Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2016/Candidates/Doug Weller/Questions

Individual questions

Please ask your individual questions here. While there is no limit on the number of questions that may be asked, please try to keep questions relevant. Try to be as clear and concise as possible, and avoid duplicating questions that have already been asked.

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Questions from Collect

Should the existence of a "case" imply that the committee should inevitably impose "sanctions"?
Recycling my old answer as experience hasn't changed my mind: A case can be opened if it’s decided that there is a serious enough problem to investigate and that sanctions may be necessary if the evidence warrants them, but with no presupposition that sanctions will be required. And if after digging into the evidence it turns out that there isn’t anything serious enough to warrant sanctions, it would be nonsense to sanction someone anyway.
If an administrator has openly stated an aversion to an editor on that editor's talk page, is that sufficient to indicate that the administrator is no longer impartial concerning that editor?
Generally yes, although there may be unusual circumstances that would allow an Admin to act. WP:INVOLVED clearly says "Although there are exceptions to the prohibition on involved editors taking administrative action, it is still the best practice, in cases where an administrator may be seen to be involved, to pass the matter to another administrator via the relevant noticeboards." I guess one example where action might be taken is if the editor is rapidly adding libellous BLP violations that will need oversighting and instant action is needed to stop them. In such circumstances the Admin should ask for a review of their block. This doesn't work the other way around, by the way. I've seen editors recently who seem to believe that if they criticise an Admin that Admin becomes involved. That's not the case.
a. In cases where the person involved in a case is actually out of the country during that case, should the case be delayed to afford that editor sufficient time to address any issues raised?
b. Where multiple editors present evidence against such a person, should that person be afforded additional space for rebuttal?
c. Where evidence is added at the last minute, should the clock be stopped to allow actual time to rebut the last-minute evidence?
d. Under what circumstance, if any, should arbitrators be allowed to present evidence in the proposed decision which was not previously presented by anyone else?
I presume you mean unable to use the Internet to take part in a case, which might be for various reasons, eg illness. I've argued this year that we should postpone a case because the person involved would have difficulties responding. However, we should only do this when we are convinced that this is not a delaying tactic.
We do have a problem with over-strict word limits. I don't think we need to allow more words per editor offering evidence, but we do need to take into account the amount of evidence being offered. In other words, if 2 editors offer the same evidence, only one response is required. I don't know exactly how we should do this. We've discussed it this year but reached no conclusion, so it should be on the committee's internal agenda in January so that it can go forward with clearer and improved word limits.
Sure, we could stop the clock or tell them to use the Workshop. It should also be added to the new committee's agenda so that we are consistent over cases.
It's already been pointed out by another Arb that all conduct during the case should be taken into account, and that includes conduct during the Workshop phase and the PD phase even if no other editor cites it as evidence. I don't think that individual Arbs should go fishing for evidence during the PD phase as a matter of course, and we in any case normally expect other editors to provide evidence. But one possible scenario is that during the PD phase we are given privately evidence relative to behavior that has occurred during the PD phase, either on or off-wiki, we might well decide to add it to the case. But that should be a joint decision, not an individual one.

Thank you. Collect (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Alanscottwalker

Thanks for volunteering. The regular meetings of the ctte make much sense. How will you deal with the inevitable calls for published minutes, etc. (even with appropriate secrecy or vagueness about sensitive matters)? More burden, but it seems inescapable, almost part and parcel of the meeting idea. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:53, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Phone conferences differ from email threads in that they are real time - you aren't listening to someone's comment the next day. We also have discussions on our own wiki. It's an interesting question where you'd draw the line. And would we then be expected to respond to comments and questions? Will people really want to know who's doing what? Will we be asked for performance indicators? Agh. I just don't know. We've only had one and that was several weeks ago, and none are scheduled at the moment. So they are a good idea and I hope become a regular feature as a partial substitute for the slower email and arbwiki process, but phone conferences are only an extension of those processes, and we don't keep minutes for them. I'm not sure of the best way to deal with any requests for minutes although I guess my first response would be to determine what use they would be and go from there. As you suggest, they wouldn't be our actual internal minutes as we can't reveal emails, etc. and a lot of our discussion would normally concern private emails.

