Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2023/Candidates/Wugapodes/Questions

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2. This year's committee has had trouble maintaining a healthy quorum of active arbitrators. What experience do you have, particularly on Wikipedia, with doing work you've agreed to do even when that becomes hard? Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

   So far in 2023 we've heard 5 cases; I've voted in all 5 and drafted 2 of them. In 2022 we heard 5 full cases (and two more disposed by motion); I voted in 3 of the 5 full cases and drafted 2. I can't find the stats easily, so you'll have to take my word on it, but we've also had a good record of meeting or beating deadlines for posting proposed decisions. Of course we do more than just public cases; my point is that I work hard to make myself available for committee business and one place that shows is my good case participation as a member and drafter.

   Part of why a 15(-ish) member committee is useful is because it allows us to wax and wane in our activity, but the issue we had been facing is that too many of us waned at the same time. This puts a strain on the remaining arbs, and often leads to the loss of voices or opinions that would be helpful in coming to a reasoned decision. This problem isn't lost on me, so I work hard to make myself available in "all-hands" situations even at my busiest. For example, a few months ago my father had a stroke (he's recovered) and I notified the Committee and clerks saying I'll remain nominally active, but outside CU/OS [appointments] and the PD [CorbieVreccan, Mark Ironie, and Tamzin when it still looked like we would have a case] (assuming it's done before I'm active again) don't wait on me for input. And I stuck to that even while traveling across the country to deal with a family health emergency: in the week following that email I provided (internally) input on the pending case, responded to questions regarding the CUOS process, and provided feedback on drafts. I didn't do much else, but I had committed to helping with the CUOS process and a case is a clear "all-hands" situation. With the little free time I had, I completing the work I had committed to in the moments I would otherwise be on BlueSky or Twitter.

   In meatspace, I'm a PhD candidate studying language variation and change, and if there's one thing that exemplifies "doing work you've agreed to do even when that becomes hard" it's research and writing! Very often I've had to pass up on social events because I needed to make a deadline. Just last week, a friend came over and while we were hanging out I was on my laptop writing intermittently because I was two days behind on getting a draft to my committee (but I had promised him we'd hang out). I do the same thing for my work on the Arbitration Committee too. I agreed to take on this work for the community, and sometimes that means skipping out on weekly bar nights because I spent all day writing a paper and won't have any other time to work on a proposed decision. Would I rather be out drinking with friends? Of course, but service work is rarely the easiest or most fun task on the to-do list. — Wug·a·po·des 02:25, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

4. Echoing a question someone asked to Maxim above, your recent RFB was opposed because people wanted to separate the powers of ArbCom members and the bureaucrats. What are your thoughts on this? QuicoleJR (talk) 02:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

   I think that's too simplistic a read of the consensus in that discussion. If you read my nomination statement in that RfB, I was proposing a rather unusual way in which I would approach the Bureaucrat position if granted, namely an expansion of the traditional role of crats in ensuring decorum at RfA. The discussion was in part whether the community wanted to grant tools knowing how I would use them. There were a number of editors who opposed simply on the grounds that they disagreed with my approach, and the other class of opposes---the "separation of powers" rationales---need to be understood in that context. It wasn't only that a promotion would mean an additional arb-crat, it was a statement on a specific arb-crat and vision for the crat position. Now of course there are some who do see a general problem with arb-crats, but a number of editors were more nuanced in how they saw the problem as the intersection of my proposal with the role of an arb-crat (Wizardman's rational was influential in this regard) not merely arb-crats generally. So I don't think it is accurate to generalize the statement that "people wanted to separate powers of ArbCom members and the bureaucrats" given the diversity of "separation of powers" comments and the context of my nomination. The community generally seems fine with arb-crats, and I don't think my RfB is a good example to the contrary. — Wug·a·po·des 06:26, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

6. Do you think ArbCom should be more transparent about the outcomes of private inquiries, especially regarding admins and functionaries? This question is motivated by the admin meatpuppetry situation in September, but it's up to you whether to discuss that situation in particular. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:27, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

   The committee is generally very transparent regarding the outcomes of private inquiries, especially as they relate to admins and functionaries. Because of our legal obligations under our NDAs, there are practical limits to how candid we can be. In the situation you reference, the initial private request we received was on a narrow question pursuant to language at SPI. The resolution of that request is what allowed you to discuss your broader issues in public, as you said in the relevant AN OP I thank ArbCom for prompting this on-wiki disclosure, as it now means that the community can discuss this pattern of misconduct in the open. Because of the privacy concerns at issue, sending out a news blast on ACN to be copied to some of the most visible pages on the project did not seem like the most prudent decision, but relevant parties were notified of the outcome so that they can (and did) handle the public matters openly. Generally I think we strike a good balance between concerns for privacy and the need for transparency so that the community can handle affairs on its own. — Wug·a·po·des 20:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

8. The majority of ArbCom's workload is in handling private matters, not public ones such as cases. Can you please elaborate on how you will handle the large volume of private work the Committee receives? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 17:53, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

