Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/Discussion

2020 Arbitration Committee Elections

Status as of 17:16 (UTC), Sunday, 26 May 2024 ()

• Thank you for participating in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections. The certified results have been posted.
• You are invited to leave feedback on the election process.

This page collects the discussion pages for each of the candidates for the Arbitration Committee elections of December 2020. To read Candidate Statements and their Q&As during the Nomination process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates. To discuss the elections in general, see Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020.

Candidates

Bradv

Communicative

There's a lot to like about Brad, but by far the best is how communicative he's been. He's been honest and open about the Committee and has been an excellent ambassador for ArbCom's work. Likewise when voting on cases/motions/etc., Brad gives a real understanding of the issues at hand, and often I find I learn something just by reading that vote. It's a skill shared by some of the best Arbs I've seen, and I look forward to seeing Brad on the Committee once again. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Enthusiastic endorsement

I'd like to add my enthusiastic endorsement of Bradv for re-election to the Arbitration Committee. I have had the privilege of working with Brad for a while now, as a fellow clerk prior to his election in 2019 and subsequently supporting him as an arbitrator for the past year. Even though I was positive he would be an excellent addition to the committee, he still managed to exceed my high expectations for him. Brad is a fantastic communicator who has something insightful and thought-provoking to say in every discussion, and he brings with him a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of policy and arbitration procedure alongside a strong sense of both fairness and empathy. It's clear to me, and I think to anyone that knows him well, that Brad really means it when he says that he loves this project and is proud of everyone helping to build it. He has both my thanks and my vote. CThomas³ (talk) 20:30, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly second this. I first got to know Bradv in late 2018, when he joined the arbitration clerk team. Brad was a fast learner and quickly became one of the most active clerks, leading to a unanimous promotion recommendation among the full clerks within only a few months and confirmation by the Committee shortly thereafter. He became de facto lead clerk for several months before his election to ArbCom, where he has been one of its most effective members. Bradv has become one of the Wikipedians I know best, and so I can say this with confidence: he is one of the most genuine, most thoughtful, most patient, and most honest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. Please join me in voting for him. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:00, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Dispassionate

- and therefore leaning to a cold, hard way of reviewing cases without always giving sufficient examination of the veracity of the claims of the original posters or comments by the uninvolved Wikipedia 'governance obsessives' or those with a general disinclination for the somewhat necessary need for administrators. This may work for some cases but not for others, so a lack of consistency. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:07, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I presume that your impression of me has been formed mainly by my participation in your arbitration case, since I'm not aware of any other significant interaction between the two of us. I've explained my thoughts on that case in some detail here. – bradv🍁 06:48, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Neither in my voter guide section about you nor here have I made any reference to that Arbcom case. Some voters who read my comments above: 'This may work for some cases but not for others...' may even consider them to be a plus point, but the operative word is consistency. There are no rules at ACE that anyone who writes a voter guide or comments in the discussion section needs to have interacted with a candidate. We're talking about you here, not me (you've had your satisfaction already in dealing with me the way you chose). I have concerns in general for years about the role of the Arbitration Committee and hence the people who compose it - which might also include 'governance obsessives' . I am not a spiteful or vindictive person, you have linked to comments of yours, you may now wish to read my voter guide - fully. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Your voter guide section on him quotes a line from his accept vote at your case, directly, in quotation marks. Parabolist (talk) 00:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah, you mean this one: "We have a duty to perform a thorough examination of all the facts". Yes, well it wasn't intended to be a reference to my Arbcom case, more an illustration of something he claimed and then, in my opinion - and that of others - didn't honour. Still, as I have also mentioned, Parabolist, he may have some qualities that appeal to voters, but the choice of candidates is not great. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Primefac

Concerns

• Concern this comment may have been a veiled personal attack to call me a CREEP although per WP:AGF I have to assume it wasn't and just of those occasions where the shortcut can have an unintended double meaning. Perhaps just careless ... but Primefac is an oversighter and going for Arbcom. - Djm-leighpark (talk) 06:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• That is patently not a veiled personal attack to call me a CREEP—from the context it's patently a reference to Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep and Primefac has forgotten to Wikilink the WP:CREEP acronym. ‑ Iridescent 12:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• I suspect Primefac did not forget to wikilink, it's actually possibly good practice not to wikilink common acronyms but can be dubious in some contexts such as here if a double meaning can result. There are actually in my view a couple of acronyms that should possibly be depreciated as they can be used offensively often quite inadvertently. My current assessment of balance of probabilities is that Primefac did not intend to be offensive, however that is not how I initially read it at the time. Djm-leighpark (talk) 17:12, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

  You'll note that BURO was similarly not wikilinked to WP:BURO, nor was DRV linked to WP:DRV. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:19, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• Amorymeltzer: With respect I assume by "You'll" you are referring to me; however I was making that specific point to Iridescent who by there response may have apparently not noticed the same. Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

• This over zealous blanking of the Jeremy Hosking article. Discussions on the talk page got some of the Railway information restored. Its also far from clear to me Hosking's political contributions are irrelevant; perhaps even recent ones not recorded here. It was a blanking that made me uncomfortable. Djm-leighpark (talk) 06:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If one looks hard enough at the thousands of edits made by a busy, dedicated user who has passed RfA and RfB with flying colours, makes, one is sure to find something that might be construed as suboptimal. In the case of Primefac if an edit had been possibly ambiguous, it certainly does not demonstrate a pattern of carelessness or over zealousness that would create a hurdle to a place on the Arbcom. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kudpung: The implication from your statement is I looked through thousands of Primefac's edits. These two touch points between myself and Primefac over the last 6 months is what I recall, but I am open there may be others; especially perhaps the odd DRV or AFD, and I certainly would be more inclined to not register a less contenious event. My experience may be an outlier, and if is this will likely fully emerge here. As an oversighter the community probably need to ensure high standards are maintained. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 23:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark There was no such implication and your assumption is unfortunately totally wrong. Reading between the lines ("that is not how I initially read it at the time") and coming to the wrong conclusion happens a lot on Wikipeia and its effects can even get admins desysoped. What I was clearly inferring was that anyone who has made 166,361 edits is very likely to have made a misplaced edit, but certainly not to the extent that it should be a deal breaker. There nevertheless appears to be a culture on Wikipedia to criticise or punish hardest those who have worked hardest for the project.. I'll say again that I do not see anything at all in Primefac's history that could even be vaguely construed as an obstacle to a seat on the Committee. Popularity contest notwithstanding. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:46, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kudpung: It is clearly not a wrong conclusion to consider that the wording and ordering of Primefac's response may have been intended to cause offence; Wilde, Yeats, and Shakespeare could likely have made such an arrangement with ease. I am currently minded my assessment of the balance of probabilities is there likely was no such issue, and from an AGF point of view that is the case. I will leave you to the last word. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Would walk through fire for PF

The backbone of the OS team, a brilliant judger of consensus, actively works toward resolutions. Unimpeachable. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:42, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

packet filter? —usernamekiran (talk) 05:06, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Too many questions

David Tornheim, you're only allowed to ask two questions. Happy to answer them, but if you could please select which two you'd like me to answer (and remove the others) that would be great. Primefac (talk) 11:55, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh sorry. I didn't realize there was a limit. In 2018, I was able to ask quite a few, e.g. Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2018/Candidates/DGG/Questions#Questions_from_David_Tornheim. Well, maybe I asked each candidate if it was okay to ask more. I don't remember. I didn't get the feeling anyone minded. These were the rules at that time were much simpler, Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2018/Questions. I'm sorry to see this unfortunate change. I will look into why this was changed. I will delete two per your request in the meantime. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

The rule is new this year per the consensus at WP:ACERFC2020. The intent is to keep the number of questions candidates get asked manageable and focused. Thryduulf (talk) 15:57, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I will abide by the rule under protest. I disagree with this close which says there was a consensus that the number of questions should be limited, as there were 16 who voted in favor of limits and 13 who voted for the status quo of no limits. There was a simple majority but not a consensus. No evidence was provided of "excessive questioning".

I further disagree with the claim "There is consensus to impose the same limit as on RfA, the limit on questions will be set at 2." (the end result of these these three,edits).

Of the 16 editors who supported limits

9 editors gave no number, despite the fact that the question specifically asked for one.

5 editors supported RfA limits

1 editor supported 3 questions

1 editor supported 3-5 questions

I simply don't see any consensus that editors should only be allowed to ask at most two initial questions. Only 5 out of the 29 editors who responded said that the limit should reflect RfA limits.

Additionally, I feel the RfC was inadequately advertised. I would have participated in it if I had known about it.

