Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Candidate statements/Shell Kinney/Questions for the candidate

=General questions=
 * General Questions submitted by the users indicated. For more information, please see the guidelines posted here.

Question from Ultraexactzz
Good luck with your candidacy. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 15:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) If you had to describe the ideal role of an Arbitrator in one word, what would that word be?
 * Prudence. Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends. --Whewell.

Questions from Giggy
Thank you and good luck. Giggy (talk) 02:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC) Questions added via the global question list.
 * 1) a/s/l?
 * 32/f/US
 * 1) What is your opinion on the apparent divide in editors who focus primarily in mainspace, and those who focus primarily in project space? What would you do to help ease conflicts that come as a result of clashes between these editors? This is a deliberately open ended question.
 * I think each contributor has their own comfort zone. Some enjoy helping out by reverting vandalism, some write lengthy content, some create new stubs, some help sort out copyvios and others keep tabs on our ever growing image collection.  So long as someone is here to help, we should find a way to welcome them and appreciate their work.  I think we can often diffuse disputes between workers of different types by showing everyone the importance of all the different types of people it takes to make this wild thing work.
 * 1) What is your opinion on the mass reversion of useful mainspace edits made by banned users?
 * Silly. Blanket reverts work about as well as most "zero-tolerance" policies.  Maybe its easier to avoid thinking and react the same way each time, but you run the risk of being wrong - a lot.  There may be times that the best thing we can do is simply revert and ignore; other times, we may be playing into someone's game by doing so.  Its worth taking the time to think about the best approach to any situation.
 * 1) Pick one arbitration case opened in the last year that contains a final decision with which you disagree. How do you think the case should have been handled, what different proposals would you have made, etc.? Again, somewhat open ended.
 * Eek - where to start? I think the Committee has found a good balance of options for dealing with general disputes, i.e. hot topic areas like ethno/religious fueds, or fringe science areas, but when it comes to dealing with individual editors, its seems like a much softer touch is used. I don't think that's a failure in any part of the Committee, I think its a failure in the way we've come to use ArbCom.  On a good day, a dispute the community can't solve is brought to the Committee, they review what's going on and brainstorm for new ideas on how to resolve the underlying problems.  One a bad day, a self-indulging bit of dramah is served up and the Committee is expected to politely listen to everyone vent their spleen (they make journals and blogs for this folks) and then they're supposed to make some kind of meaningful resolution on the load of crap they've been served up.  So we end up with resolutions that amount to "stop acting like a child and respect other editors" and why should we expect more?  If we're going to use ArbCom as our own personal shrinks, we shouldn't be disappointed when the results aren't what we'd like.
 * 1) Please select and describe what you consider to be your five "best" contributions to Wikipedia.
 * I'm particularly fond of New York Women's House of Detention and Pied Oystercatcher - my first forays into the wide world of Wikipedia, but that's probably just nostalgia. From there, it gets a little more difficult to point at specific things or articles.  I spent a lot (and I mean a *lot*) of time clearing up one back-log or another; I've worked with copyvios, image cleanup and tagging, stub-sorting, disambiguation fixing, spelling errors, article creation requests, account creation requests - you name it, I've probably put in my time.  I've also put a lot of effort into resolving various disputes through working on OTRS, MedCom, doing informal mediation and answering third opinion requests, RfCs, wiki-etiquette notes and the like.
 * 1) Will you be voting in this year's arbcom elections? Why/why not?
 * Nope. Its just a personal preference.

Questions from Sarcasticidealist
I'm repeating a couple of questions I asked on User:MBisanz's excellent voter guides; those of you who answered there can feel free to copy and paste your answers from there. I echo both the thanks and the best wishes of the above questioners.
 * 1) To what extent do you believe that Wikipedia policy is or should be binding and prescriptive?
 * To the same extent that common sense should be binding and prescriptive. Policies and guidelines are generally supposed to describe current practice - most take a pearl of what most of us would perceive as common sense (biographies should be handled carefully, respect your colleagues) and then give some explanation of why this bit of common sense is important here or what it means to the community or sometimes how the community generally responds if you decide to discard this little pearl of wisdom.  When we're talking about sanctioning or punishing based on policies, I think we have to make sure that we're being true to the spirit and not just blindly following something simply because its written on a policy page.
 * 1) What is your view of the presence of former Arbitrators on the main Arb Comm mailing list?
 * There's no reason for them to be there, especially in light of the as of yet unresolved problem with the list being "leaked". While I would welcome opinions and thoughts from clued in editors on any matter they'd like to comment on, I see no reason anyone other than current Arbitrators need to be receiving emails sent to that list.
 * 1) At least one candidate has committed to being "open to recall" in much the same way as administrators in Category:Administrators open to recall. What is your view of the wisdom of this, and do you see yourself making a comparable commitment?
 * Its a commitment I make with any task I undertake on Wikipedia - if I'm off in left field, please tell me. I've reversed my opinions/actions many times before when someone was able to point out the fallacy in something I was doing, even when that person was the one I'd sanctioned and even if they didn't put it in the nicest of ways.  I will make mistakes - I will try not to, mind you, but I have no illusions of my own perfection.  I would much rather have someone point out my errors so I can correct them.  In the same vein, if it turns out I am unsuited to work on ArbCom, I hope someone would tell me - I'd prefer an unemotional, factual message but I will try my best to listen to any concern, no matter how poorly worded.  I think the fact that I practice WP:DGAF probably helps out a lot in this area ;)

Questions from Celarnor

 * 1) What limits, if any, do you perceive in the ability of the Committee to write remedies with effects beyond those involved in a given case (.e,g, types other than those outlined in Arbitration policy, having an effect beyond "User X is subject to penalty/restriction Y")?
 * I think the limit is the community. In and of themselves the editors sitting on the Committee have no real power; the community can choose to ignore, or not enforce any decision that comes out of ArbCom.  We already see variations of this in the different way civility remedies are handled - the community is strict about enforcing some, but in other cases, is undecided about how and if a remedy should be enforced against a certain editor.
 * 1) What, if any, non-written obligations do you believe a member of the Committee has outside of their immediate duties on the committee?
 * In addition to the time on the committee, I imagine its likely that Arbs are asked to give opinions on a number of disputes and other discussions going on at any given time.

Question from LessHeard vanU
This follows from the various attempts this year at addressing the means by which Administrators can be desysopped, none of which has gained sufficient traction. Thanks for considering the above, and all the best in your endeavour.
 * 1) Given that the ArbCom already has the powers to investigate the conduct of Administrators, and to decide to withdraw access to the sysop flags, will you be willing to more readily accept Requests for Arbitration in respect of concerns raised generally on an administrators use of their tools than that has apparently been the case previously. Would you indeed promote the more frequent acceptance of such cases. If not, why not? LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Since there's no readily apparent way to remove a bit outside of a case at ArbCom, I think hearing those cases is a necessity. It would make sense that other dispute resolution mechanisms should be tried first, similar to other conduct-based issues.

Question from Carnildo

 * 1) How many hours a week do you expect to spend on arbitration-related activities?
 * All of them? Ok, I might eat and sleep at times, but I imagine that any time I would have normally spent on Wikipedia will likely be sucked in by things related to working on the committee.

Question from WilyD

 * 1) During the Sarah Palin protection wheel war, a very contentious point was whether it was appropriate for admins to take actions against other admins for misuse of their admin tools (or possibly just generally).  While the block I issued in that case became moot when MBisanz filed for arbitration, similar situations are bound to crop up. So I ask two related points:
 * Is it appropriate for an admin to block another admin over a regular editing issue? Are there any special considerations?  If it is not appropriate, what kind of sanctions would you issue as an arbitrator?
 * Absolutely; its just an extra set of tools after all. We'd like to think that admin's in general are going to be more clued in and stay away from behavior that would require blocking, but if it happens and a polite word in their ear doesn't stop the disruption, admins are (or should be) subject to the same penalties as editors without the tools.
 * Is it appropriate for an admin to block another admin over misuse of their administrative tools? If so, when?  If not, what kind of sanctions would you issue as an arbitrator?
 * This one is a bit more difficult because I can't imagine a situation in which this would be necessary. Since admins can unblock themselves, if someone really has gone hog-wild enough that blocking is needed to stop the disruption, its unlikely that blocking actually will stop the disruption.  If its just someone making a bad decision, we can probably let them have that mistake and learn from it.  If its a pattern of behavior and bad decision making, then typical dispute resolution for behavior issues should work (up to and including tool removal if necessary).

Questions from PhilKnight

 * 1) In what situations would you recuse yourself? Obviously, I'm not asking for a generic answer, but instead I'm genuinely interested in what subject areas, or conflicts involving which users, you would recuse yourself. PhilKnight (talk) 02:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Any case where the article in question was a firm who's primary business is web design or development (broadly construed). Any case that involved an article about a current or former client of mine (I am not aware of any current articles on Wikipedia that would meet this criteria).  Any case involving an article on a family member or in which a family member is a participant (again, nothing would currently meet this criteria).  As far as specific editors I would recuse myself from any case that involved Elonka, Mathsci, ChrisO, ScienceApologist, PHG, Jehochman, NYScholar, MSalt, Hamletpride, Patrice58, Deflagro, Terence Ong, Elerner, Ottava Rima, Ned Scott, Sugaar or any of the editors from Requests_for_arbitration/Shiloh as parties.
 * 1) Imagine there is a case involving an editor who had been pushing a scientific racist viewpoint, and then another editor describes them as racist. Then an uninvolved admin blocks the second editor for a personal attack. How should this be handled?
 * I assume by your question that you feel the block was improper; I'd have to disagree. I'm all for being forthright but I've yet to see a case where labeling another editor was productive or conducive to a collaborative editing environment.  There are ample ways to discuss article content and even editor behavior without having to use such terms.

Questions from Thatcher
1. The Arbitration Committee handles a wide variety of complex situations on the private mailing list, some presenting moral and ethical dilemmas that never come to the full attention of the wider community. How would you handle some of these situations?

A. A checkuser forwards to the Arbcom mailing list evidence that a large number of vandal accounts share a single IP address and a single user agent with an administrator. After internal discussion, the IP address is blocked Anon only, ACB, under the theory that since the IP is a workplace, it might be shared, but that if the admin is the vandal, he will "get the hint." The admin takes a short unannounced hiatus, then returns as if nothing had happened. Right call or wrong call and why? Does the kind of vandalism make a difference?
 * Good call. While its easy to start assuming the worst especially after dealing with issues day in and day out, unless there's a good reason to believe that the admin is being disruptive or playing silly buggers, blocking the IP to prevent further vandalism is a good start.

B. A checkuser who is an active editor of a particular article or topic sees a new user acting suspiciously like a previously banned user. What should the checkuser do?
 * (a) Run the check himself. After all, he is the most familiar with the banned user's editing patterns, and if the account turns out to be an unrelated editor, there is no privacy violation as long as the checkuser does not discuss the findings with anyone.
 * (b) Ask an uninvolved checkuser to evaluate the need for a check, and then run the check if needed. Avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest is worth the delay and inconvenience.
 * (c) Write your own answer.


 * Its common practice for an admin post to ANI or ask another admin to step in if they feel blocking is needed in a situation they're involved with; ditto with Arbitration enforcement. It would seem to me that the same should hold true any editor who thinks a tool is needed in a situation they're involved in.  Its something like being drunk and thinking you're still ok to drive - involved editors often think they're being neutral when in fact, their judgment is impaired. Its unlikely to take an exorbitant amount of time to explain the case to another CU and request they run the check if they feel its needed.

C. User:Smith is banned after a long series of behavioral problems including harassment of User:Jones, which Smith continues on his personal blog. A checkuser presents evidence that Smith has returned as User:Smythe. His editing is without incident and he is avoiding Jones. The Committee decides to ignore the Smythe account. Some time later, Smith emails the Committee, disclosing the Smythe account and pointing out Smythe's good edits, and asking to be unbanned. However, he has continued to post negative comments about Jones on his blog, and Jones objects to allowing Smith to edit under any account name. What should be done?


 * Assuming that the new Smythe account hasn't been outed, I'd suggest to Smith that to avoid dramah and a possible chilling effect on Jones's ability to edit it would be best to simply continue on quietly with the Smythe account.

2. In private discussions about a pending arbitration case, there is a split between a group of Arbitrators who want strong sanctions and a group that want mild or no sanctions. Is it better to propose a middle of the road decision that everyone can sort of support, or to write a proposed decision with both the mild and severe remedies and have an open vote? What should happen if neither the mild nor severe remedy gets a majority? Does public disagreement improve or impair the Committee's credibility?


 * I think the community would be thrilled to have a bit more of a glimpse into the actual discussion and thought process behind the Committee's decisions. When Arbitrators only disagree behind the scenes and then come out with prepared facts and agreements, its does present a solid front, but it also fuels the idea that these back door discussions may have a nefarious component.  So let members throw out what solution they think is best - if none of the ideas get a majority, then go for a compromise.  I think editors would relate to seeing the consensus process at work.

