Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:48, 14 March 2010

Archives (pre-merge)

• Arbitration guide discussions: 1
• Arbitration policy discussions: 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4
• Enforcement request discussions: 3

"In general, anonymous IP addresses are not allowed to vote on Misplaced Pages."

This statement has been used to justify striking out ip comments at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Noemi Letizia. My guess is that it is meant to mean actual elections, such as RFA and ArbCom elections, as opposed to discussions, such as AFD and talk pages. If it could be clarified to avoid similar confusion in the future, that would be super. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Beeblebrox beat me to the punch here (two heads and three arms are faster than one and two, I guess.:-) )
- Looks like we want to clarify the language in "Editing from anonymous IPs" - http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy/Past_decisions#Editing_from_anonymous_IPs .
In a recent AfD Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Noemi Letizia, an editor struck out several "votes" (including mine). I complained about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#Changes_made_to_.22votes.22_in_AfD_of_Noemi_Letizia .
It transpired that an editor had struck out votes of anon IPs, on the basis (stated in Misplaced Pages:Arbitration) that "anonymous IP addresses are not allowed to vote on Misplaced Pages."
Others responded that "AFD is supposed to be a discussion, not a vote, and IPs are certainly allowed to participate."
At this point, I don't feel that I understand whether http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy/Past_decisions#Editing_from_anonymous_IPs does prohibit "votes" of anon IPs from being considered in AfDs or not.
Thanks for clarification on this. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 01:46, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

In fact I've only striked out votes, not comments, by anonymous IPs. --ElfQrin (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Those decisions are very old, and they relate to WP:SOCK more than AFD. Community norms have progressed since then; the best place to take this query is WT:AFD. John Vandenberg 10:01, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• Uh, but the problem is that someone was quoting this to justify their actions, the language on the page needs to be changed to reflect consensus. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• I've gone ahead and made the changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:15, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Case names

I know this gets discussed periodically, but I can't remember where we're supposed to discuss it. Anyway, the meat of my point is that currently we have cases on ADHD, Matisse and the Tang Dynasty. One of those concerns a user and the other two relate to topics. Which one is the user? For a split second I was trying to work out which side I take on the question of Matisse's disputed position as an Impressionist. Hiding T 13:58, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

ADHD (talk · contribs) and Tang (talk · contribs) are innocent!

I would prefer we use a numbering system for cases (e.g. 2009-018), and improve our Index to help people find cases.

I have often typed in the wrong name, such as "Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat" instead of "Prem Rawat 2", and it has taken a few good minutes of reading before realising my mistake.

If we ever have more than 999 cases in one year, I'll be passing on the baton and retiring to Wikisource. John Vandenberg 09:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

John: If you're observant enough, the case closure date is usually enough in and of itself to make the reader realise he has the wrong case. ;-) (Although, admittedly, subsequent cases are sometimes heard fairly close to one another, and so the date isn't always enough.) AGK 16:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

splitting up the Cases index by year

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Cases is almost 200KB. Does anyone have an objection to breaking it into per-year subpages? John Vandenberg 09:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Go for it; 200kb is too large. AGK 16:14, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Can a non-party comment?

I do not see a procedure for a non-party to comment on an open arbitration. Is there one? Is it permissible for a non-party to appear as amicus curiae or amicus Wikipediae? I have a concern about one particular arbitration where, in my opinion, some of the proposed remedies will have an unintended adverse impact on the quality of Misplaced Pages. Finell (Talk) 21:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, anyone is free to comment on any of the talk pages associated with an arbitration case. In your case, you'll probably want to comment either on the talk page of the "workshop" or the talk page of the "proposed decision". Kirill  04:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Your essay on professionalism, which I discovered from the link in your signature, captures standards to aspire to with extraordinary clarity and brevity. Finell (Talk) 05:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrating on content

I submit for your consideration: Misplaced Pages:Arbitrating on content. —harej (talk) 04:56, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions

I have made some suggestions here for improving the transparency of the process. Briefly, I propose:

1. That those accused of misconduct be routinely informed of the existence of the Arbitration guide; I was not and it might have helped me in my recent case.
2. That the guide be edited to specifically reflect that there should be no expectation of equity in the arbitration process; it already includes the information that: "Arbitration is not a court case - All actions and general conduct (not just the direct issue) may be taken into account; arbitration is not a legal process with fixed approaches to problems. A person's general manner is probably evidence of their likely behavior going forward, old incidents may not be actionable but can sometimes show a persistent history of problems, and insightful impressions by reasonable people may be valuable, even if just "impressions"", but it may need to go further and specifically mention that there is no guarantee of natural justice or audi alteram partem, and that remedies may therefore be voted on before the accused has a chance to defend themselves or research the nature of the charges against them. Mention should also perhaps be made that there is no sentencing tariff, and therefore no prejudice against implementing similar sanctions on users, the nature and degree of whose alleged misconduct has been very different.
3. Consideration be given to appointing a Public Defender for those inexperienced in the Arbcom system, as User:Bigtimepeace suggests here.