   I would hope to mitigate much of the repetitive work as mentioned in my nomination statement. For the rest, I generally rely on teamwork. I don't need to take the lead on every initiative or request, and by spreading out who takes point it mitigates burn out. For example, when a CU check is needed, I'm rarely the one who does it, but if I seem to be the first to a ticket and have the time, I've taken it on. There are a number of email filters I use to organize and triage correspondence which helps manage the workload. I try to avoid sending multiple emails to the same thread unless something has materially changed; one thoughtful email saves everyone time compared to multiple off-the-cuff emails. — Wug·a·po·des 20:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

10. In the Holocaust in Poland case, you were one of the drafting Arbitrators. On one of the case pages, you wrote: Sadly I don't have so much liberty. No, I'm resigned to sitting here stoically, my eyes held open, forced to read the same arguments over and over again for two months, unflinching. Anything less and I get called insanely biased or told to watch my tone. I should watch A Clockwork Orange, describing what it was like to deal with one of the editors active in the case ([1]). Given that you felt that way, are you sure that it's in your best interest to seek two more years of that? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

    Well, I don't think it's fair to say that the Holocaust in Poland case is a representative example of the work arbitrators do, so saying I'm signing upfor two more years of that isn't accurate. Arbitration cases are stressful for everyone (in different ways), and that case particularly so. Given the issues at play we attempted a new structure for the evidence phase that turned out to be an extraordinary burden on arbitrator time and energy. The arbitrators alone compiled some 200kB of summary with a bibliography over 100 entries long and a quarter of which weren't even in English. Adequately investigating the claims meant we (I) had to go to my library to check out sources and use machine translation to get the gist of what these non-English sources were about. After weeks of that, seeing people say the same things over and over again, is frustrating to say the least.

    And I think that's understandable; I am also a human. It provides a lens into how I advocate for handling most issues that come before us. For example, an administrator at RFPP or a volunteer at UTRS may deal with the same kinds of inquiries day after day and provide the same responses day after day. Losing sight of the larger picture, they may drop their facade and be more candid than cordial. Assuming it's not something egregious, just a voicing of frustration, the response is for others to step in and help their colleague deal with the burnout. I was fortunate enough to have colleagues who recognized that and stepped up to help. At the end of that case I marked myself inactive for about 6 weeks, and I took a break confident that my colleagues could handle things in my absence.

    Any job looks bad at its worst, but a job is more than its worst moments. I'm willing to serve two more years because the bulk of the work is rewarding and even at its worst my colleagues are supportive which makes the whole job worthwhile. — Wug·a·po·des 20:46, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

12. In one case this year, ArbCom themselves served as the "filing party", accepting a case that had not immediately been brought to them. What are your thoughts on ArbCom taking actions via full cases when they don't have a request from the community to do so? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

    I think it's a useful tool but one that should be used rarely. It's not the first time, even in that topic area, that the Committee has opened a case that wasn't brought by the community. For example, the original Eastern-European mailing list case was opened by a motion of the Arbitration Committee without a formal request from the community. In the case you mention, an aspect in favor of a committee-initiated case was that we had received community concerns, but when directed to file publicly no one ever did. For example, you can see in the Committee's statement that private requests were received, told to be posted publicly, and then sent to T&S who deferred to the need for a public case. We could, of course, let the issue continue being an issue until the whole situation gets so bad that T&S did decide to go around us, or we could use our community-ratified jurisdiction to open the case ourselves. It's not a tool to be used often, but when a topic area is known to be a problem, we are receiving reports, T&S is receiving reports, but no one is willing to actually do the paperwork to have a case, then it is a tool worth considering. — Wug·a·po·des 21:45, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

14. Arbcom seems to limit itself to a very narrow range of responses to admins, with nothing in the gap between admonition and desysopping. What sort of things should it do when admonition isn't enough but a desysop is too much?ϢereSpielChequers 09:37, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

    In the last two years, I've slowly come to the conclusion that if an administrator is brought before the Committee and needs a formal restriction, then a desysop is probably appropriate. I'm not at the point where I can say that's always the case, but I am at the point where I am looking for an exception to the rule rather than evidence for the rule. It's a harsh conclusion, but I think it's a reflection of the Committee's place in the broader scheme of disciplinary procedures. If the community thought an administrator should have a topic ban but keep their tools...the community can just do that. And we have. I advocated quite stridently to impose a topic ban on an administrator in 2021 at ANI. By the time most of these issues reach the Committee, however, the community tends to have not found consensus for a topic ban or other remedy. At that point the issue seems to be one of trust with the tools, not any particular domain, and a topic ban (for example) can't fix that.

