Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2021/Candidates/Wugapodes

Wugapodes

Hello, I'm Wugapodes, and I am willing to serve on ArbCom. I view Wikipedia as a community of practice organized around the development of a free, open, online encyclopedia. What does that mean for me as an editor and what would that mean for me as an arbitrator? I evaluate options on the basis of three main criteria: what courses of action will (1) lead to the best reader experience by (2) supporting a diverse community of content creators and maintainers while (3) fostering an environment that welcomes new editors who can sustain our maintenance burden. Ultimately I view ArbCom as a body in service of concrete goals, not abstract ideologies, and while the construction and maintenance of an encyclopedia is our unifying goal, we must take seriously the social and emotional aspects of building an encyclopedia in a system of collaborative anarchy.

I divide my time between EnWiki and other projects which I believe gives me a perspective valuable to the committee. My recent work has been closing large discussions, extension development, and meta work. I am an EnWiki administrator of nearly two years, a MediaWiki developer on the ChessBrowser extension, and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation regional grants committee for the US and Canada. In my spare time I enjoy reading through old page histories in order to understand the early culture that developed Wikipedia, and contribute to other, non-WMF wiki communities.

Through these experiences with the wider free knowledge ecosystem, I can provide a unique perspective to the committee. Our wikipedia is part of an ecosystem comprising a multi-lingual commons of free creative works. No wiki is an island, and understanding how our wikipedia fits into this wider system can lead to better decisions. For example, other wikis have faced problems of scale which impact civility and collaboration; how have they addressed it and what can we learn from them? Locally blocked or banned editors may contribute to other projects and demonstrate that they have improved; how can understanding the culture of other wikis help us evaluate whether cross-wiki contributions demonstrate cause to unblock? Wikipedia's encyclopedic content is frequently improved by incorporating content written by other communities, and I believe the committee would benefit from incorporating lessons learned by other communities who faced problems similar to our own.

I will comply with the non-public data policy; see my list of other accounts.

• Wugapodes (talk · contribs · count · logs · target logs · block log · lu · rfas · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · checkuser · socks · rights · blocks · protects · deletions · moves)

Individual questions

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 Note: Per WP:ACERFC2020, there is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.

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Questions from George Ho

2. The WMF approved its Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) policy. What is your feedback on the UCoC?

   I think it's generally a well crafted document whose goals, I think, have been misunderstood. The English Wikipedia may be 20 years old, but wikis as a technology are slightly older and many of our communities substantially younger and less resourced. As we move forward, it's important to document cultural knowledge around what makes wikis work. To go off on a bit of a tangent, this was the role of MeatBallWiki in the early days of Wikipedia before eventually shifting towards Meta as non-WMF wikis diminished in popularity. Back to the UCoC, it is part of that intellectual history of documenting best practices which largely reiterates insights of the earliest wiki communities. For example, it places emphasis on assuming good faith which was theorized on meatball as early as 2004 according to the history at WP:AGF. The advice on collegiality, mutual support, and good citizenship are likewise foundational principles of how wikis can effectively operate. For example, our tradition of awarding barnstars was introduced by Sunir Shah, founder of meatball, and is a reference to BarnRaising: a phenomenon where a community comes together to build something for another member.

   Where the UCoC innovates, I think, is in documenting social AntiPatterns that the modern internet has brought to light. 20 years ago when those essays I mentioned were written, many of the contributors knew each other personally as the internet was still a relatively niche technology, especially globally. Where spam was often the largest concern of these older wikis, we know face coordinated, international misinformation campaigns, we have developed relatively complex bureaucratic structures even at the project level, and we have a user- and reader-base that would be unfathomable in 2001. How do we address these and make clear to other communities the dangers they will face should they follow our lead? What are the lessons we have learned from addressing harassment, propaganda, abuse of power, and spam in the digital age we helped create? How can we generalize them so that smaller wikis can learn from our experiences rather than having to make their own mistakes?

   In that light, I think the document is effective. It's not perfect, I've left feedback on meta at various times, but I believe it shows that the global community has matured and is ready to expand its horizons. I think that's exciting for them, but when all is said and done, we'll still be here writing an encyclopedia.

4. Which ArbCom cases have affected you the most personally as a Wikipedian, even when you agree or disagree with the decisions made, and why?

   I would say the case regarding Fram. While there is a long list of people who were more concretely affected by that case than I was, it marked a turning point in my wiki-editing that has shaped a lot of how I currently view wikipedia and arbitration. Before that point I wrote and edited and engaged in project discussions, but I never felt very invested in the community. When the community divided over the ban and arbitration oversight and the desysop and the whole saga, it put in perspective how much I did care about the direction of the project. I began to understand our contemporary and long term problems, and it prompted me to think about the institutional structures we have that let situations get to that point at all. It's what prompted me to advocate that arbcom take all good-faith administrator conduct cases as a venue of only resort. Maxim has some thoughts against this view which I've been chewing on for a while, and I still wonder whether my advocacy resulted in the best outcomes for recent admin conduct cases. While I still think (absent a non-ArbCom desysop process) the committee should err on taking up community concerns, I've tried to direct my efforts towards getting the community to effectively resolve disputes even (especially?) when they involve administrators. These all tie back to the Fram case for me, as it made me think critically about these problems and how I can contribute to solutions.