I particularly agree with Seraphimblade: "if you cannot handle a barrage of questions (not all of which will be asked in the best of good faith), you are not well suited for ArbCom." ArbCom is the Supreme Court of Wikipedia. Candidates to the U.S. Supreme Court are grilled for 8+ hours with countless aggressive and pointed questions. Answering these questions is a good test of the candidate's meddle to wade through mounds of editor statements and diffs. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:52, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I suggest making a proposal at next years RfC if you want this changed. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 16:05, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I will for sure. It would be nice to get notice of the RfC on my talk page. --David Tornheim (talk) 17:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The RfC was advertised on central notice for approximately a month, and on multiple arbcom related pages, in the administrators newsletter, AN, and VPP at least. I'm not sure you can legitimately claim that it wasn't advertised widely enough. Thryduulf (talk) 16:52, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I am signed up for Feedback Request Service, where I asked to get up to 60 notices of RfCs per month, and I got no notice of it. Is that what you mean by "central notice"? I can see that the admins all got notice of it in two places (their newsletter on their talk page and apparently somewhere at WP:AN). Village Pump has so much activity, something like that would be hard to notice.

How many non-admins (those who are not regulars at WP:AN) do you think responded to WP:ACERFC2020? I did a search on what links to that specific RfC and I got the impression that only those who were notified on their talk page were those who receive the admin. newsletter. Perhaps, non-admin. editors like me who want to stay informed need to sign up for the admin. newsletter? --David Tornheim (talk) 17:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

By central notice I mean WP:CENT, which is apparently transcluded 5026 times. But if you are interested in participating in the RfC about the ArbCom elections (which happens in September every year) it's not unreasonable to expect you to look at the arbitration noticeboard or various other admin-related pages or the central discussions notice at least once a month. None of these venues, nor the admin newsletter, are exclusive to administrators. Thryduulf (talk) 17:30, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I also maintain a watchlist for arbitration-related matters that is public (see Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Thryduulf/ArbWatchlist) where it is linked (and 2021's will be too) and you can watchlist future election pages now if you wish. Thryduulf (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

This is neither here nor there, but for what it's worth Yapperbot is designed, per it's BRfA, to only notify somewhere around 15-25 users, selected randomly (alluded to on WP:FRS). It did indeed notify users of WP:ACERFC2020 (id: 0BEA1F5), see its edits from around 4:30 UTC, September 1. It looks like 12 folks got the notice. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• I don't follow. Per your own assessment, an overwhelming majority of people who suggested a specific limit were in favor of the RfA limit of 2 questions, which was formalized and unchallenged as a consensus. That's just how things work here. Trying to rewrite the consensus system just because it didn't agree with you or you were not privy to a discussion is not and has never been valid. The ACERFC is universally announced by the software on talk pages, one can hardly say it's not adequately advertised to the community. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:53, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Scottywong

Punching down

I understand the need to allow people to learn, grow, and recover from being uninformed or wrong. I don't want to hold people's past cluelessness about gender (see Moneytrees' Question 2) against them if they've educated themselves. I was uneducated and clueless myself about gender issues for quite a large % of my life. But I'm concerned, not about the lack of knowledge, but about the smug contempt he obviously held for someone who was part of a hated, marginalized group. Not just being wrong, but casually cruel. "What if they say they're dogs? What if they change their gender every day?" hahaha. hilarious) Punching down. This is not a one-off. It is similar to the smug contempt shown against Eric Corbett during last year's denouement: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive312#Further attempts to bait Eric Corbett. I'm not going to go into Eric's status of saint or sinner, as he is not running for ArbCom. But he and Scottywong were at loggerheads for a long time, and when Eric was down and struggling, Scottywong could have chosen to not get involved. Instead, he inserted himself into a discussion to get one last free kick in. Punching down.

These don't seem like mistakes, but seem to me to be a character flaw. I will not be voting for Scottywong, no matter how many people end up running. Punching down will be even easier from an ArbCom seat. If we end up with very few candidates, I hope others will consider the possibility that "empty seat" is a perfectly acceptable alternative. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Interesting, I always had the exact opposite view about Scotty ever since I first met them around 2009. Mainly Scotty contributed with unglamorous but helpful edits & tech work. When he did get involved in drama he'd seemed to argue mostly just against big name editors or groups, always as he saw it as an important issue, not as he enjoyed scrapping like some. I had strong feelings about us treating Chelsea right, and was on her article immediately after she made the announcement back on 21 Aug 2013. But never bothered to engage with Scotty once it went to the Arbs as it was clear his example was just a word picture motivated by wanting to defend the integrity of language & logic. Dozens of editors were arguing against Chelsea's wishes for similar good faith encyclopaedic reasons. Folk might forget this as nowadays it may seem that only a bigot could want to use deadnames, but when this all began the vast majority of the media were using her deadname, they only switched a few days after Wikipedia led the way by renaming her article to her correct name. When Scotty begain feuding with Eric, if he thought of it in these terms at all, it would have seemed like he was punching up. Scotty was just a newish admin who never bothered with social games and had little clout here. Where as Eric was one of our very most admired content editors, often seen as one of the 'unblockables' due to his legions of fans and influential friends (even if Eric himself would never have seen it that way.) That said, this has made me think twice about voting for Scotty. Arbs should have a half decent social antenna, not just good character. Scotty's got better at that over the years, but the jab at Eric was only a year ago and he should have seen that at that point in time, it was indeed a case of punching down. But hope to see Scotty apply again in a few more years if he doesn't win on this ticket. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:54, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrators have made or caused far greater indiscretions - even 'punching down' and hitting below the belt. Scotty may not have been the most visible of editors or admins so it's understandable to ignore the enormous impact some of his work has had to the development of new systems and policies - an involvement which has provided him with more than the necessary insight for arbitration. Corbett may have been a content editor par excellence, but his social intercourse on the project has certainly not been without extreme controversy. I never had anything to do with him directly but as a proponent for RfA reform I was occasionally a target of his jibes and taunts and I fully understand how easily one can be led into thinking it would be harmless to respond or react in the same or similar manner. Scotty's comment may have been amiss but it was totally harmless. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Not my place to try to dissuade you, or even to disagree, but I do think the first paragraph of their answer to that question is a good (if brief) example of how to say "I was wrong." ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Unsure if suitable at moment

Feel Scottywong's heart is in right place but may not have the knack of getting a good outcome. In closure of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Code page 875 offered a compromise which while reasonable was only going to result in a car crash with a shedload of information ending up in hades .... Well perhaps in an obscure transwiki archive Plagiarized to an unwitting third party (actually another arbcom candidate) without their consent. I'd note in talk discussions wasn't prepared to deal with functionaries so I could avoid outing personal information if I wanted to request longer than a month. Recent talk page indicates may not be able to identify discretionary sanctions 1RR correctly and couldn't quite figure the laying of a Ds/alert as nomination included reference to politics of United States. Heart in right place though. Djm-leighpark (talk) 06:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Please be aware Scottywong has good faith challenged my comment regarding the Ds/Alert here on their talk page as a misrepresentation. That is obviously a matter for debate. In the light of that perhaps I should say the above is my good faith opinion and other may judge it as they see fit; and many will possibly see my comment here as inappropriate. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 11:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark: I'm competing for an ArbCom seat with Scottywong, and I don't at all see this {{Ds/alert}} stuff as any kind of deal-breaker, and am quite happy to say so. The candidate clearly understands that the purpose of a Ds/alert is simply to ensure awareness that DS applies to a particular topic area, and does not constitute a threat, accusation, warning, questioning of propriety, etc. And he says explicitly that he knows anyone may leave a Ds/alert for anyone else, at will, even if the intent of the template is to ensure awareness on the part of those directly participating recently in the applicable AC/DS-affected topic. He simply and calmly inquired as to why you thought he needed to receive that particular one, which is a reasonable thing to ask. I found your tone in your responses to him there unnecessarily combative, twice: "Nope, you've got that wrong. I am triggered by ..." (something that should not have triggered anyone or anything), and "That misrepresentation is for others to judge if necessary" (when there is no misinterpretation of anything by Scottywong demonstrated by what he wrote). Your accusation above that he challenged whether you were acting in good faith is a false accusation by you and should be retracted. (Unless I'm missing some "smoking gun" interaction about this, to which you have not linked.) If he had in fact reacted to the notice as if it were a threat or attack, one might argue that it's effectively an automatic disqualifier for an ArbCom candidate, given that Arbs have to understand everything about DS. But nothing like that actually happened, and it's alarming to me that you are blowing this accusatory smoke. I definitely "see [your] comment here as inappropriate", at least in that part.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: The concern here area more centers in the warning of 3RR editing of the squabble pair at User talk:Scottywong/Persistent Vandalism where as far as I judge (possibly incorrectly) Abhira tribe (not templated for Ds) is within the scope of DS topic ipa and one participant was under a Ds/alert(ipa) warning, and I'd applied a Ds/alert to the other after end of hostilities whihc places the partipants under 1RR on that article if I understand the whole DS thing fully which I may not. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 10:22, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I have difficulty parsing what you're writing, and that thing you linked is red. From what I can make out of what you're getting at, none of this appears to relate to you making an accusation, above, that Scottywong treated you in a bad- or questionable-faith manner, nor that he reacted inappropriately, or with any "misinterpretation ... for others to judge", when you used the Ds/alert. So I stand by what I said above. He simply asked for your reasoning in leaving him that particular template (without objecting to your doing so, and with clear confirmation that it was permissible to do so). It was a reasonable thing to ask (e.g., he might have been wondering, with him a candidate here and you a potential voter, whether you thought he had done something inappropriate in that topic area that he needed to address, or that you might have questions about whether he was sufficiently aware of the disruption the topic area is prone to, or ...).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I think it's all just a misunderstanding. I was confused as to why someone would send me a ds/alert because of a brief comment about US politics that I made in an ArbCom election nomination statement, while I've not actively edited any US politics articles recently. Djm-leighpark may have misunderstood my response as an indication of a lack of understanding about discretionary sanctions in general. I don't dispute the fact that I don't deal with DS often, because handing out discretionary sanctions is not something I gravitate towards as an administrator. Either way, I think we might be making a mountain out of a molehill here. ‑Scottywong| [gab] || 17:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Dutchy85 unblock and reblock