    Of course, this is in tension with the position I've advocated frequently: ArbCom should tend towards taking rather than rejecting admin cases. I'm still thinking through how to resolve the two, but partly I think it's an issue of how the community wants to handle administrator conduct. If the community wants to handle administrator misconduct with topic bans, then the community should not close AN(I) discussions early and instead work to build consensus on a restriction. If, on the other hand, the community wants to use desysop and RfA more frequently, then issues should be brought to the committee early. Frankly I don't think the committee is well placed to craft bespoke restrictions on administrators which the community then needs to monitor and respond to. If that level of oversight is desired, I think it's better handled at the community level rather than ArbCom, and it's why I would prefer other methods of dispute resolution be exhausted, even if that's not a requirement for me to accept an admin conduct case. — Wug·a·po·des 21:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

16. There has been tension between the volunteer community and the WMF in the past, and there may be more with the universal code of conduct now in force. Tension on the talkpage of the Elbonian civil war has spilled out into an acrimonious RFA for one of the protagonists, and the press have reported demonstrations about this article in the capital town of Elbonia and in several villages during the current visit of the US president to Elbonia. Cases being filed with Arbcom include: You should desysop the longstanding admin who briefly fully protected the talkpage for the Elbonian civil war, we have already desysopped him on the Elbonian Wikipedia for senility; Your new admin is too young to write about rape in the Elbonian civil war and should stay away from such topics until she is at least a teenager; Many of the voters in that RFA only otherwise vote "Keep" or "delete" in various Elbonian related deletion discussions, they may be admins on the Elbonian Wikipedia but several lack sufficient English to participate here, especially when they write entries on talkpages that consists of nothing more than rows of squares. Which bits of the Universal Code of Conduct have been breached by this kerfuffle and what if anything should Arbcom do about it? ϢereSpielChequers 09:39, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

    This is an interesting hypothetical, but like most hypotheticals it's a little too impoverished for me to speak definitively. I'll give some impressions, and if you want to give more details in a follow-up I can clarify further.

    • You should desysop the longstanding admin who briefly fully protected the talkpage for the Elbonian civil war Odds are low that I'd support this. While we avoid protecting talk pages whenever possible, sometimes it's the only tool for the job. These protections should be brief and only as strong as necessary to prevent the disruption. That it was brief is a good sign, but the full protection is concerning. It would depend on who was disrupting the talk page and to what degree; if there were a lot of extended-confirmed socks or meatpuppets then it might be reasonable. Even if it were too strong, I'd probably lean towards a trouting absent aggravating circumstances like being INVOLVED in the dispute.
    • we have already desysopped him on the Elbonian Wikipedia for senility Not compelling and probably a UCOC issue. The Elbonian Wikipedia sets its own policies, and we set ours. While we can look to sister projects for guidance, the decision to desysop is based on our policies and as long as the sysop is following our policies I see no reason to yank the tools. More cynically, and again based on what I've seen with political struggles on other projects, I would be worried that there are local political motivations for the desysop on the Elbonian Wikipedia. On other projects where the local community has offline political and ethnic conflict, we've seen crats and sysops attempt to centralize power for their political cause in order to manipulate content shown to readers from their culture. One method for achieving this is the ouster of sysops sympathetic to a particular cause, often for manufactured reasons. (to answer your question directly, see UCOC 3.2) I worry this might be what's going on, but being a hypothetical I would need more evidence before I committed to that analysis or reported up to the meta community. The charge of "senility" is also worrying. Locally, I'd say that's a personal attack, and regarding the UCOC it would probably fall under discrimination based on age or disability (UCOC 3.1).
    • Your new admin is too young to write about rape in the Elbonian civil war and should stay away from such topics until she is at least a teenager My first inclination would be to suppress this. It implies that the editor is under 13 which is squarely in the realm of child protection where suppression is a tool of first resort. I'd then start a discussion with the other oversighters and arbitrators on how to proceed. Odds are low that---if the age claim were true---it would be public knowledge. We are generally good at suppressing information relating to the age of minors for reasons and someone under 13 would almost certainly fall into that camp, which makes me think this is probably some form of outing, and probably harassment. As a practical matter though, I sincerely doubt that someone under 13 would pass an RfA in the current climate (this is a good thing). The maturity necessary is substantial even for young adults, and given that it takes 1 to 2 years minimum to prep for an RfA, the editor would have had to have started editing as a third grader at the latest for this timeline to make sense. It's getting very messy very fast, but some options are (1) the admin is a preternatural pre-teen being outed by compatriots (2) the admin is an adult pretending to be a child (3) the accusers are lying to make it seem like 1 or 2 is the case. 2 would probably lead to a ban of some kind for the admin, 1 and 3 would probably lead to sanctions against the accusers, and I'm not sure how would work out for the kid, probably some kind of topic ban but it would be heavily fact dependent.
    • Many of the voters in that RFA only otherwise vote "Keep" or "delete" in various Elbonian related deletion discussions, they may be admins on the Elbonian Wikipedia but several lack sufficient English to participate here, especially when they write entries on talkpages that consists of nothing more than rows of squares. I'd probably want to have a chat with the crats, especially the closer if it was a unilateral close, and see if this information affects their read of the consensus. If removing those rationales results in a clear pass, then I don't think we need to do much beyond make the crats aware and let them handle it as they see fit. If removing those rationales puts it into the discretionary zone or clear fail, then we would be in a tough situation. This would be pretty fact dependent, but my inclination is to kick it back to the crats. ArbCom passes some motion with a FoF regarding those accounts, and instead of our usual "desysop, regain tools by RfA" we have some language like "desysoped, but tools may be regained if in light of our FoF a consensus of crats finds consensus to promote". Assuming the RfA was incredibly recent, desysop and running another RfA is a huge resource sink and probably not worthwhile. Giving the crats more info and telling them to reclose seems most efficient. If it had been a few months, or there were intervening issues, then it might make sense to just desysop with directions to RfA again. This would also be something I'd ask the crats about from the start since we'd be shouldering them with work.