Question from Biblioworm

Consider the following ideas for reforming ArbCom:

Remove and redistribute tasks that are irrelevant to dispute resolution (such as functionary issues) and tasks that are perhaps too sensitive and stressful for anonymous, untrained volunteers (such as legal issues, privacy matters, off-wiki harassment, etc.)
I don't know what you mean by "functionary issues", We of course are functionaries and approve the positions of other functionaries, so we can't realistically divorce ourselves from them. We have over the two years of my term been divesting ourselves of some responsibilities, eg child protection. And we don't deal with legal matters. As for off-wiki harassment, as much as I'd like to see the WMF deal with it, we're the natural port of call for editors who don't wish to make their problems public. We could I guess just tell them to contact the WMF, but I doubt that would be very productive. We do liaise with the WMF over such issues and they are looking into providing harassment training. I doubt any of that will be enough and I agree it would be nice if we didn't have to deal with it. I'd like to see COI and (undeclared) paid editing dealt with by the foundation.
Streamline ArbCom case procedures by: Requiring that, at the beginning of every case, ArbCom clearly state (in a question format), what issues they will address, and additionally require that ArbCom address only those issues in the final decision. A great problem right now is the tendency of cases to be chaotic and have little structure.
Given that we can't tell what issues will arise during the case or what evidence will be submitted during a case, I don't think we should hobble ourselves in advance and I doubt that the community would want us to prohibit ourselves from dealing with unforeseen issues. For instance we always take into account the behavior of parties during a case, and that's unpredictable. We have however had problems with scope and we need to find a way to make sure that the scope of a case is clearly outlined and focussed and that the rationale is clear. An unfocused scope can lead to an unfocused case, and scopes too wide or too narrow usually also create problems. We need to ensure that all active Arbs take part in deciding the scope of a case, probably by a combination of email and phone conference. Phone conferences have their down side as time zones interfere with participation, but they can be more fruitful than extended email threads. I'd like to see the committee having them at the beginning of each case.
Eliminating or tightly restricting the peanut galleries and focusing mostly on the actual case parties. The peanut galleries which show up at ArbCom cases are often the cause of much confusion, flamewars, and disruption (after all, people in a courtroom gallery are not permitted to just get up and start speaking—only the parties may speak).
You're suggesting restrictions on community participation. Unlike a court, I think we should welcome relevant observations and suggestions. I've found them very helpful and they have at times caused me to reconsider and change my position. We of course need to try to avoid disruption of any kind, and I'd be an idiot to say it never happens, but we should also welcome constructive participation.
Give first preference to topic bans (or even temporary blocks) over sitebans, unless the party in question clearly has broad behavioral problems that are not restricted to a particular topic area. There is a rather widespread perception that ArbCom is currently much too hasty in using the banhammer.
That's an unfortunate but understandable impression. I would never want to site ban a productive editor just because of problems in one topic field, and I think that's the general opinion among my colleagues.
Mandate that all AE requests be left open for a minimum amount of time (let's just say 24 hours), to give the accused an opportunity to have their case heard by multiple administrators. Currently, any admin can instantly impose a unilateral and basically irreversible AE blocks, without letting any other admins consider the case. Obviously, this leaves the system rather wide open to abuse.
We certainly want to avoid the sort of quick closure with no action that led to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement, and we did state there that administrators can act unilaterally. I think our other statements there make it clear we expect Administrators to act responsibly, and I don't recall instances of the sort of abuse you mention, although there may have been some. I wouldn't want to make any time limit mandatory without discussion at the AE talk page. I wouldn't necessarily object to some time limit with of course the caveat that there may be situations where faster action is justified.
Make ArbCom more open by allowing ordinary users to propose motions, with the caveat that the motion will be considered dead and cannot be reconsidered if no arbitrator responds within a certain amount of time.
If we could define the boundaries and ensure that we weren't creating another drama forum, this might be an excellent idea.

