to act and when to ignore. There are issues with when multiple parties are involved, such as if one person outs another user, and then someone else links it back here, but these perhaps scale as well - in such a case both parties would be subsequently responsible, though the context of why it's linked back could make a bit of a difference.
So I reckon that is what I think ArbCom should generally act upon - what comes home and how.
Perhaps life needs an EULA or something.
The present situation is described as User:Wikid77#Wiki opinions continued says: "some acting as "inter-wikicity gangs" with limited civility (speaking euphemistically)...Mob rule: Large areas of wikis are run by mobocracy voting. Numerous edit wars and conflicts exist in some highly popular groups of articles, especially in recent events or news articles. In those conflicts, typically 99% of debates are decided by mob rule, not mediated reason...Future open: From what I've seen, the Wiki concept could be extended to greatly improve reliability, but allow anonymous editing of articles outside a screening phase, warning users to refer to the fact-checked revision as screened for accuracy (this eventually happened in German Wikipedia"
At the moment there is no treatment of those little crimes. i.e. deleting while cheating, lying, arguing for a view with no support at all against a well supported opposite view, war of attrition tactics, deleting a supported sentence, etc. The result is distorted articles and some fed up editors who discontinue to edit. I can provide examples, if asked for.
In my view, each of these small scale problems does not worth a sanction , but the there should be a counting mechanism, such as a user who has accumulated a certain amount of them, should be sanctioned. What is your view?
The issue is discussed her: [1].
In my opinion, the view that every post should be neutral leads to a built in absurd. Suppose that the best Wikipedia editor is editing a group of biased articles. He is doing a great job and the articles become neutral. The editor should be sanctioned because every single edit (as well as the pattern of edits) is biased toward the other side. !
e.g.
I can show that those 2 rules were ignored in the wp:arbcom but those are just an example. There are more ignored rules. So, Should we change the rules or try to enforce them? how?
Wait, what?