I just reblocked Dutchy85 for copyright violations. The almost 10k edits they've made since the unblock will have to be added to their CCI (Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dutchy85, which is just page one), making an already large one even bigger. This is exactly what I feared would happen when they were unblocked, and what I was trying to get at in my first question. I don't know what to say other than that I'm annoyed that me and others will have to spend several more hours cleaning up a mess that could have been prevented. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 05:25, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Maxim

Sign 'em up

Maxim has been a productive member of the Arbitration Committee over this past year. The community would be well served giving them another full term. Mkdw ^talk 03:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Would also like to point people to these comments at User talk:MJL/Electoral Guide/2020#Maxim where three others on the committee also noted Maxim's activity behind the scenes. Mkdw ^talk 16:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49

Terrific candidate

Barkeep49 is one of the Wikipedians that I admire most on this project. He is responsible, thoughtful, and careful. He handles difficult situations with aplomb and willingly does the right thing over the easy thing every time. He hears out folks who disagree with him, and when he realizes he's wrong he changes his mind immediately. He is a skilled mediator; when you talk with him he makes you feel heard. He never speaks before thinking and that's why I trust him implicitly. I have nothing but good things to say about him, and I hope everyone joins me in voting for him. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this assessment. I hope too that others will join me in voting for Barkeep49. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 13:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Last year, I was one of the people who persuaded Barkeep49 to run; I thought they were a very good candidate then, and after a year of further admin experience, I am even more convinced of it. Risker (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Same! I was watching the candidate page hoping for Barkeep to show up again and I was very happy to see his name finally on the table of contents. He is an excellent admin who lives up to everything I said about him at his RfA, and I know he'll be a dedicated, level-headed arb. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The bear in question

I put a Costco Bear in barkeep49's sandbox and he deleted the sandbox! That's the only reason I can think of for someone not supporting his candidacy. He would be an excellent arbitrator. Natureium (talk) 20:09, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Very much agree with the above. Barkeep has been involved with plenty of all of the better things on-wiki, including last year's GAN backlog drive. Someone I have no issues with going to over difficult topics, I have no worries that they would be great at ArbCom. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Last year I didn't vote for Barkeep49 simply because of recent uptake of sysop mop; and too many new things at once could be overload in my possibly incorrect view. That said Barkeep49 has certainly had his sleeves rolled up and got through some stuff this year. While I've been quite a pain to Barkeep49 at times in 2020 will be very pleased to support Barkeep49 at ARBCOM this year. Djm-leighpark (talk) 05:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Natureium, please note that this unfortunate decision has since been remedied (it's not a Costco bear, but still!) Perryprog (talk) 01:43, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

As above, Barkeep is an absolute joy to have around. Every time he participates in a discussion, it's guaranteed to be a thoughtful, considered, and valuable contribution. Never an overharsh word, he's got a perfect temperament for ArbCom. He's rapidly benefited every area he's worked in, and embarrasses amazes me with how quick he learns. He's just as quick to recognize, apologize, and learn from a mistake. Ideal Committee member. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:07, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• I seriously doubt I can convince anyone not convinced by the above, but while I knew and support Barkeep49 last time, I've actively worked with BK49 this year and think they would be an excellent candidate. They can cut through to the core of an issue, offset some of the "hanging judge" issues we sometimes see with arbcom, and are firmly against both poorly behaving admins and trying to increase the size of the mop corps - as such, I think they should be acceptable to both those concerned by inactive and overactive ACs. Their general achivements are already well covered so I won't re-cover them, but to say they also have an excellent sense of humour that is needed in these trying times. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Question from Gerda

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/Barkeep49/Questions § Question from Gerda

 – Unfortunately, because a new rule this year (see WP:ACERFC2020#CandidateQs3a), the Electoral Commission is removing analysis of candidate answers and similar discussion away from the questions pages themselves. Mz7 (talk) 19:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Congrats to you for not having wasted time before 2019 ;) - Kubrick had nothing to do with the 2013 case which was (or should have been) about the implementation of {{infobox opera}} vs. a side navbox (against admittedly massive opposition then - look for "17.000 words"). The case was not successful (imho), but common sense was, look. I wonder what feelings have to do with the topic. The socalled idiotbox is meant to provide easy access to idiots also (and vision-impaired, and readers not so good in English), - why not do that? Some argue as if it should replace the lead. When Voce made the comment (to one from the massive opposition, btw) Cassianto was away (June 2018 to January 2019). He always returned, and I miss him. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:25, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

An easy choice

Having gotten to know Barkeep49 fairly well, it's completely obvious to me that he is going to be an outstanding addition to the arbitration team. Over the past couple of years, we've all watched him become one of the most trusted and respected voices on the project. He is a skilled mediator, a brilliant evaluator of consensus, and a natural leader. I don't know that I know of anyone who cares about the project more than he does, and I'm thrilled that he's decided to run for the committee. This is an easy choice for me. CThomas³ (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

+1 +1 +1 Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 02:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Well deserve

I have nothing much to express toward this user, but he will surely do good as far as what I have seen with him is concern. An@ss_koko^{(speak up)} 10:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Endorse

I left Barkeep a good luck message on their talkpage: [1], and they have asked me to comment here. I feel that Barkeep49 would be an asset to the Committee if elected, as they have demonstrated a thoughtful and balanced approach in their dealings around the project. SilkTork (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

L235

Another endorsement

As I mentioned above, I have served for the past four years on the Arbitration Committee. During that time, I have worked closely with Kevin (L235) who serves as an Arbitration Committee clerk. I can genuinely say that getting to know Kevin and working together has been one of the highlights. There have been some very intense and stressful situations that the committee and clerking team have had to navigate and Kevin has always conducted himself in a professional and thoughtful way. I have been asking Kevin about whether he would ever consider running for ArbCom and I am very pleased to see his name among the candidates. Mkdw ^talk 22:19, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Losing a good clerk

L235 is, at this point, probably the non-arb with the best understanding of the process. I think it's valuable to have new, fresh members as well as those who know how the thing works; it's rare to get both in one person. Kev is obviously thoughtful, even-tempered, and always considerate, and would be a fabulous addition to the Committee; the only downside would be losing a titan of a clerk. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

There was a move discussion and it's Kyiv now. Natureium (talk) 02:35, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Brilliant! :D 2A02:C7F:BE04:700:7417:144E:7FE1:E964 (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