    — Wug·a·po·des 22:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

18. I love to sing the music of Mozart and Pärt, Requiem and Da pacem Domine. What does the RfC about an infobox for Mozart tell you regarding WP:CT infoboxes, and can you offer ideas towards peace? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:24, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

    I've only skimmed the RfC, so if there's something I'm missing feel free to point it out. My sense though is that the RfC seemed collegial if spirited, and nothing stood out as over the line when I skimmed through the longer threads. From the outside, it looks like the Contentious Topic (CT) restrictions are effective in focusing debate away from negative conflict (e.g., incivility) and toward healthy debate of the merits. My sense, having read through a fair number of infobox RfCs, is that there are two camps that are relatively set in their opinions on infoboxes and when an RfC happens there tends to be an influx of editors who are more pragmatic in their decisions. The goal of the Arbitration Committee is to make sure that discussion between the more entrenched factions do not become so off-putting that we stop getting that influx of outside editors to RfCs. Other solutions need to be community-led efforts; the committee is not well placed to decide issues of style and content like infoboxes. I think a major issue is that the burgeoning consensus on when and how to use infoboxes isn't really getting updated. The opposition to infoboxes makes a number of good points---for example, on smaller articles infoboxes can encourage new contributors to expand the infobox rather than the article, or edit war over the content in infoboxes on contentious article---which are useful to weigh when deciding when and how to use an infobox. The division into camps for or against infoboxes means we lose out on interesting insights from all sides that stand to make our content better. But that's ultimately a community issue, and not something ArbCom can do. — Wug·a·po·des 06:24, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

20. Thanks for standing as a candidate for the ArbCom. You maybe be familiar with a recent Law and Social Inquiry article titled "Canceling Disputes: How Social Capital Affects the Arbitration of Disputes on Wikipedia" that was the subject of the current article on the Signpost. In addition, a previous paper from 2017 in International Sociology also examined similar trends from the ArbCom. In short, these papers argue about the existence of external factors influencing ArbCom decisions such as editor tenure, and raise concerns about canvasing among others. Are you concerned about the issues presented in the articles, or do you have any other concerns about the structure or operations of the ArbCom?

    Pre-emptive followup if you do have concerns: If selected as a member of the ArbCom, would you (and if so, how) use your term on the ArbCom to assuage any concerns that other editors may have in dealing with active cases before the committee? Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. — microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish•growths)} 16:55, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

    As a piece of scholarship, the Grisel (2023) paper is not particularly compelling. The author's quantitative data ends in 2020 for no apparent reason, and the author's use of qualitative data treats quotation as a theory-out-of-the-box. Their use of "social capital" is muddy at best, and reading through it the term seems (incorrectly) used as a stand-in for every form of capital Bourdieu wrote about in Forms of Capital except economic. This is confusing because they quote Bourdieu's (1986) definition of social capital: "resources [...] that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of [...] mutual acquaintance and recognition." The author has no measure of resources, no measure of acquaintance, no measure of recognition, no measure of social network; their quantitative measure is edit count, something orthogonal to the features of social capital they quoted. They try to remedy this by focusing on edits in Wikipedia and Wikipedia Talk namespaces, but these namespaces are not a coherent field; they house multiple fields that are to some degree independent. The author assumes that this measures participation on edits directly to policies or discussions of policies---"the 'Wikipedia' count concerns the number of edits made to these pages, while the 'Wikipedia Talk' count relates to the number of edits made in the 'talk section' of these pages (which concerns discussions surrounding these pages). As in many other societies, social prominence on Wikipedia is associated with active participation in debates concerning policy and governance."---but it ignores the existence of fields like FAC or DYK where prominence is related to editing and content, or technical contributors whose edit counts would largely be found in Module and Template namespaces. The entire quantitative section is incoherent at worst.

    The results of the qualitative section are, to be frank, so obvious that I don't see the value. A human society with factions and cliques? Members of these factions, when they get in trouble, defend each other and mobilize resources in that pursuit? People experienced in conflict are good at conflict? These are not groundbreaking observations. I would argue that in any society, if you piss off large groups of people, you face consequences. To try and make this finding more interesting, the author cites prior work (by a member of my dissertation committee) on conflict talk, but does not discuss the 40 years of scholarship on conflict talk since Eckert and Newmark (1980). Unlike those studies, the qualitative data in Grisel 2023 are largely taken at face value with no additional analysis or investigation. Person A says Person B lost their case because of social capital, Q.E.D., nevermind that what Person A describes as "social capital" is inconsistent with the definition of social capital the author provides, and nevermind the merits of the dispute. The author at no point makes any indication that they controlled for the major confounding factor in the outcomes of cases: the dispute itself.

