Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:59, 16 November 2006

Question(s) from xaosflux

1. As functions assigned by ArbCom, describe your view on the assignments of Oversight and Checkuser permissions, including thresholds for (or even the possibility of) new applicants. (Question from — xaosflux 02:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

   It goes without saying that both are extremely sensitive areas, and should only be granted to a very few experienced and sound editors, if anyone. The current practice of granting both to Arbcom members makes sense to me; we shouldn't trust anyone with one and not the other. (I think the question of "Would you trust this person to know where you live?" should be uppermost in voters' minds, however much attention they give to Wikiphilosophies and which committees the candidate was on and suchlike.)

   With Checkuser I don't think I can state any more than the obvious; if handled badly, it would violate the privacy policy that appears at the bottom of every page on Misplaced Pages. On the other hand, it's a thankless task due to the necessity of not giving editors more information than absolutely necessary. Investigating a Checkuser case is a long and difficult process, and the Arbitration Committee members have the Arbitration Committee to deal with, so I think that at least one or two non-arbcom Checkusers are useful, if we have editors that are sound and experienced enough, and I think the non-Arbcom Checkusers we've had have been exceptional.

   Oversight is an interesting case. We should restrict oversight permissions to as few users as possible, because the more people that can see Overseen revisions, the less point there is in having it at all. So the ideal would surely be to restrict it to the Arbitration Committee, and other 'trusted by default' members such as Jimbo. However, I don't know how big the Oversight workload is - I don't know how many revisions get Overseen (that's the point of it), and requests are posted to a private email address. I'm stuck with stating the obvious, which is that we should restrict it as much as possible while retaining enough Overseers to deal with how ever many requests we get; and those few that we do choose should be the most trustworthy and experienced of Wikipedians. --Sam Blanning 16:05, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from Mailer Diablo

1. Express in a short paragraph, using any particular issue/incident that you feel strongly about (or lack thereof) in the past, on why editors must understand the importance of the ArbCom elections and making wise, informed decisions when they vote.

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/MONGO demonstrated how Arbcom has more to deal with than simply edit warring and incivility; in that case we had an outside group entangled with ours. The emphatic and decisive action taken by the Arbcom in that case demonstrates how the Arbcom needs to be able to think outside the box of probations and paroles if it wants to create lasting and enforcable solutions to disputes; in return, we have to elect members that can be trusted to use this power wisely.

2. Imagine. Say Jimbo grants you the authority to make, or abolish one policy with immediate and permanent effect, assuming no other limitations, no questions asked. What would that be?

I would get rid of Misplaced Pages:No personal attacks. We'd lose nothing, because it's redundant with Misplaced Pages:Civility, and it's more open to abuse and wikilawyering. On the one hand valid accusations of tendentious editing, sockpuppetry etc. can be miscast as personal attacks, and on the other it's perfectly possible to be incivil while carefully avoiding direct attacks (otherwise known as being passive-aggressive).

3. It is expected that some successful candidates will receive checkuser and oversight privileges. Have you read and understood foundation policies regulating these privileges, and able to help out fellow Wikipedians on avenues (e.g. WP:RFCU) in a timely manner should you be granted either or both of them?

To the first question, yes. To the second, I come from a less technical background than many Wikipedians, and on a 15-strong Committee, plus several others with Checkuser privileges, it's possible if not likely that someone more able and willing than I would be a better choice to handle Checkuser requests. Of course, I'd be perfectly willing to do it if it became necessary.

Removing revisions doesn't have the same technical aspect as connecting editors' IPs together, so I would be more than happy to help out there if needed - as I said above, I don't know what the queue of requests is like in the same way that we can all see the size of requests for Checkuser.

4. What is integrity, accountability and transparency to you on the ArbCom?

Accountability and transparency are important but secondary to making the right judgements. There have been important cases recently where sensitive information wasn't released as it wouldn't have benefited anyone. At the moment we can see how each arbitrator votes on proposed decisions, and some reasoning behind them; I think that's sufficient accountability. It's difficult to imagine a situation where an Arbcom remedy clearly damaged Misplaced Pages, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Integrity I'm not sure how to answer. Even if this is an election, we're not politicians, we're unpaid volunteers. I don't think the integrity of any of the candidates are in doubt. --Sam Blanning 17:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

5. Humour, a tradition of Wikipedian culture, has seen through several controversies in recent history. This is including but not limited to bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, parody policies/essays, April Fools' Day, whole userpages, userboxes... Do you think that they are all just harmless fun, or that they are all nonsense that must go?