An outstanding candidate

I have had the distinct pleasure of working alongside Kevin as a fellow clerk for the past year and a half, and I can say with certainty that he will be a tremendous addition to the Arbitration Committee. Kevin is extremely intelligent, with a good head on his shoulders and an even better heart. There isn't anyone I know who understands the process of arbitration more thoroughly; this knowledge will be a valuable asset fo the Arbitration team, but I were to choose Kevin's best qualities, I'd have to go with his compassion, his clarity of thought, and his commitment to teamwork. Kevin always has something insightful to add to every discussion, and I feel like I learn something every time we interact. I'll be bummed to lose him from the clerk team, but Wikipedia will be much better served with Kevin on the Committee instead. I hope you'll join me in voting for him. CThomas³ (talk) 04:54, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Outstanding candidate indeed. I am especially pleased with Kevin's answer to my DS question, and through my other discussions with him I'm confident Kevin understands the DS system and its problems better than most admins and editors I've spoken to about these issues. I think there are few other editors that could achieve meaningful reform in this area (ie, not just a copyedit), which I think is in desperate need of change. But he isn't just a one-trick pony; amazing eye for detail, as seen in the answer to A7V2's Q2. His measured, methodical nature no doubt will be put to good use in the complex disputes ArbCom sees. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:17, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Good luck

Repeating here what I said on L235's talkpage: Good luck in the election. I feel you should get in, and that would be very healthy for the Committee as you would bring a lot of experience and insight of clerking cases. I also like your intention to look into reforming DS. SilkTork (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

"First mover" advantage

I'm glad you brought up that issue with DS. It's something I've been aware of but not steeped in; something on the radar but examined in detail. You might know I've done quite a pile of DS-problems cataloguing, and this one is missing from my list, for lacking the details and nuances. Glad someone's running who groks those details will fullness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Hawkeye7

Oblivion

In response to my question, Hawkeye7 asked a question of me - so I thought I'd carry on the discussion here, hopefully Hawkeye7 will join me
Hawkeye, you say that you were oblivious to the wider political implications, the "long term saga" as you put it, but I find that hard to believe. Your block reason was "long term abuse"[2], acknowledging that there was history. You'd commented - four times [3] [4] [5] [6] - at the ANI just prior to the block. To be clear - this is what the ANI thread looked like at the point that your re-instated the block [7]. I'm concerned that you see a consensus for the original block in that discussion - I see a firm consensus against the block. Perhaps you could point me to where the "collective decision" was taken?
I will point out that my name also appears in that block log as a blocking admin.[8] though context matters. You'll also recall that I supported your 2016 RfA and suggested Arbcom made a "water under the bridge" statement. In the RfA, you were more clear with the community, you said "I misjudged the situation, and I mishandled it", I feel that your current attitude is one that holds less accountability.
Now, to your point, on whether Arbcom should make decisions on a political calculus - I cannot remember arguing either way on that previously, though I may well have. To clarify, I'm talking about wiki-politics - i.e. the activities associated with the governance of Wikipedia - since Wikipedia terms are often... contradictory to normal language. Arbcom and its members are in the unique position of being able to have a genuine influence on the governance of Wikipedia, whilst we cannot create policy, we can interpret how it should be applied. In doing so, we should be able to hear what the community wants and make our decisions with that in mind. Worm^TT(talk) 13:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

To clarify: I was also talking about wiki-politics, the governance of the Wikipedia, and not the political situation in the outside world. Specifically in relation to the concept that ArbCom should respond to what the community wants and frame its decisions accordingly. ArbCom does not create policy, but definitely has a role in determining how it is interpreted, and consequently how it is applied. I apologise for any confusion here. Wikipedia often uses terms that differ from normal language enough to cause confusion: copyright violation, neutral point of view, original research to cite only a few I've had to explain this week. Confusion here is understandable, because this year for some reason there are a lot more questions directed to the candidates regarding the intersection between wiki-politics with those of the outside world. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not backing away from "I misjudged the situation, and I mishandled it", which I still feel very strongly. There was no consensus for lifting the original block, but my decision to block came after this statement [9] which was after my comments at ANI. I was completely unaware of prior ArbCom cases. There were indeed red flags that I missed. I was neither the first nor the last to be staggered by a block log that scrolled off the page. The decision to select "long term abuse" from the drop down list was taken at that point and was a misstep as my intent was to block for a personal attack. The 2014 ruling was sought to clarify that I was eligible to run for ArbCom; at the time the eligibility criteria said that you had to be "in good standing". I remain grateful for your support then, and in my 2016 RfA. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Should ArbcOm decisions represent the judgement of the arbitrators, or the arbitrators' judgement of the consensus of the community? And to what extend should arbitrators represent the interests of the editors who voted for them? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, I think that where the community has consensus, Arbcom isn't needed. I believe the community generally supports the committee - the thousands of voters in the elections in comparison to the 10s of naysayers - often who have experienced negative outcomes directly. That's not to say that the committee cannot be improved, our communication is often poor, our response often slow. There are reasons for this, but it is an ongoing issue. As for how much arbs should represent the interests - well, in cases where the community is struggling to be heard, the committee makes a good "voice of the community", as see by a few statements / open letters released over the past few years. Worm^TT(talk) 10:44, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Without reference to this particular issue, rarely does arb com lead the community--I cannot in fact think of any single case where it has done so. rather, it seems to have followed the changes in community feeling and helped shape the feelings into practice. DGG ( talk ) 05:49, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

DGG, I think that's a very good way of putting it. Worm^TT(talk) 10:39, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

If one were to blindly rubber stamp the consensus of the community (which Arbcom occasionally appears to do), then Arbcom cases are unnecessary and Arbcom as a body can be deprecated. Also if one blindly rubber stamps the consensus of the community, one is left with the decision of a less structured venue such as ANI which is significantly populated by 'governance obsessives' who have neither passed the scrutiny of an RfA nor of an Arbcom election. There is a lot of room for serious reform of both places. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Non-Admin

I agree that having at least one non-admin at the table is warranted, you could almost say necessary. In fact, that's what probably impresses me most about this candidate: being bold enough to throw his hat in the ring without the 'perceived qualifications'. Being unfamiliar with past and present ArbCom members, it would be interesting to know how many have been non-admins. RandomGnome (talk) 04:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@RandomGnome: The answer is technically, one, but really, zero. (one member was voluntarily desysopped and asked for the tools back upon being elected.) It's not impossible but it is unlikely. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:19, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Good

I appreciate the way Hawkeye7 raised the desysopping and how Hawkeye7 addressed the concerns here. I am satisfied with the answers provided, which I take to be a pretty direct acceptance both of the initial situation ten years ago and of concerns people may have with them running for arbcom now. Frankly, I think it's commendable that Hawkeye7 is putting their name forward now and remains happy to serve. Nobody's obligated to agree with me, but Hawkeye7 has my support. --Yamla (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Re Dicklyon's question

@Hawkeye7: Being a candidate, I wouldn't post my own question on your Q&A page (not verboten, but surely gauche). However, I have to suggest revisiting your reply to Dicklyon. (Though I s'pose that you not doing so would actually help me as a competitor! Heh.) Your response doesn't make much sense, actually bolsters his concerns, and ends with statements that are apt to be taken as unbecoming/disqualifying.

To spell it out:

He asked about your view that "Determinations made at MOS are strictly local consensus, and we [a wikiproject] can and do override them", and that stance's conflict with both WP:CONLEVEL policy and a decade+ of ArbCom rulings on this (e.g. very recently here). Your answer doesn't address this at all, and instead falls back on an MoS page on the same topic as the wikiproject. You're simultaneously saying MoS is noise you will ignore to do what you want, yet flipping around to say MoS is the basis of what you're doing. Just doesn't track. Nor does that MoS page, MOS:MILHIST, actually agree with what you claim is the right thing to do in that wikiproject talk page. Your quote is not about the MoS page you referred to in your reply, it really is just about ignoring the MoS guidelines at will. Note that MOS:MILHIST actually defers – on capitalization matters (the issue in that talk thread) – to MOS:MILTERMS (part of MOS:CAPS), which is the guideline cited in that talk thread against your viewpoint (i.e., it is the one you claim you can ignore with impunity). That's circular reasoning combined with obfuscation. In short, there's a strong appearance of you having made a mistake but of not owning up to it, instead hand-waving in hopes that no one notices the error. But they will notice. In an ArbCom election, as in an RfA, a mea culpa goes a lot farther than a denial in vain. Next, "I'm not sure where ArbCom found the fact ..." and "My guess is ..." are not going to inspire confidence, since ArbCom's reasoning for such findings is always in the case pages (specifically the Workshop phase). An ArbCom candidate is expected to know this. Might also be expected to know that the statement of principle here is the same one (aside from minor wording tweaks) that has appeared in at least a dozen ArbCom cases, and is the basis for that finding of fact you were unsure of. There is no "Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style", other than a dead page; that abortive project has been defunct for years. Some editors had an interest in starting such a project and hosting a noticeboard there, but it never went anywhere (a WP:VPPOL or WP:VPPRO RfC concluded against such a noticeboard), and it has never had anything to do with MoS's actual content (which is determined by consensus discussions at its talk pages, at VPPOL, etc.). MoS is a site-wide set of guidelines, not wikiproject output. In 15+ years here, this is the first time I've ever encountered anyone confused on that particular point. Many if not most of the ArbCom statements of principles on CONLEVEL matters are specifically about wikiprojects trying to defy MoS by "local consensus" fiat, believing they may impose their own style across a category of articles over which they claim scope. (Hint: they are wrong.) ArbCom itself knows MoS is not wikiproject noise, and your unusual belief that it is (and that your favorite actual wikiproject's views take precedence, despite MoS already have a guideline page on the same topic) is the exact opposite of all these case results. I don't see how that can work unless you concede that you're in error on this and get up to speed on actual policy before becoming an Arb. By analogy, I don't know many judges who aren't aware of the difference between a criminal prosecution and a civil lawsuit. Finally, verbally attacking the questioner as ignorant and unreasonable (which he clearly is not), then doubling down on what seems to be a "fight against our WP:P&G pages" attitude, by calling compliance with them a waste of time, is highly unlikely to inspire any Support votes. As candidates, we can absolutely predict that people who have had content disputes with us will ask us ACE candidate questions pointedly pertaining to those disputes, and that others are observing whether we lose our cool in response to them.