Questions from Mikehawk10

2. Standards of Evidence: What standards of proof should the arbitration committee use when deciding to enact a sanction on an individual, and should these standards vary depending on the type of sanction being considered?

   Others have pointed out issues with the framing of this question, and I've previously taken issue with framing ArbCom as like a court. To indulge the analogy though, I would say the level falls somewhere between "preponderance of evidence" and "clear and convincing evidence". I do think the particular sanctions under consideration would move the line between those two ends; for example a warning or admonishment probably needs only a preponderance of evidence while an indefinite site ban needs clear and convincing evidence. These thresholds are used in US civil and administrative law, and generally require that the finder of fact have substantial belief that a given claim is true without requiring the high bar used in criminal trials where fundamental human rights of life and liberty are at stake. ArbCom is not a court of course, and it is certainly not a criminal court, but if we're going to make the court analogy I think looking to civil and administrative courts gives the most accurate examples.

4. Standards for Evidence: When the arbitration committee is presented with off-wiki evidence (such as discord logs, screenshots of emails, or text messages), what is the mechanism that you believe the arbitration committee should implement to verify that the evidence presented is truthful, and how does your vision compare and contrast with current ArbCom processes in place?

   I'm unfamiliar with how the Arbitration Committee currently handles this, so I can't answer that question without more information. As for how I would do it, it depends on the medium. Some venues have public logs that can be verified, even for deleted materials, and that would probably be the easy case. For communications without public logging, I would consider asking the other party to provide similar records to corroborate and depending on the circumstances ask them for comment on the materials in question. If neither of those can resolve the issue, I would ask WMF Legal to contact relevant service providers and ask for verification of the metadata at least if not the content. In some, perhaps many, cases this may not resolve the issue beyond a reasonable doubt, and in those situations the disputed evidence needs to be considered in light of the totality of evidence. Given all the other communications and evidence, what is the likelihood that the disputed communication is reliable? If it's more likely to be true than not (preponderance of evidence) it should be considered in line with its reliability, otherwise it shouldn't be considered.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your responses. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:38, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Question from eviolite

2. You have closed several large consensus discussions such as the recent ARS megathread. What do you take into account when weighing comments and evaluating evidence/arguments?

   I want to start by saying there's an important difference between weighing evidence and arguments as a closer and as an arbitrator. When closing, the critical question is how other participants in the discussion weighed evidence and arguments, not my own judgment. Were editors making largely the same points, did certain arguments cause editors to change their minds, was particular evidence refuted and did editors stop relying on it in subsequent arguments? These are the kinds of questions that can be (relatively) objectively answered in order to understand how participants came to a consensus on which arguments and evidence should be taken seriously and which should be discounted. The goal of a closer is to summarize these points and re-apply them to the discussion; in light of how participants weighed arguments and evidence, is there a core agreement that informs a viable path forward? Except in cases where arguments are flatly contradicted by policy, I try to take all comments seriously even if I don't personally find them very convincing. As I understand arbitration though, it's not about how others evaluate evidence, but how I evaluate evidence. In that sense, it's closer to being a participant than being a closer.

   When personally evaluating arguments and evidence, I try to identify whether the argument adequately connects the evidence to the proposed solution. What is the problem, why do we need to solve it, how will we do so, and what evidence do we need to substantiate our answers to those questions? If an argument leaves me guessing as to one of those questions, then I'm not going to find it as convincing as an argument that clearly motivates a solution using evidence. As for evaluating evidence, I tend to ask myself what the best kind of evidence for a particular claim would be and then evaluate evidence in light of that. For example, if we're trying to establish a pattern of conduct, I would want multiple, independent, recent examples; if I get one or a handful spread out over years or all related to one incident, I'm going to be more suspicious of whether it demonstrates a pattern. On the other hand, if we're trying to figure out whether a rule was violated, a single bright-line violation would be sufficient; multiple examples on the inappropriate-end of the grey area are still useful, but it's not ideal and would require more evidence to overcome counter-arguments.

Questions from Joe Roe

2. You are a regular on the unofficial Wikipedia Discord server. As you know, due to a recent extension of the outing policy, discussions there can no longer be scrutinised on-wiki. With that in mind, would you care to volunteer any comment on your Discord activity to voters? For example, have you ever been prompted to use your admin tools or other advanced permissions by a discussion there?

   I'm a little fuzzy on what "prompted" is meant to include, but generally yes. I prefer on-wiki communication, but if someone asks me for something in public I'll consider it. I don't take requests by direct message. This applies beyond Discord as well. I view it as just another social media site, and I'm there to crack jokes and hang out. Others don't view it like that, so I am occasionally asked to clean up some copyvios or fix a messed up move, but direct requests are rare. Like other social media sites, people post articles and if I wind up reading it I might fix whatever issues I find. That depends on a lot things like whether I even clicked the link (some channels get a hundred messages in an hour and I'm not looking through every one) or whether I have the time or energy to carry out the task (I'm not always in the mood to do page moves).

