Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Kirill Lokshin/Questions

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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! 05:53, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

   Looking at my prior terms on the Committee, I have no doubt that there would have been any number of cases with whose outcomes I would have disagreed (in whole or in part, but more often the latter than the former), and in which I would have proposed alternative findings or remedies. However, I'm hesitant to advocate specific alternatives to the outcomes of individual cases in which I did not participate, as I have not necessarily had the opportunity to review all of the evidence in each case, and consequently cannot make a fully informed decision as to what a more appropriate outcome might be.

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 Joseph (opera)#Restore infobox?

   My reading of the Infoboxes case—and recall that I was recused from it, so the decision was obviously written without my input—is that the determining factor is consensus (local or global), not the wishes of the principal editors per se. Those wishes are a factor which can be considered by participants in the consensus-building discussion (similar to how we may choose to take the wishes of an article subject into account in a deletion discussion), but they do not, and should not, determine the outcome of that discussion in and of themselves.

   Having said that, I think the specific discussion you link has too little participation to serve as an effective consensus-building mechanism; while there's a great volume of comments, most of it is an extended personal debate rather than arguments regarding the substantive question of whether or not an infobox is appropriate for that particular article. Consequently, I'd be inclined to solicit further community input rather than closing the discussion as it currently stands.

   I picked the discussion because it has (mercifully) few participants and is easy reading. I was before AE for an edit in a long discussion but didn't want to make all candidates read that much. In case of interest: I found it a bit absurd to be the one cited to AE for this while all other participants were free. We lost an admin over it. (To explain "mercifully" above. You will find the same names in similar discussions, repeating that the infobox is redundant. Yes, it has to be, that's its function. Sometimes I try to explain, see Jean Sibelius.)

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."

   The wording of this question strikes me as a bit odd, considering that I was the administrator who placed the block in question. For the record, let me state that I disagree with both your interpretation of the comment in question and your opinion regarding the appropriateness of the resulting block, for the reasons I outlined in the evidence I submitted in the associated arbitration case. (This is, I suppose, more for the benefit of readers unaware of the situation than anything else; I don't imagine anything I say with regard to this particular situation is going to change your mind.)

   To address, however, your broader question regarding arbitration enforcement:

   In principle, you are of course entirely correct—arbitration enforcement is, quite deliberately, not designed to be a "fun" process. It's a harsh, one-size-fits-all mechanism that tries to force editors into compliance—even though it's quite clear, in many cases, that the editor won't comply regardless of how many blocks they get. I'm not aware of anyone who actually likes the process; rather, it's often just the lesser evil (as compared to, say, not enforcing remedies at all).

   In the past, we've had some success with imposing mandated "mentorship"-type arrangements in lieu of (or in addition to) the regular enforcement process. It is certainly possible—and perhaps desirable, particularly in the case of otherwise productive editors who have problems in isolated areas—to make greater use of such arrangements; editors are more likely to believe that they're crossing the line when hearing it from someone they trust, and having a designated individual responsible for supervising the editor prevents the various conflicts we've seen with regard to enforcement and first-mover/second-mover/etc. mechanics.

   Having said that, the success of such "soft" enforcement methods depends in great part on the attitude of the editor in question. An editor who accepts that their behavior was problematic and has a genuine desire to improve it would be a good candidate for such arrangements. An editor who denies the legitimacy of the arbitration process and the policies on which it's based is generally not; their behavior will not improve regardless, simply because they genuinely don't believe there's anything to improve in the first place.

   All candidates get the same questions from me ;) I still doubt that the two edits which you cited as a reason to block were detrimental to Wikipedia, and therefore think they needed not even attention, so why force? - For you, involved in this example, let's look at a different situation. I was close to being blocked for the edit mentioned above. Do you think that block would have improved me? - Please return from defending your different view - no problem with that - to suggestions of how to improve Wikipedia, instead of single editors (whose influence seems exaggerated, - do you solve infobox conflicts by restricting Andy and me? Obviously not. Love the image of Jimbo Wales and the almost banned), by less force and more talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:56, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:15, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Müdigkeit

2. How many hours per week do you plan to work for the Arbitration Comitee?--Müdigkeit (talk) 18:52, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

   During my previous terms as an arbitrator, I typically spent about 10–15 hours per week on Committee business, with occasional spikes when drafting particularly complex cases (or dealing with the periodic crises that seem to hit the Committee a few times every year). I haven't seen anything to suggest that the level of work involved has drastically changed over the past two years, so I expect that I'd spend a similar amount of time in the future.