I'm not trying to start a "threaded debate" here (do candidates ever do that?), this is just a word to the wise, which you can consider or ignore.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:41, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

CaptainEek

Nice step into the breach

• Really pleased to see CaptainEek step up when there was a real dearth of candidates nearing the deadline. Adminship was May 2020 so possibly a little soon after that to take on Arbcom. I was a borderline oppose at the RFA due to CaptainEek's use of humour could in my view get him into trouble in an admin situation however I have no clue if any such issue as arisen since CaptainEek became an admin. Again commended for stepping up when dearth of candidates. Djm-leighpark (talk) 12:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Followup on questions from Clayoquot

I believe, as I think most of us do, that Eek is a fundamentally good person and valuable editor. I thank them for stepping up and volunteering.

There are some things in Eek’s responses to my questions that give me pause when I try to envision how they’ll handle Arbcom cases. First, there is the question of follow-through on their RfA commitment: Eek had made a key pledge in the midst of their RfA to revisit their past AfC declines, and it appears from their answers that they did very little of that in the six months that followed. Eek indicates that were hundreds of drafts that they had declined or draftified, that they did not review until this week. I’m glad that they eventually got to those hundreds of drafts; I’m disappointed that it took an Arbcom candidacy Q&A to nudge them into getting it done.

Another issue is Eek’s continued defense of their decision to draftify or decline Danish collaborator trials and Kirchner v. Venus (1859). Both of these articles would have survived AfD, both are good for the encyclopedia, and neither showed any signs of COI. So why is it better for the encyclopedia if they are deleted? That, not whether there is a justification for deletion, is the question.

Finally, back to Eek’s draftication of Danish collaborator trials: Eek was surprised that when they draftified a 12-minute-old article, the article creator stopped working on it and the article ended up being G13d. Those were unintended consequences, but they are thoroughly foreseeable ones. Arbitrators have far-reaching influence over the dynamics of the project and need to be highly skilled in thinking through the unintended consequences of their decisions. Unintended consequences after well-meaning decisions are perhaps the main reason to value experience in Arbcom candidates.

I do believe Eek could possibly be a good arbitrator, but personally I’ll vote for a different seven candidates this time. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Considering that the Danish Collaborator Trials articles was written in mainspace without any references at all, I don't think anyone feels that unsourced articles are good for the encyclopedia. Nor is there any possibility for a NPP reviewer to source every unsourced article--all they can do, and all they need to do, and what Captain E did, was identify the problem. That they ended up deleted in G13 is the frequent failure of our system to get drafts further reviewed and improved, not the failure of the reviewer. DGG ( talk ) 05:36, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

DGG, Is there an extra "not" in your first sentence? If there is, perhaps I'm the first person who thinks that unsourced articles on notable topics might be good for the encyclopedia. But maybe I'm not the only person, because we have Template:Unreferenced on 209,000+ pages and we seem to be pretty patient in terms of not mass-deleting them.

What do we do with unsourced articles on notable topics (other than BLPs) if they're nominated for deletion? If an article would likely pass AfD, I would expect an NPP reviewer to apply whatever templates are appropriate and mark the article as reviewed. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:46, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Fixed the not, from an earlier version.

It was rightly decided years ago not to mass delete older unsourced articles (and I remember being quite active in arguing against the proposal to mass delete them), and that unsourced by itself is not a reason for deletion unless there's a good faith effort to source them that doesn't find anything, because most of them can be sourced. And even the campaign to remover unsourced BLPs had a delay built in, during which most of them were sourced. But there is no reason to add to the number. I have never seen a completely unreferenced article pass afd. NPP is the first level screen, and if it catches anything, it ought to catch these. We don't speedy delete for having no references, not even BLPs, because they might be able to get fixed, but we do not keep them in mainspace unfixed. Unsourced BLPs go to prod, and about 1/3 of the time someone fixes them; other articles now go to Draft. It's essential that they get reviewed quickly while the original author is still around to fix them--that they often do not get spotted quickly is the first major defect , but it is not the system but the lack of sufficient active NPP reviewers. That often nobody gets around to improving them in draft space if the original author is no longer around or doesn't bother or doesn't notice is very much a defect in the system, because there is no organized way for looking at articles sent to draft but never submitted for moving to mainspace. The only way to catch them is just before they get deleted as G13, and that depends on a few of us who try to catch them there. If you want to help, see User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon sorting. DGG ( talk ) 07:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks DGG for explaining the state of things. I understand that written policy often lags behind policy-in-practice but I am surprised at the differences in this case. WP:New pages patrol#Sourcing_issues doesn't say to routinely draftify unsourced articles just for being unsourced. WP:AFDHOWTO says "if adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination." WP:New pages patrol#Sourcing_issues says that draftification is appropriate only if there is no evidence of a user actively working on it; for me when an article was created 12 minutes ago that's a sign that a user is actively working on it.

I can see how Eek's handling of this article may have been in line with norms for NPP volunteers, and I understand that the NPP and AfC systems have been overloaded for years, which itself leads to higher rates of poor results. I have to say that I still think these norms, while serving useful purposes, are probably one of Wikipedia's biggest problems in terms of retaining new editors. New editors, above all, feel welcome when their contributions become part of this site. Thanks for your work on the G13 queue - I'm not the kind of person who can spend hours looking at articles on random topics that I've never heard of, and I appreciate how rare those people are. I step my toes occasionally into Draftspace by looking there for articles to rescue about climate change. Good chatting with you. Take care, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you that this is a major problem with new editors--but half of new articles submitted to WP, ever since I began screening them in 2006, have been unacceptable enough to be deleted. AfC is an attempt to slow this down, to give new editors a chance, rather than a speedy deletion template. The problem now is that of these unsatisfactory articles, of the ones that aren't nonsense or non-English, about 9/10 are promotional paid editing. This has the inevitable effet of inclining reviews to considerable skepticism. Trying to pick out the potential good articles against this background is quite difficult. I've been doing it as long as anyone, and I make at least 5% mistakes in each direction. Examine any really active reviewer's deletions and declines, and you will find errors. The only way to decrease this error rate is to have multiple steps of review, which we do have--reviewers who are admins do not usually do their own deletions but leave them for another admin to check-- but that still gives many mistakes a day. All that can be done in practice is to try to teach the reviewers who make consistent or frequent errors, and there's only who have enough respect and tact to do that effectively. Additional idea are cetainly welcome--about once or twice a month I treat a good faith editor as a paid spammer, and I remember these, and I do not feel good about them. DGG ( talk ) 11:13, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Strong endorse

My interactions with CaptainEek have been completely positive. Under tense discussions, I have only seen this editor being impartial, rational, and very reasonable, which is exactly what ArbCom needs. ~ HAL333 23:40, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Guerillero

'Unfortunately'

