Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Candidates/N419BH/Questions

General questions

 * 1) Skills/interests: Which of the following tasks will you be prepared and qualified to perform regularly as an arbitrator? Your responses should indicate how your professional/educational background makes you suitable to the tasks.
 * 2) *(a) reviewing cases, carefully weighing up the evidence, and voting and commenting on proposed decisions;
 * 3) **A careful eye is important here, as is discretion. Evidence submitted is always biased toward a particular viewpoint, and this must be taken into account. I am well familiar with interpreting Wikipedia policy and understanding bias.
 * 4) *(b) drafting proposed decisions for consideration by other arbitrators;
 * 5) **I do have experience with professional writing thanks to my college days. This can be applied to the Arbitration Committee, though I will leave major decision drafts to members with more experience.
 * 6) *(c) voting on new requests for arbitration (on the requests page) and motions for the clarification or modification of prior decisions;
 * 7) **As with (a), a keen eye and good understanding are important here. I have plenty of experience with !voting at ANI.
 * 8) *(d) considering appeals from banned or long-term-blocked users, such as by serving on the Ban Appeals Subcommittee or considering the Subcommittee's recommendations;
 * 9) ** As with (a) and (c), a keen eye and good understanding of the situation is important here. I have plenty of experience with !voting at ANI, and have counseled indefinitely-blocked users in the past on their talk pages.
 * 10) *(e) overseeing the allocation and use of checkuser and oversight permissions, including the vetting and community consultation of candidates for them, and/or serving on the Audit Subcommittee or reviewing its recommendations;
 * 11) **I do not have experience with checkuser or oversight, and will defer to the rest of the committee for checkuser and oversight permission requests until I am more familiar with those particular tools.
 * 12) *(f) running checkuser checks (arbitrators generally are given access to CU if they request it) in connection with arbitration cases or other appropriate requests;
 * 13) **I will defer to other arbitrators for Checkuser as I do not currently have the tool. Once I have some experience in simple cases, I may use the tool after consultation with other committee members at first until I am confident of my understanding of relevant policy.
 * 14) *(g) carrying out oversight or edit suppression requests (arbitrators are generally also given OS privileges);
 * 15) **I am familiar with RevDel and oversight policy. I will however maintain a cautious approach.
 * 16) *(h) drafting responses to inquiries and concerns forwarded to the Committee by editors;
 * 17) **I already do this at AN and ANI routinely, and will continue to do so as a member of the Arbitration Committee.
 * 18) *(i) interacting with the community on public pages such as arbitration and other talk pages;
 * 19) **I do this routinely at a number of locations, and will continue to do so as a member of the committee.
 * 20) *(j) performing internal tasks such as coordinating the sometimes-overwhelming arbcom-l mailing list traffic.
 * 21) **Once I understand the user interface I will make myself of assistance in these matters.
 * 22) Stress: How will you be able to cope with the stress of being an arbitrator, potentially including on- and off-wiki threats and abuse, and attempts to embarrass you by the public "outing" of personal information?
 * A: I have had personal details "outed" on this website before, quite early in my editing career actually. As a member of the Counter-Vandalism-Unit I am quite used to insults and threats on my user talk page. As for stress, I am a pilot. I am very used to handling stress and having to make decisions under immense stress.
 * 1) Principles: Assume the four principles linked to below are directly relevant to the facts of a new case. Would you support or oppose each should it be proposed in a case you are deciding, and why? A one- or two-sentence answer is sufficient for each. Please regard them ''in isolation rather than in the context of their original cases.
 * 2) *(a) "Private correspondence"
 * A: Support. Private correspondence is private correspondence. Such matters should not be on a public website without the author's permission for privacy, confidentiality, legal, and other concerns.
 * 1) *(b) "Responsibility"
 * A: Support. Just as people are responsible for what they say in real life, users are responsible for what they say here.
 * 1) *(c) "Perceived legal threats"
 * A: Support. Legal threats or the use of an expressly legal term to characterize someone's edit opens the proverbial can of worms. Legal threats have no place on Wikipedia.
 * 1) *(d) "Outing"
 * A: Support. If someone calls me a pilot this is not outing as I have already self-identified. Private information, however, should remain private, and disclosure of such would be outing.
 * 1) Strict versus lenient: Although every case is different and must be evaluated on its own merits, would you side more with those who tend to believe in second chances and lighter sanctions, or with those who support a greater number of bans and desysoppings? What factors might generally influence you? Under what circumstances would you consider desysopping an admin without a prior ArbCom case?
 * A: I am of the lenient type. Wikipedia is a collaboration of users. Disruptive activity must be dealt with, but most of us are not lawyers, and Wikipedia does not have laws (or firm rules for that matter per the five pillars) Heck, one of our most important policies is to ignore all rules! I think if we as Wikipedians accepted that more and wikilawyered less we could all spend a lot less time on ANI and a lot more time writing and editing.
 * 1) ArbCom and policies: Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "ArbCom should not be in the position of forming new policies, or otherwise creating, abolishing or amending policy. ArbCom should rule on the underlying principles of the rules. If there is an area of the rules that leaves something confused, overly vague, or seemingly contrary to common good practice, then the issue should be pointed out to the community". Please give reasons.
 * A: Agree. We are a community that runs on consensus. ArbCom is not a parliament, senate, or congress. ArbCom not a court. ArbCom is a formal collection of volunteers seeking to solve problems. Policy is developed by the community at large, not some elected representatives of the community. That's the great thing about this place. We all set the guidelines. No one sets them for us. Not Jimbo, not ArbCom, but the community as a whole.
 * 1) Conduct/content: ArbCom has historically not made direct content rulings, e.g., how a disputed article should read. To what extent can ArbCom aid in content disputes? Can, and should, the Committee establish procedures by which the community can achieve binding content dispute resolution in the event of long-term content disputes that the community has been unable to resolve?
 * A: ArbCom may provide insight and encouragement, as well as additional eyes and possibly perspectives and conflict resolution strategies to content disputes. Ruling on article text however goes against the fundamental principle of consensus.
 * 1) Success in handling cases: Nominate the cases from 2010 you think ArbCom handled more successfully, and those you think it handled less successfully? Please give your reasons.
 * A: I believe Climate Change and Gibraltar were handled effectively and that the committee did an excellent job of sorting through fairly massive cases and coming up with meaningful conclusions and restrictions. (striking this; was a gut reaction after reviewing the committee's archives and browsing through the cases. My analysis on the weaknesses presented by these cases stands I also feel that these cases show the weak point of ArbCom. Highly charged politically motivated articles are extremely difficult to handle, and this is an area where there may be no permanent solution. ArbCom needs to work with the community to come up with ways of handling articles with perennial edit-warring, whether it be by simply keeping an eye on troublesome articles or formalizing the process with a wikiproject or noticeboard.
 * 1) Proposals for change? What changes, if any, in how ArbCom works would you propose as an arbitrator, and how would you work within the Committee towards bringing these changes about?
 * A: I believe the only individuals qualified to make this assessment are current arbitrators, former arbitrators, and some of our most experienced users.