Questions from MLauba

2. Based on your past experience, what concrete changes in arbitration procedures would you drive to shorten case length? MLauba ^(Talk) 11:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

   As I mentioned in my statement, I strongly suspect that the perpetual delays we see in arbitration cases are primarily caused by a scarcity of arbitrators with an interest in writing case decisions (and, perhaps, a lack of the sort of experience that would allow one to draft such decisions quickly) and by an excessive volume of secondary, non-case-related business. These factors aren't particularly amenable to being corrected by procedural changes, unless one includes wholesale devolution of portions of the Committee's current workload under that label.

   Having said that, there are certain changes to the current arbitration procedures that could, in the aggregate, help to reduce the duration of cases:

   • Eliminate the practice of assigning two (or more!) drafters to a single case. In theory, one might expect that adding drafters would allow proposed decisions to be written faster—there are, after all, more people among whom the workload can be spread. In practice, however, a shared workload tends to result in a decreased sense of personal responsibility (meaning that no particular arbitrator feels pressure to deliver a proposed decision on schedule), and the involvement of multiple drafters means that more time must be spent up front in debates over what should be included in the proposed decision, without noticeably reducing the length of the subsequent voting phase, when the exercise must be repeated with the remainder of the Committee.
   • Assign an alternate drafter for each case, and have them take over drafting on a specified date if the primary drafter has not produced a proposed decision. Arbitrators have a great tendency, in my opinion, to defer to each other when someone has volunteered to take on a particular task. While this isn't a bad thing, in general, it has led to cases sitting in limbo when the assigned drafter is unable to deliver a proposed decision and the other arbitrators hesitate to take the responsibility away from them.
   • Require (or at least strongly encourage) drafting arbitrators to use the workshop pages. Public drafting enables the drafting arbitrator to collect early feedback from other arbitrators, parties, and observers, and provides an opportunity for any errors in findings to be identified before the proposed decision is presented to the entire Committee. This reduces the risk of having to correct errors in findings once voting has begun (which tends to result in delays due to re-votes or alternate proposals) and of the proposed decision containing provisions which are particularly unpalatable to the other arbitrators (which, again, results in delays as alternate provisions must be proposed and voted on).

4. Some users come before the committee several times (regardless of reasons), and long-serving arbitrators risk giving in to exasperation. Can you describe steps that you would take to ensure an editor involved in proceedings during past tenures of yours would still get a fair hearing? MLauba ^(Talk) 11:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

   As a general rule, an arbitrator who examines an editor's behavior should do so in the context of the specific dispute that is the topic of the arbitration case in question. If an editor's conduct complies with policy, then the editor's past participation in arbitration proceedings is of no particular interest; conversely, if an editor has violated policy, then they can be found to have done so independently of their prior history (or lack thereof) with the Committee.

   From a historical perspective, this isn't a new consideration for me; over the course of my three terms as an arbitrator, there were many editors whom I encountered multiple times as parties to various arbitration cases, and it wasn't uncommon for me to find myself defending an editor against whom I had previously proposed sanctions, or vice versa.

   Having said that, it's important to note that while participation in prior arbitration cases isn't terribly meaningful in and of itself—there are, for example, a number of administrators who have been party to multiple cases simply because they were active in arbitration enforcement work in a particularly contentious area—the same cannot necessarily be said for editors who were previously found to have engaged in misconduct, and who continue to engage in misconduct in future disputes. In such cases—and especially in the context of evaluating whether a particular remedy would be effective—I think it is quite reasonable to consider what sanctions have previously been imposed on an editor, and whether or not they were effective.

6. Admonishments, topic bans, site bans and discretionary sanctions are part of the most common arbitration remedies. Are there any alternative remedies you would see become more prevalent in case decisions? MLauba ^(Talk) 11:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

   I'm hesitant to say that any particular alternative remedy should necessarily become more prevalent—novel remedies are, by definition, somewhat experimental in nature, and the Committee should wait for evidence that they are effective before deploying them more widely—but there are certainly remedies with which I think the Committee should experiment. In particular, I'm interested in the potential applications of "special master"-type remedies, in which a particular individual (or individuals) would be given responsibility to monitor an editor, article, or topic. The Committee has experimented with remedies of this sort in the past, both in the form of mandatory mentorship arrangements for individual editors and in the form of designated teams of administrators assigned to run RFCs or determine consensus in particular disputes, and—as I mentioned in my response to Gerda Arendt's second question, above—I think there is the potential to use such remedies in cases where normal arbitration enforcement processes have been ineffective or are undesirable.

   On a more general note, I would love to see some actual research done into arbitration remedies and their effectiveness. When selecting remedies, the Committee tends to operate on the basis of anecdotal evidence and special cases; it would be quite useful, in my opinion, to have more concrete data regarding different types of remedies and how effective each one may or may not be in curbing various forms of misconduct.

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?