"If a user sees an admin or another power user routinely flying in the face of policy and AN/ANI are not helpful, one can ask ArbCom to take a look at that user's conduct. I, unfortunately, did it earlier this year and it resulted in a case." Curiously the candidate uses the word unfortunately. One can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I would tend to classify the incident as management obsession, particularly where a situation was almost reaching (or had reached) an acceptable solution in another place. It demonstrates a possible heavy handed attitude in future Arbcom cases were the candidate to be granted a seat on the Committee again, and a continuation of the Committee's apparent new goal to rid the project of otherwise productive and highly experienced users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:17, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the evidence speaks for itself --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 17:41, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The key word I queried was 'unfortunately'. You missed the point Guerillero and and didn't address it. Hence you have failed to understand what is wrong with Arbcom as a process, and have ignored the fact that I have never disputed the sentence handed out to me. If you were to follow the proceedings more accurately and discussions around the site in the aftermath, you would have understood that it's the Committee's way of arriving at its verdict which was wrong. Which in my opinion disqualifies a candidate as one who is only interested in prima facie evidence and briefly accepting the consensus of a bunch of complainants without examining the veracity of their claims, and your short reply above reinforces my opinion.. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:28, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kudpung: The song of the Wikipedian who has been blocked, banned, or desysoped is unmistakable to my ears after years of working on dispute resolution: "I can't possibly be wrong – all of them must be." I was a party in the case so I read all of the evidence, searched for diffs, and familiarized myself with the background info. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:00, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You're still missing the point and/or avoiding addressing it, instead now making borderline attacks. I've already said that the toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube and as such I have retired from being of service to this project and won't be seeking to return. All I can hope for the future health of the project is that the next Committee will be more attentive in the way they carry out their role as jury, judge, and executioner. In any case, the vast majority of votes have been cast already and none of what you or I say here will change the result, but you are welcome to the last word. [User:Kudpung|Kudpung กุดผึ้ง]] (talk) 00:14, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

To claim now (and in fact as you have done for 9 months) that 10 active committee members did not evaluate masses of evidence in sufficient forensic detail is irrational. The outcome in your case as far as FoF are concerned was near unanimous with only a couple of dissenting votes in a couple of findings. "unfortunately" in this case seems to mean "unfortunate but necessary (to safeguard the project)" rather than "unfortunately I made a mistake which I now regret". Semantics aside, and as for "putting the toothpaste back in the tube", you of all people know where WP:RFA is. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Leaky caldron, I was actually wondering how long it would take for you to chime in - and you know what? I don't care two hoots! You can have Wikipedia and its admins all for yourself. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Right great wrongs

Having seen Guerilleros answer to my question, I can't really elect them. GPinkerton actually adhered to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS as the sources are on his side. They are reliable, secondary and also verifiable sources and they give them due weight. Both, he and I are trying to get through with ca. 50 academic sources mentioning or showing a Syrian Kurdistan against some original researchers who claim if some academic writes about a Syrian Kurdistan or Kurds in Syria it means that there exists no Syrian Kurdistan. If Guerillero thinks they are disruptive at the ANI,they could give them an ANI ban for some time in order to have time to think of what they could do better. A straight indef. ban is way too much for an editor active in an area with very low editorial admin activity since months. This is the version of Syrian Kurdistan on the day he became active in the article and this the one after he was active. He sort of doubled the size of the article which I guess is of great service for Wikipedia.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 02:54, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

P.S: adapting this to a comment instead of an answer. Maybe also a Right Great Wrongs? Who knows. Just trying to get an admin to come into the dispute with a constructive, solution finding air.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:57, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Unfavourable

You have been quite many times accused as a biased admin who play favourites in AE cases. Your behaviour and attitude is also not fair and on many instances you have taunted other editors because you were an admin. I don't see any good reason for you to be elected in Arbitration Committee. Anyhow may sanity prevail! USaamo ^(t@lk) 12:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@USaamo: Nobody has ever said that, but go off I guess --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 13:27, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah nobody has ever said but retired mentioning it in bold. I can't discuss my case but yea people should read the cases in that archive to get to know about the attitudes which is making people unsatisfied with some admins. There are people here even who have complained about your behaviour and taunts. Anyway I just hope that administrators and the committee members elected from here will play their role positively in making this encyclopedia better and credible. Regards USaamo ^(t@lk) 13:59, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

SMcCandlish

"Last minute"

I'll pre-answer a probable question: "Why did you throw your hat in right near the deadline?" I've considered running for ArbCom again every year, and was seriously considering it again for next year, but was going to sit this one out. I had assumed that the pandemic would result in various editors having a lot more time on their hands, and thus expected a large number of candidates, but when I thought to check I found very few (fewer than available seats). I've observed ArbCom becomes "non-optimally functional" when short of active and non-recused Arbs, so it seemed pertinent to volunteer this year instead of waiting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

PS: As I've also noted in my replies to some questions that another motivation for going in this year instead of waiting is the unusual number of Arbs and candidates who agree with me that WP:AC/DS is broken and that it at very least needs serious revision. I see an unusual opportunity for an interested caucus of Arbs to make real progress on this for a change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 21 November 2020 (UTC); rev'd 19:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

PPS: On the main 2020 election talk page, Thryduulf asked basically whether late-appearing candidates had some kind of strategic rationale. I can only speak for myself, but the answer is no. Indeed, I'm aware from similar earlier discussions that being a late-arriving candidate actually prejudices some editors to vote negatively for one reason or another. If I had looked in at the candidate page earlier and seen even fewer candidates, I would have stepped up much sooner.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I, for example, was planning on running for re-election in order primarily to continue work on this issue, but at the last minute decided to not submit my nomination because there were already sufficient good potential admins who, like SMc, understood the problem. I'm glad that the problem I and others have called to attention has finally received this attention, and there are others we can depend on to find at least a partial solution--I've spent quite enough time on arb com. DGG ( talk ) 05:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Addendum to reply to Calidum's Q1 (on Anti-harassment RFC, Q7: "unblockables")

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/SMcCandlish/Questions § Questions from Calidum

 – This is essentially followup material, which per new rule this year should be moved to talk.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:43, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

(This is also of some relevance to Kudpung's Q2, on "Wikipedia's drama board at WP:ANI".)

If I may brainstorm a little on potential ways to actually implement "Admonishments and/or final warnings should be much more frequent, and actually enforced" – it may require a combo approach like:

1. Not having a distinction between admonishments and actionable warnings. Or some variant of this, like leaning more toward actional warnings, and requiring an actionable warning if a non-actionable admonishment has already been made to that editor in that topic, whether that was by ArbCom (including RFARB/ARCA/WP:AE) or by community noticeboards. That is, eliminate most of the wiggle room, and definitely bring an end to perpetual wiggle room.
2. Creating a standard statement of principle (by ArbCom motion), an ArbCom policy rule (by community proposal), or some other lasting decision, that ArbCom itself must actively avoid making exceptions based on an editor's number of supporters, years editing, quality or quantity of productive work, topical or type-of-work focus, or advanced permission bits. But this must not affect ArbCom's ability to shape specific remedies that take account of the party's contributions. "Net negative/positive" is a valid meritocratic analysis, though only for what the remedies will be and what impact they may have on the project, not for whether there should be any at all.
3. Directly instructing AE (which is ArbCom's animal) to henceforth interpret these ArbCom warnings (or roughly equivalent community-imposed ones) without regard to an editor's admin status, editorial timespan, contribution level, or community "fandom" level. While "It's appropriate to consider an editor's overall contributions to the project when determining remedies", as someone put it, it is not appropriate to do so when considering whether some remedy is needed and will actually be imposed, and that is the crux of the "unblockables" problem.
4. Issuing to the community a recommendation (in a spirit closely related to the above points) that it adopt a principle that noticeboards (and randomly intervening admins) should take an RFARB/ARCA/AE warning or restriction as more actionable (by dint of investigative rigor) than community warnings arrived at by noticeboard closers (who are not always even admins and are wading often through piles of poorly examined, diffless, ranty chaff), and than "roving admin"-issued warnings. (Devils can always hide in details; we might need to include clarification about warnings from a long time ago, sanctions that have expired or were vacated, etc.).
5. Maybe obviously, given that these were conclusions reached in the RfC Q7 closure: having a low threshold for accepting RFARB cases about editors who keep narrowly dodging effective or even all sanctions at community noticeboards; and, being more willing to accept ADMINCOND examinations.

Those are just a few off-the-cuff ideas.

How to tackle the "unblockables" problem in earnest will require more detailed community and internal-to-ArbCom discussion, especially since the root of this problem, the "manufacture" of it, is not a fault in ArbCom rules or interpretation, but within community behavior and human nature: cult of personality, admin "brotherhood" factionalism, wikiproject factionalism like "gang" protection of in-group members, WP's aggregate userbase biases making it "okay" to grossly violate policies in pursuit of a popular socio-political viewpoint, etc. It varies by the type of "unblockable" at issue, and there are at least three varieties discussed in the RfC thread. I would say there are five, based specificially on: high-trust permissions (admin/crat), personality (wiki-social popularity), time/quantity of constructive contribution, quality of constructive contribution, and focus of constructive contribution. Plus there's a subclass, the "unbannable" who has been blocked many times but is always back; this is actually much more common that the truly "unblockable". Another subclass the "un-desysopppable".