4. Along the same lines, if you were elected, to what extent do you think it would be appropriate to discuss arbitration matters on Discord? Conversely, would you recuse from a case if another Discord regular was a party?

   I don't believe it is appropriate to discuss arbitration matters on Discord. There's both practical and ideological reasons to avoid using a social networking app for privileged communication. As for recusal, I think it depends on too many things to give a blanket statement. There are users who I consider friends, and I would recuse from a case where they are a party; this would be the case regardless of what app we use to communicate. There are users I see around but only have incidental interactions with, and I think recusal would depend on the specifics of the case similar to the current recusal process when arbitrators are close to an on-wiki dispute. Then there are users I never see, but I don't think you'd classify them as "regulars" at that point but for the sake of completeness I don't think I'd recuse from a case simply because someone has posted in the Discord before.

6. (Follow-up) I'm sorry, but your answers are self-contradictory in several places. Could you please clarify: if (part of?) Discord is "public", why did you support banning mention of it on-wiki? If it is a place to "crack jokes and hang out", unsuitable for discussion of "privileged" arbitration matters, why is it a suitable place to ask you to use your administrator privileges? Finally, I'm sure you trust yourself to recuse from an arbitration case or refrain from an WP:INVOLVED admin action if appropriate, but if your interactions on Discord could be grounds for recusal, how are other editors supposed to scrutinise your decision (per WP:ADMINACCT and WP:ARBCOND), if it is simultaneously treated as an "unofficial" channel that they are barred from discussing on-wiki?

   if (part of?) Discord is "public", why did you support banning mention of it on-wiki? I believe my comment in that discussion stands for itself; my comment had nothing to do with whether the forum was public or private but about incentivizing responsible reporting and minimizing the potential for fabricating evidence. I don't believe that a statement made in a (semi-)public forum is carte blanche to go posting it across the wiki. IRC and Twitter are also public, but our outing policy does not give blanket permission to go digging through them for material to smear editors with on-wiki.

   If it is a place to "crack jokes and hang out", unsuitable for discussion of "privileged" arbitration matters, why is it a suitable place to ask you to use your administrator privileges? Arbitration-related matters are in many cases covered by non-disclosure agreements and it is unclear whether the terms of the non-disclosure agreement and the terms of service for discord are compatible. Even for information not covered by an NDA, arbitrators come across information that may not be public knowledge and the line between acceptable and unacceptable discussion may not always be clear so it is best to avoid discussing arbitration matters in any venue that is not dedicated to that purpose. This is vastly different from the typical situations where administrator tool use is involved. Administrators are broadly not bound by NDAs, and the information required to do most tasks is available to anyone with a web connection. While I have my own views on how to use Discord, other editors see it as a legitimate and serious method of collaboration. I am not going to make their lives actively harder by requiring they jump through hoops to get a page move fixed or some copyvios cleaned up. This isn't even an idiosyncratic interpretation: the CheckUser policy at WP:CONTACTCU states that "In keeping with WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, checkusers are authorised to receive contact by other means, like on their talk pages, by email, on IRC or a mailing list, and so on". If CheckUsers (who are bound by similar NDAs as ArbCom members) are able to take requests by whatever means they like, I see no reason why admins should be severely restricted in how they can field requests. As a practical example, I run edit-a-thons for various linguistics organizations and in that role I frequently receive requests to use admin tools in meatspace, over zoom, and I think once by Twitter DM. I wouldn't discuss arbitration matters in those settings, but I would (and do) take requests for admin help. I don't view that as a contradiction, and I don't see why Discord is any different.

   if your interactions on Discord could be grounds for recusal, how are other editors supposed to scrutinise your decision (per WP:ADMINACCT and WP:ARBCOND), if it is simultaneously treated as an "unofficial" channel that they are barred from discussing on-wiki? This is a good question that I'd be interested in working with you on to resolve generally. As the close of the Discord discussion you linked states, the general treatment of off-wiki venues may be too strict across the board. While I'm against treating different venues differently, I do think we can be more nuanced with how we treat all of them, and while you bring up discord specifically, I think the problematic example you give is a general concern. It might be worthwhile to carve out some exceptions for scrutinizing arbitration committee members or communications as they relate directly to administrator conduct. This would allow proper scrutiny of actions by functionaries while still maintaining general protections against harassment for the bulk of editors. That said, your question relates to me and my Discord communications specifically. Absent a policy change in line with the above, I would suggest that editors with concerns about my off-wiki communications first email me or the full committee with those concerns. If after a brief discussion, the reporting editor still believes I should recuse while I disagree, I will make a note on the case inviting further public comment. Since I will be the one making the request for input on my off-wiki communication, I believe that should avoid issues with the outing policy while allowing proper scrutiny. Thank you for this and I hope we can come to a solution that generalizes beyond my personal commitments.

