Arbitration Committee Election 2020 candidate:
Guerillero
|
Add your questions below the line using the following markup:
#{{ACE Question
|Q=Your question
|A=}}
Note: Per WP:ACERFC2020, starting this year there is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.
In terms of on-wiki things, I have never been sanctioned and I rarely edit in areas that are under active sanctions. There is not a case that has made my life personally difficult. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 01:06, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm asking all candidates the same questions.
Guerillero: Thank you for your answers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 09:34, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I am asking the same questions to all candidates.
The editors of Wikipedia are probably, on the whole, slightly left leaning due to the large contingent of college educated white men, but we also have our fair share of Gray Tribe-types, libertarians, and conservatives. I will say, that in the context of the US the "right-wing positions" that are popular on twitter such as Donald Trump has a path to reelection based on the results of the election, COVID-19 is a hoax, and a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring but is being revealed by a patriot on 4chan are fringe theories that are not supported by mainstream conservative outlets such as the newsroom of Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which reports what the consensus of sources says and does not do faux-both side coverage. In fairness, leftist Twitter thinks we are bourgeoisie propaganda that prints lies about the DPRK, China, USSR, Cuba, and Venezuela, so we make all sorts of people unhappy with NPOV. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I am interested in exploring ways that ArbCom can work in this space, but currently our options are limited. ArbCom tends to not create work for itself and deals with the cases that it is handed. Additionally, many of these issues are content not conduct issues. It is something to keep in mind as the committee balances equities when deciding on a solution to behavioral issues. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Because I am a tech bro with a Substack, here are some hot takes. They aren't fully formed so aren't part of my core platform.
Since you bring up CU blocks something that doesn't fully sit well with me is the use of ArbCom as the appeals body. The number of arbs that have the experience working with the CU tool is small. I'm also not a fan of the idea of using the functionaries as a en banc appeals court. What I would like to see is a community and functionaries-first way of allowing for CU blocks, OS blocks, ArbCom bans older than 10 years, ArbCom blocks older than 10 years, and community bans to be appealed. My sketch looks something like 2 functionaries appointed by ArbCom, 2 non-functionary admins elected by the community, and 1 member of ArbCom as a liaison and chair. Any decisions that this new-BASC makes goes into effect 30 days after they make it, except if ArbCom objects with a majority vote. That should keep things from going to arbcom-l to wither on the vine. I will admit that this isn't going to be popular with some arbs, but I think it would be an important step forward. I will admit that this is a change in position that I have had since I ran in 2014, but I don't see the centralization that we did in 2015 to be helpful in moving appeals along.
In terms of former functionaries not following the privacy policies, this feels like a WMF problem more than anything else. I would like the English Wikipedia to have a better working relationship with the OC and to send to them issues such as this. The OC provides a good source of accountability at the global level and should be used to enforce global policies that have global consequences. The OC would probably forward this onto WMF's legal and the ball is in their court to enforce their NDA. The piece of paper that binds us to the privacy policy either has weight or not. There is a role for ArbCom to issue an ArbCom block here, but since the violation is global in nature, a global lock is probably most appropriate.
In terms of staffing, we need to have a long talk as the functionaries office and committee about how many venues we are going to support and if we really need to have CUs in all of them. The English Wikipedia has more functionaries than any other project (44). We make up 22% of all people with checkuser access globally. More person power might not be the correct solution to our problems. Fresh legs are important and I would like to keep adding functionaries to keep the office dynamic to new trends and challenges, but sending more people to the salt mine has yet to solve our staffing problems.
I think a number of these are fairly independent and might ruffle some feathers. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Solo-admin sanctions: Sanctions by a single admin have both the lowest floor and the highest ceiling. They can be abused, but they can also provide some of the largest benefit for the encyclopedia. Some proponents of DS have stated in the past that what DS does is revert Wikipedia's procedures to what they were in the past instead of the second mover advantage found in our current wheel warring policy. While I don't 100% buy that, I think there is a grain of truth to it. There is no justice system on Wikipedia, only ways of finding solutions. Sometimes those solutions involve an admin telling an user that they can no longer make edits on a page due to their continual edit warring, to use an example from one place that I used solo-admin sanctions.