3. Just as there are consequences for taking action as an Arbitrator, there are consequences for inaction. The mailing list receives 70-100 messages per week. I do not believe it is humanly possible for an editor to remain fully engaged in whatever aspects of Wikipedia they currently enjoy, and also be fully engaged in the business of the Arbitration Committee. If you do not fully engage in the mailing list, you might miss a legitimate ban appeal, or the chance to comment on an important private matter, or an important policy discussion. If you skip an Arbitration case or two in order to spend time writing articles, you might later discover that the decision had provisions you find incorrect or objectionable. How will you balance your regular wiki-work with participation on Arbcom? If you opt out of some matters to avoid having all your time consumed by Arbcom, what will you do if those matters are resolved in an unsatisfactory matter?


 * I think that anyone deciding to run for the Committee needs to understand that they will be giving up the majority of the other pursuits on Wikipedia they enjoy. Since the majority of my regular wiki-work is gnomish, its likely that I can sneak off every once in a while to check out a few copyvios or fix a few disambig links without compromising my work on the Committee.  If I would "opt-out" of a matter and it wasn't resolved to my satisfaction, the fault would be mine; in any case, its unlikely that the Committee would go off the rails so any incident I'm not completely happy with is unlikely to be insane or damaging to the project.

4. Have you disclosed your real name and employer? If not, are you prepared to have that information involuntarily disclosed? Would such involuntary disclosure impact your service on the Arbitration Committee?


 * My real name, yes and in fact I've not used my full given name (Michelle) and instead greeted everyone here as friends by giving you my nickname; I have also made full disclosure as part of the OTRS team. I'm actually not certain that I've ever disclosed my employer directly on Wiki, but whether or not the entire world knows that I work for DotConcepts, a business owned by my family, should have no impact on my ability to serve.  I've dealt with harassment before related to my online and volunteer activities; having learned from that, I believe I'm at a point in my life where I'm fairly stalker proof.

Questions from Newyorkbrad
1. Bearing in mind your individual skills and interests, your familiarity with the arbitration process, and your other on- and off-wiki commitments, which of the following tasks will you be prepared and qualified to perform regularly as an arbitrator:
 * (A) Reviewing cases, carefully analyzing the evidence, and drafting proposed decisions for consideration by other arbitrators;
 * (B) Reviewing cases, carefully analyzing the evidence, and voting and commenting on proposed decisions drafted by other arbitrators;
 * (C) Reviewing and voting on new requests for arbitration (on WP:RfAR) and for clarification or modification of prior decisions;
 * (D) Reviewing and helping to dispose of appeals from banned or long-term-blocked users on the arbitrators' mailing list;
 * (E) Drafting responses to other inquiries and concerns forwarded to the committee by editors;
 * (F) Running checkuser checks (arbitrators generally are given access to checkuser if they request it) in connection with arbitration cases or other appropriate requests;
 * (G) Other arbitration-related activities (please explain).


 * B, C, D, F; I would also assist with A and E from time to time, but I find writing in that manner to be rather stressful since my preferred methods of communication are generally less formal.

2. Please review the current arbitration policy at Arbitration policy, as well as the proposed updating and revision of the policy that I posted a few weeks ago (based in part on some input from the ArbCom RfC over the summer) at Arbitration policy proposed updating and the later draft posted by arbitrator FT2 at Arbitration policy proposed updating/FT2. Do you have any comments on the proposed changes? Are there any changes you would support to the policy, or to ArbCom's current procedures, beyond those proposed there?


 * First off, kudos for taking on the daunting task of updating the page to reflect current practice. I'd have to say that I believe some of the changes proposed in the later draft by FT2 are necessary, such as the clarification that formal Mediation is privileged except in cases where an editor is clearly abusing this right to disrupt dispute resolution.  I also think the idea of making updates to a case taking longer than is typical is excellent; communication and work with the community should be proactive.  I am impressed at how comprehensive the updates are and believe that lending this kind of clarity to the process can only improve interactions between the Committee and the general community.

3. Although the committee was quite busy when I joined it in January, and there have been a few high-profile "mega" cases in the past few months, in general the Arbitration Committee's caseload has been lower during the past three months or so than at any time since the committee was created in 2004. Please share any thoughts you have on this situation, including its causes and whether it is a good or bad thing.


 * This recent period actually appears to be the slowest in the Committee's history; oddly enough, there's been a similar drop in requests to the Mediation Committee. I've actually wondered about this myself in the past few months and I think there may be a few main reasons for the decline.  First, there were several major cases that dealt with problem areas in general such as the Pseudoscience and Palestine-Israel articles cases.  The sanctions in these cases encouraged the community to take a more active role in diffusing these situations by using article and topic restrictions that hadn't been part of the traditional arsenal.  While there have been some missteps and lost opportunities, in general, the sanctions appear to be effective in resolving flare-ups that frequently occur in contentious topic areas.  Second, the community has become more comfortable with the use of topic and article bans in place of full blocks.  Where before it may have been difficult to achieve a consensus to block a problematic editor or protect a problematic article, these lower impact solutions can often find agreement.  I think this shows that the community is maturing and evolving ways to meet these challenges and I believe its a good thing for the health of the project.

Questions from Mailer Diablo
1. Say you are given the power to implement or abolish one policy on Wikipedia by fiat, with immediate effect, no questions asked. What would that be?
 * I'd love to extend the BLP policy. Preferably, I'd really like a magic wand - we still have a lot of random junk out there (whole articles even) that has no business on Wikipedia.  Unfortunately, anyone with a grudge can and does come here to insert their own little bit of payback somewhere - often in articles on companies or another non-biographical area where the scrutiny isn't as high.  I'm all for taking an eventualist approach to the vast majority of subjects, but I'd like to see unsourced biographical material simply decimated in the hope that people will tire of adding their junk if it simply gets removed.

2. Hence or otherwise (of Q1), should ArbCom be in the business of creating new policy, amend an existing policy, or abolish any policy as a result of any outcome of a case? If so, should the community be consulted on such matters beforehand?
 * Nope. There's no reason that a case outcome can't include something like "Incident A appears to be a wide-spread problem that the community deals with inconsistently at this time; we'd encourage the community to discuss the best approach to handling A." if there's no policy, guideline or community norm in place to deal with an issue.  On the other side of the coin, if there's precedent in the community for dealing with an issue but no formal policy, the Committee shouldn't be shy about following community norms just because of a technicality.

3. Should IRC fall under the jurisdiction of ArbCom? If so, how do you think it should be governed?(AC/IRC)
 * Nope. The Committee doesn't have jurisdiction over anything that falls outside of en which even includes things like meta, which tends to overlap a bit.  IRC also has some overlaps, but like other projects, has its own governance.

4. "Change We Need" and "The same old Washington that's broken" is a favourite mantra for candidates running for office, and that includes this election. Would you, and how would you reform ArbCom? And how can editors be sure that you will stay true to your promise?
 * Of course it is; people aren't perfect so any Committee is going to make missteps and of course with unlimited time and people to look at case after its done, we're going to come up with solutions that the Committee didn't. This year though, I have some pretty specific concerns: first, why on earth have their been "leaks" from the mailing list?  That's just not an acceptable state of affairs when dealing with what may be confidential information; I strongly believe that only standing Arbiters need to have access to the list. Second, there has been more than one large screw-up over "secret" trials and information and honestly, the explanations have been quite lacking.  I'm all for second chances and occasional mistakes, but there needs to be a statement that covers why something happened, apologizes and indicates what has been changed to avoid repeating the mistake - I think what we've seen from ArbCom this year in particular is a lack of communication on what they are doing to remediate the problems they've experienced.


 * As far as me staying true to things I promise, I suppose the best way to determine that is to look at my history here and the way I've handled myself in the past. I can make all the assurances in the world, but in the long run, unless you feel I have a pattern of honesty and good judgment, you shouldn't be voting for me.

Questions from Rschen7754
Arbcom questions 2008 - these will be asked at the December 2008 elections and scored on a hidden rubric, which will determine my level of support.

Note that some of the questions were recycled from 2007, but have been trimmed down. I will evaluate these and a few other characteristics based on a (private) rubric to determine my level of support.

Thank you. Rschen7754 (T C) 06:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) What is your view on the length of time that it took for the case Requests for arbitration/Highways 2?
 * From my reading of the case, it appears that the majority of the work in evidence and proposals was completed in January. It appears that the Committee was divided on what they could do to help the participants and that other major cases at the time took a great deal of focus away from this case.  The lack of movement for several months cased some obvious concern and frustrating for the participants; while I sympathize with the idea of being overworked, I've always been surprised when cases are left to languish with no comment or explanation from anyone on the Committee.  At the very least, cases should be updated regularly, even if its just to say "We're not ignoring you, we will work on this as soon as possible".
 * 1) a) What is the purpose of a WikiProject? Do you believe that WikiProjects b) can enforce standards (such as article layout) on articles?
 * My understanding was the WikiProjects existed as a way to coordinate editors with similar interests and provide a means of collaboration with the goal of improving a certain set of articles. I don't believe "enforce" is the proper word here - projects tend to develop a consensus over time on how to handle certain article aspects, again, generally with the goal of improving the articles and the consistency of Wikipedia in general. Instead of asking that articles be handled a certain way based on a project, its better to say that a consensus has developed and invite other editors that have an interest in changing things to join in the discussion.
 * 1) Do you believe that parent WikiProjects have the right to impose standards (such as article layout) on child WikiProjects? (Case in point: WP:USRD and its state highway projects)
 * I really hesitate to use the words "right" and "impose" when dealing with anything on Wikipedia; most everything here works by general agreement of the community. If a parent WikiProject has developed a consensus on article layout there's no harm in letting the child projects know about the discussion, in fact, it makes sense to invite them into the discussion at the start.  However, if there is disagreement among editors about article layout, then more discussion (including outside discussion) is needed, not imposition.
 * 1) Does canvassing include a) project newsletters or other forms of communication or b) IRC?
 * Canvassing depends on the content of the communication, not the method.
 * 1) a) In terms of vandalism and good faith but horrible edits, where do you draw the line? (scenario: an editor makes a mess of articles that cannot easily be fixed). b) Should blocks, protects, and / or rollbacks be in order?
 * Rollback is only useful for clear and obvious vandalism or clear BLP violations. If an edit is made in good faith, but goes against Wikipedia policy, or makes a mess of an article that can't be fixed, reverting it deserves an edit summary and probably a note on talk or the editors talk page.  Sometimes, if you see an edit that makes a mess of an article and it would take a long time to fix, you may feel like taking the easy way out and just reverting - instead, leave it for someone else to fix who does have the time.
 * 1) An editor has made few to no productive edits to articles on Wikipedia. This user has not broken policies per se, but is hard to deal with, giving "smart aleck" remarks, ignoring consensus, ignoring what administrators tell them, etc. What are your views on this situation?
 * These are some of the most difficult situations to deal with on Wikipedia; the community is still divided on how to handle these types of editors. I think its best to look deeper into these situations and try to figure out why the editor is being a problem - are they young and need some time to mature? are they only here to push a POV? have they misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia?  Sometimes finding the core of the problem presents a way to resolve things.
 * 1) An editor does not have the intelligence required to edit Wikipedia. (does not understand English, doesn't get how to edit, etc.) What should be done in this situation?
 * I'm all for being blunt, but equating a lack of English knowledge to a lack of intelligence is incredibly offensive. That said, if an editor was unable to communicate with other editors or for some other reason unable to work with the community here, its possible that they would be asked to leave.
 * 1) a) What justifies a community ban? b) Do the circumstances described in questions #5-7 justify a community ban?
 * Community bans are typically used as a last resort when an editor has been unable to find a way to work with the community. As far as the specific ideas given: making good faith but messy edits probably wouldn't lead to a ban unless the editor is also completely unwilling to work with others and improve their editing skills; editors who are tough to deal with can be frustrating, but again, unless it rises to an extreme level and completely unwillingness/ability to work with others its not ban worthy; in number 7, again, you're looking at extremes, if an editor is completely unable to communicate with others, or unwilling/unable to learn to improve their edits, its possible they would end up with a ban.  Again, I think any kind of full ban is a last resort; even in ArbCom cases, you rarely see anything beyond a years time off.
 * 1) (This question will be scored only on the basis of your honestly completing it, regardless of the answer) What are the current problems with the Wikipedia community?
 * I think one of the biggest problems we have is the love of dramah. There appear to be certain portions of the community who either enjoy or have quite a talent at finding and perpetuating high levels of noise.  Minor problems and issues that should be calmly worked out between editors have a tendency to get blown into supernovas that span noticeboards, mailing lists and even dispute resolution.  These kinds of things clog our processes and get in the way of real work being done.  But no, I don't have any solution...yet.

