Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict of interest management/Evidence

Main case page (Talk) — Preliminary statements (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Target dates: Opened 6 March 2024 • Evidence closes 20 March 2024 • Workshop closes 27 March 2024 • Proposed decision to be posted by 3 April 2024

Scope: The intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy, in the frame of the conduct of the named parties.
Public evidence is preferred whenever possible; private evidence is allowed (arbcom-en-bwikimedia.org).

Case clerks: Firefly (Talk) & Amortias (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Aoidh (Talk) & Barkeep49 (Talk) & Maxim (Talk)

Behaviour on this page: Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at a fair, well-informed decision. You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being rude or hostile, and to respond calmly to allegations against you. Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all). Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator, clerk, or functionary, without further warning, by being banned from further participation in the case, or being blocked altogether. Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or the clerks, will be met with sanctions. Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.

Arbitrators active on this case

To update this listing, edit this template and scroll down until you find the right list of arbitrators. If updates to this listing do not immediately show, try purging the cache.

Active:

Inactive:

L235 (talk · contribs)

Recused:

Primefac (talk · contribs)
ToBeFree (talk · contribs)

Guidance on public versus private evidence

Given the nature of this case, I think some guidance on the evidence page as to what may be posted publicly, and what should instead be submitted privately (with instructions on how to do that) on the evidence page would be very helpful, and hopefully avoid the evidence page itself becoming the source of yet more contention and messes. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:08, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks – while the case navigation header already mentions an e-mail address, I think this could be made more clear and detailed. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably also worth noting that if you are unsure whether something is public or private evidence, send it by email and ask. The Committee should advise whether it can/should be posted publicly. Thryduulf (talk) 20:27, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Thryduulf - and indeed someone had sent us such a piece of evidence during the case request which has now been replied to with "this needs to be done publicly". Beyond that Seraphim, I welcome more thoughts about what guidance could be given, beyond noting the email address, which I've also added as a bullet point to the evidence page. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Thryduulf's "If in doubt, ask privately first" suggestion is excellent. Maybe also a pointer to and a brief synopsis of the outing policy? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:01, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dennis Brown's evidence

I think they deserve to be heard, and they raise issues that arbs should consider before making a final decision, even though I see a lot I disagree with... but it's not evidence. It should belong somewhere else, workshop or one of the talk pages. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:27, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dennis Brown Regarding the question about whether owning AT&T stock is a COI; like so many things, there's no black and white answer. I'm assuming that the amount of AT&T you own is an inconsequential fraction of the shares outstanding. And that it's a small portion of your total portfolio. And nothing you wrote on AT&T had any measurable effect on its stock price. And you don't know anything about the company which isn't public knowledge. The less true these assumptions are in aggregate, the more COI becomes an issue. RoySmith (talk) 13:46, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You don't know how much AT&t stock I own. AT&T stock pays a dividend quarterly. It is not the only stock I own that pays dividends. You do not know how much I earn from these stocks but I will say that it exceeds what an average paid editor would earn for going in and changing a few articles. And unless you've investigated my edits, you don't know if anything I wrote could have affected the stock price or dividends of any of these stocks. I have not disclosed what stocks I own, other than this one example, nor how many shares I own. This is what I mean when I say most everyone has a conflict of interest of some kind, but does that make it paid editing? Because if it is, then every administrator needs to make sure not to edit any article remotely related to a stock, or a competitor to a stock in their 401k, IRA, brokerage accounts, among other things, as this would be inconsistent with adminship, and grounds to remove the bit. And should admin disclose what stocks they own? Or how many shares? After all, we're supposed to disclose any conflict of interest, right? If we overreach and define paid editing as any conflict of interest where there is potential financial benefit, you will render policy unenforceable. And before you dismiss this as an absurd example, you need to look at it more closely because it is the natural outcome of that decision, and in time it will come back to bite us. Please note, I have not said anything about whether Nihonjoe's actions are wrong or right, as I don't have access to the private information. My concern is how we frame it. Farmer Brown - 2¢ (alt: Dennis Brown) 22:43, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The issue really starts with Joe Roe's evidence, which appears to be an extended exercise in trying to construe WP:PAID to say something that is contradicted by both the plain meaning of its text and common sense. --JBL (talk) 20:02, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors, regardless of whether they were compensated specifically to edit Wikipedia” is a direct quote from WP:COI Jessintime (talk) 20:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and? --JBL (talk) 20:31, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but this does not yet directly mean "Users who edit articles about their employer are paid editors". Ymblanter (talk) 20:32, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting that the committee/drafters are discussing this evidence, Joe Roe's evidence, and the first section of Fram's evidence. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:56, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fram's evidence - word limits

Fram - you are over your standard 1,000 words for your evidence section. You will need to request an extension if you wish to post any additional evidence. firefly ( t · c ) 15:29, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, if I need to post more I'll ask for an extension first. Fram (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Noted - thanks! firefly ( t · c ) 15:56, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fram is extended an additional 200 words to post part of a private submission. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:57, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, done. Fram (talk) 08:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What happens to ArbCom email

