Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022/Candidates/Primefac/Questions

Individual questions

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There is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.

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Questions from Red-tailed hawk

2. Hello. Thank you for volunteering to serve on the Arbitration Committee. Would you please explain your understanding of WP:INVOLVED, and would you summarize the extent to which you agree and/or disagree with how the Arbitration Committee has applied the principles of involvement with respect to administrator conduct in Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block, Manning naming dispute, and Climate change? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:14, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

   Being INVOLVED in a situation means that one has a vested interest in the topic at hand, generally indicated by voicing an opinion or otherwise showing that one's interactions are more than purely administrative in nature. In the three cases you mention, the Findings quite clearly indicate that the administrators in question met that criteria in the areas in which they were taking administrative action.

Questions from TheresNoTime

2. How do you foresee the role of the Arbitration Committee changing with regard to the adoption of the Universal Code of Conduct (namely, due to the enforcement guidelines, and the introduction of the global Coordinating Committee)? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

   Honestly, I do not see it changing significantly. From my understanding of the policy, ArbCom will still be the first "port of call" for intractable disputes, with the U4C mainly being required for a "systematic failure to follow the UCoC". I do not doubt that there will be cases filed with them that go "over our heads" so to speak, or go there as an appeal for an ArbCom decision, but our day-to-day operations are unlikely to change. I suspect, though, we will need to add another meeting to our schedules so we can discuss English Wikipedia-specific content with the U4C to make sure everything is copacetic.

4. Is ANI pronounced A-N-I or Annie? Thank you for standing, and good luck. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

   If you are asking me for a proclamation about the "right" way to pronounce it, I will have to respectfully decline, as everyone has their own idiosyncrasies for how they read words. Personally, I read it as A-N-I.

Questions from Gerda Arendt

2. Do you believe that we still have infobox wars? If yes, do you have better ideas than the 2013 arb ruling to end them?

   With the caveat that I am not a regular at WP:ANI or WP:AN3 and thus am not "down in the trenches" with regards to edit warring and editorial disputes that overspill from article talk pages: no, I do not think we have "wars" any more of the scale that led up to the 2013 or 2018 cases. I do recognise that there are still disagreements about infoboxes, their placement, and what is included in them (having been involved in quite a few of the last type), but I believe the DS in place (and the vanishing of one of the major players from the 2018 case) has somewhat calmed the waters (to mix metaphors). I do not think we will ever reach a point where everyone will agree on infoboxes (or any subject, for that matter), so it really becomes a question of managing incivility and disruption; that being said, I would say that some level of stability has been reached, and thus do not have any better ideas without having more information about what needs fixing.

4. Thank you, and I agree that we have calmer waters. I believe DS has made no sense, because I witnessed not one instance of them being helpful, but many where they were presented to harmless users who didn't even know there was any conflict. I smiled about the "vanishing", because in RfCs, the two major players who "vanished" tend to still feature prominently. - Follow-up question, the same for all who answered the first: Where does the recently closed RfC for Laurence Olivier sit in your perspective?

   Compared to the vitriol I have seen in past RFCs (infobox-related or otherwise) this is fairly tame. Yes, there are back-and-forths by opinionated editors who feel they must argue the point to death, but that will happen in just about any contentious discussion. I do not think that we as a community will ever agree on the infobox issue, so at the very least having a framework for dealing with the issue is a Good Thing.

One candidate has asked for more time due to a health emergency. To give you all the same chances: please look at Olivier talk again, and feel free to modify your answers. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:53, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Question from BilledMammal

2. Would you ever support a principle or finding of fact that is based on the Universal Code of Conduct?

   I cannot foresee a reason not to.

Questions from Kudpung

2. Findings of Fact: Should the Committee have a duty to investigate the veracity of the de facto evidence presented by the complainant(s) and/or uninvolved commenters?

   If evidence of any variety is presented without diffs (or in the case of private evidence, an email to the Committee) then it should be discounted if not ignored entirely. We do still have a duty to make sure that said diffs are accurate representations of the given statement, though.

4. In your opinion, are sitting arbitrators exempt from due process if and when they commit an indiscretion that would get a normal editor blocked or sanctioned?

   No.

Thank you for your answers. I asked all candidates the same questions. Wrg to Q2, you could have elaborated by citing from examples, but the one word is the most important. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:06, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

question from lettherebedarklight

2. why do you edit wikipedia? → lettherebedarklight → 晚安 → おやすみ → 13:44, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

   Momentum, mostly. I like helping folks out, I enjoy editing templates and articles, and I have yet to find a reason to stop editing. I enjoy being a part of this weird and wonderful community, even though at times it can be stressful or frustrating.

Questions from Izno

2. As a current or former arbitrator, you know ArbCom gets busy with appeals, casework, and other emails, as a matter of course. ArbCom also tries to improve its own processes or procedures in any given year to ease community use of the process or to decrease the amount of work it does. Now that discretionary sanctions are reformed (for some value of reformed :), what are the one or two things large things, or a few more small things, you think ArbCom should work on this year to improve its processes? Izno (talk) 01:04, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

   On the Committee end of things, I really, truly believe that our appeals-via-email workflow is garbage and we need a better system, even though I know we have been trying and testing out new things for the better part of two years now (at least). Even if it requires opening up a different page, we should have an easy-to-use platform for listing and discussing appeals. The WMF has tools and options that they have been hesitant to give us access to, and I think it just takes some creative appealing to get them to relent. On the "small" side of things, I have spent the last few months going through and cataloguing our ArbWiki pages to sort out what is actually there (and hopefully make navigation a bit easier). I can probably get it all done by year's end, but if not I would like to keep working on workflow maintenance there.

   On the Community side of things, I am still interested in looking at potentially converting cases into "c2:DocumentMode", wherein the clerks/Arbs maintain the primary document while threaded discussion and new ideas can be presented on the respective talk pages. One of my largest issues with our current system is the non-threaded nature of discussion, which I do realise has some benefits but makes reading an actual discussion rather onerous.

   Also — and this is not my idea but I support it — I think we might be trying to shift CU-block-appeals back to the Community, or at the very least the CUs, as a good portion of {{CheckUser block}} appeals are so trivial that any CU should be able to decline it without the Committee needing to waste time on it.

Question from Anythingyouwant

2. Have you read both WP:MANDY and WP:NOTMANDY, and if so which is a more correct interpretation of Wikipedia policy? Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

   I have neither heard nor read either of these essays before now. Given that the very policy which relates to these two essays is currently subject to an RFC about its specific wording, anything I say today could very well be invalidated if the RFC ends up supporting the opposite viewpoint. NOTMANDY seems, though, to be more concerned with the validity of any statement given, rather than the simple nature of the existence of the statement. MANDY seems to be making the case for not including a denial simply because it was made, while NOTMANDY is saying that a denial plus the circumstances around it are needed. I do not believe that one precludes the other, as the latter case would not be a MANDY issue.