Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Candidate statements/Questions for John Reid

Questions from Chacor

Q: 1. Why should people vote for someone who has previously spammed, trolled and disrupted Wikipedia, and been blocked for it? Or, why should we trust you, as someone who has been all the above, with oversight, checkuser, and the power to make judgements against other users?

A: Well, your opinions of my contributions to this project are pretty negative. I'm sorry about that. Not everyone agrees; not everyone even agrees that any of those biased labels applies to anything I've done. Any admin can block any other editor for any reason or none and give any reason as justification; that doesn't make it so. On the other hand, I agree that I'm far from perfect. Anyway, I think the occasional block is healthy; it builds character. I used to endorse Requests for Adminship for editors who had never been blocked; I would never do so again.

I think the second part of your question is very good. You should not trust me, not any more than you should trust any member of ArbCom. You should watch us all very closely and not hesitate to call us on the carpet if we step even slightly out of line. I will deal with individual criticism patiently and with respect but not be swayed by emotional pleas. On the other hand, if our community as a whole thinks I'm doing wrong, I probably am. You will never hear me assert authority over our entire community.

I won't insult you by promising never to abuse ArbCom authority. If you take the time to sift my contribs, you'll see what kind of editor I am. I wish I could avoid asking you to do all that digging but actually going to see for yourself will give you a much more honest picture than anything I could say myself -- certainly more than some one or two diffs pulled up by somebody with a grudge or by somebody hoping to back me. You'll see that while I often have strong opinions and take bold action, I believe firmly in adhering to community policy and process at all times.

I feel strongly that ArbCom and individual arbitrators must operate with less, not greater latitude. I may continue to be an annoying editor but I will never be an abusive arbitrator.

Q: 2. What is your opinion of ex-admins who have not voluntarily given up their sysophood? Do you think they should be resysopped at AC's will, or do you think that they should go through another RfA? What are your thoughts on the current re-adminship process for involuntarily-desysopped admins? – Chacor 09:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

A: All admins who are deadminned must RfA. RfA is the community procedure for promotion; ArbCom ought not bypass it. I look askance on temporary deadminning by ArbCom decision. If a former admin proves trustworthy, I trust the community to re-promote. I do not endorse post facto re-adminning under the rubric of "exercising continuing jurisdiction." ArbCom is enlisted by the community chiefly to terminate wheel wars; once the war is over and remedies have been taken, ArbCom's authority ends.

Questions from Derex

Copied from User talk:John Reid

Q: 1. Have you been in any serious conflicts? A: No, I don't think so. Editors lock horns all the time around here; I've stayed out of most of the rutting and grunting, though by no means all. I think it helps that I try to focus on the issue at hand, not on the personalities involved. I like to hope that if the personality itself is a problem, somebody else will think so, too. And I'm usually right. Q: 2. What's the deal with those couple blocks (no big deal probably)? A: I was blocked for a day for linking to an outprocess deletion on several talk pages. I don't think the block was justified but I sat it out just the same. I was blocked for another day for intervening in some fort-building; several admins commented that they thought the block unjustified and I fielded several offers of unblock, despite my request otherwise. I sat out the block; I don't see how it did me any harm. Q: 3. What do you do in real life? A: These days, I tutor high-school math. I'm a graphic designer and a project still comes my way from time to time. I'm also a semi-retired EE/CS; I'm happy to say I have an analog hardware design project on my bench even as I write. More than anything else, I'm a writer; I don't write much for publication but some of my work circulates narrowly. Update: The design project is off my bench and in client's hands; I have a check to show for it. Whew! Q: 4. Are you a serial killer? A: No. I can say this with confidence. Not only have I not killed anybody, I am reasonably certain that I will not do so in future. When I was much younger, I worried that I might fit the profile; perhaps all thoughtful people so wonder. But I'm 46 years old; whatever I was going to be would have surfaced by now. When I lose my temper, I shout; I don't throw punches or knives. I'm glad to have settled into a crabby middle age. For that matter, I'm not even always crabby anymore.

Question from Xaosflux

1. As functions assigned by ArbCom, describe your view on the assignments of Oversight and Checkuser permissions, including thresholds for (or even the possibility of) new applicants. (Question from — xaosflux ^Talk 12:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

This question substantially duplicates one just below; I'll reply there.

Questions from Mailer Diablo

Q: 1. Express in a short paragraph, using any particular issue/incident that you feel strongly about (or lack thereof) in the past, on why editors must understand the importance of the ArbCom elections and making wise, informed decisions when they vote.

A: Sorry, I will have to duck that one as far as a specific example is concerned. To cite a specific example would mean I'd have to call into question the character or performance of one or more arbitrators. While I'm not afraid to do this, I don't think it is polite for me to advance my candidacy by slinging mud at incumbents or former arbitrators. I'll merely note that I have, personally, been an involved party in a couple of RfArbs. In one of these I was not sanctioned; the other is in workshop stage and I don't think I'll be sanctioned there, either -- I'm not even really involved. Nonetheless, I'm not entirely pleased with the outcome of the former -- and I have grave reservations about the direction of the latter.

It's enough to state the obvious: ArbCom has concentrated within a very few hands a great deal of authority; this touches every editor, no matter how provincial his concerns. Despite workshop and talk pages, arbitrators are expected to decide each case on the basis of evidence presented, not on emotional appeals from the community, not even on community consensus. This is in keeping with the tradition of an independent judiciary. So, ArbCom elections are the first and last place you get to decide who is going to be making some decisions. As Mom said, You only get one pick so make it a good one.

Q: 2. Imagine. Say Jimbo grants you the authority to make, or abolish one policy with immediate and permanent effect, assuming no other limitations, no questions asked. What would that be?

A: Um, I'm sorry, but I consider this a silly question. I had the same trouble with a psychologist who asked the standard If you could have three wishes, what would they be? My first thought is how to rig the system so that my first wish gives me an unlimited number of additional wishes. I suppose that would make me Jimbo, dissolve the Board, and install little chips in all editors' heads.

Getting away from childlike fantasy, I'd have to say that I could never accept such a thing. I'm happiest when I write a new policy proposal and the community edits it to suit. Sometimes I'm sorry to see this or that clause go but I'm best satisfied when I see our community has adopted a proposal, changing it in the process. I don't want anybody to march to my tune. I'm quite pleased if anyone listens when I make rational arguments.

You may still be unsatisfied with my answer, so I will allow you to force my hand. In this case, I will, by fiat, enact Wikipedia:No wheel warring as official policy.

Q: 3. It is expected that some successful candidates will receive checkuser and oversight privileges. Have you read and understood foundation policies regulating these privileges, and able to help out fellow Wikipedians on avenues (e.g. WP:RFCU) in a timely manner should you be granted either or both of them?

A: These are two very different duties and I hesitate to address them in a breath.

Oversight is poorly named; it should be called censor. An editor with such access acts to censor Wikipedia, to hide revisions and deleted material. Censorship is a necessary evil and like all such, I have little taste for it. Sometimes, somebody has to take out the garbage, no matter how much it stinks. I accept the responsibility but you will not find me using it often. Unless the request comes from Board Legal or from a person directly and obviously compromised, I will probably ignore it.

I do not think we need a large number of censors but I think that such actions should be discussed among several members. By their very nature, such requests cannot be discussed openly, which I regret.

A somewhat related suggestion was made here; I objected strongly in workshop. Despite a developer's objection [1], this "remedy" found its way into Final decision. I see no developer has implemented it. For more information on my track record on the oversight issue, please see my comments on WT:OFFICE.

Checkuser is generally used to guess if two user accounts are WP:SOCKs of one another. No amount of IP tracking or tea-leaf reading can determine if one human person is behind two accounts -- or, truly, rule it out. I don't think checkuser outcome is a good basis upon which to sanction anybody. Besides, most socks declare themselves blatantly, if not explicitly. The new sock gets right up and goes over to where the sock master has been having trouble. Then he repeats the master's arguments, often in the same voice. Genuinely new editors don't usually do this.

Don't forget that anybody can arrange a meatpuppet that no amount of checkuser can uncover. I can pick up the phone and call an old friend a half a world away, tell him to register and "vote" on anything. For that matter, there are probably a couple people I could talk into registering today, making a few trivial edits, and going to sleep for a few weeks, until I need them to "support" my position. There is no limit to the clever ways a fellow can abuse a technical system.

This is one reason why voting in a cybercommunity is evil. Voting in meatspace has its problems but at least one hopes that one is actually counting real noses. The closest forum we have to a straight vote here is RfA; b'crats need to use good judgement to dispose of socks, meats, and dorm roomies dragged in to tip the scales. In general, we determine consensus on the strength and merits of the arguments presented, not by how many editors support one side or the other. I would be open to more straight voting if you could tell me how to checkuser so that it returned 99.44% accurate results.

I think most checkuser is inconclusive and causes more problems than it solves. If a user account is bad, block it. Obvious, disruptive sockpuppetry or that used to evade a ban should indeed be sanctioned but checkuser is hardly required to demonstrate it. Again, if you could tell how to checkuser conclusively then I would support more remedies based on its outcome.

To answer both halves of this question: I will not ask for either oversight or checkuser privs; I don't want them nor do I think I need them. If I have either of these rather dangerous tools stuffed into my hands, I will use them with great reluctance and only after I have convinced myself that the community is truly likely to benefit. I am not running for arbitrator in order to gain personal authority; I wish to act as a member of ArbCom, making joint decisions.

Q: 3a. Will you consider circumstantial evidence in cases? If yes, are you willing to explicitly reveal what they may be?

A: Well, I don't know why that should be a question. Naturally, both direct and circumstantial evidence play a role in any proceeding; see which. I'll discuss these two in detail if you like.

I'm not sure you have circumstantial evidence in mind at all, though. Like anything else it can be used badly but there's nothing to "reveal"; like direct evidence it is presented openly. Perhaps you mean evidence presented in camera, maybe also ex parte. You may wish to check out the List of legal terms. There are reasons for many of these; they have specific meanings while equivalent common terms may be vague.

In camera evidence is usually inadmissible. There can be situations in which it is required to keep evidence secret. For example, Editor A makes a libelous edit to Article X and a block war results. Warring admins come to RfArb; one or more parties demand that ArbCom see the edit, which has been deleted and censored. In a meatspace court, the allegedly libelous edit would become part of the record, it being thoroughly understood by all that this does not constitute endorsement by anybody. Here, that might be seen by the subject of X as deliberate publication, putting us all at risk.

We at WP are less likely to advance other reasons for entertaining in camera evidence, such as to protect the national security.

On whole, all evidence should be presented openly. In camera evidence should be described in the record as fully as possible without setting fire to our project.

Ex parte proceedings are another matter of concern. This is not limited to presentation of evidence. Ex parte arguments should not be made. In most cases, any argument made to me, personally, ex parte, will be entered into the record; therefore other parties will have an opportunity to respond. If the argument comes with a plea that it remain in camera, I will respect that wish -- and ignore the argument. Please don't email me with an argument and evidence that you wish to remain confidential. Keep them distinct.

This is all about transparancy in a free and open court. Perhaps you're just testing me on my knowledge in this area. Let me be clear that I believe ArbCom should be run generally by the rules of jurisprudence upheld in Western law -- roughly the same treatment (I hope) you get in your local county courthouse; a better standard than you get in traffic court. RfArbs are rarely all that complex and I don't entertain efforts to complicate them through technicalities -- but broad principles are non-negotiable.

I may as well state here what I believe ArbCom's main departure is from standards of Western jurisprudence. Western courts are generally adversarial; ArbCom leans toward an inquisitorial system. This does not mean we burn editors at the stake but that arbitrators play a greater role in case management and direct investigation. Opposing parties are generally not represented in RfArb but appear in pro per. Thus a greater burden falls on the shoulders of arbitrators to see justice done.