Questions from Maxim

 * 1) What is your stance on wheel-warring? What do you define as wheel-warring? As an arbitrator, how would you respond to a case surrounding a wheel war?
 * Wheel warring = Edit warring with tools. I feel pretty much the same as I do about edit warring - its not helpful, won't resolve the problem and makes everyone involved look silly.  I think issues with wheel warring can be handled in a similar way to edit warring - isolated incidents get you a reminder, but a patten might warrant removal of the tools.
 * 1) What is your opinion on letting the community desysop admins?
 * I think the community is capable of coming up with a way to handle it. For example, it took quite a bit of discussion but the community found a workable way to grant and remove access to the rollback tool.  I don't think the community has been able to agree on a good way to handle general admin tool removal, though recall has seemed to work in some cases - as soon as there is a consensus, I don't see any reason why not.
 * 1) What is your opinion on adminbots? The bot policy was updated to allow adminbots to bypass RfA, going only through BRfA, and fully-automated unapproved adminbots were required to be approved via BRfA. What is your opinion on handling unapproved adminbots? What is your general opinion on high-speed admin tools, which are not fully automated (like Twinkle)?
 * As a general concept, adminbots aren't necessarily a bad thing if they're only used in cases that truly need no human interaction or decision making. Since the requirements include that the operator already gained community trust through a regular RfA and that the bot's purpose be generally accepted by the community, I think we've already got the checks we need in place to veto any bad ideas that might come through that route.  Unapproved adminbots should be immediate shut down when they are discovered; a vast majority of work that admins use the tools for needs a human component/sanity check.  I'd probably be willing to give the operator a mulligan assuming they weren't running the bot with malicious intent, but, once you know the proper process, expect to lose the tools if you do it again. Tools like Twinkle are a god-send.  As with any privilege on Wikipedia, its the individual operator's responsibility to ensure they understand not only how the tool works, but applicable policy in any area where they use the tool.  Anyone misusing the tool repeatedly (hello those of you using rollback on good faith edits) should have their access yanked.

Questions from rootology
Hello, thank you for running for the AC election! Good luck, or our sympathies are with you, depending on certain points of view! I'll be asking everyone these same questions.

Questions:

1. In regards to the massive "omnibus" case Requests for arbitration/C68-FM-SV/Proposed decision, do you think bundling it all together was helpful to Wikipedia? Why, or why not?


 * I don't think bundling the case, aside from possibly taking more time, really did any harm. As much as I'm not a mind reader, the Committee appears to have felt that a lot of the behaviors were intertwined; the later adding of JzG and Viridae was a bit more confusing for me though.  However, so long as all issues and behaviors in a case are looked at carefully, the actual format shouldn't be much more than process.

2. On the same aforementioned Omnibus case, the question came up here of impartiality in voting by the seated Arbiters. It was shown there that a seated, voting arbiter in the case was unwilling to support "subjective" findings that all the users were valuable contributors to Wikipedia, even ones who have created multiple Featured Articles (to the point of being leaders on the all-time list for most Featured Articles, ever). Should someone be seated as an Arbiter, unless they are always capable of being impartial in cases they choose to not recuse from? Why, or why not?


 * I found that refusal to be particularly troubling - if you've been dealing with problems for so long that you find yourself incapable of seeing the good in others, then you need to take a break. Oddly, this is similar to what happened to a lot of participants in this case. Yes, some of them made missteps and in general succumbed to what looks like a form of burnout, but it should have been very clear that they did so after considerable service to the project.  I see no reason not to formally commend their work, while still saying "but you've let this get to you and you need to stop these things..." I strongly feel that positive reinforcement is a useful tool when dealing with behavior issues.

3. What are your thoughts on the idea of the English Wikipedia community controlling Arbitration Committee policy, and the AC following the framework of policy that the community sets out for them in how to conduct business?


 * I think that besides the formality of actually writing the policy page, this is already the case. Perhaps the community hasn't used its power in this area as often as others, but the fact is that without the support of the community, anything done at ArbCom would have no weight.  That said, I don't think the policy should be used for drawing lines in the sand i.e. cases must be heard in under a month, the voting period for cases may only run 5 days - the policy needs to remain flexible so that the Committee can respond to changes in the community.  Otherwise, have at it - if the community as a whole decides that a particular type of restriction is completely unhelpful and shouldn't be used, they should have the ability to make those kinds of changes.

4. What are your thoughts on the idea of the English Wikipedia Arbcom elections being totally owned by and controlled by the community of editors? As in, as how it is on other language Wikipedias--elections are done as straight votes/consensus, with the leaders being seated based on that alone, subject solely to the will of their peers.


 * I think its the right idea. While I understand the need of someone to look at the voting and determine who has consensus to be on the Committee, I don't think that person particularly needs to be Jimbo, nor do I think there needs to be a special "veto" power that puts editors not chosen by the community on-board.  This entire project runs solely because of the community - as a whole, the community tends to make good choices and self-correct over time.  There's no reason to think the community cannot be responsible for choosing editors for the Committee.

5. Do you think an Arbiter should be placed on the Committee without a clear endorsement/supporting majority vote of the community they will be serving during the election? If yes, why? If no, why?


 * No, essentially for the reasons I stated above. As a whole, the community has shown itself capable of making this project work; there's no reason to believe that this particular aspect would be any different.

6. You get to set a mandate, one sentence in length, for policy on how the Arbitration Committee will work--it could be AC policy, AC elections, AC responsibilities, mandates--anything and everything. No one can overrule this change, not Jimbo, not the other AC members, not the WMF board (so long as it's legal, of course); no IAR exemptions, and it is the Law of the Land forever in AC matters. What is it, in one sentence of 15 words or less?


 * Any appeal of a block/ban/sanction will be logged publicly, noting the decision.

7. Please rank these in order of whom the Arbcom serves and answers to, in order from first to last (the party who should have the most power over the AC goes first, the one who should have the least power over the AC goes last:


 * a) The Community
 * b) Jimbo Wales
 * c) Arbiters/The Arbitration Committee
 * d) The Wikimedia Foundation


 * Feel free to explain your ordering choices and your rationale behind them, if so inclined.


 * Community, Foundation, Committee, Jimbo. As above, this entire ball of wax exists because of the Community and their willingness to put in their time and effort.  The entire point of the Committee is to serve the Community by dealing with disputes the Community couldn't solve on their own.  If its not broke, why fix it?  Second, the Foundation - they put all of this together and ultimately we have a responsibility to respect that.  Third, other Committee members - being on the Committee is a privilege and a responsibility; one Arbiter can help or hurt the process and in extreme cases, make the entire Committee look bad.  And Jimbo - good guy, full of clue and in general deserves our respect for starting this whole thing and acting as the Communities conscience at times, but honestly - he shouldn't be on this list any more than another trusted and respected member of the Community would be.

Thank you, and again--good luck. rootology ( C )( T ) 00:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Question from Davewild

 * 1) Do you support reducing the length of Arbitrators terms to under 3 years, and if you do and are elected, how will you go about trying to get this implemented?
 * No; I think in general three years has worked out well both because Arbiters learn to work together and you're not always having to get new people up to speed. However, I also think that it would be helpful if stepping down due to real life commitments or "burn-out" was more widely accepted and supported.  We should, in general, be more supportive of editors who are doing one of the most intense, thankless and time consuming jobs on Wikipedia.

Thanks. Davewild (talk) 09:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Questions from roux
This question is to gauge your general thoughts on how civility applies as a general principle across WP. Please read the proposals here first.

1) Which conceptual statement(s), if any, in section A would you support or oppose, and why?
 * "Long term editors will inevitably develop disagreements and rivalries" - it happens in any environment, sometimes you find people you just don't work with well and sometimes you can't even put your finger on why. "judged against the contribution history of the editor in question" - sort of - if this means treating people different simply because they've been here longer or have more edits then no, if this means looking at the context and making an informed judgment (i.e. topic restrictions if incivility seems to happen dealing with a particular area) then yes.  ""low level incivility" may be judged subjectively and sanctions may be applied (as we have seen) based more on personal or ideological disagreements rather than underlying behavior." - this has definitely been a reoccurring problem which is why enforcement should be left to someone who is truly "uninvolved".  "Low level incivility by long term editors drives productive contributors from the project" - I agree that incivility can drive new editors away and contribute to general burn out of even well established editors, however, I'd change this to drop the "long term editors" portion since abrasive behavior by any editor can have a similar effect.  "and should be dealt with in proportion to its effect" - Probably too broad of a statement, but the general principle is good.  Over time an usually productive editor may find that they are having a harder time dealing with others whether its due to a particular dispute, or just wearing down over time.  Hopefully that editor will recognize the problem and take a break until they can deal with things again.  If they don't and they don't respond to concerns about their communications, then we need to make it clear that as a community, we appreciate them, but we can't let them run amok. "Patterns of incivility should be judged as patterns of behavior" - exactly - occasional bursts of crabbiness happen, but a pattern of dealing with others poorly should be a concern.  "It is also possible to be unacceptably offensive and antagonistic without engaging in blatant harassment or disruption." - Precisely defines the problem.

2) Which proposed restriction(s), if any, in section B would you support or oppose, and why?
 * "Civility restrictions may be imposed on an editor only where the editor would otherwise be banned for their conduct by the community or the ArbComm." - No, there's no reason to wait this long or let things get this serious before considering some kind of restriction. "The community rejects the notion of civility restrictions and voids past restrictions enacted by the community" - too broad - we might not have found the right kind of restriction yet or the best way to handle such restrictions, but this is a problem that needs dealt with in some fashion. "The current civility restrictions have problems but are the best possible solution until something better arrives." - can't really agree with this either I'm afraid - if the current restrictions aren't working, there's no use beating a dead horse just because we don't have a better idea yet.


 * 2) a) If you oppose all proposed restrictions, but view low-level civility as a concern: what restrictions, if any, would you propose as alternatives to those outlined in section B?
 * I'm personally in favor of mentorship as a possible solution; I've actually taken on one such mentorship with that so far seems to have been successful.  However, I believe its worked in this case because the editor's abrasiveness was not intentional and more a product of familiarity with a different way of doing things - online communication is radically different than other working environments and sometimes new skills need to be learned.  I also believe that topic bans can be helpful if there's a pattern of incivility in certain areas.  I think that a main component in resolving civility issues is going to be finding the core of the problem and addressing it instead of just the symptom.

Thank you for answering, and best of luck with the election. [ roux  » x ] 22:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Question from Iridescent (sort of – see remarks below)
'' This is actually a question suggested originally on Wikipedia Review; however, I think it's an intelligent – and in the current climate, significant – enough question to warrant asking. –  iride scent  01:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC) ''
 * 1) Would you accept appointment by Jimbo if you were not one of the top candidates (that is, someone else was passed over so that you could be appointed)?
 * No. I have no reason to doubt the community's judgment. (For more thoughts on this issue, see .)

Questions from Lar
Note to respondents: in some cases I am asking about things that are outside ArbCom's remit to do anything about. I am interested in your thoughts even so. Note also that in many cases I ask a multi part question with a certain phrasing, and with a certain ordering/structure for a reason, and if you answer a 6 part question with a single generalized essay that doesn't actually cover all the points, I (and others) may not consider that you actually answered the question very well at all.


