::: As an aside, I've very rarely seen anyone argue "instruction creep" on wiki when it's not been the case that the practice required knowing all the stuff that the instructions would contain, but for some reason people strongly objecting to writing those instructions down. --[[user:Barberio|Barberio]] 11:59, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
::: As an aside, I've very rarely seen anyone argue "instruction creep" on wiki when it's not been the case that the practice required knowing all the stuff that the instructions would contain, but for some reason people strongly objecting to writing those instructions down. --[[user:Barberio|Barberio]] 11:59, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
::::In my experience [//tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=NE+Ent&project=en.wikipedia.org], which includes 1,000 [[WP:WQA]] and 2,500 [[WP:ANI]] contributions, well intentioned efforts to clarify practice do not work because more words on policy pages simply lead to more [[confirmation bias]] driven out-of-context cherry-picking of phrases and wiki-lawyering. It is the ''principles'' that ultimately matter, not the nuts and bolts. By definition, any thing that ends up at arbcom is of sufficient nuance and complexity that the community has been unable to resolve it using boilerplate application of existing policy. Additionally, that also implies some non-trivial portion of the community is always going to be unhappy with some or all of the committee's final decision. What's of primary importance is not the the committee makes perfect decisions so much as they make closure. <small>[[User talk:NE Ent|NE Ent]]</small> 13:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
::::In my experience [//tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=NE+Ent&project=en.wikipedia.org], which includes 1,000 [[WP:WQA]] and 2,500 [[WP:ANI]] contributions, well intentioned efforts to clarify practice do not work because more words on policy pages simply lead to more [[confirmation bias]] driven out-of-context cherry-picking of phrases and wiki-lawyering. It is the ''principles'' that ultimately matter, not the nuts and bolts. By definition, any thing that ends up at arbcom is of sufficient nuance and complexity that the community has been unable to resolve it using boilerplate application of existing policy. Additionally, that also implies some non-trivial portion of the community is always going to be unhappy with some or all of the committee's final decision. What's of primary importance is not the the committee makes perfect decisions so much as they make closure. <small>[[User talk:NE Ent|NE Ent]]</small> 13:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
::::::{reply-to|NE Ent}} I think the mistake is in thinking that wiki-lawyering isn't already happening. It's just happening with the people who know the "unwritten" rules. So we get to the point where an editor who is well known to have conduct problems has been able to avoid remedy for a long time by knowing how to claim "mitigating-circumstances", and when they finally get sanctioned it happens in a high profile case and sends entirely the wrong message to the community. Unwritten rules are just as much subject to abuse as written ones, it's just much much harder to identify and avoid that abuse with unwritten rules.
::::::And yes, the principles are what matters... But that's the point that is entirely unclear. What are ArbCom's principles in regard to considering mitigating-circumstances? I've already outlined phrasing that appears to cover the current practice and makes it clear what the principles are, but the principles need to be stated not just assumed to be understood by the community. --[[user:Barberio|Barberio]] 14:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Can one of the arbs involved in the case please explain the reasoning behind implementing discretionary sanctions based on a case with no findings of fact or remedies against the parties? Is the whole point to kick any future problems to AE? I'm asking because one of the few remedies to pass encouraged new editors to work on the article, but DS tend to have the opposite effect on editing and lock in the status quo. Ignocrates (talk) 02:32, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The press blowup is only partly because people don't understand the minutae of Wikipedia process and haven't read all umpteen-hundred refs and evidence bits.
It's mostly because people are grossly offended by the implication that either on purpose or by neglect, this is letting the Gamergate bad guys get away with abusing the system and women.
If you are going to comment at all, and you just did, you need to address the actual criticisms. Reinterating AC longstanding process and where this case stands is absolutely positively not a real answer, and you are probably going to get pilloried in the press for having done so.
The actual criticisms do include some hefty doses of ignorance and detail mistakes, but the elephant in the room remains, and remains unanswered here.
The press blowup is because the people writing the stories don't care about Wikipedia process, and in any case a "man bites dog" story will sell more than a "the sun rose today" story. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!03:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is a moral outrage story in the press. Such do not work if there is not a credible, articulatable wrong being done, and do not spread if it's not a widespread perception. That the press exists to generate attention is both true and not relevant. That is their job, and they do so by both calling attention to true things and hyping things up. This has gotten some legs.
If this is Arbcom's statement to the community then I think a proper reply might be to tell them to kiss our ass. Let's admit for a minute that some of the press coverage misunderstood the proposed decision. Give this statement to them. Don't give it to us--who understand the process or participated in it and recognize that you screwed it up big time. We need an explanation of how this decision got written like this in the first place, not some fucking pablum fit for a press flack. Protonk (talk) 04:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I got right away that the statement was intended for the press. I do, however, agree with Protonk that it should be made a bit more unambiguous, but I would suggest the ArbCom ask the Foundation to publicise the statement on their behalf as opposed to posting it on-wiki, where the intended targets aren't going to read it. Again, the press generally doesn't care about Wikipedia functions, hence the reason for the misconception. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!04:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We discussed this matter with the Foundation. Their preference was to have it posted on-wiki, and for it to be referred to when they receive press enquiries as a statement from the Arbitration Committee, since the Foundation obviously cannot speak for us on our behalf.
To me, it would seem inappropriate for the Committee, an ostensibly independent community body, to publish its statements in the WMF Press room or on their blog. LFaraone04:51, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good statement, but where is the Wikimedia Foundation? They are the people who receive the fundraiser money -- shouldn't they be involved in supporting the community, especially when some of English Wikipedia's most dedicated editors come under attack from unfair reporting? Shii(tock)04:37, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbcom has obviously put a lot of effort into making a statement that attempts to comprehensively address, er, everything, but I can't escape the feeling that if the statement was intended to have a point, it got dropped somewhere along the line. You've spent more than a thousand words providing extensive background where it wasn't necessary, and overdetailed descriptions where five words would do. It takes 400 words for this statement to even get to the point of saying that it's being released to address mischaracterizations by the press. A further 300 words describing what the"Gamergate" dispute is (hint: if someone's reading this statement, it'll be because they already know what Gamergate is) and defining a "proposed decision" instead of just saying that the text was a working draft and moving on. By the time you get to the 500 words about how actually, yes, you're sanctioning both pro- and anti-gamergaters in similar ways - which is what people were angry about in the first place - and oh, by the way, Wikipedia has rules and here's a list of some of them...anyone who's made it that far has completely lost track of what it is you were trying to explain to them.
