Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Hullaballoo Wolfowitz/Questions

Individual questions

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Questions from Collect

Can a case be opened without presuming that sanctions will be necessary? Do you feel that once a case is opened that impartial arbitrators will "inevitably" have to impose sanctions?
1) In theory, yes. In practice, many past cases convey the impression that Arbcom members don't accept cases until they've privately settled on a preferred outcome. This was probably truer of older versions of the Committee. 2) Empirically, that's the most common outcome.
If an administrator states (hypothetically) "You will vote however you like, and I am frankly not interested in changing your mind, but you should at least be honest about why you are opposing me. At the moment, you are not", would that administrator be considered "involved" or "impartial" in any way with the editor in whose talk space he made such an edit?
That really depends on the broader context. In response to a DRV comment, it easily might not signal involvement. In response to an RFA comment, it's more likely to. It doesn't seem to be a terribly prudent statement, though.
Are arbitators under any reasonable obligation to afford editors who are out of the country on a trip, or have other substantial reasons for absence from a case, any delays in considering cases concerning them? If such a person is given only 1000 words to rebut 1000 words from each of five or more "evidence providers", is that a reasonable limit to place on the defendant, or ought the limit be raised to allow rebuttal of each such section?
I reject WP:NOJUSTICE. Wikipedia derives great benefit from volunteer contributions of time and effort and has a moral and ethical obligation to treat contributors fairly. The examples you cite are common ways in which Committee processes are not consistently fair. The fact that we can't always reach perfect decisions is no reason to enshrine imperfection as a guiding principle.

Question from Smallbones

Wikipedia is starting to have a reputation for bullying and misogyny, see, e.g the recent article in The Atlantic by Emma Paling, "Wikipedia's Hostility to Women”.
Are you willing to take serious steps to stop bullying of editors on Wikipedia? especially bullying directed toward women editors? Is this one of your top 2 priorities? What would you consider to be a more important priority than stopping the bullying? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:09, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
1) Yes. 2/3) To the extent I have priorities, they deal with Arbcom processes rather than outcomes. I don't think it's appropriate for an arbitrator to enter into their task with a roster of ways in which they plan to decide cases. That said, I would hope that that my comments in and on the Lightbreather case (mostly regarding the proposed decision) indicate gross disagreement with the low significance that the current ArbCom has placed on this problem. The problem won't be solved until the community shoulders its proper responsibility on these matters; the matter is so endemic that referring instances to ArbCom would paralyze the already limited Committee. If I had a "priority", it would be to accept cases focusing on user behavior which frustrates community efforts to eliminate, more generally, behaviour which creates a hostile environment for female contributors.

Questions from Antony–22

In general, does enforcing civility harm free speech? Does it help it?
Of course it does. But that's not the real issue. Wikipedia isn't a free speech zone. We don't debate the merits of political candidates on their article talk pages. We don't let editors promote their own businesses in their userspace. We limit the use of nonfree content even where it's allowed by law. Both calculated incivility and civility enforcement have been used, and are used, by editors here to attempt to silence editors whose ideas and opinions other editors dislike. The intent to suppress ideas and opinions is the more significant underlying problem.
It's been pointed out that incivility and harassment are not precisely the same thing. What is the line between incivility and harassment? How much does incivility, when it doesn't cross the line into harassment, affect our ability to retain editors, including but not limited to its effects on the gender gap?
Incivility is not at all the same thing as harassment, although incivility can be used to harass. If an editor followed me around Wikipedia and removed every PROD I placed, with a bland, uncommunicative, but civil edit summary like "discussion required, that's an example of harassment (lowgrade). If I were to respond by posting "STOP BEING A JACKASS" to the editor's talk page, that's an example of incivility (also lowgrade). Harassment can never be excused by provocation. Incivility can be. Incivility is determined to some extent by what participants in a conversation deem acceptable. Harassment pretty much isn't. I can't say what extent incivility affects editor retention (or, for that matter, civility enforcement practices). I suspect that greater effects on the gender cap come from the aggressive, impersonal manner of arguments which are typical of online disputes. Divorced from visual cues, tones of voice, etc, discussions easily become cold and offputting. I don't have any ready solution to this problem under our governing principles of crowdsourcing and consensus.
Arbcom's actions have come under scrutiny from the outside press lately. Do you think the Arbcom has a role in educating reporters about cases when they come under such scrutiny, to reduce the factual inaccuracies that sometimes creep into these articles? For example, do you think that releasing statements, such as been done once on a previous case, should be considered in the future? If so, how could they be made more effective?
I find the phrase "educating reporters" Orwellian. ArbCom does an inadequate, sometimes terrible, job of explaining its decisions to the Wikipedia community. If, at the very least, it made an appropriate statement of the matters it intended to address when it opened case discussions after acceptance, and stopped framing its decisions in tired generalities, the problem you are concerned with would likely be much less serious.
This question is optional, since candidates don't necessarily like to talk about current cases. But imagine that you are a current member of the Arbcom and you are delegated the task of writing a succinct, neutral primer for the press, of no more than a few paragraphs, on the circumstances leading to the current case Arbitration enforcement 2. Write that primer below. Do not cover or express an opinion on the proposed or actual decision, but concentrate on how you would help a reporter understand what happened before the case was filed.
I would send the other members of the Committee (or at least the ones making the delegation), a note more or less carrying the import "Bite me".(That's the grumpy old Bob Dole in me.) This is really not an appropriate thing for a group charged with the responsibilities that ArbCom is charged with to do.
One last question. Wikipedia relies primarily on volunteer labor, and many are attracted to Wikipedia in part due to its countercultural, even transgressive nature of subverting traditional gatekeepers to knowledge. Recently there has been increasing participation by professionals from academic and cultural institutions. This is perhaps causing some angst that the community and its interactions may become "professionalized" to the exclusion of established editors. Do you feel this fear is warranted? How can volunteers and professionals with different standards of conduct be made to coexist on Wikipedia with the minimal disruption to our existing contributor base?
All the old revolutionaries end up being taken to the wall and shot.

