Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fred Bauder/Workshop

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Case clerk: Cameron11598 (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: BU Rob13 (Talk) & KrakatoaKatie (Talk)

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so this is all my fault now

I see Fred has now posted here, attempting to blame this entire affair on me. A couple of points about that:

• Fred is suddenly claiming that my question was actually a "demand" that was highly inappropriate. This is literally the first I'm hearing of that, he said no such thing at the time and basiclly refused to answer it.
• However, in the meantime as discussion blew up on his question page, he did in fact answer it, which kind of deflates the claim that it was so very inappropriate.
• He says I should have asked him privately. I don't see how that could possibly be helpful in the very public ACE process so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• More to the point though, before I workshopped any findings or remedies here, I got evidence in order on the evidence page that supports my proposals. Fred has apparently elected to bypass submitting any evidence in favor of trying to blame my one question and one follow-up comment for literally everything that happened after, without so much as a diff to support his position.

As you can see from my submissions, I belive this case should only be about misuse of admin tools. As far as I can tell any limits on questions during the ACE process is not in fact within the scope of the case as the committee accepted it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:51, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

•  Clerk Note I've removed some comments from this section as a clerk action; as a reminder to all parties and observers, if you are going to participate please conduct yourselves in a decorum and manner expected by the community and required by policy. This comment is not aimed at any editor in particular but just to serve as a gentle reminder to keep calm heads. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 19:55, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Bauder's workshop contributions

Is it just me, or are Fred Bauder's workshop contributions all either irrelevant to the case at hand, or otherwise almost unintelligible? He's also exhibiting the same behavior here that can be seen in his answers to questions at ACE2018 - the mantra-like repetition of "non-response responses" which neither explain anything nor move the case forward. As an ex-arbitrator who claims to have "invented" the Workshop process -- I have no idea if that's accurate or not -- I would expect his contributions to the workshop process to be more pertinent and based in logic. Had his contributions come from anyone other than a very long-term editor and ex-Arb, I would suggest that most of them be hatted as irrelevant, unhelpful, argumentative or inexplicable. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

It's not just you. He is clearly trying to boomerang the case and make it about me, which I'm pretty sure is not what the committee is looking for. And he's presented all these "findings" here without presenting even one single diff or other evidence. He's not actually trying to make a case so far as I can see, and that is the same approach he took to his candidacy, so one is left wondering what the point of any of this was other than deliberately trying to destroy his adminship and any reputation he may have still had around here. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:57, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, He's in search of a premise to bolster future reviews of his performance art.∯WBG^converse 17:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Statement by Pine

I originally added a comment to the case page because I thought that it was still open for comment. I am pinging case clerk Cameron11598 to notify him of my error and that I have moved my comment here.

I have reviewed several, but not all, of the statements on thisthe case page, and based on this reading it sounds to me like Maxim did not even attempt to use the Level I desysopping procedure before invoking IAR, and I consider that to be improper. This is not a defense of Fred's self-unblocking, and I think that Arbcom might well have supported a Level I desysopping if given the chance. I think that there is a separate and reasonable question about what a bureaucrat or steward should do if, in their judgement, the situation is so problematic that it should not wait for the Level I procedure to complete, and that is a situation that Arbcom might want to address by revising the Level I desysopping procedure. There are a number of other matters in this case which it sounds like Arbcom intends to review, which I think is good, and to facilitate a thorough review I encourage Arbcom to prioritize thoughtfulness over speed. The timeframe that is currently proposed in the motion to accept the case looks ambitious for a case of this nature, and I encourage Arbcom to not rush to conclusions if more time would be beneficial for its deliberations. --Pine^✉ 00:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Pine I'd actually just gotten an email asking me to fix this so saved me some work :D --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 01:30, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Just for clarification's sake - arbcom might well have performed a level 2 desysopping; discussion was ongoing at the time of Maxim's RFAR post. We were probably not going to perform a level 1 desysopping, because some lame stick-in-the-mud (that would be me) didn't think that someone moving material from one internal page to its talk page and then unblocking himself after being blocked over it constituted an "emergency" worth treating the way we'd treat an admin running amok with offensive images on the main page or going on a deletion spree. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:19, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

