Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019/Candidates/Newyorkbrad/Questions

Individual questions

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Question from Lingzhi2

2. Let's assume, and quite reasonably so, that there are some policies and guidelines that WP:IAR could never trump under any circumstances. WP:BLP immediately comes to mind, as well as other situations with real-world consequences, such as harassment etc. What policies or guidelines might WP:IAR trump? Specifically, for example, could it trump WP:CONSENSUS? How would you deal with a situation in which you felt the consensus was meaningfully wrong?

Question from Gerda

2. I commented in the Fram case, decision talk, like this. If you had been an arb then, what might you have replied, and which of the remedies under 2 would you have supported?

   As a community member, I tried to help resolve the Fram situation by contributing to the initial discussion with the Foundation here and by submitting workshop proposals in the later arbitration case here. My approach to the matter as an arbitrator would probably have been along the same lines as these two sets of proposals, subject to any additional insights I might have gained from the non-public information that was provided to the Committee.

4. Would you perhaps have responded to the section a bit later, LouisAlain?

   I don't think it would be very nice to LouisAlain to get into a discussion here about his editing from a year ago. However, one of my proposed principles in the workshop I mentioned above, which was adopted by the arbitrators in the final decision, is this one. It emphasizes that an administrator who sees ongoing problems with a good-faith editor's contributions may wish to bring others into the process of addressing the problem, rather than deal with it all himself or herself. As long as other admins and experienced editors are willing to pitch in and help, this can have multiple benefits, including verifying whether the admin's opinion of the editing is shared by others, and showing the editor having trouble that more than one person perceives a problem. If this practice had been followed here, the result might have been better for everyone.

6. We are not here discussing LA's contribs, but his name came up on meta, as an area of complaints against Fram's interactions with him, - complaints that I - and not only I - found not supported by evidence. Just explaining. (To everyone reading: there is a corner where problematic articles are listed, in the hope that merciful souls can help, - and many were rescued already, and hundreds were not problematic at all. A few were problematic only because the Wikipedias from which they were translated have different referencing systems, different from the inline citations required here.) - Finally: can you imagine to have supported remedy 2a.

   For readers' convenience, remedy 2a read The Committee decides that the removal of Fram's sysop userright was not needed, and therefore returns it to him. My workshop proposal on this subject was The removal of Fram's adminship is not sufficiently supported by the evidence posted on-wiki on August 19, 2019. Thus, if the evidence presented publicly in the arbitration case as of that date is all the important evidence there was, I would have supported remedy 2a or the equivalent. (Also, please note the comments I made on the talkpage at the time, here.) The actual final decision suggests that some of the arbitrators found other bases for concern about Fram's conduct as an administrator. I was not persuaded at the time that there was cause for desysopping, but I did and do give the arbs who voted to desysop credit for standing by their strongly held views about the evidence, at a time when the far easier path for them would have been to accept much of the community's desire for a more complete push-back against the WMF's action.

   Thank you, works for me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Questions from Newslinger

2. When, if ever, would discretionary sanctions be an appropriate countermeasure against paid editing?

   Discretionary sanctions are available only when they are authorized for a specific topic-area, either in an arbitration decision or a community discussion. Thus far, there has been no ArbCom or community decision to authorize discretionary sanctions to address the general issue of undisclosed or biased paid editing. However, discretionary sanctions still might apply in a situation where improper paid editing is affecting an article or topic-area that is already subject to discretionary sanctions. Significantly, that would include all biographies of living persons, where improper paid editing is leading to violations of the BLP policy. If the question is whether discretionary sanctions should be authorized against paid editing, I might consider voting for that in an appropriate case, but I'd want to see evidence that they would helpfully enhance the enforcement methods we already have.

4. To what extent, if any, should the Arbitration Committee endorse the adoption of two-factor authentication on Wikipedia?

   The Arbitration Committee should continue to strongly "endorse" and encourage the use of good online security practices, of which 2FA is one example, by editors and especially by administrators and advanced permission-holders. I don't believe the Committee is in a position to require the use of 2FA, however.

Question from Nosebagbear

2. Once the new ARBCOM is in we'll be seeing an "RfC [with] focus on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future.". Personally, what particular questions/aspects would you want to see discussed? Along with that, many candidates note a balance to be drawn, but where would you actually draw a line if given the choice?

   There are basically four possible mechanisms for addressing allegations of harassment: on-wiki by the community (such as in an ANI thread), on-wiki by ArbCom, off-wiki (in whole or part) by ArbCom, or the WMF Office a/k/a T&S. One group of questions is what circumstances justify using one or another of these methods, and who decides. A second group of questions might resolve around whether there is any better way than we have developed thus far to distinguish following an editor's contributions because they are legitimately problematic, versus following an editor's contributions to annoy or torment that editor—when is the former justified, and what do we do if the follower believes he or she has a good-faith reason for the following, but the followed doesn't experience it the same way? A third group of questions would identify best practices for dealing with harassment allegations founded in part upon off-site evidence, especially where the off-site evidence suddenly becomes relevant to an important on-site discussion (as happened last week in an ANI thread that reminded me of the Qworty fiasco). Let me add that while this RfC will be important and I'll encourage wide participation in it, there are limits to how much can be achieved in this generic type of discussion. The harassment and alleged harassment situations I've seen have spanned a wide variety of scenarios, not all of which can be anticipated in advance, and there can be no rule-based substitute for discretion, empathy, and good judgment in dealing with any of them.

Question from Peacemaker67

2. What do you think about the decision to accept Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/German war effort? In particular, considering the lack of prior dispute resolution attempts or attempt to use ANI to deal with the behavioural issues. Why or why not?

Question from SQL

2. Which recent unblock discussion (anywhere, AN/ANI/CAT:RFU/UTRS/etc) are you most proud of your contribution to, and why?

Questions from Carrite

2. What's the biggest problem with Arbcom? Is it fixable or inherent?

4. How the hell do you know so much about British politics?

Question from WereSpielChequers

2. Are there any circumstances where you would think it acceptable to give an editor a fixed term block without telling them why or what you expect them to desist from when they return? (Yes, this is a Fram related question).

Questions from Collect

2. Ought Arbitrators who have been personally involved in any way concerning the facts of a case recuse themselves from any related cases?

4. Ought the persons named in a case be given sufficient time to answer charges made by others, rather than have each be given the same time limits?

6. When an arbitrator proffers specific evidence on their own, ought the accused be permitted to actually reply to such "new evidence" as though it were timely presented, with the same time allowed for such a response?