Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Izno (talk | contribs) at 01:52, 31 December 2022 (→‎Outgoing members of the 2022 Arbitration Committee: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Iranian Politics disruption continues

Original announcement

For now, the Arbitration Committee is informing the community of this disruption... Are there more details about this disruption that can be made public, like diffs or a more-specific description? Levivich (talk) 17:44, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Levivich I wish there were more details that could be made public. Unfortunately what's been shared, at least for the moment, falls well into the confidential realm and I hesitate to even characterize why it's confidential in this case. That said the foundation did have a briefing for the wider FUNCTIONARY team which was attended by myself, Eek, Primefac, L235, Doug Weller, Risker, and GeneralNotability so there are some non-arbs who have been briefed and will, I expect, confirm the legitimacy and seriousness about what has been shared. Speaking only for myself, the goal with this announcement is two-fold. First to give the community some background/awareness if ArbCom and the WMF take some actions (with some of the brainstormed actions being new approaches to disruption) and second to try to generate some interest in the topic which might render the need for those actions less necessary. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:52, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks BK. For the record I don't doubt the legitimacy or seriousness of the issue. I'm having a failure of imagination, because, unlike conduct disruption such as harassment, I can't imagine what sort of content disruption (disinformation) would need to remain confidential, e.g. tag team edit warring, RFC vote stacking, that sort of thing. But if there's nothing more specific that can be said about this disruption without breaching confidentiality, then that's that. Levivich (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think I misunderstood your question and so some answers can be given. Besides what Risker notes below, I would just say the issues that led to the principles from the case and the sorts of conduct/content issues described in the FoF (if not necessarily those specific editors) remain present. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You may be interested to read m:Office actions/December 2022 statement, if you weren't aware of it beforehand. Per m:Wikimedia regions, "MENA" refers to Middle East and North Africa. (At least, I assume that the statement is relevant to this case ...) Sdrqaz (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Sdrqaz. Levivich (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Glad to see this is on the radar. The area was a morass of POV-warring even before the most recent protests, and the need for attention is more acute than ever. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:07, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are definitely some areas where we, as an editing community, can take some action. One in particular would be to really examine the antecedents of a lot of the sources that are being used: for example, are they from truly independent organizations, or from media sources that have very close connections to the government and/or opposition. It can be difficult for us, who are mainly not well informed of this kind of information, to ensure that the reference sources being used are high quality and as independent as possible. We would probably benefit from watching targeted articles and seeing how editors modify them, particularly if they go from unusually favourable to the "opposition" to favourable to the "government". Many of those would be in relation to the current protests, but also those that relate to politicians, political organizations, governmental organizations, and so on. Because of the limited number of editors who are both unbiased and familiar with the subjects, it is an area ripe for disinformation. Risker (talk) 18:20, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Let me +1 everything Risker said and to expand on one point: We would probably benefit from watching targeted articles and seeing how editors modify them, particularly if they go from unusually favourable to the "opposition" to favourable to the "government" or go from unusually favourable to the "government" to unusually favourable to the "opposition". Barkeep49 (talk) 18:56, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But if we do not know which articles are targeted it is a bit difficult to watch them. Ymblanter (talk) 14:02, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should list some articles that need more eyes. North8000 (talk) 14:08, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