@Opabinia regalis: For the sake of the curious here, is there any real fundamental difference between L1 and L2 removal of permissions? A cursory glance at both shows that they rely on initiation from a sitting arbitrator, a formation of consensus, then finally a notification to either BN or the stewards (are they even permitted to act in the event all the crats are either on holiday, at work, or in bed) for the final enactment (though with WTT being in the position of holding both hats, I suppose he could enact directly were it proper to do so thus reducing any potential lag between decision and enactment) Dax Bane 09:33, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

My take is that "L1" is for very obvious situations like compromised accounts described by OR and "L2" is for accounts going off the rails in variety of different manners. The problem is that "rules" are always ambiguously worded and people will (committee members in this case) likely disagree as according to their own interpretation of these "rules" and stalemate will be reached. People like WTT with both hats can technically initiate a bold move to break a stalemate, which has happened in the past and does help to move things forward (given that someone is willing to take responsibility), and it is not so different from what Maxim has done here although it was done without knowing what has actually been discussed.

But this should not be about what bureaucrats/stewards should do in this situation; it should be about what bureaucrats/steward should do when ArbCom does not do what they are supposed to do in this situation. Alex Shih (talk) 10:05, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, Alex, though I was more angling at WTT taking part in both the consensus forming process and the enactment of it (were the decision made to pull tools).

Per it should be about what bureaucrats/steward should do when ArbCom does not do what they are supposed to do in this situation, glancing at the current membership of ArbCom, it appears that there can/will be times in the day when all of them will be AFK for one reason or another (off-wiki commitments etc) - so the question I'd be asking there is "what can stewards/crats do in L1/L2-probable scenarios and there's no Arbs to start the ball rolling?" Dax Bane 11:57, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) L1 requires only 3 arbs to give consensus to get rolling, and it's pretty rare that something like that wouldn't get 3 responses fairly quickly - it's not as though the L1 discussion for Fred shut down because it wasn't responded to, it was shut down because of an objection, which is exactly how the process works. L2 situations are not time-sensitive (if they were, they'd be L1 situations), so if there's no one immediately available, it's perfectly reasonable that an L2 request will wait until an active arb responds to it - and yes, that might be several hours. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:11, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Yep, as PMC says, two differences: L1 is 3 arbs concurring and no objections, and doesn't require contacting the admin first; L2 is a majority vote and does require contact first. L1 is meant for emergencies and L2 for urgent but non-emergency matters. IIRC both were written before local bureaucrats could desysop. In any case, the L1 discussion wasn't going to "win" the race in this case; my post questioning the need for an "emergency" desysopping and Maxim's IAR "emergency" desysop turn out to have occurred within three minutes of each other.

As for doing or not doing "what we're supposed to do", well, we should've answered Boing's email. Posting in the ANI thread that we were looking into the issue would've been a good idea too. Otherwise we were doing pretty much exactly what we were supposed to be doing. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Opabinia regalis, I've no doubt that you all were deliberating upon the stuff but in absence of providing any acknowledgement or making a minimal note over AN, we did not have any reasons to believe so.

It might have been quite plausible that no arb came across the emails (everybody is a volunteer) due to RL commitments, which might have led to re-manifestations of the cycle, per Fred's own words.

Minutes before the desysop, I personally felt the complete silence from your quarters, to be quite eery and thought of mass-messaging all the arbs about the situation, over their on-wiki t/p(s) but dropped the idea. On hindsight, if anyone was editing concurrently, (I need to check that), that should have worked as a catalyst, into making some statement from your end.∯WBG^converse 17:39, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

The impression that I have from this discussion is that there is at least some support for a review of the Level I and Level II desysop procedures, including reviews of procedures for public communications to and from arbs regarding the status of ongoing arb deliberations about Level I and Level II desysops, and including a proposal to amend the procedure for what a bureaucrat or steward should do if they think that there should be a temporary desysop and/or temporary removal of advanced permissions pending investigation but (1) arbs are not responding as quickly as the bureaucrat or steward thinks should happen in the situation, or (2) the bureaucrat or steward believes that an immediate temporary desysop and/or temporary removal of advanced permissions, without waiting to get permission from Arbcom, is the best choice.

As an example, if an admin account is vandalizing the main page in a way that suggests that a bad edit wasn't a simple accident, I would support bureaucrats or stewards immediately desysopping that account pending an investigation.

