User:Durova/Durova's arbitration tips

“ A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

- Robert A. Heinlein

”

Arbitration is one of Wikipedia's necessary evils. Having been through the process quite a few times, these are my suggestions to other editors who go there. I've composed this page to fill in some of the gaps at the Wikipedia namespace pages about arbitration. Anyone who intends to give evidence at an arbitration case ought to read up on those official pages. These tips are based on empirical observation since I have no privileged information about how the Committee deliberates. I'm just a rank-and-file sysop who ends up at arbitration frequently because I volunteer at investigations and dispute resolutions.

Despite the quote from Heinlein I hold the arbitration committee members in high regard. I deal with one or two cases at a time while they examine as many as ten simultaneously while also weighing the merits of additional proposed cases. Often the evidence they're asked to examine is voluminous and low quality. The clerks also earn my appreciation. If I sometimes think these people overlook something important, I also do my best to remember how much thankless work they do without compensation. I doubt many of the rest of us would perform so well under the same circumstances.

Avoiding arbitration

The best way to deal with arbitration is not to go there. Arbitration at its best is as much fun as a root canal. Sometimes arbitration can't be avoided, but it’s slow and process-bound and its main purpose is to impose external remedies so that Wikipedia as a whole keeps functioning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an arbitration case where everyone agreed with the outcome (although, to be fair to the Committee, some of the people who wind up in arbitration have a my way or the highway approach to disputes).

If you’re thinking of going into arbitration, give dispute resolution your best shot first. The Committee rarely opens a case unless other alternatives have tried and failed. I’m a strong believer in article content requests for comment, which may be the most broadly applicable form of dispute resolution. Other methods suit specific needs. One option worth considering if your dispute meets the right parameters is community enforceable mediation, which I started to help resolve some of the disputes that would otherwise get arbitrated. I’ve also done a lot to help the community banning process deal with straightforward situations.

When a small set of people consistently lock horns, often there's an underlying dynamic that keeps generating new points of contention. The disputants fritter effort into individual points of contention (microproblems) while failing to identify or resolve the macroproblem that keeps halting mutual progress. If these quarrels drag out long enough then eventually the dispute lands in arbitration, which tends to settle matters with crude solutions such as topic banning. The Committee has a limited number of remedies at its disposal in order to restore a stable status quo.

Strategy

Try to conduct yourself so that you have no need to fear arbitration if you do go there. I’ve wound up in arbitration quite a few times because of the volunteer work I do. I've been admonished once for a genuine mistake I made and regretted. In no other case was any finding or remedy proposed against me.

None of us are perfect and sometimes I’ve refactored my comments or apologized to another editor during arbitration. Most of the people who ultimately get sanctioned fail to take responsibility for their own mistakes. Although I don’t have any privileged information about how the Committee members deliberate, the basic process as I understand it is that a case opens because external remedies are probably necessary for one or more people who don’t exercise enough self-control. So ultimately, the best thing do to is to demonstrate that you can handle your own problems. If you’ve made serious mistakes, admit them and do your best to make amends or take corrective steps such as entering the Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user mentorship program. The earlier in the process you take those steps, the better. Don’t do anything to get yourself blocked while the case is open; the message that sends is that if you can’t abide by policy while ArbCom is actively scrutinizing your behavior, you definitely need external limitations imposed on your actions.

When it comes to presenting evidence, keep your statements focused and well-documented and avoid making any accusations you can’t verify. If the underlying subject regards a specialized or technical subject, craft your statement so that a general reader could follow the essential points. Look over the evidence page carefully and don’t repeat anything already covered unless you have something new to add. If someone has made a serious accusation about you, try to address it (and be the first to step forward if part of what they’re saying is correct). I usually draft my evidence statements in a text editor while three or four browser windows are open. If it’s a long statement I’ll sleep on it before posting. Keep reading the case every few days to keep up on developments, including the talk pages.

Aftermath

If a finding or a remedy goes against you, try to take it in stride. The best way to return to good standing is to respect the Committee’s decisions and (unless you’ve been sitebanned) continue making positive contributions to Wikipedia. If you have been sitebanned, sit out the time without returning on sockpuppets and please don't bash Wikipedia on other websites. Most people can come back if they're patient. I offer two user awards post-arbitration and post-ban to editors who want to make a turnaround: the Resilient barnstar for starting a new article that gets highlighted at Template:Did you know and the special edition Valiant return triple crown for contributing to Template:Did you know, good articles, and featured content. Contact me if you think you qualify. I'm always glad to award them and it doesn't matter if I gave evidence against you.