Thanks for any time you can spare to review these suggestions. --John (talk) 21:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Any comments? I realize arbs are terribly busy people but I thought you might have a response to this by now. --John (talk) 18:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

My recollection was that a process similar to a public defender had been done before - Misplaced Pages:Association of Members' Advocates - but was not felt to be helpful. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Clerk precis on user talk

Does the arbitration committee consider this to be an accurate precis of a recent arbitration decision? I don't: it gives the impression that there is still something to do within 15 days and that the mentor changes clause refers to these 15 days, which is nonsense. I say this without wishing to imply any criticism of the clerk, who closed the case with due care and attention.

I have seen similar issues arising in other cases with clerk posts on user talk. What is the purpose of the clerk precis? The parties are surely going to read the full decision, and the precis carries no formal meaning. Further, the clerk cannot be expected to be familiar with the intricacies and subtleties of a case, so that even if a precis is desirable, the clerks are not the right people to provide it, especially not within a tight 24 hour framework. Geometry guy 06:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

What should have been included is the notes left on the proposed decision page. The bits that say "(Note: As reflected in the findings, Mattisse prepared a plan as required by this paragraph while the proposed decision was pending. See next paragraph.)" and "(Note: As reflected in the findings, Mattisse prepared a plan, as required by remedy 1, while the proposed decision was pending. See preceding paragraphs.)". Those notes were intended to avoid exactly this sort of confusion. I'll try and get those notes added to where the decision was published. Carcharoth (talk) 08:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for the clarification and the time you have spent fixing this minor issue. I even want to apologize for raising it and distracting you from more important work, but my contention is that there is a procedural problem here: clerk precis is creating unnecessary work (the date linking case had another recent example of a misleading precis). Simple links from user talk to the full decision would be less problematic. Geometry guy 06:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggest you raise this with the clerks. They may be quite happy to accommodate your request. Carcharoth (talk) 21:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Question concerning an FoF in the recently closed AMIB case

Given that Arbcom found that the blocks of myself and User:MalikCarr by AMIB were improper, could they be expunged from our records? Jtrainor (talk) 23:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I was recused on that case, but will point out your question. As you may have realised, this page isn't followed that closely... Carcharoth (talk) 21:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Tango's new RFA

The committee may be interested to know that I have just re-nominated myself for adminship in accordance with your desysopping of me last year. Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Tango 2. --Tango (talk) 02:09, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Requests for Comment - Arbitration Committee 2

A new Request for Comment has been opened at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Arbitration_Committee_2. This RFC focuses on the composition and selection of the committee; specifically, how many members should be on the Arbitration Committee, how long should their terms be, and how should they be selected? The issue of a Public vs Secret ballot is also under discussion, as is the issue of Support/Oppose voting vs Preferential or Cumulative Selection. Your comments are welcome. Thank you. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 20:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Nominations now open for the Arbitration Committee elections, December 2009

Nominations are now open for candidates to run in the Arbitration Committee elections of December 2009 (WP:ACE2009). In order to be eligible to run, editors must have 1,000 mainspace edits, be at least 18 years of age, and be of legal age in their place of residence; note also that successful candidates must identify to the Wikimedia Foundation before taking their seats. Nominations will be accepted from today, November 10, through November 24, with voting scheduled to begin on December 1. To submit your candidacy, proceed to the candidate statements page. The conditions of the election are currently under discussion; all editors are encouraged to participate. For the coordination cabal,  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Category discussion

This page might get a new policy category; the discussion is at WP:VPP#Misplaced Pages administrative policy. - Dank (push to talk) 23:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Where does the "community" discuss stuff arising from cases?

Hello, I hope this is the right place to post this - I am trying to find my way around "project space" at the moment. I've been interested in reading about the way that disputes are handled on the wiki, and am interested that the Arbitration Committee sometimes refers an issue back to "the community" rather than deciding on it. Specifically I happened to be looking at this one: . (See the first two remedies.) There doesn't seem to be any sort of link back to where these issues were then discussed by the community (if in fact they were at all).

