Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Kevin Gorman/Questions

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Questions from Antony–22

2. In general, does enforcing civility harm free speech? Does it help it?

   I don't think a categorical statement can be made here, and would encourage everyone to read Sumana's keynote from WikiConf USA 2014 that goes over a lot of related issues. It's not a binary issue; an environment where civility is not enforced (or where there is no civility enforcement mechanism exists) results in a space that drives a lot of people away who would otherwise be valuable contributors. This is especially important at a time when our collaborations with institutions are increasing. At the same time, an environment where civility is enforced to an absurdly strict degree drives away another category of valuable contributors. I think that "Civility vs free speech" is a false dichotomy, and that the debate we've often framed that way is more like "Liberty vs hospitality" (as Sumana put it,) or "The free speech and participation of some vs the free speech and participation of others." I don't think that historically we've struck a very good balance regarding civility enforcement, and think we need to re-examine it, with a particular eye towards the fact that we're here to build an encyclopedia encompassing the sum of all human knowledge - or at least as close to it as we can reasonably get - and make sure that whatever method of enforcing civility we tend towards ends up attracting more contributors that add value to the encyclopedia rather than fewer. The balance we arrive at may mean that some existing Wikimedians are driven away, but if we do find a proper balance, will attract new contributors that pose more value to the encyclopedia than any Wikimedians who we end up losing. (By losing Wikimedians I also generally don't mean losing them by booting them out, just losing them by shifting community values in a way less accepting of gross incivility than it has been in the past creating an environment they may find less desirable to participate in themselves - I don't imagine doing anything like arbcom banning people over civility issues ever, if at all.

That talk is actually what inspired me to ask this very question! Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 07:55, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Haha, that's a bit funny. Sumana, though sadly no longer with the Foundation, worked for the WMF both times I was there, and we had quite a few conversations in person about issues of civility and harrassment. She's one of the Foundation (now ex) people I have the most respect for, especially with regards to her ability to pick up subtle nuance where others don't. Using the framework she put foward in her keynote, I certainly thing the pendulum has swung too far one way currently - but I'm also not the civility police as I'm occasionally accused of being. (I certainly have a lot of respect for Sue, Zack Exley, and a number of other WMFers past and present besides Sumana. Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:27, 15 November 2015 (UTC))

2. 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 doesn't require a pattern of events; harassment does. Neither one is a good thing, but harrassment is a worse thing both in terms of contributor retention and in terms of "Other Wikipedians are human, and treating other humans like that just isn't a cool thing." Incivility poses both a significant problem in retaining existing editors, and an even greater one in attracting new editors. It's quite easy to imagine a new editor whose contributions could be invaluable - but will never be made - taking two looks at some of our more higher profile forums and saying "Screw that, I have a day job, I don't feel a need to volunteer time in an atmosphere like this." I think the pendulum of civility, like that of harrassment, has swung too far in one direction and needs to rebalanced - although I would like to note that "rebalanced" definitely doesn't equate to "swinging way too far in the opposite direction and banning everyone who says anything remotely uncivil."

4. 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've done an awful lot of press outreach related to Wikimedia related to many issues, and I can tell you that releasing a statement, no matter how well written, is not at all guaranteed to reduce the factual accuracies in reporting about the incident - no matter how well the statement is written. I can imagine situations where it's appropriate for Arbcom to release a statement like this en banc - but I certainly don't envision them happening very commonly. (To give you an idea of the rarity I imagine this being a good idea - I'd put it on par with the rarity with which blacking out ENWP as a form of protest is appropriate.) Generally speaking, I'd much rather individual Wikipedians reach out to outlets to correct factual accuracies as they appear (and to be clear, if I was elected and was subsequently approached by a reporter asking for a comment about something, there's a good chance I'd give it - but I'd make it absolutely clear that it was in my capacity as an individual Wikipedian, rather than on behalf of arbcom.)

6. 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.

   To be honest, I feel pretty strongly that it would be a bad idea for Arbcom to attempt to brief the press about this case. Few arbcom decisions are picked up in the media, and for an even smaller subset of those would it be appropriate for arbcom to write a press briefing. This is unlikely to be a case noticed by the press in detail (unless arbcom explicitly draws press attention to it,) and unless a situation arises that I don't forsee arising, I don't think it would be appropriate for arbcom to write a press briefing on AE2.

8. 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?

   Yes, I absolutely believe it's a valid concern - not only with regards to the participation of people from academic and cultural institutions, but the increased paid staff base at many overseas chapters, and the increased total staff count and hierachalization of the Foundation. One of the more disappointing comments I ever heard from a grant applicant (I am involved as a volunteer in reviewing potential grants on meta) from a chapter can be accurately summed up as "We need money to pay people to do X, because ever since people realized they could get paid to do X, we stopped getting volunteers to do it." For clarification of my own role in the trend in the past: bluntly, I've never been paid half as much as I expect most people thought, and even while working fulltime as WiR at UCB, I was taking side contracts to meet my living expenses. I wish I had a better answer than I do to ensure that the increasing number of people who are making a living related to Wikimedia doesn't take the wind out of the sails of volunteers, past, present, and future. Wiki-PR certainly didn't increase anyone's motivation to edit related articles, and even people who follow the brightline rule (or the extensive flowchart CREWE made, etc) tend to have a neutral or negative effect on the motivation of many who interact with them. I am definitely less concerned with academic and cultural institutions (Dominic may be a full time employee - but the National Archives' contributions wouldn't be possible if he wasn't,) than I am with the contributions of for-profits and those of employees of a government paid to slant Wikipedia's content one way or another. (I also know that WMF grantmaking is aware of my concerns regarding chapter staff.) I wish I could throw up a better answer, but for now the best I can really do is to say that I'm aware of the concern, agree that it's a concern, have put quite a bit of thought in to it, and am more than happy to hear suggestions or ideas from others about it (although I'd include 'potential volunteer contributor base' as a major concern in addition to our existing volunteer contributor base.)

Questions from Collect

2. 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?

   Yes. I think it would be a significant error to always assume sanctions are necessary. Neelix recent had a case opened against him 10-0-0 which was closed as soon as he resigned his bit under a cloud - and I think that was the correct close to the case. There was a case earlier this year (which in full disclosure I was a party to, primarily from memory because I named someone else party to the case,) where the only actual 'sanctions' pretty much consisted of minorly trouting BK and GW and further instructing the arbs that drafted the decision to amend a couple arb policy pages to bring them in line with some clarifications contained in the decision. I can picture other scenarios - such as a case where, despite the fact that it was appropriately accepted in the first place, the involved parties made up during the proceedings and there was no of a nature severe enough to require anything beyond that and perhaps a few trouts of various sizes. I'm sure I could think of other scenarios, but don't want to get way too far in to tldr territory. Where sanctions can be avoided, I'd prefer to avoid them - partly because we're here to build an encyclopedia, not scold either other - and many arbcom sanctions fall close to that. I have mixed feelings about suspending a case just because someone declares their departure (temporary or permanent) from Wikipedia, but (and cases where suspension like that have been considered have normally involved the conduct of just one party) I'd like to at least see a pretty rapid on-wiki wrapup of most such cases followed by in camera examination of the issues involved by arbcom and either a sketched out idea of appropriate remedies when the party returns (and if they returned the sketch would serve as an idea on how to hold any on-wiki proceedings, depending on the exact behavior involved, including the person's desire to participate in proceedings, the time elapsed, and the nature of the events that led to the proceedings, among other things. I would see no reason to resurrect a two year old case that involved no dastardly behavior, and even in a case just three months old if the parties were amenable and we thought it would serve the job as effectively as a full case I'd rather effectively see a "consent decree" - a motion agreed to by the directly concerned parties and arbcom, setting out any remedies like tbans/ibans/other restrictions.) In more severe cases where the primary figure left, I would generally prefer an in camera investigation and vote on remedies, followed by making them public (at least in part) and enacting them. Even in the more severe cases where arbcom found, say, a desysopping and a handful of tbans or ibans warranted, I think probably only the desysopping need to be announced unless the person returned (and that's just because of the one-two punch that not all admin tools leave logs, and a malicious admin account that did return could do quite a bit of damage of they put their mind to it.) It's worth remembering that people whose behavior is examined by arbcom - even whose bad, or abhorrent, and that lengthy public investigations in to them after they've left - are still people, and such investigations are likely to be hurtful (and may in some cases draw the editor back when it's not productive for themselves or ENWP.