Some feel that ArbCom should be explicitly inquisitorial. This places involved parties in opposition to the project itself or to Wikimedia Foundation -- what in meatspace would be called the State. Under this system, the court becomes an arm of State interests instead of an impartial arbiter of disputes. I oppose this drift.

Q: 4. What is integrity, accountability and transparency to you on the ArbCom?

A: Integrity means that I must decide each case on the merits only, with reference to community policy only, disregarding emotional appeals, political positioning, and my own personal opinions on substantive issues.

Accountability means that I work for our community, not the other way around. RfArb is not a community-wide vote; I don't have to please a majority with every decision. But ArbCom decisions must be in accordance with long-range community consensus. If I cannot follow that consensus, I must be removed instanter.

Transparency means that ArbCom is not a Star Chamber. Sometimes it must shut the door to prying ears but each arbitrator must do personal, internal battle with the natural urge to deliberate entirely in secret. Final decisions should proceed from Proposed decisions and Workshop; after conclusion of a case, I must be ready to answer at length any request for explanation.

Q: 4a. What's your take on those who have seriously gone back on their word in their pursuit (or desire) of any important role (or power)? Should they resign? Should they be given a second chance?

A: Well, you're asking about a personal opinion. I'm sure we all wish elected officials would do in office what they said they'd do on the campaign trail. Most do not and very few resign because they did not. Is this what you really mean to ask? I read a lot of indirect comments around here; editors trip over their own feet at times to avoid personal attacks. Be polite -- please! -- but be direct.

ArbCom has no proper role in enforcing campaign promises; sorry. We can't use the bench to tear down officials who fail to live up to their stump speeches. We need to do that ourselves, as a community. Officials who ride political waves into office should be given a surfboard and ridden right back out again.

You may be thinking of officials who fail in their mandated duties. That is entirely another issue. I may promise on the stump to do my duty -- or I may not. But when I'm in office, I'm required to fulfill the duties of that office, like it or not. Failure in duty is a user conduct issue and properly within ArbCom ambit -- I maintain, the central subject of ArbCom.

I will take a giant leap, in mind of recent events, and suggest you may be thinking of Taxman, who promoted Carnildo against community consensus after promising, in his RfB, to uphold and obey that consensus. I'm not concerned that he "broke his word"; I'm concerned that he failed in his mandated duty.

I've suggested it might be appropriate for him to resign but I do not believe ArbCom should have forced him out for the offense; it was not truly egregious nor part of a pattern of abuse of trust. If he has lost the trust of our community, then I think we should act to remove him. But I don't personally feel that's required. I made a relevant proposal on RfArb/Carnildo/Workshop; it was largely ignored. I still believe it was exactly appropriate.

Q: 4a (ii) Of course one can't enforce campaign promises. What we are talking about here are moral obligations, and not only that I'd extend this question to those made in the execution of one's duties as an arbitrator.

A: If I can't enforce them, I can't sanction their failure. Sorry; campaign promises are simply not within ArbCom ambit.

You do not get to hope that I (or any other elected official) will ever resign because you think I broke a campaign promise. You will find that hardly anybody ever admits to this. People of no integrity break their promises cheerfully and just as cheerfully lie about having done so; people of medium integrity try so hard to live up to every word they have ever said that they truly believe they have done so, even when they're doing the exact opposite; people of high integrity recognize the impossibility of refining almost any question into pure blacks and whites, do the very best they can, and soldier on -- or stay far away.

I strongly recommend you do not elect anybody, anywhere, anytime on the basis of his stump speech. You need to see that in a very real way, this entire page is foolish. I could say anything at all now in the certain knowledge that it was being evaluated for election purposes. If you want to try to guess what I will do in office, you need to look through my contribs and see what I've already done. Some of my work has been good, some bad, much trivial. You need to decide what you think about what you see.

There are two really big drawbacks with examining the record to make judgements about a candidate's future actions:

• It's a lot of work. At this moment, I have 3970 edits to all pages on en:; a few more to Meta, Commons, Wikiquote, and Wiktionary. Call it a round 4000. Statistically, you would need to look at about 400 of these just to get a real accurate picture of what I've been doing. But since you'll turn up a lot of redirects and trivial edits, you might still miss my most worthwhile (and foolish) edits. Now, 400 diffs is a lot to scan but to understand the substantive edits, you might have to do a lot of reading in context.

Let's take this edit to Template talk:Qif as a random example. Unless you're already thoroughly familiar with the topic, you probably need to follow the link to WP:AUM. There, you see indeed that the page has been tagged rejected. But when? Who tagged it? Is that a BS tag that somebody threw on there in the last five minutes? Did John Reid put it there to prop up his support of Qif? You need to check AUM history to find out, maybe AUM talk, too. You take my word for it, you're being a chump. So, perhaps you do check this deeply and decide I did speak rightly in that edit -- technically. But does this mean I support Qif? And is that intelligent? Qif is deprecated. Am I some sort of policy zombie, trying to reanimate this thing? You might best resort to searching the entire project with Google, thus: [2]. This returns 16 pages on which you may find some indication of my sanity. Alas, none of these point to Qif's TfD.

Somebody failed to link to that TfD log page on Qif talk, so you have to keep digging. Finally you find this was proposed for deletion not properly at TfD but at MfD. Search for my name or scan history and you eventually find where I stood on Qif: [3]. You may decide I wasn't so foolish. Even more interesting, if you read through the whole debate you can see other editors heeding my words. It was nominated with the words Delete. Obsolete, redundant, a total fire hazard. One editor first !voted Conditional delete with qualifications, then changed his comment to read Keep per John Reid. In the end, it was, as I suggested, kept, deprecated, and preserved indefinitely. It looks to be well orphaned, too. All this tells you is that some people listen to me some of the time.

That's what you need to do to place one edit in context -- to really find out what kind of fruit you have in your hand. Multiply that by 400 -- 40 -- or even 4 (not to mention all the other candidates) and you see why most people never bother.

• It's unreliable. Yesterday I was a genius and saint, tomorrow I'm a fool or madman. We've all had the experience of electing some plausibly sane person to public office who promptly goes out, purchases a few truckloads of automatic weapons, and burns a ghetto or two -- in this country or the next one over.

People are -- well, people. We're unreliable, squishy bags of weird stuff. Throw hamburgers at one for a few years and you have no idea what may come out. It may be Nobel Laureate-class poetry or dynamite; it may be a steady stream of mail bombs. Only one thing is guaranteed: a lot of it will be shit. Human beings are notoriously inconsistent.

We function as a society by pretending, on a daily basis, that we know the guy in the next cubby is going to sit down and work his keyboard today because that's what he did yesterday. If he dribbles coffee on his tie today, we try to ignore it. If he does go postal, we're shocked. We pass the bum on the corner and whether we toss him a quarter or a foul word, we expect to see him every day in the same place, wearing the same rags and stinking of Mad Dog. If he takes a shower and sobers up, we probably continue on our way to the gerbil wheel and our daily donation is as it was yesterday. If he turns up in a suit with a Rolex, we just don't think it's the same guy. If we do recognize the former bum, we're confused. At least, most of us are. Me, I'm rarely astonished by anything my fellow monkeys do.

So, between information hard to get and information unreliable, most of us go with our most superficial gut instincts -- and that may not be bad. You're able to integrate more data subconsciously than consciously. Some listen to their friends; that's less good, because your friends are probably listening to each other, so nobody really has a clue. Some of us listen to the candidates themselves and that is really risky, since every candidate is going to present himself in the best possible light.

You may as well flip a coin.

If I were you, I'd vote for whoever made me feel good for five minutes. As soon as you cast your ballot, forget the good feeling. Assume he's turned into a rat bastard as soon as he's in office and watch him like a hawk. See what he really does, now that he's in the hot seat. If you don't like what you see, drag him out of it at the earliest opportunity.

This is your community. Don't let anybody steal it and don't give it away to smooth talkers. John Reid ° 01:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: 4b. Do you think it is a good idea to "shoot first, ask questions later"?

A: I'm sorry; but are you sure your question isn't frivolous? It's certainly loaded. Did somebody suggest he thought such a thing?

There are any number of reasons to act quickly but your phrase suggests stupid, blunt action taken without thought. Who could support such a thing?

Q: 4b (ii) but it happens, and some people do support such a thing.

A: Well, that's not how you phrased it. I don't really see the need for your pipelink, friend; it obscures your intent a little. You linked to Ignore all rules. Let's talk about that.

IAR is one of the most important non-rules we have in our community, one of the absolute cornerstones of the way we manage to get along with each other. Trouble is, if you are thinking about it -- about the page itself -- when you are doing something, you are probably doing wrong. I almost guarantee that if you cite IAR as justification for your action, you have done wrong. A life lived entirely within the bounds of Western culture is poor training for a good understanding of IAR; you need a non-Western perspective. Note that you can only begin to IAR by ignoring the policy tag on that page.

I've just edited that page, by the way, to point to my other favorite non-policy, m:Don't be a dick. If you don't understand one, you don't understand the other; if you don't understand both, you probably are going to violate both of them and misuse them, too. I don't say I understand either one completely, either; one reason they are important to me personally is that I keep reading and re-reading them -- and every time I do, I seem to get a little more light.

Now that we've discussed IAR in the most superficial possible way, I'm ready to say No, by and large. I don't think it's generally a good idea for me to ignore all rules. I don't have a sufficiently complete grasp of either IAR or DICK to apply them firmly. Most of us don't. Sometimes I see a good application of IAR; more often I see a poor one. Me, I muddle along inpolicy, just as much as I can.

Most of the time I don't do anything, anyway. I just talk. I've been called -- many of us have been called -- process wonks, useless sidewalk superintendents. The label is somewhat justified. If the hardworking article-only editors could manage to work together without occasionally being DICKs, you wouldn't need people like me. We represent overhead, the cost you pay to keep the system running, which does not result directly in movement toward goals. Since we don't do much of anything, we're not likely to violate any of our hundreds of policies -- except, of course, DICK and its descendants.

See my viewpoint, if you will. I have an engineering background and then I got into philosophy and metaphysics. I learned quickly that the engineering mindset is poor preparation for these most squshy of all soft sciences -- but I still have it. This means that I'm not always the very best creator or even interpreter of highly abstract policies. I do better when I'm working in specific, process-oriented areas. I like to think I've made excellent progress since I routinely spent my days working my way through a purely Boolean world. But I like us to have rules, I like to follow them, and I like those rules to be clear, orderly, and as simple as possible without watering them down to uselessness. I don't like a rule-free world because I don't trust my fellows to IAR without being DICKs. I don't trust myself to do so, either.

I'm pleased to have found the policy touchstone -- the one that works for me. If community consensus backs a practice, it is policy. When I meddle about writing policy pages, I don't delude myself to think I'm ever writing actual policy. I'm simply transcribing what I see around me. When others edit those pages, that doesn't mean I'm wrong; it means the page is moving forward. It may move through some bad spots but that just means the page needs more editors -- not fewer. Whenever I see anything anywhere that looks questionable, I think more eyeballs. My main goal in any policy effort is to get everyone to sit at the same table and work out their concerns together. That's why I maintain {{cent}}. The point of the template is not just to advertise every wacky proposal that comes down the pike; it is to point all interested parties to come together on one page per issue. I oppose fort-building on competing pages and deprecation-by-tag. Work it out.

I'm running for ArbCom because I like to see an orderly process of policy formation in which members of our community sit down together and rationally work out their concerns. If you elect me to the bench, you will see me do what I do now: Nag people to edit this page and please, don't fight. Thank you.

Q: 5. Humour, a tradition of Wikipedian culture, has seen through several controversies in recent history. This is including but not limited to bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, parody policies/essays, April Fools' Day, whole userpages, userboxes... Do you think that they are all just harmless fun, or that they are all nonsense that must go?

A: Oh dear. I should say right away that I don't spend much time at BJAODN so I don't really know what's been running around in there. I have gotten some laughs out of it.