I think that if the committee refers a decision back to the community, they should make a new page for discussing it on (or a new section of an existing page), and then link to it from the decision, so that if you are reading the case decision you can actually follow through to the resulting community discussion without having to have in depth inside knowledge of where these things are to be found. At least I assume that "community" in this sense is broad enough to include less active users who don't necessarily know their way around all the project pages but may still have an interest in the issue?

Thanks. Weedier Mickey (talk) 14:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Moving old cases so that they all have the "Cases" in their name

RE: Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Cases and the cases listed there.

Starting with Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Seeyou, Decided 26 June 2009, all cases are in the Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/ format.

Has there been any discussion about moving older cases, for example, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Obama articles to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Obama articles to make all the arbitration pages uniform? Ikip (talk) 17:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes to a case

I've been following a few arb cases and thought that it would be useful to see recent changes to the case pages. It can be done quite easily using {{RFARcasenav}}, by creating a page with the content {{RFARcasenav|case name=<case name>}} for each case, for example in the form Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Changes/<case name>, and link related changes to that page in {{RFARcasenav}}. An example display is here. Cenarium (talk) 00:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Arbcom and offwiki communication

Question for: Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration/Index/Principles (that pages talk page redirects here)

I wanted to add a Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration/Index/Principles section about off-wiki communications.

Here are all arbcom statements about off-wiki communication.

From the past rulings, I find that:

1. off-wiki harassment is not tolerated.
2. Other types off-wiki communication has not been decided sufficiently enough to draft an overall principle.

   The Jim62sch case states:

   "A user's conduct outside of Misplaced Pages is generally not subject to Misplaced Pages policies or sanctions. This includes actions such as sending private e-mails or commenting on Misplaced Pages and its users in other forums."

   The C68-FM-SV case seems contradictory to Jim62sch:

   "Behavior tending to cause unnecessary division or strife within the Misplaced Pages community is considered harmful...includ interfering with the consensus process through inappropriate canvassing, undue off-wiki coordination, coordinated "meatpuppetry"..."

   Unless, inappropriate canvassing, and coordinated "meatpuppetry" is talking about on-wiki cordination, not off-wiki.

   In the Eastern European disputes case the arbom found off wiki communications occured, but the arbcom did not sanction editors because direct evidence was difficult to find.

Ikip 18:14, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that the current Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/MZMcBride_2/Workshop#Jurisdiction case also deals with off-wiki communication. Okip (formerly Ikip) 01:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Corruption

@ArbCom:

I just can't get my head around this BLP summary motion. I am so angry, so embittered by it. My only hope is that you guys don't fully comprehend the profound implications of what you've tried to do; and might still be made to 'get it'.

There are two huge issues here.

1. ArbCom are a judiciary, not an executive. Your job is to resolve disputes and address bad behaviour. The right to determine and implement policy rests with us, not you. In your official capacity as ArbCom, you have no right to make pronouncements on what policies are desirable or undesirable, good or bad, high or low priority. Your motion is an attempt to use your judicial powers to make binding executive decisions. It an attempt to gain executive power. It is, in short, a coup.
2. Whether you agree with the above or not, you won't dispute that you have pronounced that a policy ought to be pursued. And then, you have tried to use your judicial powers to protect those who pursue that policy! This is down there with the very worst levels of official corruption. The worst, most evil, most corrupt governments subvert their judiciary to protect those who support them, and to persecute their opposition. Militias and secret police. Zimbabwe, Burma, now Misplaced Pages. How can you do this? How can you openly use your judicial powers to promote a political agenda? How can you openly put someone "above the law" because you desire the reform they are pushing? I just cannot fathom the ethical penury of it.

Please tell me that you realise you've monumentally fucked up and will try to fix it.