4. 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?

   By the technical letter of WP:INVOLVED, potentially depending on the context the original comment was made in, but from any practical point of view, no. We have enough administrators that if administrative action is needed, another administrator could and should take it instead of whoever made the initial comment.

2. 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?

   Collect, would you mind splitting this in to two questions? I see the first half as quite different than the second. I'll answer in more detail at a later point, but I do think especially where there's reason to believe that such 'substantial reasons for absence' are legitimate that we should accomodate them where possible, as long as it doesn't generate further significant drama or harm to the community. To use an example regarding myself - I was hospitalized for a couple weeks in January, a dozen administrators could've confirmed it offhand, and it would've have been easy for arbcom as a whole to confirm it. If I had somehow been up at arbcom on a behavioral case at that time, it would've been a bit unfair to me (or anyone else in such a situation) to be expected to either figure out a way to respond or defend themselves in such a situation... but for almost all things I could've been before arbcom before, being in an ICU 1.5 with very limited internet ability would've also pretty much stopped my ability to do whatever dastardly thing I was accused of doing.

Question from Altamel

2. What are your standards for deciding when to recuse from a case? Are there any topic areas or disputes where you feel your recusal is warranted?

   I will recuse from any case where I believe my current or former involveent in a subject (and I mean this much more loosely than the letter of WP:INVOLVED) brings in to serious question my ability to execute the role I was elected to fulfull. I would heavily consider recusal requests from colleagues, parties to the case, and the general community as long as I felt the requests to recuse were rooted in significant issues, and not just because someone didn't expect to like the way I'd vote or draft a case. I have been around and active enough that it would take a while for me to list every editor who I'd recuse from. I will say that I'll recuse in cases where Eric Corbett is a primary figure, although I have no intention of recusing in civility cases in general, and would not recusing or only partially recusing in a case involving Eric if either Eric's actions were absolutely black and white (similar to the exception built in to WP:INVOLVED) if I viewed the case as a particularly important one regarding civility in general. I'd also not recuse (unless Eric asked me to) in a case where Eric was the subject of strongly inappropriate behavior coming from other editors. I'll categorically recuse from any case involving the University of California system barring extremely unusual situations, because I've been a student and contractor for the system, and have also strongly criticized their handling of issues involving sexual violence on their campuses (to the point that I may be deposed in related cases, and may take them to court myself independently to force compliance with the California Public Records Act. I'd recuse from cases involving members of the Men's rights movement as such except in very unusual circumstances, but not necessarily from other movements that they are frequently associated with, like GamerGate, and depending on the circumstances, may not always recuse from situations involving figures or organizations that are associated in the public mind with the MRM. In general, it's likely that I'd recuse pretty much whenever requested by another arb - let alone multiple arbs - and due to the deep respect I hold for her, would also recuse from any case that User:Keilana asked me to (and I would coincidentally also recuse from cases where her behavior was a main issue.) This isn't meant to be a be-all ends-all, just a few examples to give you an idea.

Question from Rcsprinter123

2. In your own words, please explain the purpose of the Arbitration Committee and why its existence is necessary. And what, if any, changes or reforms would you support regarding the structuring and processes of Wikipedia's arbitration system?

   Ideally, disputes on Wikipedia are resolved via consensus. Unfortunately, this isn't always possible, and some disputes present a significant enough disruption to the project that the existence of a body empowered to break the back of the dispute - to cut the Gordian knot - is necessary. I have a few additional thoughts about arb's current functioning here - but in essence I think arbcom needs to act more quickly in general, be more willing to take steps that break the back of truly intractable problems (and to do so quickly,) and with more understanding of the stress that being the subject of an arbcom case often puts on the primary subjects of the case, especially when decisions are late (as many of them are.) Most people punished by arbcom will continue to be members of our community - and a prolonged public shaming of them far more often than not will both not result in their behavior being improved, and will not result in their motivation of contributing to Wikipedia increasing. In the relatively few instances where people before arbcom need to be permanently removed from our community, such removal should both be done quickly (in the interests of ensuring the health of the community, and humanely - as even if they can't be members of our community, they're still people, and we still shouldn't unnecessarily cause them mental distress.)

Question from Yash!

2. 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? Yash! 12:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

   I'm not sure I have time to respond to this in full :) I think the GGTF decision made at least a couple of significant errors. Gamergate, though dealing with a lot of the same issues, I think did a much better job at breaking the back of the problem at hand. I think the motion to desysop Neelix should've easily passed (though luckily he was amenable to requesting his own desysop - a question which I think AC probably should have asked him before starting a full case.) This isn't an objection to a specific case, but in general, I'm a bit perturbed by the sheer amount of content covered by either arb or community sanctions, and think a hard cull (or at least hard narrowing) is in order. For instance, given the behavior that triggered the motion, I'm not sure that it's necessary for there to be sanctions about India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan broadly construed.

Questions from Gerda Arendt

Thank you for stepping forward!

2. 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?

   I note that Drmies' eventual close mentions that there was a previous discussion of whether or not that article should have an infobox. Despite claims made by the anti-infobox folks in the previous discussion, I don't see any clear consensus in the first discussion - 4-2 numerically, and many of the people in support of removal just going "per above" or "per project discussions." I don't believe that Wikiprojects can reasonably mandate the appearance of articles under their purview, and thus view "per project discussions" etc as extremely weak !votes in my view. I don't see the first discussion that Drmies' references as having a firm enough consensus in either direction as to be remotely binding. The second discussion is clearly more in favor of having an infobox in the article, and if that discussion existed in a vacuum, I'd see consensus in it to restore the infobox (and probably to trout someone for WP:OWN.) However, since both discussions exist, I would probably have closed with a statement strongly suggesting the use of an advertised RfC or other method to bring in additional previously inactive on that page !voters to form a much more clear consensus than the two discussions combined currently offer. (Even over the two discussions, I still find general favorability towards adding the infobox back, but an RfC that draws more participants would decrease the chance of future conflict over the same issue on the same page.)

4. 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."

   I will expand on this answer, but as an initial comment I'd like to note that AE-the-board is different from enforcing arbitration decisions. AE-the-board is at its best at handling incidents that don't involve people like Eric (or for that matter, me - I'm not under specific restrictions, but I do edit often enough in areas covered by broader arb sanctions.) AE-the-board in it's current form isn't well suited to dealing with people who are 'vested contributors' (I assume you at least get the gist of what I mean by that term - and I'm including both myself and Eric in it,) and it's hard to see how AE-the-board could be made well suited to handle such contributors. It's also pretty astounding to me how many standing sanctions there are that cover whole topic areas - they easily cover at least half the world's population, if not more, a number I think needs to be drastically reduced and condensed - it's remarkable to me that even someone who watches arbcom cases fairly closely can't be expected to realize every set of sanctions any given article they are editing is covered by. Eric is a particularly interesting case study in terms of how personal sanctions do and do not work - he's followed his civility restriction quite well generally speaking, while not being willing to follow his gender restriction in the same way, which suggests it clearly needs to be revisited. Given some of his past behavior I think there needs to be some sort of restriction related to gender discussions on Eric, but one that he can live with. With most users I'd suggest private discussions with them to find a remedy that is palatable to the user while resolving the issue, but I would be surprised if Eric would engage in such discussions with arbcom in general, let alone me specifically (if I happen to be elected.) I do think that AE-the-board works quite well for many cases, and that an individual admin enforcing arb remedies also works quite well in many instances, but that there's a category of user (including both Eric and myself) where neither process is likely to work well. It's an issue that I need to put more thought in to (as well as gather the thoughts of other people) but one initial thought would be allowing for the possibility of direct escalation to ARCA with the possibility of doing so anonymously, since with many users in that class, retaliation against the complainant could be a legitimate concern (whether by the person they are directly complaining about, or someone else on their behalf.)

Questions from Guerillero

Thank you for running for the hardest and most thankless job on the project. Many of these questions are sourced from actual cases, discussions, and problems over the past year. Enjoy!

