User:Cool Hand Luke/ACE2008

My thoughts on Wikipedia policies and ArbCom.

Campaign promises
I think it's important to spell out limitations on my tenure as an arbitrator. If elected, I will hold to these promises, which are intended to ensure judicial independence and the community's role in Arbitration Committee.


 * Support community ArbCom elections. Jimmy Wales has suggested that he will not appoint anyone who is not supported by the existing Arbs and Arbs Emeritus. I think this is a terrible idea: the community might want to specifically select users who would clash with prior Arbitrators. I hope that Jimmy Wales reconsiders his statement. But at any rate, as an Arbitrator I will never stand in the community's way. I will always support anyone the community selects for ArbCom&mdash;even if I disagree with the choice.
 * Cautious recusal. Neutrality and the appearance thereof is important. Therefore, any user may request my recusal from any case if I've interacted with a party more than once. I will issue a specific reason for declining any requested recusal. I also will recuse whenever another arbitrator publicly asks for my recusal.
 * One term limit. At the conclusion of my three-year term, I will not stand for re-election. Nor will I allow any entity to extend my term beyond three years.
 * No oversighting revisions. Although I'm interested in sockpuppetry (see the Mantanmoreland ArbCom evidence page), I don't have consistent access to the internet. Therefore, I promise to never actually oversight revisions myself. I will take oversight access for the exclusive purposes of evaluating evidence and reviewing the conduct of users with oversight.

Recall
Breaking campaign promises. If I break any of the above promises, any editor on Wikipedia may request my immediate retirement from the Arbitration Committee. If there is a dispute about whether I've broken the promise, the dispute may be opened in Requests for comment/User conduct. Anyone with more than 300 edits and three months history may vote in this special RFC/U. After two weeks, if a simple majority of the participants agree that I broke one of these promises, I shall be removed from ArbCom.

Arbitrator recall. Additionally, any request for recall can be opened by the request of 6 editors who have not previously requested my recall. These users must have more than 300 edits and three months history. If opened, a vote should occur at RFC/U&mdash;open to all editors with more than 300 edits and three months history. After two weeks, if more than two thirds favor recall, I shall be removed from ArbCom.

These special RFC/U votes will not be reviewable by ArbCom.

Civility
WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL are important, but often misunderstood. We don't have these policies because we dislike "naughty words," or because we're trying to bowdlerize frank expression. Rather, we promote civility because it helps build an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is first and foremost a volunteer project. No one is paid. That means that contributors write articles because they enjoy writing. An uncivil working environment sometimes drives away volunteer contributors, and for very little benefit.

This project does not exist to help editors grow a thicker skin. Our mission is to build an encyclopedia, not establish limits for low-level abuse that we think our volunteer editors should be willing to suffer. If we drive away more people than we attract, then it's a genuine loss to the project and we should fix it rather than label those who would prefer to work in a civil environment as "thin skinned." Cool Hand Luke 04:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC) On Wikipedia talk:Editing restrictions/Civility restrictions in support of proposition that "Low level incivility is a serious problem" 

Conflicts of interest
WP:COI is one of the most poorly applied guidelines on this site. Typically it's waved in the face of people who have a job or some other alleged disqualification that ideological opponents can exploit. Thus, WP:COI is employed to punish people for foolishly disclosing details about their life.

From the perspective of building an NPOV encyclopedia, this is a disastrous interpretation. It's trivially easy for users to set up new accounts without revealing personal details, and totally anonymous accounts are worse for the project overall.

With a known COI editor, POV editing can be more easily monitored and corrected. COI editing is not a big problem for Wikipedia&mdash;in fact, the project benefits immensely from some of our expert editors. Undisclosed COI accounts are the real evil. User:Thebainer summarized our self-defeating guidelines and policies by noting that we have "a sockpuppetry policy that encourages sockpuppetry, an (no) open proxy policy that encourages open proxying, and a conflict of interest policy that rewards deception and punishes disclosure."

To avoid rumors of COI, I think it's reasonable for Wikipedians to know who their arbitrators are. My name is Frank Bednarz. I'm a third year law student at the University of Chicago Law School. Confirmation of my identity can be found in this article.

Biographies of living people
WP:BLP is possibly our most important policy. Before anything else, this encyclopedia should do no harm. Every living person harmed by our negligence is a thorn, a stumbling block to attracting contributors and maintaining respect as a project. More importantly, we have a moral duty to other human beings.

ArbCom must respect our contributors, and provide them with a speedy and transparent process (see statement), but it also has obligations to real human beings who are not part of our project. As arbitrator, I would always consider the real-world effects on living people, and the implications that our decisions might have on them.