Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/Op-Ed

Some of the most controversial topics to edit in Wikipedia are in the political arena. Just the thought of editing even one political article can have a chilling effect. With temperature in mind, I'll add that the heat generated on talk pages by some of the political discussions makes temperature predictions for global warming pale in comparison. I know several admins who would go out of their way to avoid the area altogether – like purposely crossing a busy street in the style of Pamela Karlan – you'd have to hog-tie 'em and drag 'em into that arena but not without a fight.

The issues
The biggest issue confronting us with our political articles is political bias, which is second only to Wikipedia's own systemic gender bias. The number of active male editors in the political arena dwarfs the number of active females, and the same applies to real-world career politicians. Such an imbalance may contribute to the aggressiveness and bullying we occasionally encounter in our bold-revert-discuss collaborations on article talk pages but then, if the balance ever shifted, the discussions might feel more like marathons. It is natural for people to rally around their home team, be it football, baseball, or a political election, and we already know there will always be a few in the group who will take things too far; Wikipedia is not immune, and I doubt we'll see a vaccine for it anytime soon.

Much of our political bias stems from media bias which drives our narrative and inevitably results in biased content in some of our political biographies. The issues are likely to remain for some time before copyeditors move in to make repairs and updates with less chance of being reverted, and often citing better sources that are authored by academics and historians with a retrospective advantage. Another contributing factor to disruption is the rush to publish, which leaves us vulnerable to the same mistakes that are in our cited sources. When there's big news breaking, editors tend to ignore our policies and guidelines on recentism, not news, and news organizations, the latter involving media conglomerates and their echo chambers which threaten free thought and diversity. Such disregard makes it difficult to achieve neutrality, especially during a presidential election year.

Media behind the scenes
My 30 plus year career as a media professional has sensitized me to political bias, propaganda, sensationalism, spin, etc. Spotting it is second nature to me. It wasn't that long ago when such tactics were considered unethical by TV news anchors and bureau chiefs. U.S. public television had to walk an even straighter, more neutral line when it came to politics. They were governed more closely by FCC regulations in relation to each station's source of funding; they did not want to risk losing their broadcast license. When public broadcasters made controversial decisions regarding programming of a political nature, they were careful to not do anything that might exacerbate concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars in media. Both commercial and public stations broadcast over public airwaves whereas networks, cable and satellite transmissions operate under different FCC regulations; none are immune to political pressure and again, there is no vaccine for it. If you wanted to keep your job, you learned to leave your biases at the door or be shown the door. Our scripts, productions, and editing were pragmatic and neutral...until they weren't anymore.

I first noticed the paradigm shift from print to digital and analog to digital around 1994. I was producing a one-hour special about sturgeon for PBS broadcast, and never would have guessed that politics would be involved, aside from the subject being so fishy. During production, I had Bobby Kennedy Jr. lined up to do the narration but when I submitted the first draft to my entry station, they rejected Kennedy because of his family's political ties, despite his being a law professor at Pace University and not a politician. That incident demonstrated to me how closely public airwaves were being monitored by the FCC, so I hired James Drury instead, and by 1996, the program was airing on PBS affiliates without incident. The stations also used the program during local fund-raising drives, which was probably their primary reason for rejecting Kennedy; i.e., to keep it neutral, get a cowboy.

On March 7, 2019, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted an event they described as "troubling trends for press freedom and democracy itself" titled "The War on the Press: A Conversation with Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel". Koppel's words align with some of the points I've made here, as well as those I made in several article talk page discussions that were not well received and led to my indefinite topic ban from American politics a few years ago. The topic ban was successfully appealed.

Somewhere around mid to late 1990s, I was doing a bit of field production for CNN Headline News, and I remember one assignment in particular in mid-January 1999 that involved an interview with an associate of George D. Lundberg and it coincided with the Clinton impeachment trial. I became a little suspicious while taping the interview because the news anchor's line of questioning steered the response. When I watched the edited segment on the news, it was easy to spot the political spin. In contrast, the Washington Post, which did not align so closely with CNN back then as they do now, published a factually accurate article, same time frame, same subject. Their article stated: George D. Lundberg, for 17 years the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was summarily fired yesterday morning because of the upcoming publication of an article his boss believes is appearing largely "to exact political leverage" for the president in his current impeachment travail. That particular shoot marked a milestone in my career because it motivated me to focus entirely on nature programming. Nature doesn't play around with politics; in fact, she doesn't play around at all.