Do you support these measures, and would you work to implement them if elected? If you do not support all of them, please specify which ones you do support.}}

Thank you. Biblio (talk) Reform project. 22:10, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mark Arsten

Hi Doug, thanks for running for Arbcom. My questions are about account security.
What are your thoughts on the handling of the recent incident in which several administrator accounts were compromised? Do you think that technical or policy changes need to be made as a result? Also, are you confident in the security of your e-mail and Wikipedia accounts?
I'm generally pleased with the response - it was fast and has sped up the adoption of stronger security measures. Accounts have been globally locked quickly and the situation is being constantly monitored. At least one new software change has been implemented and more are forthcoming. I'd like to see technical changes to make it easy to recover my account if I lose my token, and understand that's being worked on. As for policy, I think we need to revisit the issue of inactive (as Admins, not editors) or barely active Admins, as they are probably the least likely Admins to change to 2FA. I've changed my passwords and although I'm pretty confident they are secure I am considering using 2FA, I just need to reassure myself I can't lose my e-mail or Wikipedia accounts permanently by accident or carelessness or my part! I have had a committed identity for some time now.

Questions from Carrite

Thanks for running. This year's ArbCom took very few cases and seems to have kept to deadlines more expeditiously. I think most everyone can agree that this was for the good. What do you think was the biggest mistake made by ArbCom in 2016? What letter grade (A to F) would you give their performance? What could they do better?
Probably the Hardy case. But of course that was a messy situation to begin with. Grade? I've given grades on everything from Master's theses to children's spelling and like some sort of guideline, but given that we've done a pretty good job but there's clearly room for improvement, I'd say a B. And as I've said above and in my statement, issues like scope, involvement of other arbs at all stages and not just the drafters, use by us of the Workshop and phone conferences would be a good start.

Do you read or post at Wikipediocracy? What is your opinion about this off-wiki criticism site? Do you feel it is a malicious venue for harassment or a positive tool for off-wiki discussion of Wikipedia's periodic problems or something in between these extremes?
I've read it from time to time when someone's brought a link to my attention, but otherwise I generally avoid it. I'm not a member but can understand why some good Wikipedians participate. It's a curate's egg. I appreciated it when someone brought up an off-wiki attack on me which was quickly refuted. And there are worse sites that focus on us.

Question from Yngvadottir

Thanks for running again. With regards to your points about phone conferencing, do you have any ideas on how the accessibility issue with respect to deafness could be overcome? Yngvadottir (talk) 20:04, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That's an excellent question. My wife is very hard of hearing, so it's one that I would work very hard to solve if we find it's an actual issue. Since I'm responding only minutes after you've asked it I don't have a definite answer, but it has reminded me I'm making a mistake in using the word "phone" as these are "voice" conferences and use a web interface - I think the one we used last can be used with a real phone, but I used it with headphones and a mike. So whether some sort of speech-to-text software could interface with it, I don't know. But I'll ask!
I have found out that the conferencing system used by the WMF in their voice conferences with us does have a stream to text facility. They didn't know about it and are going to test it at my request.

Questions from Opabinia

I debated whether to post these for the current arbs after asking the former arbs, and decided the fairest thing to do is post them with the disclaimer that it's fine to ignore my ramblings ;)

Case load is way down. Email volume is holding steady, but is still way down from its peak. ARCA requests are up slightly, but not too bad. Attention to this election is down compared to last year. We're slowly becoming irrelevant, and not in a bad way. Meanwhile, though, the most common community dispute resolution venue is ANI, with which there is long-standing and widespread dissatisfaction.
I'm interested in your thoughts on the general state of dispute resolution on Wikipedia. What do you think about this trend toward fewer cases? Do you have any ideas on how to improve the committee's efficiency at ARCA? What if anything can the committee do to help at ANI?
As I commented during the discussion at WT:AC#Declining caseload, I agree that the spread of sanctions to cover more contentious topic areas has made a lot of difference. I don't think it's just shuffled stuff off to AE, it actually seems to have reduced editwarring. It may in some cases have been a motivation for editors to leave a topic area, but I have no figures for that. Next year may be different with the American political scene apparently undergoing major changes which may see long term conflict. ARCA has been somewhat more frustrating for me this year, with requests staying open for far too long. I'll comment on that below. I've got no metrics for ANI either, but my impression is that it isn't quite as dismal as it was some time ago. By its nature it will always attract the most problematic of editors. It's a community venue and I'd be unhappy to see our powers extend to trying to change or police it, even if we could find a policy justification. The only thing I can think of may be seen as too radical, and that's to set up a clerking mechanism similar to the one we use (which of course doesn't always work optimally). We've got no remit to set one up so it would have to come from the community via an RfC, which might be very interesting. Who knows, something creative might come from another community look at the issues. But I don't see it as our role to suggest such an RfC (and as I recall we decided not to propose an RfC in another situation.
What aspects of the committee's work did you find most (or least) satisfying since you've been a member? Do you expect this to change much in a new term?
The slowness and at times very low participation in discussions, leaving issues raised by email unanswered for weeks and ARCA requests dangling. You've helped a lot on the email side, but it shouldn't depend on one or two people bearing the bulk of the burden of nagging and responding. In part it's because we are a committee, and worse than that one that never meets physically. Other than case deadlines, which are fairly often not met, we generally don't have other deadlines imposed upon us either externally or internally. And even in the rare cases that we do we don't always meet them either. But maybe setting ourselves more deadlines would be useful. The one voice conference we had worked very well I thought, going through a lot of business quickly, with decisions made, tasks assigned, etc. But although there was discussion about having another one that didn't happen. It was great that DeltaQuad set it up, but I'd suggest trying to use the WMF facilities - I'm sure they've been offered - as that way we aren't dependent on one or two people having the capacity, and any of us can set one up at any time. If we have these regularly I think things will change. If we don't, not so much. Things will start off well for a month or so and then slow down again. Then there's drafting. Fewer cases this year have made this less of a problem, but as I've said we need more arbitrators participating at all stages of drafting where possible (multiple concurrent cases can obviously make this more difficult). Although we concluded 4 cases this year, but one of them was left over from 2015 so it hasn't been as much of a problem.