You guys are in a tough spot and I don't envy you your position. The media coverage has had serious mistakes that are reflecting poorly on a group that's never done the things that people are angry about. But this statement isn't going to fix that; it's too wordy, too esoteric, too legalistic, and too lacking in actual explanation or refutation of the talking points that caused you to write it in the first place. Even as a deeply-involved Wikipedian who understands jargon like "discretionary sanctions", I can't figure out what you thought this statement was telling us that the PD didn't already. If you're inclined to explain the rationales behind your decisions, I think the community - and probably the media as well - would be much more persuaded by a frank, honest "debrief" Q&A after the case closes than by a statement assuring us that you're only doing what you're doing because it's what you're doing, and also because reasons and stuff. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 04:39, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Did anybody with PR or marketing experience review this? You wouldn't send an amateur to argue a court case or do brain surgery. Packaging a story for the press takes a bit of skill. The obvious mistake here is that the statement is wordy and lacks sound bites. For instance, "We don't ban people for the views they hold; we ban them for screaming and yelling." JehochmanTalk04:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There was assistance from a few WMF employees to review and edit the statement before being released. And, yes, I do agree that if we were going to release this statement, it needed to be shorter, cut down to the bone of a central point and evidence. I fully expect that the intended target (the press) aren't going to understand what on Earth the statement is actually saying, and what it is trying to prove. Anyone who has ever served on a real-world committee knows this is what happens when things get drafted and edited by committee (which is why such tasks are often formally assigned to a small subcommittee, which did not happen here). Even worse is when committees try to draft something important and vote on it in about 72 hours. Personally, I wish we had written for the community and not the press. I thought this approach was unlikely to change any minds either inside or outside the community (and might make things worse, especially externally), and I opposed issuing it for that reason, among others. And, yes, I know that was only very partially an answer to your question, Jehochman. Courcelles05:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Don't waffle. That would just make things worse. What was said is right, but hard to follow. You don't have a big problem here. That fellow who himself was banned has been delivering sour grapes to everybody he knows in written a blog post that was picked up by the press. The Guardian ran a story, but so what. They are predictably anti-Wikipedia. Nothing said to them will change their tune. I recommend you stay the course. Don't over react. If somebody from the serious press contacts you for a statement, get a spokesperson to field the call promptly. They should keep it simple and use homey analogies that everybody can understand. JehochmanTalk05:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Since when are The Guardian "predictably anti-Wikipedia". Yes, there was an idiotic article on GG, but in the past there have also been many pro or neutral articles on Wikipedia from them. An attitude of anyone who say bad things about us must simply be because they are anti-Wikipedia is not helpful. -- KTC (talk) 09:06, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if you took any advice from the WMF while drafting it? It's basically not written in a way that works as a press statement, in my view. The Land (talk) 11:08, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Better is the enemy of good enough. While I agree with the comments of Fluffernuffer et. al. regarding be concise, as a past and current member in real life of various committees, I'm sympathetic with the difficulties in coming to a consensus which is both inclusive and concise. A camel is a horse designed by a committee is a truism for a reason. (For explicit clarity, what I'm saying is I'm sympathetic to the difficulties of the committee as a whole, not that any individual(s) of the committee should be criticized for this outcome).
As the recent Rolling Stone debacle makes clear, the press is not necessarily made up of Fair Witnesses, and regardless of how well the committee conducts themselves, statements will be taken out of context to serve individual reporters / publications agendas.
At this point, with the statement made, editing it in response to legitimate committee concerns will be counterproductive, as the press will just dissect that.
Just to make things crystal clear to any journalists reading the statement, I would like to see approve/dissent/recuse/abstain count at the bottom. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are serious media outlets interested in the inner workings of this case and how members came to their decisions. I have a rough draft for a writer from the AP, here is a screen cap. I broke down some 'partisan' wording, but Pro-GG and Anti-GG aren't my final descriptors, just something I used while documenting the case. Screen capture ArbCom vote in Office DocumentDave Dial (talk) 18:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@DD2K: *puts my digital anthropologist hat on* The only way to figure out how someone came about to the final decision they made is through asking them. Any move to figure out a persons POV by looking at what they did/didn't vote for is going to show some serious flaws. *takes hat off* --Guerillero | My Talk00:09, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You can leave your hat on (as Joe Cocker would say). With my historian hat on, you cannot figure out how someone came about to the final decision they made through asking them. This is because of cognitive dissonance. People will subconsciously rewrite the process to conform with later events. The only way is by looking at documentation generated at the time of the decision. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:57, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry @Guerillero:, I may have worded that post poorly. In fact, I know I did. But I didn't say you can extrapolate someones POV based on just votes. In any case, that is just sheet 3 of 4, and I barely added any comments(the little red boxes are comments) into the votes yet. In any case, it's a rough draft and for later. Not a 'gotcha' type thing at all. Thanks for the comment though. Dave Dial (talk) 03:02, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who analyses documents on internal evidence, I think you will also find a good deal of information from observing the changing votes during the case. As something obvious, at an early point several people were going to be banned from WP; later, nobody; in the final result, one. Most of us who changed votes gave some indication why. DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the vote changing and page history are important. I saw that perhaps several were going to be banned from the initial draft, and voiced my displeasure. I have been following the case and the off-site coordination relatively closely, and I do understand that Arbs had to make tough choices. I just very much disagree with certain aspects of the decision. Because of the message it sends and it gives a blueprint of how to get ArbCom to rid editors from topics. Thanks for the response. Dave Dial (talk) 01:05, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would be surprised if there is anyone on the committee who does not disagree with some elements of the decision. That's the very nature of majority decisions: not all the excision makers will agree (and it is therefore only a covenant form of words to say that arb did or did not do something--the real meaning is that the decision is made by the majority of those on arb com at the time, and even so, their may not even be a plurality in their rationales for the decision. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to parse this awfully written statement seems to support the following apparent positions of the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee:
The Arbitration Committee does not care that editors were exposed to coordinated off-site harassment, and is in fact deliberately ignoring that.
The systemic bias of wikipedia in regards to gender issues continues to be deliberately ignored.
The belief of the committee that "gender-related dispute or controversy" is a narrow enough issue that a ban on editing articles "broadly related" to it is no-big-deal. (Such a "broadly construed" ban would mean they can't edit the article for The History Channel because it has programs about the Suffragettes.)
The false-sense of impartiality, with a stated belief that there is a "Gamergate" and an "Anti-Gamergate" side, and that both "sides" should be treated equally.
Feminism isn't an attempt to bring balance between the male and female population, but a "point of view" that must thus be "fairly" balanced out with Anti-Feminist points of view. Thus wikipedia must view "Feminists" with caution.
If these are true. Then the Arbitration Committee does not deserve the support of the community. --Barberio 17:16, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
See, the thing is I think the Arbitration Committee thinks it said "We are a complicated and community led group that settles internal issues and applies our policies and have done so fairly.". What it's actually put down in writing for journalists to print sums to "It's our policy that Feminism is just a point of view, and we need to give the Gamergater's a voice". --Barberio 17:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The document does not refer to a "Gamergate"/"Anti-Gamergate" dichotomy, nor does it even refer to two sides. This was an intentional wording choice. The other assertions made also do not appear to be supported by the text, nor does your interpretation of "broadly construed" match administrative practice at arbitration enforcement. LFaraone17:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You perhaps may not understand that Journalists are not restricted to just reading your official sanctioned press release. They are quite able to read the arbitration case and it's talk page, where Arbitrators have made some... unwise comments. This statement doesn't actually say anything to reverse those stated positions.
You also don't get to claim lack of addressing an issue as defence for lack of addressing an issue.
And you may well wish that there will not be a dispute about how the topic ban should be applied, but it seems like you've left it hugely wide in scope for people disagreeing about what is and is not covered, and what articles someone is and is not supposed to edit. I make an absurd example, to point out that you can't just use a 'can just be implemented as written' hand-wave, you're going to punt this back to the community to decide on a case by case basis how and who gets banned from where and what.