I certainly won't sign up to either extreme, all or none. In general, I strongly support humor in all its forms; at times, my rhetoric grows quite florid as I attempt to inject some lightness into a heavy discussion. Sometimes I'll even throw a funny picture onto talk, if only to break up a wasteland of text. I don't doubt that jokes can go too far but I haven't seen anything funny I can remember that I thought had to go.

In the context of this page, you're asking if a user conduct issue ever arises from humor. I'm sure it does; I just can't think of an example. The garden-variety offense of this nature is when somebody is excessively cynical in his talk page comment or parodies his opponent. This may be rude and is usually not funny; worse, the inexpert parody risks being taken for serious essay.

The standard, as usual, is easy to find: If a joke harms our community, impedes our project, or misleads our readership, we can't allow it. Otherwise, Laughter is the best medicine™. John Reid ° 22:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: 5a. "One man's meat is another man's poison." How would you reconcile parties in which they disagree upon whether something is funny or should be deleted, preferrably without "The Troubles"?

A: The only Troubles I know are in Ireland, may the Virgin have mercy. This sounds like you're talking about a content issue.

Let me repeat -- and be forgiven for boldface: I trust our community to decide content issues of all kinds. My personal opinions are of no consequence. If it were up to me, perhaps there'd be a smiley on every page. It's not.

I'll go further: I trust our community to decide ordinary issues of user conduct. ArbCom is not needed to settle every petty squabble -- nor even, really, to weigh in on most blatant offenses. Admins are appointed by our community to manage these things. We need to let them do their job. If, as a group, they're not doing it, then we need to refine the process of adminship itself, not patch it up a bit at a time by selectively bashing this or than admin. We certainly don't want to reduce admins to some sort of castrated monkeys and put all power in ArbCom's hands.

I believe this strongly. I will uphold this at every turn. Ask me again and the answer will be the same. ArbCom is needed to terminate wheel wars and settle difficult, complex issues of user conduct. That's all.

@ Thank you for your answers! :) - Mailer Diablo 08:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your questions! John Reid ° 10:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from AnonEMouse

Warning: Most of these are intended to be tough. Answering them properly will be hard. I don't expect anyone to actually withdraw themselves from nomination rather than answer these, but I do expect at least some to seriously think about it!

The one consolation is that your competitors for the positions will be asked them too. Notice that there are about one thousand admins, and about a dozen arbcom members, so the process to become an arbcom member may be expected to be one hundred times harder.

Q: 1. A current Arbcom case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy is concerned with the decision of whether or not a proposed policy has consensus or not, and therefore whether or not it should be a policy/guideline. Whether or not the Arbcom has or should have the power of making this decision is hotly disputed. Does Arbcom have this power? Should it have this power? Why or why not?

A: Having been one of the parties who has most hotly disputed this intrusion, I don't think I should now soapbox. Short answer: No.

Q: 2. Similarly, a recently closed Arbcom case Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano barely dodged the possibly similar issue of whether the Arbcom can, or should, determine whether Bureaucrats properly made someone an administrator. (Discussed, for example, here). The current arbcom dodged the question (didn't reach agreement one way or the other, and ended up leaving it alone by omission), but you don't get to. :-) Does the arbcom have this power? Should it?

A: Again, I commented heavily on this RfArb when it was in workshop. Short answer: ArbCom is not entitled to reverse b'crat decisions short of truly extreme circumstances; however, insofar as a b'crat's actions are consistently or egregiously outpolicy, ArbCom has the authority to sanction that b'crat, just as any editor who misuses the tools given him. The standard remedy is to remove privs. Note that even if, in this case, Taxman was de-b'cratted, this remedy would not overturn Carnildo's repromotion.

Q: 3. Various arbcom decisions (can't find a link right now - bonus points for finding a link to an arbcom decision saying this!) have taken into account a user's service to the Wikipedia. Several times they have written that an otherwise good user that has a rare instance of misbehavior can be treated differently than a user whose similar misbehavior is their main or sole contribution to the Wikipedia. Do you agree or not, and why?

A: Well, you needn't look further than your last citation. Short answer: Absolutely. This is not some vast bureaucratic mill where we stamp out cogs for the machine. We do not reject a human being because he is imperfect. We all have shortcomings; I've met very few people without a few serious ones. An editor who is consistently of value to the project is still of value, even when he makes a mistake or three. An editor whose contributions are all counterproductive is of no use to us.

Note that the way you phrased your question assumes real merit and hypothesizes only a rare mistake. I daresay there are one or two editors who may have been quite useful in the past but who have, over time, become arrogant and disruptive. Even exemplary past service does not give anyone a lifetime pass.

Q: 4. If you agree with the above point, which service to the encyclopedia is more valuable - administration, or writing very good articles? For example, what happens when two editors, an administrator and a good article writer, come into conflict and/or commit a similar infraction - how should they be treated? Note that there are relatively the same number of current administrators and featured articles on the Wikipedia - about 1000 - however, while relatively few administrators have been de-adminned, many former featured articles have been de-featured, so there have been noticeably more featured articles written than administrators made. This is a really tough one to answer without offending at least one important group of people, and I will understand if you weasel your way out of answering it, but it was one of the issues brought up in the recent Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano, so you can imagine it may come up again.

A: Easy question, as first stated: Writing articles is the only essential contribution. New editors write most of our content; the higher the edit count, the more likely an editor has started to slip from writing into -- well, editing; and involvement in policy matters. We do need to pay this overhead in order to keep our growing community functioning as a community. But overhead does not create a project and our project is our reason for being. Maintenance is important but never as important as writing articles.

You go on to suggest that admins do not write articles. I agree that most admins spend time doing maintenance; that's as it should be. But a good history of article editing has long been a standard at RfA, so most admins have a habit of it and some still keep their hands in.

Finally, your question -- I'm sorry -- falls apart. It looks like a hypothetical but then you cite a real example. I don't know if you have that in mind or perhaps something else. In any case, there are far too many variables in any real case to give a shotgun answer to a hypothetical. If you want to present me with a real case, I'll take a quick look and tell you if I can make a quick judgement; I probably can't.

→ Try to keep in mind that ArbCom is not in the business of declaring a winner. It's entirely possible that all involved parties go away with smarting backsides. In /Giano, essentially, all parties went away officially unscathed but nobody thinks all parties were "right". When two parties come before ArbCom, we don't balance them, one against the other, to see who should be hit harder. We look at each individual and his actions and see if a remedy is called for. It's possible that an editor has behaved badly but no remedy applies. The purpose of ArbCom is not to beat up on misbehaving editors but to take action to see they do not misbehave in future.

Q: 5. While some Arbcom decisions pass unanimously, many pass with some disagreement. I don't know of any Arbcom member who hasn't been in the minority on some decisions. Find an Arbcom decision that passed, was actually made that you disagree with. Link to it, then explain why you disagree. (If you don't have time or inclination to do the research to find one - are you sure you will have time or inclination to do the research when elected? If you can't find any passed decisions you disagree with, realize you are leaving yourself open to accusations of running as a rubber stamp candidate, one who doesn't have any opinions that might disagree with anyone.)

A: Ha ha, I can't give a rubber stamp answer to a rubber stamp question? Anybody who has bumped into me on talk knows that I don't agree with the prevailing mood at ArbCom. If you vote for me, you vote for opposition to the direction I fear ArbCom is heading.

Q: 6. It has been noted that the diligent User:Fred Bauder writes most of the initial Arbcom decisions -- especially principles, and findings of fact, but even a fair number of the remedies. (Then a fair number get opposed, and refined or don't pass, but he does do most of the initial work.) Do you believe this is: right; neither right nor wrong but acceptable; or wrong? When you get elected, what do you plan to do about it?

A: I don't know about right or wrong; it's a good thing that somebody writes decisions who has a grasp of the language. It may not be so good that this somebody is a retired lawyer.

Let me tell you a little story that illustrates my position on lawyers and legal thinking: One day I met a young law student who seemed smarter than that and I said, "Why are you throwing your life away like this?"

She said, "Law school is good for you; it teaches you to think logically."

I could not stop laughing. "Law school is not logical; it's a perversion of logic, plus rhetoric and scholasticism. Logic proceeds from given axioms and reasons strictly to inevitable conclusions. Law school teaches you to begin with a desired outcome and reason backwards by any means, fair or foul, to arrive at any precedent that might support your outcome. An honest logician's goal is the truth; an honest lawyer's only goal is to bend the law to serve his client."

All lawyers are not evil; only your lawyer is evil. My lawyer is my White Knight and I want him to do everything possible to keep me free and solvent. Your lawyer is a black-hearted snake who would sell his mother's liver on the street corner, sliced and charcoal-barbecued. Lawyers make excellent partisans and awful jurists.

I believe that a major fault in the American system as it stands is that all three branches of government are packed with lawyers. A career before the bench is terrible training to sit on it and entertain the same tomfoolery. We ought not trust people who have practiced poking holes in laws to write new ones (with holes pre-punched). And given the choice, I'd rather have a general than a lawyer as President or Mayor.

I am not a lawyer. I do believe I write clearly and I know I type at length. I have already proposed some findings at ArbCom workshop; I expect to propose many more, whether I am elected or not.

Q: 7. For those who are administrators only - how do you feel about non-administrators on the arbcom? Note that while "sure, let them on if they get elected" is an easy answer, there are issues with not having the ability to view deleted articles, and either not earning the community trust enough to become an admin, or not wanting the commensurate duties. Or do you believe that non-administrators are a group that need representation on the arbcom?

A: I'm not an admin so I guess that means I get to duck this one. Obviously, I think I can do the job. It's up to you to say if I should.

Q: Bonus question - do you think I hit that difficulty standard? :-)

A: Sorry to disappoint you; can't say I do. I've already thought hard about the issues you raise; I've commented on talk on most of them.

I agree that ArbCom candidates should be run through the most rigorous possible mill. Forget about below the belt; aim for the knees and the head; try for the knockout punch. If I didn't think I could stand up to the most methodical interrogation, with rubber hose and leaky faucet, I wouldn't be here. Forget about interrogation; I expect a straight up beating. Why not? We don't need ArbComminees who lose their cool over a few questions or can't solve complicated problems. Anybody who folds under the bright light should be led away to a comfy chair, given a nice cup of tea, and thanked for coming in. John Reid ° 11:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from Newyorkbrad

These are standard questions I have been asking all candidates. However, in view of the large number of questions above dealing with overlapping themes (which did have not yet been posted when I posed these questions to other candidates), please feel free to respond with a simple "see above" if that's the appropriate response. Newyorkbrad 20:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: What can be done to reduce the delays in the arbitration process?

A: Excellent question; I wish I knew the answer. Obviously, one step is to refuse to hear some cases that don't fall properly within ArbCom ambit. We only have so much time and cases we do hear deserve to get proper attention. I've spoken out strongly against ArbCom hearing cases that do not involve issues of user conduct. I also would like to think that not all user conduct issues must be resolved by RfArb. Quite simply, if one or more editors are out of line, they should be counseled by their peers; if that doesn't work, they can be blocked by admins. If no admin is willing to block, why is an RfArb merited? ArbCom is only necessary when admins disagree to the extent of wheel warring. There may be practical value in hearing cases to head off wheel warring before it starts. But we do rely on admins blocking, protecting, or deleting most ordinary sources of trouble.

Past that point, I really can't say. Not being party to ArbCom deliberations, I don't know exactly what is going on behind closed doors to stall process. If you let me in, I'll find out and do my best to speed things up, consistent with fairness and due process. I'll also tell you why things go slow.

Q: Do you anticipate taking an active role in actually writing the ArbCom decisions? If so, do you have any writing experience that would be relevant to this task.