Question from Ferahgo

In his comment here, The Devil's Advocate criticized your decision to not recuse from the "Race and Intelligence" arbitration case (although I'm aware the rest of Arbcom accepted your decision about that). Could you please explain what level of involvement in disputes covered by a case should require an arbitrator to recuse, in your opinion?
WP:ARBCOND outlines the policy regarding recusals, and it is difficult to give more precise rules about what level of involvement would require recusal because it always depends on the circumstances of the case. The rules for Arb recusal are different from those regarding admin involvement (WP:INVOLVED). One issue is that an admin usually acts alone to perform an administrative action, whereas an Arb acts in conjunction with the Committee. Arbitration procedures are slow and methodical and there is plenty of time for editors or members of the Committee to say whether they think a particular Arb should recuse.

Question from *thing goes

Regarding security in e-mail-communication, especially when it comes to potentially sensitive information about “editors”:

Do you deem unencrypted e-mail-communication with said content sufficiently secure and private?
Not my area of expertise. We definitely need to make sure we have strong passwords we don't use elsewhere and hopefully 2FA, which I'm doing. I see that DeltaQuad has dealt with the technical aspects, that's her area of expertise. It sounds as though the problems wouldn't be easy to overcome.
Would you strive to see your policy regarding that matter realized?
I think we are all aware of the need for strong passwords and 2FA. I'll certainly strive to make our communications as secure as practical - but it doesn't look as though encrypted email is going to be practical for us. I see that Email encryption says it's difficult for users.

Question from The Rambling Man

In relation to the recent 'Arbcom case' which saw my eventual de-sysopping and active sanctions against me, would you accept a case in which dozens of individuals had been canvassed and encouraged to contribute, all of whom had been notified because they had been in conflict with the subject for one reason or another over the past decade?
I voted to accept your case "with the understanding that the case will not be limited to TRM and George Ho." That unfortunately didn't happen. It raises an interesting issue - if an acceptance vote is conditional, and that condition isn't met, and if the case is accepted by only one vote, where does that leave us? I've already said that I think we need more voice conferences and that we should have one or more when we are considering accepting a case, in particular to determine scope but also where necessary to discuss circumstances such as you describe and how they might affect the case. My direct answer to your question is that I think we should accept or reject cases based solely on the merits of the case. The committee has to be able to work through evidence that might have come from the sort of canvassing that occurred in your case or edits from people recruited off-wiki in cases such as Gamergate. Maybe the new committee should discuss the issue when they discuss scope, but in the end the answer to canvassing is our ability to to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, and if we can't do that then we will be failing our resonsibilities.

