Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Candidate statements/Newyorkbrad/Questions for the candidate

Question from I

1. What, if anything, do you believe is wrong with the current arbitration process, and/or the committee? This includes anything related to the committee and its actions. If appointed, what do you intend to do to resolve these issues? i ^(talk) 03:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: By far the most serious problem with the arbitration process as currently administered is the excessive length of time that it takes to consider and decide many cases. As best I can tell, this has been an ever-present issue ever since ArbCom was created in 2004. It was of sufficient concern to me last year that my own standard question to all of last year's candidates was "what can be done to reduce the delays in the arbitration process?", and you will have seen that I refer to this problem in my candidate statement this year.

   During 2007, though the substance of the Arbitration Committee's decisions in the various cases have generally been reasonable, it has taken far too long for the committee to arrive at many of these decisions. In some important cases, the level of hostility between feuding users mounted as their back-and-forth continued on the arbitration pages themselves for week after week; this even includes instances where we may have lost users from the project as a direct result. I know it is easy for me to say this from my current vantage point, but a pattern of protracted and unnecessary delays in deciding cases can defeat the entire purpose of establishing a high-level committee of experienced and respected editors to provide a fair and expeditious resolution to disputes, and should not be permitted to continue.

   If elected, what I will do to help resolve this problem is give a high priority to my work as an arbitrator and provide my input in case evaluation and decision as promptly as possible, although of course only while giving all parties to the case and other interested editors a full opportunity to have their views and evidence considered. I would also urge other arbitrators to provide their input in a reasonably timely manner (although as I have learned as a Clerk, there is probably a very thin line between urging cases forward in a helpful way and simply nagging in a way that gets one tuned out).

   I have also given some thought to whether there ought to be a model timetable for cases that arbitrators should bear in mind (say, a week for the parties to present evidence; then an arbitrator should post a proposed decision within X days and all active arbitrators are expected to comment or vote within Y days, etc.). My current thinking is that such a framework would be too rigid given the variety in the types and complexity levels of cases that are brought to arbitration, but perhaps the committee will have to revisit implementing such a timetable, at least aspirationally, if nothing else seems to work.

Questions by Jaranda/Jbeach56

• What do you think about self-admitted alternative accounts, see User:MOASPN, and User:Privatemusings as an example? Jbeach ^sup 03:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

• Answer: According to our policy on sockpuppets and alternate accounts, use of an alternate account to comment on a particular topic is permissible, provided that the user is not also commenting on the same topic with his or her primary account so as to create an illusion of greater support for a given position than actually exists. The community has generally viewed this as acceptable, if not optimal, user conduct given the controversial nature of some topics that are discussed from time to time. In such situations, the editor operating the two accounts should ensure that none of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are broken, either by either of the two accounts individually, or if the two accounts' edits are considered as a whole.

• What do you think of Wikipedia Review? Jbeach ^sup 03:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Well, it is hard to know just what I should say about the website that recently discussed my potential candidacy for the Arbitration Committee, in a thread where one contributor opined that I could become Wikipedia's Gorbachev, while another said that I reminded him or her of "a Senator-on-the-verge-of-becoming-Emperor Palpatine."

Wikipedia Review is a forum of varying quality, just as one would anticipate given the wide variety of people who contribute to it. From time to time, WR has offered reasonable, or at least arguable, criticism of Wikipedia and its editors. Other times, some of WR's content has been seriously off-target and misguided, containing too many threads replete with factual errors coupled with hatred, anger, and vitriol. One of the reasons WR is so uneven is that its contributors include both individuals who acknowledge Wikipedia's role while seeking to improve specific aspects of our policies or performance, but also include others who are outright hostile to the existence of Wikipedia and would support doing virtually anything to promote our destruction.

Unfortunately, whatever valuable role Wikipedia Review might play as a source of constructive criticism is seriously overshadowed by the participation of several WR contributors (both on that site and elsewhere) in seeking to uncover and reveal the real-world identities of Wikipedia editors who choose and sometimes need to edit Wikipedia anonymously. Such "outing" of editors can enable both online and real-world harassment and represents a serious threat to our editors' privacy and well-being. If Wikipedia Review wishes to enhance its position as a forum for responsible criticism of Wikipedia and its leadership, the site and its contributors should immediately and definitively cease this practice.

Questions from Heimstern

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?

Answer: The term "edit-warring" is used to cover a wide spectrum of situations, some more serious than others, and only the most serious of which are likely to reach the Arbitration Committee. But I have some thoughts that span the wider gamut of situations that arise, because I fear that too many "edit wars" end with one or the other of the editors giving up on editing either the article or the topic or the encyclopedia as a whole, and if the editor has value to add, that doesn't do anyone any good.

Let's assume there is a controversial article, but in a given week, only one editor is editing it. Hopefully that editor is making good edits, sourcing any controversial claims, and sticking to NPOV. However, if unfortunately he or she is not, it is possible that the problem might not be caught for awhile. Now, a second editor comes along, who has different views on the article subject from the first. The second editor changes the article. The first editor changes it back, and now we have an edit war in the making.

If our two hypothetical editors are acting at all in good faith, what Wikipedia now has is not a problem but an opportunity. Two users collaborating on the same topic from different points of view should be working on the talkpage to reach a consensus version promoting the advantages of both. They should be pushing each other to make the most accurate possible edits and to use more and better sources. They may be able to suggest additional research sources that might interest one another. If a passing administrator or mediator happens by, creative suggestions that the editors work together in this fashion may be more productive than a simple "you are both edit warring, stop it or I'll block you both for 3RR and/or protect the page!" Of course, the latter steps may be necessary if the users don't get the hint, but they should not be first resorts. There are often nicer suggestions. "Why don't you lay off this article for a day or two, and work on such-and-such related article which could be built from similar sources but isn't as in the spotlight right at the moment?" is another suggestion that might work sometimes, channeling the users energies that are being dissipated in an edit war into a more productive direction.

Now of course, if our hypothetical users are of the sort that will take this type of friendly advice, their dispute will never reach arbitration. By the time ArbCom gets involved, someone will hopefully have ensured that prior attempts at mentoring, mediation, and the like have all been tried without success. Only at that point are more coercive remedies ready to be considered. At that point, as I discuss elsewhere on this page, paroles or restrictions may be implemented if there is reason to believe they will work, and those who are repeatedly unable to edit collaboratively in accordance with NPOV and other policies need to be separated from the project.

2. What about uncivil editors (including those making personal attacks)? What factors should the Committee consider in deciding whether and how to sanction them?

Answer: Incivility and personal attacks on other editors harm the collaborative editing environment and have the potential to drive contributors away by making Wikipedia a less enjoyable place to work. On the other hand, our many thousands of editors all have different ways of expressing themselves, and we cannot eliminate robust give-and-take on many pages, so many of us have had to grow thicker skins than we anticipated when we first came here to be part of an encyclopedia project. The question of how much we should tolerate in the way of uncivil commentary is not an easy one, and disagreement on this issue has already cost us at least one administrator.

Relevant factors for the arbitrators in deciding whether to impose sanctions for incivility or personal attacks would include, among other things, the severity of the comments or attacks; whether they were isolated or repeated; whether there was any provocation that could be a mitigating factor; whether the disputed remarks were simply a poorly worded attempt to make a legitimate point, as opposed to expressions of hostility or incivility for their own sake; and whether the party making the remarks recognizes that his or her level of civility should be improved and that negative personal comments about other contributors should be avoided.

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?

Answer: Desysopping is appropriate in cases where through either a serious act of misconduct or a repeated pattern of misjudgments, an administrator has demonstrated that he or she may be a danger to the welfare of the encyclopedia or its contributors if he or she continues to retain administrator tools. As stated in a principle proposed in a current admin-conduct case, "Administrators are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Wikipedia policies. They are expected to pursue their duties to the best of their abilities. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with this; administrators are not expected to be perfect. However, consistently or egregiously poor judgement may result in the removal of administrator status." I agree with this formulation. Of course, applying it in a given case requires a nuanced weighing of the good with the bad and the application of the arbitrators' best judgment.

Temporary suspension of adminship, as is probably clear, may be useful in a case where desysopping is unwarranted, or the arbitrators are willing to give an administrator who had engaged in problematic behavior a last chance to reform, but where a "caution" or "admonition" or "reminder" is judged insufficient. Ordinarily, I would expect an administrator who is the subject of a formal remedy in an Arbitration Committee decision critical of his or her behavior to take the matter seriously without the need for suspension of adminship to become a regular part of decisions. However, there are intermediate cases, and therefore I certainly would not rule out suspension of adminship as a possible remedy in appropriate cases. In terms of past cases, in one recent case an administrator returned from suspension and hopefully will display improved performance as an administrator; however, in another case where an administrator made a bad block and initially failed to discuss it and the arbitrators suspended his adminship for 10 days, the effect of the decision appears to have been so demoralizing that this user has stopped working as an administrator almost completely. As always, the arbitrators must balance the interests of the administrator in question, the editors who were harmed by the administrator's alleged misconduct or misjudgments, and the project as a whole in making findings and issuing remedies.

4. Under what circumstances should the Committee consider an appeal of a community ban?

Answer: The Arbitration Committee should accept a case for review of a community ban where there is substantial difference of opinion as to whether the ban was warranted (e.g., it is debatable whether consensus to impose a ban was obtained), where there is reason to believe that the community in imposing the ban overlooked important considerations that might have changed the result, or where on review of the record as a whole the ban appears to be fundamentally unfair. In addition, after lapse of an appropriate time period, an appeal to ArbCom (though the mailing list) is the vehicle to be used by a banned user who believes he or she is now capable of editing properly if unbanned; since such a user is banned from posting on-wiki, he or she cannot request reconsideration of the ban from the community, and therefore the arbitrators must address the request.

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) 03:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: This question is of great interest to me, because part of my off-wiki scholarly research right now concerns how the Supreme Court of the United States has dealt with similar situations. (I will refrain, with difficulty, from rattling off a series of legal citations.) As with other problems that arise, I think that this is a problem that would be alleviated with higher activity levels among the arbitrators. If an arbitrator drafts a proposed decision, and another arbitrator disagrees with it, and then a third arbitrator disagrees with both of them, then obviously the case is more complex than usual and the arbitrators need to consult about it, either on-wiki or on the mailing list. If the arbitrators put some time in to synthesize their thoughts, then it should generally be possible to reach a consensus or at least a majority outcome, perhaps a compromise that no one thinks is perfect but that at least gives some guidance to the parties and to other editors going forward. On the other hand, if Arbitrator A proposes finding A and Arbitrator B proposes finding B and then Arbitrator C posts "I don't agree with A and B, I propose C," but by then Arbitrators A and B are thinking about another case and haven't watchlisted the page, then obviously no progress is going to be made.

For what it's worth, in the Allegations of apartheid case, when it became clear what issues were dividing the committee, I posted some belated workshop proposals that I thought would be acceptable to most of the arbitrators and produce some form of resolution, but by this point the case had been pending for months and the committee voted for outright dismissal instead. Discerning when a case has become effectively moot so that a decision will not create value is a matter for arbitrator judgment and discretion; there are competing considerations on both sides, and it has also happened that I have proposed that a case need no longer be resolved because (for example) the administrator who is the subject of a case has resigned his adminship voluntarily, but the arbitrators have chosen to proceed to a decision on the merits anyway.