A: I did answer the first half of this question (above). I am an experienced writer, in my narrow way. I spend an hour or more every day writing something, somewhere, if only to please myself. I think if you look at my comments on RfArb workshop and on the talk pages of policy proposals, you'll see how closely I'm able to reason. For an example of the very finest writing of which I'm capable, I refer you to the single line: WP:WW#Policy. In the original [4], No admin may do any admin thing twice in the face of admin opposition. Like everything else on this project, this has been edited by our community but then, that's our goal, isn't it?

Q: (Non-standard question) On arbitration and policy pages, you are generally a strong voice for the principle that the consensus of the community should govern Wikipedia decision-making, and were particularly outraged when you believed that bureaucrats had violated the principle of consensus in a recent controversial resysopping. Similarly, when it was proposed in a recent arbitration case to ban you for one week, you opined that a particular arbitrator was acting as if he governed the community as part of an "aristocracy." Yet a few days later, when the ban ultimately was not imposed, largely as a result of strong objections to it from members of the community, you opined that it was "shameful that ArbCom should listen to us yelling from the peanut gallery." (Quoting from colloquy on your current talkpage.) I find these two thoughts - that ArbCom acts aristocratically if it disregards consensus but shamefully if it recognizes consensus or the merit of the arguments behind the consensus - difficult to reconcile. What role, if any, would you give input from interested members of the community in formulating ArbCom decisions?

A: It is difficult to explain why I hold all three opinions. Let me make it clear that I include myself among the peanut gallery; you might find "audience" more palatable. You might expand your criticism to discover six opinions I've voiced, seemingly in conflict. I think the key is to see that there are six distinct situations.

• First, Taxman promoted Carnildo against expressed community consensus. I say that was wrong. B'crats must follow consensus on a case-by-case basis, not dictate or ignore it. They are not judges, legislators, executives, traffic cops, or even meter maids. They are simply a kind of clerk, a person employed to stamp a paper and move it from one bin to another. Like all clerks, they have wide latitude but almost no discretion.

Taxman went on further to suggest that he does not think he need obey consensus; I think that warrants removal from office but I don't know if it would have been wise to throw that much more gasoline on the fire. I believe Taxman should have been officially sanctioned; the remedy I proposed was very mild.

• Second, some editors thought Carnildo should be de-adminned. I say that was wrong, too. Taxman acted wrongly but not egregiously so; he exceeded his authority but did not rampantly or willfully cause havoc; he had some basis for his action. (Compare the absurd example where a b'crat admins WoW without so much as an RfA opened.) Therefore, Carnildo's repromotion was at least on the borderline of being inprocess. Thus it undermines the system to reverse this action. Carnildo didn't pay off Taxman for the brass ring; he has the right to keep it.

• Third, ArbCom considered a proposed remedy: Carnildo restored to Administrative status. This failed to pass into final decision. I say that was a bad remedy because unnecessary; Carnildo is already promoted to admin. The remedy is, I believe, intended to tell Taxman (and by extension, other b'crats) that ArbCom considers the promotion invalid but ArbCom chooses to make it instead. Again, this undermines the system. Also, I abhor oblique references and dark hints.

I particularly don't like the phrase Exercising our continuing jurisdiction in... a closed case. The pertinent text from that case reads For his actions in this case (demonstrating particularly bad judgement in permanently blocking 3 other well-established users without prior warning for reasons that are - at best - disputable), Carnildo is to be desysopped. Two weeks after this case is closed, he may reapply for administrative privileges. This remedy was not written to suggest or imply any sort of temporary de-adminning, probationary re-adminning, or "continuing jurisdiction". Carnildo was de-opped without prejudice to reapplication and at that moment, he dropped off the ArbCom radar screen. Exercising our continuing jurisdiction opens the door to a nightmare parade of exhumations and new remedies for old injuries -- "zombie remedies".

• Fourth, ArbCom considered banning me for a week, ostensibly for my lack of tact in questioning Taxman and other b'crats. The ban may have been quite all right -- it certainly would not have inconvenienced me -- perhaps out of proportion, but what's the difference? A week off is a week off; it's not like a week in jail or a week picking up trash by the roadside. A week, say, of 8-hour days spend raking out the Sandbox, now that would be brutal punishment.

I was bothered by the ban -- and more by other aspects of the proposed decision -- by the way that they did not seem to grow in any way from /Workshop. ArbCom having opened workshop on the case and encouraged community participation, it seems a slap in the face to all of us to come out with findings and remedies that seem to have been stitched out of whole cloth.

An even darker thought is mere speculation on my part; this is that it seems to me that I was about to be banned not for what I said to Taxman but for my extensive participation on /Workshop. Note that I added myself to the case as an involved party; it is not clear that anyone else would have done so, since all the attention was on other parties. I edited /Workshop with careful forethought and sincere good faith; I believe my opinions honestly voiced there offended at least one arbitrator personally; and I suspect that this resulted in the proposed ban. In short, I felt suckered.

I would have been perfectly content with the ban had it been aired on /Workshop; not a fair remedy, perhaps, but at least fairly delivered.

To answer your direct question directly, I think /Workshop is an important part of RfArb process. It is the place where arguments, as opposed to /Evidence, should be made. At times it seems to veer into a personal battleground -- a judge would say, "Order in the Court" and cut the warring parties off. But a frank and complete exchange of ideas is key to a fair hearing. That said, proposed findings should either all be aired on workshop -- or none. I should generally prefer the former.

• Fifth, several editors -- you, Newyorkbrad, prominently among them -- voiced outrage at this proposed ban and also "Geogre desysopped", which also failed. This is wonderful and I wholeheartedly thank you and the more than 30 editors who supported us. No matter what happens, it's always good to know that you have friends, or at least that somebody, somewhere, doesn't think you deserve the shaft.

I would have been very well pleased had ArbCom decided to ban me anyway, some fool of a meddling admin insisted on blocking me to "enforce" the ban (disregarding my freely given parole) and the fool snowed in by comments from other admins, noting that I specifically requested they talk to him rather than block war over me. (Note the admins who indicated that they were willing to unblock the last time I was blocked; always a good sign -- and even better that all respected my wishes.)

• Sixth, ArbCom was eventually swayed -- it appears -- by these statements of outrage, first to drop Geogre-de-opped, then to drop John-Reid-banned. If I thought arbitrators had simply rejected the proposed remedies, I'd have been quite pleased. But it seems that 3 arbitrators, at least, endorsed my ban, then changed their minds. I believe I have "the peanut gallery" to thank for the reversal and I'm sure it's a mystery to you why I'm not pleased.

This goes back to the principle of judicial independence. Sorry, but I don't consider this article to be complete. Let me sketch in just the bare outlines of a very big picture. ArbCom is, I believe, a court, not a legislative or executive body. As such, arbitrators are our judges.

Judges are not the people's representatives in the same way as elected legislators. This is true -- or should be true -- even when judges are elected. A sitting judge is expected to rule on a case based on the law (community policy) and evidence presented only: upon the merits of the case. In jury trials, jurors hear evidence and arguments in open court, then retire to deliberate. Both judges and jurors are expected to close their ears to comments on the case not made in court (for example, in the media or shouted from the visitor's gallery or section). Judges may hear arguments in chambers but this is understood to be rare and done only when circumstances compel; both parties are always present in such chamber sessions. In particular, judges are expected to be indifferent to any uproar made when a decision is uttered. It is weak of the judge to state such a decision, hear the audience reaction, and withdraw it. By doing so, the judge himself undermines the system.

One might object, saying, "But judges do work for us; we put them there, we pay their salaries, we employ them for our good, not to serve their own interests or even an abstract law. They should be responsive to our concerns." I say this is true in the broad sense but not in the narrow. This is indeed an argument against elected judges; it makes them into politicians.

Let's consider "Maximum Bob", the judge we all know and fear. Max Bob may sit Traffic Court or Supreme Court but whatever his bench, his decisions are always brutal. He regularly hands out the maximum penalty allowed by the law to every offender and seems to find most of them guilty, regardless of evidence presented. If the community feels Max Bob is too harsh, they have the right to replace him at the next election to his bench. If the community feels he is really out of line, they have the right to petition for immediate removal through whatever judicial review process exists.

However, in any given case, Max Bob has a duty to hand down whatever verdict and penalty he believes are correct. He may be wrong but he can't second-guess himself.

If judges make decisions based on community sentiment and abandon judicial independence, this leads to mass democracy, mob rule, and the sad spectre of the black robe cloaking the lynch mob. Turn it around: What if an innocent but unpopular party became involved, evidence did not lead to a negative finding or require a remedy, yet the community shouted for permabanning? What if ArbCom listened? That is why this principle is so important and that is why I disapprove of arbitrators who altered their opinions if they did indeed do so based upon community outrage.

This may be the most complex set of positions I've had to explain on Wikipedia. I'm happy to have you ask about them and I only wish I could manage a simpler explanation. Here's the short answer:

If I sit on ArbCom, I will decide all cases in accordance with standing policy as determined by community consensus and the facts as they appear based on evidence presented. I may even go so far as to do a little research on my own; ours is not an adversarial system. I will not listen to emotional appeals and I shall disregard community expressions when they conflict with what I believe to be the correct conclusions of a specific case as demonstrated by its merits. I shall protect the unpopular as well as the popular innocents; I shall sanction the popular as well as the unpopular miscreants. If a large number of unpopular innocent parties and popular guilty ones come before ArbCom, perhaps the community will decide to remove me. But I shall do my utmost, right up to that point, to treat every party with complete and impartial justice -- admitting no fear and accepting no favor.

I am, perhaps unfortunately, a poor politician and an absolute stickler for justice; even more so, I uphold the system even when it treats me ill, because outside the system we have nothing but anarchy and chaos. John Reid ° 05:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Q. Thank you for the ... comprehensive response. But what makes you think that the arbitrators who changed their positions gave in to the existence of audience reaction rather than the merits of the audience's arguments? (See comment from Jayjg, comment from Raul654, comment from Morven).

Well, that is an imponderable. Even if you asked each arbitrator to tell exactly his reasoning you might never know just what swayed him. But certainly ArbCom was swayed. They appeared to me first to ignore solid reasoning, then respond to emotional appeals. Perhaps not.

I don't think it's an enormously big deal; as you and I and quite a few people said at the time, they were getting ready to make a poor decision and finally made a better one. I commented on my talk at the time that I didn't feel they'd done so out of honest conviction but from political motives. Perhaps I didn't pile on enough weasel words at the time but like all such comments, it's just one man's opinions. We'll never really know.

I would not have answered at such length if I thought I could have done so completely in less space. Judicial independence is an important principle. I will be more responsive to community concerns than a great many arbitrators, I expect; but I cannot cater to the mob. Not on the bench.

Q. Are you serious in your comment above that you could never support an RfA candidate who had never been blocked, or is that rhetorical hyperbole? If you actually mean it, is there a specific type of violation of Wikipedia policy that you are looking for people to engage in (I ask as a potential RfA candidate myself someday :) ) ? I don't think an isolated block should be disqualifying for a candidate, but please explain why you believe that it is a good thing for editors to violate -- or to have been perceived as having violated (a distinction I expect you would make if I hadn't anticipated it) -- the very same rules that, by running for arbitrator, you seek to be empowered to enforce.

I dislike hyperbole; if my writing is colorful, it's because I have colorful thoughts, not because I inflame them for public consumption. Yes, admin candidates should have a short block log. I think it's particularly good to see a candidate blocked stupidly or carelessly, out of spite, or otherwise wrongfully. I also want to see how the candidate handled the block. Did he demand to be unblocked, possibly to start a wheel war? Did he set fire to something? If the block was well given, did the candidate learn from it?

We all change, based on our experiences. I never gave much thought to blocking one way or the other before I was blocked; if you had asked me, I suspect, I might have said "So what?" It's difficult for me, even now, to understand why anyone would place much importance on blocking. You go on IRC, visit a few channels, and no matter what you say (maybe nothing at all), some chan op is going to kick you. Here on Wikipedia, great quantities of blocks are handed out hourly. Some are to kids for scribbling on the blackboard, some to black-hearted merchants of death for pushing their agendas, some to well-respected editors who cross the line once, some to absolute saints out of spite.

