User:Volunteer Marek/Uninvolved administrators

The policy
From WP:INVOLVED:

"In general, editors should not act as administrators in cases in which they have been involved. This is because involved administrators may have, or may be seen as having, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute.

One important caveat is that an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvement are minor or obvious edits which do not speak to bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. This is because one of the roles of administrators is precisely to deal with such matters, at length if necessary. Warnings, calm and reasonable discussion and explanation of those warnings, advice about community norms, and suggestions on possible wordings and approaches, do not make an administrator 'involved'."

Key phrases:

 * Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community
 * current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors)

Observations:

 * An administrator who takes some kind of a part in a dispute needs to decide a priori whether they are going to act as an "uninvolved administrator", or a regular Wikipedia editor, participating in a discussion.
 * The choice of acting as an "uninvolved administrator" is constrained by the requirement of the policy that the person is or has not been involved in past disputes on the topic. Hence, it may not be available.
 * Choosing to act as if one was just a regular Wikipedia editor participating in discussion but switching to the administrative role mid way through the discussion by threatening sanctions on those who disagree with them is particularly disruptive and has a chilling effect on attempts to resolve the dispute. It is a violation of WP:CONSENSUS.

Litmus test
The definition of "involvedness", given by policy still leaves a lot of room for interpretation and the possibility of gaming of the policy by parties to the conflict. Non-admin editors may try to disqualify a particular administrator on the basis of alleged "involvedness", even when this is inappropriate. On the other hand, an involved administrator can attempt to abuse their administrator status to unduly affect the outcome of the discussion.

One particular way to decide whether or not a particular administrator can be considered "involved" is through a simple litmus test. If there are two sides to a dispute then it is possible to simply ASK the editors if they consider the administrator involved. If the administrator trully is "uninvolved" then most of the time this will be reflected by the answers of the editors. At the very least, there should be no correlation or pattern in responses; if every single editor on one side of the dispute believes an administrator to be "involved", while every single editor on the other side of the dispute believes an administrator to be "uninvolved", that's a pretty good signal that in fact, the administrator is "involved".

The principle here is one of caution - if there's doubt it is best to ask another administrator to look at a situation.

Univolvedness vs. bias
It is important to recognize that "uninvolved" is not the same thing as "unbiased" though there may be some relationship between the two.

An "involved" administrator - one who has participated in discussions in a particular topic area frequently in the past - may be unbiased. In fact, these kinds of administrators are in many ways ideal in dispute resolution as they have the necessary understanding of the details of the topic area.

A "uninvolved" administrator - who has not participated in discussions in a particular topic area - may be biased. This will be true if the person does not actively create or edit content (as many administrators don't) in a particular area, but for one reason or another has strong opinions or assumptions, conscious or subconscious, in regard to EITHER the subject of the topic area, OR of the editors involved.

A "uninvolved and unbiased" administrator is likewise not a guarantee of successful dispute resolution and compliance with basic Wikipedia content policies (like NPOV and OR) if they lack a sufficient understanding of what is going on. Sometimes well-meant but naive intervention can do more damage than transparently bad faithed intervention (if for no other reason than that the second kind can often be successfully appealed).