There is some gray space between "immediate temporary desysop without waiting for Arbcom is reasonable" and "immediate temporary desysop without waiting for Arbcom is likely unnecessary". In this case I get the impression that Maxim's action falls under the category of "unnecessary" and I would likely support reprimanding him, but I can imagine other situations in which I would support a bureaucrat or steward doing an immediate temporary desysop and/or immediate temporary revocation of advanced permissions without waiting for Arbcom.

I suggest to Arbcom that if Arbcom agrees to a review of desysop procedures then that review could be done separately from the resolution of this case to allow for community input specifically on the subject of Level I and Level II desysopping procedures

Regards, --Pine^✉ 03:51, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Alex Shih and Dax Bane: Regarding holding both hats - the crat hat isn't really worth the paper it's made out of these days. It gives the technical ability to add and remove the admin and bot flags. There are very few situations where either should happen without an open discussion. Historically, 'crats could perform rename tasks, and then it was useful to have a 'crat on the committee, helping users vanish quietly. Indeed, most of my renames that I performed came either from the private bureaucrat list, or the arbcom list. At any rate, I try to keep a separation between the roles, I would only use one in relation to the other in exceptional circumstances, where I felt that any other alternative would cause harm. Worm^TT(talk) 10:00, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Asking for attention of clerks/arbs

Fred seems to have a habit of making tangent/indirect references to supposedly private stuff in a manner that suits him and then later claim some sort of harassment, if that is unfurled in details.

Over the mailing-list-issue, he skirted any direct reply to Beeblebrox (under the guise of confidentiality and old-quarrels) for a long span but casually mentioned the phrase not the lyrics of Blue Yodel Number 12 to Boing's question over the same locus in an extremely clever manner. Whilst, at that moment, the usage did seem like a metaphor for stuff he considered non-useful for the general editors and condescending in tone, later disclosures point that Fred's mailing-list-departure was indeed very linked to those lyrics.

Now, today, he has mentioned Iridescent's linking of the court-documents (which have been already-suppressed) and further notes ...since when is the victim of a lynching responsible for paying for the rope?.This is plainly ........ and he is taking advantage of the suppression. Please warn Fred to desist from making such irrelevant statements and de-suppress it.∯WBG^converse 17:23, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I've posted there. As per my addendum to my initial statement (now on the main case page), I'll re-iterate that I did not post a link to anything that hadn't already been discussed on-wiki by Fred Bauder himself. I have no idea what "since when is the victim of a lynching responsible for paying for the rope?" or "Iridescent displayed extreme animus" is meant to insinuate; my comment in full—and the only comment, to the best of my knowledge, which I've ever made about Fred Bauder prior to this case—was in reply to Fred Bauder claiming I don't remember the details that well, and was, in full, As you don't remember the details that well, [link to initial case], [link to Supreme Court hearing regarding the case] if that helps jog your memory; this didn't violate any part of WP:OUTING, which I imagine will be his next claim, as Fred Bauder had already confirmed on-wiki that he's the "Fred Bauder" named in these reports. There does seem to be a strong pattern emerging of Fred Bauder lashing out and posting irrelevant comments at the workshop whilst refusing to provide evidence; I'm not sure if it should be actively clerked (if nothing else, it's a demonstration of a pattern of behavior) but the arbs and clerks should at least be monitoring it. ‑ Iridescent 18:36, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

@Iridescent:, as to the implied meaning of since ........rope, read the very last paragraph of the case, you linked to.∯WBG^converse 18:49, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Agree in entirety. And, that was a poor suppression, for a lot of reasons.∯WBG^converse 19:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Speaking as an oversighter, the longstanding practice has always been to suppress potentially outing material as soon as we become aware of it. If it later turns out not to be outing then it can be unsuppressed. In this case the material was very clearly potentially outing, as not everyone was aware that it been previously disclosed on-wiki (it was over a decade ago). There was a discussion about whether it should remain suppressed on the Oversight mailing list, before that reached a conclusion two arbitrators stated that it would be best to leave it suppressed for now, without prejudice, pending a final decision to be taken during the case. Thryduulf (talk) 21:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