Question from Gerda Arendt

2. Thank you for standing! Would you have listened to SarahSV (aka SlimVirgin) in this case?

   I'd always listen to Sarah; she was one of the best thinkers we had. That's different from whether I'd agree with her, which I think is the core of your question. At the time would I have agreed with her? Well, in that same case I advocated the opposite position to her, so almost certainly not. Would I agree with her now? I think I'm closer to a yes. As I mentioned in response to George's second question, my thinking has changed since then. My stance on accepting administrator conduct cases has softened somewhat given the views of other editors, and having seen the outcomes of the RexxS case and similar, I think I see more value in Sarah's comment now than I did at the time. For example, in a recent case request regarding ARS following an unpleasant ANI discussion, I recommended that the case be declined quickly so that the emotional rifts had some time to heal rather than further exacerbating the issue. It wasn't an admin conduct case, but I think it demonstrates the kind of empathetic considerations that Sarah wanted to be considered.

Questions from Kudpung

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

   Generally, yes, the committee should always evaluate the reliability of particular evidence and seek out verification of it. We should not incentivize fabrication or exaggeration by tying our own hands. An expectation that the committee will take reasonable steps to verify evidence incentivizes complainants and commenters to accurately represent the dispute and avoid hyperbole. Another possible interpretation (based on personal experience reading your comments in various discussions) is whether ArbCom should perform its own investigation into the situation parallel to the evidence presented. I think that's more complicated and perhaps more dangerous than we realize. Committee members are usually outsiders to a dispute so they won't have full context or know precisely where to look. There is risk of selection and confirmation biases on the part of the committee, and the members' investigations may overshadow the more representative evidence presented by editors involved in the dispute. In some cases it may be useful like if participants don't provide much evidence or provide evidence that is mutually exclusive. It can be a good idea to look through the situation or try to figure out what evidence represents what objectively occurred. Arbitrators shouldn't uncritically accept claims, but they shouldn't go looking for things just to confirm their suspicions.

4. It is claimed by some that little or no participation by an accused generally results in a more severe sentence. In the RexxS case, the members' opinions on an accused's right to silence varied from one extreme to the other. Consensus was however, that participation is neither an obligation, nor should it be taken into consideration for the severity of the sentence. Whether or not Arbcom functions according to Case law, or makes up its own rules on a case-by-case basis, in the interests of consistency would it make sense to get some kind of ruling established in policy?

   I think community governance is important and would welcome an amendment to the arbitration policy through the established process to clarify participation requirements. Personally, I don't believe we should try to force people to participate in a process they would rather not be a part of; putting aside philosophical points, we simply have no way to make someone participate in a case so adding a participation requirement to policy would not be useful. For similar reasons, I don't think we should read into a participant's silence. When I get into heated disputes, I try to disengage, and I think that's a healthy strategy. That said, the reality of a fact-finding process is that silence loses control of the narrative. If the evidence is reliable and the adverse party offers no rebuttal, what is a finder of fact to do but rely on the evidence? Testifying in your own defense is dangerous, but so is remaining silent; it's an unfortunate double bind in an already unpleasant process. If the community can come to a consensus on how it wants these considerations balanced, I would support following it and adding it to arbitration policy.

Thank yu for your answers, Wugapodes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Question from TheresNoTime

2. In your opinion, what is the Arbitration Committee's core purpose?

   In my opinion, the purpose of the committee is to resolve entrenched conduct issues which threaten the smooth functioning of the project. The ultimate goal is to support the creation and maintenance of an encyclopedia, but within the limited scope of issues that the community has not been able to handle using the typical tools and methods.

Questions from Sdrqaz

2. When accepting cases regarding administrative conduct, an oft-used qualifier is that opening a case does not mean sanctions are inevitable. However, historically, that has not been the case. What are your thoughts on the Committee's approach to desysop cases?

   As the only venue that can desysop, the committee should generally accept good faith disputes that the community brings before it. The historical record you bring up is complicated, and I recommend reading Moneytrees' question and linked discussions for additional background on my thoughts. I'll try to summarize my thoughts relatively briefly. Firstly, I think the committee is generally unwilling to accept a case that will not result in sanctions, and members justify this with various arguments. I've pointed to one of Primefac's 2020 ACE answers for an alternate case structure with the aim of incentivizing consensus building and fact finding over sanctioning (seemingly inspired by my comments in the anti-harassment RfC which he pointed out in his closing statement). Secondly, reporting administrator conduct is hard, and you need to piss off very specific people in order for a case to be filed let alone accepted. My comment in discussing the RexxS proposed decision goes into detail on this dynamic, but the crux is that very few people have the mix of social, cultural, and technical skills required to compile the necessary evidence in the right form and in the right venue and then be taken seriously. The more borderline cases, the ones where sanctions less than desysop may actually be incredibly effective, are less likely to get brought up because of all these systemic barriers to reporting. Why waste time navigating the complex process of filing a proper case request with no guarantee that you'll be taken seriously when you could just leave the project? Addressing that issue is, I think, most important for lowering the stakes for administrators.

