Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022/Candidates/Sdrqaz/Questions

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Questions from Red-tailed hawk

2. Hello. Thank you for volunteering to serve on the Arbitration Committee. Would you please explain your understanding of WP:INVOLVED, and would you summarize the extent to which you agree and/or disagree with how the Arbitration Committee has applied the principles of involvement with respect to administrator conduct in Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block, Manning naming dispute, and Climate change? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

   My apologies for the delay in responding – I was away from my computer on the 23rd and should have provided an update on this and will do better. At a basic level, INVOLVED aims to provide fairness by preventing someone who may have clouded judgement by prior involvement from acting in an administrative capacity. I view this prohibition as one of the fundamental principles governing administrators – as I have written, adminship is to be used for the community, not for one's selfish interests.

   For Principle 7 of Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block (2022), I would quibble that there was a discrepancy between the text of the policy and the principle – for me, it is not the same to say that "the community has historically endorsed" versus calling it "[t]he sole listed exception". While we know that policies reflect consensus, and not the other way around, citing precedent is not the same as saying that an action is absolutely fine. As for the application of said principle, I would agree with the Committee's actions, both in the findings of fact and the remedies. TheresNoTime was quite clearly involved, be it due to their role in the RfA or be it due to their subsequent messages to Athaenara. The two factors combined made the involvement beyond dispute (or at least it should have). Based on the votes on Remedy 4, it seems that for the majority of those supporting, the removal of CheckUser was more based on TheresNoTime's behaviour following the tool use instead of due to violations of administrative policy – in an alternate universe, it would seem that the violation of INVOLVED alone would have led to a warning/admonishment instead of removal of both CheckUser and Oversight. While I was mildly surprised to see TheresNoTime's Oversight being removed, I think I would have voted in favour of doing so based on the entirety of what transpired. As for the proposed desysop, many of the votes seem to have focused on another aspect of administrative policy when I believed that the salient issue was involvement. While I think I would have voted against it as excessive, I don't believe I would have done so as readily as many Committee members did.

   Principle 13 of Manning naming dispute (2013) seems to a little short to me (a "modern" Committee would probably list those three sub-principles as separate ones, fleshing them out further), but overall they seem to have been intended as high-level summaries and are factually correct. The involvement-related parts of the finding of fact seem reasonable, as does the admonishment. The indefinite tool restriction on transgender topics is interesting in the sense that is simultaneously broad (not just Manning and not time-limited) and narrow (not a topic ban). While reading through the case, my instinct was that I wouldn't have voted for it because it was based on a single incident; however, as I have written, the need for the community to have faith in administrators' impartiality in these fraught areas is important. As a result of that and the fact that the point of INVOLVED is to minimise decisions clouded by personal emotions, I think that it was the right action. Given that the issues of misconduct stemmed from a single area, I think I would have voted against the desysop as I believe that the tool restriction (a more tailored solution) would have stopped disruption – as I have written, there seems to be a modern trend towards desysopping administrators in misconduct cases. If the restriction had proven unsuccessful, I think I would have been receptive to a case focused on David Gerard, with a desysop very much on the table.

   I think that the age of Climate change (2010) shows a little in the length and extra information when compared to the policy at the time. The principles regarding involvement are a little unfocused and I think I would have proposed alternatives that got at the heart of the issue. Finding of fact 4 seems reasonable, as does the other findings of fact regarding involvement, but I think that lack of diffs supporting Finding of Fact 13.1 is worrying, and I certainly would not have voted for it without diffs in the finding. While a significant improvement on proposed finding 13.0 (which lacked a lot of extenuating information and nuance), it still wasn't good enough. Remedy 9.2 was rightly rejected. While it should be commended for being willing to have some nuance, it unfortunately made things less clear. As for the other involvement-related remedies, I think that asking Stephan Schulz to refrain from further administrative involvement was the right move. As for Lar, to me it felt strange that there were various findings of fact regarding them but no specific remedy – an admonishment would have hopefully worked, but I think perhaps asking them to disengage from the subject area was something that should have been given more serious consideration.

Questions from Izno

2. As an arb, you will have to deal with messes which often have a lot of reading attached to them. Some of them will be the reasonably ordered messes most cases are. Some of them won't be. One mess I regularly think about is this case request (last revision before archival and first revision). Assuming (for simplicity's sake) that the entire discussion was held onwiki, can you share some thoughts on how you might have responded to the original case request, the changes in aggregate that occurred while the request open, and the ultimate case request? Izno (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

   I think that my initial response to the original case request, after reading through the prior discussions, would have been to ask why Jehochman had brought the case before the Committee before other "higher-level" routes of dispute resolution (such as AE – covered by Digwuren / Eastern Europe – or ANI) had not been exhausted, as it had not yet been proven that the community was unable to resolve it – of the routes used, only one noticeboard was claimed to have been used, and COIN is (from prior experience) not particularly well-frequented by administrators.

   While the filer invoked "another hydra head" from Eastern European mailing list, the issue with the comparison is that although one of the parties is the same and it was also related to Eastern Europe, the 2009 case was more about stealth canvassing and the case request was regarding users allegedly acting with a conflict of interest to remove references to a newspaper article and whether it was reliable due to the sources it used. There didn't seem to be any allegations of stealth canvassing, so to me it was unclear why it was being brought up again. The 2009 case had a stronger argument for Committee jurisdiction due to the private evidence, while the case request as written seemed to be focused on a relatively narrow matter. I would have waited for other editors' input (as well as the filer's) before deciding on what to do with the case request. Digging further simply based on that initial request, I would be concerned that one of the sources used by the article was a user that had been banned by both the Arbitration Committee and the Foundation. While the article was mainly sympathetic to said user, Jehochman appeared to make it seem as if it was critical of them.

   Changes in aggregate as the case progressed include the COIN discussion being closed (archive) and Jehochman posting a message on behalf of the banned user. At that point, I think I would lean further towards declining the case request as written – the close meant that the community has attempted to resolve the issue and some chance should be given to see if it would prove successful. I would also make clear my concern towards Jehochman for posting that message. However, on the wider issue, I would have to investigate further if a case were necessary on a general Polish World War II scope, as disputes were/are evidently ongoing. Ultimately, the Arbitration Committee has been elected to deal with intractable disputes, and I would feel compelled to not pass the buck / kick the can down the road if I felt that the community was unable to deal with the issue. Significant work would be needed in such a case to keep it focused.

   Looking at the final revision of the case and the successful motion, I cannot help but feel that some of the remedies were toothless – while the good intentions behind asking users to return to the area are admirable, I don't think that it would have led to any meaningful change. While the amendments to the original motion help it a bit (explicitly allowing requests directly to ARCA by both non-administrators and administrators), the measures seem insufficient to me. As for the supplemental motions, I feel that a full case should have been opened to deal with each of the editors (including Jehochman – even though I feel that he was rightfully admonished and the decision to do so was justifiable as the evidence was limited to what happened in the case request, in the end he deserved the Committee to go through the dispute properly).

Questions from TheresNoTime

2. How do you foresee the role of the Arbitration Committee changing with regard to the adoption of the Universal Code of Conduct (namely, due to the enforcement guidelines, and the introduction of the global Coordinating Committee)? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

4. Is ANI pronounced A-N-I or Annie? Thank you for standing, and good luck. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Questions from Gerda Arendt

2. Do you believe that we still have infobox wars? If yes, do you have better ideas than the 2013 arb ruling to end them?

Question from BilledMammal

2. Would you ever support a principle or finding of fact that is based on the Universal Code of Conduct?