Question from Ragesoss

In the Wikipedia context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?--ragesoss 04:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view defines "NPOV" as presentation in an article that "represents fairly and, as much as possible, without bias all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." While "SPOV" is not defined in policy, I would take it as referring to NPOV as applied to scientific topics, that is, presentation of a science-related topic that presents fairly the significant views of a subject reflected in reliable scientific literature.

In articles dealing with science-related topics, NPOV and SPOV may converge in many cases, as the most reliable sources will primarily be peer-reviewed scientific journals and secondary sources deriving from them. Even in such articles, views not found in mainstream scientific sources may be presented, but will generally be accompanied by an explanation that they do not fall within the current consensus of the scientific community. Fringe and highly unorthodox views without meaningful scientific support sometimes will not need to be presented, unless they are held by a wide proportion of the population or otherwise attain notability in their own right (Velikovskyism is one example) or unless they historically were scientifically believed to be valid at an earlier time, in which case they may deserve to be presented, with, again, indication of their current level of acceptance or non-acceptance within the scientific community. Similarly, religious beliefs on a given subject may warrant some mention or presentation in a scientific article, but they should be presented as religious beliefs on the subject, not as scientific in their own right, unless the religious beliefs and the scientific evidence and literature happen to converge on the issue. Conversely, in an article on a religious topic, the fact that modern science disagrees with a religious tenet may be worth mentioning in the religion article but should not become the focus of the article.

These types of issues will normally be worked out by editors during the ordinary editing process, or where necessary, through dispute resolution. Instances in which Arbitration Committee intervention was necessary to ensure compliance with the NPOV policy have occurred, but should hopefully be rare.

Questions from east718

1. Do you feel that the Arbitration Committee takes too long to close cases? Or do you feel that they act too hastily and some important facets of cases occasionally fall through the cracks? Either way, what will you do to remedy it?

   Answer: I do believe the committee has taken too long to resolve many cases. I have provided some thoughts about this problem in my response to User:I above.

   Although a less serious problem, at other times the committee has sometimes failed to address an aspect of the case. However, there often are legitimate reasons for the arbitrators not to address every aspect of a dispute in their decision, and this is a matter on which the arbitrators' judgment and discretion can come into play. The solution to this situation, when it arises, is for arbitrators who believe that an issue has been overlooked to raise the additional issue, either on the workshop, in the proposed decision, on a talkpage, or if appropriate on the arbitrators' private mailing list. Arbitrators who follow the arbitration pages for input from the parties and other interested editors are also able to take note when someone expresses the concern that something has been overlooked.

2. You touched briefly on this in your statement, but how do you feel your experience as a lawyer will affect the performance of your arbitration duties? Thanks, east.718 at 04:27, 11/1/2007

   Answer: In some ways, I think my experience as a lawyer will be helpful to me as an arbitrator, while in other ways I think that I am more-or-less the same editor (and would be more-or-less the same arbitrator) that I would have been had there been an Internet and a Wikipedia when I was starting my career 20 years ago, and so it shouldn't matter very much.

   If working as a litigator has taught me one thing, it is that there are two or more sides to every story, and two or more perspectives to be considered in just about every dispute, whether in the real world or on Wikipedia. It has also taught me the importance of carefully reviewing all the evidence and arguments in a case before reaching conclusions. In my work as a Clerk, my experience has probably aided me in understanding and applying some of the complexities of the arbitration procedure (which is not at all to say that the procedures should be applied in a legalistic or formalistic way). I also think that my years of document drafting experience would be helpful in crafting decisions.

Questions from Majorly

These are generic questions, so apologies if you've answered them elsewhere :)

1. How do you think that your personality would make you a good arbitrator?

   Answer: I hesitate to apply flattering adjectives to myself, but I think that I am attentive to detail and able to carefully analyze evidence and arguments, which are important skills for an arbitrator. I would also like to think that I have established a reputation in the community for civility, patience, and well-thought analysis. These would I hope be helpful in having my opinions and decisions as an arbitrator accepted more readily by those affected. It is far better and certainly more collegial if editors accept arbitration decisions in a spirit of "a selected group of well-regarded, experienced, dedicated editors have reached this conclusion after careful consideration, so it is likely to be right and we defer to it," as opposed to "I guess I'm stuck with complying with this damfool set of orders if I don't want to be blocked."

2. Do you have any experience in real life that could relate to activities arbitrators have to deal with? Thanks for your time. Majorly (talk) 14:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: I've responded to a question elsewhere on this page about my years of experience as a litigation attorney and how that might help inform my participation on the Arbitration Committee. I also served for six years on a school board, with supervisory involvement in the disciplinary process for both employees and students, and that experience might prove relevant as well.

Questions from Picaroon

• Under what conditions should non-arbitrators be granted access to the arbcom mailing list? Former members, checkusers/oversights who have never been on the committee, board members, others?

Answer: I don't have a strong view on this one way or the other, in part because although I have a general idea of what this mailing list is used for, I haven't had access to know the specifics. My impression is that this list is used for several purposes. One of these is private arbitrator discussion and deliberation regarding specific cases pending before the committee. Another is general discussion of topics, sometimes including highly sensitive topics and private information, that needs to be discussed in a confidential way by community leaders. Including trusted individuals in such discussion should not be problematic so long as the recipients are carefully selected and so long as all mailing list participants refrain from using their access to the mailing list to exercise undue influence on pending cases in which they are parties or in which they have a particular interest not shared by the editing community as a whole.

• Please list the total number of alternate accounts you have used, and please list the usernames of as many as you feel comfortable making public.

Answer: None. Other than maybe 15 or 20 non-controversial IP edits before I registered, I have only edited as User:Newyorkbrad.

• Under what circumstances should a case be heard completely via email, as opposed to onwiki? Under what conditions should the committee block a user without making public the full extent of the reasoning (for example, this user)?

Answer: On-wiki discussion is preferable unless there are concrete and specific reasons for taking an action off-wiki. In the case of the indefinite block of User:Melsaran, I do not know the reasons for the action taken beyond the limited information that has been disclosed on-wiki. Therefore, I can't really opine on whether the matter could responsibly have been handled through a fully on-wiki process, nor am I in a position to say that things should have been done differently or not. To the best of my knowledge, Melsaran has not requested that the discussion be moved on-wiki, which tentatively suggests that he might accept that the matter was better addressed in a non-public fashion.

• Under what circumstances should the committee implement an indefinite ban on a user? Under what conditions should probation/supervised editing be instituted instead of a ban of any duration?

Answer: In one sense, banning or indefinitely blocking a user (other than a serial vandal or obvious troll) is a remedy of last resort, whether for an arbitrator, for an administrator, or for the community. After all, to a banned user, Wikipedia is no longer "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit"; it has become "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit—except you." On the other hand, we all know that there are users whose contributions are so consistently problematic that allowing them to continue editing will damage the encyclopedia, such as by driving off other editors who become exasperated or by continually wasting large amounts of other people's time. Deciding when this point has been reached is a large part of the Arbitration Committee's job description; it requires carefully examining the user's entire record of contributions, as well as his or her comments in prior dispute resolution attempts and on the arbitration pages, which are often important signals as to whether there is hope for improvement if a ban is not passed.

Remedies less severe than a ban, such as probation or supervised editing, are worth exploring when a user's disruptive editing is limited to a particular article or topic, or when there is reason to believe that the restrictions will alleviate the problematic behavior while allowing the user to contribute positively.

• What constitutes a wheel war? Was the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/BJAODN situation a wheel war? How about Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sadi Carnot and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar?

  Please see my response to Daniel's last question for my thoughts on the current ambiguity of the term "wheel war." As for the specific cases you cite, the administrator actions in the Sadi Carnot matter occurred in the light of our currently unclear community ban policy; please see my comments at the acceptance stage of that case (now found on the case talkpage) as well as the proposed decision in the Ferrylodge case that arbitrator Kirill Lokshin posted this morning (as I write this). The BJAODN case was not really a wheel-war, in that there was only one reversal of an admin action, unless one wants to count reversal of an action taken several weeks earlier, which generally would be outside the definition of wheel war; this does not, of course, mean that the situation was handled well, although fortunately a consensus was reached on how to resolve it. Finally, the Alkivar case seems to have grown well beyond its original bounds, and I do not have access to the private evidence, so I'd rather not comment on it as I'm not clear which of the incidents mentioned in various items of evidence and the workshop you have in mind.

Questions from Sean William

1. In your opinion, what is the best way to deal with revert-warriors brought before ArbCom?
2. What is your opinion about revert parole (1RR limitations, etc.)?
3. What is your opinion about civility parole (also known as personal attack parole)?

   Answer: I think I've addressed the essence of these three questions in my responses to Heimstern, above. "Parole" remedies (now referred to in some decisions as "restrictions") should be utilized when there is reason to believe that they will curtail problematic behavior of editors who, if they are able to refrain from excessive reverting, grossly uncivil comments, or the like, will make positive contributions to the encyclopedia and the community. There have been concerns raised that revert parole mechanisms are subject to a certain amount of gaming (e.g., two editors allied against a user on a 1RR limit have an irrevocable advantage, plus when alleged parole violations are reviewed by administrators, the definition of a "revert" versus a regular edit can be even more subjective than in reviewing an ordinary 3RR report). I fear that some of these concerns may be legitimate, but thus far I have not seen a better proposal for limiting unreasoned article reversions without losing the editor altogether.

Question from xaosflux

1. As functions assigned by ArbCom, describe your view on the assignments of Oversight and Checkuser permissions, including thresholds for (or even the possibility of) new applicants. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 16:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   Oversight and checkuser rights are among our most sensitive permissions and should be assigned only to users who have shown dedication to the project, sensitivity to privacy issues and confidentiality, and demonstrated possession of widespread community trust. Relatively few checkusers are active at any given time, and I think we do need to grant this permission to some carefully selected additional users. I do not anticipate seeking checkuser access myself because I don't have the technical knowledge concerning IP assignments and related matters that is necessary to use this tool most effectively. I understand that oversight access is assigned automatically to newly elected arbitrators (subject now to the Foundation resolution); if elected, I would anticipate using this permission sparingly and in strict accordance with the applicable policies.

Questions from Lar

1. A perennial issue with ArbCom is the increasing caseload. What do you personally think of the idea of splitting the caseload somehow so that not all active arbitrators participate in every case? Possible ways are self selected per case, split the arbcom into two parts semi permanently and assign randomly or round robin or by current case load (some cases are more work than others), split cases by jurisdiction (subject area or nature of case, perhaps) or other ways (which did I miss?). Please discuss the technical issues, pros and cons of this idea as a way to gain insight into your thinking about the Arbitration Committee in general. Thank you! ++Lar: t/c 17:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   Although this could change in the future, at present I don't see any reason why the full membership of the Arbitration Committee should not be available to consider every case. I am reluctant to see a split into two committees or other sub-bodies unless it is unavoidable, because this will inevitably raise questions ranging from "how do we split the work and decide which matters are assigned to Panel One rather than Panel Two?" or "what happens if Panel One has different views from Panel Two and they start deciding cases inconsistently?" or "what if the arbitrators who at a given time are in a position to shoulder most of the workload are all on Panel One and none are on Panel Two?"