 * 1) Is the English Wikipedia's current BLP approach correct in all aspects? Why or why not? If not, what needs changing? In particular, how do you feel about the following suggestions:
 * a) "Opt Out" - Marginally notable individuals can opt out, or opt in, at their request. If it's a tossup, the individual's wishes prevail, either way. George W. Bush clearly does not get to opt out, too notable. I (Lar) clearly do not get to opt in, not notable enough.
 * b) "Default to Delete" - If a BLP AfD or DRv discussion ends up as "no consensus" the default is to delete. A clear consensus to KEEP is required, else the article is removed.
 * I think the policy hits it head on, but the community hasn't quite started using it broadly enough yet. For example, there is still a great deal of biographical information wandering around in various articles that aren't biographies themselves - these entries often get less scrutiny and sometimes end up sitting around with nasty edits from former employees or other people with an agenda. I think in general, the community needs to take a stronger stance on biographical information, where ever it may be found.  This would include things like speedy removal of unsourced information, immediate stubbification of biographies lacking sources and more consistent notability requirements both for biographical articles and when weighting biographical information in articles.
 * a) I think we're already practicing this to some degree; AfDs sometimes reference a subjects request to have an article removed and editors seem to be considering that as a factor. I think its an excellent trend; as you said, clearly we aren't going to let obviously notable people demand article removal and thus hurt the encyclopedia while at the same time, recognizing that we do affect the real world and need to take that responsibility seriously.
 * b) I like this idea as well, but I'm not sure the community is sold on the idea yet. Its a considerable change in the way deletions are handled so there's understandable concern about whether this will harm our ability to cover encyclopedic content in the long run.  I think the community is doing a good job of working their way through this slowly and finding the right balance, but I think it would be appropriate to ramp this up while making sure to keep an eye out to ensure that legitimate articles aren't being deleted this way simply from a lack of participation.
 * 1) Given that it is said that the English Wikipedia ArbCom does not set policy, only enforce the community's will, and that ArbCom does not decide content questions:
 * a) Is question 1 a question of content or of policy?
 * b) ArbCom in the past has taken some actions with respect to BLP that some viewed as mandating policy. Do you agree or disagree? Did they go far enough? Too far? Just right?
 * c) If you answered question 1 to the effect that you did not agree in every respect with the BLP approach, how would you go about changing the approach? Take your answers to 2a and 2b into account.
 * a) Its policy, but clearly content related (as opposed to our behavioral policies).
 * b) Its been hit and miss. The Sarah Palin case was appropriate - it encouraged and suggested without prescribing policy.  The Footnoted quotes case overstepped - it created new policy and instructed the community as a whole unecessarily; its not surprising that the log there is practically empty.
 * c) Any approach I would take towards making changes to the way biographies are handled would be through community channels and unrelated to the Committee. Some things I might do would be making arguments in deletion discussions where appropriate (this does not include closing deletion debates for novel reasons not supported by community consensus), educating editors about problematic biographical content in non-biography articles and helping to police them or discussing possible solutions with other editors at WT:BLP.
 * 1) It has been said that the English Wikipedia has outgrown itself, that the consensus based approach doesn't scale this big. Do you agree or disagree, and why? If you agree, what should be done about it? Can the project be moved to a different model (other wikis, for example, use much more explicit voting mechanisms)? Should it be?
 * I disagree. In general the community finds ways to work together and generally self corrects over time if something does go off the rails.  Clearly there are going to be times where the community can't come to a decision immediately and takes a few tries to find a solution that works for everyone; some times the solutions happen through evolving practice rather than centralized discussion or "voting".  In my personal experiences, web-based communities that use straight voting tend to be subject to gaming and cliques on a larger scale than is seen here; at the very least, in most places on Wikipedia, editors need to make a reasoned argument instead of just tossing a yes or no on to a pile.  I don't think there would be much to gain in moving to a different system.
 * 1) Please discuss your personal views on Sighted/Flagged revisions. Should we implement some form of this? What form? Do you think the community has irretrievably failed to come to a decision about this? Why? What is the role, if any, of ArbCom in this matter?
 * In theory, its a good idea especially the proposals that have suggested showing flagged revisions for visitors while still showing changes immediately to logged in editors. The caching system already does something like this, but unfortunately since no one is controlling which revisions get cached, sometimes visitors end up seeing vandalism that's already been reverted.  There seems to be difficulty in general when trying to implement large changes like this via community discussion - I'm not sure if this is a failure of the system or if its just that no one has hit on the right proposal yet. I still think this can be solved through regular community processes; perhaps someone will stumble upon an even better way to handle this problem.  In the meantime I don't think that ArbCom has any role in this process, other than acting as standard community members in this discussion.
 * 1) Wikipedia was founded on the principle that anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, is OK. You do not need to disclose your real identity, if you do not wish to, to edit here. You are not forbidden from doing so if you wish.
 * a) Do you support this principle? Why or why not?
 * b) If you do not support it, is there a way to change it at this late date? How? Should it be (even if you do not support it, you may think it should not be changed)?
 * c) With anonymity comes outing. Lately there has been some controversy about what is outing and what is not... if someone has previously disclosed their real identity and now wishes to change that decision, how far should the project go to honor that? Should oversight be used? Deletion? Editing away data? Nothing?
 * d) If someone has their real identity disclosed elsewhere in a way that clearly correlates to their Wikipedia identity, is it outing to report or reveal that link? Why or why not?
 * e) Do you openly acknowledge your real identity? Should all Arbitrators openly acknowledge their real identity? Why or why not? If you are currently pseudonymous, do you plan to disclose it if elected? (this is somewhat different than Thatcher's 1C in that it's more extensive)
 * f) Does the WMF make it clear enough that pseudonymity is a goal but not a guarantee? What should the WMF be doing, in your opinion, if anything, about loss of pseudonymity? What should ArbCom be doing, in your opinion, if anything, about loss of pseudonymity?
 * g) If an editor clearly and deliberately outs someone who does not wish to be outed, what is the appropriate sanction, if any? Does the question differ if the outing occurs on wiki vs off-wiki? (this is somewhat similar but different from Thatcher's 1D)
 * a) Absolutely. We've had excellent contributions by editors using pseudonyms or even those identified only by their IP address.  If it ain't broke...
 * c) Traditionally, the community has respected the right to vanish only in cases where an editor was leaving the community. Even in those cases, its a bit difficult to put the rabbit back in the hat.  However, it makes sense that if a contributor experiences problems that make them rethink their decision to release their personal information, we should take reasonable measures to assist them.  This would include renaming an account, facilitating an editor who wishes to abandon an account and start again on another, deleting edits that revealed personal information (not including edits that simply had a signature that was a real name) and possibly even oversighting edits that revealed identifying information such as location or employer.  In regards to outing, if another editor were to mention an old account name that was also a real name, it should be met with a polite request not to do it again.  If an editor continues mentioning the old name after receiving such a request, assuming of course that we're sure they saw the request, then I would support blocking to get across the point that we do take privacy seriously.
 * d) Yes. It think we have to consider the outcome here - regardless of whether or not you post a person's name or simply a link to their name, you are taking away someone's ability to edit with a pseudonym.
 * e) Yes, I do, but I don't think there's any reason it should be a requirement. The Committee exists to work out problems that the community has given up on; nothing in that mandate would require someone to give up their psuedonymity if they don't want to.  I"m personally open about who I am and short of giving my address on wiki, I'll probably answer any question asked of me.  However, since stalking and frankly, blackmail are problems that Committee members may have to deal with, I would never begrudge them an extra layer of security.
 * f) I think they do. Yes, we see a lot of newer users with unrealistic expectations but we see an equal number of new users who use personally identifying information as their user names or on their user pages. Whether or not a new editor realizes the Foundations goal and the impact of the username and information they release has a lot to do with how much time they take to look around before creating an account (and general internet savvy of course).  I think its responsibility of the Community to ensure pseudonymity, not the Foundation (privacy is not the same thing as pseudonymity) or ArbCom.
 * g) That's a really difficult question to answer. Clearly, outing someone who does not want to be outed is way over the line, similar to blatant personal attacks or other serious harassment.  But, no matter what we do, the cat's already out of the bag.  We should quickly delete/oversight the offending remarks and block the editor until they clearly agree they will not make any further reference at all to the incident or the real identity they were trying to expose.  Long term, we might even require that the blocked editor have no further contact with the editor they tried to out, even if that means giving up some of their favorite editing areas.  Outing off wiki however, has traditionally been outside of the purview of the Committee (and the Community for that matter).  Recently however, one editor did receive on-wiki sanctions for some rather callous and rude remarks made on another website perhaps indicating that the Community is starting to accept that someone's actions on another website that are intended to directly affect editors on wiki can still be stalking or outing.
 * 1) Stalking is a problem, both in real life and in the Wikipedia context.
 * a) Should the WMF be highlighting (disclaiming) the possible hazards of editing a high visibility website such as Wikipedia? Should some other body do so?
 * b) What responsibility, if any, does WMF have to try to prevent real life stalking? What aid, if any, should the WMF give to someone victimised. Balance your answer against the provisions of the privacy policy.
 * c) If someone has previously been stalked in real life, what allowances or special provisions should be made, if any?
 * d) What special provisions should be made, if any, to deal with stalkers who are using Wikipedia to harass victims? Consider the case where the stalkee is a real life person and the harassment is done by manipulating their article, as well as the case where the stalkee is an editor here.
 * e) Where is the line between stalking or harassing an editor and reviewing the contributions of a problematic editor to see if there are other problems not yet revealed?
 * a) Yes. I think most large social sites have tried to educate their users on internet safety; I think it would make sense for there to be some notes on privacy/pseudonymity displayed when an editor goes to sign up for an account, especially if we can then link those to longer essays that help explain why being careful is important.
 * b) The WMF already maintains a privacy policy for personally identifying information and has given editors the option of using a pseudonym. It should be clear (and I think it is) that oversight should be used any time personally identifying information is released on Wikipedia. However, just as starting a journal on MySpace that led to you being stalked wouldn't be the responsibility of MySpace, editing Wikipedia doesn't mean that Foundation is realistically going to be able to provide assistance should you get stalked.  This is absolutely not meant to minimize the traumatic impact of stalking or suggest that the fault lies with the victim, but unfortunately, I don't believe the Foundation (or any internet organization) is going to be in a position to help users of their service in that way.
 * c) If someone is concerned that a stalker may follow them to Wikipedia or may use information on Wikipedia to find them, a quiet word to ArbCom or a trusted Administrator can help with the former or in the latter case, oversight can assist.
 * d) In the case where a stalker is stalking a real life person whom we have an article on, the stalker should be shown the door and the article protected if necessary. The same should be done if the person being stalked is an editor.  As a community, we should have no tolerance for this sort of behavior.
 * e) If you're in a dispute with someone, that's not the right time to decide to go through their contributions and acerbate the problem - this has to be an actual dispute though i.e. acting as an uninvolved admin wouldn't count as a "dispute". If you stumble across a problem or see an issue at a noticeboard and check into it, you're clearly in the good.  If an editor complains about having their contributions looked through, it doesn't hurt to get a sanity check from other editors just to be sure.
 * 1) A certain editor has been characterised as "remarkably unwelcome" here, and the "revert all edits" principle has been invoked, to remove all their edits when discovered. In the case of very unwelcome and problematic editors, do you support that? What about for more run of the mill problem editors? What about in the case of someone making a large number of good edits merely to test this principle? Do you think blanket unreverting removed edits is appropriate or would you suggest that each edit be replaced with a specific summary standing behind it, or some other variant?
 * Reverting all edits by a banned user is something that should be decided on a case by case basis. For example, if the banned user is simply coming back to test and see if we will revert the edits, then it probably makes sense to simply revert everything rather than play a game.  If the banned user is simply interested in contributing and not being disruptive, then its actually causing the project more disruption to track down the edits and revert them.
 * 1) What is the appropriate role of outside criticism:
 * a) Should all discussion of Wikipedia remain ON Wikipedia, or is it acceptable that some occur off Wikipedia?
 * b) Do you have a blog or other vehicle for making outside comments about Wikipedia? If so what is the link, or why do you choose not to disclose it? Why do you have (or not have) such an individual vehicle?
 * c) Please state your opinion of Wikipedia Review and of the notion of participating there. Please state your opinion of Wikback, and of the notion of participating there. Why did Wikback fail? Describe your ideal outside criticism site, (if any)?
 * d) Do you think it appropriate or inappropriate for an editor to participate in an outside criticism site? For an admin? For an Arbitrator? Why or why not?
 * e) Do you have an account at an outside criticism site? If it is not obvious already, will you be disclosing it if elected? Conversely, is it acceptable to have an anonymous or pseudonymous account at such a site? Why or why not? Assuming an arbitrator has one, some folk may try to discover and "out" it. Is that something that should be sanctioned on wiki? (that is, is it actually a form of outing as addressed in question 5? )
 * a) That depends on the discussion. General discussion of Wikipedia, policies and criticism of the project should be welcome anywhere.  However, this does not mean that trashing other editors, speculation on editors real identities or any other general tasteless conversation is appropriate.
 * b) Nope. I have written a Wikipedia guide for my clients (generally SMBs) in response to the number of questions I get about it which I would be happy to provide to anyone on request (or put it up on a user subpage if that would be better/easier).  It explains, in detail, all the reasons why SMBs absolutely do not want to try to put their article on Wikipedia.  As far as why I don't have a blog or journal, I'm not one to throw my feelings out there for everyone to see and my husband is a great listener, so I have my outlet.
 * c) Wikipedia Review has its good points and its bad. On one hand, there are some legitimate criticisms and good ideas thrown out.  On the other hand, there is deliberate and intentional disruption of the project, reprehensible behavior with regards to editors and I believe it has been used to facilitate outing and stalking.  Given that the owners have not stepped up to stop even the most egregious of offenses, I have absolutely no respect for them or the site.  I understand why Wikipedia editors might contribute there, but personally, I would prefer if people did not, simply to avoid giving it any kind of respect or recognition until they clean up their act.  Of course, the salacious aspects of Wikipedia Review may be one of the reasons it has survived, where forums like Wikback failed.  I also believe that many people who stopped using Wikback cited harsh application of rules as one of their primary reasons for leaving.  I think the ideal outside forum would be something of a community site in itself with a forum, user pages and even a place member's could write their own blog, but it would require clearly defined limits that prevented the kind of abuse that happens on Wikipedia Review.
 * d) I think the decision to participate in an outside criticism site should be left up to the individual editor, regardless of what their position might be here. While I would personally prefer that editors not visit sites which allow harassment of Wikipedia editors, I don't think there should be consequences here for that choice.
 * e) I believe I signed up for Wikipedia Review at one time very early in their history and used my original account name here (Jareth), but have never posted there and do not even read or visit the site any longer due to my disgust with some of the things that have gone on there. Given the fact that editors have been harassed (here and at outside sites) for their participation in such sites, I think being anonymous or pseudonymous would make good sense.  I don't believe we should allow Wikipedia to be used for outing any more than those other sites should allow outing of Wikipedia editors; there's absolutely no reason to stoop to their level.
 * 1) Does the English Wikipedia have a problem with VestedContributors? Why or why not? What is to be done about it (if there is a problem)?
 * Absolutely. We often see arguments similar to "but he has X number of FAs" as an excuse for behavior or a request for lighter sanctions.  While we want to reward contributors and appreciate their work, we need to stop letting editors get away with inappropriate behavior based only on their contributions.  Instead we need to consider the cases on their merits - is this a pattern or a single incident? does this editor have a problem dealing with a particular subject area or with particular editors? are their contributing factors? - counting contribs or FAs should never be part of this equation.
 * 1) What is your favorite color? :) Why? :) :)
 * Purple because I find it to be both calming and empowering. Believe it or not, all the rooms on the first floor of my house are painted purple; I've got purple flowers, purple vases, purple sea shells and tons and tons of amethyst.  My husband even proposed with an amethyst and tanzanite engagement ring and I like it 1000 times more than any crappy colorless diamond ;)
 * Absolutely. We often see arguments similar to "but he has X number of FAs" as an excuse for behavior or a request for lighter sanctions.  While we want to reward contributors and appreciate their work, we need to stop letting editors get away with inappropriate behavior based only on their contributions.  Instead we need to consider the cases on their merits - is this a pattern or a single incident? does this editor have a problem dealing with a particular subject area or with particular editors? are their contributing factors? - counting contribs or FAs should never be part of this equation.
 * 1) What is your favorite color? :) Why? :) :)
 * Purple because I find it to be both calming and empowering. Believe it or not, all the rooms on the first floor of my house are painted purple; I've got purple flowers, purple vases, purple sea shells and tons and tons of amethyst.  My husband even proposed with an amethyst and tanzanite engagement ring and I like it 1000 times more than any crappy colorless diamond ;)
 * Purple because I find it to be both calming and empowering. Believe it or not, all the rooms on the first floor of my house are painted purple; I've got purple flowers, purple vases, purple sea shells and tons and tons of amethyst.  My husband even proposed with an amethyst and tanzanite engagement ring and I like it 1000 times more than any crappy colorless diamond ;)