Questions from Antony-22

In general, does enforcing civility harm free speech? Does it help it? What is the line between incivility and harassment?
Without knowing what you mean by "free speech" I'm not sure how to respond. There's an essay WP:Free speech which might interest you. Having said that, I have no doubt that some people find it difficult to contribute in an uncivil atmosphere. Some withdraw, others respond with more incivility or anger. Neither response is conducive to fruitful discussion, which is presumably one of our goals in even being concerned about civility. We define harassment as "a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons." Incivility becomes harassment when it is targetting someone with the intention of pushing them out of a discussion or a field of editing. Determining whether the boundary between them has been breached can sometimes be tricky but at other times is very obvious.
Wikipedia relies primarily on volunteer labor, and many are attracted to Wikipedia in part due to its countercultural nature of subverting traditional gatekeepers to knowledge. Recently there has been increasing participation by professionals through formal programs in GLAM institutions, universities, and government agencies. This is perhaps causing some angst that if workplace standards of decorum are enforced on Wikipedia, existing editors will be driven out. How can volunteers and professionals with different standards of conduct be made to coexist on Wikipedia with the minimal disruption to our existing contributor base?
I haven't seen evidence that this has become a problem. It's possible that a shifting demographic might bring about changes in our policies dealing with civility and harassment and our role in that would not be in formulating new policies but in applying changed policies to cases. In the meantime, just as we expect editors used to writing original research for journal articles to follow our no original research policy when editing, we expect all editors to adhere to our standards of conduct and to accept the consequences when they don't.
More specifically, let's say a professional at one of these institutions complains to ArbCom that another editor is using uncivil language that violates their organizations' internal rules, and thus their engagement with Wikipedia is jeopardizing their job. What considerations would go into ArbCom resolving such a case?
I'm not sure how that could happen. In my experience no organisation I've worked for, and I've been an academic at a major university and worked for a large government body, has suggested that someone's job would be at risk because of something similar to what you describe. We have no way of enforcing any other organisation's policies, we can only enforce our own. On a related note, and if there were very unusual circumstances that I haven't imagined, we don't take cases that haven't gone through several lower level dispute resolutions processes which have failed to resolve the issue.
Arbcom's actions have come under scrutiny from the outside press in the past. Do you think the Arbcom has a role in educating reporters about cases when they come under such scrutiny, to reduce the factual inaccuracies that sometimes creep into these articles?
Definitely not. Individual members have done that at their peril, but if anyone should it's the Foundation. It's not our role and shouldn't be.

Questions from Sarah777

Would you support the unconditional lifting of restrictions placed on me by Arbcom about 7 years ago?
I don't know the case or you. But you've had a clean block record for well over five years, which is encouraging. I'd advise you to bring your request to WP:ARCA and if I'm on the committee when you do I can assure you I'll approach your request without bias.
Do you accept that there is an in-built bias towards an "Anglo-Saxon" perspective on En Wikipedia?
Not sure what you mean by Anglo-Saxon. There's a clear bias towards native English speakers I'd say, but they aren't all Anglo-Saxon. And of course towards developed countries. I suspect that many of the smaller Wikipedias have a more nationalist bias, but that's no excuse for not trying to fix any imbalance here.
Do you acknowledge that "civility" is often used as a political weapon by Admins to suppress perspectives they disagree with? Sarah777 (talk) 20:11, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can't recall any instances, although with over 500 Admins it might well happen occasionally. I hope that if it happened often it would be brought to the attention of the community, as clearly that's not acceptable. I am presuming that you mean Admins sanctioning editors for incivility in order to suppress their perspective which would be a misuse of Admin tools.

Questions from George Ho

If a person subject to the case avoided one of the phases of the accepted ArbCom case, how would the person's avoidance or boycott affect the overall results of the case?
In the DangerousPanda case, Dangerous Panda didn't participate in the evidence phase. We need to be sure that parties are both aware of the case and able to participate and that they realise that non-participation isn't a way to avoid possible sanctions, but it's their choice whether or not to take part in the case.
Rephrasing or specifying the questions: The majority of the Committee voted to revoke a person's administrative privileges, yet that person resigns from those duties before the decision became final. What if that person did not resign and did let the decision be final? Would the Committee or that person be antagonized by many people for the decision to revoke the privileges?
I'm still not sure what you mean. However, I'm guessing that as "antagonize" means "to make someone dislike you or feel opposed to you" you might mean would the committee or that person be criticised or attacked, something like that. But if I'm right, that means you're asking me to speculate about the way in which "many people" would respond, and even in context I probably wouldn't want to try, without a specific context I can't even try.