   I am not wholly opposed to splitting some of the workload of the committee, nor to potentially creating subcommittees or some sort of referral system, particularly if the docket becomes much larger than it is today. (For example, perhaps a small subcommittee should be appointed to consider e-mailed applications by banned users and recommend which ones warrant the full committee's attention or temporary unblocking to allow the user to file a case. As a Clerk, I regularly receive such requests from banned users, immediately forward them to the arbitrators' private mailing list to which I do not have access, and then sometimes no word is ever received as to the outcome.) However, I am not presently persuaded that most of the committee's work should not continue to be performed by the committee as a whole.

   Incidentally, based on the case counts recently added at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Completed requests and User:Picaroon/Stats, it is not at all clear that the ArbCom's caseload is actually increasing. (It may be that the average case is becoming more complex, however, as some situations that would have led to arbitration cases a couple of years ago are now dealt with by administrators and do not reach arbitration.)

2. "WP is not a democracy", "WP is not an experiment in governance or social justice", "WP is not fair", "There is an inherent right to edit WP by all", "Some people may act in good faith but are nevertheless not suited to working on this project, despite best intent". Which of these statements do you agree or disagree with? Why or why not? Thank you! ++Lar: t/c 17:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

   I agree with all of them to some extent, but am least sympathetic to "Wikipedia is not fair." Wikipedia does not exist as an exercise is demonstrating fairness for its own sake, and there is no guarantee that each and every comparable situation will be handled alike, but the role of the Arbitration Committee assuredly includes deciding each case in a fair and equitable a manner as possible, and rectifying unfairnesses that may have occurred elsewhere on the project so long as this can be done consistent with our overall mission.

Questions from Animum

Question 1: Do you think wikipedia has a functional "political" (for lack of a less political term) infrastructure? Why or why not?

Answer: Wikipedia has a complicated system of community leadership, some formal and some informal. This is a collaborative project and we should allow the base of contributors to work to write the encyclopedia, without unnecessary rules and bureaucracy, to the maximum extent feasible. Of course, as the project has grown, some policies and guidelines and dispute resolution procedures become necessary, with cases before the Arbitration Committee as the culmination of these.

Question 2: Which is more detrimental to the project: An incivil POV-pushing revert-warrior who causes much drama and takes very long to get banned, or bitey users who may cause a user who could have been as helpful to the project as some of our best users to leave before flourishing as a contributor?

Answer: Both types of users are detrimental. I don't see it as a particularly useful exercise to determine which is more detrimental; the more relevant question is how we could induce both users to stop being detrimental, which would begin by explaining to them why their conduct is problematic, and then escalate through attention from administrators or through the steps of dispute resolution as needed.

But how do you stop the former? :-) —Animum (etc.) 22:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I've addressed this above in some of my answers, particularly to Hermstein's questions about edit-warring and related problems.

Question 3: Which would you prefer to mediate: A convoluted case pertaining to a complex dispute with problematic editors, or a more clear-cut, one, similar to the Merkey RfAr?

Answer: The arbitrators have no control over what types of disputes arise and are brought before the committee. They do, of course, have the ability to decide which requests to accept or decline, but those decisions are properly based upon the needs of the community, the seriousness of the dispute, whether prior dispute resolution has been exhausted, and allied considerations, rather than what types of cases might theoretically be the most interesting or enjoyable to resolve.

Questions from CO

1. Question one: Is consensus really possible with over 200 people commenting on different processes?

   Answer: Attempts to provide rigorous definitions of and criteria for "consensus" have never succeeded. Despite this fact, consensus has been achieved on many issues that have obtained wide community input and large numbers of comments. In occasional instances, consensus decision-making fails to produce a clear outcome, and it is necessary to resolve a matter through some other means. The fact that a consensus outcome cannot be obtained in each and every instance does not negative the value of consensus decision-making in the majority of cases where the process does work. (I am indebted to the principles adopted in the otherwise somewhat problematic Giano arbitration case for aspects of this formulation.)

2. Question two: Does Wikipedia need some sort of governing body? If no, isn't ArbCom a governing body? If yes, what would you propose?

   Answer: As discussed in my answer to one of Animum's questions above, in a perfect world we would let the editors get on with the business of writing the encyclopedia, without supervision or rules or governance of any sort. That obviously became impracticable once the number of editors exceeded a dozen or so, and so Wikipedia step by step established the edifice of policies and guidelines and dispute resolution methods and all the rest, but always intending that be are ancillary to and supportive of the project's goals rather than at the heart of the project for their own sake. In this vein, arbitration is the final step of dispute resolution, primarily with regard to user-conduct issues; it has traditionally shied away from policy formulation, and properly so, so it is not really a "governing body" for the project as a whole, nor do I see a need to add more governance institutions at this time. Needless to say, in a real-world sense, governance of not just the English Wikipedia but all Wikimedia projects is provided by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

   Follow-up: How do you prevent abuse from this "governance institution"? Don't you need a balance of powers? Shouldn't it be a local balance made up of active contributers selected by the community instead of employees of the Board? CO 00:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: Um, the Arbitration Committee is composed of active contributors selected by the community. That's why we're here having this election. (Jimbo Wales, who is not an "employee of the Board" although he is a Board member himself, makes the final selection of arbitrators, but I think there is a firm expectation that he will select leading vote-getters in the election, as he did last year.) Theoretical concerns that ArbCom might assume an excessively broad role and thereby bypass that of the community are largely belied by the Arbitration Policy and procedures. These describes ArbCom's primary role as resolving user-conduct (not policy, nor content) disputes and only after other dispute-resolution methods (including community-based methods) have failed—a scope or remit that the committee has generally adhered to.

   Sorry for the confusion. You seem to mean that the "balance of power" for ArbCom is the Board of Trustees. I said "shouldn't the balance of power be made up of active contributers selected by the community instead of board employees?" Also, isn't user-conduct subjective? How can a group decide if a user is editing constructively or not? Simply being controversial doesn't mean a person is nonconstructive. CO 01:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: I didn't mean at all that ArbCom is balanced by the Board; they play fundamentally different roles; all I was doing was identifying the Board as a type of formal governing body that might be germane to your original question at the top of the thread. A majority of the Board is also elected, of course (I was a member of the committee that supervised the June 2007 election of three board members). For your other point, of course judging user conduct is a subjective process; editors can't be classified by a bot with a label such as "well-behaved" or "non-constructive," and instead user conduct must be judged by fellow editors, administrators, and arbitrators based on the editor's overall record, not generally based on any single incident nor on whether a given user is "controversial" or not.

   Do you think there should be a balancing power to ArbCom? If not, how do you prevent abuse? CO 01:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: I've provided some thoughts on this just above in this thread (the part beginning "Theoretical concerns...). Also bear in mind that even if the ArbCom did render a decision that was viewed as overstepping into the policy arena, it was reaffirmed in discussion in the Attack sites case that the community is always free to modify the policy in question.

Question from Wanderer57

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 01:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Mixed results. The Arbitration Committee observed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abu badali that "[a] user-conduct request for comment represents a forum in which editors may raise concerns about the conduct of a fellow editor. Although this procedure can be misused, when utilized in good faith it presents an editor with the opportunity to learn that concerns exist about his or her behavior, respond to the concerns, and if appropriate adjust his or her behavior." That paragraph of the decision, which was taken from a workshop proposal that I drafted, recognizes that the RfC process is valuable but also can be misused to attack or harass a user. RfC's against an editor or administrator should only be filed in the utmost of good faith. High standards of civility should be expected from all editors participating in an RfC, and it is helpful when an uninvolved administrator or experienced editor keeps an eye on the RfC pages and makes sure that things do not get badly off track.

Questions from Daniel

1: The use of IRC evidence in arbitration cases has flared up in certain cases. A few questions on this:-

a) Do you believe that IRC conversations in Wikipedia channels (ie. #wikipedia, #wikipedia-en, #wikipedia-en-admins) should be admissible in arbitration cases where it is directly relevant to the dispute at hand?

Answer: IRC conversations will generally be irrelevant to on-wiki disputes, but it probably is not practicable to say that they could never be relevant or considered. To choose a hopefully overstated hypothetical example, if an administrator announced on IRC that "User:X really hasn't done anything deserving a block, but I don't like him, so I just blocked him anyway," the arbitrators would surely consider such evidence, whether or not a policy somewhere said that they should or not (compare exclusionary rule).

b) Do you believe the Arbitration Committee has the jurisdiction to sanction users in these channels when it relates to Wikipedia disruption? If not, should it?

Answer: I don't know exactly what you mean by "sanction users in these channels." If you mean impose sanctions enforceable in the channels, I don't believe that ArbCom has jurisdiction to impose a remedy along the lines of "User:X is banned from all Wikimedia-themed IRC channels for one year." On the other hand, in cases involving harassment situations and the like, arbitrators have the ability to inform the IRC channel operators of the relevant facts. If you mean do they have jurisdiction to impose on-wiki sanctions for conduct in an IRC channel, again the answer is "this would rarely happen, but never say never." For example, if someone made death threats or legal threats (not flippantly but seriously) against a Wikipedia editor during an IRC conversation, it might be necessary to take on-wiki action.

c) If so, what are your thoughts on possibly creating an official Arbitration Committee IRC logging account in these channels for the purpose of providing corrupt-free logs when required for deliberation?

Answer: I would hope this would not be necessary.

2: Can emails and IRC logs, etc., be published on Wikipedia? Why or why not? Should they, or shouldn't they?

Answer: In the Hkelkar 2 case, the Arbitration Committee held as a principle that private e-mails should not be posted on-wiki without, at a minimum, the permission of the sender. I agree with this principle both for privacy reasons and also because if the e-mail is of more than trivial length, republication could theoretically be considered a copyright violation. Similarly, IRC logs should not be published on-wiki without the consent of all participants in the conversation, and such consent should rarely even be sought as the use of such logs to make a case or for any other reason should not generally be necessary.

3: Are Wikipedians, in particular administrators, required to answer to the Committee for their activites outside English Wikipedia (ie. on other Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikipedia-related websites including The Wikipedia Review, conduct linked to Wikipedia etc.). Should they be? If so, should the Arbitration Committee have intervened in the case of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gracenotes, and do you believe this was the correct decision?

Answer: The Arbitration Committee generally lacks jurisdiction over off-wiki conduct such as editing on projects other than English Wikipedia or posts on other websites. An exception is when the conduct can reasonably be anticipated to have on-wiki effects, such as extreme harassment or "outing" of English Wikipedia editors. Regarding the Gracenotes RfA, although I regret that a couple of the candidate's remarks were interpreted as suggesting that he was insensitive to harassment of editors, I believe people now realize that is not the case, and I have had a standing offer for some time to renominate him for adminship when he is ready. Regarding the desysopping you link to, I would presume that such a decision was based on substantial evidence, but there is not enough evidence on-wiki to permit a complete evaluation of the situation. Relevant factors would include the precise nature of the off-wiki posting referred to; the nature of the deleted material that the administrator was suggesting he might copy and provide off-wiki; the explanation, if any, provided by the administrator for his comments or actions; and the particular administrator's prior record (which it would serve no useful purpose to evaluate here).

