User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/Vassyana

Hello, below are some optional questions to help the voters at the 2008 Arbitration Committee elections get to know you, the candidate, better.

  • 1. How long have you been an editor of Wikipedia?
  • A. About 3 years, when I first created this account. I largely edited as an IP until January 2007.
  • 2. How many total edits do you have on Wikipedia? What is your % of edits to the article space?
  • A. 10818. 23%.[1] These are almost all "by hand" edits, as I make very little use of automated and semi-automated tools.
  • 3. Are you an administrator? If so, how long have you been one?
  • A. Yes. Since 31 May, 2007.
  • 4. Do you hold any other userrights or positions at the English Wikipedia? (crat, medcom, WPPJ, etc)
  • 5. Do you hold any userrights or other positions of trust at other WMF projects? Which ones?
  • A. No.
  • 6. Have you ever been named as a participant of a Request for Arbitration? If so, please link case(s).
  • A. No.
  • A. No.
  • 8. Have you ever been blocked or formally sanctioned at another WMF project? If so, please describe.
  • A. No.
  • 9. What is your best work at Wikipedia? (an article, list, image or content template)
  • A. I brought Laozi and East Asian religions up to good article status. I think more "core" topics need attention and improvement. Image:Save a Little Dram for Me.ogg is a featured sound I helped restore (and quite a fun little song). I am also very proud of my participation in mediation and third opinion requests.
  • 10. If elected, would you request the Checkuser and/or Oversight userrights?
  • A. No. While the tools may be useful for an arb, they are not necessary to carry out the responsibilities of a seat on ArbCom.
  • 11. Please list any disclosed or undisclosed alternate or prior accounts you have had.
  • A. I have not utilized alternate accounts. I did edit as an IP somewhat regularly from October 2005 until January 2007. I have not edited under another account nor edited logged out since January 2007.
  • 12. What methods of off-wiki communication do you use to discuss Wikipedia related matters? (IRC, Skype, WR, Mailing Lists, blogs, etc) Please link to any publicly available forums you use.
  • A. I openly make myself available to contact via email. I am a member of the MedCom mailing list. I have used IRC, but my participation there has been very limited for some months. I occasionally use Skype. IRC and Skype are largely been used for socializing, but they are also used to coordinate on projects (such as for joint-nomination featured sound candidates), privately discuss mediation efforts, discuss wikiphilosophy, and so forth.
  • 13. Do you have OTRS access? If so, which queues?
  • A. No.
  • 14. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/MONGO and RFAR/Jim62sch as to off-site activities by users?
  • A. I do not believe there is a contradiction. The former states that those participating in some places may be placed under greater scrutiny, which (for better or worse) is little more than stating an observable fact. The latter (correctly) clarifies that off-wiki activities are not subject to sanctions unless there is a clear threat of disruption to the project or harm to its participants. Taken together, it essentially means that an editor cannot use demands for privacy and/or claims that their activities were "off-wiki" to defend against clear evidence that they were involved in (as examples) organizing a POV-pushing edit war or the posting of private information.
  • A. I have a mixed, leaning towards negative, opinion of it. It has a great potential to be used as tool to "legislate from the bench". I am very wary of "clarifications" unrelated to existing ArbCom cases. Generally, if a dispute needs to be addressed by ArbCom, there should be an ArbCom case opened.
  • 16. Besides compromised accounts, under what circumstances would you support or initiate an emergency request for desysopping?
  • A. Emergency desyssoping should only happen when there is a serious threat of disruption to the project. For example, if an administrator were to wade into the pop culture notability debate by speedy deleting articles that could be seen as "borderline" or of "questionable notability" and showed an intent to continue by ignoring community concerns, it would be appropriate to desysop the admin until the situation can be sorted out. As a counterexample, if an administrator displays some civility issues or is accused of bias, it is highly unlikely that emergency measures would be needed or appropriate.
  • 17. Currently, only Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee are authorized to perform/request involuntarily desysop an administrator whose account has not been compromised. What is your view of community-based desysopping decisions?