Rough consensus at AE sanctions: For the majority of cases at AE that aren't about wedge issues, the biggest problem with AE is that there aren't nearly enough admins who want to be involved. A better staffed AE would result in better and faster decisions and would open the door to depreciating the solo-admin sanctions. However, in our current climate, there are too many topic areas and requests that fall off the back of the conveyor belt at AE to consider it right now. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:15, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Awilley's list seems particularly boneheaded to me, and I have never encountered anything like it in my 9 month of working at AE. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 01:05, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
While retention of productive editors and administrators is rightly considered important for the continuation of the project, the conduct of all editors, especially trusted users such as administrators is also rightly considered important for the retention of other users. I consider these two issues which are, unfortunately, often intertwined to be the most pressing types of issues to the project which ArbCom tends to deal with. I am therefore asking all of the candidates the same questions irrespective of whether they are a former Arbitrator. Many thanks and all the best with the election! SITH (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia, on the other hand, does not suffer from the core governance problems that require global action. Instead, we suffer from a regular drum beat of harassment. When I was on the committee we begged the WMF to take on a case of egregious and horrific harassment. WMFers that work in T&S gets paid time off and mental health resources for dealing with the trauma of seeing things that you can never unsee. ArbCom gets none of those benefits. I think that it is in the best interest of the community for ArbCom to be able to pass some things onto the WMF. Additionally, a crosswiki ArbCom never appeared in the mid-2000s when making ArbComs was in vouge. The WMF is the best option that we have for dealing with crosswiki harassment and subtle abuse because the current global community ban system is broken.
I'm not in favor of T&S being the super-ArbCom and sua sponte dealing with users, such as was the case with Fram, when there are community-based systems for dealing on-wiki issues in a private or semi-private manner. I agree with the substance of the January 2019 ArbCom letter. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 19:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The Electoral Commission is collapsing this question as a violation of Fæ's topic ban on
human sexuality, broadly construed[6]. We have also removed a part of the question that improperly speculated about an election candidate. Candidates may still respond to this question if they wish by editing the collapsed content. For further discussion on this matter, please see this thread and this ANI thread. Respectfully, Mz7 ( talk) 21:42, 24 November 2020 (UTC) |
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|
New users and ArbCom rarely come in contact with each other due to how Wikipedia operates. When they do, it is more often than not part of a large topic area case where ArbCom is interacting with an area of the encyclopedia that has flared up for the first time. These cases are exceedingly rare; the last one I can think of was ARBGG. In these cases, topic ban are sometimes warranted if the behavior of new user is disruptive and it is established than a user is here to right great wrongs or push a POV. Handing these users off to the AE system is fair to neither the new editors nor the AE admins that need to cleanup after the committee. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves [...] People who identify with a certain sexual orientation or gender identity using distinct names or pronouns? Regards, The Land ( talk) 21:42, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
We don't explicitly currently require empathy by policy.
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves in the content space has the possibility to conflict with COMMONNAME for the likes of Cat Stevens, Republic of Ireland, Czech Republic, Devils Tower, etc.
We would not currently ban someone for not engaging in the bullet points under Civility, collegiality, mutual support and good citizenship
Most of Abuse of power, privilege, or influence falls under informal policy that might need to be codified.
Hate speech in any form, or discriminatory language aimed at vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of [...] their personal beliefs sounds great until TERFs use it to make us call them gender critical feminists and racists use it to make us call them race realists. While I appreciate the attempt to limit this to vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred, we are going to see a parade of people yelling about how "TERF is a slur" and using the mainstream term for people of a belief set incites hatred. I have no intention of banning trans* people from the project for making TERFs uncomfortable.
I have no idea what this means: The gratuitous, unjustified and decontextualized addition of symbols, images, or any kind of content with the intent to [...] impose an arbitrary scheme on content.
I hope that they have another round of feedback before presenting the draft to the board. 90% of the material is good, there is just a small amount of things that need to be tweaked.-- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 22:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
In seriousness, NOTCENSORED is not our version of Encyclopedia Dramatica's infamous offended page. We are here to build the best encyclopedia in human history, not crack sophomoric jokes or get a rise out of people. When prudent ( It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers for example) we sometimes use language and images that may offend people and might not be appropriate for all audiences. But, this is always done for the betterment of the encyclopedia and not to shock people. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 23:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I know that I'm supposed to tell you that the community is flying apart at the seams, but I think the community is in its best state of the last 10 years. Our editor retention problem seems to have gone away. There was this thought that editors who were active in 2007 were going to be the core editors of Wikipedia forever, but, with a 2011 RfA, I am the second "oldest" admin running this year. The torch has been successfully passed to a new generation of Wikipedians. This year, I took The Minute Man from a newly created article to an FA. Along the way, I found editors who were more than willing to help and I found FA to be a welcoming place for someone who is not a content creator. I was in the habit of reviewing FLs earlier this year and the community of list makers and reviewers was lovely. Life in the community is pretty good. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves [...] As a sign of respect, use these terms when communicating with or about these people. Should this principle extend to religious names, titles, and honorifics?