4: Theoretical situation: an OTRS respondent blanks a section of an article on a living person, clearly stating that it is an OTRS action based on a semi-credible legal threat in the edit summary. The respondent then protects the article and leaves a note on the talk page asking for the section to be rebuilt, citing OTRS again. An administrator comes along and unprotects it 15mins later and reverts to the old version. A series of administrative and editorial reversions take place, with protection and unprotection (with content reversions) occurring three times in quick succession before both administrators are emergency-desysopped.

The article is then reprotected by a third administrator, and a case brought before the Arbitration Committee. Upon reviewing the OTRS ticket privately on the mailing list, it contains a semi-credible legal threat which is now being dealt with by legal counsel. With regards to the three administrators, what sanctions do you 'support' applying to each of the three?

Answer: This hypothetical arguably represents a more serious "wheel-warring" scenario than any we have recently seen. The hypothetical omits important information such as the administrators' prior records and their explanations for their actions, but desysopping would certainly be likely for an admin who reinstated, without consultation and discussion, information that had been blanked from a BLP article on the basis of an OTRS reference to legal concerns. The second admin in this example might or might not deserve significant sanction; if the disputed content was facially problematic, insisting that the material be blanked and protecting it pending counsel's review, with an explanation that that was the reasons given for these actions, might indeed be the appropriate steps to take, especially if supported by consensus. The third administrator's action appears justifiable, or at least excusable, for the same reason based on the limited facts provided.

5: What is your (emphasis heavily intended) definition of a wheel war?

Answer: The mere fact that the definition of "wheel war" is disputed to the point that you need to ask the question in this way, suggests that there are underlying policy issues that need to be analyzed and worked through by the community. In the meantime, I could define "wheel war" operationally as "one administrator undoing another's administrator action under circumstances that the Arbitration Committee would consider improper," but that probably is not what you are looking for.

A full-fledged "wheel war" occurs when there is a repeated undoing of one another's admin actions (blocks/unblocks, deletions/undeletions, protects/unprotects, etc.) by two or more administrators. The more common scenario where use of the term "wheel war" is disputed is where one admin simply reverses another's action (and then perhaps the first one reinstates the original action). The term "wheel war" is generally overstated and unhelpful in this context; but this does not, of course, mean that it is how administrators should ordinarily behave.

Question from Addhoc

Are there any subject areas that you would recuse yourself from? Thanks! Addhoc 14:08, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I can't think of any subject areas that if they arose in a case, would necessarily cause me to recuse myself (unless there were a coincidence that arose, such as a dispute involving an article on a law firm I've worked with or the like). Like any arbitrator, I would recuse myself in a case that arose from a dispute in which I had been significantly involved as an editor or an administrator.

Question from Ultraexactzz

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 15:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: The arbitrator's role is to bring his or her experience to bear so as to help resolve disputes as fairly, reasonably, undramatically, and expeditiously as possible, in the best interests of the affected users and articles/pages and of the project as a whole. (Sorry, but one sentence is as brief as I can get with this; I don't think the matter can effectively be distilled into a single word as you suggest.)

Question from Wikidudeman

In my experience, many larger arbitrations seem to suffer from the fact that the arbitrators do not spend as much time on examining the evidence and statements as they should be spending. Examples of problems that arise would be proposals not being used or relevant issues not even being addressed. This is probably due to the large backlog and caseload. What would you do to ensure that all arbitrations are ended efficiently and fairly and that all issues and concerns are addressed and all needed remedies met? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 23:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I share this concern, and have discussed this and related issues in my earlier answers above on this page. The best thing that can be done to alleviate this problem is to select arbitrators who, despite all of us having other on-wiki duties as well as busy real lives, are going to put in the time to analyze evidence and proposals that you would want them to spend if you were a party to a case. If you have a more specific follow-up question please let me know.

Question from Dihydrogen Monoxide

What's your opinion on Jimbo's desysop of Zscout370? — H₂O —  00:39, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I opposed the emergency desysopping when it happened, and posted on ANI to that effect at the time. It seemed to me that while Zscout370 acted most unwisely in undoing Jimbo Wales's block of Miltopia in the way that he did, the emergency desyopping was an overreaction and was unnecessary because, among other things, there was no emergency and the original block had long since been reinstated by consensus. However, Jimbo's resysopping of Zscout370 the following day (rather than a week or more later as originally announced), coupled with Jimbo's reaffirmation that his own administrator/bureaucrat/steward actions are subject to review by the Arbitration Committee and that he will accept the ArbCom's decision as final, have ameliorated much of the concern that the desysopping originally raised.

Question from Anonymous Dissident

By submitting a candidacy for the December 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections, you are indicating your commitment to Wikipedia, and your belief in its continuance and worth as a project. What do you personally see for the future, both near and distant, of Wikipedia as a collaborative effort to bring free knowledge to the planet, and what are your feelings in regards to the Arbitration Committees relation to the successful endurance of the quality and credibility, among other aspects, of Wikipedia, and of Wikipedia itself? -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Thanks for the wide-ranging question. I will avoid, at least for now, the temptation to respond with a multipage philosophical essay about the role and future of Wikipedia, in part because I am not really an expert in predicting future trends in Internet usage and information structure, and in part because no one else is either. (Did anyone predict 10 years ago that something like Wikipedia or Wikimedia would evolve? If so, I certainly didn't see it.) The role of the Arbitration Committee is to settle disputes arising within the project, primarily dealing with user-conduct issues. By dealing fairly, equitably, and expeditiously with disputes brought before them, the arbitrators can promote a collaborative editing environment—preserving and enhancing the ability of any English-speaking person in the world with computer access, sourceable knowledge, and good faith to add to our encyclopedia, while emphasizing which editing practices are not acceptable.

Question from Blaxthos

How do you feel that the idea of stare decisis applies to Wikipedia generally, and to the arbitration process specifically? Thanks in advance for all the hard work I've seen in the past. Best of luck. /Blaxthos 10:43, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: By way of background for the non-legalists, stare decisis refers to the presumption that when a court decides a case, it will follow the holdings of prior decisions that addressed the same issue. This is perceived as promoting fairness, because parties to like cases will be treated alike, and stability, because the governing law will not arbitrarily change from one day to the next. On the other hand, stare decisis cannot be applied in an inflexible way, because sometimes changed conditions or experience with the effects of a given holding will persuade the judges that the law should be changed. Sometimes, too, it is a change in the personnel of a given court (particularly an appellate court with broad discretion in its decision-making, such as the Supreme Court of the United States) that reopens debate about whether a prior decision should be scaled back or overruled.

In the Wikipedia context, it is important to bear in mind that the Arbitration Committee is not a court, and Wikipedia dispute resolution culminating where necessary in arbitration is not a legal system, but simply a series of methods designed to address issues in a way that provides fairness to contributors while promoting our underlying mission of writing the encyclopedia. The Arbitration Policy has always provided that ArbCom is not bound by its prior decisions. However, principles and precedents established in prior decisions are certainly relevant to current decision-making, as witnessed by the number of times that proposals and decisions in current decisions are based upon the holdings of earlier cases. I certainly would approach cases with a presumption that principles and precedents established in an earlier case on a related issue were carefully considered by the arbitrators who decided that case and are likely to be correct, as opposed to reopening basic well-settled principles and deciding everything from scratch in every single case. That would be subject, however, to arguments why the rationale or outcome of an earlier case should not be applied in the current one.

Question from U.S.A.U.S.A.U.S.A.

What kind of temperament do you think you have as a user and a person? Please forgive me if you don't understand the question.--U.S.A.U.S.A.U.S.A. 18:39, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I think my on-wiki temperament is pretty much a known quantity by this point, and I don't really have much to add beyond what I've already written elsewhere on this page.

Actually, I will add one thing. Introspecting in the run-up to this election, I thought a great deal about the fact that in administrator discussions and even in arbitration case workshops, I have often (but not invariably) found myself advocating that a problematic user be given another chance, or summing up on the side of leniency. This reached an extreme in one ANI discussion where a comment was made along the lines of "everyone is supporting a block here except Newyorkbrad, and he never supports blocking anyone." That was overstated teasing, but contains a kernel of truth (which may originate in part from my having brought to ANI and challenged a number of bad blocks in my first few months here, all of which were reversed). To be candid, it will be no fun at all to be the one typing on a proposed decision page, "User:Foo is desysopped" or "User:X is banned from editing Wikipedia for a period of one year." But someone has to type such things sometimes, to preserve the ability of the rest of us to write an encyclopedia and to have fun doing so, and I'm prepared to address every case on its merits and do what ought to be done.

As for the other part of your question, if by my temperament "as a person" you mean offline ... well, let's just say that on the rare occasions that I reveal my on-wiki self to the people I am close to in real life, they stare dumbfounded at the overly kind words that my fellow editors have written on my userpage and in my RfA, and uniformly they have the same reaction: "This 'Newyorkbrad' person cannot even possibly be you."

Questions from jd2718

1. I know, I know, ArbCom concerns itself with conduct, not content. But the sorts of conflicts that reach ArbCom often fall into one of a small number of content-related categories. Should ArbCom explicitly recognize that the line between editor conflict and editorial conflict in some areas, esp nationalist related articles, is a blurry one? Should cases involving those topics be treated differently from other sorts of cases?

   Answer: The clichéd, but still accurate, answer is that every case must be treated on its own merits. You are right to suggest that the line between "conduct dispute" and "content dispute" can sometimes be a blurred one. But to say that nationalism-related articles inherently create problematic editor behavior would be unfair to our thousands of editors, from many different cultures, who create and collaborate on such articles without the sorts of problems that we have seen in a few high-profile cases. There should be no topic so contentious that Wikipedians working in good faith cannot produce a high-quality, NPOV article on the topic, although perhaps not every editor has the temperament to work well on every article.

2. Without reference to yourself or to other candidates, what qualities or experiences would you look for if you were to vote for ArbCom? What qualities or experience would you seek to avoid?

   Answer: I don't have anything to offer in suggesting candidate qualifications beyond the obvious ones. Would-be arbitrators should be experienced Wikipedians, with a solid record of contributions to the encyclopedia and the community, and the ability to assess evidence and resolve disputes fairly and impartially. Willingness and ability to invest substantial time in arbitration work are essential; prior experience in the arbitration process and/or other forms of dispute resolution are pluses. Ideally, a well-rounded Arbitration Committee would include arbitrators with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.

3. Last year the community nominated what looked like a solid bunch of Arbitrators. Yet 10 months later it turns out that several had very spotty levels of ArbCom activity. Do you think that this was at all predictable? And if so, how?

   Answer: No, I don't think this was predictable at all. In fact, I think the community did a good job of selecting well-qualified arbitrators last year, from whom diligence and dedication were justly anticipated based on their records of interest in arbitration as well as excellent article contributions. Several of this group of arbitrators have been active throughout the year (in particular, Kirill Lokshin has taken over the role of authoring the first drafts of most decisions, although several other arbs have also written in one or more cases). No one can begrudge any arbitrator the right to take a break for real-world reasons, although one hopes that too many do not need to become inactive at the same time. This is also probably as good a place as any to express my hopes that Flcelloguy is all right; he was an outstanding editor who had expressed consistent interest in the arbitration process and who I believe received the highest percentage support of any candidate since ArbCom elections started. I worry that his absence the past six months may reflect some grave event in his life; I hope that when things are better for him he he will be able to return to some role within the project.