4. Of the decisions taken this year by the Committee, which one did you disagree with the most? Please note that may include choices not to take actions and simple inaction where you felt the Committee should have done so.

   I would probably say the case request regarding Hijiri. It struck me as another example of the dynamic I mentioned in my answer to your first question, except this time without the issue of a desysop. I made an extended comment to Kevin that goes into more detail, and while I appreciate that some arbitrators made clear that they took the issue seriously, I wish there was more awareness of how that discussion would affect non-elite editors and their willingness to use community-controlled methods of dispute resolution.

Questions from Moneytrees

2. On August 3rd, you added this section titled "Excised tangent" to L235's talk page. In the section, you criticize him for this comment on this declined case request where he says ArbCom is not an investigative body. Our job is to decide disputes, not to go looking for them. I think the core of what you say can be summarized with "expecting everyone initiating a request have sufficient embodied cultural capital to meet an undocumented procedural burden, frankly, protects abusers [...] Declining without comment does not do that, declining for procedural deficiencies does not do that, and declining based on the statement with no mention of the six-year-long block log does not do that. It creates an environment and perception where victims would rather leave our project or seek action from outside the community instead of opening themselves to further harassment in front of a committee that will give more than a cursory glance if they aren't perfect. [...] Countering an institutional culture that protects abusers means we need to be aware of how our expectations and biases contribute to a culture that makes victims feel like their reports will not be worth the time or risk." He pinned this comment but has yet to respond. I believe this directly contradicts previous statements you have made with regards to Arbcom accepting cases, such as your statement at the RexxS case where you say "I share Tony's concern above: I just have really serious concerns that we’re not even trying to de-escalate before going into case requests now", or when you say "We're losing a number of Arbs that I valued for their restraint, and Tony's criticism of an increasingly active arbcom will help keep the balance" at User:Wugapodes/ACE2020. Comparing the RexxS case request and the Hijiri88 case request together, it doesn't make sense to me how things like your statement about ignoring Hijiri88's six year block log gel with statements made before yours like Thryduulf's and Swarm's, where it is pointed out that there are issues outside of the ones PR has brought forward. Could you explain either why you can think these things at the same time, or how your mind has changed since the RexxS case request? Thank you.

   An important distinction for understanding my position is that I believe the duties of the committee and the duties of the community are complimentary but not identical. The arbitration committee offers top-down solutions to problems, and while top-down solutions are effective and attractive, they are not ideal in all situations. Wikipedia is built by a community of editors, and as colleagues we should FosterEachOther so that we may all produce our best work. When interpersonal conflict arises, the most long-lasting resolutions come from community support, deescalation, and reintegration. When my partner drops and breaks (yet another) glass, I help him clean it up and try to get him to do better. Yeah, I might get mad or snarky if I'm having a bad day, but my first resort isn't to kick him out of the house or take him to small claims court for the $5 I lost. Of course, I could, but is that truly going to make anyone's lives better? That said, not everyone is in a healthy or safe relationship, and financial abuse is real, so it is incredibly important that the community keep those options available even if they are not ideal for my particular situation.

   So, with that in mind, to your specific examples and questions. In the RexxS case, you rightly quote my statement where I say that we, as a community, should still try to deescalate situations, but your quotation leaves out the parts of my statement where I recommend that arbcom take the case in order to keep the avenue open probe the additional concerns: That said, while AN might be a good way to de-escalate situations, so might arbitration....administrator accountability at Arbcom should not be predicated on letting bad admins run rampant for years with minimal consequence (this is a general comment not a statement on RexxS)...If the committee has time, they should accept the case and use this as an opportunity to further develop ideas presented last year. I did not recommend that the committee close off the reporting avenue or ignore wider problems. Quite the opposite. I recommended that they take the case and explore new solutions that might address whatever concerns are raised in the course of the dispute resolution. If you still think there is a contradiction between that and what I said to Kevin regarding him declining the Hijiri case, feel free to follow-up on that. I will note that RexxS had not been a party to arbitration or had prior blocks, while Hijiri had two bans placed as the result of previous arbitration. Whatever additional issues were at play, the record supporting those issues were substantially different.

   You ask about how my mind may have changed since that case which is something I've mentioned in response to Gerda's question and (vaguely) in response to George's second question. I'd recommend reading those if you haven't. To summarize and clarify, I still believe the committee should liberally accept administrator conduct complaints, but that doesn't mean we should do so without regard for the human costs of traditional proceedings. As Sarah pointed out in the RexxS case, the context of the case was a global pandemic where RexxS was recovering from an illness; even if accepting the case were correct (which I believe it was), was the situation so dire that it required immediately imposing additional demands on him during his recovery? Was the route the committee chose the only one available, or even the best one in the situation? In that case I recommended two specific possibilities that then-sitting arbitrators had recommended in similar cases (neither was taken up), and even now I wonder if there are potentially more. For example, accepting a case in abeyance and allowing any new issues to be raised at ARCA as a request to continue the proceedings. This is similar to xeno's suggestion that I mentioned and something we do when the party resigns or retires. There's no reason that our processes must lack humanity. We can make new tools to better address the situations and people before us.