I also think that perhaps you honestly think that "If only the journalists really understood how wikipedia works, and what the committee does, they would report in a way that reflects well on us". If so, I'm telling you that even with knowledge of how wikipedia works, the headline here is "Process with a systemic gender bias results in a decision that entrenches the gender bias". --Barberio 17:43, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Journalists could certainly read the case pages themselves, but given evidence so far I wouldn't hold my breath! -- KTC (talk) 17:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Any Journalist worth their salt is going to be able to skim-read the talk-page and spot an Arbitrator saying "And, by the way, there's the "anti-GamerGate" side off-site and they too have been active on-wiki." or possibly just get pointed in the right place to look. --Barberio 18:41, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I think the elephant is that one side of Gamergate is destructive to civilization, and the other supports civilization, and that moral equivalence is a grave danger. The bad guys should be sanctioned harder, and those defending women from online bullies should be given a pass if they get over excited in their defenses. JehochmanTalk00:08, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's about the size of it. As it stands, ArbCom's statement will quite probably be perceived as saying that what you write in Wikipedia articles doesn't matter to ArbCom as long as you are unfailingly polite on talk pages. That is a proposition readers and the general public will never sign up to, and rightly consider an absurdity in a project aspiring to produce an encyclopedia. Readers do not care about civility. They care about content. (This is also a key point in another arbitration case currently in progress.) AndreasJN46600:51, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There needs to be clue. In some disputes one side is "good" and the other is "bad". You have to talk the good people down and remind them to be civil, and then turn around and ban the bad people as hard as you can. In everything we do, we should evaluate who supports our values, and who doesn't. Wikipedia stands very strongly against online harassment and intimidation; it's part of our core policies. When a group comes here with that purpose in mind, we exclude them. If some good people get overzealous in defense, we support them, correct them, and calm them. We don't sanction them. JehochmanTalk01:26, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jehochman's summary covers my point of view as well. This debacle has utterly destroyed my faith in ArbCom's ability to resolve disputes. Novusunatalk06:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is this anything new to you all? You all sound exactly like I did back in 2009, when ArbCom did pretty much exactly this in WP:ARBMAC2. There we had two similarly unequal sides: one that wanted to base WP terminology on reliable sources and common usage, and another that wanted to base it exclusively on nationalist feelings. ArbCom hammered down both sides, much like here. This bullshit's been going on for ages, and no one speaks up about it until it's their case that ArbCom fucks up. And that's why the problem lives on: until the community stands up and fixes the system, this is going to keep happening. And the problem is systemic: it's a completely inevitable by-product of conduct-only dispute resolution, where conduct can be brought to final arbitration but content can never be. This system favours content warriors, of whom there is an inexhaustible supply (counting socks) and whose content goals border on a religious mandate over the people they wear down with their constant civil POV pushing. Until the community stands up and makes binding content dispute resolution, this story will play out again and again. Heimstern Läufer(talk)13:59, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom and article content
The statement says,
The Arbitration Committee does not address the content of Wikipedia articles. As such, the preliminary decision by the Committee is not a referendum on the content, perspective, or neutrality of the Gamergate controversy article. The Committee does not endorse or censure the content in the article in question.
This is not entirely true. Content work is governed by policies, and thus forms part of any assessment of editor conduct, according to longstanding precedent. While the Arbitration Committee does not rule on the content of an article, it certainly can and does rule on the quality of content added or proposed by the editors involved in an arbitration case. Editors have been sanctioned in past cases for adding content based on unreliable sources, for misrepresenting sources, for violating BLP (biographies of living persons) sourcing policies, for writing or seeking to write biased content, and so forth.
I haven't looked at this case at all as my time has been limited but I agree with Jayen466 in that falsifying, warping or otherwise manipulating sources is far more deleterious to the 'pedia than incivility. If arbcom pays no attention to this, then we are all sunk as we are defenceless. Cas Liber (talk·contribs)
Yep. The old adage of "ArbCom does not rule on content" is as oft-repeated as it is misleading. While the ArbCom does not specifically direct the wording of articles, it most certainly does judge the quality of sources that editors use, and sanctions editors who do not adhere to NPOV and other content policies in their editing. The formula for an ArbCom non-content content ruling is simple:
WRONG:Foo, Bar, and Baz are do not represent content which adheres to WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT/WP:RS/WP:BLP, and should not be used in our article.
RIGHT:Editor Doe failed to adhere to WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT/WP:RS/WP:BLP when he used Foo, Bar, and Baz in our article.
The 'trick' is to phrase a content ruling as a conduct ruling. You can find variations on this theme sprinkled through the case archives. (Look for cases which cite WP:NPOV, WP:SYN, WP:WEIGHT, and/or WP:BLP in their principles; there will usually be an explicit or implicit content ruling in the findings which follow. Last year's Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gun control, for instance, specifically finds violations of WP:WEIGHT among the sins of four different editors who subsequently received topic and/or site bans. Last year's Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Austrian economics topic bans a number of editors, implying that their personal biases prevent their editing in a constructive, NPOV-compliant manner.)
I don't necessarily have a problem with ArbCom doing this; one cannot produce sensible responses to (for example) civil POV-pushing on fringe topics if one cannot acknowledge the asymmetry in the quality of content presented in support of different viewpoints. And it would be rather odd if the enforcement of WP:NPOV and WP:RS – core Wikipedia policies, essential to our mission – fell outside the remit of our highest conflict-resolution body. However, I find the insistence that the ArbCom doesn't rule on content has grown to become a rather tiresomely precious form of lawyerly hair-splitting.
That said, the advent of widespread use of discretionary sanctions in contentious areas has (somewhat) reduced the pressure on ArbCom to directly make these sorts of content-as-conduct rulings. The ArbCom slaps DS on a topic area, and punts the content rulings back to whichever editors (and unfortunately admins) happen to show up at WP:AE. This sort of deferral is either an abdication of ArbCom's responsibility to support a central policy pillar, or a triumph of community participation over ArbCom hegemony, depending on your preferred view of Wikipedia governance. (Of course, since AE decisions are ultimately subject to being appealed to and overturned or endorsed by ArbCom, the ArbCom remains ultimately responsible for affirming these content-as-conduct rulings—albeit with one additional layer of cover.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:58, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really understand how Arbcom can be expected to rule on the quality of content added, or sanction editors for adding content based on unreliable sources, misrepresenting sources, violating BLP..., writing... biased content, etc. if they "don't rule on content", no matter how you phrase it. How can they determine if the sources have been misrepresented without checking the sources and then comparing what they say to what the WP article says - i.e. ruling on whether the wording is okay? And how willing can we really expect Arbcom to be to find that [editors'] personal biases prevent their editing in a constructive, NPOV-compliant manner when the POV in question is presented as a legitimate interpretation of feminism (noting that the current discussion has been placed as a subheading of Gamergate discussion, and that editors on one side of the dispute have clearly positioned themselves as "feminist defenders of WP against an unending torrent of bullying trolls" or something like that)? Especially when there are so many outside forces with an ax to grind about the gender imbalance among WP editors? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 09:17, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While it is true that The AC does not address the content of WP articles it is also true in my opinion that that The AC indirectly affects the content of WP articles. Perhaps some of my colleagues do not think so, but it was abundantly clear to me for as long as I've been editing, because I have always needed to edit within the rules in some areas set by the AV, such as in BLP or pseudoscience, and it affects the editing also in many areas I normally avoid. I certainly ran for the committee on that understanding, and it is my impression that many of those who voted for me voted for me specifically because they though my editing experience would be helpful.