Being asked of all candidates
Arbitration Committee Election 2020 candidate:
Guerillero
|
Add your questions below the line using the following markup:
#{{ACE Question
|Q=Your question
|A=}}
Note: Per WP:ACERFC2020, starting this year there is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.
In terms of on-wiki things, I have never been sanctioned and I rarely edit in areas that are under active sanctions. There is not a case that has made my life personally difficult. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 01:06, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm asking all candidates the same questions.
Guerillero: Thank you for your answers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 09:34, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I am asking the same questions to all candidates.
The editors of Wikipedia are probably, on the whole, slightly left leaning due to the large contingent of college educated white men, but we also have our fair share of Gray Tribe-types, libertarians, and conservatives. I will say, that in the context of the US the "right-wing positions" that are popular on twitter such as Donald Trump has a path to reelection based on the results of the election, COVID-19 is a hoax, and a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring but is being revealed by a patriot on 4chan are fringe theories that are not supported by mainstream conservative outlets such as the newsroom of Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which reports what the consensus of sources says and does not do faux-both side coverage. In fairness, leftist Twitter thinks we are bourgeoisie propaganda that prints lies about the DPRK, China, USSR, Cuba, and Venezuela, so we make all sorts of people unhappy with NPOV. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I am interested in exploring ways that ArbCom can work in this space, but currently our options are limited. ArbCom tends to not create work for itself and deals with the cases that it is handed. Additionally, many of these issues are content not conduct issues. It is something to keep in mind as the committee balances equities when deciding on a solution to behavioral issues. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Because I am a tech bro with a Substack, here are some hot takes. They aren't fully formed so aren't part of my core platform.
Since you bring up CU blocks something that doesn't fully sit well with me is the use of ArbCom as the appeals body. The number of arbs that have the experience working with the CU tool is small. I'm also not a fan of the idea of using the functionaries as a en banc appeals court. What I would like to see is a community and functionaries-first way of allowing for CU blocks, OS blocks, ArbCom bans older than 10 years, ArbCom blocks older than 10 years, and community bans to be appealed. My sketch looks something like 2 functionaries appointed by ArbCom, 2 non-functionary admins elected by the community, and 1 member of ArbCom as a liaison and chair. Any decisions that this new-BASC makes goes into effect 30 days after they make it, except if ArbCom objects with a majority vote. That should keep things from going to arbcom-l to wither on the vine. I will admit that this isn't going to be popular with some arbs, but I think it would be an important step forward. I will admit that this is a change in position that I have had since I ran in 2014, but I don't see the centralization that we did in 2015 to be helpful in moving appeals along.
In terms of former functionaries not following the privacy policies, this feels like a WMF problem more than anything else. I would like the English Wikipedia to have a better working relationship with the OC and to send to them issues such as this. The OC provides a good source of accountability at the global level and should be used to enforce global policies that have global consequences. The OC would probably forward this onto WMF's legal and the ball is in their court to enforce their NDA. The piece of paper that binds us to the privacy policy either has weight or not. There is a role for ArbCom to issue an ArbCom block here, but since the violation is global in nature, a global lock is probably most appropriate.
In terms of staffing, we need to have a long talk as the functionaries office and committee about how many venues we are going to support and if we really need to have CUs in all of them. The English Wikipedia has more functionaries than any other project (44). We make up 22% of all people with checkuser access globally. More person power might not be the correct solution to our problems. Fresh legs are important and I would like to keep adding functionaries to keep the office dynamic to new trends and challenges, but sending more people to the salt mine has yet to solve our staffing problems.
I think a number of these are fairly independent and might ruffle some feathers. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Solo-admin sanctions: Sanctions by a single admin have both the lowest floor and the highest ceiling. They can be abused, but they can also provide some of the largest benefit for the encyclopedia. Some proponents of DS have stated in the past that what DS does is revert Wikipedia's procedures to what they were in the past instead of the second mover advantage found in our current wheel warring policy. While I don't 100% buy that, I think there is a grain of truth to it. There is no justice system on Wikipedia, only ways of finding solutions. Sometimes those solutions involve an admin telling an user that they can no longer make edits on a page due to their continual edit warring, to use an example from one place that I used solo-admin sanctions.