I'll integrate something I said in my response to Kudpung's Q2: Community noticeboards would benefit from imposition of more posting rules, perhaps adapted from AE which is kind of half-way between RFARB/ARCA rigidity and ANI free-for-all. The generating of several kinds of "unblockables" would likely be short-circuited by community noticeboards no longer permitting endless evidence-free and usually consequence-free ranting. There is already precedent for this; e.g., ANEW already has long had a variety of stringent rules about evidence and what a proper report is and how to format it, and like AE has a history of BOOMERANG being easy to trigger there, while even AN leans much further this direction than ANI or various more specific noticeboards like NORN and NPOVN. A strong structural change to ANI and other "too open" noticeboards would also help solve the "dramaboarding as a spectator and team sport" problem, of abusing these venues as a form of addictive entertainment instead of dispute resolution. This is a long-standing NOTSOCIAL / NOTGAME / NOTFORUM / NOTBATTLEGROUND issue that the community doesn't know how to tackle.

PS: There's also an inverse problem not really addressed by that mega-RfC at all: "too-blockables". Certain sorts of editors are clearly more likely to be blocked or otherwise sanctioned based on what topics they edit, what viewpoints they express, even what kind of work they focus on, as well as for being newish and without much of a track record, among other "criteria". That's a whole different can of worms, though (and A7V2 has already asked a separate question about this). Another obvious-not-obvious point: we should not take this RfC as a mandate to accept "finally getting to going after" supposed unblockables simply because they've been seen that way. Any case brought must raise an ongoing problem/recent incident, not attempt to just relitigate old news. This is also a double-jeopardy matter; the fact that the community declined to sanction, or effectively-enough sanction, in reaction to an old incident is already a done deal. Cf. the principle that remedies must be preventative not just punitive.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

SMC, " the principle that remedies must be preventative not just punitive" shouldn't it be "remedies must be preventative not punitive"? A punitive aspect (at least as perceived by the individual affected) may sometimes be inevitable, but it should never be part of the purpose. DGG ( talk ) 20:45, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@DGG: Yes. I was using "just" in the dismissive sense ("Watch where you're going, don't just blunder around like a drunk!"), rather than the additive sense. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Unlike any other venue on the Internet, every Wikipedia user has the scope to be a 'governance obsessive' - and it's an activity some of them relish as seen by the speed in which some newbies post the 'I wanna be an admin someday' userbox to their user pages. ANI, the corps of a sysops, and the Arbitration Committtee are peppered with amateur litigators (fortunately there are sometimes some professional lawyers on the Committees) who like to feel important and will gladly issue a purely punitive remedy that has little to do with prevention. For some strata of users this is even without a course of appeal to the Arbcom or a body of even higher instance - a true Supreme Court which would rule not only on the relevant policies, but also fully (re)examine the evidence and facts of a case. Indeed, one of the problems of Arbcom is that any number of members are able to recuse themselves or be on a leave of absence where the remaining active arbitrators are barely a serious quorum.

SMcCandlish has some excellent ideas how all these issues could be addressed but this is not the venue to do so. Not being an admin may well unfortunately prevent a successful bid for a seat on the Committee, but I would heartily encourage him to take the incentive to initiate formal discussion towards the badly needed reforms. None of it will bother me personally, but Wikipedia isn't going to close down any time soon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Interesting observations. The only one I would quibble with is that I don't think real-life lawyers are necessarily a good addition to the ArbCom/AE mix (which I say as a non-lawyer who worked daily with a legal team for over a decade), though it may matter a lot whether they are steeped in a common law or civil law system. In particular, I'm thinking of a civil-law-jurisdiction attorney who was rather problematic as an AE "enforcer" throughout much of the early-to-mid-2010s (and at least three Arbs said so, though did not directly demand that he depart AE). I think that admin's approach has relaxed some since then, but it was still several years too many of excessive proceduralism (often union-rep-style dodging of responsibility for own actions if not technically against the letter of a rule), grossly punitive approaches (e.g. defaulting to one-year blocks/bans as minimums), and an everyone-involved-is-partly-at-fault pattern (which leads to victim blaming and that corrosive "a pox on all your houses" attitude, which past ArbComs have also been sharply criticized for). ArbCom does not need that, nor did AE. But ArbCom also doesn't need certain aspects of a common-law approach, like excessive resistance to departing from prior decisions even if the facts are different and the result will not be equitable without a new approach. The fact that ArbCom isn't literally bound by precedent seems to have only moderate effect on some Arbs' perception that it should be, that it should behave as if it is (not necessarily Arbs this year, but in general).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I won't be disappointed if you get a seat on Committee - your detailed analyses of situations are impeccable. However, it would be easier to reform the Committee from outside rather than from within. I would love to help you but I won't be around, when this ACE is over I'm going to dive back under my blanket. I like lawyers because if they are good, they are usually pragmatic - generally far more so than the average governance obsessive or careerists who possibly take care to tell the world about their importance on the Committee on their blogs, Facebook & Instagram pages, and personal web sites - no modesty, some people. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Well, I have tried reform from without. A couple of years ago, for example, I opened (at WP:VPPOL) an "advisory-to-ArbCom" RfC to either A) do away with the counterproductive "notice and awareness" stuff involved in WP:AC/DS and thus obviate any need for the universally alarming and hostile-seeming {{Ds/alert}}; or B) have that template (with correct topical parameter) automatically delivered by bot to any editor who non-trivially edits in a DS-covered topic area, so that awareness is ensured and the template cannot be mistaken for a threat from another editor trying to get the upper-hand, or an allegation of wrongdoing by an admin without any actual evidence. The RfC concluded with over 50% support, and the vast majority of opposition (probably over 90% of it) was based simply in the assumption that the community cannot tell ArbCom what to do with its own templates, which both missed the point and is not actually true (the community sets ArbCom policy). The community could force ArbCom to change this stuff but won't, due to FUD about ArbCom's bureaucracy. ArbCom, though, can itself make such changes, so it appears more practical to get ArbCom to change it from within.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Question from Gerda

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/SMcCandlish/Questions § Question from Gerda

 – Unfortunately, because a new rule this year (see WP:ACERFC2020#CandidateQs3a), the Electoral Commission is removing analysis of candidate answers and similar discussion away from the questions pages themselves. Mz7 (talk) 19:36, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I thank you for a detailed explanation of your point of view in the matter, which is all I wanted, by an admittedly a little provocative wording, and better not by (involved) me. My wish for arbitration is to look at things closely and without prejudice, no more, and you convinced me - above and before - that you will. So just musing: I believe that not all infobox discussions are created equal, and no factual discussion is bad. Someone simply asking "why no infobox?" should not be treated as an infobox warrior (and wasn't for a TFA a few days ago, which I take as a good sign). - A discussion whether to include a certain parameter is different from requesting that an infobox needs to go completely (or just silently remove one while improving an article, which often annoyed me in the past, but happened less this year, another good sign). The discussion which made three editors leave wasn't about infobox yes or no, but collapsed or uncollapsed. Really, I mean leave the project because a bad compromise is ended? I miss them. - Back to Voceditenore: in 2013, "17.000 words" of discussion needed to be archived about a very specific topic: the new {{infobox opera}} vs. a side navbox (pictured: this or that), - it looks like that comes to an end. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Re "not all infobox discussions are created equal": Yes, that was always the point being made by ArbCom (and WP:INFOBOX, and various i-box RfCs over the years). It was unfortunate that our general Wikipedian principle to work on articles as articles, on their own merits, was all but forgotten by various parties in those lengthy and overly-categorical infobox disputes, but this mostly seems to have finally settled out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Questions from Atsme

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/SMcCandlish/Questions § Questions from Atsme

 – Because of the new rules about the format of Q&A pages, the Electoral Commission is moving follow-up discussion containing analysis and general comments about candidate answers to relevant discussion pages. Mz7 (talk) 01:23, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