Over the years it has been visible that AC has to some degree addressed the improper behavior of those individuals who are active and constructive editors of content differently than the improper behavior of those who are not. It is always a question to what extent it should do so, and it's clear that any decision it makes either in general or in an individual case is going to be equally criticized. I do not see see solution to this, but I certainly think that in the past the committee has been somewhat less willing to give differential treatment than AN/I, and I see us as a corrective to the excesses of AN/I in this matter--AN/I is in my opinion sometimes too much influenced by strongly expressed personal views. In this particular case the extent to which the on-wiki contributions of the various parties was helpful was certainly taken into consideration. DGG ( talk ) 23:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, one necessary change to my version would be to restore the "this was text approved by" part as I was just putting that there because I thought it would look weird to have that part in my userspace. Just in case they miss it.--The Devil's Advocatetlk.cntrb.03:59, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:JIMBO, perhaps this is one of those times when he is indeed needed to set aside this fiasco and regain some dignity for the project he founded. This Committee has punished those who did right, token-punished a pile of throwaway accounts, and left the field wide-open for the 2nd wave of throwaway accounts who are now active in the topic area. What say you, @Jimbo Wales:? Tarc (talk) 03:01, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Behold brave Sir Tarc, most impartial of observers, takes a principled stand against heinous villains who perform odious acts such as editing Encyclopedia Dramatica pages to defame those seeking to expose their trolling misdeeds. Surely this is a man of great quality whose wondrous works shall be spoke of in the annals of wikilore! Heil Tarc! We who are about to be sanctioned salute you!--The Devil's Advocatetlk.cntrb.03:42, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Don't be pointy, TDA. I see nothing in Tarc's statement that deserves you deliberately mocking him- were your sanctions not enough in urging you to be more civil? PeterTheFourth (talk) 08:41, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A party to the case is the last person who ought to be invoking WP:JIMBO. Besides, why should we expect Jimbo Wales to come promptly to an informed decision on the matter, when the entire Arbcom panel has taken this long to consider the evidence in spite of a sincere desire to expedite the case? The basis for the appeal, as far as I can tell, is a combination of fear-mongering and a personal feeling of injustice. But there's a very simple refutation available here: if "those who did right", in Tarc's estimation, are really so obviously in the right, why are they so few? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 09:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose the obvious point here is that even the most cursory examination of the activities of throwaway accounts shows that they reflect a wide spectrum of views. I'm really not clear how making a partisan stand, not supported by any objective evidence, will resolve the internal on-wiki disputes. Mind you, proposing partisan solutions to the controversy de jour is not new. During the Climate change case, we restricted many people, from both sides of the debate. This didn't stop people accusing us of undermining the science supporting Climate change and thus accelerating the imminent destruction of civilisation (and the world). Roger Daviestalk09:14, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think your obsession with turning everything into "being about a conflict between two sides, that we rise above" is a combination of Tunnel Vision and False Impartiality. Turning a dispute about tenacious refusal to acknowledge overwhelming cited scientific consensus, into one of "two sides in a debate", is pretty much the perfect example of this. A group that is focused on pushing false information onto wikipedia to further a massive harassment campaign, can not be said by anyone to be equivalent a harm to someone who lost their cool while under harassment by that group. Wikipedia is not Fox News, please stop trying to make it "Fair and Balanced".
And to be honest I just barely maintain WG:AGF in the face of your statements. Particularly when you seem more intent on protecting processes instead of people, and going out of your way to explicitly not care about the content rather than just be moderately content-agnostic as I believe was the original intent of that ArbCom restriction. At the moment your stated views seem to indicate that ArbCom is acting more like a dysfunctional social-club rules committee than the arbitration body that Wikipedia needs. --Barberio11:44, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I should think the fact that you have trouble imagining how someone could disagree with you (or with a particular "side") in good faith is pretty good evidence of bias. Starke Hathaway (talk) 12:52, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't about sides. There shouldn't be talk of an "anti-gamergate" side, that also needs to be viewed with suspission. Because the aim of the so called "anti-gamergate" side in this is to maintain Wikipedia's policies. What are we supposed to do when supporting NPOV and the BLP policy can be seen as a "picking a side"? If the arbitration comittee's true position on this devolves to "teach the controversy" and ascribing everything as merely "points of view held by opposing sides", and that every group needs to be treated with equal weight no matter what their intent and grounding is, then they're becoming as useful to an encylopedia as the Texas School Board. --Barberio13:09, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If it is your belief that the editors sanctioned at ArbCom are being sanctioned for maintaining Wikipedia policies, I would invite you to reread the case. Starke Hathaway (talk) 13:13, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Membership in an "anti-gamergate" side is demonstrated by opinions expressed about the topic. You say you're defending Wikipedia's policies from violations of the gamergaters; the gamergaters say this is propaganda. Well, guess what? Arbcom is finding that the "defenders of Wikipedia's policies" have in fact violated them on numerous occasions. Your appeals to conspiracy theory etc. are absurd because you are holding that Gamergate supporters are somehow not justified in making claims about their own motivations and intents. BLP policy may not defend the users of an Internet hashtag as a group, but it certainly does not require stating opinions of them that are potentially insulting to new editors. Further, it does not in the slightest follow that identifying "sides" to a controversy is an endorsement of treat[ing] every [perspective] with equal weight - your teach the controversy rhetoric is entirely uncalled for here, as you are speculating about motives that you have absolutely no evidence for, and frankly I think you're coming close to casting aspersions on Arbcom.
But aside from that, if you've ever identified someone as an "anti-feminist" - a term I seem to hear dozens of times daily nowadays - in spite of not thinking there are legitimate sides to that discussion (Balanced POV and Feminist are actually the same thing after all, per your statement on the PD Talk page), then there's something very inconsistent about your reasoning. 76.69.75.41 (talk) 00:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You understand that it's possible for us to see all the edits that have come from your IP address right?
I also note that the mentions of an anti-gamergate were made in defence of treating "both sides the same" and not considering extant circumstances or giving benefit of the doubt to the editors that were trying to uphold BLP policies on their own.
And I guess I should make this clear, I'm not close to casting aspersions on Arbcom, I'm outright saying that their handling of this issue was clearly flawed. Particularly when the previous pattern was to give a wide leeway to conduct when enforcing BLP policies. If I am to assume good faith, then my only other option is to assume either rigid obsession with structure and policy, or just banal short-sighted incompetence.
Arbcom have strongly re-enforced the systemic gender bias of en.wikipedia, at the same time as making it clear that you should not risk enforcing policy under fire of coordinated off-site harassment because the ArbCom will string you up if you lose your cool. --Barberio11:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Of course I'm aware. I have no idea what you hope to accomplish by pointing it out, other than to sound intimidating. As for your claims, I might be willing to entertain them once you've provided actual evidence. Even if you doubt that the controversy at large has "sides", it's transparently obvious that the Wikipedia dispute does. You appear to literally be arguing that Arbcom messed up because they applied the same principles to all the established editors involved. As for BLP, my question remains: if it's so obvious and clear-cut that the editors that were trying to uphold BLP policies on their own were in fact doing so, and that they were justified in doing so, why didn't a significant number of other editors show up to help? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 12:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It should be note that Jimmy Wales has supported this decision on Twitter. From the article in The Verge: Bernstein, in a follow-up post, called Wikipedia's decision "majestic indifference," saying that it ignores the real problems of harassment. There is "no thought for volunteers who have been mercilessly harassed and hounded by braying, taunting gangs," he writes. "And not a single word of care for victims against whom Wikipedia has been and is being weaponized." Wales, for his part, has responded to critics on Twitter. "It's one thing to fight to keep articles clean," he says. "It's another to violate policies in the process." And as for the larger debate? "Not everything has to be a battle."AndreasJN46614:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As an arb, I found myself faced with a choice between two undesirable results: endorsing bad on wiki behavior, or endorsing bad off-wiki behavior, and I was very acutely aware that any possible decision was going to be wrong in some direction. I suspect that the posted statements during & after the case from other arbs will show the same thing. They will also show that different individuals among us had different views where the balance lies, and I doubt any of us is completely satisfied with all aspects of the decision, though a majority thought it the best balance. Though committees have their disadvantages, one advantage of a committee is that it does provide a mechanism for balancing the individual views, and is therefore on the average more equitable than relying on any one individual. another advantage is that when consensus fails, a voting process does inevitably result in there being some decision. DGG ( talk ) 23:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The elephant in the room, regarding public perception of Wikipedia
A bit of a rant here, sorry. This line of thought was inspired by my comment above re Arbcom and content disputes. A big issue has been made about how the Gamergate case is linked to gender issues, and how female editors are supposedly going to be scared off of Wikipedia by any action that might possibly be perceived as giving pro-GG views the time of day. This also comes hot on the heels of the GGTF case, and indeed the formation of GGTF in the first place.