Rough consensus at AE sanctions: For the majority of cases at AE that aren't about wedge issues, the biggest problem with AE is that there aren't nearly enough admins who want to be involved. A better staffed AE would result in better and faster decisions and would open the door to depreciating the solo-admin sanctions. However, in our current climate, there are too many topic areas and requests that fall off the back of the conveyor belt at AE to consider it right now. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:15, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Awilley's list seems particularly boneheaded to me, and I have never encountered anything like it in my 9 month of working at AE. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 01:05, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
While retention of productive editors and administrators is rightly considered important for the continuation of the project, the conduct of all editors, especially trusted users such as administrators is also rightly considered important for the retention of other users. I consider these two issues which are, unfortunately, often intertwined to be the most pressing types of issues to the project which ArbCom tends to deal with. I am therefore asking all of the candidates the same questions irrespective of whether they are a former Arbitrator. Many thanks and all the best with the election! SITH (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia, on the other hand, does not suffer from the core governance problems that require global action. Instead, we suffer from a regular drum beat of harassment. When I was on the committee we begged the WMF to take on a case of egregious and horrific harassment. WMFers that work in T&S gets paid time off and mental health resources for dealing with the trauma of seeing things that you can never unsee. ArbCom gets none of those benefits. I think that it is in the best interest of the community for ArbCom to be able to pass some things onto the WMF. Additionally, a crosswiki ArbCom never appeared in the mid-2000s when making ArbComs was in vouge. The WMF is the best option that we have for dealing with crosswiki harassment and subtle abuse because the current global community ban system is broken.
I'm not in favor of T&S being the super-ArbCom and sua sponte dealing with users, such as was the case with Fram, when there are community-based systems for dealing on-wiki issues in a private or semi-private manner. I agree with the substance of the January 2019 ArbCom letter. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 19:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The Electoral Commission is collapsing this question as a violation of Fæ's topic ban on
human sexuality, broadly construed[6]. We have also removed a part of the question that improperly speculated about an election candidate. Candidates may still respond to this question if they wish by editing the collapsed content. For further discussion on this matter, please see this thread and this ANI thread. Respectfully, Mz7 ( talk) 21:42, 24 November 2020 (UTC) |
---|
|
New users and ArbCom rarely come in contact with each other due to how Wikipedia operates. When they do, it is more often than not part of a large topic area case where ArbCom is interacting with an area of the encyclopedia that has flared up for the first time. These cases are exceedingly rare; the last one I can think of was ARBGG. In these cases, topic ban are sometimes warranted if the behavior of new user is disruptive and it is established than a user is here to right great wrongs or push a POV. Handing these users off to the AE system is fair to neither the new editors nor the AE admins that need to cleanup after the committee. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves [...] People who identify with a certain sexual orientation or gender identity using distinct names or pronouns? Regards, The Land ( talk) 21:42, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
We don't explicitly currently require empathy by policy.
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves in the content space has the possibility to conflict with COMMONNAME for the likes of Cat Stevens, Republic of Ireland, Czech Republic, Devils Tower, etc.
We would not currently ban someone for not engaging in the bullet points under Civility, collegiality, mutual support and good citizenship
Most of Abuse of power, privilege, or influence falls under informal policy that might need to be codified.
Hate speech in any form, or discriminatory language aimed at vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of [...] their personal beliefs sounds great until TERFs use it to make us call them gender critical feminists and racists use it to make us call them race realists. While I appreciate the attempt to limit this to vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred, we are going to see a parade of people yelling about how "TERF is a slur" and using the mainstream term for people of a belief set incites hatred. I have no intention of banning trans* people from the project for making TERFs uncomfortable.
I have no idea what this means: The gratuitous, unjustified and decontextualized addition of symbols, images, or any kind of content with the intent to [...] impose an arbitrary scheme on content.
I hope that they have another round of feedback before presenting the draft to the board. 90% of the material is good, there is just a small amount of things that need to be tweaked.-- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 22:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
In seriousness, NOTCENSORED is not our version of Encyclopedia Dramatica's infamous offended page. We are here to build the best encyclopedia in human history, not crack sophomoric jokes or get a rise out of people. When prudent ( It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers for example) we sometimes use language and images that may offend people and might not be appropriate for all audiences. But, this is always done for the betterment of the encyclopedia and not to shock people. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 23:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I know that I'm supposed to tell you that the community is flying apart at the seams, but I think the community is in its best state of the last 10 years. Our editor retention problem seems to have gone away. There was this thought that editors who were active in 2007 were going to be the core editors of Wikipedia forever, but, with a 2011 RfA, I am the second "oldest" admin running this year. The torch has been successfully passed to a new generation of Wikipedians. This year, I took The Minute Man from a newly created article to an FA. Along the way, I found editors who were more than willing to help and I found FA to be a welcoming place for someone who is not a content creator. I was in the habit of reviewing FLs earlier this year and the community of list makers and reviewers was lovely. Life in the community is pretty good. -- Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves [...] As a sign of respect, use these terms when communicating with or about these people. Should this principle extend to religious names, titles, and honorifics?
Being asked of all candidates