North and Ymblanter the idea of asking "which articles to watch" is a reasonable one. However, it needs to be emphasized that this disruption is throughout the topic area. This is similar to how an ask of "what articles should we watch in the American politics topic area?" would mention big names like Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and the many related articles about those two figures, but would likely not mention Scott Baugh or Libs of TikTok to name two articles which have recently received article restrictions. In the last report from the disinformation team (which doesn't cover the most recent activities) there were over 100 different articles mentioned as having been disrupted by editors.
However, because it's a reasonable ask and as a place to start here are some topics with-in the broader Iranian Politics area which are likely to have ongoing disruption and/or have had disruption in the past and in no particular order:
Please note that this is a list I have compiled myself and is not something I have run by any other arb or the WMF disinformation team. Also note that some of the 100+ articles mentioned above were in other topics I didn't include above in the hopes of having a somewhat manageable list and for the sake of BEANS. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I am not sure whether the talk pages of these articles have AE template, but of not it would be a good idea to add the templates. This will make the articles easily findable, in addition to the main function of the template. Ymblanter (talk) 18:37, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I used the related changes "watchlist" trick on User:GeneralNotability/watchlists/Iran_protests, for some specific articles related to the ongoing protests. (For those who don't know the trick: make a page that's a list of links to articles of interest, then use Special:RelatedChanges to see changes on pages linked to or from that page and get a recent changes feed. Great way to make pseudo-watchlists for specific topic areas) GeneralNotability (talk) 20:34, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great, thanks. I added yesterday templates at some talk pages, but there is more work to be done. Ymblanter (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I worry that an officialish list kept by arbcom would make a lot of editors uncomfortable but I think GN's method of watching a topic area is a good one, and one ArbCom could link to, if the community, or perhaps even just the functionaries, maintained the pages. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:50, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

2023 Arbitration Committee

Original announcement
  • Congratulations to all of the reelected and incoming arbitrators, and to those whose terms are expiring, thank you for your service. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:30, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to thank the election commission and the scrutineers for their work on this. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Congrats to all, and echo the thanks for the scrutineers work. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 00:04, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks to everyone who made the election possible, as well as to the unsuccessful candidates, the arbitrators-elect, and the retiring arbitrators. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 00:27, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • My condolences to all the successful candidates. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:27, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also passing along my holiday condolences. Mkdw talk 08:12, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • With fewer than 30 hours until the Committee's self-imposed deadline, I would like to ask if it is still on track to meet it. This is the latest the Committee has made announcements regarding departing members' permissions in a decade. If it is still deliberating, I suggest that it would set a poor precedent to allow a user to retain access to these sensitive permissions if they haven't met the expectations of the role – while incumbents are not subject to the minimum logged activity levels, they are expected to remain active and be responsive to the Committee's queries. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:49, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a plan for the announcement to go up later today. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Change to the Checkuser team

Original announcement
Welcome back Ivanvector (talk · contribs)! -- Ponyobons mots 20:34, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Outgoing members of the 2022 Arbitration Committee

Original announcement
  • Was the Committee able to successfully contact all outgoing members? Sdrqaz (talk) 23:00, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    No, we were unable to get in contact with one of the members successfully. That is the primary cause of the delay in this announcement that you asked about above. The astute observer will plausibly identify who that person is and accordingly why the outgoing message is worded the way it is, say, in comparison to previous years. Izno (talk) 23:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I figured as much. As members of the Committee are undoubtedly aware, functionaries-en has several subscribers who have been inactive for lengthy periods of time. Is there a plan to address this, given the sensitive information that is shared on it? Sdrqaz (talk) 23:37, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    We last did an activity audit in late 2021 so it feels appropriate to do one again soon. However, as we are in the transition period there aren't really plans for much of anything at the moment. As with many things whether or not this is done will boil down to an Arb or Functionary (likely one of the list owners) making this a priority. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:47, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. The last time someone was unsubscribed for inactivity, it seems that it was done unilaterally by a list admin. The optimist in me hopes that it will be similarly straightforward next time.
    As an aside, while I was pleased to see that the default outcome from lack of response to CU/OS queries is not retention of those permissions, I was disappointed to see that the removal without a holder's explicit consent was not made clearer in the announcement, given that inactivity removals are routinely announced. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:08, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    ... which was the secondary cause for the delay, as there was quite some discussion on the point. What's in the announcement text is something I think I'd call a compromise as a true statement, but that's my personal feeling on it. We're looking to set up either some internal procedure or possibly adding something to WP:ARBPRO to make it clear for the future how to handle this very-much-an-edge case situation (historically, the outgoing have reached out to let us know, and the counterexamples were rare). I don't think anyone has discussed how it should be framed in the announcement in the context of going forward, so I'm happy to have gotten the feedback. Izno (talk) 01:52, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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