   Certainly, but it's important to distinguish between "sanctions" and "remedies" in this context. A case may conclude without sanctions (in other words, with no editors banned, with no articles placed under editing restrictions, and so forth), but with non-sanction remedies (such as, for example, a mandatory RFC to resolve a particular dispute); this was done in a number of past cases (more successfully in some than in others), some of which were indeed opened with an understanding among the participating arbitrators that sanctions were unlikely to be required.

   As far as a case with no remedies at all, while something of this sort has been proposed in the past—I can recall at least one instance when the idea of holding a case purely as a fact-finding exercise was proposed—I'm not convinced that it would be a good use of the Committee's time or of any real value to the community.

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?

   Viewing this purely as a hypothetical, without any specific context, I would be inclined to say that this sort of exchange would be sufficient to meet the threshold for the "current or past conflicts with an editor" provision of the administrator involvement policy, meaning that the administrator would be considered involved with respect to the editor in question.

   Having said that, I'm having some difficulty imagining the hypothetical situation in which a comment of this sort might occur. Presumably the administrator is a candidate in some election (and one that has public voting, which narrows the field considerably) and the editor has opposed them? I think it would be rather poor practice for someone in those circumstances to individually contact opposing voters, regardless of whether it would make them "involved".

6. 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?

   Generally speaking, I think the Committee can (and should) make reasonable accommodations for editors who are genuinely unavailable to participate in a case for reasons beyond their control. However, in practice, the question of what is "reasonable" in a particular case is very much a subjective one, and it's often difficult to differentiate between an editor who is unavailable and one who is deliberately not participating.

   As far as evidence limits are concerned, I've never found them to be particularly useful to begin with. In my view, if someone is presenting good, useful evidence, then there's no need to place artificial limits on the length of their submission; indeed, they should be encouraged to provide more, since that ultimately reduces the Committee's workload and results in a better decision. Conversely, if someone is presenting evidence that isn't useful, then the artificial limit will do nothing to make it more so.

Questions from Jim Carter

2. Civility is one of Wikipedia's five pillars. Do you think we have a problem with civility on Wikipedia? Why or why not? Do you think civility can and should be enforced on Wikipedia as vigorously as the other pillars like NPOV are? Why or why not?

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?

   In broad terms, I would favor delegating AUSC's work outside the Committee. The specific group to whom it should be delegated is, of course, a matter for careful consideration; my initial inclination would be to favor a distinct community-elected committee or the movement-wide Ombudsman Commission rather than the functionaries en banc (if only because the latter option would mean that individuals under investigation would gain access to the records of their own hearings when participating in future ones), but I could be persuaded otherwise.

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?

   The question seems to have been overcome by events. For what it's worth, I agree with the Committee's judgement in disbanding BASC. As I said in my statement, the Committee spends too much of its time on a variety of non-essential, and often unproductive, tasks (such as hearing an endless stream of ban appeals, the vast majority of which are denied), and effective delegation of these tasks to other groups is needed to allow the Committee to re-focus its attention on more critical matters.

Current Disputes and Cases

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

   I don't think it's practical to define a particular standard for banning someone; ultimately, every case is unique in some way, and should be considered on its own merits rather than through the lens of some pre-defined scale of sanctions. Having said that, during my prior terms on the Committee, there were several factors that I would often find to be present in cases where I supported outright bans:

   • Misconduct that spread across a significant swath of the project, to a degree that a targeted sanction would need to be impractically broad in scope;
   • Misconduct that constituted the majority of an editor's history of participation, to a degree that there was insufficient non-disruptive editing to judge whether an editor could contribute in a constructive manner under a targeted sanction;
   • Misconduct that continued after lesser or targeted sanctions had been imposed; and
   • Misconduct of a particularly egregious or depraved nature, to a degree that the editor's continued presence would be fundamentally incompatible with the principles of the project or would bring the project into significant disrepute.

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?

   While "civility parole" has indeed not been used as an explicit name for a sanction for some time, it's worth noting that the underlying concept has been retained in various forms, including both specific sanctions enacted by the Committee under alternative names, as well as sanctions imposed by individual administrators under the broader umbrella of discretionary sanctions.

   As far as new remedies are concerned, I am increasingly of the opinion that namespace bans should be used in cases where editors are unable to comply with the civility policy. Prior incarnations of the Committee have been reluctant to move in this direction, largely out of a belief that dialogue with other editors was a necessary prerequisite to constructive participation; but, given the significant body of research indicating that many constructive editors participate only in the article space, I am unconvinced that this should continue to be a barrier to the use of such sanctions.