4. I have seen it written that to become a good Arbitrator, a WPian should first be a good editor. Do you agree? How would you characterize (qualitatively and quanitatively) your own editing? Will you restrict your editing during your term on ArbCom?

   Answer: I've created a number of pages, some better than others, as well as doing some copyediting and wikignoming. I came to Wikipedia originally to write and edit articles, and found myself surprised to be spending more and more time in project-space as the months went on, both before and after I became an administrator in January. Articles I've created include a number of biographies of obscure U.S. federal judges. (I think the good news is that these articles have no edit-wars, while the bad news is that these articles have no readership.) I periodically vow to spend more time in mainspace, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing (just because no one enforced 1FA on my RfA doesn't mean I shouldn't eventually get there, although hopefully no one will invoke it in this election).

5. Please set aside modesty for this one. Your candidacy will certainly be successful. Why are WPians looking to vote for you? What incident(s), arbitration(s) or mediation(s) led to your decision to run? Explain a bit, if you don't mind. And what incident(s), arbitration(s) or mediation(s) most account for your current popularity? Jd2718 03:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

   Answer: Thanks, of course, for the kind words, although I count no chickens before they hatch, and my candidacy will not be successful until such time, if it comes, as the community and Jimbo Wales decide that it was. As for the substance of your question, I think the first time I came to the community's attention was at the time of a controversial resysopping that took place in September 2006 and a very contentious arbitration case that resulted, but I don't think a review of those events more than a year later would be terribly useful and if you don't mind it would probably be best to skip it for now.

Question from Cla68

In reading your answers above I understand that you've done a lot of quality content work and hope to soon take an article to Featured status. Have any articles that you've heavily edited attained Good Article status? Cla68 07:35, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I have not participated in that particular process to date, although I hope to do so in the future. I will add that I've had some input on a couple of featured articles, but in the capacity of copyediting or adding sources, not at all as primary author. Again, this is something I hope to change in the upcoming year, whether or not I am elected to the committee.

Question from Warlordjohncarter

One basic question. I noted in your responses to Lar above that you would oppose formally splitting the arbitration committee into multiple subcommittees, and agree with you on that. However, I wonder what your opinion of the idea of perhaps increasing the number of members of the committee, or possibly decreasing the required quorum, to the point that it would be more easily able to "break up" into smaller groups who would be able to take on a greater number of concurrent cases, and with luck speed some of the processes. These groups would not necessarily all have the same members every time, but would hopefully include those members of the committee who have a particular interest in or knowledge of the subject or point of contention. Would you favor or oppose such a development, and why? John Carter 18:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: As I said in response to Lar, I would rather not take this type of steps unless it becomes unavoidable. In particular, I don't envision supporting any sort of division of the caseload by content area or the like. If the caseload were to increase dramatically, my views on this might change, but the numbers suggest that it has stayed more-or-less stable for the past couple of years.

Questions from WJBscribe

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.

1. Appointment to the Arbitration Committee is for three years - a lot can change on Wikipedia in three years. Should there be a mechanism by which the Community can recall an arbitrator in whose judgment it loses confidence? Do you have any thoughts as to what form that mechanism should take?

   Answer: I do not believe that a formal mechanism for user-initiated arbitrator recall should be established, as this could be used to harass arbitrators who rendered difficult but necessary decisions that became unpopular with a small but well-organized portion of the community. However, if it became clear that a given arbitrator had lost the confidence of the community measured in a reasonable way, then I suppose there would need to be some way of acting on that concern. Perhaps a rule providing that Jimbo could remove an arbitrator with the consent of two-third of the other arbitrators, or something along those lines, would make sense, although hopefully it would never become necessary to utilize such a procedure.

2. ArbCom is responsible for assigning checkuser and oversight access to users of the English Wikipedia. Would you advocate withdrawing the access in the case of someone someone who failed to make sufficient use of it? If yes, what sort of activity level would you say is required?

   Answer: I have never seen this issue discussed with specific respect to oversighters and checkusers, but whenever it has been raised with respect to bureaucrats and administrators, the consensus of the English Wikipedia community has typically been that this is not a sufficiently serious problem to warrant attention. (The practice varies on some other projects, where I understand that a certain period of inactivity for administrators results in automatic desysopping.) I would have no problem with a rule that an oversighter or checkuser who made no use of the permission for, say, one year, would have the access removed, but I would not consider it a priority to push for the rule to be implemented.

3. Where the Community finds itself unable to reach a consensus on the formulation of a given policy, do you think ArbCom has a role to play in determining that policy?

   AnswerThe Arbitration Committee, as it reminds us itself from time to time, exists for the fundamental purpose of dealing with user-conduct issues, rather than writing policy. In fact, in some decisions or proposed decisions, ArbCom has specifically observed that an area of policy is unclear, but has urged the community to clarify the policy rather than attempt to do so itself. See, for example, the proposed decision in the Ferrylodge case and related discussion in Sadi Carnot case dealing with issues relating to indefinite blocks and community bans. However, on a few occasions ArbCom has indeed established a new rule of policy, such as the holding in the Giano case (and reaffirmed in Konstable and PhilWelch) regarding when a user who has relinquished adminship (or another access level) is entitled to get the buttons back on request without a new RfA (or equivalent). In rare instances, the Arbitration Committee has affirmed the importance of vigorously enforcing a given policy and at the same time adopted a particular construction of the policy; the discussion of the biographies of living persons policy in the Badlydrawnjeff case is probably the best-known recent example.

   Where the community appears to be hopelessly deadlocked on an important policy issue, a technique that the arbitrators have occasionally used is to establish what is effectively an interim policy, but with the clear understanding that the community should continue discussing the issue and hopefully come to consensus on a policy adopted in the ordinary course, which would supersede the principles set forth in the committee decisions. Examples of this technique include the Protecting children's privacy case (addressing some of the concerns originally addressed on the WP:CHILD policy proposal page) and the more recent Attack sites case (although the final decision in that case was somewhat prolix and confused). Although generally policy formation should be left to the community processes, this may be the best tack for the committee to take in the very most difficult cases.

A queston from Albion moonlight

Would you be in favor of a rule that made it necessary for at least 3 administrators perpetrate an indefinite block ? In my view this would help create a reality check for hot headed admins who may jump the gun. Also such a rule need not apply to Jimbo but.... Albion moonlight 07:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I would oppose a blanket rule requiring 3 administrators to block indefinitely because this would lead to unnecessary bureaucracy and delay, in that most indefs are for vandalism-only accounts, blatantly unacceptable usernames, and the like. I assume, though, that you are referring primarily to indefinite blocks of established contributors who have made significant good-faith efforts. In these situations, administrators hopefully are already consulting, either before blocking or especially if an unblock request is forwarded. So I would think that most of these blocks do get attention from at least three administrators, particularly if they are expected to be controversial or disputed.

Another question from jd2718

If the community blows this election and leaves off a potentially great arbitrator, I think we know it won't cripple ArbCom. But the converse, how bad would it be if the community chooses mostly good arbitrators, and one really awful one? Is the committee resilient enough that the impact would be minimal, or is there real potential harm? Jd2718 22:28, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: That depends on what "really awful" means. If it means someone who didn't participate regularly, that would be unfortunate but the committee would live with it. If it means someone who reaches bad judgments on the evidence and remedies, that would cause more problems, but at the end of the day the person could be outvoted. But if it meant someone who was acting in bad faith or an out-and-out troll, given the amount of sensitive and confidential information the arbitrators are privy to, that could be a catastrophe. (Not that I am suggesting that any of the candidates would fall into this category!)

Question from Splash

The inevitable upshot of electing a clerk to the committee will be that others in short order view being a clerk as a route to a seat on the committee. The clerks are at present appointed and oligarchicly so (see WP:CLERK#Becoming a Clerk), and thus the only 'approved' route to a seat on the committee would be oligarchic in nature. (Whereas at present there are no clear routes to a seat save the annual appointments). I would like to enquire if you think entrenching oligarchy in this way is the right thing to do, or why you think that electing you would not create such an effect. Splash - tk 03:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Thanks for the question and giving me an opportunity to respond to your concern. To begin with, I don't agree that the upshot of electing a clerk to the committee will be that others seek clerkship as a stepping stone to becoming arbitrators. Last year, the community did elect and Jimbo did appoint one of the clerks, FloNight, as an arbitrator. This hardly resulted in a flurry of people signing up to be clerks. Currently we have four active official clerks, and I am the only one running for arbitrator. Moreover, although the work I've done clerking may have some relevance to my qualifications, it is hardly the central basis of my candidacy. The main thing my clerk work would contribute to my work as an arbitrator is detailed familiarity with the arbitration process, as well as an understanding of how users caught up in arbitrations perceive the process, derived from fielding their questions and correcting their procedural mistakes. If anything, bringing that experience to the committee would seem to be a plus, but the community can evaluate that for itself.

Second, regarding your mention of "oligarchy," I think that would be a more valid concern if ArbCom were a self-selecting and self-perpetuating body, so that there would be a fear that the arbitrators would choose as their successors the individuals who had assisted the committee and in the process become well-known to them. But of course, that is not the case; all members of the En-Wiki community with meaningful edit counts are eligible to participate in this election, and very few of them have any connection with the ArbCom itself. Selecting arbitrators by election across the entire community is about the most anti-oligarchic selection method that I can imagine. Also, even if I were elected, then former clerks would now constitute a grand total of 2 of the 15 (or possibly more) arbitrators, hardly a disproportionate number.

It may also be useful to remind readers here about what the clerks' current job description is. Typical clerk tasks include these: When a case has four net votes to open, we create the case pages from the templates and notify the parties. When a case is ready to close, we write up an implementation note, copy the decision to the main case page, and announce the decision to the parties and on the noticeboards. We answer procedural questions from the parties about how arbitration works; we try to keep the arbitration-related pages in good order; when a case drags, we dun the arbitrators to kindly get around to voting. All of these tasks are, if not 100% than close to it, procedural and clerical in nature. They do not involve substantive input into the committee's decision-making. It is true that from time to time, I have opined on whether a case should be accepted, or presented proposed principles, findings, and remedies on the workshop. (In fact, I'm sure I've griped and cavilled and criticized about various proposals more than any other user all year, which again hardly suggests that I hold charter membership in some oligarchic in-group.) But those actions are taken as an ordinary editor, not as a clerk; the substantive case input of a clerk has no more importance than that of any other editor, and in any event in cases where I was involved in the underlying events I would have recused myself as a clerk (just as I would have if I were an arbitrator).

Users who were active two years ago (I was not yet a Wikipedian then) may remember a brief period in which it was proposed that the then-new position of clerk be assigned a greater role than the clerks have actually ever exercised. It was proposed at first that clerks, in their official capacity, be assigned responsibility for summarizing the parties' evidence in cases and preparing recommended decisions. But these suggestions quickly became controversial and were never implemented, and the role of the clerks is, at this point and as I have said, genuinely clerical in nature, and not a stepping stone to anything else.