Individual questions
This section is for individual questions asked to this specific candidate. Each eligible voter may ask a limit of one "individual" question by posting it below. The question should:
 * be clearly worded and brief, with a limit of 75 words in display mode;
 * be specific to this candidate (the same individual question should not be posted en masse onto candidates' pages);
 * not duplicate other questions (editors are encouraged to discuss the merging of similar questions);

Election coordinators will either remove questions that are inconsistent with the guidelines or will contact the editor to ask for an amendment. Editors are, of course, welcome to post questions to candidates' user talk pages at any time.

Please add the question under the line below using the following format: -
 * 1) Question:
 * A:
 * 1) Question: The Arbitration Committee frequently has to deal with issues of administrators abusing tools. As you are not an administrator, how familiar are you with the policies regarding adminship? --Rschen7754 09:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A: The basic rule of adminship is that administrators are simply regular editors with extra tools. I am a strong proponent of this idea and I feel it is one that is lost on the general community and on at least a few administrators. Administrators MUST NOT use or threaten to use their tools in order to gain an advantage over editors who do not have those tools.
 * 1) Question: Most people agree ArbCom should not set content policy (let alone actual content). You also mentioned that ArbCom can provide insights about dispute resolution strategies. You also mentioned topic areas with "perennial edit-warring" (such as politics, history...) may need a formalized process from ArbCom. Should ArbCom remedies ever include designing a dispute resolution process to deal with perennial content disputes that cut across an entire topic area? How far should ArbCom go? Shooterwalker (talk) 17:21, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A:The way I see it, ArbCom and its members have two roles within the community: That of a formal, dispute resolution body, and that of informal community guidance and support. I believe arbcom can recommend a formalized dispute resolution process for an entire topic area, but it would be up to the community to discuss, agree to, form consensus, and implement such. Arbcom can and should continue to block individual editors for violations of policy, and can and should implement editing restrictions when needed to prevent disruptive editing on controversial topics. The goal however needs to be on preventing disruptive editors. Here is where the line is drawn. Arbcom remedies need to focus on the behavior of editors, not the content which they are advocating. ArbCom editing restrictions must focus on preventing disruptive editing, not preventing the insertion of well-sourced yet controversial information.