Questions from Heimstern

 * 1) Nationalist and ethnic edit wars: It's widely accepted that edit warring and POV-pushing along national and ethnic lines is one of the bigger problems at Wikipedia. Do you have any thoughts on how to solve this problem? For example, should the Arbcom be more willing to issue sanctions, such as bans, topic restrictions and revert restrictions (and if possible, maybe comment on when different types of sanctions are appropriate)? Should the community, particularly administrators, take on more of the responsibility for this problem? If so, how?
 * I think we've seen some improvement in these areas lately due in large part to sanctions the Committee crafted to be used across all articles and editors getting involved in some of these areas. Its going to take consistency and some creative ideas to resolve these issues.  I think that both the Committee and the community need to be more liberal in issuing topic restrictions including topic bans for editors who are unwilling to stop using Wikipedia as their own personal battleground.
 * 1) Civility restrictions: Civility restrictions imposed by the Arbcom seem to frequently prove divisive among administrators enforcing them. Frequently, one administrator feels the user in question has been uncivil and should be blocked, while another disagrees and unblocks shortly thereafter. Should the committee seek to change this? If so, how? Different restrictions? Different wording? Using them less frequently or not at all? Is there anything you would change about the committee's approach to the civility policy?
 * I think the fact that the community is reacting so negatively to these sanctions is a good indication that there is something wrong with the solution. I think the majority of blocks that are being undone are those that aren't discussed first; there's also been concerns that these blocks are being made by administrator's who have history with the editor; those issues can be pretty easily fixed.  I am strongly against the most recent proposal by ArbCom to force all civility blocks for a certain editor to be heard by the Committee first - not only are they taking this out of the community's hands, by the time ArbCom can review the issue, the block won't be prevention any longer.  I think when incivility has gotten to the point where it is causing constant disruption and a clear pattern of behavior, we need to give them a few months off to get themselves back together instead of patchwork blocking that's historically been of little use in solving the problem.

Questions from User:NuclearWarfare

 * 1) What percentage would your vote have to be before you would accept an appointment from Jimmy Wales?
 * As I've said in a few places above, if I'm not one of the community's choices, I would not accept appointment.
 * 1) Would you support any system of recall similar to the administrator's one (with possibly tougher restrictions for any Arbitrator?
 * I think that Arbiters should be responsible for their actions and if someone clearly can't handle the stress or turns out to consistently make poor decisions, the community should have a say in removing them from the Committee. However, since Arbiters are likely to make quite a number of people very unhappy by virtue of the cases they handle, we'd need to be careful to craft a system that couldn't be gamed by disgruntled parties.

Questions from UninvitedCompany

 * 1) Can you summarize briefly the kind of editing you've done at Wikipedia?
 * I'm a gnome and a mediator. I clear up backlogs and do some of the grunt work that helps Wikipedia run smoothly. I help people both on wiki and OTRS, I enjoy solving problems and I like to find new solutions and compromises.  The majority of my content work has been to start new articles, copyedit and add new bits.  I can write a whole article or rewrite an article from scratch when necessary, but I agonize over it, so its not my favorite activity.
 * 1) Can you summarize your education and your professional background?
 * I spent my life in private schools and focused on languages, biology (with a concentration in animals) and math. Following in my father's footsteps, I worked as a consultant for the majority of my career covering a wide range of technology related work from systems administration to security and risk management to design and development.  I currently work for a family owned web service firm.
 * 1) Can you summarize your involvement in other on-line projects and communities, including the identities under which you have participated at those communities?
 * I'm usually the one building websites and communities as opposed to participating in them. Aside from Wikipedia, I am active at Facebook (where I play bunched of silly little games) under my real name.  I also participate in a number of animal rescue and welfare mailing lists and discussion groups, also under my real name.  At one time, I ran a gaming guild (mostly Dungeon Siege and Diablo II) called the CrimsonBlade; my name there was Jareth (the nickname I used when I first started here).
 * 1) Can you summarize any non-routine involvement you've had in disputes here or on other WMF projects, under this or any other username?
 * I am active here and a teeny bit on Commons. The only "non-routine" dispute I've been involved in was a civility block in 2006 of ScienceApologist that was hotly debated.
 * 1) Do you have any significant allegiance to any political, national, advocacy, or faith-based organizations?  If so, do you see any potential conflict of interest?
 * Good god, no. I do work in animal rescue, but its limited to a local scale and only focused on saving and re-homing strays, nothing remotely of the PETA level.
 * 1) Can you describe any other leadership roles you now hold or have held in the real world?
 * In my current position I am a managing partner responsible for our web design services; I manage marketing, client interactions and all staff designers. I am also the owner and coordinator of a local animal rescue where I manage intake, volunteers and approve all adoptions.  In the past, I have worked as a project and departmental manager, as well as organizing employee training initiatives. I also volunteered for several years as one of the coordinators for Akron's Labor of Love Run.
 * 1) Have you publicly revealed your actual name and address?  Do you plan to do so if elected?  If not, how do you plan to respond to any threats you may receive to publicize this information?
 * Name, yes, address no. I have no problem providing the Foundation with any information they require, but will not publicly provide directions to my home for the world to see; that's just not smart behavior.  If someone were to find my information, more power to them - I will take any threats to my family very seriously.
 * 1) Do you have any friends, family members, or other people close to you IRL who edit Wikipedia?  What are their user names and their relationships to you?
 * My husband edited Wikipedia a handful of times under the username Dixen.
 * 1) Other than the wiki itself, where do you discuss Wikipedia matters (e.g. IRC, mailing list, meetups)?
 * Only at home; my friends glaze over very quickly when I mention Wikipedia, but my husband tends to put up with me for longer :)
 * 1) What constituencies do you imagine that you would serve as a member of the committee?  Do they all carry equal weight?
 * In general, the community is the first priority which is what I believe ArbCom was designed for. My answer to Lar's question above gives some further details.
 * 1) What kinds of cases do you think the committee should accept?  Refuse?
 * The Committee should be accepting issues that the community hasn't been able to solve on its own except in cases where it would be asked to rule on specific content. Any case where the outcome would mean choosing or favoring content should be avoided.  Cases which are unlikley to be solvable (i.e. the case is mostly an issue blown out of proportion) shouldn't be taken; these types of cases waste the time of the Committee and the Community since they often produce nothing more than resolutions which simply remind everyone involved to play nice.
 * 1) How do you believe the committee should address problematic behavior that takes place off-wiki but affects conflict here?
 * That's going to depend on the particular situation. For example, if someone is being stalked on another website because of their contributions here, the Committee should kick the offending party out of our community.  We should have zero tolerance for people who think that kind of behavior is acceptable.
 * 1) What kinds of arbitration remedies do you believe are most effective (e.g. Bans, editing restrictions, article restrictions, other "creative remedies")?
 * I think I like the creative ones the best, mainly because if a situation can't be solved by the community, something new and unique needs to be tried. I believe some of the wider sanctions this year that allowed increased enforcement in areas that are constant battlegrounds was particularly effective.
 * 1) Do you have any specific plans for change to the arbitration system or the project as a whole that you would seek to carry out as a member of the committee?
 * The mailing list should be limited to the fewest people possible; since the Committee has access to potentially sensitive or confidential information, they need to be responsible in how that information is disseminated. I also think that there should be much more communication with the Community, for example in the form of logging requests to lift blocks and bans and the outcomes of such requests or in updating cases on a regular basis, even when there has been no progress during that period.
 * 1) Which past or current members of the committee do you admire the most?  Why?
 * I'm a fan of Newyorkbrad. He puts in an extraordinary amount of effort and isn't afraid to speak up for what he believes is right.  His contributions to the process are well thought out and genuinely helpful.
 * 1) To what standard of proof do you believe the committee should work?
 * I believe "beyond a reasonable doubt" is an acceptable standard. We're working in a purely online format, so I don't believe we can reasonably expect that everything will be possible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt; we certainly can't read people's minds and we don't have the benefit of body language or tone when evaluating cases.
 * 1) What are your feelings regarding the Wikimedia Foundation, its governance, officers, board, and employees?
 * They've got a great thing going here, but beyond appreciating their projects, I don't have any particular interest in the Foundation itself.
 * 1) To what extent do you support the work of the OTRS team?
 * Having worked on OTRS for a while now, I could not possibly express the respect and admiration I have for the volunteers who work there. Those people who work in the "complaint" areas regularly deal with some of the most difficult issues on Wikipedia and handle it with great poise and thoughtfulness.
 * 1) Do you have any plans to publicize information that the committee has kept confidential in the past?
 * As I've said, I believe that requests to lift a block or ban should be logged somewhere. This would include only that a request for X block to be lifted was received and the outcome was not lifted/lifted.  Since this has not traditionally been published on Wikipedia, I believe this would be a change, though I'm not certain I'd consider the bare facts to be confidential information.

Questions from TomasBat

 * 1) In general, which of these 2 concepts do you regard as higher priority? The concept of "user" as another human being or "what's best for the encyclopedia"? (would you be 200% fair and patient to a relatively new good faith user at the expense of commiting to something that you know will most probably, at an overall, not benefit the encyclopedia?)
 * I'm not sure that you can throw one above the other - these two ideas need to work together to produce both the best encyclopedia and the best environment to work on the encyclopedia. In your example, I will go out of my way to help and educate a new user, but I'm going to be firm about policies.  Its a bad idea to start out new users the impression that we'll bend policies and guidelines when its expedient.  I feel its best to kindly and patiently teach them about the policies and explain not just what they are, but why they are important.  The more people who understand the spirit of our policies, the better place Wikipedia will be.

Question from MBisanz

 * 1) In the past there have been issues with arbitrators who did not reveal their real life identity onwiki, being harassed offwiki with the threat of revealing it. If you have not revealed your identity publicly and were threatened with someone revealing it with the intent to harass you, how would you respond?  If your identity is already public, feel free to ignore this question.
 * Not an issue for me and in the case that someone would attempt to blackmail me, I am not going to take it lying down.