The suppression was done in good faith and had I not known something of the history of this specific material I might've done the same myself. As Thryduulf says it is considered a "tool of first resort" in these sort of situations as it is just as easay (often easier) to undo. We can't expect everyone to know the history of everything. But you can rest assured that arbcom is aware of it and can see it for themselves so if Fred is making specious claims they can see that as well. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the initial oversighting was in good faith, but I consider leaving it oversighted—but leaving the fact that I made the edit that was oversighted visible in the logs—to be out of process and inappropriate. As WBG correctly states above, it allows Fred Bauder to insinuate that I was making genuinely inappropriate comments (and leaves people viewing the page history to infer the same conclusion); meanwhile, given that Eric Corbett's initial comments and Fred Bauder's response haven't been suppressed, it means anyone reading the Q&A page thinking "what the hell is all that about?" is going to do a Google search on Fred Bauder's name. ‑ Iridescent 23:26, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I have to agree that the continued suppression of the edits at thsi point is not helping, but once Fred's attempt to make the case all about me became apparent I became a party to it so I can't personally act on it. I have made sure the team is aware of this very discussion though. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:34, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi all, I've forwarded this to clerks' mailing list to see what action should be taken. I'll post an update here when I have recieved direction from the committee. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 02:35, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for commenting, Cameron. This ball is firmly in Arbcom's court, and they have been prodded by the oversight team as well. Risker (talk) 03:08, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Passing on that this is under discussion. -- Euryalus (talk) 02:46, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

• Please note that the Oversight team has been discussing whether or not the edits should remain suppressed for some time, ever since they were brought to the attention of the team as a whole (which was just prior to Arbcom's acceptance of the case). The team is clarifying the request that was made by some arbitrators as they pertain to the suppressed edits. In the interim, since the edits are not yet unsuppressed, I have published a table outlining exactly what got edited in the activities that have led to the opening of this Arbcom case, on the evidence page. I am very much hoping that Arbcom will clarify its position to the Oversight team within the next few hours. In the interim, I do suggest to both the community and the parties that the suppressed edits are a red herring with no indication in any way that they are related to the activities that resulted in Arbcom's acceptance of the case. The suppression was done several days after the events in question, and relates to an edit made several days before; this information is publicly deducible by reading the relevant page history. Risker (talk) 03:08, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
• I suppose I'm in on this, since I was the one who removed the content and requested oversight. I'm not wading into the bureaucratic minutiae on the project page because I can't be bothered. It would be nice to have something from the ArbCom saying "don't be so damned nasty please", because we can play games and shift blame this way or that, and who really cares, but there were some pretty nasty bits. Part of the nasty bits were the bits that I removed and requested suppressed.

At least in my opinion (I'll be sure to let you know if/when anyone cares about my opinion in particular), unless you have a diff of FB linking on wiki to the text of the court cases that were suppressed, then you're wrong. We can wikilawyer the details of what's been discussed or alluded to when and by whom, and that may rationalize why individuals were acting in good faith, but being wrong in good faith is still wrong. I would have requested oversight earlier if I had seen it earlier, but I didn't.

The spirit of policy is clear, at least to me (see above disclaimer wrt my opinion). Using your real name and discussing your real life is not leave for anyone to link to salacious details about an editor at their leisure. I've used my real name, and I've talked about my real life, but that doesn't give you leave to start posting newspaper clippings. If it ain't covered by WP:OUTING then it's well covered by meta:Don't be a jerk. GMG^talk 00:38, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• After a discussion with the oversight team, the relevant edits have been un-suppressed. As others said above, suppressing pending further review is normal practice and was the right thing to do here, but this stuff has been extensively discussed on-wiki in the past. (As for whether any particular question or comment is nasty or being a jerk - again, election commission, not arbcom.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:20, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• For the sake of completeness, I will add some historical notes here to help contextualize the situation.

  The current suppression tool (which is only a variant of the revision deletion tool) came into service in February 2009. Prior to that, the "true oversight" tool was, to put it mildly, a sledgehammer that created huge holes in the database that could not effectively be repaired, and could only be reversed by the tiny number of developers who had root access and were WMF employees (volunteer developers could not, or perhaps would not, do it - and even staff developers avoided it like the plague). Therefore, it was really difficult to get something truly oversighted; the request normally had to come from the person affected, it would often take weeks for a decision to be made, there was only a handful of oversighters, and quite often by the time a decision was made, any potential damage was already done. Administrators from pre-2009 may well remember doing a process referred to as "poor man's oversight", which involved splitting the history of the relevant page, deleting the edits with the "problem" edit visible, and then reassembling the "clear" revisions; this was in some ways more effective than the "real" oversight at the time. It should also be noted that the community philosophy at the time was much more utopian, and there was a strong sense that almost nothing should be deleted.