  • A. It would be best if a means of desysopping were available to the community, but exceptional care would need to be taken to avoid it becoming a forum for revenge. A poorly-designed recall process would provide a strong disincentive for administrators to become involved in difficult disputes and certain contentious areas of the wiki, where admin intervention is needed most.
  • 18. If you owned Wikipedia as the WMF currently does, what would you do to fix the BLP problem?
  • A. Delete unreferenced articles and articles regarding subjects whose notability is questionable, upon request from the subject. Strongly encourage the enforcement of BLP provisions. Strongly discourage BLP articles lacking references and clearly reliable third-party sources. Strongly discourage the use of references with questionable reliability.
  • 19. In 2004, the Arbitration Committee referred issues to the Mediation Committee. However, as of recent, the Arbitration Committee has not referred issues to the Mediation Committee. Would you refer more content-based disputes to MedCom or continue the current practice?
  • A. Content-based disputes with minimal behavioral issues should generally be referred to the means of addressing content disagreements. Mediation is voluntary, so recommendations should not be confused with mandates. In cases where behavioral issues are prominent, but legitimate content disputes are present, should be resolved to address the conduct problems and thereafter referred to mediation or other avenues of dispute resolution. Mediation is not the only option. For example, if a dispute has had limited outside participation, it may be appropriate to post a neutral request for outside input on an appropriate noticeboard (such as WP:RSN) and/or file an RfC.
  • 20. In the past the Arbitration Committee has taken a checkered view of wheel wars, desysopping in some cases and not desysopping in others. What do you believe constitutes a wheel war which would result in a desysopping?
  • A. Every case has its own context and facts to be considered. In general, wheel wars where the participants have a clear intent to perform such actions in the future or a blatant disregard for the community's wishes should result in desysopping. Wheel wars over policies, high-profile articles, and similar areas of high impact to the wiki should probably result in emergency desyopping while ArbCom determines what, if any, long-term sanctions will be imposed.
  • 21. How involved must an administrator be to be unable to enforce policy on a user? Given that it is expected that all admins understand policy when they pass RFA, under what circumstances would you not desysop an administrator who was clearly involved with a user they blocked or an article they deleted/protected?
  • A. Generally, if a majority of participants from both sides and/or uninvolved users feel that an administrator is neutral and uninvolved, it is probably true. Each case has to be considered in context because different areas of the wiki have distinct scopes of dispute and editing dynamics. An editor involved in a large number of Latter Day Saint movement articles would still probably be an uninvolved party to a dispute at Early Christianity, even if some of the same editors were involved in the article. That would preclude evidence that the administrator is carrying out "revenge" actions for losing a dispute in their regular main topic area. Other areas of the wiki have much broader (and more heated) areas of dispute. An administrator involved in acrimonious edit disputes over parapsychology and homeopathy (or otherwise involved in a broad manner in the skeptical/fringe dispute) would probably not be considered an uninvolved party in a dispute over cold fusion or acupuncture. Religion articles generally have fairly limited areas of dispute, while fringe science and alternative medicine articles have broad disputes that range over a wide variety of articles with a relatively small group of editors repeatedly involved in the same disputes. Under almost no conditions, except those of clear community disapproval and/or extreme controversy, should prior administrative actions involving a user or topic area be considered "prior involvement" for these purposes.
  • 22. Besides the technical capabilities administrators have, the Arbitration Committee has granted administrators the rights to enforce certain general sanctions with regards to specific editors and articles. What is your view on these new non-technical privileges being considered part of the "administrative" function for purposes such as RfC, Recall, and RfAR?
  • A. I believe it is a common sense extension of administrative abilities. Administrators can fully lock down articles and completely block users from editing Wikipedia with a few clicks of a mouse. It makes sense that administrators can opt to impose lessor restrictions, such as topic bans or editing constraints. These actions are subject to administrator and community review, just like any other administrative action.
  • 23. Current checkuser policy at the English Wikipedia prohibits checkusers from fulfilling "fishing" requests. However, global privacy policy does not prohibit such requests from being fulfilled, so long as personal information is not disclosed. Would you support the alteration of the en.wp policy to permit fishing requests?
  • A. I do not see why permitting fishing requests should be necessary. On the contrary, I believe permitting them would lead to significant discontent in the community and cause unneeded drama.
