User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/Phil Sandifer

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 Since early 2004, I believe.


 * 2. How many total edits do you have on Wikipedia? What is your % of edits to the article space?
 * A.


 * 3. Are you an administrator? If so, how long have you been one?
 * A. I have been since mid-2004.


 * 4. Do you hold any other userrights or positions at the English Wikipedia? (crat, medcom, WPPJ, etc)
 * A. No.


 * 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. I was named in Requests for arbitration/Snowspinner vs. Lir. I have participated voluntarily in several more. The IRC case is probably the most recent major one - the rest are all quite old at this point.


 * 7. Have you ever been blocked or subject to restrictions such as WP:RESTRICT, WP:BLPLOG, WP:AER, or WP:SANCTION? If so, please link to the relevant issue.
 * A. I may have a 3RR block or two somewhere, generally from failures to do math. None show up in my block log though.


 * 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.


 * 10. If elected, would you request the Checkuser and/or Oversight userrights?
 * A. Probably not unless someone suggested that more people with those userrights are needed, in which case I would probably put ny name forward.


 * 11. Please list any disclosed or undisclosed alternate or prior accounts you have had.
 * A. I have used User:Snowspinner, but all edits are now folded into this account. I also have occasionally made article space edits from socks when I didn't feel like dealing with wikipolitics, but I don't remember the names of those accounts.


 * 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 use the mailing list, and am occasionally in IRC.


 * 13. Do you have OTRS access? If so, which queues?
 * A. I do, to the basic en queue and permissions.


 * 14. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/MONGO and RFAR/Jim62sch as to off-site activities by users?
 * A.


 * 15. What is your opinion on the new closed motions process?
 * A.


 * 16. Besides compromised accounts, under what circumstances would you support or initiate an emergency request for desysopping?
 * A. I would use a "clear and present danger" test here - if leaving the user with admin rights poses an immediate problem, those rights should be removed.


 * 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. Community bans have a useful check in place that allows consensus to be gagued - if nobody thinks that lifting the block is worth doing, the block stays. Unless a similar system can be created for desysopping, I don't think community desysopping is viable.


 * 18. If you owned Wikipedia as the WMF currently does, what would you do to fix the BLP problem?
 * A.


 * 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. I prefer the current practice of rejecting with an instruction to follow other methods of dispute resolution, which certainly includes medcom.


 * 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.


 * 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. I don't think this can be answered in the general case - I would need to see specific cases. But generally, I am inclined to treat involvedness as an aggravating factor in bad calls rather than as a prima facia reason for sanction.


 * 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. Administrator has evolved into a social role, though much of this is that administrators are, by their nature, long-time users, and long-time users acquire a level of social power. I do not see a way to make this preventable, nor am I convinced it would be desirable to do so.


 * 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 a convincing argument for doing this.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 28. To what extent do you believe policy on Wikipedia is or should be binding?
 * A.


 * 29. Do you believe that former arbitrators should be on the Arb Comm mailing list? Why or why not?
 * A: I do not know what goes on on the arbcom mailing list, and thus have no opinion on this matter.