What's truly pathetic about the idea that blocking is punishment is that it doesn't require me to do anything at all. If you're sent to sit in the corner, well, that's time out; you don't get to play with any of your toys. If you go to jail, it's smelly, loud, and the food is bad. If you are fined, well, that can really cost money and that's always a problem. But what possible inconvenience is it to have one's Wikipedia user account blocked? I don't even have to stop editing for a day; I always edit in a word processor. I can save up temporary files (like the one on which this section is contained right now, while I write my reply), continue to edit at will, and dump all the edits in tomorrow. I can even use my talk page as a sandbox if I need to check formatting.

This naturally assumes the blockee's parole. Less honest editors can just edit anonymously or under a sock. It's rather absurd to host a party, insist that the door remain fully open at all times, and then hope to throw anybody out. This is cyberspace; the ejected bum can simply screw on a new face and come right back in. Ha ha, you want something to keep your eyes open tonight? Maybe WoW grew up a little and decided to register a sock and not vandalize with it. Maybe he's running on RfA now. You just don't know.

Now that I've been blocked, I have new thoughts on the subject. I was astonished to find myself personally offended. The block itself is no inconvenience but the implication is distasteful -- the suggestion that I am so irrational that I cannot even see when it is pointed out to me that I am in violation of community standards. I can see very easily how another person, with a shorter fuse, might stalk off and never come back. Do we want to push this button?

It's pretty obvious that blocking is a poor "punishment" indeed. You can't block a troll; he comes right back and has no respect for the implication. You can block new editors but they have no stake in the community, so they don't really care. You can certainly block in hopes of sufficiently inconveniencing disruptive visitors that they don't come back but that's not punishment; that's just prophylactic action. Blocking-as-punishment has value only to interrupt an editor who is actively doing bad, in hopes it may give him sufficient pause for him to rethink. If you block a good editor for any other reason, you're just cutting off your nose to spite your face. The editor will likely ignore you for the duration of the block, live his life, and you lose his work for the day. If you guessed wrong, you lose him for as long as he remains angry -- possibly forever. If you guessed really wrong, you create a troll; I've seen it happen. You can't fire volunteers. You aren't paying money; you don't have any leverage.

Blocking is a serious measure. I suspect we block far too frequently and far too quickly, in many cases. This is part of the price we pay for a fully open door: an atmosphere of hostility and gunslinging -- frontier justice. I think RC Patrol and the admins who back it up by blocking new editors develop a distorted view of our community; they start to see enemies everywhere. You're either with us, or against us. The end of this paranoid road is a project guarded by a fanatic cadre of defenders beating off all edits except from within their own circle. Paradoxically, the final result of the fully-open-door policy may be to weld it shut.

So, I've had to think again about standards for admins. We've all seen candidates nod their heads up and down at RfA, swear to use the tools wisely, then go right out and wreak havoc with them. Then we don't just block them; we de-admin them -- or try. I've decided that nobody is to be trusted with the big red button who has not felt the other end of it. That's all.

If you, personally, are wondering what rule to go out and break so as to qualify in my eyes, please don't. That earns no points with me. Just keep doing as you do: Get in the thick of the policy debates and speak your mind. Be Bold, make some controversial edits -- good ones, of course. Sooner or later, some wheel warrior will block you. Then you can stand for RfA and think about blocking somebody else.

Newyorkbrad/new

Q: You indicate below that you should be questioned about dealing with user conduct issues. Here's one. What ArbCom findings and remedies, if any, do you believe would have been appropriate with respect to your own user conduct that was criticized in the so-called Giano arbitration? Newyorkbrad 11

32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

A: Oh, I don't know. How should I answer that?

"If a significant number of reasonable people suggest, whether bluntly or politely, that you are being a dick, the odds are good that you are not entirely in the right.

"Being right about an issue does not mean you're not being a dick...." -- m:Don't be a dick, my personal favorite page.

So, perhaps I was a dick. We're all dicks from time to time; it's not unusual, not some sort of shocking, freak exploding turd that leaves us gaping in awe. I worked hard to avoid being a dick and failed. Oh well. If the penalty for that is a week ban, so be it. We don't really have the technical capability to punish anybody for being a dick; we just express our annoyance. What is there, to a mature person with a life, between telling him You've been a dick and banning him forever? You can't fire volunteers; you have no leverage. A 24-hour ban is about the strongest possible statement of You've been a dick; 48-hour bans, 72-hour bans, week-long bans -- these only mean something to kids. Adults aren't inconvenienced -- we're otherwise employed -- and we got the message the first day.

After the case closed, with no ban, what am I supposed to think? The failure of ArbCom to levy any sanction on me does not mean I wasn't a dick. It just means they couldn't decide how much of a dick I was. I don't think I was very much of a dick but I don't want to be a dick at all. Meanwhile, there is still this festering issue with b'crats who don't appear to respect community consensus.

• Case closed with a finding of principle: "Bureaucrats are bound by policy and current consensus to grant administrator or bureaucrat access only when doing so reflects the wishes of the community, usually after a successful request at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.....They are expected to be capable judges of consensus, and are expected to explain the reasoning for their actions upon request and in a civil manner., Wikipedia:Bureaucrats Passed 6-0 at 13:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)"

• Case closed with 3 related findings of fact; I won't quote them in full. In sum, they say Carnildo had both strong support and strong opposition; there was a failure to reach consensus; and Carnildo was promoted by Taxman, with input officially recognized from Danny and Rdsmith4.

These appear to add up to Carnildo promoted wrongly against community consensus while straining to avoid putting it in those words. Carnildo is still an admin, which suits me fine but not others; Taxman is still a b'crat, which worries me but may be okay; Taxman has not admitted fault, which concerns me greatly; and other b'crats have done their best not to accept the rule of our community openly and explicitly. I don't know what to do about that.

Every day, new admins go on the rolls. Did we put them there or did they put them there? I don't know. I need to ask but the last time I tried, I was a dick. So, I asked you, Brad: How do I phrase this tactfully, politely, and civilly? You never answered. I asked Fred Bauder, who certainly seemed to feel more than anyone else that I'd been a dick, how I might ask without being a dick. He was non-responsive; you can see his words on his talk if you like. I interpret him as saying The question is forbidden/unnecessary. I'm not sure which. Either way, that answer is either silly or, ominously, a direct answer to the question itself: No. You don't have a say around here. None of you do.

Please, poke a way out of this logical thicket, if you can. I can't. I can't seem to frame the question in a non-dickish manner; it would seem, on its face, that simply to walk around asking people for help is something of a dick-move in itself. So, I've shelved it for the time being. What else can I do?

Let me come back to the point of your question. You ask me to sit in judgement of myself. I'm not quite sure how to make this a realistic question. If the RfArb had come up exactly as it did while I was a sitting arbitrator, I'd have had to recuse. Worse, I don't think I'd have been in the right to comment on the case, even as an involved party. I'd have had nothing to say about it before, during, or after. I would regard it as most unfortunate if arbitrators who are considering a case make any exception for an involved sitting member.

If somehow I sat on my own case, well, I know too much about my intent in this matter and intent carries a great deal of weight. A dick is a dick, right or wrong, but most especially he's a dick if he's trying to be a dick. Dicks almost always say they're not trying to be dicks. It's very hard to read between the lines and see true intent behind the wordsmog -- and that's the challenge at ArbCom. So, you're giving me a question with the answer already written out. I know John Reid was acting in the best of faith; so what's the point of sanctioning him? We can't make him a better person. He knows he was a dick; he admitted it. Either we throw him right out of the project or we keep him, with his imperfections.

If there was any doubt in my mind, I'm sure I'd endorse a reprimand. They're cheap and easy to get agreement on; they carry actual weight with adults. If there was any more doubt of John Reid's sincerity, I might endorse a day block, just to be sure I knew that he knew that we thought he'd been a dick. If there was much more doubt in my mind than that -- if I started to think that John Reid had really been a deliberate, premeditated dick -- then I'd have to ask myself if there was any possibility of a remedy such as mentorship paying off. I lean to no; he's a crabby old guy, set in his ways. I might ask him directly: Do you think it will help? If he's an out-and-out dick, then permaban is the last resort. Always dangerous; you never know when you're going to forge another WoW.

You're a lawyer-in-training -- yes? -- so my line of reasoning may seem strange. But ArbCom is not The Mikado; we need not insist the punishment fit the crime. Our object all sublime is to belong to a smoothly-running community. Therefore expect not punishment for what you've done but action taken to see that what you do in future is better. Intent is important.

Let me stress that I think you're bringing this hypothetical to the wrong forum. You're asking what I would do if John Reid in Giano came before ArbCom while I sat on it. But I don't see why John Reid should be at ArbCom at all. He's an ordinary editor, not an admin. My first thought when I see his name on the calendar is to ask involved admins: Why didn't you block him for 24 hours instanter? If it's because his question had real merit and no admin wanted to muddy the waters, then why did you wheel war over the discussion itself? Why did you block war over other involved editors? If you did think he was being a dick, did you tell him so? And if you did, and he stopped being a dick, then why is he here?

But if you talked to him, and he persisted in being a dick, and you thought he'd been a dick, and you thought the dickness was more important than his participation in the discussion, why didn't you block him for the day? Of course, if John Reid had been blocked -- and block warred over -- my questions would have been much fewer. Was there any question in your mind that you were block warring? No? Good. You're deadminned. Feel free to reapply in six months.

I added myself as an involved party to this particular case; if I'd given it more thought, I might not have done so. It seemed the right thing at the time -- but why? The case was already filling up with warring wheels. It's not as though I needed to provide a scapegoat. Well, we learn.

Ordinary editors do wind up in ArbCom cases; when they do, we have to deal with them. But they shouldn't. We have admins for that. If we can't trust our admins to keep ordinary, daily peace on the street then we have a much bigger problem than any one editor. Perhaps we do have such a problem and, if so, that makes the question of b'crat accountability all the more important. After all, if we can't trust our b'crats to promote the editors we designate, there is no hope of repairing the RfA process -- and no point in any discussion, either.

Questions from User:Carcharoth

Copy of the questions User:John Reid has been asking other candidates, so he can answer them himself! :-) Carcharoth 12:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: 1. Who are you?

A: As I mentioned above, I'm a high-school math tutor, a graphic designer, and semi-retired microelectronics engineer and computer programmer -- like so many of my neighbors in Silicon Valley. I'm a writer but not anybody famous. I have a wife and small daughter. I do not root for professional sports teams. I like dogs and cats equally.

Q: 2. Are you 13? Are you 18?

A: I'm 46.

Q: 3. Should ArbCom arbitrate policy disputes or any other matter outside user conduct issues? Why or why not?

A: No; absolutely not. ArbCom is our supreme-and-only court. Our role is to keep order in our community, not to order it around. Case law is bad law, a patchwork quilt constructed of accident, fortune, and one judge's bad night with the wife. It is not representative of the will of the people.

We do not have any policymaking body in our community. That was fine when we also had no judicial body. Now we do. We should now have a legislative body to balance it -- as well as our executive. There is a perception that a legislature takes policymaking out of community hands and indeed, this can happen when the community is not vigilant and allows itself to be manipulated by corrupt, self-centered politicos. In stronger communities, a group of elected representatives works together to defend the authority of the community over public issues against factional interests and encroachment by the judiciary and executive. We need this now.

We need this body but we do not have it; into the power vacuum, ArbCom is getting ready to insert itself. I don't point a finger at any one arbitrator; it is a natural development. The absence of an elected, representative legislature sucks other powers into trying to steer policy.

Until our community is willing to build a house strong enough to defend it, I will sit on ArbCom and do my very best to keep it in check.

