User:DGG/How to fix Arbitration Enforcement and Discretionary Sanctions

How to fix Arbitration Enforcement and Discretionary Sanctions

 * This is talking about Discretionary Sanctions * as applied to individual editors--blocks, topic bans, interaction bans, etc., not to page-level sanctions like Extended Confirmed edit protection or 1RR

1. The reason we have Discretionary Sanctions (DS) is to eliminate the second mover advantage in ordinary administrative sanctions.--topic bans, interaction bans, blocks. When Discretionary Sanctions were adopted, this 2nd mover advantage was being exploited by supporters of abusive admins, mostly abusive admins from the early years, who would overturn other admins sanctions against them and effectually paralyze enforcement. (There's a firm -- and very necessary --rule than once an admin action has been reversed by another administrator, the first admin can't revert it back without consensus)

2. Discretionary Sanctions changes this to first mover advantage. No other administrator can remove the sanction without clear consensus--this is called stickiness. This causes a different form of unfairness, by favoring the actions of whichever admins are prepared to enforce most aggressively.

3. We could modify Discretionary Sanction slightly for balance by decreasing the stickiness. this could be done by:
 * a requiring consensus,
 * This means changing the rule that reversing a Discretionary Sanction at Arbitration Enforcement (AE) requires "clear and substantial consensus"; Perhaps this special condition is not longer necessary or can at least be modified this can be done anyway by interpretation at Arbitration Enforcement closings, but it wouldn't be consistent.)


 * b. limiting penalties
 * This would mean limiting the length on the various sanctions (at least, eliminate indefinite--those cases meriting indefinite could be done by ordinary sanctions, not Arbitration Enforcement), and by removing the right to invent unusual sanctions. Probably it would be easier to have just a small change: remove indef, limit to 6 months., remove the phrase  "or anything else that would help".


 * c/. discouraging individuals from dominating the process.
 * can be done by just adding a general statement to INVOLVED, warning against excessive involvement with the same editor or topic .It could even have numerical limits, but in terms of practicality, a general statement would be more likely to get agreement.

BUT
 * do we need Discretionary Sanctions on individual editors at all?

AT LEAST
 * do we need individual placements of Discretionary Sanctions on editors
 * without going to Arbitration Enforcement: according to WP:Arbitration Enforcement (there were only 83 EA actions against individuals so far in 2019.**, fewer than 2/week; about half were simple vandalism, that could be dealt with by ordinary means/
 * This could be achieved by having them all go to WP:Arbitration Enforcement, rather than placed individually by any individual admin.

HOWEVER
 * The entire set of rules grew up gradually as Arb procedures. Therefore, adopting any of these changes needs to be either done by the Arbitration Committee, or by the very difficult process of changing Arbitration Policy..


 * Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions
 * They are listed at WP:Arbitration enforcement log and WP:Active sanctions