Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Candidate statements/Tony Sidaway

Tony Sidaway

Nomination statement

Wikipedia is growing fast, and its response has been to secrete a shell of bureaucracy as sclerotic as any state. Too many rules, too many feet to tread on. Too many new editors scared away.

Arbitration is intrinsically slow and unscaleable. Administrators are individuals working in loose cooperation, which does scale.

Too many cases are reaching arbitration. We should be careful about the cases we accept, and give administrators more technological power by working with developers to share ideas for more tools to help them. Alternatives to blocking, more flexible IP and username blocking arrangements, more watchlists for administrators, subscribable watchlists, edit throttles for edit warriors, per-page blocking. Spending time and effort on this will be worth our while as a committee because it will reduce our caseload by empowering and strengthening Wikipedia's immune system.

Abusive treatment of newcomers starves the community of new blood and unnecessarily expands the class of disaffected trolls and vandals. Edit warring and biting by administrators and other experienced editors should be taken seriously because it drives people away. I want to focus on this. The administrators should take the bulk of the load, but the Committee should act as a check on the administrators.

The Arbitration Committee has a resource of previous cases and decisions, and what ensued from those decisions, that amount to the wisdom of some of the best wikipedians. The Committee, augmented by interested former members, should from time to time make non-binding recommendations to the community for policy clarifications or changes, with the aim of stimulating Wikipedia's immune system and reducing arbitration caseload.

Questions

Please ask any questions you have about me or my candidacy. I will answer on this page and inform you on your user talk page that I have responded. I have added this page to my watchlist.

Question from Sjakkalle

Are you mad? :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:04, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and he would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

I figure if I have to fly these missions I might as well be the bombardier. --Tony Sidaway ^Talk 19:58, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Cryptic

You have been an outspoken proponent of WP:IAR, and have recently come under a great deal of fire for this stance (interested third parties: RFC, RFC 2). While you've apologized profusely for incivility, you've been quite been unapologetic for the actions the controversies stemmed from. How do you reconcile this with your statement above? —Cryptic (talk) 21:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your proposal for more technological powers is intriguing; however, you opposed Wikipedia:Quick and dirty Checkuser policy/proposal, saying that you "want to see more than a beauty contest for this kind of power." Would you be in favor of more widespread access to this ability, and if so, to whom would you like to see it granted? —Cryptic (talk) 21:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reply

In the case of the Albert M. Wolters article the application of Ignore all rules was straightforward. The article was caught in the usual stalement on Votes for undeletion, but a glance at the deleted article and the deletion debate was enough to convince me that, if undeleted, the chance of the article being deleted in an Articles for deletion rerun was minuscule. Because the controversial nature of IAR would draw more editors to the second deletion debate, I concluded that consensual support for the keeping of the article was guaranteed and that the wider consensus that would be gained would be in the interests of the community. Accordingly I ignored all rules to give it the chance of another run. I was right. The article got an overwhelming keep vote, a potential copyright problem was quickly fixed, and so the article remains.

I see absolutely no potential conflict between this and my candidate statement. Editors should always be free to innovate in the interests of the encyclopedia, subject to consensus.

In my opinion, checkuser access must only ever be given to qualified information technology specialists who are trusted by the development team, subject to the agreement of the Foundation. A vote of confirmation of such an appointment may be carried out if desired, but checkuser access must never be available solely because someone has enough votes. --Tony Sidaway ^Talk 21:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Zephram Stark

What is your opinion of the Wikipedia: Policy Trifecta?
Does Wikipedia policy exist for the sole purpose of creating structure for dispute resolution when consensus is not reached? If not, what other purposes are there for Wikipedia rules? --Zephram Stark 22:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Trifecta is the lightning rod of policy--by which I mean that even if I'm following the written policy to the letter, I'm not doing it right unless my behavior also fits the trifecta.

Wikipedia policy exists for the sole purpose of writing an encyclopedia. Everything else is secondary. --Tony Sidaway ^Talk 23:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Form question by Snowspinner

Being an arbitrator requires a finely tuned bullshit detector. What in your life has prepared you to detect bullshit with ease? Phil Sandifer 21:25, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a parent, and I've been in information technology from 1975 (when really intelligent machines were expected to be developed within the next twenty-five years) to 2005 (when really intelligent machines were expected to be developed within the next twenty-five years). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 05:36, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Form question by karmafist

Many policies contradict and overlap with each other, and then WP:IAR makes things even more complicated while making them paradoxically more flexible. When two or more policies apply and conflict, what do you do? karmafist 18:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Use my common sense. The rules are there to serve us in building an encyclopedia; the encyclopedia doesn't exist to serve the rules. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 05:40, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from User:-Ril-

The following questions are for each candidate, and do not specifically target you

Do you hold any strong political or religious opinions (e.g. concerning George Bush, Islam, or on which end you should break a boiled egg)? If so, would you recuse yourself from cases centred on these?

How willing are you to contest the decisions of other arbitrators rather than just "go with the flow"?

Do you view all requests to re-address cases, particularly requests made by those most penalised, as being automatically without merit?

In the case against Yuber, it was decided by the arbitration committee that it is the duty of arbitrators to investigate, and rule on the behaviour of not only one party involved, but all of them. Do you support this decision? [if current arbitrator] Does your visible behaviour on recent cases reflect this decision?

--Victim of signature fascism 16:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Question from Marsden

Many people have noted that Wikipedia's original communitarian structure is no longer functioning very well. One editor has suggested that ArbCom is "about getting the trains to run on time," which is a reference to a fulfulled promise of Mussolini's fascist government. Do you agree that Wikipedia needs to become more orderly, and if so, do you think there are any options other than a move toward a more centrally controlled authoritarian system? Do you think that the spirit of cooperation in Wikipedia would survive such a change? Marsden 16:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]