Question from Ragesoss

Q: In the Wikipedia context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?

A: Well, I hope you're not looking for support for Creationism; you won't find it here. You can describe creationism, just as you can describe Time Cube -- just so long as our community will tolerate it.

There's a big difference between neutrality, which is mandated by one policy; and no original research, mandated by another. When you get into NOR, it leads you directly to cite sources. When we ask you to cite your sources, we mean reputable sources -- and no, I can't tell you what that means. Like all really critical terms, it's undefined. Community consensus is not entirely settled on this point but it's pretty plain that we hold cranks, religionists, and pseudo-scientists in low esteem.

I realize we have a large faction in our community that believes, one way or another, that science is wrong. I could duck this entire question by saying, "You're talking about a content issue; ArbCom deals exclusively in user conduct issues, so I have nothing to say." I hope you appreciate my honesty in meeting the question head-on.

The straight truth is that I believe that human beings really are a highly evolved form of animal; it is one of the two keys to the human condition. The other is that, for a reason science has been unable to explain, we are in some sort of intermittent contact with another plane of existence -- the realm of the gods, if you will. This suspends us between the extremes of Heaven and Earth and there we dangle, climbing the slippery, fragile thread. Many of us, unfortunately, let go. A few manage to tunnel below the surface but that's another issue.

As a humanist, I believe man is the measure of all things. You may be surprised to understand that this does not align me with the scientists. My understanding of human nature leads me to believe that we are not clockwork toys any more than we are fallen angels or finger puppets. I do have a hard engineering background but I don't think materialism has the last word at all times.

You may be comforted to know that I seriously insist ArbCom must restrict itself entirely to issues of user conduct. If you are able to create articles that state Jehovah created the World in six days, well, good for you. You just have to do it without conducting yourself in such a way as to annoy your fellow editors. You have to abide by our policies; you have to cite sources -- not sources that please me, but sources that satisfy community concerns. With that, you're well on your way.

Question(s) from maclean

Q: Do you have dispute resolution experience in any of the following areas: Wikipedia:Mediation Committee, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal, Wikipedia:Third opinion, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, or Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates? If not successful with the Arbitration Committee, will you seek a position with the Mediation Committee?

A: Pretty much, no. I've given third party opinions on several occasions, sometimes by request. I stay away from RfCs because they seem to be ineffective wheel-spinning most of the time. I have no political leverage to use in other areas.

You and I may disagree on the role of ArbCom if you see it as an extension of these processes. I know RfArb has been called the final step in dispute resolution but that's not really what it is. It's the first and only step in terminating wheel wars.

Resolving disputes, particularly content or policy disputes, is not something that happens within a small compass. The processes you cite may indeed help greatly but they have no teeth; they make no final decisions. They may be able to help push things along but in the end, disputes are generally settled in a messy, informal fashion on user talk, with editors bringing concerns and compromises to one another directly. And that's all as it should be. Since I'm not really part of any clique or buddy circle here, I don't have much leverage in dispute resolution.

ArbCom is not here to resolve disputes; that is an arrogant thought, that we might be able to step into the middle of a messy debate and impose a solution. We can't and we shouldn't try. We simply stand by and hope things work out. If editors involved in the dispute get out of line, admins are expected to perform their duties and protect pages from edit wars, delete out-of-control pages, and block out-of-control editors. ArbCom is not needed for this. We have an entire class of about 1000 trusted editors who have been given the tools to moderate disputes. We need to let them do it.

When admins disagree on the proper course of moderation, we expect them to discuss it among themselves. We hold admins to a higher standard than ordinary editors; it should be much more difficult for civility and collaboration to break down among admins. If and only if admins are unable to sort things out; if they begin to undo one another's actions, edit warring on protected pages, block warring over controversial editors -- then ArbCom is required to step in not to impose a solution to the underlying problem but simply to terminate the wheel war.

I suggest that the dispute resolution processes you cite are poor preparation for ArbCom. They lead an editor to think he can make things better by getting warring parties to sit down and talk it out. And indeed, this is highly commendable. But at ArbCom, we do not make things better. We simply put a halt to madness.

I am running for the bench especially because I oppose the creep of ArbCom into matters which do not truly concern it. If ArbCom reaches down into the machinery of policy formation, let alone article writing, it must eventually take responsibility for all decisions made in our project. I will not attempt to decide who is right and who is wrong on substantive issues; I will not, as an arbitrator, bully editors into agreement. I will simply look at each case, see if there is an egregious issue of user conduct, and if so, move to sanction it.

I may as well say that I have little interest in ordinary user conduct issues, either. As I say, we have admins for that. One reason we have a backlog at RfArb is that ArbCom accepts too many cases that have not risen to the level of wheel warring. If there is no wheel warring, then by definition the admins, as a group, have the situation under control.

ArbCom is not Mom; we don't put bandaids on your knees or lecture you on how you should love your brother and not hit him with the blocks. We are not Dad; we don't paddle you and send you to your room. That's what admins do. We are the Real Police who come and take Mom and Dad away when they start beating each other with tire irons. So long as only you have been bad and Mom and Dad are in control of the situation and of themselves, we stay outside in the squad car. Okay?

Questions from Badbilltucker

Thank you for volunteering to take on this task, and for putting yourself through having to answer these questions. For what it's worth, these particular questions are going to all the candidates.

Q: 1. I've noticed that a total of thriteen people have resigned from the committee, and that there is currently one vacancy open in one of the tranches. Having members of the committee resign sometime during their term could create problems somewhere down the road. What do you think are the odds that you yourself might consider resigning during the course of your term, and what if any circumstances can you envision that might cause you to resign? Also, do you think that possibly negative feelings from others arising as a result of a decision you made could ever be likely to be cause for your own resignation?

A: I share your concerns. If an arbitrator can't handle the pressure, yes, he should resign but it is generally disruptive. This is why I urge all editors to make this question time as brutal as humanly possible. I'm very disappointed that nobody has yet asked a truly unfair, rude, offensive question. Let me make it absolutely clear that on this page, at any rate, any consideration of civility is completely suspended. You can call me names, use hate speech and foul language, poke me with a stick. If you see me so much as quiver from a little tickle here, you have to wonder how I'll perform through three years' of snide accusations and snippy second-guessing. Do not elect a weak straw.

If elected, I will serve the full term, barring accident. I can't say I'm young and strong anymore but I substitute craft for brute force and enjoy a reasonably good rude health. Nobody can see the future but I don't expect to be taken out of rotation for months at a time due to illness. I'm self-employed and set my own hours, so I don't expect to plead the press of business. Relocation is obviously not the issue it might be in a meatspace office. As for my willingness to come back to an atmosphere of contention and uproar, month after month -- well, I'm still here, am I not?

I suppose that the Unforeseen might cause me to take a short leave but I can only think of one likely scenario that might force me to resign. That is if I am discovered in a serious indiscretion -- if I fail to uphold the integrity of the office and discharge my duties impartially. I would like to think that my temperament is such that I would never do this but power corrupts. Arbitrators are given a great deal of latitude and opportunities for abuse abound. If I fall into this trap, you will find my letter on the doorstep instanter. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll be around for some time. As Mom said, You only get one pick, so make it a good one.

Q: 2. There may well arise cases where a dispute based on the inclusion of information whose accuracy is currently a point of seemingly reasonable controversy, possibly even bitter controversy, in that field of study. Should you encounter a case dealing with such information, and few if any of your colleagues on the committee were knowledgeable enough in the field for them to be people whose judgement in this matter could be completely relied upon, how do you think you would handle it?

A: Absolutely and imperatively not. ArbCom is for user conduct issues, chiefly wheel warring. It does not matter whether we are experts on substantive issues or laymen. We must completely avoid any action on content issues of any kind, and dip our beaks into policy issues with the greatest prudence. The furthest I have been able to go in that direction is to propose that ArbCom mandate that a certain policy be considered polarized or disputed -- simply to state openly that the community has not formed consensus on it. This seems like an obvious declaration and I think it's sad that the community itself has not been able to agree to disagree.

Content issues of any kind are completely outside ArbCom ambit. As an individual editor, I may argue forcefully on talk in favor of this or that edit; never as an arbitrator. You may be assured that I will never confuse the two or fail to recuse myself when involved. And I absolutely promise to dig my heels in, debate my fellow arbitrators at length, and oppose any finding or decision that meddles in content issues of any kind.

Note that substantive issues never affect a finding of user conduct. You are not excused from user conduct policies because you are right. ArbCom must never be swayed by such arguments; I shall never be.

Question from Snowspinner

Q: You're a non-admin running in stark opposition to the current direction of the arbcom. In the past, such candidacies have fared extremely poorly, begging the question of why one would engage in one. Do you sincerely think you can win? If so, what do you think has so dramatically changed about the Wikipedia community in the past year to make that possible? Phil Sandifer 02:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

A: What possible answer would satisfy? Perhaps I have no chance at all. This is for our community to decide, not me.

Perhaps you are right. Perhaps our community is tired of working out differences of opinion, peer-to-peer. Perhaps we are simply begging for a greatly expanded, perhaps multi-level ArbCom to make all decisions. If so, I'm sure I will not be wanted.

I am not a radical candidate. I propose no new direction for ArbCom, no innovations. Rather, I stand opposed to any radical power grabs. Perhaps the status should not always be quo but change must come from our community, not be imposed from above.

I sincerely believe that ArbCom is an essential part of our community. I also sincerely believe it is running away from its roots and that this has upset a great many editors. I hope our community will welcome an arbitrator who promises to judge fairly on the merits; to avoid back-room deals, horse-trading, and favoritism; to consider user conduct solely in light of existing community policy defined by the consensus of our community; and who has clearly stood against any meddling in public policy affairs. Maybe I'm wrong; I hope not. John Reid ° 06:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Question(s) from Dakota

Q: If elected to the Arbitration Committee will you continue active editing? Will you not lose interest in contributing to articles?

A: Well, my main substantive contributions to our community are already in the form of policy work. That's not likely to change; I'm better at that than other things so that's what I do. My main end-user contributions to the project have always been in the form of images -- photos and graphics, such as Pi-unrolled.gif. I have not been able to resist putting together a brag page, if you want to know more. Most of my articlespace edits have been copyediting. I don't know more than you about anything to write more substantially.

I don't see why a seat on ArbCom will stop me from doing the odd bit of graphics work or copyediting. I may have to leave some of the policy work to you. If I campaign vigorously for a policy proposal and an issue of user conduct arises, I will have to recuse myself from hearing any related RfArb.

Q: Will you be available to any users who seek your help or advice?

A: Of course -- but this has nothing to do with ArbCom. My talk page is always open -- I won't allow it to be protected or semi-protected -- and anybody is welcome to bring any concern to me. I like people to be civil on talk but on my talk, I generally don't care. Speak your mind. If there's any way I can be of service, let me know.

We are a community in pursuit of a goal; we need to work together as a team. There are no individual accomplishments here, only joint achievements.

I worry about this question in this context. Individual arbitrators have no authority -- nothing that inheres in the office itself. They may hold other offices but that's another story. A seat on ArbCom does not give anybody a special right to be heard, to render judgements at large, or even to escape censure, block, or community ban for incivility or disruption. Admins have individual, executive authority; ArbCom only has judicial authority when acting as a body. That's why it's called the Arbitration Committee instead of, say, "Knights of Wikipedia". We're all only men and women. John Reid ° 00:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from JzG

Q: Open-mindedness and the ability to revise one's own position in response to new evidence seems to me to be an important factor in considering ArbCom cases. Can you please provide an example of a situation where your initial judgement of a situation turned out to be wrong, and show how you dealt with it? Guy (Help!) 14:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

A: Ye gods, is there any other kind of situation? We spend all our lives bumping into glass in the hall of mirrors and can plainly see behind us, at every turn, how we went wrong. Let's talk about my biggest mistake ever in snap judgement.