Subcommittees

2. The Audit Subcommittee was created in 2009 to investigate improper tool usage of our Check Users and Oversighters. Currently, neither the community nor the committee can decide how to handle it. There have been calls to completely disband the subcommittee, transfer its role to the functionaries en banc, and extend it for another year. The current auditors terms expired on 1 October, 2015 and they have been continuing in their roles without formal authorization. What would you do about the subcommittee if you were elected to ArbCom?

   I would be greatly inclined to transfer its role to the functionaries en banc, and there ended up being too many issues with that in practice (there are an awful lot of functionaries, after all,) putting the use of AUSC back in to place, but increasing it to 9 members - which is enough to allow for easy enough discussion even if one or two occasionally have to step away, yet not prone to running in to the issues of too few currently active participants or tied 3-3 votes, both of which I forsee as issues with the current setup.

4. The Ban Appeals Subcommittee exists to hear appeals of community bans and long-term blocks. There have been moves to divest this role from the committee. What would you do about the subcommittee if you were elected to ArbCom?

   There may be problems with the functioning of BASC that I am not myself aware of, but I am inclined to like the idea of a subset of arbitrators at least hearing as a forum of last resort appeals of indefs. I'm not entirely comfortable with BASC overriding outright community bans, but can see something like BASC internally evaluating cbans, and then presenting a formal recommendation at a community forum as to whether or not, in BASC's opinion, lifting the cban is a reasonable idea, or if lifting it would continue to cause disruption. Although I'm aware that AC not infrequently takes up community sanctions as their own, I'm still a little uncomfortable with the idea of BASC unilaterally reversing cbans (though it is within the remit of the committee I'd think, if in a rather twisted way.)

Current Disputes and Cases

2. What are your standards for banning someone from the project compared to a topic ban or some lesser sanction?

   People should be excluded from the project outright in one of two situations: when it either becomes clear that they are causing a significant enough level of disruption to the project that the value they add is less than the negative of the disruption they cause coupled with the lost value of contributors they drive away + those who won't contribute to begin with because of the environment they are partially responsible for creating and where no level of lesser sanction will remedy the problem (this is obviously not a simple calculus.) The second situation that warrants an outright siteban is when the initial offense is of such gravity (malicious violations of outing, etc,) that the damage of the initial violation or the risk of a second violation is more than we can reasonably tolerate.

4. Nearly every case involves violations of the civility policy in some way. At one time, a remedy call a "Civility Parole" existed but it fell out of vogue. Today, the only tools in the current Arbitrator's toolboxes to deal with civility issues are interaction bans, topic bans, and site bans. What new and creative ways would you bring to the table to solve this problem?

   Unfortunately, we're somewhat limited just by what we can technically do. Most of our remedies involve the assumption that parties are acting in good faith. I do think this is a good general assumption, and would support significantly more direct engagement explaining what exactly the issues are perceived to the party being sanctioned, and good faith non-template style attempts to convey to them how they could alter their behavior to avoid running in to future problems. Though it may surprise some to hear, I think Eric's civility sanction and the communication that accompanied it actually worked pretty well - he certainly acts quite a bit differently than he did a couple of years ago. We do have a few remedies that have occasionallly been used that I think have potential to be used more than they have been - restricting someone to edit only in article space temporarily can be a good alternative to an out and out block, as can banning someone from particular processes and boards where their problematic behavior is most likely to crop up - whether that involves AFD, RFA, ANI, etc. We do run in to an ultimate obstacle at some point since when it comes down to it if someone just doesn't want to be civil and their incivility is significant enough to cause a major issue, we do run out of things to do that don't just involve bans of one form or another. Acting in my role as an admin I've been fairly fond of asking people to agree to a set of restrictions on their behavior in lieu of a lengthy block, even when their behavior could theoretically warrant a lengthy block - and doing so has resulted in several editors reforming from a path that would otherwise likely have resulted in an eventual indef.

6. Do you believe that the Super Mario Problem exists? How would you fix it?

   I think it exists, and I think it's demonstrated pretty routinely - and is likely to be rather resistant to any attempt to fix it. Linus Torvalds represents a rather good example of the problems that this type of problem has (and is causing) outside of our own community - although it may be more appropriate to term the problem the Linux community is currently facing more of a 'metal man mario' problem, to borrow an analogy from a game later in the series. His abrasiveness is well-documented to have cost the Linux community a number of important developers, but he's almost the ultimate example of VestedContributor, and can behave with a degreee of abrasiveness that would result in any lesser dev being instantly ostracized. Besides having an arbcom willing to aggressively consider disciplining any level of contributor (which to be clear, I would be - including both administrators and fellow arbs if appropriately severe behavior was uncovered,) I'm not sure what action could effectively address the problem (although I'd certainly be willing to discuss potential solutions.)

8. Do you see value in Admonishments and Warnings as remedies at the end of a case?

   Admonishments and warnings rarely have any value whatsoever. More often than not it seems from an outside position like they're used because AC feels they have to sanction parties in some way. A FoF that a specific behavior was inappropriate can certainly have value in some situations, but a general admonishment? A reasonable contributor will have picked up on the fact that they did something that wasn't okay, and all an admonishment will do is either irritate them and make them less likely to contribute, or make them laugh - it won't effect their future behavior. (I write this as a proud bearer of a previous arbcom admonishment ;))

Insider Baseball

2. Does the workshop serve as a useful portion of a case?

   I think it can, but I also think it tends to provide another opportunity for those involved to take potshots at each other, and further prolongs the arbitration process (which I already view as too long.) I'd support either greatly time-limiting it, or getting rid of it altogether. Any really significant options not thought of by the drafting arbs could always be brought up on the PD talk page or via email (which would also reduce drama generated.)

Question from Biblioworm

2. Do you have any experience in successfully resolving disputes, either on-wiki or off-wiki?

   While I was an undergraduate, due to a rather unusual set of circumstances, I was part of the de facto management team for a house of sixty women for a bit longer than two years - meaning lots of boring day-to-day dispute resolution. I also participated in leadership roles in a large number of groups that ended up involving, again, a lot of day to day dispute resolution. Once I took a position as WiR at UCB I ended up acting essentially as a TA or subject-specific lecturer depending on how you'd like to construe the role, which involved quite a bit of dispute resolution, often with people significantly older than myself. On-wiki, ignoring the more high profile disputes I've been involved in (Wiki-PR was more like "Byebye now" than dispute resolution - although we did try to make it closer to the latter,) I've pretty frequently been involved in successfully resolving disputes ranging from random stuff I picked up at DRN or AN to behavior I totally randomly picked up on. In at least a few of these instances, people I could've indefinitely blocked I instead worked out an agreement with to avoid further problems of the nature that brought them to my attention to the first place, and who are still happily editing today.

Question from MLauba

2. Your last paragraph in your nomination statement reads as follows: "It concerns me greatly that every study conducted on the English Wikipedia’s demographics has found that the vast majority of our editors are men, generally well-educated, generally fairly-well off, and almost entirely from the Global North. Our encyclopedia aims to encompass the sum of all human knowledge - a lofty goal that we cannot possibly accomplish unless we take steps to ensure that, to borrow from a recent public comment, we’re sending no demographic into a cultural buzzsaw." You yourself appear to be part of the very demographic that is already over-represented, and if elected, would deny a seat on Arbcom that could go to someone actually representative of any other demographic. How do you reconcile this contradiction? MLauba ^(Talk) 19:43, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

   Oh this question makes me happy :-). You're right - there is a pretty significant apparent contradiction there (as there was when WiR at UCB for that matter - the specific program that initially hired me focused on issues of inequity and inequality in America, so hiring a white cisdude with the last of their grant money represented an apparent interesting contradiction.) Unfortunately, Arbcom's candidate pool is a self-selecting subset of ENWP as a whole. If there was only one seat open and the other candidate was GorillaWarfare or Keilana (as examples, obviously not meant to be an all-inclusive set,) I would either promptly withdraw my candidacy and endorse them. However, that's not the case - I would love to see a day where arbcom's candidate pool included enough people from enough of a diversity of backgrounds that I would feel comfortable simply producing a candidate guide rather than running myself, but we're not at that pool yet. If I'm elected, it's extremely unlikely that I would be denying a seat to to someone like Gorilla - and of available candidates, I believe my experiences dealing with past diversity issues within the Wikimedia movement (including significant experience at a meta level with WMF grantmaking, both as a volunteer and former contractor,) my real-world experiences at Berkeley (both as WiR and as a campus activist against gendered harrassment and violence,) and my other experiences, including with the Ada Initiative and similar groups mean that of our available pool of candidates, I believe I am better suited than most of our current candidate pool to take steps towards making ENWP a friendlier environment towards demographics that are currently under-represented.