All of that discussion is brutally missing the point.
It is utterly impossible for the percentage of editors on WP identifying as female to go up significantly, and utterly absurd to expect it to happen, as long as there are official recommendations for female WP editors not to do so. The idea that new female editors inherently need protection from the voices of experienced editors because they are male (and not because their experience gives them an upper hand in wiki-lawyering, or because of their willingness to WP:BITE) is gender-essentialist, patronizing and sexist - just like the idea that any criticism of any action taken by a woman constitutes "misogyny". Yet we keep seeing "feminist" proposals based on exactly that premise. We cannot expect a significant increase in the editor population are consistently bullied by experienced editors, and we especially cannot expect an influx of female editors if they receive that treatment and additionally get condescended to by official policy and thus made into targets for resentment. (And no, rectifying the gender imbalance by driving out male editors and expecting the women to stick around is not a viable strategy; there's no sane way to implement it.) The very fact that the phrase "diversity hire" has ever been uttered ought to make this point perfectly clear.
The solution to the problem of male editors harassing female editors is not to impose "corrective" (i.e., sexist; there's no such thing as "reverse sexism", it's just sexism) measures, it's to recognize that harassment is not acceptable and discipline the editors who engage in it, no matter how experienced they are. The logic Beeblebrox (talk·contribs) presents in his excellent essay "The Unblockables" (if you haven't read it, I strongly encourage you to drop everything and go do so now) does not simply have binary application; there is a clear pattern on Wikipedia whereby experienced editors are given a ridiculous amount of leeway, to the point where some older accounts can barely go a month without being dragged to ANI and given yet another laughable slap on the wrist, while new accounts get indeffed for a single 3RR violation. There's also an obvious gradient there; it's not like the problem can be reduced to a few problem users.
Little wonder why I edit from an IP - I want no part of those politics, at least not if an account is at stake. I'd rather let people know what city I live in (on websites where I do have an account, I usually make no real secret of that anyway) and deny myself a permanent WP identity, than have to play a game of defending a new account, having to dodge accusations of being an SPA, dodge criticism for knowing too little about WP policy, dodge criticism for knowing too much about WP policy, and worry about getting dragged to SPI if I dare try to start over. And for what reward? The opportunity, if I last long enough, to participate in inflicting that same hell on others while exchanging barnstars with my buddies?
To hell with that. Stop the madness. Stop the cycle of bullying, and restore WP's civility pillar. Toss out the old, bad eggs; they only get worse with the passing of time. Only thus can the problem be solved. 76.69.75.41 (talk) 09:30, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you put such weight on the wise words of Beeblebrox, then consider the essay User:Beeblebrox/fuck off, which for most of its existence has meant "I only tell people to fuck off if they deserve it". This essay was written in Dec of 2011, wording strengthened in Jan 2013, and curiously softened & essentially retracted in Jan 2014, right winning a one year Arb term WP:ACE2013. There is no such thing as an anti-Gamergater, and there was certainly no bullying or any of that nonsense on the part of "the 5"; there were only those of us who upheld project policy in the face of vicious, misogynist assault. None of us are eligible for the "unblockable" shield; only voluminous content creators are allowed that protection. Tarc (talk) 13:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You have no blocks in the last five years. It's rather absurd that they proposed to sanction you, rather than issue an admonishment. JehochmanTalk 14:16, 28 January 2015 (UTC) Then again, we have "Tarc has already been sanctioned in three previous cases (Feb 2012, Oct 2013, Oct 2014, Oct 2014)." I guess your extra lives were used up, so this sanction is justifiable. JehochmanTalk14:19, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, J, I was sanctioned for keeping sanctimonious hordes at bay who didn't think the rest of us should be allowed to look at Muhammad pictures, for a false flag shtick in the Manning case that was in hindsight ill-advised, and having the gall to want an account suspected but not proven to be a banned user be allowed to post on Jimbo's talk page, when Jimbo regularly allows such things. They went 1 for 3. So, good thing I never dropped the c-word into conversation or sabotaged a WkiProject, though, then they'd really have thrown the book a...oh, wait. Tarc (talk) 14:46, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Let's assume you were right in each case. Why do you keep getting sanctioned? Can't you figure out how not to let this happen over and over again. Instead of focusing on actions of others that you can't control, focus on what you did that lead to the sanction, and change it. JehochmanTalk15:18, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dammit, Tarc, can't you just go along to get along, already? What are you doing, trying to change the social order. ACCEPT YOUR PLACE OR BE BANNED. Hipocrite (talk) 15:27, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
21:45, 10 December 2014 (diff | hist) . . (-238) . . Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Evidence (Reverted hatting by TRPoD. However right you think you are, I don't think you have standing to hat another editors contributions to the ArbCom case. Let the arbs handle it.)
19:52, 28 March 2005 (diff | hist) . . (-1) . . m South Vietnam (→Army)
17:27, 28 October 2004 (diff | hist) . . (-268) . . Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Disentangled NM SecState lawsuit from Acorn allegations)
04:08, 22 March 2005 (diff | hist) . . (0) . . Voice over IP (→See also)
Three of these things belong together; Three of these things are kind of the same; Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here? Now it's time to play our game (time to play our game). Hipocrite (talk) 16:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever point you are trying to make about me is irrelevant to the discussion of whether Tarc's behavior is proper. I decline to play your game, but if you think I've violated policy, I invite (nay, encourage!) you to bring it here or here. Starke Hathaway (talk) 16:16, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is not appropriate for an unabashed single-purpose-agenda-driven account such as yourself to cast doubt on an account with 2.5k article space contributions. Hipocrite (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What does it say about you, then, that "an unabashed single-purpose-agenda-driven account" seems to have an understanding of Wikipedia policy better in line with the Arbitration Committee than yours, O wise one? Starke Hathaway (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably that having "an understanding of Wikipedia policy better in line with the Arbitration Committee" might not be a good thing. The topic title says it all. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 00:29, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jehochman, there's 2 ways to answer that; one would be a flippant way, that all I'd have to do to avoid future sanctions in similar cases was to write a few dozen Featured Articles, as that is the ASOI (Arbcom Standard Offset for Incivility). The regular answer would be...this is as good as you're going to get. IMO, I have turned down the dial from 11 for say the 2010 era to more of a 3-4 at present, which was acknowledged by several reasonable Arbs in this case. I cannot suffer fools any more gladly than that. Tarc (talk) 17:15, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you put your efforts into writing a featured article, that will probably keep you away from controversies, and win you a whole bunch of new friends who'd look out for you. The FA crew are some of our best editors. They always welcome new participants. I've only written two featured articles, but it was really helpful to do so. JehochmanTalk01:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Tarc:, you are entitled to your opinion about your actions, but it is not reasonable for you to accuse others of harassment and then suppose that you are in a position to dismiss the same charge laid against you with any objectivity. Also, I didn't say anything about "anti-Gamergaters". As for Beeblebrox's other essay, I don't see your point - it seems to me that he's still holding himself to a rather high standard, all things considering. It's one thing to get angry and on rare occasions hit "Save page" when it's not the best idea; it's quite another to spend months expressing the battleground mentality for which you and others are being sanctioned. And as for the idea that a history of writing Featured Articles would exonerate you for this, that is exactly what I am arguing against. I mean, I'm sure you don't think celebrities should be automatically judged less harshly for crimes in the real world, even if you like their works. 76.69.75.41 (talk) 23:43, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think you missed the underlying sarcasm in Tarc's comment about how a history of featured content writing is grounds for exoneration. That was a shot against ArbCom's past actions, not a value statement on whether content writing should lead to immunity. Resolute23:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was not sure about the sarcasm, but I was hoping to find common ground. I can't guess offhand what specific past Arbcom actions are being referred to, but to the extent that it's true that FAs earn lenience from Arbcom, I'm arguing against it. There are plenty of people out there capable of writing FAs; who knows how many WP has already scared off? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 00:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's clear that WMF does not care about women