   Lastly you bring up my rationales in ACE2020, specifically that I would support someone whose positions I apparently disagree with. Put simply, I do not want a committee that is uniform in its opinions. To me, a committee that is not heterodox is bad because it means members will not need to discuss, negotiate, or reconsider their opinions as deeply. By having members with opposite views, I believe members will have better, deeper discussions which will hopefully result in better, more nuanced decisions. At a higher level, I believe that the committee should represent the diversity of views within the community, not uniformly represent the views of the majority of the community. My opinions are not identical with the community at large, and so if I want a committee that represents community diversity, I cannot vote only for candidates whose opinions are the same as mine. So ultimately, it is part of tactical voting strategy. ArbCom elections incentivize tactical voting, and if you read voter guides you'll see the common strategy to support 8 and oppose the rest, but there are other tactics. My criteria do not stop at analyzing candidates, I also consider how candidates will work together and the composition of the committee as a whole. Ultimately we're composing a committee, not a random assemblage of individuals, and so we should consider how good a given set of individuals are, not just each individual in a vacuum.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer. I had read the rest of what you said about accepting the RexxS case, but still thought that the individual comment at the beginning didn't make much sense given things you had said previously and moving forward; I'll send you a few more specific reasons why I think this way later. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 23:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Questions from A7V2

2. As a hypothetical, suppose two otherwise very positive content editors are simply unable to get along (with the associated disruptions to discussions, etc), and arbcom ultimately imposes a mutual IBAN on them. One of the editors subsequently finds the restriction too restrictive and stops editing. Was the sanction a net positive for Wikipedia?

   Probably. It's unfortunate, but we have thousands of editors who manage to never get an ArbCom IBAN. If not being allowed to get into fights anymore is so strict a restriction that someone chooses to leave the project over it, then that's their choice.

4. In general, should editor retention be a factor when deciding on sanctions? Should the type of editor (in a broad sense) and type of contributions they make matter in this regard?

   Yes, but what often gets lost when discussing disruptive-but-productive editors are the dozens or hundreds of editors who get bullied off the site bwfore a case gets to ArbCom. We should work to identify where editors work well without disruption and let them keep working there, but we also need to consider the risk of too-lax sanctions. Repeat behavior could cause a lot of damage or chase lots of editors away before it makes it to ArbCom again, and that's bad. A case is at ArbCom because of disruption, and the ultimate goal is to put a stop to it. Arbitration is not therapy, and if an editor is making it impossible for others to do work on the project, we need to do what's best for everyone.

   Apologies for any typos. I'm travelling for the Thanksgiving holiday and am answering from my phone. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:14, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Thankyou for your answers! A7V2 (talk) 04:07, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Questions from Kolya Butternut

2. An SPI on Daner's Creek was opened this year in connection to an arb announcement, Statement regarding Flyer22 Frozen. An investigation into one of the potential socks was declined as stale. Do you think it's important to investigate old sockpuppets so that others may recognize the patterns of new sockpuppets of actively socking users?

   My position is that investigating sock puppetry is important, and so is documenting patterns of known sock masters, but we should avoid off-handed accusations and mobbing. There's always the risk that someone innocent is on the other side and getting harassed for no apparent reason with accusations they cannot disprove, so we either need to be really sure or the disruption needs to be bad. For really old cases, it can be hard to be sure since checkuser data is not retained for long. It is probably better to focus on recent disruption and potential current socks. I think the editors at SPI do a good job of considering those things which is why I usually refer editors there over making accusations in other venues.

   Sorry for any typos. I'm travelling and answering from my phone. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Question from Epiphyllumlover

2. There is an active and routine off-wiki freelancing market where Wikipedia editors from non-English speaking countries sell RfC votes and talk page comments to paying editors on enwiki. I have watched this corrupt discussions on enwiki, but would feel guilty reporting it, since I know that the editors actually making the comments really need the money. In addition, I feel that editors from the non-English speaking countries have the potential to contribute more to Wikipedia-- but fall into selling votes because it is both lucrative and requires little understanding of wiki code. It would be a shame to drive them away, given the great potential which would be lost. Would you support a WMF-funded bounty program modeled after the Nordic model approach to prostitution, where the editors from non-English speaking countries could receive a financial bounty for turning in their employers to ArbCom for discipline, while at the same time also be offered access to an exclusive Wiki syntax training program so they can build skills to pursue greater things?

   This is a really interesting idea! I'm not sure this is something for ArbCom, but I'd be happy to talk with you about how you can develop into a proposal if you get in touch on my talk page or by email. The reason I'm not sure this is a job for ArbCom is that paid editing is covered in our terms of service, and violations of the TOS are usually handled by WMF Legal. I think they'd do a more effective job by pursuing legal consequences that punish undisclosed paid editing much more severely than ArbCom could. But I like the idea and am willing to help in whatever role I can!