My personal opinion is that most of BJAODN isn't funny. It should be replaced with users being allowed to host their own mini-BJAODNS in their own userspace, consisting entirely of material they themselves thought was funny enough to take responsibility for - that would set a higher threshhold on what nonsense got preserved. BJAODN suffers from something of a tragedy of the commons problem - like bash.org, everyone just dumps any old nonsense in. And without a centralised 'funny vandalism will go here' venue, we'd eliminate the problem of vandals being tempted to aim for BJAODN. (There's also the problem that BJAODN entries are often copied and pasted while the history is deleted, frequently breaking GFDL, but if I start talking legal I'm going to look like even more of a miserable old git, so I won't.)

April Fool's Day should be restricted to userspace, and possibly something on the main page, as long as it's only be about Misplaced Pages-related jokes like the Encyclopaedia Britannica takeover - at no point should encyclopaedic information or policies be falsified (e.g. having "1923 - Henry VIII came from Mars to impregnate as many women as possible for the birth of a new master-race hybrid" in the "On this Day" section would be out). This is a worldwide encyclopaedia, and April Fool's Day isn't celebrated everywhere; the same rules should apply to any holiday, that while the community should be free to acknowledge it, it shouldn't be forced on everyone else.

Parody essays such as WP:ROUGE and WP:SPIDER are a good thing - they lighten the atmosphere, and often they have a serious point behind them (such as that if you accuse someone of being a rogue/rouge admin, you're probably suffering from MPOV).

Humour on userpages and userboxes should always be fine so long as the usual constraints on the use of userpages are met (i.e, most stuff goes as long as you're here to write the encyclopaedia). With userboxes, I would personally prefer that all userboxes are substed rather than transcluded, and, as with all things funny, humourous userboxes become significantly less funny every time someone copies it. When someone creates a userbox that makes me laugh, he's being funny. When someone else copies it onto their userpage by entering two words in a double curly bracket, that's not being funny, that's being a hyena. --Sam Blanning 23:13, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Question(s) from maclean

Do you have any dispute resolution experience in any of the following areas: Misplaced Pages:Mediation Committee, Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal, Misplaced Pages:Third opinion, Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment, or Misplaced Pages:Association of Members' Advocates? If not successful in this Arbitration Committee election, will you seek a position on the Mediation Committee? ·maclean 05:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I've mediated one case under the Mediation Cabal - I put myself forward as mediator another time but the matter solved itself without mediation actually starting. I've responded to several requests for comment, less so on WP:3O but it's an interesting alternative and something I might look more at. I don't intend on trying my hand at advocacy - I can't help feeling that it can be something of a waste of time. My only experience with advocates was one when questioned me on a 3RR block I gave, which had left one of the recipients extremely miffed (he claimed to have left, I'm not aware if he's come back or not). The problem was that the 3RR block was a) totally uncontentious and b) had occurred many weeks before the Advocate brought it up. I basically repeated my justification and he went away again. I really couldn't see the point from either end.

If I wasn't successful, then I do hope to mediate some more Cabal cases, and if I felt good enough about the results I would apply for the Committee. --Sam Blanning 23:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from AnonEMouse

Warning: Most of these are intended to be tough. Answering them properly will be hard. I don't expect anyone to actually withdraw themselves from nomination rather than answer these, but I do expect at least some to seriously think about it!

The one consolation is that your competitors for the positions will be asked them too. Notice that there are about one thousand admins, and about a dozen arbcom members, so the process to become an arbcom member may be expected to be one hundred times harder. (Bonus question - do you think I hit that difficulty standard?) :-)

1. A current Arbcom case, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy is concerned with the decision of whether or not a proposed policy has consensus or not, and therefore whether or not it should be a policy/guideline. Whether or not the Arbcom has or should have the power of making this decision is hotly disputed. Does Arbcom have this power? Should it have this power? Why or why not?

   As you can guess from my posts in that case's Workshop, no I don't. Arbitration Committee decisions are binding, and that's why I don't feel it should rule on content in articles - it would create a clot on the article in question, a sort of elephant/mantrap in the room that you would have to carefully step around every time you pressed 'edit'. The same applies to policies - unless there is a pressing need, they should remain open to editing. If we need a child protection policy badly, then the Board, Jimbo, legal counsel or someone on that kind of level should be the one to hand it down.