Optional Question from Pharaoh of the Wizards

2. Is Terms of Use a policy  ? Do you believe that ArbCom can sanction undisclosed paid editors if there is evidence that they violated TOU ?

   It's actually been an explicit policy on ENWP for longer than I've been editing - Wikipedia:Terms_of_use. I believe anyone with the necessary tools can sanction people with strong evidence that they've violated the ToU, especially intentionally - I've done so myself previously. I do differentiate between people like Wiki-PR, people from firms that signed the Donovan House agreement but may not be individually aware of it, people from other PR firms that may be acting in good faith but simply unaware of the ToU, and people editing (even if undisclosed and paid) about the company that normally employees them. I find it appropriate to smush companies like Wiki-PR as they pop up in the most effective way we can, and to try to educate and fix most other violations of the undisclosed paid editing clause. In most cases, doing this doesn't require the intervention of Arbcom - I've never even been a CU, but with evidence I've collected or that has been sent to me by others, in collaboration with some of our CU's, I've been responsible for the blocks of hundreds of undisclosed paid accounts. I've also intervened to educate people unaware of our paid editing provisions, both from Donovan House-compliant firms, and from firms that haven't signed on to the Donovan House agreement as well as people from individual companies. The only situations where I see arbcom generally speaking - as a whole - playing a role in sanctioning people for undisclosed paid editing are where they are well-established community members being intentionally deceptive, as was the case in the Wifione incident. Obviously, tools like CU are useful (albeit to a limited extent) in tracking down undisclosed paid editors, as is pattern recognition. I prefer education over punitive approaches, but with some groups like Wiki-PR/Status Labs, punitive approaches are the only thing likely to even partially work.

Question from Anonymous Coward

1. Should Eric be permitted to discuss his position on gender-related topics? Should Neelix be banned from the topic of sexuality? Who of these two is the greater concern? I am trying to understand your position, consequently anything that explains the reasoning behind your position would be helpful. Saying "Arbcom ruled this-and-that" doesn't count.

   I think Neelix should be broadly banned from human sexuality, use of automated tools, and probably a couple of other things. At this point, I don't view Neelix as a giant risk - mostly because he's been desysopped, his further edits will undoubtedly be scrutinized, he's expressed that he's likely to be inactive for at least a couple months, and I doubt he'll be granted autopatrolled at any point in the remotely near future. Eric's a hell of a content builder and has reformed in terms of civility quite impressively in the last period of time. Given his past disruption regarding issues related to the gendergap, I do believe Eric needs some continuing restriction w/r/t him talking about gender on Wikipedia. His current restriction clearly isn't working - for him or for Wikipedia. In an ideal world, there would be a private discussion between Eric and AC as well as AC and those concerned on the other side to come up with a restriction that works for all involved, but given Eric's frequently stated disdain for AC, I doubt that could happen. I'm uncertain as to what an ideal restriction on Eric would be, and suspect revising it will take a lot of thought. And just to state it explicitly: no, I don't think EC should be sitebanned.

Question based on a user's removed question

2. You don't seem to be able to cope under pressure. Your user page says that you have extended periods away for ill health, how will these fit in with your duties as an Arbitrator? Theoretical T (talk) 11:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

   I don't think not desiring to engage with a troll says much about my ability to cope under pressure - especially when the troll in question is just a couple votes away from being called a troll in a current proposed decision in an arbcom case (in slightly more legalistic terms.) As an administrator, I'm not at all obliged to humor a troll who I've asked dozens of times to refrain from trolling on my talk page. I'd suggest that the number of live national interviews I've given or number of controversial on-wiki decisions I've made and defended would be better gauges of my ability to function under pressure than my desire to needlessly engage with a troll. For that matter, I've also actively engaged with trolls quite often, when I found there to be any point in it. If I somehow wasn't recusing in something like a case involving a user like this, I'd certainly be more diplomatic in writing a finding of fact than ust labelling someone a troll - probably something like "This user's persistent inability to refrain from engaging in behavior contrary to the growth of the encyclopedia's content and community means that for the good of the encyclopedia he is restricted to editing mainspace only." I think a potential arb being willing to call it like they see it is a distinct advantage. My health status is perfectly compatible with serving a two year term. I think a potential arb being willing to call it like they see it is a distinct advantage - we don't need to tiptoe around behavioral issues. My health status is perfectly compatible with serving a two year term.

Question from User:Beyond My Ken

2. Do you believe that SPI is the only legitimate mechanism for determining the nature of suspicious editors? If so, what do you advise long-term editors with a good feel for behavioral patterns to do about questionable editors when there is no clear candidate for who the master might be?

   Nope. Most of the Wiki-PR case among other prominent cases was handled through mechanisms other than SPI (including an awful lot of emails, which are perfectly appropriate when dealing with confidential or potentially confidential emails.) Admins who see (or have pointed out to them) can use their own discretion to block questionable editors of their own accord, as can CU's etc (although often technical data is useless, especially when dealing with paid sock farms.) When dealing paid sock farms or other longterm disruptive similar issues, it's often a good thing to not use SPI -- because they monitor the process and that can often tip them off to how we're catching them. Emailing admins or CU's who have a decent history of bopping socks - especially if they're familiar with the case in question - is often a better idea than actually going through SPI. SPI of course remains an option, but especially in situations involving farms that monitor their own SPI's, often is not the most desirable mechanism for dealing with the editors you describe.

Question from User:Ritchie333

2. I am sorry to say I have been disappointed with the level of profanity and civility I have recently seen from you, including "clearly done using a poorly written bot that fucked up a DB pull", "someone has made 80k articles that are primarily crap ... His script fucked up a DB pull" and "if you create any more of this shit before this situation is resolved, I'm blocking you for a severe violation of bot policy and emailing arbcom, crats, and anyone else I can think of". I'm a grown up and I can handle the "f" word easily, but the language here is not too dissimilar from what caused several blocks of Eric Corbett. How can you reassure me that you will be able to handle arbitration cases calmly, fairly and rationally?

   Well, to start off with, I don't think the Eric comparison is apt - when such language led to blocks of Eric, is was pursuant to an arbcom remedy and part of a much larger pattern of behavior on his part at the time - and was also generally directed towards individual people (where most of my language in this case wasn't.) To be blunt, I was caught pretty off-guard by the entire situation - it was an administrator I've met multiple times in real life engaging in behavior much of which was more in line with what we usually see from juvenile vandals (tumorous titties? seriously?). It was also as far as I know an actually unprecedented case - I don't think we've actually had any admin do something comparable in ENWP's history. I guess I'd point out that a lot of his content was clearly made using a script that severely messed up a database pull (which is why we have WP:BAG,) and that rather than blocking Neelix for what was a very massive violation of our bot policy, I instead first emailed arbcom suggesting a private motion to desysop him, and, when that failed, talked him in to resigning his bit off-wiki, a course which minimized drama compared to what a full case would've entailed. So I certainly can't promise I won't curse at any point, but it'll generally be at situations rather than maliciously directed at people, and my aim will still be to both ensure the interests of the community are upheld, and to minimize drama.

• Kevin Gorman, this is totally not my place to speak and if you want to delete this pronto or move it elsewhere I'm fine with that, but this is a rather public forum. Ritchie333, it's a fair question, but I have also been involved with this particular case, from the beginning (it started on my talk page...), and have deleted hundreds of sexist/fetishistic redirects that made my skin crawl and that made me completely embarrassed: I had a hard time telling Mrs. Drmies what the (male) internet had been up to. I may have done a slightly better job than Kevin biting my tongue, but I had to bite it a lot--a lot. Drmies (talk) 18:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Questions from GrammarFascist

2. 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.