Hmm, on consideration, that would be my wife. I love her dearly; it was my initial judgement that was mistaken. And the less said about that, the better. "On the Internet, it should be well understood that anything you say can and will be used against you for the rest of your life." Have to skip that.

Several of the second-worst snap judgements I ever made were probably in 1989 when I overloaded a van with all my worldly goods for a cross-country relocation. The van was a real PoS, originally kustom-tricked, then abused as a work van for years. I had no business buying it in the first place, let alone driving it anywhere. Every few hundred miles, one of the studs would snap off. This was due not only to the overweight but to the fact that cheap custom mag wheels stress the studs more than steel, because they're thicker and force is applied over a longer lever. (I figured this out later.) Soon, each wheel had 4 instead of the usual 5 studs.

In the middle of the night, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, I stopped to fill up the large tank. A couple miles further on, I had my second flat tire and walked back to the gas station to get a spare. The stoner tow-truck driver put on a spare with a portable air wrench and snapped off another stud, leaving 3 on the left rear wheel. I drove on for a few miles until I felt a lurch and heard a horrible noise. My left mirror was filled with orange sparks and yellow flames. I pulled over to the shoulder, grabbed my handy extinguisher, and foolishly stood there trying to calm the inferno. The wheel had cast off its last ties to me and exited rearward, shearing off the gas tank filler pipe at its base; the entire 33 gallon tank was pouring directly onto the frame member that hit the asphalt at 60 mph. I lost everything. The memorable picture from that night is of the local volunteer fire department waiting for the thing to blow itself out so they could use their jaws of life to open the blackened hulk and see what was inside. First to tumble forth: an absolutely black Mac I had personally cracked and upgraded to 512 Kb.

Lesson: Don't push anything past that certain point. Remedy: Hitch ride to next town, call Mom for cash, ride bus.

That didn't really involve any snap misjudgement of people, though. I tend to make those misjudgements less often, or at least more deliberately, because I'm more cautious when dealing with unpredictable beasties.

Not so long ago, I had a roomie who seemed to be a dick. He was very short in speech, was openly annoyed when I spoke to him for any reason. He had an obnoxious habit of waiting impatiently for one to pass -- insult masked as courtesy. My snap judgement was that the man was impossible to live with at all. I made many attempts to make very small talk in very small doses, gave him plenty of space, and still kept trying to be a decent human person. I said, directly, that we were after all living in the same house; we couldn't simply avoid one another entirely. I asked if there was anything I was doing to upset him; he said no, he was just a quiet person. Well, I've seen quiet people; he wasn't that sort -- he was a ball of rage.

I stayed civil and eventually our relationship thawed a little, month by month; a small victory for Politenessman. I still thought he was a bit of a dick but we were able to live in the same house in peace. The cops finally came and got him on an old assault warrant. We all have our demons. John Reid ° 22:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from Torinir

I'm asking these questions all applicants:

Q: 1.0) How would you handle a situation where an error of judgment has occurred, especially if evidence is provided to confirm that the position is incorrect?

A: Sorry, but your question has insufficient parameters. What is the situation? Who made the error? What was the effect of the error? Is any remedy available and effective?

Hypotheticals are always tricky; I avoid them. Yours might apply to anything from

• me sitting at home watching an executive caught on teevee with his cigar in the wrong place; to

• me facing the teevee cameras with a stained blue dress in my hands.

Narrow it down or, better, point me to a real case. By the way, no need to specify "evidence provided"; by definition, if the judgement is in error, it's because something shows that it is so. (I'm a realist.)

The hypothetical

Q: 1.1) Let's put a hypothetical case to the question - A lot of heated discussion occurs on an article. Tempers flare and nasty words are exchanged in the article's talk page between two of the more vocal contributors. You've blocked both editors for 24hr for WP:NPA violations, but later learn that one editor initiated the fight on the other's user talk page with serious threats, later removed by the initiator to attempt to cover himself. Time frame of the incident is two weeks. The editors have been daily contributors. The removal was within 48 hours of placement. How would you rectify the situation? Assume the threatened individual is relatively new and doesn't know about the WP:AN, WP:ANI or WP:PAIN pages. User:Torinir 0:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

A: This is an admin-level question. By the time the case closes ArbCom, I expect any such issue of sneaky reverts to have surfaced. I just don't imagine that a case could conclude, after a week or so of digging up evidence, with nobody seeing a simple sneaky user talk revert. Anyway, what are "fairly new" editors doing at ArbCom? Why didn't an admin block?

I'd like to help you out. Let's extend the hypothetical so that the water level rises to the bench:

• Content dispute on Article X. Editor A ignites war with rude comment on User talk:B. New editor B sees this and reacts but A sneaky reverts himself before anybody else notices the instigation. Rude comments on Talk:X. Rude comments between Editors A and B on each other's talk. Admin C blocks A and B for a day. 12 hours later, Admin D sees the sneaky revert and unblocks B and, for good measure, extends A's block to 2 days. Admin C sees the unblock, doesn't understand/agree with the block sum, reblocks B and extends his block to match A's. He comments in good faith on User talk:D.

Admin D sees the reblock and reads the comment that reveals C's ignorance, reunblocks B, and leaves message on AN, explaining the sneaky revert. C reblocks again, leaves message on User talk:D complaining of 0WW violation. D replies on User talk:C, explains the sneaky revert, and unblocks both parties. Admin E (up to now uninvolved, stay with me here) comes to User talk:B to follow up on unrelated Article Y discussion; sees B complaining mightily but incoherently about being blocked. E reads through talk on X, A, and B and sees a lot of rudeness, blocks both editors for a day.

Editors M, N, P, and Q, friends or partisans of A and B, object loudly on talk to every turn of events; C blocks some of them, D blocks others. Meanwhile, C and D are trading insults on talk and Admin F finally steps in and blocks them for a week. Admin G unblocks everybody. Admin H discusses the situation offwiki with Admins J and K; H posts to AN with the stated intent to block all involved parties for 24 hours for violations of CIVIL and NPA. J and K endorse; H implements the blocks, which expire a day later. The case winds up at ArbCom.

Now that's a hypothetical -- maybe about half as complex as some of the real cases. I'll address it after this maintenance edit. On second thought, perhaps I should let some other candidates take a crack at this. Of course, I've already written my answer in detail. John Reid ° 07:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Some candidates have been begging for a peek at my solution or at least more information upon which to ponder. Sorry, no peeky. Here's a refinement of the situation for those who are late getting in their answers:

You wake up one evil morning to a masked thug wielding a tire iron who duct-tapes you to your keyboard and directs your browser to an RfArb which contains no more information than you see here. You are given to understand, with a tap or two, that if you do not render a decision on the issue as stated, your dog is going to use your skull as a dinner dish. What do you do?

Continuing with Torinir

Q: 2) If a decision of yours, while technically a correct one, would knowingly be unpopular en masse, how would you present your decision?

A: Exactly as any other. There really is no choice.

Note your use of the pronouns "yours" and "you". Like other languages, English has ritualized the use of the plural form to apply to the second-person singular; "you" has replaced "thee" and "thou", "yours" has replaced "thine". This does lead to ambiguity. Are you speaking of me or us -- in this context, ArbCom? In your shoes, I would probably say "ArbCom" if that's what I meant.

A member of ArbCom makes no decisions barring the most petty procedural ones. ArbCom acts as a committee; this means that all decisions issuing from ArbCom are joint. If I'm elected, I will not attempt to rule our community by personal fiat.

I will certainly vote on proposed findings and remedies. Some may be highly unpopular; I may or may not be in the minority on ArbCom as well. All such votes and their comments will adhere to the same standards I have now:

• Be civil, be honest, speak to the point, and don't be afraid to laugh once in a while. Try to see the other fellow's point of view and describe my own as courteously as possible. Be persuasive but recognize that few people are very open to opposing viewpoints; never try to cram an opinion down anybody's throat, just explain it factually and leave it there. Remember that when I turn off the screen and go back to real work, the entire project and all of cyberspace shrinks down to a tiny white dot. Do my best but avoid at all costs any attempt to Save the Project personally. Listen patiently, respond directly, respect facts. Give emotional appeals consideration and attention but do not be swayed into false positions. And of course, no matter what, Don't be a dick.

Q: 3) Place each of these policies/guidelines listed in order of precedence (to you) starting with highest priority. There is really no right or wrong answer. I'm interested in seeing what you would normally look at first when assessing an article.

WP:V WP:BLP WP:NOT WP:NPOV WP:NOR WP:C WP:RS WP:N

A: Well, this is what comes of boilerplate questions. I wish someone would root through my contribs and really grill me on who I am, not with these random potshots.

I don't edit much in articlespace; when I do, I copyedit and stuff. I rarely "assess" an article; sometimes I lean in on AfD but I'm just passing through. My first concern when commenting on AfD is simply Is this BS pretending to be something other than BS? I keep Time Cube -- patent BS but noteworthy and the article distances itself appropriately from its subject. I call into question all of the Method Engineering articles; they appear to be authoritative but I smell BS. Mom always said I had a good BS detector. If it's not patent BS, I don't generally oppose it. That doesn't mean I endorse it, either.

You want me to rank project-space pages. That makes some more important than others. While this is appropriate in some cases, in others it's not. You need to understand that of our core policies, none of those you have listed are in conflict with one another. I'll keep your ranking and tell you shortly what I think about each.

• Verifiability: Core policy. Otherwise, we're Crank City. No discussion possible.

• Biographies of living persons: A novelty, nearly but not even a year old. Has been churning without letup ever since. Tries to address too many issues in one place. Still, moving in the right direction. Cannot be ignored -- for legal reasons if nothing else. Better we follow these rules than wait for Danny.

• What Wikipedia is not: Core policy but atrociously written; the proverbial horse designed by a committee. Terrible to describe anything in terms of negatives. Self-contradictory in places. Cited most often to annoy opponents in debate. Still, essential lest we become one of these things.

• Neutral point of view: Core policy again; atrociously named. The acronym NPOV comes up so often I have to restrain myself from deleting it everywhere I see it. Worst are bastardized derivative forms like POV-pusher and the use of NPOV as a verb. I prefer "neutrality" and "bias" as nouns; "neutral" and "biased" as adjectives; "balance" and "skew" as verbs; and "neutral party" and "involved party" as terms to describe editors. In extreme cases, "partisan" may be appropriate. Usage aside, the policy is clear and well written. I wish more people would read it before citing it -- or worse, yelling it out on talk, as if that established something. Absolutely essential policy, of course, lest we become Soapbox City and the Astroturf Suburbs.

• No original research: Another core policy. Not badly written or named but -- like all core policies -- honored in the breach and widely misunderstood. Some have suggested that it merely restates V and NPOV, perhaps NOT. I think it needs to be here, lest we become the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

• Copyrights: What is there to say? Steal a photo, go to jail. Trouble is, all the jails are in meatspace and we're in cyberspace. WMF is governed by the laws of US and Florida but the jury is still out on the legal status of online content. For sure, copyvios are rampant in cyberspace and the crackdowns are fleabites. It's nice to know we're way ahead of the curve. Stupid to upload copyrighted photos ripped off the web. Even stupider to paste in essays from online sources.

• Reliable sources: Another novelty, this almost 2 years old -- and still not really a guideline, much less policy. (Guideline tag disputed, see talk.) I've discussed the difficulties in reinventing the citation-verification wheel on talk. What this boils down to is an impossibly high standard, with holes pre-punched to allow the project to continue. I see no value in such a leaky dam.

V is policy; we need to respect that. Any hope of determining beforehand, project-wide, if a given citation is acceptable in a given article to support a given claim is doomed. There are rules for such things -- entire thick manuals -- but RS is not one of these.

