Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Questions/General

1. Stress. Do you have the mettle 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. Please provide details.

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2. Confidentiality. How will you cope with the tension between the community desire for openness and the need for the confidentiality of personal information about parties to arbitration decisions?

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3. Likely roles. Bearing in mind your 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 the requests page) and for the clarification or modification of prior decisions;

   :(D) Reviewing and helping to dispose of appeals from banned or long-term-blocked users, such as by serving on the Banned User Subcommittee or considering the Subcommittee's recommendations;

   :(E) Overseeing the granting and use of Checkuser and Oversight permissions, including vetting candidates for these privileges and supervising elections for them, and/or serving on the Audit Subcommittee or reviewing its recommendations;

   :(F) Drafting responses to other inquiries and concerns forwarded to the committee by editors;

   :(G) Running checkuser checks (arbitrators generally are given access to CU if they request it) in connection with arbitration cases or other appropriate requests;

   :(H) Carrying out oversight or edit suppression requests (arbitrators are generally also given OS privileges);

   :(I) Internal tasks such as coordinating the sometimes-overwhelming Arbcom-l mailing list traffic, reminding colleagues of internal deadlines, and the like.

   :A:

4. Desysopping. Generally, do you think Arbcom has (a) not desysopped enough (b) got it about right (c) desysopped too much over the past year? Under what circumstances would you consider desysopping an administrator without a prior ArbCom case? Be specific.

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5. Do you support or oppose the recent Committee practice of bypassing RfA by directly re-granting previously revoked administrative privileges without community comment or approval?

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6. What changes (if any) would you make in how the Arbitration Committee works?

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7. 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. Do you agree or disagree, and why?

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8. ArbCom cases divert vast amounts of editor time and goodwill into often pointless arguments, causing constructive editors to feel oppressed and disillusioned, and leading to "remedies" that are in fact retributive punishments (often ill-targeted) that fail to remedy any real problems. Do you agree, and what would you do about it?

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9. Conduct/content: ArbCom has historically not made any direct content rulings, i.e., how an article should read in the event of a dispute. To what extent can ArbCom aid in content disputes? Should it sanction users for repeated content policy violations, even if there is no record of repeated conduct policy violations? Can 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:

10. Civility: How and when to enforce civility restrictions remains controversial. How admins should enforce it is largely outside the scope of this election, so I ask you this: To what extent and how should ArbCom enforce civility? Is incivility grounds for desysopping? Banning? Are civility restrictions a good idea? To what extent is incivility mitigated by circumstances such as baiting or repeated content abuses (POV pushing, original research etc.) by others?

    :A:

11. How will you attempt to improve ArbCom's efficiency and ensure that cases do not drag on for months?

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12. As of May 2009, only 5 of the 16 Arbitrators had made more than 500 edits to the mainspace in the past calendar year. Several arbitrators' past 500 edits stretched back over 12 months.[1] Considering this, do you feel that the Arbitration Committee is qualified to judge conduct disputes that overlap heavily with content disputes? Please elaborate.

    :A:

Specific past examples of ArbCom's decision-making

1. Do you agree with the committee's decision to reban the_undertow/Law (see motion here)? Would you have handled the situation differently?

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2. Why do you think the committee chose to desysop Jennavecia but not Jayron32 (the motion to desysop Jennavecia was passing with all arbitrators having voted when Jennavecia resigned, the motion to desysop Jayron32 had been and was rejected; see the previous link)? How would you have voted?

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3. Out of all the cases handled by the Arbitration Committee in 2009, which one(s) do you think the committee as a whole handled (a) the most successfully, and (b) the least successfully? Please explain your choice(s).

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4. For the purpose of the following five questions, please assume the principles in question are directly relevant to the facts of the case that you are deciding as an arbitrator. Would you support or oppose these principles as written should they be proposed in a case you are deciding, and why? (To keep the amount of time required to respond to these examples to an absolute minimum, I personally would consider one or two sentences to be ample reasoning for the "why" part of this question; that kind of statement length is akin to many of the Arbitrator votes on the proposed decision pages of a case.) (Daniel)

(As a point of further clarification, it is entirely unnecessary to read the case these principles were originally decided in — the intent of these questions are to establish your opinion on the general principles that are linked to, while working under the assumption they are directly relevant to a case you are deciding.)

(i) "Private correspondence", July 2007

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(ii) "Responsibility", December 2007

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(iii) "Perceived legal threats", September 2008

A:

(iv) "Privileged nature of mediation", December 2008

A:

(v) "Outing", June 2009

:A:

1. What do you think of the Arbitration Committee's recent decision to appoint MBisanz as a fourth community member – or rather, alternate member with full access and possible voting rights – to the Audit Subcommittee after an election which was to elect three members to the subcommittee?

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2. Do you feel that the English Wikipedia's current BLP approach is correct in all aspects? Why or why not? If not, what needs changing?

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3. Please list all of your accounts, active at any time, and any IP addresses you have made substantive edits from?

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4. One issue on which arbitrators (and others participating in cases) frequently disagree is how "strict" versus "lenient" the committee should be toward users who misbehave and need to be sanctioned. Although every case is different and must be evaluated on its own merits, as a general matter in the types of cases that tend to lead to split votes among the arbitrators, do you think you would side more with those who tend to believe in second chances and lighter sanctions, or those who vote for a greater number of bans and desysoppings? Generally, in a given case what factors might lead you to vote for (a) a less severe sanction, or for (b) a long-term ban or a desysopping?

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