Question from Hijiri88

2. What is your stance on two-way IBANs that are imposed because of one-way harassment? In the past, ArbCom has rejected one-way IBAN proposals in favour of two-way IBANs on purely technical grounds (that they are subject to being gamed, that they "don't work", etc.), but if such a one-way IBAN is implemented and it doesn't stem disruption (for example, if the hounded party is simultaneously placed under a TBAN that is not placed on the hounding party), and instead only leaves the harassed party subject to repeated remarks of "User X is subject to an IBAN with User Y -- he wouldn't be banned if he hadn't done something wrong" and unable to explain the context, would you be open to repealing it? (I am assuming that BANEX applies to these questions.)

   I'm not a fan of two-way IBANs for one-way disruption. I've seen arguments that IBANs should be "two-way or no way", and I think it misses the point. The main problem with one-way IBANs is that they can lead to baiting and more disruption. That's bad, but it also should be something we think about from the start. Some editors don't need an IBAN to avoid people they don't like, and if the problem is that someone has a favorite person to pick on, a one-way IBAN should be fine. If one editor seems vindictive or is feeding into problems to make the other look bad, then there's a risk that a one-way IBAN will be gamed. It's not that one kind works and the other doesn't, they're different tools for different problems.

   To your questions about appeals, there's a lot of "if"s so I'm not sure I fully grasp the scenario. I will say that I don't think indefinite means permanent, and if a sanction is only serving to harm someone's reputation, we should consider repealing it. Stale sanctions are not benign because reputation and trust are important for effective collaboration. Given how time consuming it can be to reimpose sanctions if we're wrong, we should not repeal sanctions lightly, but neither should we let useless sanctions weigh on editors who have moved on.

Question from Nosebagbear

2. I frequently handle regular indef appeals, of which a significant fraction is non-technical "Duck" sock blocks. In many of these cases, the blocking admin hasn't and won't share what is often a non-direct set of behavioural evidence to the accused/blocked. When I review it, most are clear-socks, but a few are judgement calls. In either case, impossible standards are being demanded in the appeal - prove a negative, without knowing the exact (complex) material which they need to rebut. This leads to several related queries: 1) is this lack of public sharing of info (to avoid aiding future socking) policy-backed? 2) is it morally justifiable? 3) How are non-expert users supposed to make a viable appeal under these circumstances? 4) Does this method not encourage outright lying, as it pushes people towards having to concede the socking, even if they didn't?

   1) The technical answer is no; to my knowledge there's no policy that requires we keep secret information which is publicly available. But policy is more than an {{mbox}} with a green check mark, and community norms around this are pretty clear. WP:BEANS is one of those essays, like WP:BRD that has the de facto force of policy while not being not de jure policy. A downside to that state of affairs is that the community has not fully negotiated when and where it applies, and how to weigh the need for security through secrecy against other constraints like the need for an informed defense.

   2) The short answer is yes, but it depends on your moral framework. Personally, I think broad organizational policy decisions are best evaluate through a consequentialist frame because it's hard to argue that organizations or policies have any coherent "virtues" beyond maximizing utility for the group members. While we should not arbitrarily keep information secret, the range of possible outcomes for a block appeal are not comparable to the range of possible outcomes of a criminal or civil court case. The gravity of possible outcomes means that any mistakes hugely affect group utility, and so equally heavy protections are necessary to prevent them and maximize the expected utility. For block appeals, the outcomes are not negligible; there are physical and emotional tolls to being wrongly accused and pilloried based on secret evidence that we need to be aware of, but these outcomes are not the same as deprivations of life, liberty, or property. In some cases, not providing public behavioral evidence in public is what's necessary to protect the encyclopedia.

   3) The reality is that they won't, or, rather, the problem is inverted. A non-expert user wrongly blocked for sock puppetry will post an unblock appeal saying they didn't sock; that's just a normal response. We can write tons of help pages describing how to write a better block appeal, but if they could navigate our labyrinth of advice pages, they're already doing better than most newbies. We shouldn't be putting the onus on them to learn a new bureaucratic system and then prove a negative. Instead we should focus on our responses. Can we overlook (or fix) formatting and procedural errors in appeals instead of procedurally declining them? Can we communicate with the blocking admin privately in order to understand the core concerns? Can we ask questions to the blocked editor to try and gauge whether they have a good explanation without giving too much away? Could we use other tools at our disposal like conditional unblocks that would keep the editor away from the areas they (or the sock master) had been disrupting? In general though, the problem here is that a "viable appeal" is just out of the realm of expertise for most newbies that get duck blocked, and so rather than trying to make every non-expert user competent in our bureaucracy, we should reconsider "viable" in light of that.

   4) That is a problem, yes, though one that I think is broader than just sock blocks. It's why I think we ought to consider conditional unblocks or asking about plausible explanations for behavior without giving away what the behavior was. Conditional unblocks allow us to side-step the issue of whether they're innocent or not---we'll let them edit if they stay away from the area that the supposed sock master was disruptive in. More involved questioning helps us gauge the likelihood of innocence without needing the blocked editor to have tons of evidence and a working knowledge of our bureaucracy---things like "why are you interested in X topic?" or "What information were you looking for when you were reading project page Y?" Editors should not be placed in a catch-22 where they either stay blocked or admit to something they didn't do, and while our current structures can lead to that, we already have the tools to start building out an alternative.