Questions from Pixelface

 * 1) Please list all the arbitration cases (accepted by the arbitration committee) where you were listed as an involved party. (I am speaking of closed cases as well as active cases). Do you think the remedies given in the case(s) were helpful in resolving any disputes?
 * Requests for arbitration/Shiloh (under my previous username Jareth) and Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The Shiloh case successfully resolved all disputes brought forward by clearly stipulating that Wikipedia was not to be used as the battleground for two feuding factions and banning the most egregious offender.  The case on Pseudoscience also resolved issues with several problematic editors and gave general sanctions that could be used to resolve disputes in that area.  While I don't believe the general sanctions have completely resolved the problem, there are bright spots of hope such as the current mediation at Talk:Chiropractic/Mediation which by use of some of those sanctions, has finally developed a consensus on a section that's been in contention for more than 8months.
 * 1) Please list all the arbitration cases (accepted by the arbitration committee) where you, acting as a non-member of the committee, have provided a statement, or evidence, or /Workshop material. Do you feel it was worth your time in each case?
 * In addition to the Shiloh case listed above, I also offered evidence at Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance. The Shiloh case went a bit long for my taste, but was ultimately successful.  The case involving the Franco-Mongol alliance was very complex, but also ultimately resulted in a means to limit the wide-spread disruption that was of concern.
 * 1) Please list all the requests for arbitration you've made. (If you can't remember them all, please describe some of the ones you *do* remember).
 * I've only made one request, which was the Shiloh case.

Questions from Badger Drink

 * 1) It is important that members of an "small but powerful" group such as ArbCom be able to offer criticism, and to admit that no person - neither themselves nor their fellow members of the Committee - is perfect. Nor should it be assumed that one's fellow members are sensitive waifs, unable or unfit to handle criticism - even public, on-Wiki, criticism. Choosing to always err in favor of preserving harmony in the workplace will inevitably lead to a workplace less deserving of harmony in the first place. With this in mind, looking over the Closed Case Files, such as they are, it becomes more and more evident that the ArbCom is not always right. Can you give an example or two of recent (i.e., within the past two years) cases (opened, rejected, or even clarifications) where you feel the ArbCom, to put it bluntly, screwed the pooch? If you were a member of the ArbCom at the time of this pooch-screwing, what would you or could you have said or done to make matters better?
 * We certainly can't expect ArbCom to get it right all the time; they're a small group of people doing their best to solve things that the entire community couldn't find a way to fix. Some things they try aren't going to work; sometimes they're going to get into a case and find there's not really anything they can offer.  A good example of the latter is Requests for arbitration/Highways 2 - the case languished for months before the committee closed the case without really doing anything.  I think there were some behavioral issues brought up during the case that could have been addressed and I would have suggested or made proposals in that vein.  I am really concerned with two current proposals at Requests_for_arbitration - "Administrators are prohibited from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy" is not a good idea; yes, we don't want administrators going sideways and reversing AE decisions on a whim, but those incidents should be dealt with on a case by case basis, not with a blanket ban. "Until further notice, no enforcement action relating to Giano's civility parole shall be taken without the explicit written agreement of the Committee." - honestly, when I saw this, my only thought was "WTF?".  If the parole isn't working, it needs to be fixed; this will do nothing to help the situation and is taking on authority that I don't believe the Committee has. I would oppose this proposal in the strongest possible terms.
 * 1) What are your thoughts regarding the OrangeMarlin case?
 * I strongly believe that the case was very poorly handled; the Community deserves better than "secret trials" and certainly deserved a better explanation of that debacle than what we got. No matter how disruptive an editor might be, the Committee needs to toughen up and handle the case through normal channels.  This is the biggest collective brain fart I think we've ever seen from any Committee.
 * 1) This final question may be frustratingly broad - and might be superceded by smaller, more focused questions on individual aspects of the incident. But let's just get a broad overview for the time being: What are your thoughts on the bombastic RFC/AC? Are there any issues raised within that RfC that you find particularly prudent?
 * Some things that stuck out for me: "From the moment they are written down, there is a marked unwillingness to change wording of findings of fact and so on, even if part of it is demonstratably in error." - perhaps too general, but I believe that in an effort to put forth a united front or perhaps for a lack of time, the Committee sometimes lets pointless or clearly incorrect portions of a case to slip through, even when situations later change. "silence as an official response, also does not help matters." - absolutely, I believe the Committee should take a more proactive approach to communicating with the community, especially in cases where an error has occurred - the OrangeMarlin case is a prime example of this problem. Also in the same vein was the comment that "Arb-Com does not engage with the community enough during cases." "The arbitration committee has several times this year acted in ways that prevented or highly prejudiced a user who was not yet able to give evidence." - there were several cases in which the Committee appeared to have made up their coordinated minds beforehand; even if this is not the case, they should avoid even the appearance of prejudice.  "The Arbitration Committee are not entitled to create binding rulings that institute new Wikipedia processes or policy, or substantial alter current Wikipedia processes or policy" - this is something that should have been obvious; the idea is to apply already existing community norms, not create new ones.  I believe the 'Sourcing Adjudication Board' and the 'BLP Special Enforcement' measures were both missteps and exceeded the authority given to the Committee; it is not surprising that the community rejected both.  "informal methods have been offered and accepted at various times during RFAR. They should not be acceptable and, if proposed, should be removed by the clerks." - absolutely, ArbCom is the last step for good reason - there should be no shortcuts or yellow brick roads, we should give the community a reasonable chance to solve the problem.
 * I believe some of the proposed updates to the ArbCom governing policy will address many of the concerns brought out at this RfC.

Question from BirgitteSB
Due to concerns over the way a non-public case was handled I once suggested some minimum standards for such cases. Which follow slightly clarified:


 * Have at least two arbitrators develop comprehensive presentations of evidence in isolation.
 * Allow all parties concerned to review at least the portions of the evidence presentations regarding their owns actions before any decision is reached.

I believe such standards will not only lessen the drama surrounding such cases, but are also necessary to have any confidence in the quality of the decision reached. In public cases the evidence presentations are usually left up the community and seldom is any one presentation comprehensive. However the scrutiny of the larger community is generally sufficient to tease out the weaknesses and strengths of the multiple presentations. Since private cases are necessarily denied this scrutiny it is imperative that evidence presentations are much stronger than in public cases. So I believe it is necessary for an arbitrator to collect the submissions of evidence into a comprehensive presentation even though such a thing is not done with public cases. Having two arbs put together presentations in isolation is an check on the subconscious bias of "finding what one is looking for." Allowing the parties to review the presentations concerning themselves is a final check on any misunderstandings, and a commonsense measure to build confidence in the whole process. How well do you agree with these suggested practices as I have outlined them?-- Birgitte SB  19:54, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Questions from Kristen Eriksen
1. In the course of ascertaining whether editors have violated our verifiability policy, arbitrators may be called upon to determine questions of source reliability. Should certain peer-reviewed journals be considered reliable sources when they are published by otherwise respectable organizations, but engage in a practice of lending credence to fields of endevour and subject matter widely held in disrepute by the scientific community? As an example, consider the journal "Homeopathy", which is published by Elsevier, but which regularly carries positive experimental results for homeopathic preparations.
 * I would consider this to be an editorial decision, as opposed to one that should be made at ArbCom. If an editor is providing a source, they are satisfying the spirit of the Verifiability policy; whether or not that source is reliable or should be used is a decision the Community needs to make.  I think that the community has remained fairly consistent on issues such as these and that they can be expected to solve the problem through RfCs or similar methods.  In my experience (just as an editor) consensus is usually that these sources can be used in context, but must be appropriately weighted against current mainstream scientific thought.

2. What is the intent of our policy that WP:NOT? How does the presence or absence of content covered by that policy affect Wikipedia's utility, reputation, and acceptance amongst the academic community and the general public?
 * I believe the spirit of the policy is tied in to the idea that Wikipedia intends to be a repository for all human knowledge. This means that we will sometimes explore subjects which some people might find offensive.  I believe that this sometimes shocks parents who don't realize that Wikipedia does cover topics not suited for children, albeit, I'd much rather have my child find something on Wikipedia where the information is much less likely to be salacious.  I'm also aware that there have been cases where organized groups objected to particular content they found offensive (i.e. Mohamed pictures, sexual information, paedophilia) but I believe in general, the public has a good impression of the site.  I'm afraid I don't have much traffic with the academic community at this point in my life and couldn't hazard a guess as to the effects of content on that community.

3. Consistent with our neutral point of view policy, what relative weight should be given to popular views and scientific findings where the two strongly conflict? For example, consider the finding of this study, and the previous research cited therein, that, in the United States, children seeing their parents naked or having sex did not result in adverse effects on their physical or psychological health. Most residents of the United States would strongly disagree with such a conclusion -- it is quite likely that we could, with sufficient effort, locate appropriate surveys or other reliable sources as to this state of popular opinion.
 * Speaking purely as an editor, I'd probably need more information on the particular debate especially in regards to the proposed weight of the wording. I don't think there's harm in presenting both points of view while clearly labeling which is scientific research and which is popular opinion assuming both are backed up by high quality sources of information.  Depending on the breath of information it might even be appropriate to present each view separately if enough information exists on "in research" vs "in popular opinion".

Questions From Ϣere Spiel  Chequers
For the following questions please don't count any cases that you were involved in, or if you'd been on Arbcom would have recused yourself for reasons such as friendship with a participant.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  00:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) How many arbitration cases have you fully reviewed (or participated in as an Arbcomm member)?
 * 2) In what proportion of the unanimous decisions in those cases did you agree with the decision?
 * 3) In what proportion of the split decisions in those cases did you agree with the majority decision?
 * 4) How well do you think Arbcom's procedures would handle the situation where new evidence comes to light after a decision has been made?

Question(s) from LtPowers

 * There seems to me to be a significant portion of the community that has lost, or is beginning to lose, trust in the ability of the Arbitration Committee to fairly and effectively adjudicate cases. Do you agree with that basic assessment?  If so, what do you think might be the major factor contributing to this attitude, and how might you attempt to modify ArbCom procedures and policies to regain that trust?  (Note: I recognize that many of the disaffected are simply apathetic or permanently cynical on the subject, and nothing ArbCom could do would restore a trust that was never there to begin with.  My question relates to those members of the community who might be persuadable if their specific objections were addressed.)  Powers T 13:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I would agree with your general assessment. I think there have been a number of high profile faux pas that have lead to some dissatisfaction being expressed by the community.  I believe one concern is the use of the mailing list, who has access to the list and private information having been leaked, more than once.  I think this can be quickly remedied by limiting the list to current Committee members.  Some other concerns dealt with the idea of secret trials and private evidence.  If a case needs to be heard in private, the appropriate people should be aware of the case, fully informed of the goings on and as the case progresses, the community should be given as much information as possible.  In general, I think the Committee needs to improve the way it communicates with the community by giving regular updates to cases in progress, logging requests for removal of blocks/bans and keeping as much discussion as possible on the wiki.

=Individual questions=
 * Questions asked individually to each candidate may be placed here.

Questions from Al tally

 * 1) Who in your opinion should decide who is granted CheckUser/Oversight rights? Community, or a group of 15 people in a super-secret discussion that no-one is allowed to see? Bear in mind, every other Wiki without an ArbCom conducts CU/OS elections publicly, without any issues. Your opinion please, not what so-and-so policy says.
 * I think this should be given over to the community; there's no reason a discussion similar to an RfA or RfB can't be had.
 * 1) See this oppose vote on SirFozzie's RFA, from 2007. I laughed when I read it, because he's opposing something that sounds just like ArbCom. '...the idea that that small, insular group of editors that frequent the page (including the nominator)' [Arbitrators] 'are the "community" and can achieve "consensus," adding substance-less votes to what should be consensus discussions on bans' [Motions, voting to reject, accept etc. Basically, a community version of ArbCom]. Quite amusing, coming from a former arbitrator. Anyway, my point is, Community vs. ArbCom Decisions. Can the community overrule an ArbCom decision? Can the community choose to ban someone without going to ArbCom? (From what I can determine from Dmc's message, he doesn't like the idea the community can ban people, but would rather a "small, insular group of editors that frequent the page" do it instead).
 * While I'm not sure the community has ever officially "overruled" an ArbCom decision, they certainly have ignored those they didn't agree with, so in essence, I think we can already do this. I've seen site and topic bans decided by the community before; while they are sometimes overly full of dramah, I think the community is quite capable of making these decisions outside of ArbCom.
 * 1) Former Arbitrators - should they lose CU/OS privs, and access to the Mailing list? After all, they resigned, so aren't interested in doing the work. Therefore, they have no need for such rights. If you resigned, would you surrender such privs?
 * Yes; if they have CU/OS beforehand, obviously it would make sense for them to retain it. I would certainly give back anything related to ArbCom if I was no longer participating.
 * 1) Recall - if the community have an issue with your use of CU/OS, or actions as an Arbitrator, what effective way can they address this? (Taking it to ArbCom is the wrong answer, by the way).
 * I'm not sure there is one just yet - we're still working out the kinks in administrator recall. However, I believe something in the vein of an RfC format would be an appropriate way for the community to express itself if an Arbiter were abusing their position or tools.  I would hope that if there were legitimate concerns, an Arbiter would have the integrity to step down.