Between this ruling and the GGTF ruling, both of which unfairly target women and minorities, it's no wonder the WMF was finally called to task by global media. It's about time they received the same level of criticism as the GamerGate hordes they're trying to protect. I guess white men need to band together to drive women out of their homes for the sin of trying to participate in an online community. This nonapology for supporting GamerGate is ridiculous. I'm not sure why the ArbCom is throwing their support in with a group of men who seek only to destroy the lives of women, but it is absolutely reprehensible. 64.208.122.50 (talk) 15:46, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
They're not trying to support GamerGate, and anyone who claims this has already made up their minds about the whole situation. I agree the entire thing was less than ideal, but the reality is that their hands are tied with regards to off-wiki incidents. And when one "side" is operating entirely by throwaway accounts compared to the other "side" being established editors that actually give a fuck about Wikipedia's goals who are being relentlessly harassed both on and off-wiki by the side operating the throwaways, there is only so much the ArbCom can realistically do. Unless you're familiar with how the ArbCom operates (Hint: they do not take content disputes as cases) you've no right to criticise them over what is, by all accounts, a messy, fucked, and divisive case. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!03:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, I feel I should note a contributing reason Ryulong got banned fullstop is because off-wiki sites were planning to abuse Ryulong's (at the time guaranteed to pass) 1RR restriction to harass him. If you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at 4chan, 8chan, and the rest of the sites tied to GamerGate support, and start doing everything in your power to make their lives living hell. Otherwise, shut the hell up. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!03:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Which is pretty ridiculous and unfair, when you think about it. "This guy was getting harassed and was edit warring in retaliation. Let's restrict him to 1RR." "Good idea." "Oh, they'll just harass him even more then? Nothing we can do about that. May as well ban him." They've essentially elevated his punishment from 1RR to a site ban because he was getting more harassment. Kind of a strange precedent, no? SinglePurposePartier (talk) 04:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Which would you prefer: Being removed from a site entirely or being allowed to remain on the site albeit under conditions that would exacerbate the harassment you're facing already? You need to remember that Ryulong was one of the five editors 8chan was specifically gunning for (The other four only got topic bans). —Jeremyv^_^vBori!04:09, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the point. The point is that they didn't leave it up to him. If I were getting harassed, I'd rather it be my decision to leave a project I've dedicated hours and months and years of my life to. If they switched to a site ban only because he was being harassed more, then they're essentially punishing him for receiving harassment. That's not his fault. It sets the precedent that if you harass an editor enough, WP will ban them just to be rid of the bad PR and drama. SinglePurposePartier (talk) 04:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I said it was a contributing factor. Ryulong has been before ArbCom in the past, which was why the Arbs quickly jumped to sitebanning him first. The 1RR would have been a last chance, but given the off-wiki discussions turning it into a cruel mercy and the fact that Ryulong has a quite extensive history, the siteban was the only way to go.
You're not wrong, and I don't mean to seem overly hostile. I completely see where you're coming from here. I understand that Ryulong has quite a long and checkered history here and, in a vacuum, a site ban might make sense. But not when connected to the overarching campaign here. The siteban makes sense if the goal is to quickly tone down the heated discourse and drama in the topic area, which seems to be ArbCom's reasoning behind it. Unfortunately, that decision has basically codified a way of silencing editors and, more disappointingly, given the harassers exactly what they want. Of course Ryulong wasn't an angel here, and had he kept his patience and not edited in a battleground fashion, he would still be here today. But ArbCom, in searching for the easiest solution, also gave people who are actively canvasing off-site exactly what they wanted, which to me seems damaging to the project in the long term. I don't disagree with your logic, I just think there's a piece missing, which is that banning someone for being the recipient of harassment (which is really what this is, otherwise the move from 1RR to siteban doesn't make sense) is not a good look, no matter if there's a logical reason behind it. SinglePurposePartier (talk) 05:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Let's also be perfectly clear - the GamerGate hubs continue to organize harassment with respect to Ryulong - they are attempting to prevent him from gracefully accepting his ban by aggressively edit warring on articles that he was focused on during his decade long career here - cf [1], [2], [3], and that's just a small sample. You want to know why Ryulong isn't going to go away for a year and come back refreshed and renewed? This is why. Arbcom, are you going to do something to help here? Hipocrite (talk) 04:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Start reporting those trolls for stalking. Just because a user is banned does not make the edits they made prior to the ban instantly revertable. Not to mention there are a couple LTAs whom Ryulong had the displeasure of dealing with before this shit blew up. Also, NBSB has retired in protest, which is only going to make the PR situation for Wikipedia and the on-Wiki reputation of ArbCom even worse. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!05:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I genuinely don't understand how editing an article that a banned editor "was focused on", when that editor can reasonably predict the changes and has no reason to stick around to see them, without any demonstrated intent to draw the editor's attention to the changes, could be construed as "harassment" in any way, shape or form. These are changes that the communities in question seem to agree upon; when I look at the talk pages for the articles in question, I consistently fail to find any evidence of anyone else taking Ryulong's side of the argument. What message are we sending if we allow the wishes of a banned editor to continue to dictate article content, regardless of the arguments presented by others and in spite of consensus? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 10:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also have absolutely no idea why you think any of this has anything to do with "gamergate hubs". By your own argument (since you're flinging the term "LTA" around), Ryulong has had enemies on Wikipedia since long before Gamergate was a thing, probably at least as far back as when he was desysopped. And these are articles about Japanese tokusatsu shows. What on earth has that got to do with the Gamergate controversy? This smacks of the same guilt by association that Gamergate supporters have been complaining about the entire time. Why is anyone who has a beef with Ryulong assumed to be part of a "gamergate hub"? Or did you mean that he's getting swarmed by sexually viable ants from a colony lacking a queen? 76.69.75.41 (talk) 10:55, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When I said LTAs, I specifically (as you correctly note) did not mean anyone affiliated with GamerGate, and I apologise if it appeared that was what I meant. Yes, Ryulong worked on tokusatsu articles, which was where he encountered the LTAs I'm referring to. I also only mentioned the "gamergate hubs" (and not with that term, because I do not acknowledge such a thing exists) because their behaviour was relevant to why Ryulong got the axe (i.e. they were planning to exploit Ryulong's 1RR, as Newyorkbrad explicitly noted when opposing the 1RR remedy for him). Do not put words into my mouth. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!21:23, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can vouch that I've been on those talk pages, arguing against those edits (in contradiction of the claim that nobody is arguing against these edits but the ghost of Ryulong) -- which, honestly, I see no reason to believe are "Ryulong's side". Ryulong was debating about using Condor or Condol, for example, and the edits that were reverted were for the totally unrelated Taka/Hawk. The reason these edits were invalid has nothing to do with Ryulong, and everything to do with that the animanga wikiproject (and ENGVAR, honestly) has consensus on using the official romanized names for topics, regardless of whether they're Engrishy or not. Please...please keep all your wikidrama out of the animanga wikiproject, guys, we don't need you interfering with our procedures just because you hate someone who used to be a member.192.249.47.186 (talk) 23:50, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I've been notified that the pages aren't part of animanga, they're part of tokusatsu. Still, I believe the same concept applies, and I still don't see how these edits are linked to Ryulong.192.249.47.186 (talk) 01:20, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Vote totals please
Given that this statement was not unanimous and includes what may be controversial content, as a voter in arbcom elections, I'd like to know the S/O/A on this statement, please. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 16:17, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Hipocrite: I've started a thread about whether to release a vote count. (Individuals, of course, can say how they voted; I noted above on this page that I had opposed it.) Courcelles03:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes#Enforcement of restrictions: "Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year."