Bias, prejudice and POV creep
Not all admins who have taken on the task of arbitration enforcement choose to act unilaterally. The majority are lenient, understanding, even-tempered, proven problem solvers, prefer a consensus approach, and have done an excellent job at leaving their biases at login. We tend to see them as superheroes because they handle the tedious jobs and assume tasks that few are willing to execute. As a result, they have earned the community's trust and are not at issue here; however, political bias can materialize unnoticed.

When enforcing discretionary sanctions, admins are authorized by Arbcom to take unilateral action using their sole discretion against a disruptive editor. I seriously doubt WP has an excess of administrators who are completely void of political bias, but I believe most admins are good-intentioned and will try to do the right thing. Anonymity does tend to make people bolder. It is also easy to get the wrong impression and harbor preconceived notions about an anonymous contributor based on a simple misunderstanding of intent or misinterpretation of something they innocently said or did. It is not always easy to WP:AGF, especially when editing in controversial topic areas. It is also quite conceivable to think real life may be a priority for some admins, who find themselves pressed for the time to properly review a case, and read all the diffs in context in order to avoid rash judgments; that's one rash calamine lotion doesn't help. We are all capable of being overly emotional, getting frustrated and impatient, or saying and doing things we may regret later but admins rarely falter. We are all volunteers, each with our own personal reason for wanting to help build the encyclopedia, while collaborating productively and doing our best to avoid disruption...except when we're not, and then it becomes a war of the worlds.

One of the consequences of Arbcom's decision to delegate such unleashed power to individual admins in the name of AE was a shift in balance that did not actually resolve the problems that crop up at controversial articles; rather, it simply took things in a different direction and opened the door to POV creep; i.e., bias and prejudice, unknowing or otherwise. Today's clickbait media and biased news sources are what I consider interest compounded daily except it's not in the form of money in our pockets, rather it's trouble on our plates. People are naturally drawn to sources that agree with their political POV as evidenced by a January 2020 analysis conducted by Pew Research. To that, add today's journalistic opinion and conglomerates pushing a political agenda in an echo chamber, and we have the perfect storm.

The real issues
Admins are elected by the community, in part, to take quick action against vandals and stop disruption, not silence political opposition in an effort to prevent disruption. Disruption is subjective and falls under multiple definitions, which increases the potential for POV creep. Do the math: sole discretion + unilateral action + a relatively high level of protection against reversal = Fort Knox. But articles get even more protection via DS because the common remedies used are restraint and restrictions. Restraint comes in the form of indef t-bans, article bans, blocks, iBans, etc. Restrictions come in the form of BRD, 1RR consensus required, semi- or full-page protection, and on and on...all via DS, be it whole or in part, or what one editor referred to as do-it-yourself ruminations that look more like the Mad Hatter at play on the internet than anything Arbcom or the more thoughtful volunteers at AE would consider useful. Whatever we call it, it inhibits the free exchange of thoughts and ideas that WP was founded on. And what exactly do restraints and restrictions accomplish? Discretionary sanctions open the door to gaming and inevitably, to tendentious editing which is what Arbcom's remedy was supposed to prevent.

Few editors have dared to speak up about the issues because of the chilling effects of having admins with unbridled power targeting specific editors and creating designer sanctions customized for that editor only. Any admin who believes they know an editor well enough to predict their responses and actions is involved in the sense that preconceived notions take the form of prejudice and are a valid reason for Arbcom to consider some form of admin rotation in controversial topic areas.

I'm not sure how we went from a panel of arbitrators imposing binding solutions to individual administrators imposing binding solutions, with the exception that admins can use sole discretion with unbridled power that individual arbitrators don't even possess; Arbcom must act as a panel. With reference to the amendment portion of my ARCA case last year, the relative responses to my DS/AE questions by three arbitrators were encouraging. Hopefully, the committee will see the need to rein in the unbridled power they've delegated now that some of the unforeseen consequences have come to light, including micromanagement of an entire topic area, POV creep and neutrality questions, prejudice, an unhealthy degree of INVOLVED and overreach that goes beyond the scope of regular administrative duties. Such absolute power doesn't just create a chilling effect, it creates glaciers, and Arbcom has full control of the thermostat. The question is, will they take the necessary actions?