2. Similarly, a recently closed Arbcom case Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano barely dodged the possibly similar issue of whether the Arbcom can, or should, determine whether Bureaucrats properly made someone an administrator. (Discussed, for example, here). The current arbcom dodged the question (didn't reach agreement one way or the other, and ended up leaving it alone by omission), but you don't get to. :-) Does the arbcom have this power? Should it?

   Yes, I think the Arbcom should be able to review bureaucrats' decisions and conduct, as it should with editors, administrators and Arbitrators for that matter. But it should also be able to decline to do so if it wishes. In the case you refer to, I think the Arbcom simply didn't feel that the issue required them to either reinforce it or overturn it.

3. Various arbcom decisions (can't find a link right now - bonus points for finding a link to an arbcom decision saying this!) have taken into account a user's service to the Misplaced Pages. Several times they have written that an otherwise good user that has a rare instance of misbehaviour can be treated differently than a user whose similar misbehaviour is their main or sole contribution to the Misplaced Pages. Do you agree or not, and why?

   I think it's self-evident that an isolated bad incident is less of a problem than an editor who is frequently problematic. Blocks are, as everyone knows, designed to be preventative and not punitive; the same arguably applies to probations, paroles and similar remedies. They're only necessary if an editor is otherwise going to be a problem in the future.

4. If you agree with the above point, which service to the encyclopedia is more valuable - administration, or writing very good articles? For example, what happens when two editors, an administrator and a good article writer, come into conflict and/or commit a similar infraction - how should they be treated? Note that there are relatively the same number of current administrators and featured articles on the Misplaced Pages - about 1000 - however, while relatively few administrators have been de-adminned, many former featured articles have been de-featured, so there have been noticeably more featured articles written than administrators made. This is a really tough one to answer without offending at least one important group of people, and I will understand if you weasel your way out of answering it, but it was one of the issues brought up in the recent Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano, so you can imagine it may come up again.

   I can't give an A or B answer to that question. Without administration writing good articles would be impossible (if only due to vandalism), and without editors writing good articles administration would be pointless. No two Wikipedians have the same skills, the same background or the same inclinations, so no two Wikipedians are of equal value. Because of that I simply don't think your hypothetical question can be answered - there are too many other factors involved in every conceivable case. The most likely answer is that if both committed in an equally bad action in exactly the same circumstances then both should be equally sanctioned, but unless they're clones that's an extremely unlikely situation. I'm sorry if you consider that 'weaseling out' of this question but it's the only answer I can give.

5. While some Arbcom decisions pass unanimously, many pass with some disagreement. I don't know of any Arbcom member who hasn't been in the minority on some decisions. Find an Arbcom decision that passed, was actually made that you disagree with. Link to it, then explain why you disagree. (If you don't have time or inclination to do the research to find one - are you sure you will have time or inclination to do the research when elected? If you can't find any passed decisions you disagree with, realize you are leaving yourself open to accusations of running as a rubber stamp candidate, one who doesn't have any opinions that might disagree with anyone.)

   The Arbcom-mandated notice on Bogdanov Affair is ugly, intrusive and unnecessary - the sockpuppets attacking the article know full well why they're being blocked and reverted. All of us, including the Arbcom, should remember that editors are dwarfed in number by readers, and self-references of this kind are intrusive, however well-intentioned. The other remedy, the article and talk page ban, I support.

6. It has been noted that the diligent User:Fred Bauder writes most of the initial Arbcom decisions -- especially principles, and findings of fact, but even a fair number of the remedies. (Then a fair number get opposed, and refined or don't pass, but he does do most of the initial work.) Do you believe this is: right; neither right nor wrong but acceptable; or wrong? When you get elected, what do you plan to do about it?

   As I've said in my candidate statement, I don't think it's wrong, as Fred Bauder has the judgement and experience to take on this role, but it would be even better if there was some more variety in who takes the lead. As for what I would do about it, I would try to take the lead on at least some cases - I think everyone submitting themselves for the Arbitration Committee should have the confidence to be able to make that effort at some point. I think we're likely to see that anyway, as we're going to get at least 3 new arbitrators (assuming Jayjg stands and he and UninvitedCompany both win) and as many as 5; that's bound to provide some new energy, which should be welcomed.