Questions from Gerda Arendt

Thank you for stepping forward!

Arbitration findings and the wishes of principal editors govern the use of infoboxes in articles. If you want to win my "neutral" please say how you would close the discussion at Talk:Joseph (opera)#Restore infobox?
Well, I probably wouldn't close it, as there's not enough participation to establish a consensus, given the different views expressed. Moreover, as a followup to a relatively recent discussion which apparently reached a consensus, I'd be very reluctant to reverse the prior decision based on a discussion with much less participation. I'd be more likely to !vote against including the infobox, since I believe an infobox image should more clearly dwfinitely the article subject than the proposed infobox image does.

Adding: at least one candidate looked at the 2013 discussion, but 2015 is the one I mean, sorry if that was not clear.

An editor has been blocked for a month in the name of arbitration enforcement for having said that he creates half of his featured content with women. I find it kafkaesque and remember the opening of The Metamorphosis for an analogy. If you want to win my "support", please - on top of #1 - suggest improvements to get from arbitration enforcement ("not a fun place") to arbitration supervision, where such a thing would not happen. I offered some thoughts, wishing to see Floquenbeam's "no foul, play on" more often, or Yunshui's "The edit was unproblematic and actually made Wikipedia better."
The underlying problem is ArbCom's reliance on a set of fossilized standard dictates that are trotted out without regard to the circumstances of individual cases. Here, ArbCom mandated escalating sanctions regardless of the relative severity of violations. Once a major violation has occurred, the penalty for the next violation, no matter how trivial, must be greater. This is idiocy, but it is also standard ArbCom practice. It's one of the reasons that respect for ArbCom's authority is justifiably declining. If you examine the pattern of responses to claims that a particular breach of a sanction is in one way or another excusable, it is evident that ArbCom's response has be fundamentally unprincipled, and that it often does not mean what it says in its decision. That's more damaging and corrosive to the community than any petty violation of sanctions.

Question from Biblioworm

Do you have any experience in successfully resolving disputes, either on-wiki or off-wiki?
Yes. I have experience in various levels of mostly lower-level government over many years, including formal administrative processes. One important thing I've learned is that participants in disputes promote effective dispute resolution by framing questions and presenting their positions clearly and carefully. In a continuously changing community like Wikipedia, it's unrealistic to expect the most contentious issues to come to a fixed and final resolution, and that developing a standard framework where questions can be resolved makes it far more likely that people will accept outcomes they disagree with -- which is extremely important in a community like Wikipedia. For a specific example of contributing to on-wiki dispute resolution, I'd put forward the Scott Rasmussen dispute, documented here [1] and here [2][3]; I was certainly not the only editor who contributed to the resolution, but I believe my careful review of the sources and presentation of their substance played a significant role in reaching a very clear and broadly accepted consensus in a subject area (same-sex marriage) where disputes often proved intractable. I've spent a great deal of time working on BLP questions, and many many editors associate me with BLP disputes relating to erotica and pornography. This is an area which hasn't been particularly prone to congenial discussions, but right now the inevitable disputes, especially at AFD, are settled more rapidly, more consistently and without anywhere near the rancor that was common several years ago. I'd rate myself as one of the editors who have focused on establishing clearer standards and a tighter focus on notability guidelines and BLP principles. This is an area where there will always be irredentist editors, and the process hasn't always been pretty, but the situation has been greatly, greatly improved.