    Compare this work to the other one you cited, Konieczny (2017), and you'll see the glaring difference in quality (strangely Grisel 2023 does not cite this paper). Konieczny motivated his selection of quantitative variables, mentioned cases not taken by the committee, described the research process, provided summary statistics, considered biases in data collection, performed quantitative hypothesis testing, and made conclusions strongly motivated by the constellation of results from these various metrics. As a result, the findings of Konieczny (2017) are compelling, and as a bonus tend to track with my personal experience 10 years after his data collection ceased. That said, I don't think the findings of the two point to the same phenomenon. Grisel attempts to study how decisions are reached and the features of disputants which make certain resolutions more or less likely. Konieczny studies the features of the committee itself and how those structured the distribution of labor and accumulation of influence within the committee. These are not entirely separate, but the outlooks are different. I'd be more concerned about the findings of Grisel (2023) if I actually found its methods or results to be valid. I think Konieczny's (2017) findings are more compelling but also less bleak than Grisel (which should maybe be a hint about which is a more realistic view). According to Konieczny's findings, the largest impacts on decision-making were activity levels and time constraints, with nationality and conflict avoidance being minor contributors at best. In general, the arbitrators doing the most work tend to have the most influence, and the arbitrators with the most time tend to hold relatively privileged positions off-wiki as well.

    A brief aside: this is a major strength of Konieczny over Grisel. Konieczny connects these issues to wider society. To indulge the social capital analysis for a second, the accumulation of social (and cultural) capital on Wikipedia is not divorced from the forms of capital one has in meat space. The accumulation of social (and cultural) capital on Wikipedia is made easier if the editor already has extensive capital (social, cultural, or economic) in other fields. Capital begets capital, and Konieczny's results tie in nicely to why we theorize social capital as a form of capital and not merely a kind of influence. If one has a job that pays a lot and gives a lot of free time (lots of economic capital and implying significant social and cultural capital in order to attain and maintain such a social position) then you naturally have more time to devote to the encyclopedia than someone who needs to work long hours for little pay (less economic capital and social or cultural capital may be orthogonal to acquiring or maintaining that social position). As a result, one can invest that external capital (free time) to acquire capital in this field, and the more capital one already has, the easier it is to acquire more in this field (i.e., on-wiki; c.f. capitalism). By comparison, Grisel treats social capital on Wikipedia as something that is divorced from the society Wikipedia is embedded in, and the analysis suffers because it fails to realize that Wikipedia is in the real world and forms of capital at play in wider society structure the ways in which capital is acquired on the site. Notice the difference, Konieczny's findings speak to social capital better than Grisel despite not even being framed around the topic; that's what it looks like when good data and good theorizing go together. New and interesting connections arise naturally and organically without having to be shoe-horned in. Suddenly we are able to understand how even economic capital (something that doesn't operate on Wikipedia) is able to influence behavior simply because Konieczny took the time to consider that people live lives off-wiki.

    That's not something the Committee can really fix directly because it implicates fixing social and economic inequalities which prevent economically and socially disadvantaged editors from contributing. The way we get at that is largely what I've been advocating: resolve disputes in a way that considers the burden we place on the time and resources of our editorial community and streamline the arbitration workflows so that participation is less costly for our members. By lowering the time-sink that is project governance, we reduce the reliance on external capital that Konieczny (2017) identified as a major hurdle to achieving the egalitarian and collegial structure we would like to foster. More broadly, it means investing in off-wiki communities by holding edit-a-thons and community education events to lower the barrier to these communities contributing. For example, the essay I use for training new editors focuses on minor edits that new contributors can make with limited time investment to try and balance the workload, and a number of these ideas have been incorporated into the Newcomer tasks feature of the Growth team tools. — Wug·a·po·des 22:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

22. What role does or should precedent play at ArbCom? voorts (talk/contributions) 18:47, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

    I think the role it plays currently is about right. We consider prior solutions to similar problems and adapt them for solving current problems. We do not have binding precedent because the challenges we face are new and evolving, so flexibility is important so that we can meet the needs of our time rather than the needs of the past. At the same time, most problems we face are not entirely unique, so understanding how our colleagues in the past (and even other deliberative bodies) came to solutions for a similar problem we face is persuasive when deciding among multiple courses of action. We strike a good balance between being agile and consistent by treating even our own decisions as persuasive rather than binding. — Wug·a·po·des 05:55, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

24. In your opinion, what is the single worst remedy or finding-of-fact that the Arbitration Committee has voted in support of during a case or motion that was resolved in 2022 or 2023? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 04:05, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    In hindsight, the Request for Comment remedy of Conduct in deletion-related editing is arguably one of the worst ideas I had and stands out as one of the Committee's biggest mistakes in the last two years. The problem to be solved was that there seemed to be a need for an RfC, but when the Committee has recommended The community hold an RfC it often doesn't happen. So the idea was that we would tap editors as moderators who would see the process through. In practice though it was one problem after another, and the whole initiative just fell apart up to the point that the Committee rightly washed our hands of it. I gave a post-mortem on the initiative back when we decided to shut it down if you're interested in a more detailed analysis. — Wug·a·po·des 06:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

26. In your opinion, what is the single most important thing that the Arbitration Committee has needed to improve upon throughout 2022 and 2023, and how will you improve upon it when you are elected to the committee? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 04:05, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    Ask different arbitrators and you'll get different answers, but I think the core issue is that the amount of work we have is not being met by the available person-hours. Why that is and what to do about it? That's probably where you'll start to get disagreements. Personally I find our workflow to be wildly inefficient and would argue it creates rather consistent harm. Kevin (L235) gave a talk on some of these issues at WikiConference North America a few weeks ago (see his slide deck). I didn't actually see it but he's told me about it and we've chatted about some of the issues so my perspective is influenced by the ideas I've heard him toss around. Anyway, before getting into ideas for solutions, I want to give a sense of just how annoying out workflow is (it's not the glamorous case decisions or bringing the hammer down on ne'er-do-wells, but it's closer to the reality of being an Arb than most of that stuff is anyway).