   @GrammarFascist: - I decided to ignore the health trolls and answer this question more thoroughly (while noting that my health is not expected to interfere with my ablity to serve as an arb.) I'm in my 20's, living in Southern California. I've always had severe health issues and was originally diagnosed with EDS before moving up to Marfan's Syndrome. However, my heart is perfect and my genetic workups all show tons of mutations in evolutionarily conserved regions of my genome related to connective tissue, with a disease involving TGF most likely linked to a SMAD3 mutation as the most direct culprit, but with me also likely having Congenital_contractural_arachnodactyly. On top of that in early January of this year I experienced an epsisode of severe septic shock, leading to subsequent diagnoses (now treated) of CVID and narcolepsy. I have significant instructional experience at UC Berkeley in the ethnic studies department as well as TA'ing courses related to environmental and restorative justice (though I am white.) Fully describing my gender identity etc would take quite a bit of text, but I present as a cisdude. I was raised in an upper-middle class family, but my medical costs coupled with my current inability to take most forms of work full time may make that designation less relevant.

2. Please list at least one pro and one con of having non-administrators serve on ArbCom.

   Most non-administrators will be less entangled in wikipolitics than most admin candidates will be; at the same time, unless the RfC currently ongoing about it passes in their favor (or they simply run successful RFA's after being elected arbs,) it brings up some practical issues. Arbs who request them are issued OS bits - one of the frequent uses of which is to suppress WP:OUTING and similarly nasty stuff. Other administrators aren't always available to block in convenient timeframes when situations like this are going on, and it also risks creating a two-tier arb system - one 'fully-fledged' set of arbs who can carry out their full set of duties including performing arb-blocks, and one set of arbs unable to do things like perform blocks to stop stuff like in-process outing.

Thanks for responding, Kevin Gorman. (I know someone offline who has Marfan Syndrome; good to hear that your heart is healthy!) —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 01:24, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

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.

2. 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?

   If the names are identical and the Reddit account doesn't reveal personal information about Bar that hasn't been self-disclosed by Bar on-wiki elsewhere, I would not be inclined to sanction Foo for outing (although I would almost certainly redact the information initially for private discussion with other arbs.) I have seen others make (and have personally made) different calls regarding this depending on the very individualized circumstances (and there's a sentence about it in WP:OUTING in fact.) Really though, if this is a case already before arbcom, it would be a much better choice on Foo's part to simply foward the evidence in private to arbcom. Even in situations where it isn't a case before arbcom, it would be a good idea for Foo to email an administrator the evidence rather than doing something like going to ANI with it. Quite a few blocks (especially with things like the men's rights movement community sanctions) have been dealt with in a similar manner. If I saw Foo post information that was likely on the wrong side of WP:OUTING in the course of my day to day activities (regardless of whether or not I end up getting elected,) I would RD it (or OS it if I do happen to get elected,) and then evaluate the situation on its merits. If I thought it was nonmalicious on the part of Foo, I wouldn't be inclined to take punitive action, and would evaluate the evidence itself to determine what, if anything, to do about Bar (as well as explaining the situation, including the details of outing and a warning not to do it again, to Foo.)

4. 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?

   This answer presupposes that the accounts are linked and there's sufficient evidence to establish the linkage. I would prefer to see a situation where arbcom conducted a thorough investigation immediately after receiving such an accusation (and having previously worked as both an abuse admin and skiptracer, am confident I could gather enough evidence to make the best decision based on any remotely discoverable info) and if finding the accusation justified, instantly sitebanned the hell out of Bob. If this didn't happen and the evidence trail was in fact strong (and arbcom rapidly acting on its wn is really what should happen,) I would not find Alice's offsite behavior sufficiently problematic to siteban her. Revenge porn is not cool beans, and if for some reason arbcom didn't take action with sufficient evidence available, I think it would be actively wrong to punish Alice for seeking other recourse. There's also the frequently repeated mantra that blocks are preventative, not punitive - and the only way blocking Alice in this situation would be preventative is if you were, er, worried that she was going to out you for posting her nudes or something.

Question by Müdigkeit

2. How many hours per week do you plan to work on the Arbitration Committee?--Müdigkeit (talk) 19:01, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

   For at least the nexxt year, for the most part, as many as needed (included drating plans to shorten the process and turn it in to more of an inquisitorial process - which is what it's mandate is - than an adversarial one, which is what it currently often functions as.) I will certainly have to take occasional absences (ex: I probably won't be able to maintain the same committment to arbcom during weeks when I'm involved in active litigation, and expect to be involved in active litigation in the next year,) but expect these to be less frequent than those of many current arbs.

Question from Harry Mitchell

2. While dealing with an unrelated issue, I noticed this edit of yours on a user talk page. In it, you appear to suggest that you have intentionally outed two editors—on arbitration pages no less. In fact, from your tone, you appear to think this is an entirely right and proper thing to do; you even seem to bragging about it. Given your apparent disregard for other editors' privacy when it conflicts with your objectives, how on Earth can we trust you with the huge amount of private information that arbitrators routinely deal with?

   The editors I outed were the founders of Wiki-PR. That outing coincidentally was overwhelmingly endorsed at ANI, and the community ban that outs those editors is still an active cban, and was quoted in the text of a C&D sent out by the WMF. I think the vast majority of people would agree with me not having a problem outing the founders of a blackhat paid editing firm that created at least 10,000 articles. The fact that I don't think that outing the fouders of a firm that represented a not insignificant threat to ENWP's integrity social capital is an okay thing to do doesn't mean that I treat privacy loosely - I've made plenty of outing blocks or revdels myself, and in the last year have brought up an issue I believed was significant that the oversight team (wrongly) held wasn't the case. Without going in to details, it involved the gender of a user who had never disclosed their own gender on-wiki,and a potential (though fairly unlikely) risk to their own well-being. I've also been in discussions about how best to reform our OS policies so that they conform to best practices (with a number of people, probably most notable User:Doc James,) and intend to take some form of action in the near future to try to make sure ENWP's OS policies use a reasonable definition of personally identifiable information, such as that offered up by the EFF. I find it scary that 96% of American citizens can be uniquely identified by the trio of their DOB, their ZIP, and their gender - yet I've received a statement from the ENWP OS team that since gender isn't an explicitly listed criterion on ENWP's OS policy, they won't OS it. I suspect I'm one of the *stronger* pro-privacy candidates running, but in certain situations, such as Wiki-PR/Status Labs, I believe that outing can be necessary to defend the integrity of the wiki. To add a bit, I viewed intentionally outing two people (let alone getting them cbanned) as an exceptional situation that will rarely if ever repeat.

Question from Nyttend

2. I'm coming from the ANI thread. I was already familiar with the basic concept of inquisitorial/adversarial systems, so I understood your meaning without any links to inquisition or inquisitorial system. However, I'm interested in hearing your reasoning for saying that the Arbcom process is supposed to be inquisitorial rather than adversarial (not that I disagree; I've never considered the issue before), and also your opinions on the extent to which your views on this question will affect your actions if elected. Nyttend (talk) 05:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

   My understanding is that Jimmy's intention in setting up in setting up arbcom initially was for it to be an inquisitorial system, though I'd have to diff dig deep for that. In practice though, it's primarily an inquisitorial system, with arbitrators acting as both finders of fact and finders of law, compared to an adversarial system where they would be acting as impartial arbiters (though still finders of law) hearing out the advocates for each side before the finders of fact (which can be judges or jury) render a decision. In most of it's practices, arbcom is inquisitorial - the mission of the arbs is to ferret out the truth in how policy applies, ferret out the facts, and render a decision. The most controversial areas of arbcom are always those where arbcom flirts closest with the adversarial - the workshop and evidence phases etc. I'd probably prefer to get rid of the public workshop altogether (arbs will generally be aware of potential remedies in any given case,) and both instruct the clerks to be much more proactive at removing sniping/pointyness, and tit-for-tat evidence from non-parties (and slightly less aggressively from parties, but still aggressively,) from the evidence page. One non-party should really never be sniping at another non-party. I'd probably also be inclined to allow involved parties greater word limits whenever requested barring exigent circumstances, and to limit further the number of diffs non-parties to the case present. I also intend to review arb policies and practices (and yes, I do mean all of them,) shooting for more inquisitorial, less adversarial, and less dramatic. (You may also find this to be interesting, though tangential.