• Notability: This started as a personal essay about a year and a half ago but is rooted in NOT "an indiscriminate collection of information". Editors have been citing "non-notability" on XfD for a long time, so there's no question that the concept has broad support. Trouble is, any effort to define notability needs to be local to a subject matter area; the global, project-wide definition eludes. This leads to the proliferation of subpages. It may someday get to policy but that won't mean anything if the several subpages are still in guideline or worse. I support the idea; otherwise we turn into Cruft City.

Now that we're done with that, let me put my personal position forth. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. To an educated person of my age, this is all that really needs to be said about Wikipedia article content. I know what an encyclopedia is; I've read enough of them. The way it is working out is that most WP editors have never had any deep contact with any encyclopedia except WP. For that matter, our readers are fast coming to equate the two. Therefore, the statement is a tautology and worthless as guidance.

Meanwhile -- as I've said -- I have little interest in content issues of any kind. I piddle about here and there but I rarely have any strong opinion; it's up to experts to determine what belongs where -- and here, an expert is anybody who hangs out at Foo. My knowledge is general and rarely sufficient to challenge anybody who knows anything about anything. My end-user contributions are pretty much limited to graphic design. I do know more about how to turn out good graphic art than the next fellow; I'm more talented, too. I also do a little template work; I have a computer science background and I dabble in toolmaking. My work simply does not run very often across any of the policies you've cited.

I'm not here to push policy issues, either. I don't think I know better than our whole community what we should or should not do. I'm not afraid that if I fail to push my pet proposal into policy that the wiki will collapse. My interest in policy issues is mainly that warring parties all sit down at one table and work it out civilly. I like to see proposals edited, not deprecated. A deprecated proposal only leads to a competing proposal and then we're off. We have a serious policy in NPOV forbidding article forks; sometimes I think we should forbid proposal forks, too. Edit this page.

I'm running for ArbCom because I believe this body should concentrate exclusively on issues of user conduct and leave policymaking to our community. If you want to know more about where I stand on relevant user conduct policies, you'll have to ask me about those -- but ping!, time's up for today.

Questions from Ben Aveling

Regards, Ben Aveling 21:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: 1.0) Which of the follow roles should arbcom members fulfil: judge, jury, executioner, detective, lawyer, psychoanalyst, teacher, leader, parole board, parole officer, weighing machine, opinion poll, weathervane, policeman, keeper of the vision, guardian of peace, visionary, psychic, nurse, other?

A: Judge.

Q: 2.0) What would Wikipedia lose if you were appointed to the ArbCom?

A: I think nothing. You're concerned about busy article editors who won't have time to crank out Featured Articles anymore. I'm already pretty much supernumerary around here; you'll never miss me.

Q: 2.1) My concern is that arbom is a big hit on people's time. That don't come from nowhere, something's gotta give. But what?

A: Well, WP does take up a lot of my free time as it is. I don't think I'm doing anything particularly essential elsewhere on WP so I don't think anybody or anything loses out -- whether I make ArbCom or simply get hit by a bus. I do the best I can but this is a big community and a big project. No one person is essential, least of all me.

Q: 3.0) Are we winning the war on vandalism?

A: I can't answer that question without a 5000-word essay. We have met the enemy and he is us. John Reid ° 01:51, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Q: 3.1) I love the poster, but it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps I can summarise them thus: huh?  :-) How about 50 words? Regards, Ben Aveling 02:49, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

A: I said 5000 words; that's a minimum. "Vandalism" is a biased word; so is "war"; and so is "winning". Your question assumes that there is a distinct class of activity, distinct from all others; that this is undesirable; that various parties oppose one another (presumably 2 organized groups); and that it is possible for the conflict to end in victory for some party. Some of these assumptions may be true, others false; but I can't really sit here and sort them out on my knee.

I might be able to better address your concerns if you stated them more directly. If you're looking for some sort of vision, sorry. I have plenty of those but I don't know how many are appropriate for WP. Certainly, ArbCom is not a platform from which to launch agendas. I see it as a dull, nose-to-the-grindstone task of hearing stories about people fighting, hearing about them all over again 6 or 7 times, then saying, "You were fighting. Now go sit in the corner/leave the room/shake hands and apologize/don't do that again." We can't fine anyone so much as a dollar, let alone slam him in Q.

ArbCom is not here to direct the future of WP or even to solve problems. It's very dangerous for a community to put that much control in the hands of a small group of entirely fallible humans. I'm running for a seat on the bench because I want to keep ArbCom focused on its proper role of terminating wheel wars and remedying issues of user conduct. You need to make policy -- and if you think we need to beat off the vandals with a stick, all I have to say about it is, Please do so politely. John Reid ° 10:46, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from Sugaar

Q: How would you deal with abuse of authority by administrators, meaning by this application of blocks as punitive measures and use of blocks in unclear PA cases, as per WP:BLOCK. Would you protect the sysop no matter what or would you defend policy above all? In other words, what do you consider more important: strict discipline or strict application of policy? Thanks.

A: Policy. There is always room for interpretation and application of common sense; I avoid the word "strict" when human beings are involved. But policy as expressed by our community consensus will be my only guide. John Reid ° 11:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Question by Carcharoth

I have been perusing the block logs of candidates in these elections. Do you think looking at past incidents and disputes documented in a block log are a good way of assessing a candidate? Carcharoth 00:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions from You, Too

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Questions from Anomo

1. Do you think there should be an age requirement for ArbCom? Anomo 12:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

2. I have read on several websites (they even gave links to block logs) of Wikipedia admins who do things like indefinitely blocking accounts who have not edited for months, there was no CheckUser anything, no reports, and the admin didn't give any reason, just put personal attacks as the block reason (e.g. saying "troll"). Basically such cases seem done beyond punative, but just out of bullying. I saw at least ten of these, but so far I can only find one here [5]. I don't feel like digging for hours, as I just want to ask your opinion of whether you support or oppose such admin activity because it's clear most support it. Anomo 12:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

3. What is your view on the current policy often called "kicking them while they're down" of deleting the user and talk pages of people who are blocked? Anomo 12:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

4. What is your view on the practice on Wikipedia where a person blanks out text on talk pages because the text mentioned something wrong the person did or defeated them in an argument? The text blanked usually has no reason given. When there is a reason given, it's only a fake reason. In rare cases, the text is not blanked, but the entire talk page is archived including discussions hours old, blanking it out. Anomo 12:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

5. What is your view on the frequent practice of locking the talk page of someone who is banned to avoid communication with them? Anomo 12:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

6. Why is it that in the past when in a conflict in ArbCom between non-admins and administrators that ArbCom has usually sided with the admins? Anomo 17:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from Proto

Hi John. With your project, at Wikipedia:Source grading, you've continued to add the tags you created for the project to articles, despite the universal appellations to stop and get a community consensus befopre proceeding, as everyone who has commented on the idea seems to be of the unanimous opinion that it is a bad idea. Yet you proceeded anyway. What's the reasoning behind that?

Question from Dfrg.msc

In one sentence, what will you bring to the Arbitration Committee? Dfrg.msc ^{1 . 2 . Editor Review} 23:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Voting in the elections

Hello, the ArbCom elections are coming up very soon and I was wondering if you would give your public assurance not to vote or comment on other candidates. I think this will help keep friction to a minimum. Imagine how ugly it would be if two people who vehemently publicly attacked and opposed each other both ended up sitting on the ArbCom together. I think, in the best interests of decorum, these kind of conflict of interest issues should be avoided. Do you agree? --Cyde Weys 20:22, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom Candidate Questions

1. As concisely as possible, please explain how you would continue with your stated commitment to the ArbCom process as an ordinary editor, should you NOT be "elected". Please be as concise as possible, preferably in 100 words or less.

My reasons for this question are three-fold.

First, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It's a powerful statement that has many meanings. It means that, among other things, any user has the power to do pretty much anything, should they wish it. I submit my own user contributions as evidence.

Second, one thing that's a constant is Wikipedia's GNU License. As an online-encyclopedia, the history of everything, every edit, every comment, every misdeed, every injury, and every achievement are readily available to anyone who wish to look at it. All they need is a computer, frankly, and they can dig away.

The third is merely a perception. Power is great, but when the entire history of your actions are utterly transparent, and anyone can do virtually anything on their first day here, it's really just a big illusion. I further submit that the more "power" you think you have, the more you have to "lose". You also have to more "work" and have less "fun".

2. What do you think about this "election"? What do you think about your fellow "candidates"? What do you think about "campaign banners" on an online, open-source encyclopedia? What do you think about your own "campaign"? Please answer as concisely as possible, preferably in 100 words or less. For reference, please see this: [WP:Wikipedia is not a Democracy]]?

3. What, specifically have you done wrong in the past as an editor, community member, administrator, and human being trying to create a world-wide online open source encyclopedia on Wikipedia? For reference, see my own user contributions. Please be as concise as possible, preferably in 100 words or less.

4. Do you apologize for your actions, and who are you apologising to, specifically? Please be as concise as possible, preferably in 100 words or less.

5. Hypothetically, how would you deal with an explosion of editors and users behaving very badly because Wikipedia has just aquired a bigger "stick". For reference please see Soft Power.

6. What, exactly do you want do on Wikipedia? Why did you come here, and why did you stay for more than a minute? What's fun for you here? What makes you happy here? Please be as concise as possible, preferably in 100 words or less.

Questions from LoveLight

Would you kindly evaluate and/or comment article 911. As a reader do you find that piece factual and accurate? As an editor do you find it satisfying (with regards to our fundamental Wiki policies and guidelines)? As future arbitrator how do you feel about status quo imposed on that and similar "ever burning" editorials? Lovelight 10:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Questions from jc37

Things to take into consideration in responding to the following questions: One of my main criteria in selecting whom I would like to see as arbitrators is an ability in discernment, and in diplomacy. Also, a Wikipedian who may be involved in contentious issues does not lose or gain my support on only those grounds, as long as the involvement is in a community/encyclopedia-building sense, since that "may" merely mean that the person is involved in issues of contention, which I think is a large enough factor in being on the arbitration committee. Also, while many of the questions below may seem to have rather obvious answers, please consider what I mentioned above. Thanks in advance for your responses : ) - jc37 17:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• 1.) Seeing that it currently seems less than likely that your nomination will succeed, why do you not withdraw? Is this due to an outside hope of the underdog, as a sort of RfC learning experience, a mixture, or something else?

• 2.) You've stated your concerns about the arbitration committee's onvolvement with the making of policy. How do you feel about the recent decision involving WP:CHILD? Did they go too far (if so how), did they not go far enough (in which case, what would you suggest), or do you feel that they stayed the middle course evenly, performing "just right"?

• 3.) You state in answer to a question of User:Mailer Diablo above: "...this entire page is foolish." You then go on to describe that you feel that such is "...information hard to get and information unreliable...", and say to go with your "gut instenct", "flip a coin", or even suggesting: "If I were you, I'd vote for whoever made me feel good for five minutes". As most cases in the arbitration committee involve such information gathering, would you elaborate more fully on this?

• 4.) "If community consensus backs a practice, it is policy." - Could you more fully explain this statement?

• 5.)"I'm running for ArbCom because I like to see an orderly process of policy formation in which members of our community sit down together and rationally work out their concerns. If you elect me to the bench, you will see me do what I do now: Nag people to edit this page and please, don't fight. Thank you." - Do you think that this would to be something that should have been placed in your "statement"? Also, do you feel that this contradicts your other statements about the arbitration committe and policy? If not, please explain.

• 6.) Based on "Writing articles is the only essential contribution." - How do you feel about the work done in "support" of the encyclopedia? (Admins, XfDs, the arbitration committee, etc.)

• 7.) "We should now have a legislative body to balance it -- as well as our executive." - This would seem to suggest that you would favour a republic form of heirarchy on Wikipedia. Do you agree or disagree; and either way, would you more fully explain?

Question from Zoe

What is your feeling concerning the potential vote to desysop User:MONGO? User:Zoe|(talk) 21:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)