Question from Atsme

2. What is your position after the rather involved discussions about DS amendments and irreversible unilateral actions in the name of AE, all of which were put on the back burner in 2021?

   Well, I only felt compelled to give one comment in that consultation and forgot about the whole thing until this point, so I can't say that my positions are entrenched. Reading the close, I'd say that I agree with the main points. Discretionary sanctions are useful and effective, but the barrier for entry is high and awareness is broken. Arbitration enforcement is a useful venue for these entrenched disputes because it structures discussion and limits back-and-forth that often leads to flame wars. The recommendations seem sensible, though I'm not sure all of them are necessary like renaming or adding whole new sections to an already complicated policy. Limiting first-mover advantage is a good way to limit gaming (especially of awareness), and clearer, consistent instructions across regimes would limit confusion and gaming of ambiguity. The role of individual administrators should be re-examined, but ultimately the goal is to limit disruption in areas known for especially toxic behavior. While some editors may not like being bound to more stringent norms of civility and etiquette, it's worth remembering that we wouldn't need discretionary sanctions in the first place if our existing tools worked well. That's partly why DS sanctions may not be unilaterally overturned (you are incorrect that they are "irreversible", they may be reversed by consensus) since our existing policies give second-mover advantage to administrators who overturn sanctions. When there is an entrenched dispute with implications for the health and safety of the public (like COVID, BLPs, or sectarian conflict) we should not have the default state be letting people continue with their disruption just to live up to some bureaucratic principles that have repeatedly failed to stop disruption in the first place. The first mover advantage introduces new problems, yes, but they are easier to fix. Instead of blanket prohibition on unilateral repeals or modifications, allowing them after a moritorium limits the potential damage of wheel warring while reducing the bureaucracy of modifications or repeals years later. The close didn't really go into this, and I haven't heard anything new out of the process, but reading the close and skimming the discussion, that's where my head's at.

Question from Robert McClenon

2. Some of the most troublesome disputes in Wikipedia are protracted content disputes that are complicated by conduct issues, such as incivility, civil POV pushing, stonewalling, and filibustering. These disputes often go to WP:ANI more than once. This is a two-part question, and maybe will be considered to be one question or two. First, how should ArbCom decide when it is necessary to accept a case that is a combination content-conduct dispute? Second, there are relatively few available mechanisms for dealing with such protracted cases short of conduct adjudication (WP:ANI, Arbitration Enforcement, or an arbitration case). Third Opinion is for straightforward cases with two editors. Dispute Resolution Noticeboard is normally for relatively simple disputes that will take two or three weeks to resolve. Do you have any ideas for how to try to resolve protracted content-conduct disputes to minimize their division of the community before arbitration is sought?

   Nosebagbear had a 4-part question so I won't tattle to electcom if you don't. To answer your second question first—Do you have any ideas for how to try to resolve protracted content-conduct disputes to minimize their division of the community before arbitration is sought?—at the June 2020 anti-harassment RfC I and others threw around the idea of training sessions for volunteers in mediation and de-escalation. It's kind of scattered across multiple threads, but if you "ctrl+f" for "training" you'll find the important bits. The main idea is that the WMF fund recurrent open workshops on mediation and dispute resolution for editors as part of community development. This would empower editors with the tools needed to prevent and resolve protracted disputes before they get to ANI or ARBCOM. Beyond that, the most effective solution I've seen is simply for those of us not involved to work harder. Many times the root of the problem is that the dispute or thread has become so toxic that no one wants to step in and stop it. Why paint a target on my back, take on a bunch of paperwork, and get yelled at for days (or months) when I could just ignore the flame war? Completely rational and a thought process I've had, but that's the mindset that leads to dysfunctional ANI threads and eventual arbitration. Preventing these disputes from festering requires breaking the ConflictCycle by intervening even when it's not the popular thing to do. That's easier said than done—if de-escalation were easier we wouldn't need arbcom—but absent formal training in mediation and dispute resolution, we just need to be more proactive in speaking up when we see things getting off-track There are some editors who I've seen doing this to great effect, so I'm hopeful.

   Now to your first question: how should ArbCom decide when it is necessary to accept a case that is a combination content-conduct dispute? I think the two main questions are (1) has the community tried and failed to resolve the conduct dispute and (2) is the disruptive conduct preventing the development of consensus on the content question? Similar to what I was saying in the previous paragraph, a content question can lead to disruptive conduct that prevents uninvolved editors from participating. This can lead to false consensus, further disruption, and general instability for readers. If the community can handle that, all the better, but often the content question can distract from the actual conduct problems leading to a lot of no consensus results even when the conduct issues are pretty obvious. In these cases it is useful for arbcom to wade into the conduct issue and resolve the core disruption so that other, non-disruptive editors can feel comfortable wading into the question and building consensus through our normal processes.