Question from IP Editor

2. What will you do to ensure people AGF when dealing with IP editors? 82.132.214.116 (talk) 19:42, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

   Besides interacting with IP's myself in good faith, making FoF's supporting the important role of IP contributors to Wikipedia, treating IP users fairly in decisions, defending their right to be ip users, and generally setting a public standard in support of IP's (and there are quite a few hoppers I get along with,) there's unfortunately fairly that an arbitrator could do compared to what I can (and do do) now.

Question from JMHamo

2. Have you ever offered to have your Admin bit recalled by the community and if not why not? JMHamo (talk) 23:24, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

   The only situations where it's come up have involved everyone's favorite fanclub, and I chose not to at the time. I'm certainly not opposed to recall and would instantly resign my tools if a number of parties told me they believed I no longer had the trust or judgement needed to exercise them. I've never really quantified my recall stance, although I probably should've. To give you an idea of the kind of people I can think of off the top of my head who could do the trick pretty easily, though not necessarily in the middle of a heated disagreement since sometimes tempers flair on all side then calm (and in some cases I mean one person saying 'do it' would have me do it, and in others I mean multiple: Gamaliel, Keilana, Native Foreigner, GW, Sasata, NYB, Drmies, slakr, Trypto, Jimmy, Sue, Steven, Doc James, etc - I could list at least a couple of dozen more people, but see little value in doing so.

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.

2. 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?

   I don't agree with the viewpoint, but I can understand where it's coming from. It's certainly true that when particular people (and I am thinking of a whole host of people when I say this, to be clear) are involved in disputes, their friends tend to jump in regardless of the facts of the situation. ANI is good at dealing with legitimate emergencies (some admin a while ago was conducting so many page moves that it would've taken many hours to fix if he hadn't been stopped,) and good at dealing with situations involving relatively new users. It's not good at handling issues involving experienced users for the most part. Let's say that I make a legitimately just awful block, and a third party appeals it to AN/I 90% of the time the person will be told it's within my discretion, and 10% of the time my block will be overturned, and I'll receive a minor trout (which are delicious, btw.) Similarly, when experienced users are taken to ANI, there tend to be long drama filled discussions that result in nothing happening except in the most egregious cases, even when it's about behavior that would get a newbie indeffed. That is not a good thing. AE is sometimes functional - most often when it involves a user without a brigade following him, and an experienced AE admin or three involved in the case (like Sandstein, Callanecc, etc) In situations involving vested contributors, more often than not AE breaks. I believe that arbcom has contributed to AE breaking in these situations, by not making it clear that there remedies will be enforced equally on both popular and unpopular contributors, and that your buddy admin shouldn't close a section for you. (I also strongly disagree that instead of being able to reopen AE discussions where you thought the close was bad, you're forced to escalate to ARCA, a further step that many are unwilling to take.)

4. 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 there's no question that they do, and no question that this is a bad thing. I think arbcom should abolish the public workshop in most cases (being able to resurrect it where they think it's needed,) lift the word limit in the evidence section for involved parties in a case upon request, lower the diff limit or noninvolve parties from 50 to 15, and instruct the clerks to much more strongly than they currently do remove anything resembling sniping, baiting or tit for tat disruption on case pages, with a one warning a month a party max about such things, followed by blocking. I'm hardly done brain storming, but I strongly feel that arbcom should aim to be an inquisitorial system, not an adversarial system.

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of WP:BOOMERANG? Would you support it's retention, restriction or abolition? Why?

   When used as a tool to warn a relatively new user that they might want to duck (back off) lest they be hit by a boomerang, it's a good thing. When it's used as an otherwise unsupported call for punishment, it's a bad thing. When it's used against an experienced used.. well, WP:Don't template the regulars. We could abolish the phrase, but we can't abolish the behavior (people doing stupid shit and getting boomeranged,) so I see little harm in keeping the phrase.

8. 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?

   Well.. it greatly depends on the use. It can be used to essentially exert ownership over an article area, which isn't cool. On the otherhand specifically in contentious areas where someone is exhibiting a pattern of behavior that has been seen dozens of times before, I don't see much point in going through the full normal steps to block them unless they are significantly contributing in another area - although I might evoke WP:MEAT rather than WP:SOCK or WP:DUCK. It's quite common for me to come across articles that were obviously written by paid editors - dealing with Wiki-PR and other stuff, I have more experience with their behavioral patterns than most - but unless I have more solid evidence than just the basic behavioral pattern, I prefer to question them or watch their further moves, rather than just scream DUCK.

10. 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?

    The obvious significant negative: IP's are responsible for a hugely significant portion of edits to Wikipedia. Second significant negative: that's a fairly gameable limit. It certainly will mitigate sme of the disruption in the area, but I much rather would've just seen massive use of PC1. IP editors should not be unable to edit entire content areas.

12. 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?

    Well, if he's already been brought to AE, that suggests he's violating an existing arbcom remedy, so the next logical step would be ARCA.

14. 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?

    I don't think this is a particularly good idea, although it did occur to me when thinking about hw to streamline arbcom. One option that might work better is instead of accept/reject/abstain, accept en banc/accept/reject/abstain - have all of arbcom active on the more significant cases, whild using the normal accept option to have cases heard by a subset of say, three arbs on a facilitated timeline. Even if we did that, I do think that any party at risk of serious sanction should be able to request an upgrade an an en banc case before the case itself started

Many thanks in advance for any answers. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 15:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from EvergreenFir

2. To put my questions into context and saying without passing any judgment, I think it is fair to say you have been "close" to some of the cases before the arb com in the past year and have strongly held beliefs about some of the subjects of those cases. Do you feel yourself willing and able to recognize when you may be too close or involved with the subject of a case? If such occasions arise or cases where you feel you cannot remain relatively neutral, are you willing to recuse yourself? If not, how would you justify your participation in such cases?

   This is quite similar to Altamel's earlier question, which should provide a lot of what you're looking for. The tl;dr is yes, there are several categories of cases I will recuse from off the top of my head (unless all arbs recuse, in which case the most likely scenario would be no arb would recuse.) In cases where I feel there are elements I need to recuse from but where there are other elements that I am not so personally close to as to need to recuse from, I'll also consider recusing from only part of a case. I will note that remaining relatively neutral is not a requirement of an arb, and not necessarily a desirable characteristic of one - for instance, I don't think arbs should remain relatively neutral about child protection issues, or issues of harrassment.

Thank you for your time! EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Roger Davies

Hi Kevin: Both these questions flow directly from your reply to Harry Mitchell above.

2. Per your reply to Harry Mitchell, you advocate highly selective enforcement of the WP:OUTING policy. It appears too to be a highly personal interpretation. That is, that outing by your friends is either expedient or inadvertent, both of which are unfortunate but excusable. And that outing by your enemies is malicious, which is despicable and unpardonable. Given the current epidemic of outing and off-wiki harassment, is this a sustainable position for an arbitrator to adopt?

   Roger, this question stretches the bounds of good faith beyond belief. I have defended one single instance of outing. That same instance of outing had widespread community, arbcom, and WMF support. I hae supported no other instance of outing. I recently clarified to Doug that outing on arbcom pages hasn't always resulted in automatic block - that's not the same as defending Tryptofish (talk · contribs)'s behavior, it's just me clarifying that something hasn't always been automatic policy. Since you know I don't have the permissions necessary to see what Tryptofish actually did, you know that I cannot defend (or not defend) his behavior.) Any policy has exceptions; I was the exception to WP:OUTING (which has by the way limited the damage they've been able to do to our content as StatusLabs.) Clarifying past history for Doug is not defending Trypto's actions (which he's not even defending himself.)