  When the new suppression tool became available in 2009, a lot of things changed. First, in the months prior to seating the Arbcom in 2009, there was a significant change in the level of idealism within the community, and greater calls for deletion/oversight of personal attacks and the like; therefore, more oversighters were appointed, including oversighters who were not arbitrators. Almost every arbitrator in the 2009 class actively participated in oversight activities. Secondly, with the new tool, oversighters were now able to reverse the suppression of edits. And third, there was a rethinking of the nature of what materials should be considered suppressible, and with community consultation and the agreement of the WMF, the types of material that could/should be suppressed was expanded. As well, the page deletion tool was redeveloped to allow full-page suppression; the old oversight tool was not able to do this. The Oversight team continued to grow, and requests for suppression were now accepted from the community at large rather than just the person whose information was "revealed". There was also a new ability to suppress entries in logs, and eventually edit filters and other new software extensions. In other words, the entire philosophy behind suppression changed.

  Because of the massively increased volume of requests for materials to be suppressed, the Oversight team developed certain practices to ensure that the tool was not being used inappropriately. First, we moved requests to OTRS - which encouraged oversighters to review each other's work. Second, we developed the "suppress first, review if there are questions" practice, which was able to be implemented because suppression was now reversible. Third, everyone who encountered a request (either through the OTRS queue or through some other means, such as direct email or IRC) whose best result was not clear was strongly encouraged to bring it to the Oversighter mailing list for discussion to obtain consensus on best practice. Fourth, if a suppression action was controversial - either at the time it was taken, or based on subsequent events or review - oversighters would review the action and develop a consensus. It should be noted that fewer than 0.1% of requests ever get discussed on the mailing list, because most of the requests have a clear and straightforward best result (whether that be suppression, revision deletion, or no action at all).

  In this particular case, the initial suppression was carried out based on the request of one or more third parties who were not involved in the edit; the request was made directly to the oversighter. The material edit did, on its face, appear to contain suppressible material, and the suppression was made. It was only subsequent to that suppression that the controversial nature of the suppression became clear, and it was brought to the Oversighter mailing list for the consensus discussion. At that point, some of us who had been around a lot longer recognized that the suppressed material had already been published and discussed on-wiki years before, and also noted that (despite the fact that Fred had made it very clear that he objected to some other material on that page) there had been no concerns expressed by the subject of the edits to anyone's knowledge. The consensus on the list was that the initial suppression was entirely in accord with the standard practices; the Oversight team was moving toward a consensus to unsuppress when a few arbitrators pointed out that a case had just been accepted, and the team was asked to hold off on any action while the Arbitration Committee sorted things out. Mitigation activities (including the evidence that I presented for this case) were instituted so that the community and the parties could participate as normal, while the Oversight team awaited the okay from Arbcom. The edits were unsuppressed by an arbitrator. I will note that, in the 9 years that I've held the Oversight permission, this is only the second occasion I'm aware of where there was a confluence of Arbcom case and controversial suppression involving the same material; in the other case, everyone who had seen the relevant edits before they were suppressed universally agreed that they should be suppressed.

  In other words, the process worked as intended. Steps were taken to limit the impact of the delay in coming to the conclusion of this review. It took a little longer than it might otherwise have done because of the extremely unusual situation, one which has never really been encountered before in the memory of any of the participating members of the Oversight team. It's unlikely that there would be a repeat of this situation in the future. Thanks to everyone for their patience. Risker (talk) 04:56, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Risker, thank you for that extremely informative gloss on the history of Oversight, and its application in this instance. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:38, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Risker. This makes the situation much more clear and removes a lot of my concern that Fred could have been a victim in this which led to his actions. He's not and that increases the responsibility he bears.--v/r - TP 20:13, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Could one of the clerks please fix the partial sig?

...in the comments block below the second "proposed remedies" section I contributed? I'm not sure who commented, and there's only a time stamp, not a username. Thanks, The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:05, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Not a clerk, but if you mean the one that says "Absolutely", I already fixed it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:12, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: careful, you might put me out of a job, thanks for the fix though :) --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 21:31, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't intend to overstep, it's just the sort of formatting fix-up I routinely do throughout Wikipedia when I come across them. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Not an over step, it was much appreciated  :) --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 22:09, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Workshop Phase

Just a reminder that the workshop phase will be closing in a little under 24 hours. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 19:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Workshop is now closed. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 22:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)