Question from Peter Damian

Your answers look very good (educating reporters is 'Orwellian'). But despite a long time on and around Wikipedia, I don't know much about you. Is there anything bad we need to know about, or will come back to bite us? I note you have a minor block log, nothing like mine, mind you.
Someone referred to you (see my ACE talk page) as a 'BLP zealot'. Which kind?
I think of myself more as a BLP absolutist (or, if you want a less favorable term, fundamentalist). I believe strongly in enforcing BLP policy requirements for substantive, independent reliable sourcing. I also believe strongly that content not related to a subject's notability is given far too much weight in too many biographies. Most biographical articles about performers are likely to devote disproportionate space to their sex/romantic lives and public misadventures than to informed critical assessment of their work.

Question from Brustopher

Hi, and thank you for running for Arbcom. These questions focus on WP:OUTING. For the purposes of these questions please assume the editors' usernames are far more distinct and unique than the ones I have given.

User:Foo get's into an edit conflict on Wikipedia with User:Bar, and end up as parties to a large Arbcom case. Soon afterwards on reddit someone going by the username Bar begins posting lots of critical and disparaging threads about Foo. In these threads they claim to be Wikipedia user Bar. The Bar account on Wikipedia is older than the Bar account on reddit by several years, however the Wikipedia account had only really begun active editing a few years after the reddit account had been created. Foo notices these posts and complains on Bar's talk page and ANI. Bar responds by accusing Foo of WP:OUTING and claims that the account might not even be his. Is it OUTING to connect the Bar reddit account with the Bar Wikipedia account?
On the facts presented, there is no WP:OUTING violation here. (Whether this should be a violation is a different question, and not one for ArbCom to decide). The policy page states explicitly that linking to off-wiki accounts is not a per se violation. The key element of WP:OUTING is the disclosure of personal, private, or identifying information, and there is no claim that that occurred here. The external site is open to, and intended to be open to, public view. The content linked to is Wikipedia-related. (If the content was not Wikipedia-related, but, say, comprised paintings on an amateur art site, and Foo's comments were intended as derisive, their conduct would likely be sanctionable, but not necessarily as WP:OUTING.)
User:Alice is a party in an Arbcom case. She is browsing the internet one day and decides to google her Wikipedia username. She finds that somebody has uploaded naked photos of another woman to a pornsite and labelled them "Alice of Wikipedia." She looks into the account that has uploaded these files and comes to the conclusion that it is owned by Wikipedia User:Bob, an editor she had clashed with heavily on wiki. In the process she also finds out his real life identity. She emails her evidence to Arbcom. Alice then decides to go to Wikipediocracy's forums, and makes a thread informing them of this porn site account. She asks them if they can guess which Wikipedia editor is behind it, and mentions that she also knows his real life identity. They independently come to the conclusion that it is User:Bob and figure out his real life identity without Alice giving the game away. Alice confirms that this is the case. Nobody in the forum finds it remotely questionable that Bob owns the account in question. In such a situation is it appropriate for Arbcom to pass a finding of fact stating "Alice posted inappropriately to an off-wiki website apparently with the objective of having the participants identify a Wikipedia editor by name." Furthermore is it appropriate for them to then use this supposed violation of WP:OUTING as part of their justification for site banning Alice?
Wikipedia is not the center of the universe, and it can't be walled off from the rest of the world. Our policies are too easily manipulated to protect editors who commit abusive behaviour. Significant real-world disputes overlap with Wikipedia issues all the time. Using Wikipedia-specific policies to punish legitimate outside-world behaviour, like trying to track down the perpetrator of harassment, is misguided a best and in some circumstances malignant. If the real-life version of "Bob" in your hypothetical-a-clef above were to run for my local town council, I would publicly trumpet all the relevant details from any available rooftop. Enforcing certain aspects of WP:NLT would very clearly violate US civil rights laws regarding retaliation against complainants. If an editor seeking advanced permissions / access to nonpublic information proved to have a criminal record including domestic violence, I'd have no qualms about putting that fact on the public record here if it weren't addressed quickly and appropriately in camera. (That's not an idle hypothetical, although the real-world parallel did not specifically establish domestic violence.) My comments on the original proposed decision in the Lightbreather arbitraation [4] are also relevant to the hypothetical you present.

Question from Yash!