• SMcCandlish, just so you'll have a bit more clarity about the questions I asked, I've provided a few diffs for you to ponder: DGG stated in this diff: As a separate issue, anything that relies on DS will fail. The only way forward is for arb com to directly regulate conduct by removing prejudiced editors and admins, either from an area or from WP, not trying to adopt rules about just how disruptive they can be. DGG also expressed concern over "admin involvement" in this diff, and further explains in this diff. And to credit of Awilley for recognizing potential involvement, there is this diff. Atsme 💬 📧 00:29, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Atsme: I think this whole set of follow-up stuff will get refactored to the talk page, but my quickie analysis of these specific diffs, in order: 1) DGG is expressing his skepticism of DS's effectiveness and even its ARBPOL legitimacy (issues he feels are compounded when "broadly construed" is applied to a DS topic area). I agree, though am amenable to reform of DS not just its outright abolition. 2) Taking that entire paragraph, I agree with DGG's concerns and observations, to the extent I can see the context just from that page (I didn't wade into a lot of ARBAP2 enforcement analysis). That talk page raised multiple concerns (including WP:DIRTLIST), and other admins than DGG (e.g. SPECIFICO) raised them. I'm not particularly concerned about the user page it belongs to (which I would guess is your "modification of DS by a single administrator", above). Since DS is left to admin discretion, it's reasonable for admins to write up reusable DS for community consideration and admin-corps application, and the page even shows clear evidence of negative feedback resulting in the "deprecation" of several of these ideas. The more novel they are, though, the less likely to be used and thus to be useful. I buy Awilley's take in no. 4 on DGG's view in 3 (and don't have issues with 3 that were not raised in 4). In short, Awilley appears to have taken the principles and criticism in 2 and 3 in stride, and a potential logical over-reach by DGG in 3 was correctly refuted in 4.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:48, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Addendum to reply to Stifle's Q1 (on non-admin candidates for ArbCom)

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/SMcCandlish/Questions § Optional question from Stifle

 – Refactoring part of a response to talk page, since it speculatively tries to answer possible meanings of an unclear question. It's in keeping with rule to move followup/extraneous material to talk.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:39, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

I can't mind-read the full intent of the question, of course. Maybe it includes a notion like "How can you assess a desysopping case if you've never been in admin shoes?" I already have and use most of the advanced permissions that have been "unbundled" from admin, including the high-risk (of badly breaking things) template-editor and (in potential community drama) page-mover. The effective fact is that INVOLVED, ADMINCOND, and related policies apply "and then some" to their use, because of their admin origin and community expectations about their use, and because the threshold for having these bits taken away is much lower (anything that smacks of abuse can be cause for WP:AN to revoke such a permission without much of a hearing). Admins are not, as a matter of procedure and rules, treated differently by ArbCom than other parties (though this RfC seems to have reached the conclusion that they have sometimes received subjective favoritism in whether a case would be accepted or a remedy applied). ArbCom is already notoriously difficult to persuade to even consider a potential desysopping, so there is no need for it to be more protective of admins. Indeed, there's a fairly common everday-editor view that ArbCom is basically a board of admins mainly there to shield other admins and help them sanction everyone else. I don't believe that's a correct assessment, but it's an "optics" and community-faith problem nonetheless, with the really obvious (and easily-fixed) cause, of ArbCom usually being only admins.

If anything, the fact that most Arbs are admins, and most admins reduce their content focus and just-an-editor interaction with others, as they get increasingly involved in administrative roles (and a few Arbs have further become like "career politicians", doing ArbCom over and over and over despite it consuming most of their available wiki-time), suggests that the Committee needs more non-admins for balance. Cf. frequent RfA opposition on the basis that a candidate doesn't do enough content work and spends too much time in dramaboards; it's the exact same concern applied to a different role candidacy. Maybe the better question for the community is, "How do we feel that ArbCom can properly discharge its project-protective roles when most of its members have less and less connection over time to the work of and issues faced by everyday editors achieving the project's actual encyclopedia-building mission?" See also WMF's eventual decision (years ago under community pressure) that it needed community-selected board members (and see recent outrage from editors that a draft revision of that bylaw would no longer require the community-selected ones to be the majority). It's essentially the same representativeness concern, just shifted upward a meta-level. ArbCom is in fact really weird for usually not containing any non-admins, and I hope to help crack the artificial ceiling open a bit more, to the community's and project's benefit.

Another possible meaning in your question is "If you're not an admin, why should we think you understand policy well?". My previous answers to questions above have gotten into my policy analysis, shepherding, and interpretation work in some detail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Addendum to reply to Newslinger's Q1 (on conduct vs. content disputes)

Moved from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates/SMcCandlish/Questions § Question from Newslinger

 – Refactoring part of a response to talk page, since it speculatively tries to answer potential but uncertain meanings of a question. It's in keeping with rule to move followup/extraneous material to talk.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:48, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

A latent sub-question in this is: When does a conduct dispute become a conduct dispute for ArbCom? That's generally only after community DR mechanisms have already been exhausted (or cannot apply, e.g. because the conduct disruption is transgressing ArbCom-imposed restrictions, because it involves a desysop request, etc.). Another embedded query of sorts is: When is an RS-related dispute in particular not a conduct dispute despite conduct issues being raised? In short, when the dispute is primarily about content (source reliability, source existence, whether the source actually verifies the claim, etc.), and the behavioral complaints are incidental. (Or confused/specious, e.g. "won't stop citing sources I consider unreliable" is not a behavior dispute). However, it is often the case that protracted conflicts will result in content and conduct issues both arising sufficiently that they're independently disruptive and must be addressed. This requires they be handled separately, e.g. the one at RSN or NORN and the other at ANI or ultimately an ArbCom venue. Sometimes back-to-back or even concurrently. E.g., I'm strongly reminded of various "your ethnicity/religion/country/etc. versus mine" ugliness, the sordid "e-cigs" saga, modern American politics edit-and-flame wars, etc., which have all involved numerous content noticeboards and multiple behavioral noticeboardings and ArbCom, often involving the same parties. It can be a slow and even frustrating process, but it is one of our separation-of-powers safeguards against things like an institutional "viewpoint cabal" and so on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Poached question from Epiphyllumlover

Some candidates got this question, and I didn't. But I found it fascinating, so I'm stealing it. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

2. If Abby and Brittany Hensel or any other set of similar twins were found to be editing with a "team" rather than individual account, would you block or ban them?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 00:14, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

   @Epiphyllumlover: This speaks to our WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and related principles; our policies are written to address practical operation of the project, rather than to handle every possible imagined scenario. So, I do not believe an admin should unilaterally impose a WP:ACCOUNT-based block in such a case, since the policy never imagined this arising. However, "human-interest story" journalism and TV fodder is notoriously toward the low end of newswriting rigor, so claims made in such material about cognition would not be sufficient. This would almost certainly have to be an ArbCom case, with considerable private-evidence consideration, for personal privacy reasons.

   Conjoined twins (CTs) come in all sorts. I believe those of the Chang and Eng Bunker type, who are near-totally independent, would have to be considered separate editors, with a need to take turns at different accounts while editing (or use separate laptops simultaneously, or something to that effect). However, there are also CTs who directly share brain matter, fused at the head, and who do not always have entirely separate consciousness (often one is overwhelmingly dominant). We would often likely conclude to treat them as a single editor. In this specific hypothetical case, there's evidence of both independent and coordinated cognition, so I think it would come down to a specific determination about that case, with consideration given to the impact of various possible outcomes on the editor[s].

   If their normal operation mode while writing really were an indistinct "commingled-I", then they could probably be permitted to retain a single account, but be barred from using it to present Abby-says-versus-Brittany-says dual input, which would definitely be two people using the same account, and confusing to other editors, to WP:CLOSE consensus assessments, etc. I.e., to keep a single account, they would need to privately come to a personal consensus on what to say before posting it, or remain silent on the matter, any time their commingled-I were to separate more clearly producing dissonance between them.

   If their normal mode while writing were in a two-distinct-minds vein, they should use different accounts, but also be instructed not to use them to vote-stack by twice presenting one of their occasional commingled-I viewpoints as if it were two individuals separately coming to the same conclusion (whichever one first posted the commingled-I stance would be the only one to say it). It would be fine for both accounts to !vote in an RfC or whatever, whether they agreed or not, as long as they where independently reasoned (though probably mutually well-discussed) decisions.

   There would of course be no way to absolutely enforce either of these, or even be 100% certain their self-reported descriptions of their mental separateness/coordination were accurate. But either version of these approaches would be a way to adapt policy to suit their unusual circumstance and keep them as editors/an editor in good standing. They would be the community taking in good faith how their mind[s] work, and them in turn agreeing in good faith not to game the system. Since the Hensels do have separate brains and spinal columns, and their coordination is thus a learned (albeit ingrained from infancy, developmentally-shaping) adaptation, I would expect that the second approach (separate accounts) would be the result, even if I think the opposite would likely result in many cases of CTs with fused skulls and direct brain/cognition overlap. PS: This is all assuming the community did not just update the policy to say something about this; I'm presuming ArbCom has been left to interpret and try to apply existing policy. PPS: I would normally have had some misgivings about discussing the Hensels in this way, but they have made public speculation about and understanding of their CT experience central to their actual lives, though various TV shows, etc., that they have long participated in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)