No, @Kevin Gorman:, that's not really correct. You've defended the various outings you've performed yourself, including one on the Arbitration noticeboard talk page, which you yourself described as pointy. You've also whitewashed historic ones. Even more remarkably, you'll probably go down in history as the only ArbCom candidate to have had a reply to a question suppressed for outing the person putting the question. This has nothing to do with assuming good faith but more to do with it not being a suicide pact. This is after all an ArbCom election - which will catapult you into the marble halls of unbridled power (irony) - if you prevail.  Roger Davies ^talk 14:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Please provide one instance of an actual outing I've defended other than that of Wiki-PR's founder. And given the number of commons galleries I've been trying to deal with in the last weeks after wikiconf where the person didn't want the gallery up, it was hardly a stretch to Common's search your username. I sincerely doubt that either of the two of you were harmed by the two minutes the gallery link was up. Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:31, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Funny way to phrase an apology but I guess that's the spirit, so accepted.  Roger Davies ^talk 10:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd still love for you to provide examples of outings that I've committed or defended that reach the policy standard for sanction of not being "unintentional and non-malicious" with the sole exception of Wiki-PR which I admit to, and defend as necessary to protect the fundamental integrity of the encyclopedia - although even then I would argue that it met the standard of "non-malicious" (as did most of the community and WMF.) Do you think that in a week when I've been dealing with taking Commons galleries down, I linked to a Commons gallery that happened to share your name maliciously, in some attempt to maliciously accuse you of being an astronomer? Or that by accidentally calling Keilana Emily before she had disclosed her name publicly, I was trying to harrass her? By "whitewashing historic outings" do you mean the fact that I believe in proportionality in sanctioning, and don't agree with you that a draconian indef for outing corresponds well with the monthish long block the person the indeffed user outed had himself recently received for outing is proportional or in the interests of the enyclopedia? Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't think it was malicious, which is why I didn't push it. But it was a remarkable act for someone running for ArbCom to out someone so casually.  Roger Davies ^talk 12:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

In a week where I've been dealing with significant numbers of actually problematic commons galleries stemming from wikiconf USA and was answering questions rapidly, you seriously view accidentally associating your name with that of a similarly named public figure as an un-understandable error, let alone an actual attempt to out you? It as clearly an mistake which I apologize for, but "outing" carries a malicious tone that is unsupported by the facts. BTW: please answer the rest of the question. By "whitewashing historic outings," are you referring to the fact that I think it literally approaches absurdity that two people who both clearly violated the outing policy (and I'd view Phil's violation as the less severe of the two even if Cla68 hadn't just been sanctioned for outing) saw Phil receive an indef, and Cla receive, what, a monthish long block? Sorry Roger, but not supporting draconian sanctioning is not whitewashing, and if that's the situation you're referring to, you're not being honest in my view by painting it as such. If you meant a different situation, please clarify. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

2. As an arbitrator you will have access to Oversight and be responsible for Oversight appointments. Do you believe this is compatible with your belief that a person’s (non-disclosed) gender should be automatically oversighted on request? If so, would you oversight each and every reference to me as "he" or "she" because I have never disclosed my gender on-wiki? And, further, would you sanction each and every Oversighter who refused to Oversight such references?

   Again Roger, this is stretching the bounds of good faith to the point of assuming I do not understand simple aspects of fairly well-known Wikipedia policies. First, without doing a diff dive, I doubt that you've never stated your gender on-wiki. Moreover, you've edited under an obviously male pseudonym for many years, and have never made any request to oversight the use of your gender pronouns - a step required before oversight is performed under most aspects of that criterion. Moreover, usage of your gender pronouns is widespread (and not just limited to two arbitrators in two places,) and does not pose any conceivable threat to your life. You've made no request (AFAIK) to redact your gender pronouns, and if so it would be rejected because they are already (likely, but would require a deep diff dig) available on-wiki. Discretion is key - do you not see the difference between someone who has a whole category of commons images dedicated to them, and someone whose gender pronoun was used twice putting them at an admittedly likely but still real threat? Discretion and nuance should define the aspects of a good admin - or arb. Regardless of whether or not I'm elected, I am going to be working over the next year to harmonize our oversight definitions with those that the EFF and similarly movement aligned organizations consider personally identifable information, because I find it really disturbing that 96% of American citizens living in the US could be identified be the three combo of their DOB/ZIP/gender, yet I have statements from arbs and oversighters in my inbox that since neither DOB, ZIP, nor gender is explicitly listed in our OS policy, it's not OSable. Arbcom and the oversight team as a whole don't believe that three bits of information that would identify 96% of American citizens down to the person level should be oversightable. And yeah, especially after oversight policies are harmonzized, I'd have no problem taking appropriate action against +OSers who refused to follow them.

In this specific instance, the gender pronouns were used considerably more often than just by "two arbitrators in two places" and in fact predated the arbitrators' use. But you should really know that. More generally, you are conflating personally identifiable information and potentially personally identifiable information: they are not at all the same. You're also assuming that because some individual components may not in and of themselves be automatically oversightable, sub-sets of them aren't either. Oversight is all about common sense and discretion.  Roger Davies ^talk 14:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

It's comical that someone who made a categorical statement that gender is not ever oversightable since it falls outside the express (but not exclusive) criteria of OS#1 is taking a public stance that OS is all about common sense and discretion. Of course it should be about common sense and discretion. Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

No, they weren't. All I've found and all the person is aware of is their gender pronouns being used by two arbs in two places. No one on arb or OS provided a counterexample despite fairly extensive discussions. I've received direct emails that seemed to be jointly sent by arb/os that directly state that personal information not explicitly listed in OS#1 (or another OS criterion) is not oversightable. The English Wikipedia uses oversight requirements that run contrary to our fundamental values. There is no reason why OS#1 should not include, upon request, the oversight of all personally identifiable information as defined by the EFF or another movement-aligned organization with more expertise than we have. Our oversight requirements are fundamentally contrary to our values as a movement, and when taken to the OS/arb team as a whole, would mean that literally most people could be effectively outed without it meeting the criteria for oversight. This is wrong. Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:31, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Funnily enough, other gender-related stuff existed when I looked yesterday and still exist today. A more open-minded approach would be to ask for diffs ... but hey I'll leave others to form their own conclusions.  Roger Davies ^talk 10:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't post diffs or copies of private emails involving the privacy of a particular user that occurred between the two of us, though surely you're aware of that - and presumably aware of the fact that my emails included diffs and explicitly mention that having conducted a reasonable search I found no self-disclosure by the user on-wiki, which you responded to with a categorical statement that gender is not considered personal information under ENWP's oversight policy, rather than oh - say - diffs - or even a reasonable situational argument. Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Still would love whatever diffs you may or may not have found. Would've loved them at the time, too. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

And the EFF percentage is 87% not 96%. Not hugely different I agree but let's keep this factual.  Roger Davies ^talk 10:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

You're correct that I quoted a slightly high percentage; it's what I get for not looking at the tab I'm quoting. You and I both know we can't discuss the particular case I am discussing on-wiki in any speific detail, but we have had direct email conversations about this, in which you were self-admittedly unaware of the nationality of the editor I was talking about (which is remarkable because it was the second time the issue had been raised,) and then proceeded to state that even if that was their nationality it wasn't possibly a potential problem because "using the internet is legal in country X," - and I really wish I could fill in the blanks here just to illustrate to watchers how absurd your position was. I brought up two specific diffs showing the inappropriate use of gender pronouns not disclosed by the editor, along with an additional diff ilustrating why the gender pronouns were problematic enough to be oversighted. Your response was that because gender pronouns are not explicitly considered "non-public personal information" by ENWP's oversight policy and thus could not be oversighted. You made a broad statement that gender was not potentially oversightable information because it was not covered by ENWP's oversight policy (while in the same email pointing out that it is covered as personally identifiable information by WMF's privacy policy, which further points to your actions being contrary to the values of the Wikimedia movement) rather than making any situational argument. Many oversighters and several arbitrators I was in communication with at the same time made situational arguments or just outright stated that they disagreed with you but that it wasn't a fight they were going to win. Besides the editor's word that their gender had not been publicly disclosed, I manually and semi-automatically searched through every edit the user had made on any talk page looking for disclosure of their gender and found absolutely nothing beyond the two diffs (and their archivebot versions) where disclosure of the editor's gender was made by people other than the editor. This is pretty much the extent of information I can divulge on-wiki. You have my email address. If you've somehow found other relevant diffs in the months between when you weren't sure what half of the globe the editor was from and now or if for some reason you were aware of diffs of self-disclosure at the time but decided to make an absurd categorical argument intead, you're more than welcome to send them to me - I'm sure it would please both me and the editor involved to know your logic made more sense than was apparent. Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Gender by itself narrows the field down to 3.5 billion people, give or take. That is what makes it, by itself, unactionable. In a context (for example, "User:XXX is the only woman on the board of Wowco") it becomes actionable. This is not difficult to grasp.  Roger Davies ^talk 12:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Roger, do I have your permission to directly quote one line from an email I received from you that makes it clear that this is not the position you expressed? I'd love to quote more because you and I both know we weren't talking about a random person on planet earth and the odds of identifiability were significantly less than one in 3.5 billion? They were significantly less than 1:1000, but how much less isn't information I can disclose on-wiki but that you've been rather negligent as an arb/OS if you're unaware of the general magnitude of. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