    Administrators have the unblock ticket request system, CheckUsers and Oversighters have their own ticketing cues, as does the volunteer response team; the arbitration committee has a tutorial on how to set up email filters written by another arb probably a decade ago. Those groups, who you would think would make good arbitrators, have been trained on infrastructure and tools we simply do not have. Want to send a canned response? You need to go on ArbWiki, navigate to the page with our template responses, and copy and paste it into your email system of choice. You go from a nice system with ticket assignment, canned responses, a nice queue to sending multiple emails trying to figure out who is taking point. Frustrating to say the least, especially if you've tasted the sweet efficiency of a ticketing system. And that's just email.

    Our discussions take place across like four different venues, and different arbs frequent different ones so half the time I'm not even sure where or to whom I said something. We have on-wiki discussions, we have email, we have arbwiki, we have IRC, and probably others that I've lost track of. I'm not even 100% sure how to search our email list archive, I mostly wait for someone else to post a link if it's relevant, and even then I usually have to modify the link because I have multiple Gmail accounts (this is a recent discovery). I forget that I have IRC most days, but every so often someone mentions it and I'm like "oh yeah, that exists". I think there are things on ArbWiki that I wrote that I've just completely forgotten about seeing to completion, and more often than not someone just copies over our votes from email onto the wiki so that we can comply with our internal procedures that say motions are posted on ArbWiki. Cases are managed on-wiki and on ArbWiki; block appeals are done largely by email and on ArbWiki; discussion of open business is done over email or IRC. It's a tangled mess, and different people have different preferences for these platforms; some people would sooner just tune out most of them rather than participate. There are other issues, but these are the ones that I find most annoying and feel most capable of addressing.

    So with that sense of the issue, here's some ideas I've had or heard floated that I'd want to actually try supporting if not spearheading

    • Let clerks triage our emails Kevin has a much more thought-out plan for this than I can do justice to, but the gist is that a lot of our time is taken up by paperwork that could easily be delegated. At the moment, clerks only handle on-wiki paperwork, but there's a lot behind the scenes that most people don't see. We like to send out a template along the lines of "we got your email, we'll get back to you eventually" but we forget a lot of the time. We get a lot of appeals that aren't well written and we need to prompt the editor for more info. We get inquiries that simply aren't our wheelhouse. We need to send form letters for people who have had their appeals granted or denied. It's high volume, but low priority work in the grand scheme of our duties, and every few months we need to train new sets of arbitrators on all of this. Alternatively, we could have the corps of clerks, a fair number of whom have been doing this longer than I've been an arbitrator, handle these routine responses. Kevin, having served as a clerk for quite a while before his current stint on the committee has way more knowledge on this than I do, and I would look forward to supporting an idea like this.
    • Ticketing system and internal case management As I mentioned, I wasn't at WikiConference North America, so I'm not up to speed on the conversations around Kevin's (and others') presentation. My understanding is that there has been talk among arbitrators and some MediaWiki community members regarding ticketing systems and case management systems that might be implemented for the Committee behind the scenes. I'm honestly in the dark on this one, but I don't need to lead every initiative. It sounds promising, and I look forward to supporting those leading this work.
    • Contact forms We get a lot of bad unblock requests. Part of the reason is that when you email the committee you're faced with a blank page. The idea behind a contact form is that it allows us to ask questions and provide a structured way for editors to make requests, increasing the likelihood that we get good ones. I've uploaded a mock-up of the form and you can see that it asks for name, email, and subject line (iirc this is modified in the back-end so that we can triage it better regardless of what subject users give). We would ask for what category the appeal falls under using radio buttons, and hopefully users realize that if they don't fall under one of the categories, we'll decline as outside out jurisdiction. We ask for why they are appealing, giving two common options---wrong on the merits or no longer necessary---and a third option (again, hopefully they realize that if it's not one of the first two then it's a likely decline). We ask for some sockpuppet information, prior appeals, and then (not pictured) text boxes for their actual appeal. It's mostly ready to go, just some back end stuff to figure out before it's ready for prime time. Anyway, the hope is that by giving a more structured form, it cuts down on our work sending form letters and hopefully speeds up our review by creating a consistent presentation of information to review; it also can be used by other processes like CU, OS, UTRS, VRT, etc for setting up their own forms so it has a broad benefit beyond the Committee if we can get it working.
    • Block appeal subcommittee We get a lot of good unblock requests, but when we unblock editors we're essentially putting a burden on the community to monitor them. That's a big ask, and it's hard to judge based only on a couple of paragraphs. An option we've been making greater use of is the "downgrade" where we don't unblock outright, but we allow them to appeal to the community instead of the committee. This is nice because it gives the community more of a say in the decision of welcoming this editor back, but it increases workload on everyone: the committee has to review an appeal, the community has to review an appeal, and the editor needs to do two appeals which can take months. It's also difficult in situations where the editor is globally locked since it's not always obvious whether they should appeal their lock to the stewards first or their enWiki block to us first. The idea is to delegate block review to a subcommittee of arbitrators (importantly not all arbitrators, probably no more than 3 or 4 at any given time) and community members appointed by the committee and who have signed the NDA (so likely functionaries at first, but presumably anyone who would be a good fit). Appeals would be forwarded to this subcommittee and voted on by its members. The goal would be to delegate this work so that we don't need to wait for the whole committee (something we already don't do because of various procedures that let us expedite the process), increase community participation from the start to avoid duplication of work, and providing more transparency around how this aspect of our work is disposed of. We used to have the ban appeal sub committee which was disbanded a while back, but the structure then was rather different. There was no community involvement, and any arb who wanted to could join the subcommittee at any time which really just made the whole thing redundant to the committee as a whole. In talking with editors and arbitrators who were around for that debate, it seems like avoiding a situation like that is for the best which is why the set membership and inclusion of community members is a main priority; the work should be properly delegated.