Your question also appears to question in passing whether the existing clerks should be in part responsible for selecting new clerks, as has become the case (by evolution, not necessarily the original design). The current system is that a new person starts by helping out around the arbitration pages informally, makes a favorable impression, is invited to open and close a couple of cases, and if that works out well the existing clerks present his or her name to the arbitrators for an appointment. I see the role of clerk as analogous to that of other administrators (and not all of the clerks are even administrators) who carve out a specific admin area or task as one is which they are going to concentrate their admin time. To pick an example literally at random, imagine an administrator who specialized in keeping an eye on the "redirects for discussion" page. Every day he would close the completed RfD's and implement the results, remove or fix any malformed RfD's, give advice to people with question about the RfD process, and in general watch over the page. If he were going on vacation, he might try to make sure that some other administrator monitored RfD while he was away; if he decided to retire or to move on to a different area of adminning, he might act responsibly by making sure that someone else was going to take on the responsibilities for RfD rather than leave a gap. This is how things work over dozens of project pages and in dozens of administrative processes all across Wikipedia, with nary a hint of controversy. The only difference in the case of the arbitration clerks is that the clerks have a more formal title and a slightly more formal role and, because of the nature of the work, the Arbitration Committee has to approve their final selection.

So the answer to your question is that I do not agree at all that electing a current arbitration clerk as an arbitrator would represent the entrenchment of an oligarchy, for the reasons I have explained here at probably excessive length. Please let me know if you have any more specific or follow-up questions.

Thank you for a very detailed response, I will go and consider that. On one point of crossed wires, my 'oligarchy' references were meant to apply to the clerk organisation and not to the arbitration committee itself. Splash - tk 15:25, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Thanks for the clarification—I had understood your use of the term to refer to both the clerks and the arbitrators—but I think my answer can stand unchanged.

Question from Revolving Bugbear

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 16:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: The Arbitration Committee actually has relatively little to do with real-world legal issues. The committee generally concentrates on addressing user-conduct issues, rather than content issues that devolve into legal threats. To be sure, once in awhile a legal concern can arise in a case, but when that occurs, I would advise that Foundation counsel be consulted, just as I would suggest (and occasionally have suggested) when a sensitive thread arises on ANI or elsewhere.

In general, you are correct that because the Foundation is incorporated in the United States and specifically in Florida, the laws of those jurisdictions govern Foundation activities including the English Wikipedia. On occasion, laws of other jurisdictions also become relevant; for example, in determining the free-use status of an image created in another country, sometimes the copyright law of that country is examined.

The extent to which the law of a country outside the United States might apply to other legal issues arising, such as alleged instances of libel or invasion of privacy, involves an exceedingly complex and in many respects currently unsettled area of the law. I am a lawyer in real life, although not an expert in conflicts of law or private international law, and have read some of the relevant cases, but I can assure you that it would not really be reasonable to attempt to provide a summary of all the applicable principles here, especially the ones still in flux. If you have a more specific question, I can take a stab at it, but I would not want to be perceived as in any way giving legal advice to users as to the law of even my own country, much less any other countries—much less would it make sense for other candidates who are non-lawyers to try to do so. The most important thing to bear in mind is that, as I said above, the Arbitration Committee in no way fills the role of a Foundation spokesperson or of the Foundation's legal counsel in any jurisdiction.

Perhaps my question is indeed too generally worded. A particular example where this would be relevant to ArbCom is, for example, a case comes to ArbCom where a user has repeatedly been blocked for 3RR / contentious editing. The catch? He claims that the article violates some other country's law -- say, for instance, Britain's significantly tighter defamation laws.

Answer: The Foundation takes the position that it is not subject to British defamation law, and in any event that it is not subject to defamation law at all with respect to Wikipedia's contents, because it is not the creator, but merely the publisher, of the content on the site. For this reason, and also because whether content is legally defamatory under the law of one or more jurisdictions is a question of law and fact not suited for resolution by Wikipedia administrators, our policies do not specifically recognize a claim that a statement in an article allegedly violated defamation law as a defense to 3RR. However, if the article violated our policy on biographies of living persons, which is motivated by many of the same considerations that give rise to the legal concepts of defamation and invasion of privacy, then reversion of such material is generally exempt from 3RR enforcement, and a user repeatedly re-posting such material may be blocked. If an editor attempts to redress concerns about BLP or defamation issues in an article, and his or her reversions are met with edit-warring, the best course of action would generally be to post to the appropriate noticeboard rather than continue to edit-war, unless the article content is patently unacceptable on its face. However, the fact that the user was attempting to redress a good-faith concern about a BLP violation or defamation, rather than to push a particular POV, could be a mitigating factor in deciding what sanction, if any, should be imposed if the matter reached ArbCom.

As a point of information and nothing to do with the Arbitration Committee, American courts generally recognize money judgments by foreign (non-U.S.) courts so long as the court had jurisdiction and the foreign courts meet basic standards of fundamental fairness (which the British system of courts has been held to do). However, the courts in New York and Maryland have held that as a matter of public policy, the wide scope of the British defamation laws contravenes the spirit of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and therefore British libel awards will not be enforced by those states. I do not know if the state or federal courts in Florida have considered this issue. Individual editors, however, need to be cognizant of their own potential liability for defamatory content placed on Wikipedia, as they may be amenable to suit or hold assets in a jurisdiction where the Foundation does not, and also of their ethical obligation not to add defamatory or privacy-invading content to what is now one of the most visited websites in the entire world.

Question from Jossi

What is your opinion on the use of multiple accounts in Wikipedia, as it relates to the recent discussions on the subject? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Please see my answer to the first question from User:Jaranda/Jbeach56 above. Thank you.

I missed that... thanks. Best wishes for your candidacy. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 01:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Questions from Piotrus

1. Do you think an arbitrator should be active in all cases he has no conflict or interests in?

   Answer: Ideally, an arbitrator should be active in all cases unless there is a specific need to recuse. Several arbitrators do participate in substantially every case and that would be my intention as well. However, if it happens that an unexpectedly high number of cases need to be decided around the same time, or an arbitrator has a temporary limitation on his or her time due to real-world commitments, I would rather see that arbitrator go inactive on a particular case rather than cast a vote without having spent the due time necessary to properly review the statements and evidence in the case.

2. If the arbitrator is active, should he be expected to comment in workshop/arbcom discussion pages?

   Answer: An active arbitrator should be keeping an eye on the pages in the pending cases, and certainly should review them carefully before reaching an opinion and voting in each case. Timely input from arbitrators can help to keep these pages useful, free from unhelpful feuding or extraneous commentary, and most conducive to aiding in the arbitrators' decision-making. However, I don't know that that necessarily means that all 15 arbitrators should be putting comments on every workshop, as that could make the workshops even more unwieldy than some of them are now.

3. Do you think some editors should be more equal than others? I.e. should incivility of experienced editor - one who registered years ago and wrote or contributed to many articles - be treated differently from incivility of a relative newcomer?

   Answer: No editor, of any description, should be uncivil or make personal attacks. Exactly what constitutes incivility can be in the eye of the beholder, and accusations of problematic incivility and calls for sanctions should not be made lightly, especially where there is some provocation involved. I do think that a user's entire record and history here need to be weighed in considering the appropriate response to any offense, civility-related or otherwise, although paradoxically a long contribution history may simultaneously be both a mitigating factor ("how can we be critical of someone who has done so much good work?") and an aggravating factor ("after three years here he should have known better"). But any editor who repeatedly finds himself or herself accused of habitual incivility should look carefully over his or her contributions and reflect on whether a change in tone would be warranted. Often the answer is yes.

4. How can WP:CIV and similar issues be enforced? Should they be enforced as efficient as 3RR?

   Answer: No, enforcing our norms against incivility and personal attacks can never be routinized the way 3RR enforcement supposedly has been, as witnessed by the deactivation of the "WP:PAIN" personal attacks noticeboard after an MfD in which the consensus was that the forum was too often being misused as a vehicle for users to seek blocks of those who opposed them on content issues, rather than to redress serious personal attacks. Administrator and, in the gravest cases, arbitrator discretion becomes involved in every case. Personally, I find incivility and personal attacks to be very troublesome behavior; I try never to engage in them, and I wish that everyone else did also. But we all have different personalities, and different sensitivities, and different expectations, and different understandings about where to draw the line. There is a difference between saying "X has made a rude remark and I hope he will withdraw it; I know I would never say such a thing" and "X has made a rude remark, let's block him for a week." Intervention by other editors can sometimes help defuse these types of situations; nothing to do with arbitration, but I have done so from time to time: sometimes I wind up feeling that the result has been avoiding an unnecessary drama or escalation that would have resulted in hurt feelings and blocks, while other times I have been viewed as more of an officious meddler. The remedies of "civility parole" or "personal attack parole" or what is now referred to as a "behavioral editing restriction," or in extreme cases a ban from a topic or from the project, imposed by the Arbitration Committee remain available for serious problems and I would be fully prepared to impose them where warranted.

Question from Ali'i

You have done a lot of good work as a clerk, and are well-known around arbitration cases. Do you think you are the favorite for a spot? If not, whose odds do you think are better? No "political" answers please. :-) Mahalo. --Ali'i 15:04, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Thanks for the kind words. I would like to think my candicacy is receiving serious consideration, but that is for the community to decide. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to comment here on the other candidates, for reasons that I hope you'll understand.

Questions from David Shankbone

The Arbitration between THF and myself was very tense, and I generally think you conducted yourself well; however, there are three issues that concern me as it relates to your own Arbitration bid:

1. One of your comments in that Arbitration was "Given that THF is widely understood to be a well-known attorney and policy analyst in real life, and the fact that his real-life identity is widely known (and is gratuitiously mentioned in this decision, as I pointed out higher on this page), a formal conclusion by the Arbitration Committee that THF violated Wikipedia conflict-of-interest policies bears the potential to be thrown in this former editor's face and used against him in real-world contexts." The question: If a well-known person is problematically editing Wikipedia, why should we take into account his "real-life identity" (that they had made known) when formulating a response to that problematic editing? Do you think that the well-known off-wiki should have special considerations in Arbitration than those who are not well-known?

   Answer: For those not in the know, the reference here is to discussion on Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/THF-DavidShankBone/Proposed decision (those interested will have to check the page history, as the page has been courtesy-blanked at the request of a party to the case, and should not be restored). The decisive factor in my making that particular comment was the fact that several days before I posted it, THF had announced that he was leaving Wikipedia as a result of the events culminating in the arbitration case, and except for edits relating directly to the arbitration itself, he had indeed stopped contributing. Coupled with this was my opinion that the proposed decision that was close to passing was thinly reasoned, harsh, and one-sided, and that a proposed remedy under which THF would have been "banned from all politically-charged topics" was overbroad and unreasonable. (For those familiar with the case, my view was that THF made repeated good-faith efforts to comply with our COI policies and that his editing was more usefully viewed in terms of occasional violations of NPOV rather than as a traditional COI issue.) These were among the factors that led me to suggest that the committee consider dismissing the case even though it was already well into the voting stage, a practice I ordinarily would oppose, in this unusual and difficult case.