Hesperian 13:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Very well said. Guettarda (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I must admit I do feel like something of a coup has happened, and that the ensuing civility and disruption are being ignored. I am pleased Scott had the gumption to retract some comments he made, but some other behaviour has been concerning. Having been on arbcom and well aware of the nature of the predicament, I can understand and sympathise to a point with Kirill's motion but I do have misgivings. I think more examples are better off in the case. Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I bet this will just peter out into a gimmick. A lot of times when ancient FAs with no cites are around the place, people will just add a random web ref at the end of a para and hope that nobody checks and only sees that the ref doesn't match up at all, or only covers the last sentence. A lot of people at FAR/FAC don't check at all and just AGF, let alone these spot-checks. ArbCom is about politics so they have to put on a brave face like the leader of a sports team or a political party, unless they are in the unconventional minority, they aren't going to say that there are major problems with nonsense content etc or that there needs to be a leadership change, so they will do this fluff, sabre-rattling etc, but it will just go unenforced and so forth. Heaps of people including admins fake sources etc or bend them out of shape or just cite blogs and rubbish anyway. I know PHG got knocked on the head for having info not match up with refs, but let's face it, look who was complaining about him? Durova, Elonka, Jehochman, Shell Kinney and others. All people who attract a lot of eyes when they campaign for something, so the ArbCom had to react with all the eyes on them. But many other established users including admins are career POV-pushers and have ethnic blocs to protect them. Who's going to bother manning them all the time? And a lot of aggressive admins, despite what they say, only crack down on people who show dissent, although ostensibly it is for POV pushing. They have no interest in the content and any smart POV pusher knows that the only thing they will care much about is their ego massage. I predict that people will just randomly attach fake refs or refs with incomplete coverage to get their stuff out of danger. Many of these sweeping pronouncements have little effect on anything without anything serious on the ground. Misplaced Pages is a lot about gaming metrics and feeling better about oneself by tricking the casual observer with some meaningless stats so that one's prestige increases. Like Robert S McNamara and his silly stats, so all the lieutenants, captains and majors report gamed body counts to get a promotion or being removed from command. A lot of smaller wikis create empty articles with blank infoboxes, section headers only with no prose, or copy the same meaningless sentence over; someone on the Marathi.wp created about 100 cricket biographies which all had the exact same sentence about something cut and pasted. They do this to move up the rankings so that the leaders of the said project look more prestigious and get more praise from the outsider who doesn't look beneath the surface. Or subdivide their edits or let lots of tweaking bots loose so that the # of edits per article skyrockets or create lots of meaningless bureaucracy pages so that their "depth" rating goes up on the meta:List of Wikipedias so that their articles appear more sophisticated, when they aren't. Or simply doing the bare mininum to pass GA/FA (and never improving the article again until it gets hauled to FAR/GAR) or choosing the easiest targets to inflate the WikiProject or personal FA/GA count, because the casual observer will assume that 100 FAs is better than 50 FAs when the 100 FAs could just be 5kb long about a small thing, while the 50 could be all 60kb long about complicated prime ministers or presidents who ruled for a long time. Or simply writing a FA/GA that is not comprehensive enough in the comfort that nobody else on wiki knows about the content and getting a cheap milestone. And so on. People have always added fake references, and there isn't any reason why they won't continue to do so here to pass the token screening. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Bottom line, coup or no coup, it doesn't prevent the troops on the ground from running amok, so it hardly matters. If it is a coup, it's more like awarding oneself hundreds of meaningless medals, like those North Korean generals YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure about a lot of what's said above, but if you arbcom did something wrong, then ignoring dissent like this will work well (feel free to ignore). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Workshop

After a year or two of the original arbitration committee, arbitrator Fred Bauder introduced workshop pages. Prior to that all work in progress was restricted to the evidence page (edited by anyone) and the proposed decision page (edited only by arbitrators and. later, also by clerks). The idea was good: increase community involvement. It was a resounding success. Nowadays parties take it for granted that they can spend a few weeks editing motions condemning one another to various versions of wiki-hell, before the Committee surprises everybody with its own, definitive, decision.

The problem as I see it is that this may have contributed to the tendency of arbitration to be regarded as an extremely acrimonious and undesirable process. Perhaps that's inevitable. But I'd like the committee to consider that, since the Workshop format was basically the initiative of one member, albeit strongly supported by other arbitrators at the time and patronised with enthusiasm by involved parties ever since, it remains within the Committee's gift.

The committee may want to hear some cases on the evidence alone, without workshop. I suggest that arbitrators consider this question when they vote on whether to accept a case, or at some later point during the case. --TS 02:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Too difficult to participate in

I think that it was NewYorkBrad who fairly recently said that the committee would welcome some more involvement/commentary on cases here. I've at least been skimming over most of what shows up here ever since, which leads to a complaint that I'd like to make. I think that the current discussion convention used here is too rigid, stilted, and disjointed to really be effective. I only have a half formed proposal here, so if we could brainstorm on it some that would be nice. I see the definate utility in having "involved parties" make statements within a distinct section, and I think that should be retained. However, I think that it ends up causing more harm then good to force everyone else commenting to follow suit. For one thing it makes cases which garner any significant commentary huge, and like I said above the discussion can quickly become disjointed and confusing. My proposal is that, when a new case, motion, request, or whatever is started, that there should be a dedicated section for each of the involved parties, and then a Discussion section for everyone to comment about the case. We could, and probably should, then come up with some guidelines on limiting sniping by involved parties in the proposed discussion area, but I think that this would help facilitate things here overall.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)