In the past couple of years, the ArbCom has closed various cases, passed motions, and such. Is/Are there any outcome/s that you disagree with? If yes, which? And, what result/s would you have rather preferred? Ya sh ! 01:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

~~===Question from Pldx1===~~

Dear candidate. As you probably have noted, an user describing himself as a Grammar Badguy asked the question he asked to most of the candidates. In my opinion, the way each candidate answered this question is an important criterion of choice. Therefore, I think it could be fair to give you an occasion to comment. Pldx1 (talk) 10:00, 19 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

No more useful (see below) Pldx1 (talk) 19:41, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Worm That Turned

Hi, I'm Dave, I was on Arbcom between 2013 and 2014. I can tell you now that being an arbitrator is tough - you become a target. Comments you make will be taken out of context, your motives and abilities will be insulted, you may be threatened or harassed. Have you thought much about the "dark side" of being an arbitrator? How have you prepared for this?
Well, I've been involved in school board politics. Do you really think anything here remotely compares to angry suburban parents who know where you live and have your phone number?
You were blocked about a year ago over talk page size issues. Could you explain your thoughts on the block? Also on the underlying issue of talk page sizes and the amount of leeway given to individuals in their userspace?

Question by Müdigkeit

How many hours per week do you plan to work on the Arbitration Committee?--Müdigkeit (talk) 19:06, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't "plan" to put in any, because I have realistic expectations about the outcome. Of course, realistic expectations would tell us that Eric Cantor succeeded John Boehner as US House Speaker. Also, my impression is that it's been too easy for ArbCom to be a work-expands-to-fill-the-time allotted position.

Optional Question by Pharaoh of the Wizards

Why did you not run for Adminship first .Given the fact that no non Admin has ever been elected Arbcom ?
Because I wasn't interested in enduring the iron maiden ordeal that RFA too often becomes to acquire tools to perform work that I wasn't particularly interested in doing.

Questions from GrammarFascist

Please divulge as much of your demographic information as you are comfortable making public. Specifically: your gender, including whether you are cis, trans or other; your sexual orientation; your race and/or ethnicity; where you live (feel free to specify you live in Triesenberg if you want, but a country or continent will do just fine — even just "Southern Hemisphere" or "Western Hemisphere" is helpful); whether you have any condition considered a disability (even if you're not so disabled you're unable to work) including deafness, physical disabilities, developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, again being only as specific as you wish; and what social class you belong to (e.g. working class, middle class, etc.). ¶ If you prefer not to answer any or all of those categories, I won't count it against you. My intention in asking for this information is not to out anyone or try to force affirmative action. However, when deciding between two otherwise equally qualified candidates, I would prefer to be able to vote for more diversity on ArbCom rather than less.
(I recognize that another editor already asked you a variant of this question; I want to have posed these identically-worded two questions to each candidate, however, in the interest of fairness.)
I'm tempted to reply simply that I am a mammal. If you want to achieve productive diversity, look for people whose statements and actions manifest different attitudes and experiences. I've spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with organizations which claim demographic diversity but hire from a narrowly defined pool of people with very similar education, training, and experience and prove to end up hidebound, stultified, and ineffective.

Please list at least one pro and one con of having non-administrators serve on ArbCom.
Pro: There is general agreement with the idea that the admin selection process is, said politely, suboptimal. Its criteria have proved to have little or nothing to do with the qualities the community should demand of arbitrators. Con: Well, if you believe that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a bad choice for the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court because she never presided in Traffic Court, I suppose you could find a con.

Thanks for responding, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz. (I LOL'd at your RBG comment.) —GrammarFascist _contribs ^talk 01:51, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from User:Wikimandia

Many editors were unhappy with the results of the recent Neelix fiasco, in which the AC closed the case as soon as Neelix resigned as an admin, despite the fact that many of the issues brought up in the evidence page had nothing whatsoever to do with misuse of administrative tools or even his redirect spam, including building walled gardens and violation of WP guidelines concerning advocacy in editing. This led to accusations of a double standard for admins and regular editors. (If a non-admin had done the same, there could be no such easy dismissal as we don't have tools to resign). Neelix never acknowledged or agreed to stop any of this behavior, simply (eventually) apologized for the redirects only and then later resigned with no further comment. There was significant support for at least a topic ban at the ANI. Do you believe a topic ban or other measure should have been applied in this case?
Well, a topic ban was applied after extensive discussion at ANI. I assume you were looking for a broader ban. It's not appropriate, absent unusual circumstances or contravention of WMF policy, for ArbCom to overturn a community decision arrived at through proper processes. That said, the community has shown a grotesque willingness to tolerate pinheaded behaviour by admins as well as a painfully adolescent attitude toward sexuality with undertones of demeaning attitudes toward women, if not outright misogyny -- which hardly creates a welcoming environment for potential female contributors. Also keep in mind that since Neelix conspicuously self-identified on-wiki, he has likely compromised his employability for at least a decade since Google searches will soon present him as an Internet buffoon, while HR review will flag his public displays of obsessive breast fetishism.