Good luck with the election!  Al Tally  talk  19:41, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Questions from Will Beback
This is a standard set of question I'm asking everyone. Best of luck in the election. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 1. Have you used other accounts this year? Are those accounts disclosed or transparent?
 * No. My account was originally named Jareth.  I have never used any other accounts nor edited anonymously (unless I screwed up and didn't notice I wasn't logged in).


 * 2. Is it appropriate for editors to create joke accounts, role accounts, "personality" accounts, etc., to have fun or to make a point? Should socks be allowed to edit policies, engage in RfCs and ArbCom cases, or seek positions of trust in the community? Or should undisclosed alternate accounts be used only with care in limited circumstances?
 * Personally, its not my style. I'm sure that a joke account can be an outlet and I think they should be accepted as such.  I don't think that alternate accounts should be used to make a point (we discourage that from any account, right?) and I don't believe that these joke accounts should be engaging in anything that's not a joke, meaning they should not be editing policy or running for ArbCom (maybe in their own user space clearly labeled as a bit of fun).  Funny only gets you so far.  Disclosed or undisclosed, alternate accounts should be used carefully and with a large dose of common sense.


 * 3. Aside from the easy-to-spot vandalism, a large percentage of disruption to the project comes from a relatively small number of harder-to-spot users engaged in POV pushing, trolling, etc. After their first incarnation they keep coming back as socks and causing problems. (We call them socks but they seem more like ghosts: still haunting the place after their departure and just as hard to eradicate.) How can we minimize the impact of banned users who won't go away? How can we improve the handling of sock checks and blocks?
 * I think to combat this problem, we need to give a bit more respect and support to editors that typically work in the areas that these socks appear. These editors will be most likely to catch a sock before they become majorly disruptive again; while we don't want to drive off new contributors, if the new account is engaging in POV pushing and problematic enough to be taken for a banned user, we have to seriously consider whether or not we want to keep assuming good faith because its no longer "until it hurts", its already hurting.  Its a sad state of affairs when some of our better contributors have gone nuts trying to combat these constant problem editors.  Perhaps we need to look into the format for reporting socks and see why we're not addressing this problem and what in the system could be changed to interest more editors in taking on sock confirmation and blocking.  I believe part of the problem is that editors responding to sock reports can't possibly be familiar with all the myriad incarnations that keep popping up, which makes it difficult to assess new appearances.

Question from Rspeer
In your view, how does the notion of scientific consensus relate to the Wikipedia notion of NPOV? Is the scientific consensus (if it exists) a point of view, or is science a way of finding the neutral point of view? Does it differ based on the topic of the article?  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  08:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think what you're getting at here is the tendency of numerous fringe and pseudoscience apologists to use Wikipedia in an attempt to legitimize their particular cause. This has caused many articles to get improperly weighted over time by giving non-scientific points of view equal footing with the mainstream.  Scientific consensus is a view, but it needs to be properly treated as the prevailing view and weighted appropriately. While I appreciate the fact that Wikipedia carries articles on strange subjects and controversies, we shouldn't be in the business of proselytizing for anyone.

Questions by Pohta ce-am pohtit
Two questions related to the balance of power between ArbCom and admins. Pcap ping  16:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) Do you think that the special civility restrictions enacted by ArbCom in several cases have been successful? If not, what would you do propose instead?
 * In some cases it seems to have worked well, however, I think those have been cases in which the editor has been willing to police themselves, or at least listen to criticism from other editors. In other cases, especially those that were already contentious in the community, the restrictions have gone completely sideways.  I believe in the cases that the restrictions have failed in a rather spectacular manner, it was due more to polarization of the community than any particular failure in the restriction itself.  When administrators and long time contributors become vested in a particular editor, conscious or not, their bias comes in to play.  This has lead to blocks where maybe a block wasn't necessary and unblocks where an unblock wasn't warranted.  I think the only remedy is more participation by truly uninvolved parts of the community in deciding when a block is or isn't warranted.
 * 1) Should a single admin A be allowed to undo an action of another admin B when the latter is claiming to act under the provisions of an ArbCom case (WP:AE)? If the answer is no, what should be done about admin A?
 * I don't think there's any case (ArbCom related or not) where an admin should undo another's action with out either a) consulting the other admin and agreeing to an action or b) consulting the community and getting a consensus. Sure, any admin can be wrong, but so can the admin looking to undo the action. If the two can talk and find a solution, its a good sanity check; if the community can talk and find a solution, then you're on pretty solid ground.

Question from Ling.Nut

 * I'm asking this of everyone; it didn't occur to me to ask 'til after the "general questions" were closed. This also isn't a vanity question intended to pump my essay. I'm hoping for thoughtful responses.
 * Would you please read the (very, very, very short) essay at User:Ling.Nut/3IAR and indicate how much you agree or disagree with its points? If it helps at all, the essay was originally written as a response to an admin who insisted that I was not permitted to make my talk page a redirect to my user page. He did so even though there is (or was at that time?) no rule or guideline to this effect, and far more importantly, even though my actions were harming neither the encyclopedia nor any of its editors.
 * Thank you for your time. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 15:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with the essay I'm afraid. First, I'd like to point out that in the situation you describe, its my opinion that you were disrupting the encyclopedia by making it difficult for users to contact you and likely impossible for new editors to figure out what's going on.  Communication is an important aspect of consensus editing, so in this case, your personal preferences can't override the needs of the community.  By redirecting your talk page (the main method of intra-editor communication) you were showing a distinct disrespect for other members of the community.  The part of your essay that makes it impossible to agree is "An admin must recognize and respect the principle that all Wikipedians are inherently endowed with individual liberty, as long as their exercise of free will does not conflict with the First or Second Law."  While I feel all editors deserve respect, there is much more to be considered that just neutrality and verifiability when considering whether or not an action would harm the community.
 * Tks. FWIW, I was trying to stay on wikibreak while writing my dissertation. I was also dragged to ANI for this. I think if anything is important enough to drag someone off to ANI, it is important enough to be codified. This rule is not codified, perhaps because others like me might disagree with it. In any case, if the rule were codified, I would not have knowingly broken it, and wouldn't have been shanghaied to the slough of despair. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 13:42, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Questions from FT2
These are some questions about WP:CLUE and insight, focussing on a role as a member of Arbcom. Research is allowed and encouraged. Quick answers are appreciated.