Seems like there's a small typo in 8.4, where the word "not" is repeated: "including, not not limited to". Pretty sure that isn't intended? ansh66602:03, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What happened to all of the missing numbers? We've got remedies 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, 5.3, etc., but not 3.anything or 5.2. Were they unsuccessful proposals that got only minority support on the committee? Meanwhile, there are several links to the "standard topic ban", which all go to the nonexistent Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Scope_of_standard_topic_ban. What's the correct link? Nyttend (talk) 03:59, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
At least they had the decency to correct the article, WP really needs a project to explain how the inner working of the encyclopaedia works to the public/press in order to make sure such mistakes don't happen again. There seems to be a big misunderstanding how Arbcom works. Avono (talk) 09:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink. No matter how well documented our processes are, no matter how much effort isput into educating others how Arbcom works, it doesn't matter when you have biased reporters and clickbait authors trying to put their own spin on things. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 12:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
They have a penchant for ignoring editors, so I'm perplexed as to why they care what that rag thinks. But the real point is commenting before the case closed was inappropriate. They could have sent a letter to the editor after the fact. Now they are wearing egg after making a substantial change less than a day later. If they felt the need to explain so urgently, they should have let the WMF handle it.Two kinds of porkMakin'Bacon09:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Statement from ArbCom says no bans. Then they ban Ryulong. Yes, the statement was technically true, because it said "right now." It was tremendously misleading, however, that some of them said "no bans right now," but then switched, with what appears to be no additional evidence presented to bans? I guess there must have been some back room horse trading and ultimatum dropping or something. Too bad deliberations are all private now. Hipocrite (talk) 14:20, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also note that the ban passed invalidates the public press statement that was voted on by the ArbCom. I think in the light of that we should insist on identification of the individual ArbCom members who voted to make what became a misleading public statement. --Barberio12:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do not recall the ArbCom ever before issuing a press-release to try to defend it's self mid-case. Nor one that mistakenly pre-announced the result as being other than the one that was eventually issued. --Barberio12:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Watchlist WP:ACE2015. If you think you can do a better job, run. If you don't like how some of the present arbitrators conducted themselves, ask them questions, make statements, write a guide, or vote against them. JehochmanTalk13:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And, in the meantime, participate in cases. That's what the evidence and workshop pages are for. The big problem with the Gamergate case was low community participation. Don't wait until it's at voting and then start kicking ArbCom ass, it's too late. Roger Daviestalk14:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The reason people don't participate in cases is because they are a free-fire zone where it's not clear if anyone is ever being listened to at all. People have no idea what the arbs want to know more about, or what's driving discussion, because all of your discussions are held in secret, backroom horse trading and ultimatum dropping sessions on your mailing list. Prove me wrong. Hipocrite (talk) 14:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you didn't read what I said? The reason people don't participate in cases isn't because you aren't asking enough, it's because those of us who have been around the block know how to influence the committee. I mean, I'm giving away the secret, but User:Short Brigade Harvester Boris/A pocket guide to Arbitration is right. I'm not even sure why I'm commenting here at all - you're the only one in a position to do anything about the back room reading this, and we're both aware that it's not changing as long as Arbcom is elected by a process that requires going along to get along, with a necessary precursor of going along to get along. Hipocrite (talk) 14:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Short Brigade Harvester Boris is a great guy and his guide is excellent. We have tried to get rid of some of our peripheral responsibilities which take up a lot of time so that we can concentrate better on core stuff but there's zero interest in taking them on. I'm keen on reform, big reform if necessary, but nobody is prepared to work with the committee to help achieve it. It's not a one-way street. Roger Daviestalk14:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What do you want me to do? Here, I'll take everything unrelated to actually filed cases and advanced permissions off of your hands - I've sent them to the circular file - you are no longer dealing with "child protection," and "anti-harassment." If the foundation wants something done about that, they can do it. You can pay me by no longer deliberating in private about anything, ever. Hipocrite (talk) 14:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The age old wiki canards of "People who are not willing to spend as much time invested in the project as we do are not allowed to criticise us!" and "It's not our fault you didn't know about it till after we'd already made our minds up!".
Also, are you honestly saying that the point at which a draft is published, is the point at which you stop listening to outside input? How does that work then, how do we know to start criticising potential decisions until you start voting on very badly worded ones? Are we supposed to read your minds and predict what we need to criticise? ArbCom used to make it very clear that they were not a 'formal court', and have recently insisted they are not the Wiki's "Supreme Court", yet now you insist we treat you like a court room and have to work within your bureaucracy. That we have to follow every one of your not-a-court's public-briefings, or check on people who may be a party to a case's talk page, in case there is ever a point where we need to say something. (But no person should ever advertise those themselves, or risk being accused of Canvasing...) And if we miss our window, then we must remain silent or be ignored?
What next, do we need start hiring advocates, have people monitoring cases being brought up so we know when to file our amicus briefs? Do you want to be a formal court, or do you still claim you are not acting like a formal court, make up your mind.
That the community, and those outside the community would have problems with this should not be a surprise. The last time you handled a case like this, a member of the press lambasted you for it, and you don't appear to have learned anything from it or comments made by the community at the time of that case. Blaming ArbCom's unforced errors on "low community participation" is not fair. You've consistently rebuffed community concern raised, by defending the process you follow. I want to ask you, if you are following a process that may be causing harm to Wikipedia, do you deserve community support? --Barberio14:42, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you can come up with a viable alternative process that allows the many differing stakeholders (not "both sides") in a complex and entrenched dispute to participate calmly and dispassionately, and somehow arrive at a binding solution, I'd love to hear. Roger Daviestalk14:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The main hurdle is getting people to address the issues and not spend their whole time fighting with or attacking each other. Address that and much of it is cracked, Roger Daviestalk15:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I don't buy that. This isn't arbcom's first rodeo. Cases are characterized by people fighting intractably--that's what brings the issue before the committee. If the lack of evidence or the lack of decorum was so poisonous (as many arbs knew it would be before the case opened), why were no termporary injunctions proposed? Why was no one sanctioned during the case for gumming up the works? Why, at the conclusion of the case is there unanimous support for a principle extolling the importance of decorum during the case if a drafting arbitrator feels behavior during the case negatively impacted the decision? Protonk (talk) 16:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What sort of injunctions? Injunctions to be nice to each other? Conduct during cases always impacts on the outcome. We simply don't have enough clerks to keep stuff tightly locked down and if we started handing out lengthy blocks "simply" for case misconduct, the community would go ballistic. Roger Daviestalk20:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno, injunctions to stop people from filling the evidence page with shit, making it hard for anyone who isn't already fully devoted to the case to even know if their evidence will be read or duplicates something elsewhere. Or stopping people from swapping evidence sections to escape limits. Or demanding people put up or shut up with respect to accusations made with minimal or non-germane evidence. Really anything envisioned by Beeblebrox here. And I don't know if you can tell, but the community is going ballistic. Maybe that's six on one hand, half a dozen in the other but it's distressing to see arbcom know in advance that conduct would be a problem and that the case needed to be moved along at an appropriate pace then just...do nothing until the case concludes at which point the community is blamed for not bringing enough evidence. Protonk (talk) 20:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
People fighting with and attacking each other - when one side is using paintball guns and the other nuclear weapons. The committee did exactly what I warned you against on the case request page and gave the harassers exactly what they wanted. You punted the people trying to protect the article at personal risk to themselves, left a vacuum that will more likely be filled by the SPAs than anytone else, and only offered the community the laughable remedy 18 which is basically a request asking for people willing to be doxxed and threatened for trying to maintain Wikipedia's policies. Oh, and if you do so, you can expect to be sanctioned for it. No thanks Resolute16:23, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If only there were some kind of committee, elected by the community, that could use it's weight to initiate a review and reform of the arbitration policy? Perhaps they could start an RfC, I understand that's a tool editors can use to draw in attention to something they need help with.
