User:NuclearWarfare/ACE2011/Questions

Questions from NuclearWarfare

 * Note to readers and respondents:
 * These questions are partially my own and partially derived from a set of questions Lar asked in the 2009 and the 2010 Arbitration Committee elections.
 * The Arbitration Committee may not ever be required to directly rule on some of these matters. Nevertheless, I believe that they should impact the Committee's thinking significantly and am interested in the candidates' thoughts. The responses will likely influence significantly my voting guide for this year.
 * To those who have answered these questions in the past, please feel free to reuse old answers. I would however appreciate a comment about how and why your views have or have not changed in the past few years.
 * Candidates: I would request that you please make an attempt to answer the core questions at the least. If you have the inclination to answer the additional questions, please go ahead. Depending on your answers, I may ask follow-up questions.


 * Core questions
 * 1) Please describe your opinion on the following proposals in relation to Wikipedia's BLP policy: an expanded version of opt-out, "targeted flagging", and a more permanent version of the old pending changes trial. In your answer, please discuss your personal views on the pending changes trial: what you thought of it, whether we should ultimately implement some form of it (and if so, what form?), whether the community failed to come to a decision about it, and what you believe the role of the Arbitration Committee should have been.
 * 2) Please describe an experience you have had with a significant content dispute. If you have had any disputes where you felt that either yourself or another party was either not acting in good faith with respect to the neutrality policy or with regards to source gathering, I would be especially interested to hear about your experience. What do you feel you did incorrectly and how would you have realistically fixed that for future situations?
 * 3) In my 2010 voting guide, I highlighted several quotes by other editors. Please select two from "On Administration" and state why you agree or disagree with them. Bonus points if you give reasons for your answers
 * 4) Do you believe that the policy on involved administrators using the admin tools should ever be relaxed to any extent? Does your answer change depending on whether general or discretionary sanctions are in place?
 * 5) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?
 * 1) In my 2010 voting guide, I highlighted several quotes by other editors. Please select two from "On Administration" and state why you agree or disagree with them. Bonus points if you give reasons for your answers
 * 2) Do you believe that the policy on involved administrators using the admin tools should ever be relaxed to any extent? Does your answer change depending on whether general or discretionary sanctions are in place?
 * 3) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?
 * 1) Do you believe that the policy on involved administrators using the admin tools should ever be relaxed to any extent? Does your answer change depending on whether general or discretionary sanctions are in place?
 * 2) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?
 * 1) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?
 * 1) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?
 * 1) No legal threats spends a fair amount of time talking about legal threats, as one might expect. Interestingly, there is little in it about actual legal action. If editor A sues editor B over a matter that began primarily as a dispute on Wikipedia, what should be done onwiki? Should the two editors be interaction-banned? Should it be forbidden for either editor to mention the lawsuit? Should either of the editors be blocked? What, if any, should the role of the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation be?


 * Additional questions
 * 1) What is your opinion of specialized content guidelines like Identifying reliable sources (medicine)? Do you think it is a practice that we should encourage with other guidelines like Identifying reliable sources (natural sciences) or Identifying reliable sources (history)?
 * 2) Do you think we should have a policy for medicine and health in the same manner that we have WP:BLP for living people? What about for corporations?
 * 3) Given that it is said that the Arbitration Committee does not set policy, only enforce the community's will, and that the Committee does not decide content questions: the Committee has taken some actions in the past with respect to BLP that some viewed as mandating policy (1, 2). Do you agree or disagree?
 * 4) It has been said that the English Wikipedia has outgrown itself, that the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big (e.g. for major policy or software changes). Do you agree or disagree, and why? If you agree, what should be done about it?
 * 5) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?
 * 1) Given that it is said that the Arbitration Committee does not set policy, only enforce the community's will, and that the Committee does not decide content questions: the Committee has taken some actions in the past with respect to BLP that some viewed as mandating policy (1, 2). Do you agree or disagree?
 * 2) It has been said that the English Wikipedia has outgrown itself, that the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big (e.g. for major policy or software changes). Do you agree or disagree, and why? If you agree, what should be done about it?
 * 3) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?
 * 1) It has been said that the English Wikipedia has outgrown itself, that the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big (e.g. for major policy or software changes). Do you agree or disagree, and why? If you agree, what should be done about it?
 * 2) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?
 * 1) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?
 * 1) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?
 * 1) Some editors enforce the banning policy in a manner perhaps best described by BannedMeansBanned; others take a more lenient approach and only enforce the ban on what they believe to be "bad" editing. What is your opinion on this? Does the reason why an editor was banned have any impact in your analysis?