2. THF took umbrage with the idea that there was an arbitration case against him, and in his stead User:Cool Hand Luke argued on his behalf. After the case was dismissed, Cool Hand Luke edited THF's Wikipedia biography and removed THF's criticism of Wikipedia that he mentioned in CBS news. Further, THF made a statement that he wanted a ruling, "because I need a last paragraph in the article I'm writing on the appalling bias of Wikipedia." He also stated that "Jimbo should be notified if the ruling is actually "Right-wingers are barred" since that could cost Wikimedia its tax exemption." Do you think it was appropriate for Cool Hand Luke to edit THF's Wikipedia biography in light of all this? Do you think it was appropriate for him to remove the criticism of Wikipedia information? When I restored the Wikipedia criticism, you gave me a warning not to edit THF's biography, but you gave none to CHL. Your reasoning was "Given the serious disputes involving this individual that you have been involved with on-wiki, culminating in a bitter series of noticeboard reports and an arbitration case, it would be best if you refrained from editing the mainspace article on [THF]." You gave no similar warning to CHL, yet he was just as involved and in fact filled in for THF (even presenting his evidence, and answering people's responses to that evidence). In addition to the previous questions: why would you not see that as a double-standard that you gave me a warning to not restore pertinent information, but not CHL a warning when he was removing content from THF's biography?

   Answer: The answer to this question, or perhaps I should say set of questions, picks up from the previous one. Although I suggested that the arbitrators dismiss the THF-DavidShankBone case largely out of concerns for fairness to THF, THF soon made an edit expressing extreme dissatisfaction with such a result. THF's edit also contained other comments that would have been better left unsaid. Fortunately, THF himself realized this, and undid the edit you cite literally 15 minutes afterwards. I see no useful purpose that is served by your drawing attention to it now, several weeks later. I also believe that my request that you no longer edit the mainspace article on THF was fully warranted. It is indisputable that you had a series of bitter on-wiki disputes with THF, which after weeks of disruption culminated in the arbitration case and in THF's leaving the project. That you should not be making controversial edits to the mainspace BLP article on that same individual seemed to me, at the time as it does today, self-evident. Several other administrators who have commented on your edits to THF's article, and more recently on your inserting references to THF into other articles, have come to the same conclusion. Cool Hand Luke's editing of THF's biography, while not an optimal situation, did not strike me as rising to the same level of concern. However, when you advised me that you thought I was being unfair or one-sided in my view of the situation, as you are aware, I stepped back from further comments on the matter and you were free to seek input from any other administrator. I repeated that I had disengaged from controversies involving you as recently as yesterday, when someone brought an issue to my talkpage. I still believe that for a time you were excessively focused on editing with respect to THF and adding references to him to other articles. I am pleased to note that on your talkpage, you have recently indicated that you are prepared to step away from further edits involving this individual and focus on other matters.

3. Lastly, in the above diffs, you state things such as "I would especially appreciate your no longer mentioning the arbitration case in mainspace edit summaries, as the way you have been doing this is really not appropriate," yet you never give any reasoning, and I asked you for some. Do you think it is wise to state that things are inappropriate without giving any explanation as to why they would be inappropriate? That could be a problem for an Arbitrator, since Users need to understand reasoning and not just accept judgments.

   Answer: In a biography of a well-known attorney for a controversial organization, who has been involved in many significant litigations and as a commentator for several years on matters of general public concern, there is a good deal of relevant information to be discussed. By contrast, we should not be gratuitously referring either in the text or in edit summaries to the fact that the same individual edited Wikipedia for a time and became embroiled in an arbitration case. It seems especially clear that such a reference should not be inserted by the editor who was the subject's principal adversary in the arbitration. Such a reference clearly has nothing to do with any notable activities of the subject that qualify him for an article. (I spend a fair amount of time on Wikipedia arbitration activities as a clerk and I hope I am elected to the committee, but I don't flatter myself that these activities have attained a real-world level of importance.) The comment served no purpose in the context where it was placed except, there as in your questions on this page, to draw completely unnecessary attention to the unfortunate edit that THF made but then undid within 15 minutes. Lastly, with regard to your final comment, I will say simply that after a year and a half of being told that my posts are often far too verbose (and I fear that my answers to these candidate questions are examples), I believe this is the very first time I have been called to task on Wikipedia for not sufficiently explaining my opinion and reasoning regarding any matter.

Questions from DHeyward

1. With your past and future position, it appears that your patience, sense of logic and tests of reason are likely to be challenged by inane and tendentious editors. Do you think it's inappropriate to maintain your sanity by using the banhammer without an appropriate and longwinded reasoning statement?

   Answer: With possible, very limited exceptions where a case involves privacy concerns or the like, every ArbCom decision should make clear the reasons for the findings reached and remedies imposed, for the benefit both of the parties and of other interested editors. In some simpler cases, a sentence or two of explanation or a link to an evidence presentation may be sufficient for this purpose, while in others, a more detailed statement of the arbitrators' reasoning may be appropriate.

Points of View: When does including "notable" points of view become problematic for NPOV?

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 18:29, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: This is a matter of editorial discretion for the users contributing to each article. Where there are divergent political or other points of view on an issue, NPOV calls for appropriately reflecting in the article all of the views enjoying a reasonable degree of support. This may sometimes involve quoting influential proponents of the various points of view, but for the purpose of setting forth what the view is and who advocates it, not whether the view is "correct" or not. If there is a trend as you describe of people going around inserting quotations purely for advocacy purposes then that should be discouraged.

I think more the question is: when does it start to become a problem, even if all "sides" of a debate are accurately reflected. As an encyclopedia, or in an effort to be one, should we be putting in spin from the political spectrum as opposed to giving the facts surrounding circumstances without the spin? I don't have an answer, I'm simply curious about the Arb nominee's thoughts on this. --David Shankbone 18:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: If an article is fairly presented from a neutral point of view, then what quotations it contains is, as I noted above, a matter of editorial discretion. Personally, if quotations are to be used, I would prefer to see ones that make a substantive contribution to the information content rather that the visual equivalent of "sound bites." The effect of too many quotations on overall article length might also become relevant on occasion. These are content issues to be worked out by editors and hopefully will not raise conduct issues that have to come before the Arbitration Committee.

Question from xDanielx

What is your opinion on the difference between private (i.e., general agreement in arbcom elist discussions) and public (i.e., WP:RFAR) ArbCom decisions? Should both be regarded as equally authoritative? Does the ArbCom have an obligation to make the former publicly accessible upon reasonable request (assuming no privacy issues are involved)?

Decisions should be made in public unless there is a specific reason for conducting the discussion elsewhere. Recognized reasons include decisions that may raise sensitive privacy or legal issues, as well as certain appeals from banned or indefinitely-blocked users who are not permitted to post on-wiki (but in cases where the appeal has potential merit and the appeal process has not been abused, a limited unblock to allow the editor to edit the arbitration pages may be a better recourse). Even where a discussion must occur off-wiki, it will sometimes be possible to publish a brief statement of the arbitrators' reasons for taking a certain action, as opposed to the bare result.

Both types of Arbitration Committee actions (those following full-fledged cases or on-wiki discussion and those based upon off-wiki discussion) are equally binding with respect to the specific editor or issue involved. However, in terms of providing guidance for the future, a decision based upon full on-wiki consideration will generally be more helpful to the community, and therefore more influential as a practical matter, because editors will be able to understand not just what action was taken, but the underlying reasons upon which the action was based. This is of assistance to an editor or administrator who is trying to decide, for example, whether the facts of a current situation are sufficiently similar to those of a prior situation for the prior ruling to apply. Compare U.S. Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and accompanying advisory committee notes.

Question from Avruch

First, I'd like to point out that you snuck in a little legal citation above. Sneaky.

What is your opinion on the utility of the ArbCom workshop pages? Raul654 has stated that they are a forum for trolls and disruptive editors created by Fred Bauder because Fred finds them useful. I'm not asking you to criticise either Arbitrator, just for your general opinion on if they are useful and if they should indeed be used.

Also, thank you for standing for election to ArbCom. I think we all appreciate your intellect and temperament, and I can comfortably predict that the community will reward you with the appropriate volume of work to do. Avruch^Talk 22:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. I find the Workshops useful in many cases as a vehicle for editors to make proposals, with brief explanation of the reasons for them. This can include both parties and non-parties; I've proposed language in a few cases that arbitrators have picked up on in final decisions, and several other editors as well. At other times, editors or an arbitrator explain why a particular proposal should not be adopted, and this is useful communication as well. Equally important, the workshop can be used as a location for arbitrators to post a draft decision and obtain comments from parties or other editors, resulting in the final decision's reflecting such input and presumbly benefitting from it. Therefore, if elected, I would read the workshop in all the cases and frequently comment or post proposals. While there are certainly cases in which obstreporous parties or the sheer volume of commentary have made the workshop close to useless, these remain the exception and not the rule. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Question from AniMate

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 12:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I've talked about this some above, in response to Jd2718's question. Some pages that I've created include Arthur Yager, Peter J. Hamilton, Bureau of Insular Affairs, Office of Territorial Affairs, Richard J. Daronco, Martin Manton, Samuel Mandelbaum, Charles Edward Clark, John F. Davis, Robert Inch, Henry Werker, Robert S. Vance, and some pages that I think I've edited or expanded usefully include Jones-Shafroth Act, recusal, United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, Irving Younger, and Samuel Leibowitz. Much more, I hope, to come.

Question from Rgfolsom

Hello Brad, Best wishes to you in the election. I have a few questions about conflict of interest.

1. The COI guideline says:

• "Editors proposing to write about themselves, their own organizations, or matters they have very close ties to, are strongly advised not to edit or create such articles at all..."

The Arbitration Committee has said:

• "Knowledgeable users...are welcome to edit on Wikipedia, provided they cite reliable sources for their contributions and respect Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not...[etc.]"

The Arbitration Committee also said this:

• “A significant portion of the experts in most fields are engaged in some business venture related to the field. It is desirable that such experts participate in Wikipedia, but important that both they and others appropriately deal with conflict of interest issues.”

Do you believe that the COI guideline and the Arbitration Committee's language in the quotes are compatible?

Answer: They are obviously in tension with one another and there is a balance to be drawn. The closer the subject-matter of the article to the personal interests of the editor, the more problematic the conflict-of-interest issues might become. For example, if an editor were a well-known executive in the newspaper industry, he might have a completely disabling conflict with regard to editing an article about himself or herself (though he should still feel free to comment on the talkpage), serious issues about writing about current issues concerning the article on his or her own newspaper, but little or no COI concern in an article concerning the history of newspaper publishing. It should often be possible to retain the interest and effort of an expert editor while steering him or her away from the specific article(s) that it would be most problematic for that person to edit.

2. If a person edits an article that is closely tied to their employment/professional status, is that status alone prima facie “presence of evidence to the contrary” of the person’s good faith?

Answer: Without more, I would say no. However, the wording of your question is a little bit confusing. You are obviously quoting from discussion of a specific dispute, and I am not recognizing the source of the quotation, so I can't comment on whether "status alone" was indeed the source of the actual or perceived COI in that case.

3. True or false: An editor who violates the COI guideline can do so only by simultaneously violating one or more of Wikipedia's core policies, such as NPOV, OR, NOT, etc.

• If True, then isn’t the COI guideline redundant?
• If False, how can experts and knowledgeable editors be welcome on Wikipedia?

Answer: I think there is a fallacy here of believing that edits can be rigidly pigeonholed as violating our conflict of interest policy or not, whereas in reality that policy needs continued development and unsettled issues will continue to exist. There may be blatant conflicts of interest (e.g., urging that one's own company is the best provider of a given product or service in existence) where the conflict of interest, without more, makes the edit problematic. In more borderline cases (compare my answer to your question 1 above), an edit might be acceptable as long as all other policies were followed.