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

   The problem certainly does exist in practice. Generally speaking, neither arbitrators nor the broader community like to convey the impression that they insist upon getting their pound of flesh; consequently, when an administrator resigns in the face of a scandal, or is desysopped by the Committee, there is often a hesitation to press for further sanctions, for fear of appearing unduly spiteful.

   The solution to the problem is conceptually simple—the Committee must simply refrain from prematurely stopping a proceeding when an administrator loses their bit, and must instead press forward with the same sanctions that a non-administrator would face for the same misconduct—but actually doing this in practice can be quite difficult.

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

   I think that a formal, written condemnation (under whichever name) of an editor's conduct can be of value in cases where an editor is found to have violated policy, but where the violation is not severe enough to warrant a more substantial sanction. A statement of this sort ensures that the editor in question does not continue to operate under the mistaken assumption that their conduct is appropriate, and servers as a means to clarify potential gray areas and boundaries in policies for the community as a whole.

   Having said that, I'm not wedded to the idea that such condemnation must necessarily take the form of a remedy—strongly-worded findings of fact could be just as suitable for this purpose, in my opinion—and I'm disturbed by what I see as an emergent variant of the "Super Mario Problem", where some insist that an editor cannot receive a more substantive sanction unless they have previously been warned, admonished, and so forth.

Insider Baseball

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

   I think it does; indeed, as I mentioned in my response to MLauba's first question, I would support more consistent use of it by drafting arbitrators. In brief:

   • For a drafting arbitrator, the workshop offers an opportunity to get feedback (including both straightforward corrections to errors in findings and more subjective reactions) on a proposed decision before it's formally put up for voting. This can ultimately lead to a more efficient voting phase, as proposals that are unacceptable to the rest of the Committee can be dropped beforehand; but, at a minimum, it reduces the risk of obvious errors (such as incorrect diffs) in findings not being found until after they have already been voted on.
   • Somewhat more cynically, the workshop can provide a fishbowl in which the conduct of individual parties—and their ability to interact while in the midst of a dispute—can be observed. This is by no means determinative, of course—I've seen editors who will behave atrociously elsewhere but adopt a visage of perfect propriety while involved in arbitration proceedings—but it can help to highlight editors who are fundamentally unable to handle disputes with others in a reasonable manner.
   • Stepping outside the realm of applicability to specific cases, the workshop also serves as an excellent training ground for future generations of arbitrators. Many of the most proficient members of the Committee got their start with arbitration by proposing items on workshops; in a number of cases, non-arbitrators essentially wrote the entire decision, with the drafting arbitrator merely collating already-written sections from the workshop page.

Question from BethNaught

2. To what extent should people who write many GAs and FAs be exempt from WP:CIVIL?

   Not at all. The question of whether or not an editor's conduct has violated policy is quite independent of said editor's talent for writing articles, and no editor should be exempt from policy in principle.

   Having said that, an editor's contributions can certainly be a factor to consider when determining the most effective remedy to address misconduct. If an editor is able to participate without issues in some areas of the project (as demonstrated, for example, by a record of successfully navigating peer review processes such as FAC or GAN) but runs into problems when participating in other areas, then more fine-grained remedies (such as restrictions for specific topics or specific types of participation, or some form of mentorship arrangement) may be effective in curtailing misconduct while allowing the editor to continue participating; see also my related comments in response to Gerda Arendt's second question and MLauba's third question, above. Conversely, if an editor has no track record of being able to participate effectively without violating policies, then less surgical remedies, such as bans, are more likely to be the appropriate response.

   It's worth noting, incidentally, that this evaluation of an editor's ability to participate without problems is not limited to editors who write FAs or GAs; the same can be said for any editor who demonstrates constructive participation in one particular area—such as creating and maintaining bots, or uploading and restoring images—while having conduct issues in another.

Question from Beeblebrox

2. Pardon my bluntness, but from what I can recall from when I was an incoming arbitrator, you couldn't wait to get out of the role, off the mailing lists, etc. I got the distinct impression that the committee had been particularly acrimonious and at odds with each other the previous year (not necessarily because of anything you did, that's just the impression I got) So I guess my question is: why come back now?

   I don't recall 2013 being an especially acrimonious year—certainly, the Committee has seen much worse, with 2008 in particular coming to mind—but that could just be my own impression.

   With regard to my departure, while part of me was indeed happy to be off the Committee—spending seven years as an arbitrator is, to borrow a phrase from another arbitrator, "soul-crushing"—the sense of abruptness had more to do with my belief that former arbitrators shouldn't try to stick around and make nuisances of themselves than with any great urgency to be gone. Having served on the Committee at the time when former arbitrators dominated the mailing list and drove much of the Committee's agenda, I'm somewhat sensitive to that particular issue, and so made an effort not to drag things out. (This is, incidentally, the reason why I don't say much on the functionaries list either.)

   As far as coming back is concerned: as I mentioned, I think we're likely to see a great deal of turnover as a result of this election, and I think that the Committee will need the sort of experience and institutional memory that I can help provide. Plus, as someone who spent many years helping to shape the current arbitration system, I can't help but feel a certain responsibility to help in keeping it afloat.

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.

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

   The intuitive answer—that non-administrators will provide a unique perspective that is not present in an all-administrator Committee—is not necessarily incorrect, but I think the practical benefit of this tends to be somewhat overstated. There isn't really a single "non-administrator perspective" that is both inherently missing in a group of administrators and can be provided by every non-administrator; an individual non-administrator might espouse ideas that sit anywhere on the wiki-ideological spectrum, in much the same way that individual administrators do (and the frequent bitter arguments between administrators should provide ample evidence of that, if nothing else). Moreover, it's unclear to what extent even a uniquely non-administrative viewpoint would survive the experience of actually serving on the Committee; a newly-elected non-administrator might offer such, but I strongly suspect that in six months their perspective would simply be that of an arbitrator, whatever their background.

   The real benefit of including non-administrators, in my view, is simply the fact that doing so will allow the community to regard the Committee as being more broadly representative and less exclusionary, and thereby—one hopes—increase community support for the Committee and its work.

   As far as drawbacks are concerned, I think there are few, if any, of note. The common concern that a non-administrator is less suited for the rigors of serving on the Committee by dint of not having experienced administrative work is similarly a function of individual experience rather than administrative or non-administrative background; there are many non-administrators who encounter the same stresses, and many administrators who stay out of contentious areas and thereby avoid them. The ability to have qualified arbitrators can ultimately be reduced to the question whether the community can refrain from electing unqualified candidates, but this is equally true for both administrators and non-administrators.

Thanks for responding, Kirill Lokshin. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 00:51, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Questions from Worm That Turned

2. Hi Kirill. We worked together throughout 2013 on Arbcom, but you were one of the least active arbitrators at the time. You have a lot of other responsibilities on Wikimedia related projects, let alone real life. I'd be concerned that if elected, you may not have the time to actually do the role. I'd like to hear your thoughts on activity levels.

   Looking back at 2013, out of a total of 12 cases, I was recused on two, served as a drafter on two, and actively participated in all but two of the others. That doesn't strike me as a particularly low level of activity, but of course your expectations may differ.

   For what it's worth, I do regret not doing more to push forward some of the cases that sat in limbo for months that year. As I mentioned in my response to MLauba's first question, aritrators have a tendency to defer to their colleagues when they volunteer to do something (such as drafting a case), and I'm by no means innocent in that regard.

   Having said that, perhaps what you have in mind is my rather unenthusiastic participation in mailing list discussions? That was true enough, but more a question of inclination rather than time. Honestly, after three terms, I felt like I had seen all the debates before—had participated in all the debates before, in fact—and thought that repeating the same arguments would be of little benefit to either myself or the rest of the Committee.

   There's nothing preventing me from participating on the list more actively, if that's what the Committee wants—although, to be fair, in prior years I was told off for "trying to dominate the discussion" and "not letting other arbs have their say"—but frankly I think the Committee would be better served by reducing the number of such discussions rather than by increasing participation in them.

   Thanks Kirill. That's a really helpful answer. It was indeed due to your lack of participation in the mailing list - I never noticed much of a "presence" from you due to your absence there, especially when combined with your brevity when participating on cases - so it does sound like it was a perception thing. I do appreciate you taking the time to answer. Worm^TT(talk) 15:09, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Biblioworm

2. Do you have any experience in successfully resolving disputes, either on-wiki or off-wiki? (I know you were an arbitrator, but as I mentioned in the question, I would like examples of successful dispute resolution. If you want to use your ArbCom work as an example, could you demonstrate what you believe to be your best work in resolving disputes?)

   I hesitate to reference anything having to do with arbitration as an example of "successful" dispute resolution. While arbitration cases do quite often signal a permanent end to disputes, this tends to occur through the forcible removal of one (or both) sides of the dispute, whether from the area of conflict or from the project as a whole, rather than through any particularly effective "dispute resolution" per se.

   As far as off-wiki experience is concerned, I've had occasion to resolve both interpersonal and contractual disputes in the course of my professional work, but neither one is a particularly good parallel to the sorts of disputes that generally come before the Committee.

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?

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?

Questions from Antony–22

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

   Any policy that limits or prohibits certain types of behavior in online interactions will, of necessity, have to limit free speech to one degree or another. However, this doesn't mean that such limits are inherently harmful, nor that not enforcing such policies is necessarily better. Indeed, there is considerable research to support the notion that failing to enforce behavioral standards ultimately has its own highly detrimental effect on freedom of speech, with voices being silenced when individuals leave the community because they find the prevailing culture to be too hostile.

   The fundamental question that we must ask ourselves is which form of speech is ultimately more important to us: the freedom to toss about petty insults that is demanded by those who advocate against the civility policy, or the speech of the individuals driven off the project by such exchanges? The answer is, at least in my view, obvious.

   It's also worth noting, of course, that Wikipedia is not (and was never intended to be) an experiment in unrestricted free speech. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with restricting certain forms of speech here if we, as a community, determine that doing so is required to fulfill the mission of the project; we are not required to play host to everyone on the internet with something to say.

4. 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?

   As I alluded to in my response to the previous question, incivility—whether it rises to the level of harassment or not—ultimately contributes to a hostile atmosphere that can drive away editors who are unwilling to deal with it as the price of continued participation. The precise effect on the Wikipedia community is difficult to quantify precisely—particularly if one is concerned with the relative severity of the effect on demographics with already-limited available sample sizes—but the general principle has been extensively researched in the context of professional workplace environments, and there is no reason to think that Wikipedia is uniquely immune to its effects.

6. 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'm hesitant to endorse direct engagement between the Committee and the press; whatever individual arbitrators' level of experience and comfort with such matters may be, the Committee as a body has no real expertise in media relations. Serious media outreach is, in my opinion, best left to the Wikimedia Foundation's press team, which is much better qualified to carry it out effectively.

   Having said that, I think there are in fact potential benefits to preparing easy-to-understand explanations of specific cases, and the reasoning behind the Committee's decisions in them. However, I would not necessarily view this as something directed at the press; indeed, over the years, there have been a number of requests for such statements from the community, and the Committee has previously discussed preparing them as a way to enhance community understanding of the arbitration process rather than as an externally-oriented media outreach strategy.

8. 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.

   As I'm a party to that case, I can't imagine that I would be asked to write a press statement about it (or that it would be advisable for me to do so even if, by some bizarre chance, I were).

10. 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?

    I think the concerns about growing professional participation are somewhat overstated in practice. While professionals with non-Wikipedia backgrounds will indeed need to adjust to Wikipedia's unique way of doing certain things, the same can be said of most new participants. Some professionals will certainly fail to acclimatize to Wikipedia, but this is by no means unique to them as a class; there are plenty of non-professional editors who've had the same problem.

Questions 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 ? (Please note several polices have been made by Jimbo/WMF without ENG Wiki consensus like Global ban, Global CU, Global OS, Privacy, Access to nonpublic data and Arbitration and also pointed here)

   Without getting too deeply into the question of whether the WMF Terms of Use are semantically a "policy" or not—I do note that we have a local page, Wikipedia:Terms of use, that currently bears a policy tag—I think that the Terms of Use can be treated as a policy for all practical intents and purposes (including, in particular, enforcement of their provisions and sanctions for violations).

   As far as sanctioning undisclosed paid editing is concerned, I have no objection to the idea of the Committee doing so. However, I'm not convinced that the Committee is necessarily the group best suited for this particular job, considering the inherently private and off-wiki nature of much (if not all) of the evidence in such matters and the Committee's historical difficulties with "secret" hearings of this sort. Frankly, I suspect that a dedicated group—whether composed of WMF staff, volunteers selected for this specific task, or some combination of the two—would be more effective at actually enforcing the Terms of Use in this particular area than the Committee is likely to be.

4. Can you clarify as a former Arb whether a Non Admin will be given the right to view deleted material if elected ? This here talks about CU and OS alone not about deleted material.

   I am not a MediaWiki expert, but my understanding is that the current implementation of the "oversight" toolkit inherently includes the ability to view material that has been deleted by administrators. Consequently, a non-administrator arbitrator would presumably be able to view such material by virtue of receiving OS rights, regardless of anything else.

   Note that this is, of course, separate from the question of whether non-administrator arbitrators should have access to other administrator tools (such as blocking or page protection) during their terms, which is currently being discussed elsewhere.

Questions from Rich Farmbrough

2. I see from your contributions that you have only made 458 mainspace edits in the last six years of which almost none (maybe 5 or 10) are other than gnoming. Do you think one content gnome edit every 4-5 days is enough to keep you in touch with wiki-reality?

   There is a myriad of ways in which a volunteer might contribute to Wikipedia—from writing featured articles and wiki-gnoming, to maintaining WikiProjects, helping to resolve disputes, or assisting other editors—and it is a mistake to think that one's experience with any one of them in particular is somehow uniquely determinative of one's grasp of "wiki-reality". An editor's understanding of the project is not defined by their edit count; having more edits will not make one a better arbitrator, and one gains no mystical revelations as to the fundamental nature of Wikipedia by fixing a million typos.

4. You make a great deal of the number of proposed decisions you drafted and how quickly you do it. While overrunning is not a good thing, it seems to me that you rushed the drafting of proposed decisions, failed to check basic facts, failed to read policy, and failed to take into account comments on talk pages which identified factual inaccuracies. How would you avoid this in future?

Question from User:Beyond My Ken

2. Can you define what you mean by "harassment" and how you would differentiate between it and legitimate inquiries into a suspicious editor's background?

Question from Wikimandia

2. Many editors were unhappy with the results of the recent Neelix fiasco, in which the AC closed the case as soon as Neelix resigned as an admin, despite the fact that many of the issues brought up in the evidence page had nothing whatsoever to do with misuse of administrative tools or even his redirect spam, including building walled gardens and violation of WP guidelines concerning advocacy in editing. This led to accusations of a double standard for admins and regular editors. (If a non-admin had done the same, there could be no such easy dismissal as we don't have tools to resign). Neelix never acknowledged or agreed to stop any of this behavior, simply (eventually) apologized for the redirects only and then later resigned with no further comment. There was significant support for at least a topic ban at the ANI. Do you believe a topic ban or other measure should have been applied in this case?

   This is essentially a specific case of the broader problem discussed in Guerillero's third question above.

   Without commenting on what specific remedy would be most appropriate in this instance—I have not reviewed the entirety of the evidence in the Neelix case, and would not feel comfortable rendering judgment without doing so—I will say that I support the notion that editors should receive similar sanctions for similar misconduct, regardless of whether they happen to be administrators or not. Being an administrator should not exempt editors from having to follow basic policies, and resigning one's administrator status should not serve as a "get out of jail" card, particularly for misconduct that has little to do with one's possession of administrator tools to begin with.

Question from Everyking

2. You are a party in an ongoing arbitration case regarding a matter in which you set off a firestorm of controversy by misusing admin tools. In light of that, do you really think this is an appropriate time to stand for election? Furthermore, as you acknowledge above, you have been practically inactive (aside from involvement in wiki-drama) for years. I don't think "fixing a million typos" is what we need from our arbitrators, but I also think we need to see some activity so that we can have some basis for evaluating your suitability for the position. Also, given your poor performance during your last stint on the ArbCom, can you give us any indication of how you might do the job better if given another chance? Everyking (talk) 05:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

   While your continued insistence that I've somehow "misused" my admin tools is hardly a surprise to anyone at this point—you've diligently repeated that particular refrain since 2007, when you decided to help a particularly vicious harasser evade his ban and I blocked you for it—the evidence for your allegations seems to be as absent as always, and the arbitration case you mention includes no adverse findings regarding my conduct.

   As for my performance during my prior terms: that is, of course, a subjective matter. Suffice it to say that I disagree with your evaluation, and will instead defer to the community's judgement of my effectiveness as an arbitrator.

   It is disappointing that your tone is so hostile. If you are going to stand for ArbCom, shouldn't you be able to answer tough questions? The ArbCom case is ongoing, as I stated. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to wait until it's been settled? And you have not addressed the problem of your inactivity. How can we possibly evaluate your candidacy when you've done so little to indicate that you're suited for the job? It would be helpful if you could point to whatever you've done that's constructive these last few years. Everyking (talk) 08:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I have more questions. Is your hostile attitude and general inactivity reflective of how you'd conduct yourself on the ArbCom? We already have enough inactive or semi-active arbitrators and we certainly don't need another. It's hard to imagine that you're going to suddenly spring to life after years of inactivity if you're elected. Also, if you find so little interest in working on this project, why would you want to take on a big new responsibility? And do you think that it's appropriate for arbitrators to give concerned members of the community an earful of insults when they ask questions?

You state above that "the arbitration case ... includes no adverse findings regarding my conduct". And while that may be true, your actions didn't receive a rousing endorsement, either. The sentiment seems to be that it was a bad block that was sure to stir up needless drama, but they are refraining from sanctioning you because they think it is possible that "a reasonable person" could have believed what you ostensibly believed. How do you feel about that? Everyking (talk) 20:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Wehwalt

2. Do you maintain a list, written down or otherwise, of editors, whether administrators or otherwise, that you would unhesitatingly vote to take action (that is, ban, block, desysop) against were they to be a party to a case before the committee? What policies would be implicated in an arbitrator maintaining such a list? If a fellow arbitrator maintained such a list, and they told you about it, how would you advise them?

   I do not; frankly, trying to maintain such a list strikes me as a completely unworkable idea in practice, whatever one's motivations for attempting it. As I mentioned in my response to MLauba's second question, every case that comes before the Committee must be considered on its own merits; an arbitrator can easily find themselves defending someone they had voted to sanction in a previous proceeding, and vice versa. In such an environment, having a pre-conceived list of editors whom one will always try to sanction is simply not compatible with properly doing one's job as an arbitrator.

Question from SageRad

2. Would you please talk about your approach to civility, one of the five pillars of Wikipedia? Do you recognize that there are some dominating types of behaviors that don't quote look uncivil at first glance, but may be part of a longer-term history between two or more editors, in which there may be bullying going on, maybe no "cuss words" but still some passive aggressive controlling behaviors, or otherwise uncivil behaviors, that need addressing to make a more friendly and inclusive editing environment for all? Thank you.

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?

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?

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

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?

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?

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?

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?

Many thanks in advance for any answers. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 15:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Bzuk

How would you deal with the perpetual wikilawyer whose main contribution is in the preservation of ownership rights rather than content creation? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Question from Deacon of Pndapetzim=

I recently got an email about these elections, and saw that you were standing for ArbCom election again. If you remember a few years back, you failed to recuse yourself and acted both as judge and prosecutor against myself at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Perth/Proposed decision, actions which at the time seems quite plausibly like retaliation for my vocal criticism of your handling of the Eastern Europe cases and which contributed to a general feeling of being wronged that destroyed my will to contribute significantly to the encyclopedia after a decade of service. I haven't been following anyone's deeds on Wikipedia for several years and I have no idea if you are a good Arb these days or have done a good job in the role and I have no idea what your motivations were for acting like that on the case, but I am wondering if you still believe you acted in a way that you would consider 'judicious'. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 02:56, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Questions from Dcs002

2. You discussed your strong position against harassment in your statement, but what about racism and other isms? Of course you are strongly opposed, but specifically, and this is a very real issue in WP, what if articles in WP systematically and overwhelmingly use different language for identical behavior, depending on race or geographical region? What if that language comes from our reliable sources, but the result is still that WP uses different language for the things White Europeans do than for what non-white Africans do? Would such a case be of concern? What if the word we apply to non-whites has negative connotations? Would you see that as a problem, and if so, what would be the role for ArbCom in resolving this discrepancy? (Assume the RfC at WP:W2W did not achieve consensus because the language came from RS.)

   The issue you highlight is certainly a significant one, touching on both matters of systemic bias as well as the perpetual question of what we are to do when "reliable sources" happen to be wrong on some point. Having said that, I don't think there is much that the Committee would be able to do here; it is explicitly prohibited from adjudicating questions of content, and while it might be possible to argue that something like blatant misrepresentation of source material is a conduct issue rather than a content one, doing so would be exceedingly difficult in a case where the problem lies with the sources themselves rather than the editors using them.

4. Would you please clarify what you said above concerning an emerging variant of the Super Mario issue, where there is a growing expectation that users should first be warned or admonished before sanctions are applied? If I did something, maybe even something self-serving, but I didn't realize it violated WP policy, Shouldn't I get the benefit of a doubt, and get some sort of caution first, and maybe some minor sanction first?

   To clarify, when I speak of an editor being "warned" or "admonished", I am referring specifically to the corresponding arbitration remedies (typically entitled "User:X warned" or "User:X admonished") rather than to warnings in general. Certainly, allowances can be made in cases where someone is genuinely unaware of a policy; but this should not mean that someone who is very much aware that their conduct is a violation of policy—by way of a finding of fact against them in a prior arbitration case, for example—cannot be substantively sanctioned merely because the Committee has not formally adopted an admonishment remedy against them.

6. Is there a point where the Super Mario principle should be reversed? For example, a teenager opens an account and right away creates an article about himself as a music producer with his own studio. (That was one of the AfD discussions I participated in last year.) We say, "Aw! He just doesn't understand how WP works yet." And we delete the article and someone gives him a friendly post on his user talk page. But what if an admin did the same thing? I don't know ANY of the details, but it seems someone who was an admin is about to get banned for doing something similar, some sort of self-promotion, using sockpuppets though. What is the difference?

   In general, Wikipedia's disciplinary processes operate on the assumption that sufficiently "experienced" users are familiar with, at minimum, fundamental Wikipedia policies (such as, for example, the prohibitions on sockpuppets). This is true of both administrators and non-administrators—someone with tens of thousands of edits is not a "new" user regardless of whether or not they happen to be an administrator—but administrator status is one of the more obvious indicators that a user can be considered "experienced". The exact point where a "new" user ceases to be such is, of course, a highly subjective matter, and I'm not aware of any real standard that can be applied across the board in this regard.

Thanks for your replies - I like them all :) Dcs002 (talk) 03:57, 3 December 2015 (UTC)