    So those are some of the ideas I have and have heard about. They're not mutually exclusive, for example, a ticketing system for the block appeals sub committee tied to a block appeal form would be a great idea, but we need to implement the pieces first. We're most of the way on the contact form, getting started on the ticket system, and are still workshopping the block appeals subcommittee and clerk triage ideas. I think that's a good pipeline, and the hope is that as we move through them we can reduce our turn-around times, increase our participation, and generally reduce pain points in the system for everyone. — Wug·a·po·des 08:47, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

28. what is the most important type of editor? ltbdl (talk) 07:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    The encyclopedia works because of the diverse skills of our editors. Content writers produce the articles which serve our readers. Technical contributors provide tools to make content writing easier and more attractive to prospective volunteers. Administrators prevent disruption from affecting our readers and editors. Running an encyclopedia requires many different kinds of labor, and it's all important. — Wug·a·po·des 09:03, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

30. do you support mandatory registration for wikipedia editing? why or why not? ltbdl (talk) 07:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    A few months ago I would have considered myself a blocker to the initiative because I was strongly opposed to the idea. I am still not a fan of the idea, but I am no longer a blocker to consensus. Having seen the issues faced by our CU corps and the recent trend of browser development, the legal hurdles leading to IP masking and the burden that places on developers and administrators, coupled with the general decline of helpful IP edits across the movement and it seems like my perspective is going to lose in the long run. Do I support it? No, I think unregistered editing is a sign of our unique perspective on how to structure and engage with the internet. However, it is unfair for me to use that belief to make the lives of our contributors actively harder. Maybe one day the trend will reverse---other wikis like MeatballWiki have closed their doors only to reopen years later---but for now I'm content to step back and let others chart the course. — Wug·a·po·des 09:03, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

32. Would you care if an article for a kids tv show got vandalized with false information? Scoophole2021 (talk). 07:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    Yes. When I used to work somewhat regularly at Requests for page protection children's TV shows were pretty frequent targets. I won't lie and say that the verifiability of our kids TV articles is as crucial as biographies of living people or medical articles, being wrong there could ruin or end lives if we aren't careful. But people, including children, use the encyclopedia for lots of stuff that isn't politics or medicine, and it's important we give them accurate information too. A curious kid should be able to ask her dad about Bluey and when he pulls up Wikipedia to find the answer, we should give them correct information. — Wug·a·po·des 09:16, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

34. Consider the hypothetical where the English Wikipedia community comes to a consensus under WP:IAR that violates WP:CONEXCEPT. The English Wikipedia community attempts to enforce that consensus but the WMF pushes back, resulting in wheel and edit warring. If an ARBCOM case was opened on this matter would you sanction editors attempting to enforce the consensus, and would you support the English Wikipedia's right to come to that consensus? BilledMammal (talk) 11:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    If you don't want to be sanctioned for wheel warring, don't wheel war. If you don't want to be sanctioned for edit warring, don't edit war. Unless the hypothetical also includes a sudden consensus shift that, actually, we want incredibly unstable articles and now encourage administrators to use their tools as a bludgeons in disputes, wheel warring and edit warring are decades old bright-lines that will result in sanctions if crossed.

    Frankly, I also don't really buy into the hypothetical. CONEXCEPT is a list of times where the typical consensus process doesn't apply, so it doesn't really matter that "a consensus under IAR" was formed; that consensus is by our policies invalid. Even if we ignore CONEXCEPT, the number of other policies and guidelines that would need to be repealed or modified to allow unrestricted edit warring and wheel warring suggests that the hypothetical consensus isn't viable. The behavioral guidelines at Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point and Wikipedia:Disruptive editing will need to be changed because we have very strong consensus that IAR does not justify disruptive editing. Our sysop policy at Wikipedia:Administrators#Reinstating a reverted action ("wheel warring") will need changed because we also have a strong consensus that IAR does not justify bald-faced power struggles as a dispute resolution mechanism. Our policy at Wikipedia:Edit warring will need to be changed to provide an exemption to the 3RR for "being right" and the nutshell will need to be changed since Don't use edits to fight with other editors. Disagreements should be resolved through discussion. will no longer be true. The right to form a consensus to tell the Foundation we disagree with a decision is part of CONEXCEPT; but using edit and sysop tools to disrupt the encyclopedia is one of our strongest and most long-standing prohibitions.