  • 24. In 2006 the Arbitration Committee asked the community to address the issue of protecting children's privacy on Wikipedia. To this day there is still no policy on how to handle children's privacy on Wikipedia. What steps would you take to ensure children's privacy is protected under policy?
  • A. It seems to be common practice to remove personal information posted by minors. Policy is often formed by common good practice. It should be relatively uncontroversial to document the community practice on this issue, which is already de facto policy "on the ground".
  • 25. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/LevelCheck and RFAR/Durova as to what may be considered justification for blocks of educated new users?
  • A. I do not believe there is any contradiction. Taken together, they establish that there should be clear evidence of disruption and/or clear evidence of sockpuppetry linking the "new" account to the "old" account in order to justify a block. This seems to echo general community sentiment and standing good practice.
  • 26. Originally RfARs were named in the style of Party X v. Party Y in line with the idea of two groups in opposition to each other (eg. User:Guanaco versus User:Lir). Later it was changed to naming an individual user (eg. Husnock). Now cases get random names like Highways 2. What naming convention do you believe is the appropriate one for ArbCom to use in designating case names? under what circumstances should a case name be changed after opening, such as in RFAR/Zeraeph?
  • A. If a case is specifically addressing the conduct of (a) specific user(s) in a context unrelated to broader disputes, naming it after the user(s) is appropriate. Otherwise, cases should generally be named in relation to their disputes, usually by topic area or the specific type of behavioral issue being considered. This is simply the best practice for ease of reference and transparency. Cases should be renamed as necessary to best conform with this naming convention.
  • 27. A case is presented between two administrators who have repeatedly undone each other's administrative actions with regard to the deletion of an article. The basis for the deleting administrator's action was an OTRS ticket showing the article to be a copyright violation. In performing the deletion, the administrator clearly referenced the OTRS ticket number. Assuming the undeleting administrator did not have OTRS access, do you penalize him more or less for wheel warring? Do you penalize the deleting administrator for wheel warring?
  • A. Regardless of OTRS access on the part of the undeleting administrator, OTRS deletions should never be overturned lightly and/or without consultation. The matter should be discussed with the deleting administrator and it would not be inappropriate to contact another editor with OTRS access to verify the ticket. Even absent an OTRS ticket, repeatedly restoring a copyvio that has been clearly identified as such is extremely inappropriate. The deleting administrator should not continue to wheel war. They should try contacting the undeleting administrator to let them know the seriousness of situation. Failing that, a post to the administrators' noticeboard would help resolve the matter with community support. This is a situation where communication by either wheel warring admin could have quickly and relatively painlessly resolved the situation. Restrictions, desysopping, and other measures would be based on whether or not this was an isolated incident, whether the involved admins recognize their error, and whether either involved party is likely to disrupt the project in a such fashion in the future.
  • 28. To what extent do you believe policy on Wikipedia is or should be binding?
  • A. I believe principles behind the basic policies are strongly binding and relatively non-negotiable. The policies themselves are subject to change and revision, but their underlying intent is fairly consistant and supported by the consensus of the community. Editors should avoid overly relying on the particular wording of policies, but the fundamental concepts are firm. Regardless of what our policies on edit warring and the three revert rule say in particular language, it is undisputed that edit and revert wars are undesirable and frowned upon by the community to such an extant that blocks are a common (and widely supported) tool for dealing with such behavior. To get a better idea of my views, please see this essay.
  • 29. Do you believe that former arbitrators should be on the Arb Comm mailing list? Why or why not?
  • A: No. ArbCom should consider private matters before them amongst themselves. The few cases where former arbs need to contacted can be handled individually, while including them in private ArbCom deliberations and lists as a matte of fact has a great potential to harm the reputation of ArbCom and engender significant ill-will in the community. It may be useful, on occasion, to consult with former members of ArbCom to access a bit of "institutional memory". However, due to the length of arbitrator terms and the staggered election tranches, access to this institutional memory should be available within ArbCom itself. If one, or a few, former arbitrators need to be contacted about previous cases they were involved in, this rare circumstance can be handled on a case by case basis by contacting those editors directly.