Question from HiDrNick

Recently in a discussion about some late-breaking wikidrama, you said "In lieu of my filing a formal request for arbitration, I urge that one or more arbitrators review this situation immediately. Based on the information available to me there is insufficient evidence to support any block." ([1]) Do you think it's appropriate for arbiters to make this kind of determination with their arbitration committee hats on, either acting alone or in concert with each other, outside of the context of a formal request for arbitration? Is it ever appropriate to say "speedily unblocked by order of the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee" without the benefit of a public, transparent RFArb?

Cheers, ➪HiDrNick! 04:28, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: In the ordinary course of events, an individual arbitrator has no authority apart from the committee as a whole, except to the same extent as any other editor or administrator (or other special function the arbitrator might hold such as checkuser). However, the situation you are alluding to, which as I am sure you know is now the subject of a pending case (see, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman) involved extraordinary circumstances. In this situation, an administrator announced that she had blocked a well-regarded good-faith user, whose history reflected no bad edits of any kind and no warnings of any nature, and then announced the block on ANI with the declaration that the evidence supporting it could not be discussed on-wiki and that any appeal must be routed directly to the Arbitration Committee.

After I posted to ANI urging that some evidence be presented in support of the block, the blocking administrator e-mailed me the evidence that she had relied upon in concluding that the blocked editor was a sockpuppet of a banned user. I reviewed the evidence and, while it did appear that it showed that this was not the user's first Wikipedia account, I found that it contained no convincing evidence that the editor was a reincarnation of a banned user or that an infraction of any kind had been committed. In fact, the evidence was so unconvincing that I was certain that I was missing some piece of the puzzle. A complicating factor was that, in casual conversation some weeks earlier, another user had speculated on what this user's former identity might be, and I had thought about it for a few moments and decided that this speculation was probably correct—although it did not matter, except as a piece of good news that a well-regarded former editor and administrator had not really been lost to the project, because there was no evidence of misbehavior of any kind.

I responded to the blocking admin's e-mail with a statement that this block appeared to be a serious misfire and that I had reason to believe that the user in question was a former administrator who had retired that account in good standing. Because I was only (say) 85% certain of who user formerly was, not 100%, and because I did not have this individual's consent to link the two accounts, I did not include his name in my e-mail (a judgment that someone has questioned in an e-mail to me, but which I think was right at the time; I regret only that I was unable to get onto IRC at that moment, which might have expedited matters). Nonetheless, as objections to the block continued to be posted on ANI and as no further evidence supporting the block came to light, I was left with the definite and firm impression that a good-faith but very serious mistake had been made that needed to be rectified as soon as possible.

I had no information at that time that the block would soon be reversed. Under the circumstances, it seemed logical to me that "one or more arbitrators" review the block as soon as possible, because I believed that the blocking administrator might accept advice to reverse the block from an arbitrator that she was not accepting from other administrators and users. As a formal matter, an arbitrator participating in such a review might have been acting qua administrator rather than qua arbitrator in considering the matter. On the other hand, an arbitrator reviewing the matter would also have had the ability to bring the matter before the full committee for plenary consideration, either on the mailing list or in the context of a case, if he or she found it desirable. And an arbitrator would also have quick access to a checkuser if that were determined to be necessary in the course of reviewing this block (although I hoped it would not).

Most important, the blocking administrator had indicated that any review of the block would have to be handled through arbitration only. This implied that she would not recognize a consensus in favor of unblocking, even if one emerged on ANI, because many of the participants in the discussion would not have seen the evidence on which she relied. For that matter, many participants on ANI could not even have ventured a meaningful opinion on the block (beyond the fact that it seemed odd) because they lacked access to the evidence. In other words, in this case, an implication of your question might be that (if the blocking admin had not reversed the block) there was no available mechanism for this block to be reviewed and if necessary reversed without a formal arbitration case, which might take a week or more to file and move through the acceptance, evidence, and voting stages. Under the circumstances, I continue to believe that my suggestion that one or more arbitrators review the complete record before the block was the most sensible thing to be suggested under those circumstances; although fortunately such review was not ultimately necessary because the block was soon reversed by the blocking administrator herself. I hope that this is responsive to your question.

Question from Cla68

So that it won't look like I'm targeting anyone in particular, I'm asking this question of all the candidates. Were you a recipient on the email list used by Durova to distribute her evidence used to wrongfully block !! as detailed in this ArbCom case? Cla68 (talk) 00:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: No, I was not. (Addendum to clarify something that appears to have confused someone commenting on an external site: I did receive a copy of the "evidence" e-mail from Durova shortly after the block of User:!! was announced and I posted to WP:ANI asking for some explanation of the block.)

Questions from Rschen7754

1. What are your views regarding debates such as WP:RFAR/HWY and WP:SRNC? (In terms of dispute resolution).

   Answer: The protracted dispute over naming conventions for United States highways and roads, culminating in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways largely predates my tenure on Wikipedia and certainly predates the time period during which I have been watching arbitration cases. I don't think it's worth my investing the hours that would probably be necessary for me to understand this dispute thoroughly, so I will confine myself to saying that it is always unfortunate when, in that case as in the more recent Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming conventions, editors are unable to use normal community methods to reach consensus on a naming convention and user conduct reaches the point where an arbitration case becomes necessary.

2. a) What is the purpose of a WikiProject? Do you believe that WikiProjects b) own articles or c) can enforce standards (such as article layout) on articles?

   Answer: (a) The purpose of a WikiProject is to promote collaborative editing on articles of mutual interest to the members of the project, and to bring attention to opportunities to improve content such as by noting articles that should but do not yet exist. (b) The verb "own" in Wikipedia-speak is a harsh negative, so of course neither a WikiProject nor any of its members may "own" an article, but I would want to know a little more about what conduct is being described as exerting "ownership" before this answer were quoted in the context of a specific dispute. (c) Agreed-upon standards across articles on a common topic (say, all the Presidents of the United States or all the Amtrak railroad stations), particularly as to form, can be a good thing where they are arrived at by consensus, but "enforcement" must mean by consensus of the affected editors and not by brute force or decree.

3. Do you believe that parent WikiProjects have the right to impose standards (such as article layout) on child WikiProjects? (Case in point: WP:USRD and its state highway projects.)

   Answer: In general, no group of editors may "impose" standards on another. Thus, the answer to this question could depend on the nature of the relationship between the two projects and, most important, the views of the editors actively engaged with the articles whose standards or layout were in dispute. Beyond that, I would prefer not to comment in detail on what the question suggests may be a past or ongoing content dispute that I have not studied.

4. a) What is your definition of canvassing? b) Does it include project newsletters or IRC?

   Answer: (a) Canvassing is defined as reaching out to editors (or worse yet, outside the Wikipedia community) to artificially affect the result of a consensus-gathering mechanism (whether an RfA, XfD, editorial poll, or otherwise) by drawing in editors who might otherwise not have known of the controversy. In my personal opinion, our anti-canvassing policy at WP:CANVASS is sometimes overapplied in a way that would stop editors from bringing important discussions to the attention of editors who would be most interested in participating in the discussion or most affected by its outcome, particularly where the discussion is taking place on a relatively obscure page that a typical content-creating editor might not watchlist or think to check on. As years of debate on the language of WP:CANVASS demonstrate, whether a given notification or series of notifications represents problematic canvassing can be a matter of interpretation or degree. (b) It might or it might not; more facts are needed. In general, a project newsletter strikes me as a perfectly appropriate way to notify editors of the existence of an issue relevant to the project on which community input is being sought, without unfairly slanting the outcome one way or the other (although I can imagine that exceptions might exist). IRC canvassing might be more problematic, but the whole essence of that form of communication is free real-time flow of information so it is difficult to control; I find IRC canvassing to be most problematic in the context of RfAs or other discussions of editors, and particularly if there were an instance (I haven't seen it personally) where those in a channel were urged to vote against a candidate for reasons unrelated to the merits of the candidate.

5. a) In terms of vandalism and good faith but horrible edits, where do you draw the line? (scenario: an editor makes a mess of articles that cannot easily be fixed). b) Should blocks, protects, and / or rollbacks be in order?

   Answer: (a) Vandalism is defined as an edit or action taken with the intent to damage the encyclopedia. Where an edit is in good faith even if misguided (or "horrible"), the term vandalism is not applicable and in any event never helps the situation. An editor making this type of edit should be given an explanation of why his or her edits are unhelpful and how he or she might be more productive. If the editor persists after that, input from additional editors might be helpful, or in extreme cases dispute resolution such as mediation may help. (b) Use of the newly enabled "undo" feature or even the administrator rollback button may be necessary when an editor is mass-producing a series of good-faith but unhelpful edits, but only when manually reverted the edits with an explanatory edit summary would be too time-consuming or inefficient. If this is done, a note should be left on the user's talkpage explaining what was done and the reason for it, so the user will not wrongly infer that he was being considered a vandal. Page protection can be used in these situations if the problematic edits result in an edit-war. Blocking for good-faith but misguided edits would be truly a last resort, but there are some limits; Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Stefanomencarelli, decided earlier this month, will probably become the canonical example.

Question from Risker

There is currently a proposal at the Village Pump (Policy) that policies be protected from free editing[2]. 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)

In general, I dislike the idea of having any page on a wiki that is considered so final that it cannot be edited and improved. For the most part, having the policy pages freely editable has worked well for us; I have not seem unilateral, radical changes being made on most policy pages. However, there have also been some well-known exceptions, and where that sort of thing does become a problem, I would have no objection to full-protecting a particular policy page or group of pages by consensus where unilateral changes to that particular policy were becoming problematic. In such a case, there would no edits to that policy without first achieving consensus on the talkpage, which I believe is the intent of the proposal you link to.

Making ArbCom less complicated (by Sebastian)

In a mail about a year ago, you agreed with me that ArbCom is very complicated for non-professionals, and I seem to remember some indication that you were willing to change that. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't see that in your statement. Is that still a concern of yours? (Related questions: #Questions from Animum; #Question from I, in which you mention time, but that's not the same thing.) — Sebastian 18:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Question from AGK

You touched on your experience as a Arbitration Clerk during your response to east718's questions, but I'd be interested in your answer in a more elaborated form, so here goes. You have served as a Clerk of the Arbitration Committee for over a year now, and are one of only four active Clerks in that area. You are also an Administrator of over a year. One could also say you are a trusted user on this Project.

1. At the danger of asking an obvious question here, what technical skills do you believe you have acquired as a Clerk, and how do you see them transferring into your duties as an Arbitrator, should you be elected?

2. Delving a little deeper here, what non-technical aspects of your Clerk work do you believe would benefit you, should you be elected as an Arbitrator? Similarly, what skills do you believe you have acquired in your duties as an Administrator, that would transfer to your duties as an Arbitrator?

3. Arbitrators are often assigned the oversight permission, and less regularly the CheckUser right. Do you see yourself taking on-board these extra duties? Do you believe they would affect your time as an Arbitrator? What benefits do you see of these permissions, with regards to your duties as an Arbitrator, should you be elected?

Thank you for your time. I apologise if any repetition has been made from any other questions from the Community - if this has occurred, feel free to point out my stupidity and send me to the correct section :) Anthøny 18:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)