These are some questions about your skill at Wikipedia dispute resolution: (Note:- in a lot of cases, a remedy may potentially be "multi stage"; that is, take a step, see what effect it has, return to it if needed. This may include watching or warning first times, taking a harder line later, or deciding it's an acceptable risk if they act up again, since action could be taken in future if needed. I would be fine seeing evidence of that approach if you use it, and what you did if it failed.
 * 1) There is clear agreement that all is not well, in all ways, at Arbcom. Many users standing will be hoping to change that, as many did last year. What aspects work well, and what are the core changes you feel would help change the ones that don't?
 * In general, typical case management and hearings work well. Unfortunately, cases still take longer than the community (and probably the Committee) would like.  Since many past candidates have noted this as a problem they intended to fix, I surmise that the problem isn't readily fixable and that despite everyone's best efforts, the sheer amount of work the Arbiters have on their plates means that cases are unlikely to be handled as quickly as everyone would like.  So, since the total time involved likely can't be shortened, I think the next best thing the Committee can do is to be more proactive in communicating with the participants and the general community about the status of cases.  If regular (say weekly) updates are given, I believe the community is much less likely to feel they are being ignored or that ArbCom simply isn't working on the issue.  I believe this particular change was already included in your proposed updates to the Arbitration Policy, so this may be a moot point by the time the new Arbiters are on board.
 * Another thing that seems to work well is management and review of indef blocks and bans.  Somewhat related to this particular area is the fact that the community has expressed a great deal of concern over a lack of transparency and general secrecy from the Committee.  There are going to be many things that cannot be public due to confidentiality or privacy concerns, but I believe that constant handling of private information may have caused the Committee to clam up a bit too much. I think its possible to give the community a window into unblock reviews without sacrificing privacy.  I believe a simple log of blocks/bans reviewed by the Committee could be created with a brief note about disposition (such as declined, accepted or in rare cases perhaps sent to the community for further discussion). All that said, since I'm not privy to the Committee's discussions about block/bans, there may be additional concerns, such as avoidance of dramah or disruption to the community that prevent this kind of disclosure.
 * I think communication is going to be at the heart of repairing the breech with the community. For example, in the OrangeMarlin incident or the cases of mailing list leaks, there were a great number of community complaints about the general silence and lack of explanation.  While there has to be a balancing act between transparency and the good of the community, sometimes simply acknowledging concerns and explaining remediation efforts can go a long way.
 * With all that in mind, its still considerably easier to promise sweeping changes than it is to effect those changes.
 * 1) Ex-arbitrators and Jimbo are privy to various Arbcom dialogs. What impressions do you have regarding the nature and extent of their involvement in the sitting arbitrators' discussions? How do you imagine their activity looks, on the Committee's mailing list/s, and in particular when the topic is a controversial matter, one that ex-arbitrators may have views on, or some other significant matter?
 * I would imagine their involvement is similar to the involvement of retired mediators on the MedCom list. They may comment on a case from time to time based on prior involvement, specific knowledge or just a good idea or two. However, that's where the similarities end; on the MedCom list, issues are only occasionally brought there when additional assistance or a sanity check is needed.  However, this is where the similarities end.  Since all communication to the ArbCom goes through a single mailing list, I believe the ex-arbiters are going to be privy to considerably more confidential or private information than is strictly necessary.  I'd like to see the Committee consider keeping two lists, one for the general public to submit things to where confidential information can also be discussed and another where ex and current arbitrators can discuss issues.  This second list wouldn't necessarily be prohibited from discussing private matters, but, this would prevent an unnecessary amount of private information being known outside of the Committee.
 * 1) Two questions, or two sides of the same question. Your choice.  a) Arbcom involves matters that Arbitrators may decide need to be kept out of the public domain, for various reasons that vary between privacy breach and avoidance of harm, to reducing disruption. You-personally-may come under suspicion from some users regarding such matters if you do so. It is unlikely that you will be able to do the job properly without offending a range of users, and unlikely you will be able to always explain your actions as an admin might in a range of circumstances. Thoughts?  b) As the community has become more versatile in handling everyday forms of disruptive conduct, Arbcom cases have tended to cover a higher proportion of cases where privacy is a significant issue, and cases where there are factors involved that some will argue cannot be fully disclosed due to privacy, WP:BEANS or other effects that would be harmful to the project. At the same time the community wishes greater levels of disclosure, and some will demand it, often without regard to harm (which they may not be aware is a possibility if their requests are met). Communal benefit, or user safety, may be at risk in some of these. And yet you are also there to do right by the project and community. You will be a decision-maker in the question of what to make public, and indeed, when to not even explain why something will not be made public (because of concerns over consequences or fairness). Thoughts?
 * a) There is no doubt that no matter what is done in Arbitration, someone is going to be pissed off and sometimes, you may just manage to piss everyone off. As you said, there are many times that Arbitrators can't do more than quietly accept the abuse hurled at them; it sucks, but it comes with the territory.  Having other editors angry with you is fairly common to dealing with disputes and something any editor who's tried to offer a third-opinion or mediate a dispute has experienced (usually in a less extreme form).  Being unable to explain your actions fully isn't as common, but does occur in other areas, such as OTRS.  Interestingly, the community has also been quite upset with OTRS at times over that same inability to explain and so much so that several editors specifically voted against candidates last year simply because of OTRS involvement.  Most Wikipedians don't appreciate the fact that they've never have to deal with concerns over confidential information or complex disputes because of the few who do put in the time.  Until society as a whole becomes more enlightened, I think we can expect to see more of the same.
 * b) There have been some complaints that the Committee is erring too much on the side of caution this year. While that's not a reason to start spewing Committee business on the wiki, it does deserve a hard look.  I think the community is much more likely to be forgiving when they feel they've received sufficient explanation and in cases where they think an error occurred, information on remediation plans.  Sometimes, even when much of nothing can be said, simply saying "Nothing can be said" may help editors to understand that their concerns aren't being ignored while also clearly indicating that further discussion isn't going anywhere.  As above though, its not possible to please everyone, so the Committee has the difficult task of weighing community feedback against information they've been unable to share and doing their best to ultimately serve the best interests of the community.
 * 1) Seasoned and respected users appointed to Arbcom routinely believe they will not burn out. Yet, equally routinely, a proportion do (or become markedly less responsive over time, or less likely to keep pushing to reduce long standing issues). Why should users feel you stand a chance of lasting the course and remaining strongly involved in a year's time?
 * I don't think anyone can legitimately promise they can handle a position when frankly, we only see the tip of the iceberg. However, I'm not one to give up on things and I think I've shown that with my work here on mediation.  While its nice when issues can be quickly resolved, I've worked with a number of cases that spanned months or even a year.  Not all of them have come out completely successful, but I have followed them and continued my involvement, sometimes even after the main dispute was closed.  I have no illusions that working on the Committee is going to be easy or fun and I understand that should I be elected, the Committee will likely take away any time I would have spent on Wikipedia and likely a great deal of my other personal time as well.
 * 1) Many disputes stem from poor following of communal norms (including policies), or norms that are problematic, insufficient, disputed or conflicting in the face of some new kind of issue. When standards lapse, or dispute arises due to such issues, how hard should Arbcom push the community in expressing the pursuit of higher standards or better consensus as a "need" rather than a "request"?
 * I think it needs to be a strong push even to the point of opening an RfC or similar community discussion to encourage the community to work out a set of standards or find a consensus on a particularly troubling issue. As mentioned above, the community has become more skilled at handling a variety of disputes so the issues coming in front of the Committee often lack an existing policy or community norm to draw on.  Since the community strongly believes that the Committee should not be making these decisions or policies themselves, the ball needs to be back in their court.  I'm sure no one is going to be truly happy if an issue has to be referred back to the Community, but unless everyone wants to give the Committee broad new powers, the community is still going to have to hack through some of these issues and develop some consensus on how to handle them.
 * 1) If appointed, what would you consider your personal sense of "your mandate" to be? (This is not asking what Arbitrators should do; rather it is asking what you see as your personal special agenda, or "matters and issues to especially focus on", out of all the areas of Arbitrator work and activities, as a Committee member.)
 * I think one of the things I would like to focus on most would be finding ways to improve communication with the community. This could be simple things like case updates or a review of current case management strategies to see if there are additional areas for improvement.  Also, since I have access to JSTOR and am close to two large colleges, I would be able to go some of the leg work in cases where allegations of source mis-use are at play.
 * 1) How will being on Arbcom affect your actions, or choices about how to act, in other capacities - as an editor, user, admin, or the like?
 * First, there will be a lot less of me acting in other capacities simply due to time constraints. Also, since there is often a perception that Arbiter's edits and comments carry more weight, I will be even more watchful about what comments or edits I make.
 * 1) Flexibility:
 * a) What experience do you have at a range of Wikipedia dispute resolution "styles", and in estimating how users may react to a given response? (This is a fairly essential skill in deciding whether to play hard or soft, direct or mediated, give another chance, discuss further, draw a line, or "try something new" in a case.)
 * Other than my gnome work, the vast majority of time I spend on Wikipedia revolves around dispute resolution. Over time I've used a variety of techniques including forms of mediation (fully led, facilitated or participant empowered) and case evaluation (consensus determination). I've played both "good cop" and "bad cop" and worked with other administrators or mediators to engage a problem from multiple directions.  I've warned, I've cajoled and sometimes I've even played mentor.  Basically, I try to pick the best tool for any job.
 * b) Please outline your track record at choosing remedies that are effective, but not overly-excessive, in a sample of difficult cases.
 * A good example of this is still in action at Talk:Chiropractic. This is a long standing dispute with fairly entrenched sides; large areas of the article are completely unacceptable to one or both sides and edit warring has been used liberally as a result.  Since this article falls withing the Pseudoscience case remedies, more options are available than a typical dispute. When I started assisting, the article already had its own subpage for recording administrative actions in regards to the article/talk and its participants.  The first step was getting everyone's attention; in such a long dispute, participants often tend to over look the talk page or new offers of assistance due to general frustration about the dispute or failed prior attempts.  Through encouraging discussion, asking questions and some personal talk page notes, the vast majority of involved editors began to lay out their concerns.  Next we worked on getting the discussion out of the personal realm and back into discussion of achievable goals and concerns.  There was considerable push-back in this area that was stalling progress, so I chose a stronger touch both by making a consensus decision on an RfC and some personal warnings.  After more discussion to identify specific concerns, I suggested that the participants engage in mediation to resolve these issues.  I chose to set ground rules and then allow participants to freedom to structure the discussion; I prefer to empower participants whenever possible hoping that they can apply these skills to later disputes.  Most participants reacted favorably and settled upon a variant of the "no reverts, only edits" to tackle a particular section.  During this work, I had to deal with two issues: first an editor who was not participating attempted to take the section being worked on in mediation, add their own tweaks and present it on the talk page as a "proposal"; this quickly devolved into an edit war since editors who were working on the mediation felt the editor was trying an end run.  A warning and further encouragement to participate in the mediation resolved this problem.  The second was an editor who was unhappy with an earlier consensus and chose to go against it; after several warnings didn't resolve the problem and the editor escalated to deleting the majority of the work done on the particular section in mediation, I was forced to issue a short page ban.  As this has not expired yet, I cannot evaluate the effectiveness of this decision yet. However, after a few weeks of work and a bit of discussion, the work in the mediation has hit upon a version of at least one section that both sides can tolerate.  I believe we can continue to work through other sections in the same manner, with the goal of eventually moving back to the talk page to work out finer details.
 * c) Please show some cases you gave a seemingly difficult user a chance to reform (when others were skeptical), and where you drew a very hard but fair line on a problematic user.
 * Recently I've been involved in the mentorship of ; this is an editor that I have needed to block before for disruption and who's manner of discussion had caused severe tensions with other editors to the point of a community ban discussion being held on ANI. Having worked with the editor before, I believed that the problem lay in the manner of communication and unfamiliarity with expectations at Wikipedia as opposed to an intent to be rude and disruptive.  I suggested mentorship as a possible alternative and the proposal was accepted.  We've worked together for several months and had a lot of excellent discussions both on and off wiki on the vagaries of Wikipedia communication and how vastly it differs from other educational pursuits.  There have not been any incidents since the start of mentorship and I have every confidence that there will be no further problems.
 * The issues at Chiropractic are also good examples here. Discussion had been stalled for months and edit wars were frequent; after diving in I found that the majority of this friction was over a particular claim.  This claim had gone through at least 4 RfCs, two outside noticeboards and multiple other long discussions without being completely resolved.  After studying all these discussions, I found an interesting pattern - one particular editor took up over 30% of these discussions and was arguing against a variety of others including quite a number of outside editors.  He was supported by two others who regularly used the talk page and a handful that only stopped by once a month to support his actions.  Conversely, the other side of the dispute involved multiple other editors and all of the outside editors who responded to the RfCs.  After testing the waters and seeing that there handful of editors supporting the claim were going to refuse to move on, I offered a reading of consensus based on the totality of these RfCs and discussions and drew a line - it was time for this discussion to be dropped (after 8 months) so that other things could be worked on.  One of the editors supporting this claim moved on and has been a very positive influence in further discussions, others have stopped commenting since their only interest was this claim and one finally required a short page ban after multiple warnings.
 * d) Please highlight a project space matter where there was much divisive opinion but where other administrators (on both "sides") listened to you, and you helped focus or resolve it.
 * 1) Conduct under pressure:
 * a) Please point out a case you took a stand that was not universally popular, knowing you could face retaliation or rebuke.
 * More times than I can count. I've been called a "science supporter" or a "fringe supporter" as if both were dirty words, but, I think its a good sign that both sides think I'm working for the other ;)  One specific incident was in 2006 when I blocked ScienceApologist for what now would be called BLP and civility violations; at the time, the community hadn't evolved quite that far and there was considerable uproar for having blocked a valued contributor.  Since then the community has grown, expectations have changed and ScienceApologist and I have mended our fences. Another example would be my support of Elonka's novel sanctions in areas under general restrictions; a lot of editors were very unhappy with that situation which eventually led to an RfC and a Recall petition.  I've been called an Elonka supporter and crony along with less polite terms and yet, editors of Chiropractic recently suggested (without prompting) using some of the techniques she developed to resolve an issue - and its working.
 * b) Please point out a matter where you were badly attacked, accused, or heavily provoked, but remained in line with "best practice" conduct, yourself.
 * The recent issue of the RfC and Recall involving Elonka was rife with accusations and a general lack of civility in many areas. One example of an exchange during that period would be here.  The long-standing disputes in fringe areas often make for difficult conversations such as this one  or this.  Then we all have those editors who were upset over a time we blocked them and keep seeing evil in other blocking situations, such as this exchange where the difficulty lay in being unable to provide private information to an editor who was unhappy with reviews by other administrators.
 * c) Please point out a dispute where you faced people trying to redirect the matter to a side-issue (soapbox, hobby horse, etc) and your response was to avoid the "invitation" of distraction, and to keep the focus on the main target.
 * This happens frequently at the start of a mediation and sometimes even during. Depending on the stage of dispute resolution, I might redirect the conversation to the actual issues, address only the issues that were on topic or even remove the comment entirely.
 * d) Please point out a serious dispute which occupied your attention for between 2 weeks and several months, and which shows your sticking power and handling in the context of protracted disputes.
 * Most cases at MedCom take several weeks at best; some have spanned 4-6 months in length. I have been involved in resolving the dispute at Chiropractic for more than a month at this time; the mediation itself has been open almost a month now .  I have worked on resolutions on the article Juice Plus that originally spanned several months in 2007 and occasionally requires maintenance, the most recent being in October 2008.  Work on a dispute at R. L. Hymers, Jr. started in July and went through the end of August.  Work on a dispute at Shiloh Shepherd was probably the longest starting in December 2005 and ending after an Arbitration case in November 2006.  Work on a dispute at Franco-Mongol Alliance was probably the most time consuming because in addition to several months and an Arbitration, a considerable amount of time was involved in tracking down and verifying obscure sources (see Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Evidence/Shell Kinney Sources Table).

I will be interested to see the results. They are intended to be searching. Feedback will be provided. Thank you. FT2 (Talk 19:21, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Additional questions from Pixelface
I am asking all candidates the following additional questions: Thank you for your time, and good luck with your candidacy. --Pixelface (talk) 00:30, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) How many arbitrators do you think Wikipedia should have?
 * 2) How long do you think an arbitrator's term should be?
 * 3) What's your opinion about editors lobbying on arbitrators' user talk pages in order to influence their case decisions?
 * 4) Do you think it is a good idea to let anyone edit Wikipedia's policies and guidelines?
 * 5) Do you think it is appropriate for ArbCom members to make substantial edits to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines?
 * 6) Do you think only ArbCom members should be allowed to edit Arbitration policy?
 * 7) Do you think it is a requirement that subjects must be "notable" in order for there to be a Wikipedia article about them? If so, how does one determine if a subject is "notable"?
 * 8) Do you think the statement "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" (which appears on the WMF's donation page) conflicts with the policy "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" or with Wikipedia's notability guidelines? Why or why not?
 * 9) Imagine a situation where an editor consistently nominates 50 articles from the same category for deletion every day with a nearly identical reason for deletion. Other editors object to this, and several threads at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents follow, but no user RFC is filed. Is this is a content dispute or a behavioral dispute? If someone made a request for arbitration about the situation, would you likely accept or reject the case?
 * 10) Considering the following scenario: An editor nominates all 17,000+ articles in Category:Asteroids for deletion at once and bundles them in a single AFD, with the reason for deletion "Asteroidcruft." The AFD is closed early by an admin, and the admin tells the editor not to bundle so many articles together in a single AFD. The next day, the editor nominates 200 asteroid articles for deletion using an automated tool, with the reason for deletion for each being "Asteroidcruft." A second editor, who is a member of WikiProject Astronomical objects, is checking their watchlist and sees many asteroid articles being nominated for deletion. The WikiProject member asks the first editor on the first editor's talk page to please stop nominating asteroid articles for deletion. The first editor tells the WikiProject member that he will not stop until every asteroid article is deleted from Wikipedia. The WikiProject member starts a thread at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents about the situation, and later starts a thread at WT:ASTRO about the ANI thread. WikiProject members show up to the AFDs and argue to keep in all of them. At the ANI thread, several WikiProject members and several editors feel that the first editor is being disruptive. A second admin blocks the first editor for disruption, but asks for a review of the block at Administrators' noticeboard. At AN, several admins think the first editor is being disruptive, but several admins agree with what the first editor is doing, and several editors express their disdain for the WikiProject in general. A third admin unblocks the first editor, and the first editor continues to nominate 200 asteroid articles for deletion every day. Several threads at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents follow, some initiated by members of WikiProject Astronomical objects, some initiated by editors, but no user RFC is filed on the first editor. The first editor never comments at AN/I, but replies again and again on their user talk page that they feel that Wikipedia should not have any articles on individual asteroids. Is this is a content dispute or a behavioral dispute? If someone made a request for arbitration about the situation, would you likely accept or reject the case?
 * 11) Wikipedia is a non-profit wiki and Wikia is a for-profit wiki and both were founded in part by Jimbo Wales. Do you think Wikipedia editors should be required to publicly disclose if they are employees/shareholders/editors of Wikia? Do you think Jimbo Wales has the power to make them do so? Do you think the arbitration committee has the power to make them do so?