Experience

Here’s a list of the arbitration cases where I’ve had some involvement. The comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other editors.

1. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich My first; commented on talk pages.
2. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Agapetos angel Although I was not a named party, a citation of my informal attempt to mediate the dispute got listed in the request for arbitration as the only previous attempt at mediation. I responded because I believed that citation was made out of context and Agapetos angel had earned a share of a collective barnstar in a loosely related request for comment. My evidence was limited to that narrow portion of the case and I went on wikibreak before it concluded. This is the classic example of how impartial I am, since here I was the lone supporter of an editor whose ideology was diametrically opposed to my own beliefs.
3. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Gundagai editors One of three cases in which I have been a named party and the last one that got initiated before I became a sysop. I hope that future cases of this type go through the community banning process rather than taking the Committee’s time.
4. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education This case opened at my recommendation and turned into an enormous time drain. My perspective on some of the participants shifted considerably from the initial evidence to the end of arbitration review.
5. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Midnight Syndicate This was the first case request I initiated and probably my most successful venture into arbitration, both in terms of my participation and the case’s ultimate outcome. It was during this case that I started my standing offer to award the resilient barnstar for people who get a new article into Template:Did you know after receiving an arbitration sanction. One of the participants here did earn that barnstar from me later on and has become a good editor.
6. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla This unusual case got suspended because it opened concurrently with an experimental mediation that both parties tried with me. Ultimately both the arbitration and mediation lapsed because one of the parties went inactive, but the mediation attempt became the prototype for Wikipedia:Community enforceable mediation. The goal at that program is to help established and reasonable editors avoid full arbitration by giving them the option to select arbitration-like remedies for themselves.
7. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Barrett v. Rosenthal The second case where I was listed as a named party. As before, no finding or sanction was proposed against me.
8. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Free Republic I asked the Committee to consider this case, submitted a brief evidence statement, and participated at the workshop and talk pages based upon some investigation I had performed on this dispute.
9. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Darwinek I participated at the workshop as a neutral party.
10. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Mudaliar-Venki123 I submitted a brief evidence statement regarding a dispute I had attempted to settle. Both parties got sitebanned.
11. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram The second case for which I initiated the arbitration request. Although I was not a named party, one of the involved parties accused me of bias because I had made a brief attempt to mentor another disputant. I submitted evidence regarding the community banning process.
12. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/E104421-Tajik Opened concurrently with a Community enforceable mediation request with me as the mediator.
13. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus In some sense this is a revival of the suspended Piotrus-Ghirla arbitration in an expanded form with several additional named parties. I’ve urged the committee to hear the case and asked that it be renamed to Eastern European disputes.
14. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PalestineRemembered Submitted an evidence statement about the community ban discussion that preceded the arbitration case.
15. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff A single post to the Workshop.[1]
16. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS I opened this case and became a named party because a community siteban discussion failed to reach consensus.
17. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jmfangio-Chrisjnelson Submitted evidence, requested checkuser, and proposed a sanction. My suspicions led to the discovery that one of the named parties was a reincarnation of a community banned editor. Checkuser also uncovered an unnamed long term vandal who had been causing related disruption.
18. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites Submitted evidence, participated at the workshop, semiprotected both the evidence and workshop pages due to disruption.
19. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giovanni33-John Smith's Requested the case and named myself as a party. I had imposed an indefinite block on Giovanni33 that survived an unblock request but failed to achieve community consensus support.
20. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar Submitted evidence both onsite and privately, participated at Workshop.
21. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Commodore Sloat-Biophys Recommended arbitration after community enforceable mediation failed. Participated at workshop.
22. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sadi Carnot Comments to the workshop.
23. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Railpage Australia Submitted evidence of sockpuppet disruption during the case.
24. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eyrian Submitted evidence and participated at the workshop.
25. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings Commented at workshop.
26. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman Ate crow. Resigned administratorship.