7. For those who are administrators only - how do you feel about non-administrators on the arbcom? Note that while "sure, let them on if they get elected" is an easy answer, there are issues with not having the ability to view deleted articles, and either not earning the community trust enough to become an admin, or not wanting the commensurate duties. Or do you believe that non-administrators are a group that need representation on the arbcom? AnonEMouse 14:06, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

   I think that if you have the experience, judgement and trustworthiness to become an Arbitrator, becoming an admin shouldn't be a problem. I believe that if a non-administrator is elected, he should automatically be granted sysop status. That way they can continue being a non-admin if they lose the election if that's what they prefer, but if they win they will have all the powers necessary to fulfill their function (as you say, seeing deleted articles and so on).

   I don't believe that non-administrators need "representation" on the Arbcom, because that implies that they're somehow separate from administrators. They're not. Adminship is just a set of extra buttons - I stop short of describing it as "no big deal", but it's by no means some sort of Misplaced Pages elite status. We don't need non-admins on the Committee to provide some sort of 'non-admin perspective' - if an admin's perspective changes just because he can block people, then never mind being on the Arbcom, he shouldn't be an admin. --Sam Blanning 19:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from John Reid

Q: 1. Who are you?

A: Sam Blanning.

Q: 2. Are you 13? Are you 18?

A: To seek the Holy Grail.

Q: 3. Should ArbCom arbitrate policy disputes or any other matter outside user conduct issues? Why or why not?

A: To somewhat rehash what I've said above; Arbcom shouldn't restrict itself to remedies that relate to one specific user, as that would prevent it resolving issues in the long term; measures such as article probation are an example of what may be needed. But the Arbcom should continue to decline to rule directly on content. Misplaced Pages is a wiki - each page is edited extremely frequently, many times a day on some articles. The community as a whole makes thousands of edits a day. The arbcom, by contrast, makes around 10 decisions a month on average. The Arbcom cannot say "The article must contain this, and not contain that" without getting left behind by events, while the article carries the remedy around like a ball and chain. (My support for the decision on ED links may appear to contradict this, but I don't count external link blacklisting as a content issue, because external links sections are not part of articles, they're additional to them.)
Policies are slightly different, but with our core policies firmly established (WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:CIVIL, etc), and the higher powers having shown their willingness to establish policy when needed (the recent additions to WP:CSD) it's difficult to imagine in what situation we'd have a policy proposal that couldn't obtain consensus, yet was still essential enough for the Arbcom to have to mandate its introduction, and yet not urgent enough for the Board, Jimbo or someone at a similar level to make it policy themselves. This is my attitude to the WP:COPPA case.
But on the other hand... AAARRRGGGggghhhhhhhh...

Question from Ragesoss

In the Misplaced Pages context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?

The proposal that Scientific point of view should be established as a basis from which to write scientific articles was resoundingly rejected, and I think with good reason. Writing from a neutral point of view should ensure that the scientific consensus is properly represented. Meanwhile notable minority opinions should be covered, but only to the degree they deserve; that's what we have the undue weight proviso of NPOV for. I would object to almost any conceivable proposal that NPOV should be deviated from just because a particular point of view (e.g. scientific) is "right" - even when it is. --Sam Blanning 17:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from Badbilltucker

Thank you for volunteering to take on this task, and for putting yourself through having to answer these questions. For what it's worth, these particular questions are going to all the candidates.

1. I've noticed that a total of thriteen people have resigned from the committee, and that there is currently one vacancy open in one of the tranches. Having members of the committee resign sometime during their term could create problems somewhere down the road. What do you think are the odds that you yourself might consider resigning during the course of your term, and what if any circumstances can you envision that might cause you to resign? Also, do you think that possibly negative feelings from others arising as a result of a decision you made could ever be likely to be cause for your own resignation?

I think it's unlikely that I'd resign, but then I wouldn't be running if I thought otherwise. It's obviously not desirable that we should lose Arbitrators; but on the other hand, the committee is large enough to not be irreparably damaged by temporarily going down to 14 or 13 arbitrators.

As for resigning due to community negative feeling, it's unlikely that I'd resign due to an Arbitration Committee decision (as those are done by majority), and I've been here long enough that I don't believe I'd ever do something on my own that would lose the confidence of the community.