I think this question has directly or indirectly come up during this case. Here seems to be an OK place to bring it up again, given the submissions from Tryptofish and JoelleJay. I've written an essay, User:Maxim/The dark abyss, to describe what happens. It's more a brain dump than an essay, but I hope it makes that part of ArbCom a bit less mysterious. Maxim (talk) 13:34, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for linking that, Maxim, it's very informative and allays some of my concerns over how private evidence is handled. It's good to know that (if I'm understanding correctly) there's some sort of actively-triaged action list visible to all arbs, and that it's normal for complex COI allegations to take a while. If it ends up being in the scope of this case, I think it would be helpful to float ideas on how progress in an investigation might be transmitted to involved parties without much additional hassle for arbs. Something like a deidentified phabricator ticket (or even more simply like a DoorDash delivery timeline) that just automatically shows where in the pipeline an investigation is. JoelleJay (talk) 14:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've thought for several years now that the capacity of any given arbitrator is not fixed. They will have more or less capacity given not only the things you'd expect but their interest in given topics. However, I would argue the capacity among arbcom as a whole for administrative tasks is pretty fixed and an increase in administrative tasks (as thoughtfully proposed here) leaves less capacity for other work which in this instance would be handling the concerns themselves. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand it would be more work for arbs to keep track of notifying interested parties without some easily-portable automated system doing this. My thought was mostly along the lines of some template email, like the acknowledgement of receipt one, being sent out if and when an investigation reached some particular stage or endpoint. Nothing individualized. Perhaps even limited to cases where arbs can be reasonably sure a nontrivial number of editors have seen some particular private evidence (like certain off-wiki content, or when the committee receives multiple independent reports on the same evidence) and thus the likelihood of editors agitating for a response and potentially posting outing material on-wiki is high.

I just know I was left wondering whether my very brief email to the committee was even sufficient to trigger anything at all, or if I should have provided a curated list of the major allegations and diffs in the email body rather than linking to a webpage for y'all to dig through yourselves. JoelleJay (talk) 16:47, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That I can answer: providing a brief and well curated explanation is always going to get faster action than a more generic link (for more on that see User:Barkeep49/ArbCom_Guide#How_to_submit_effective_evidence). Speaking for myself there are certain things I stopped doing because I didn't want to do the administrative work that was to accompany them. For instance I stopped acknowledging appeals because updating the table of appeals felt like too much of a pain. Now using a templated message is easier than updating a table with multiple embedded templates so in that sense you're right. But as Thryduulf points out what the landmarks where an update is sent out isn't always clear and things can go backwards not just forwards (one arbs completes their look into it, discussion on those findings start, another arb does other investigation and presents different findings, thus potentially stopping discussion into yet more arbs can look into it) and this is on top of the administrative burden concerns I have. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:01, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unless things have changed significantly since my time on the committee, there isn't really a usefully granular pipeline between acknowledging the email and taking final action/determining no action is required as there are many variables that determine what action(s) by the committee are needed and even more variables that determine how long each will take. I recall one allegation we received that required a lot of work to investigate, and then the results of that investigation were not clear cut so the committee was roughly evenly divided on whether the allegation was sufficiently proven or not so dealing with it took several weeks. During that time we received a similar allegation related to a different editor which was resolved in (iirc) a few days start to finish, despite requiring roughly the same number of steps, because everything was much clearer. Thryduulf (talk) 16:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the essay. I've had the impression for a very long time that it has been difficult for ArbCom to get to where there is a Committee consensus on how to respond to an email request, as the essay describes. And that stands to reason, because that's the nature of a committee, especially a volunteer one. If ArbCom wants to kick some ideas around, internally, about ways to improve the process, I think it would be beneficial to both ArbCom members and to the community if that particular kind of logjam could be loosened up. One way to do that might be to have a process where there would not always be a need to have an official quorum and vote to designate a response as more than "in an individual capacity". Perhaps one member could draft a response, circulate it among the Committee before sending it, and if there are no objections after a defined amount of time, the reply could be sent, as something more than an individual response but also something less than the official response from the Committee as a whole. (Defining, in your procedures, the amount of time before the reply will be sent will also have the beneficial side effect of motivating quiet members to stop procrastinating.) I think that the more efficiently emails get processed, and the smaller the backlog, the easier the whole thing would become. You'd probably need to work out some details that I've overlooked, to flesh out such a procedure. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:46, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps one member could draft a response, circulate it among the Committee before sending it, and if there are no objections after a defined amount of time, the reply could be sent, as something more than an individual response but also something less than the official response from the Committee as a whole. this is essentially how things work for correspondences already. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I allude to this in the essay, but finding that one member to draft a response is sometimes tricky. Maxim (talk) 19:00, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]