    I don't think this is particularly realistic (or smart) that we'd jettison decades of behavioral policies in order to make it easier for a particular faction to disrupt the encyclopedia. IAR generally does not apply to behavioral policies; "improving the encyclopedia" generally isn't a good defense for violating WP:NPA for example. I also don't think it would be smart for ArbCom to set a precedent that we will ignore multiple well-established policies out of personal spite or factional allegiance. Another option is that all of those still apply, they just only apply to those on the Wrong Side (TM) or editors without the political power to be granted clemency by ArbCom. That's worse, despite being a more realistic view of how people tend to want rules applied. The Committee is tasked with the evenhanded application of policy, and I'd shy away from using the position to carve out exceptions to long-standing expectations in order to privilege particular factions or undermine conduct expectations. Supporters of a particular faction will always want preferential treatment when their members face consequences for their actions, and while it would be politically easy to say I'd grant amnesty to whatever faction is en vogue this year, that's not what justice is and it's not the role of the Committee. — Wug·a·po·des 22:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

35. To clarify, I'm not referring to edit or wheel warring between two factions of the English Wikipedia; I'm referring to edit or wheel warring between the English Wikipedia and the WMF. For example, Interface Admin A implements consensus, the WMF reverses it against consensus, and then Interface Admin B re-implements consensus. BilledMammal (talk) 03:06, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

    If you don't want to be sanctioned for wheel warring, don't wheel war. If you don't want to be sanctioned for edit warring, don't edit war.[...]The right to form a consensus to tell the Foundation we disagree with a decision is part of CONEXCEPT; but using edit and sysop tools to disrupt the encyclopedia is one of our strongest and most long-standing prohibitions.[...] — Wug·a·po·des 22:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

37. The roles of checkusers and oversighters are currently managed at the pleasure of the sitting arbitration committee. What, if any, conditions would be necessary for you to support divorcing checkuser and oversight functions from the arbitration committee, making these roles managed by the community instead? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:42, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

    I don't think I've ever given serious thought to this. As a first impression, I don't think divesting the Committee of CU/OS appointment and oversight responsibilities is the best choice, but I'm open to considering other opinions. For appointments global CheckUser policy and global Oversight policy requires that CU/OS be selected either by an ArbCom or community vote. EnWiki attempted the community vote method in 2010, and it went poorly (RfC on the matter). Of course, consensus can change, and it's been 13 years so it might work this time (but I'm suspicious). More importantly, the selection of CU/OS has implicated private information that may be difficult or legally impossible to share with the community. There's also the importance of candid conversations and how the candidate would work with the existing corps. I also think there's a practical benefit in these positions being relatively a-political when compared to arbcom, sysop, or crat which are closer to straight community votes. None of these are hard blockers (after all, ArbCom is partly a CU/OS appointment vote), but they point to issues that will need to be discussed and hopefully safeguards put in place to prevent the worst outcomes. So I guess the major condition I see is "how do we give due weight to private information when that information cannot be directly shared with the voting body". One route that comes to mind is having functionaries field nominations, and on the basis of their recommendation a candidate can be put forward to a vote. That has the added benefits of letting functionaries state their concerns to colleagues before airing them publicly, though it doesn't really deal with the political concerns of needing to find candidates who get over 70% of the vote (a higher bar than even arbcom).

    For oversight of the use of tools, the functionaries generally do a good job of peer review, but I think the committee serves a useful role as a relatively independent oversight body. It's one thing to do peer review and report up, and another thing to investigate and vote to discipline your own colleagues. Internal discipline is not fun in the slightest and leads to internal strife that makes it difficult to work together, especially if rights are retained. Putting the responsibility of oversight and discipline on an external body has some benefit in that it discourages factionalism and grudges within the functionary corps and inspires confidence in the independence of investigations and conclusions. Again, not a hard blocker as many bodies are tasked with internal discipline, but I'd want to see some significant gain to delegating oversight and discipline entirely to the functionary corps. There's the option of reporting up to the ombuds commission, but their charge is more narrow than some of our expectations for functionary behavior. I'd want to see some indication that the functionaries actually want to take this on since it's also a big responsibility to put on a group that so far has been more ad hoc than formal. Maybe that's another necessary condition: I'd want to see the functionaries organize and develop some kind of charter for how these more formal and procedural duties would be handled internally. — Wug·a·po·des 23:38, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

39. Apropos of question 12. Did not happen in 2022 or 2023, but what think young candidate of decision to admonish Bishzilla for her block of an arbitrator? Arbitrators best not blocked? bishzilla _ROARR!! pocket 14:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC).