Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/NE Ent

NE Ent

This is the talk page for discussing a candidate for election to the Arbitration Committee.
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I have harshly criticized NE Ent once or twice. NE Ent is a fine, calm person who does not return fire. NE Ent would make a good arbitrator. Jehochman ^Talk 14:07, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

He does show signs of frustration from time to time, however. (I suppose that is because he is human!?) IHTS (talk) 01:05, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

He *does* return fire, he just does it subtly and insidiously so that it slips under the radar. He shows clear favoritism towards certain editors. MaxBrowne (talk) 02:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

"Moderate UK insult"

This edit suggests a bias in favour of a certain editor, and against proper enforcement of the civility policy. It's true that the "heinously misogynistic" (note hyperbolic language) US usage is not prevalent in the UK and Australia and New Zealand, however the "moderate UK insult" is actually very strong and will probably get your teeth knocked out if you use it on a random person in the pub. It's probably the only word you still can't say on TV in these countries (I've heard "fuck" plenty of times on BBC programs). I suspect Ent knows all this, but for whatever reason is biased either in favour of Eric or against enforcement of normal decorum and civility. (For the record I have no personal beef with Eric and would happily collaborate with him on an article, however we tend not to edit in the same areas).

Also of concern is the preoccupation with other people's drama at the expense of encyclopedia building... no non-admin should have more edits to ANI than to main space. When not posting at various ANI threads, he's writing essays about civility, patronisingly telling people that "life is not fair" or trying to invent his own wikipedia memes. MaxBrowne (talk) 10:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I've said the same thing. However, upon reflection I realize that different people will be fascinated by different things. If NE Ent is interested in how to improve online interaction between people, that's what he's going to work on. Whether or not somebody is an admin should make no difference to how they try to help. A fair number of people around here respect NE Ent's opinions, more so than the opinions of some admins. Jehochman ^Talk 16:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Not a fan of WP:NOJUSTICE, either. But NE Ent might be the "Socrates of Wikipedia". (And what if Socrates had gotten "a real job"?) IHTS (talk) 01:12, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

When formulating my evidence section for AE2, I was repeatedly struck by the absurdity of having to justify an insult. In Wikipedia-as-it-should-be, it would not matter which (UK/US) connotation was meant. But in a world where anger, aggression, vehemence, disparagement, snark, sarcasm, snideness, harassment, demeaning, name calling, profanity, punishment, revenge, payback, keeping score, arrogance, put downs, AGF is not a suicide pact, Facepalm, seriously? derision, sigh, troll, wtf, ffs, narcissist, fuck off is common, it actually becomes important, depressingly, to distinguish between run of the mill insult and outlier insult. NE Ent 13:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I understand the offensiveness, and, during the original 2011 episode, with Eric's consent redacted the usage. As I said at the time It'll either blow over (achieving nothing) or blow up (causing lots of churn and angst and in the end achieve nothing) If Wikipedia was truly focused on dispute resolution, rather than punishment, it could have ended there, instead of still churning over it four years later. NE Ent 13:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

This isn't so much about NE Ent's candidacy. It's a point for optimism: We do have good dispute resolution available. Does anyone go through mediation anymore? Or is it right to ANI? I see the Mediation Cabal is no more, but the DRN looks like a great alternative. Maybe less fire and glitter and forcefulness, but maybe more substance too because it's voluntary. I've gone to mediation twice, and both times it was a positive experience, especially the second time, when the mediator declined the mediation case because through the process of seeking mediation, we had begun resolving our problems ourselves. If people like working on dispute resolution, that's a great place to go. Dcs002 (talk) 10:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

My Q/A

As is obvious from the history of NE Ent's talk page, as well as my own Q&A page, I'm trying to finalize the candidates I want to support. I was earlier asked about the idea of a non-admin becoming an arbitrator, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So I asked NE (among a number of other candidates) a question that I considered fairly important in who I personally want to vote for. After I asked it, I realized I had posed a question that someone without previous functionary experience wouldn't have the full context or backstory to answer, so I posted a quite non-argumentative request for clarification - I didn't want to ask the same question to some people who were literally involved in the email thread that triggered the question while also asking it of people who weren't in a position to understand the full context or backstory. NE removed my request for clarification; I initially attempted to remove my entire question (as has been done on several candidates' pages) because I thought it not quite right to leave the question up when it wasn't a question he had the full backstory or context to. I removed my name and sig from the question afterwards in an effort to basically indicate that I thought I had fucked up in asking a question that I didn't provide enough context to to someone who didn't have the context from their past experience, particularly because NE's lack of previous functionary experience is explicitly one of the reasons why I have been considering voting for him. I think it's a bit silly that OID restored my signature when all its replacement really did was indicate that I thought I had fucked up, and not anything bad about NE.

I consider it kind of silly for the initial request for clarification to have been reverted by NE, and really silly that someone who wasn't NE reverted my own attempt to explain that I thought I had fucked up by asking a question to someone without the full context of why I was asking it, but I'll let NE decide what to do whenever he's around next. I fucked up by looking for a non-admin candidate and then asking them a question that required previous functionary experience to understand why I was posing the question, and think it's especially silly that anyone other than NE reverted my own attempt to explain in as few words as possible in small type that I thought I had fucked up in how I asked my own question in a way that was unfair to NE. Further explanation is on both my own Q&A page, and NE's usertalk page. Kevin Gorman (talk) 09:31, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I restored your signature because your attempt to distance yourself from something that doesnt paint you in a good light is clearly self-serving. You asked a rather stupidly formulated question and got an answer that you didnt like. Then you tried to backpedal, followed by an attempt to disassociate yourself from it by not having it overtly linked to yourself. Now you are harping on about his 'lack of experience not enabling him to understand your question' etc etc. The reality is he did understand your question, gave you an answer which clearly illustrates why your question was silly, and you still wont drop it. As far as I am concerned, the person who lacks experience and understanding here is not NE. I suggest you voluntarily restrict yourself to your own QA page instead of engaging in pointless bickery regarding other candidates. You will be elected (or not) on your merits. Not on how much you can disprove others. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:57, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Providing clarification about the specific scenario (which to be clear was before arbcom and the OS team this year) in an attempt to give more context to a question to someone who lacked it is 'backpedalling'? Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

A question was asked. It was based a rather thin premise -- that the impact of three things is indicative of one of those things. I took the time to look at the study quoted, and explain why the reasoning wasn't compelling. In reply to my query on my talk page, Kevin then synthesized that Oversight wouldn't suppress the information that provides the majority of the localization, date of birth and zip code, based on his interpretation of an email he received [1], which struck me as implausible. The policy states "Removal of non-public personal information, such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities" (emphasis mine) so I was pretty sure date of birth or zip code would quality. As has been pointed out, I'm not even an admin, let alone an oversighter ... so I asked an Oversighter, and received the expected, common sense answer that dates of birth and zip codes have always be suppressed in her experience. I don't mind the question, so much. But honestly, the innuendo that the Oversight team isn't doing their job kinda pisses me off, which I try not to let happen in my wiki-life. Now, if the question is, do I think unwanted speculation about an editor's gender should at least be rev-deleted, I would say yes, not because any geolocate-by-gender argument but because simply it's no one's business if the editor doesn't want to specify. NE Ent 02:18, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

• NE: I don't want to quote from an arbitrator's email without his own explicit permission, and I appreciate your answering this in greater detail here, but I want to be clear that this was not something I synthesized out of thin air. Since Roger Davies has had no qualms in sharing the gist of the contents of my emails with him but not their exact contents, I don't feel like I need to have any qualms about returning the favor. I like a lot of our oversighters - some of them I count among my best friends - and think that left to their own devices they do a pretty damn good job exercising discretion. Earlier this year, Roger, acting on behalf of arb and OS (and arb does have great significance interpreting WP:OS,) sent me an email that stated that the undisclosed gender of an editor was categorically not something that could be oversighted. He didn't try to make a contextual case, but made a flat out statement that since gender was not explicitly listed in OS#1, it was categorically unoversightable, even in a situation that put an editor at potential real-life risk. Kevin Gorman (talk)

Did you contact WMF? NE Ent 10:42, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Not sure I want to step into this but here goes... Gender is considered non-public information by policy when associated with someone's account, right? I don't want more details about this case, just - have I got that right? Is this question of oversight about which policies are covered by this specific oversight process, or is this about whether gender is actually protected information?

(I first posted this as a follow-up on the Q&A page and quickly realized that section is reserved for the questioner.) Dcs002 (talk) 08:55, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think so; copy-pasting the referenced section (emphasis mine):

Information you provide us or information we collect from you that could be used to personally identify you. To be clear, while we do not necessarily collect all of the following types of information, we consider at least the following to be “personal information” if it is otherwise nonpublic and can be used to identify you:

   (a) your real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, IP address, user-agent information, credit card number;
   (b) when associated with one of the items in subsection (a), any sensitive data such as date of birth, gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origins, marital or familial status, medical conditions or disabilities, political affiliation, and religion; and
   (c) any of the items in subsections (a) or (b) when associated with your user account.

given the qualifiers "and can be used to identify you:" and "when associated with one of the items in subsection," my personal interpretation would gender is not necessarily oversightable. I claim to be neither an expert on WMF policy nor a lawyer, but my basic WP:AGF would be that oversight did the right thing lacking evidence to the contrary. In any event, if someone has a problem with actions of Roger Davies, they should discuss with Roger, and if they feel either a) WMF policies are being violated or b) someone is being put in danger, they should contact WMF. WMF does take community concerns seriously: there was a recent AN discussion involving apparent retention of checkuser beyond WMF guidelines, as written at the time, so I emailed WMF about it and they clarified the guidelines [2]. NE Ent 10:42, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

• Gender is explicitly covered under WMF's privacy policy, but, as confirmed by legal, but the WMF privacy policy applies to CU but not OS (also confirmed by legal.) Gender is not explicitly listed as an example of PII in WP:OS, but OS#1 authorizes the use of the tool for the suppression of PII and then gives a non-exclusive list of types of PII. So, gender isn't explicitly listed, but it's not meant to be an inclusive list, either - hence the room for how arbs choose to interpret a policy that they are primarily responsible for enforcing. Roger made a categorical statement that because gender was not an explicitly listed criterion, it was categorically not-oversightable. I'm find with arguments that discretion should be involved and context is important, I just refuse to vote for an arb who would make a statement directly to the effect that PII such as gender is categorically not oversightable. I have had conversations with WMf about it, but because it involved a situation where the editor was, luckily, not immediately in direct danger they declined to intervene. Bluntly, although if you are elected I'd be happy to fill you in on the context of the case, I asked the question both because it was based on an incident that did occur, and because I wanted to judge the rigidity of candidates in terms of interpreting policies that they will be primarily responsible for interpreting.

  Basically, even without knowing the specifics of the situation, the answer you pretty much just gave - that gender is not necessarily oversightable, but that it depends on context (and can be oversightable in certain circumstances) was pretty much the sort of answer I was looking for. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Roger made a categorical statement that because gender was not an explicitly listed criterion, it was categorically not-oversightable. I've not said that.  Roger Davies ^talk 19:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. Dcs002 (talk) 04:52, 3 December 2015 (UTC)