2. There may well arise cases where a dispute based on the inclusion of information whose accuracy is currently a point of seemingly reasonable controversy, possibly even bitter controversy, in that field of study. Should you encounter a case dealing with such information, and few if any of your colleagues on the committee were knowledgeable enough in the field for them to be people whose judgement in this matter could be completely relied upon, how do you think you would handle it?

I think the fact that the Arbcom doesn't rule directly on content (for my stance on this, see above) means it's not necessary for it to have expertise in the field under dispute. One of the things you get told if you close enough AfD discussions is "How can you think yourself capable of closing that discussion when you're not knowledgable about x, if you did know about x or you wouldn't have deleted it" - to which the answer is usually "we need verifiability, not truth". We don't depend on editors' personal expertise to write our articles, we depend above all on reliable sources. In the end, when people have to edit war, bully and generally act tendentiously, it's likely that the information they're seeking to include violates WP:V, WP:NPOV or similar core policies. There are a lot of people (outside Misplaced Pages) who think that "truth by consensus" can't possibly work, but I haven't yet seen a case where consensus was clearly in the wrong, and the lone crusader for truth was in the right. --Sam Blanning 18:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from Giano

What is your view on the IRC Admin Channel. What subjects do you, and would you if elected, see fit to discuss on the IRC Admin channel? Why would you not discuss the same subjects On-Wiki. Giano 20:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I've never used it, or any Misplaced Pages IRC channel, and I would continue not to do so as an Arbitrator unless something specifically required it. There are, at a quick count, 15 IRC channels that relate to the English Misplaced Pages to varying degrees, and unlike the mailing lists, which can be read at leisure, seeing something 'important' depends on being there at a specific time, so I can't see that use of the IRC channels affects ability to be on the Arbcom.

While discussion may take place on IRC, it can't be used as a venue for deciding policy, justifying non-trivial administrative action ("non-trivial" defined as any issue where someone might ask "Please explain the reasons behind this" on-wiki), editing or anything similar. Chat logs cannot be posted (see m:IRC channels) so even leaving aside the issue of whether it's appropriate, you can't say "We worked this out in IRC yesterday evening (and lest we forget, "yesterday evening" for Americans is the middle of the night for Europeans), here's the chat logs". Attempts to present any kind of off-wiki discussion as consensus for on-wiki action have generally been disastrous, the Blu Aardvark unblocking fiasco and the fair use image gallery policy debacle being the most obvious recent examples. --Sam Blanning 02:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Question(s) from Dakota

If elected to the Arbitration Committee will you continue active editing? Will you not lose interest in contributing to articles. Will you be available to any users who seek your help or advice.

--Dakota 13:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a prolific editor (as in writing articles, as opposed to administration) as it is, though I do create and expand articles occasionally as can be seen from my userpage. I expect that my level of contribution would remain roughly the same. As for help and advice, being on the Arbitration Committee means that it may not be advisable to actively step into heated disputes, as they may later go to Arbitration; however, I would be perfectly happy to give advice as I always have. Misplaced Pages:Help desk is one of my most frequently-visited pages and I don't see this changing. --Sam Blanning 20:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Question by Bhadani

• Would you please share evidences publicly warranting an indefinite block of User:Anwari Begum, particularly her IP address?
• Do you believe that the ArbCom members should stop contributing to the main spaces and confine their activities to the resolution of disputes only? In case, your answer is No, please enlighten me on how would you continue to enrich the main space after being elected as a member of the ArbCom? I am requesting you to kindly elaborate the exact steps that you propose to take to continue to be active as a contributor to the main space. Please also share with the community the names of the ArbCom members who are most active and who are least active in main spaces in your assessment. I request you to please share the names to understand the level which you feel are acceptable. I do understand that the acceptable level would differ from editor to editor.
• Do you believe that to resolve disputes relating to contents, domain knowledge of the contents are secondary? Thus, for example, a dispute relating to the contents of a particular page may be resolved by reference to the materials available within English Misplaced Pages? Or, the ArbCom members are expected to make themselves familiar with the issues involved by actually making references to the citations and references available within and outside English Misplaced Pages?

Regards. --Bhadani 13:28, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from JzG

Open-mindedness and the ability to revise one's own position in response to new evidence seems to me to be an important factor in considering ArbCom cases. Can you please provide an example of a situation where your initial judgement of a situation turned out to be wrong, and show how you dealt with it? Guy (Help!) 13:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)