But, Kevin, I have never expressed the belief that gender is never oversightable and have always been carefully to note that it is sometimes actionable. An example would be: User:XXX is the only woman on the board of WWWCO, where user:XXX has disclosed in general terms being on the board but not disclosed being a woman.  Roger Davies ^talk 18:37, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

2. You say above you want to change the oversight criteria:
   • How do you propose doing this?
   • What is the WMF's position on this (important as theirs are the global policies from which ours derive) and how will you accommodate it?
   • Given the vastly increased resources it will absorb and the huge increase in oversighters, why is it a good idea?
   • Why do we need a seismic shift on the en-wiki when mostly it benefit only Americans? (And what, incidentally, is the equivalent percentage for EU citizens?
   • What additional rules would be needed to make this work and to prevent trolls abusing it?
   • How will you fit this in with your arbitrator responsibilities?
   • If elected, will you make arbitrator decisions based on your personal opinion, or on what policy actually says?
   • Given your very strong views on outing and personal information, will you recuse from any arbitration matters relating to outing?
   • Given your idiosyncratic views on outing, why are you the best person to push for change?

   Certainly, we're both aware of the methods available to change policy? Since there's no global policy that prohibits us from providing greater explicit clarity in our local OS policy that lends our editors greater privacy than the global policy does - or even just specifying in policy (which you'd think would be assumed to begin with) that oversighters can exercise reasonable discretion in deciding what personally identifiable information oversight is warranted for as opposed to making blanket statements that categories of personally identifable information not written in to OS explicitly are not OSable, our local policy could easily be clarified as long as doing so does not weaken the privacy global policies provide (as you accurately point out that our local policy doesn't get to do that.) I'm not at all certain why the fact that I quoted a particular study that happened to deal with Americans leads you to believe that only Americans would benefit from increased privacy protections. I'm relatively certain that a majority of Wikipedians and Wikimedians alike support increased privacy protections - even outside of the movement, Europe smokes the US in terms of privacy protection requirements. I have no idea why you think that accomodating requests to oversight personally identifable information not provided by the users themselves would require a huge increase in the number of oversighters we need - for crying out loud, editors accidentally editing while logged out have their IPs suppressed on request (and sometimes simply on sight) regardless of how unidentifiable they are - do you honestly think that allowing personally identifiable information not disclosed by users to be suppressed upon request and discretion of the oversight team would require a significantly higher workload than the current workload? Even if it somehow required appointing a dozen additional OSer's, given the issues trusted users often spend their time on, certainly suppressing personally identifiable information not disclosed by users to be suppressed upon request and discretion would be worth the small additional workload? Given that OS policy already allows discretion in removing personally identifiable information - OS criterion #1 explicitly states that OS is authorized for "Removal of non-public personal information" and then proceeds to give a non-exclusive list of examples of what non-public personal information constitutes - that anything I've suggested would actually constitute a deviation from policy and not an already explicitly permissible discretionary exercise of suppression baked in to global policy? Are you suggesting it's not an acceptable viewpoint for a potential arbitrator to feel strongly that user privacy should be protected through the use of discretionary suppression of personally identifiable information (discretion is also awesome for dealing with trolls btw) even though that is actually already stated in our written policy? Do you feel other potential arbs should recuse from user protection issues they feel strongly about - ex: Cas Liber pushing for WMF to take stronger action regarding child protection? Do you honestly believe the idea that "personally identifiable information not disclosed by the user should be suppressed upon request within the bounds of reasonable judgement is an idiosyncratic view?
   
   Could you please elaborate on why you view protecting personally identifiable information not disclosed by the user as a "seismic shift" - it makes me somewhat concerned that a longstanding arbitrator views the use of oversight within currently written policy to protect user privacy as a "seismic shift" from current practice...

I do wish you'd responded to the sub-questions instead of coming back with a wall of text. It would make it much easier to see where common grounds lies, if any. You still haven't explained how gender, by itself, is personally identifiable information.  Roger Davies ^talk 12:51, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Roger, you asked me a bunch of questions you knew I knew the answers to, without apparent purpose. Gender is PII because (a) especially in the case that prompted me direct earlier question it very definitely was, for reasons you should know yourself and shouldn't have made an OS call if you didn't, (b) PII leaks are unpredictable, so a single piece of PII leaked one place can be put together with other unanticipated leaks to break privacy, as the deanonymization of the Netflix Prize dataset of 500,000 users clearly shows along with dozens over other papers, (c) Because a consensus among academics exists that PII leaks should be absolutely limited because dozens of studies have shown that even very apparently anonymous datasets can be uniquely deanonymized for an overwhelming number of people involved, and consensus among academics exists that gender is PII. (e) every major movement aligned organization agrees that gender is PII (f) every well-known cyber harrassment specialist agrees that gender is PII. You have permission to reformat my answer to your silly question with line breaks if it pleases you. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

No, I wanted to find out whether you'd thought it all through. It took four years to get the WMF to take over child protection (and a lot of that initiative was mine). Making gender automatically oversightable (which is what you have been advocating by including it explicitly in the Oversight policy and thus, by the normal creep that takes place, including it in the outing policy) is a step too far. This is not simply because people seem to assign gender online instinctively but also because for the purposes of the American 87%, gender is low-grade (two outcomes, with 160 million people in each group) compared to the birthdate (25,000 outcomes) or zipcode (44,000 outcomes). In most instances, I'd guess that individuals can be identified based on birthdate and zipcode alone (which are both usually oversighted pretty much automatically).  Roger Davies ^talk 18:55, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Question from Pldx1

2. Dear Candidate. Can you further comment your attempt to marshall the Questions/Answers page of another candidate ?

   I haven't done anything I would describe as an attempt to do so. I'm running, but I'm also voting, and trying to finalize who I will vote for. An earlier question asked me about the advantages of having a non-admin be an arbitrator, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a good idea, and wanted to probe some candidates (including non-admin candidates) a bit more to finalize my votes. I asked one of the non-admin candidates a non-argumentative question that I considered fairly relevant in my assessment of who I'd like to be an arb (and also asked a number of other candidates the same question for the same reason.) His initial answer made me feel that I had asked the question in a way that gave some candidates an advantage, as current arbs like Gorilla understood the full backstory to my question as initially phrased due to the fact that they've been current arbs (or oversighters.)
   
   I thought the playing field would be more level if I clarified my question so that people without current arb/OS experience would more fully understand why I was asking it, so I posted an (again, non-argumentative) clarification of the question. He decided to remove my request for clarification, so I decided to remove the whole question as I felt it didn't offer much valuable information without his answer being shaped by a better understanding of why I asked the question in the first place. He decided to remove my request for clarification, so I decided to remove the question (as people have done on my own page,) since I thought it didn't offer much valuable information without clarification, and was also worried his answer would potentially put him at a disadvantage compared to those that answered it understanding the backstory more fully. He restored the question. I left the question in place, but removed my name and signature, replacing my sig with a quite brief <small> tagged rationale for having removed it. I've politely asked him to either remove the question or at least allow my name and sig to be removed from the question unless he readded my request for clarification, because having initially failed to ask the question in a way sufficient for him to understand its full context, I wanted to at least indicate that the I thought I had bungled asking my own question. A more detailed explanation is here. I'll reword the question for any future candidates I ask it of, so that its full context will be readily apparent to those without the private backstory.
   
   Tl;dr? I was trying to finalize what candidates I personally wanted to support, and particularly had an interest in finding a non-admin candidate to support. When I asked the question in a way that didn't make its full context apparent and he didn't want me to follow up, I at least wanted to indicate that I thought I had screwed up asking my own question.