Questions from Ryk72

Thank you for stepping forward; your commitment to serving the community is greatly appreciated.

Please accept my apologies for the lateness of these questions.

The en.Wikipedia community has been likened to that of a gaol (US:prison), with members of various gangs aggressively supporting each other in disputes, which are policed by trusted inmates. Do you agree with this view? If so, why so? If not, why not? To what extent are the behaviours which lead to this view enabled by AN/I, AE & ArbCom?
Do you believe that our current processes & procedures encourage adversarial methods of dispute resolution? If so, is this a good or bad thing? If bad, what role should ArbCom play in addressing this?
I think our current dispute mechanisms presume that collegial decisionmaking has failed and default to adversarial methods. Inquisitorial processes are inconsistent with our commitment to consensus, and simple numerical voting will still be accompanied by adversial mode debate. Wikipedia arises from a culture that relies on adversarial decisionmaking.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of WP:BOOMERANG? Would you support it's retention, restriction or abolition? Why?
We see regular use of WP:DUCK/WP:SOCK to justify indefinite blocks of new editors entering contentious topic spaces, without those editors being explicitly linked to banned accounts. Is this use justified? If so, why so? If not, why not?
It can be. In the recent incident regarding indiscriminate PROD removal, the editor's own behaviour made a convincing case that they were a blocked editor intending to disrupt, even though they didn't provide enough information to determine which blocked editor they were. In more than a few situations involving Howard Stern-related pages, we see a group of disruptive editors returning over and over, and it's not always possible to associate each new account name with their original account. On the other hand, simply insisting on a common trope like Caitlyn Jenner is a man, Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or the World Trade Center attacks were an inside job is not enough to establish that a banned editor is returning. I was on the receiving end of a patently invalid DUCK/SOCK block years ago, so I'm ready to be skeptical when the issue comes up in an appropriate case.
In Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_3#Remedies, ArbCom implemented a "500/30" limit on edits to the Palestine-Israel (the 3rd topic space in which this remedy has been used). What are the positives & negatives of this remedy as written? Would a more technical/formal implementation (akin to semi-protection) be an improvement? What other improvements, if any, might be made?
I don't see any positives to it. The case arose out of a well-regarded admin's meltdown in response to inappropriate comments by an editor who was well beyond the 500/30 threshold. The case, as presented, focused on the admin's behaviour. ArbCom used the case as a pretext to revisit an area where its prior actions had provided ineffective. Even though it had framed the case itself, ArbCom couldn't reach any squarely relevant factual findings. This was just ArbCom declaring policy it had no authority to make.
A hypothetical editor, involved in a contentious topic space, regularly derails Talk page discussion with personal views on the subject, anecdotes of their off-Wiki involvement in the topic, epistemological first principle reasoning for exclusion of material, "hatting" of discussions, and snide attacks on new editors. Administrators have failed to address this editor's behaviour; WP:AE has failed to address the editor's behaviour. What should be done?
Would you be prepared to recuse from 1/3rd of cases, and encourage other Arbs to do likewise, so that each case might be addressed faster, and by fewer Arbs?

Many thanks in advance for any answers. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 15:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Bzuk

Can you shed light on your block log?
The first was for removing a personal attack made in another editor's userspace. The block was controversial when it occurred, was criticized by no less than Jimmy Wales, and led to the resignation of the admin who placed it. Hindsight has pretty well established that it was not appropriate. The second was acknowledged as erroneous by the admin who placed it; it was rescinded about an hour later. The third will be addressed in response to WTT's question above.

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, perfectly understandable; good luck on your candidacy.

Question from Dcs002

I have encountered a few (very few) admins who are... stubborn, like owning, multiple reverts with no summary, intolerant of noobs, etc., but there have been worse examples that ArbCom has considered. I think it's an established principle that admins should hold themselves to a higher standard than we ordinary editors do concerning their conduct on WP. What should happen if ArbCom finds (as fact) that an admin has failed in this regard? Should they have heavier sanctions for violations because they are in a position of authority and trust? Should the threshold for what is considered egregious conduct be higher or lower for admins? (Sorry - 3 questions, but I am really unfamiliar with this markup stuff.)

Question from De Guerre

Greetings, and thanks for putting yourself forward as a candidate. It came up in the discussion section that five years ago, you were the the subject of a user conduct RfC. Could you please shed some light on this?