But to be serious, if you are sincere about supporting reform, we can start an RfC on the process right now and you can lend your support to that review. -Barberio15:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll gladly support any reasonable proposal, really, but don't expect me to turn up and support a load of arb-kicking stuff. The fact is that the writing has been on the wall for the committee in its current form for a couple of years now. Too much baggage, too many disgruntled people etc. I was hoping to make a real change this year and welcome this opportunity to do so, Roger Daviestalk15:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
From what I've seen of trying to getting ArbCom stuff through the community, RFCs are a complete waste of time. What you don't is drive-by supports but people who will hang around and commit the time to effective producing solutions. What is much more effective is a moderated discussion which is moved on from time to time as consensus develops. I'll gladly comment on your draft on that basis. Roger Daviestalk20:56, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, you're saying that none of the extensions were prompted by 11th hour requests for more time and space from parties to the case (and the knock-on requests from other parties to rebut)? Protonk (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I provided sample links. There was a lot of bickering and little hard fact. Maybe we should just have closed it then but I expect that would have been controversial too, Roger Daviestalk15:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So I guess it was a mistake to just believe that ArbCom knew what was going on, the organized harassment, and trust the committee to handle the case with common sense. I have no beef with Eric Corbett or Sitush, but can you explain why some Arb members voted against site and topic bans for them(citing such excuses and baiting), while supporting site bans for Carol Moore, Neotarf, Tarc(mostly topic ban) and Ryulong? It seems if you are marginally 'baited', not a feminist and are deemed a 'content creator', you get the benefit of the doubt and can do whatever you want without fear of sanction. But if you are relentlessly harassed by an organized, off-site group, your 'civility' is reason enough for a site ban. It seems to me that some members of the committee believe if a non-feminist man defends himself it's ok, but if a woman or a feminist defends herself/himself it's nagging or bickering. Dave Dial (talk) 15:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary break 2
What would the ArbCom say to editors who might want to edit about a subject, but don't want to suffer the same fate as those who came before them? Nobody wants to end up banned, or even topic-banned, just for contributing some of their time to try to improve an article. "Anyone can edit" ends up sounding pretty hollow when you follow it with "...except all those people who already tried". Nobody wants to invest time in something that's liable to earn them nothing more than an ArbCom-certified ass-kicking. I think this kind of official abuse chills participation a lot more than you realize. Ryulong invested years of volunteer effort into improving this project, and now he's banned—exiled, persona non grata, his name forever blackened, an officially designated miscreant. Who else wants to go down that road to nowhere? Everyking (talk) 15:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The vast bulk of the 150 sanctions covered by this case arose from admin action from a dozen or so admins. I guess many of the same admins will now be working on the same issues under discretionary sanctions. Although ArbCom retains jurisdiction over DS, the committee is usually very hands off in he day-to-day operation of it. Roger Daviestalk21:10, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that editors were harassed both onsite and offsite for their participation is probably even more chilling to discourse and participation, especially considering that the editors who were most toxic to the conversation and most directly involved in coordinating offsite harassment received little more than a slap on the wrist for their efforts. -gtrmp (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There was a great deal of email evidence and almost none of it was about harassment. The one "clear" example of GamerGate brigading turned out to be one of the GaterGaters complaining about having been brigaded himself. There is no reason to suppose that the the people who came to Wikipedia were the same ones who had been involved in the monstrous activity reported in the press. The stuff I have seen was mild (mostly low level vandalism) and certainly nowhere near the levels we see in other problematic topics. As it happens, the harassment allegations mostly surfaced after the proposed decision was posted and were unspecific. Roger Daviestalk
"There is no reason to suppose that the the people who came to Wikipedia were the same ones who had been involved in the monstrous activity reported in the press." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS. Protonk (talk) 21:18, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they're not all GamerGaters for a start. The politics of this - and the allegiances - are very complicated. For instance, there's even a radical feminist group aligned with the GamerGaters (and at one point fundraising for them). So what makes you think that people engaging in extreme activity on one hand are going to get involved with arguing about sources and BLP on the other? Roger Daviestalk21:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So is there no reason to suppose it or is it unlikely because some people donated to TFYC and you believe people won't code switch? Because those don't seem relevant at all. I'll bottom line it for you. A party to the case is a moderator' of KiA and you're telling me that there is no evidence of crossover? Or are you making the narrower claim that the people actually calling in bomb threats aren't editing wikipedia (rather than harassing people over twitter, email, etc.)? Because even if that's true it's hardly the same thing. Protonk (talk) 21:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Protonk: During the case, I looked over the private evidence and came to the conclusion that there was evidence that off-site harassment was taking place and a party was involved in it. In response I drafted two FOFs. Due to my personal anxiety and the fact that I felt that I was increasingly on an island in respect to this issue, I retracted them an hour later. I dropped the ball here and I am sorry. --Guerillero | My Talk22:06, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Roger, are you saying that you believe harassment didn't occur, or just that you don't believe that the people who publicly said they were going to carry out harassment were the ones carrying out harassment that exactly matched what they said they were going to do? If it's the former...that's pretty scary, that an arbitrator could have managed to be entirely ignorant of what was going on surrounding a case they were hearing when the facts were to be had by simply googling one or two words. If the latter, it's...well actually, to me that's still pretty scary, and brings to mind suicide pacts. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying that the whole situation is so complicated, with so many people involved and with their identities so concealed, that we cannot state with any degree of certainty that the individuals who were involved in doxing, swatting, death threats and so on are the same individuals who came onto Wikipedia. Sure, we can speculate .... Roger Daviestalk22:03, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I agree with Roger that the evidence (public and private) was severely lacking in this case. I get the sense that a lot of people think more private evidence of harassment was submitted than actually was. The evidence of harassment that we did receive was extremely difficult to connect to specific users, which is largely why I (and presumably others, though I'll let them speak for themselves) chose not to use it heavily in the decision. I do disagree with Roger's implication that those involved in offwiki harrassment can't be supposed to be involved in issues onwiki—there was pretty clear offsite collusion, and it's coy to imply otherwise. I also think that pointing to TFYC is disingenuous and beside the point. GorillaWarfare(talk)22:06, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
With respect, it's impossible for a non-arb to know what private evidence has and hasn't been submitted, especially before the PD is posted. That's not a rejoinder per se but it needs to be said. Protonk (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Right, that's largely what I'm trying to say. I think both arbs and non-arbs alike need to remember that—arbitrators can't expect non-arbitrators to submit evidence based on what has and has not already been submitted, and non-arbitrators can't assume that arbitrators have evidence that we're just ignoring. GorillaWarfare(talk)22:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yea, those 'concealed' identities that had the same damned user names on Wikipedia as they do on Reddit. Or almost every time Loganmac posted on 8chan to organize harassment he started the posts with "Logan here". It takes a real CIA researcher to figure out those identities. And Roger is more than being coy or disingenuous, he's insulting the intelligence of any editor with common sense. Sheesh. Dave Dial (talk) 22:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's no good solution here, unless the user publishes the connection on-wiki. If we don't make the link, we are accused of ignoring offwiki harassment. If we do make the link, we are accused of enabling joe-jobbing. Short of electing a telepathic to the Committee, we have to try to weigh the two. GorillaWarfare(talk)23:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How on earth was this weighed? By what standard is not blatantly obvious that Loganmac and Logan_mac are the same person. Like seriously? I dont know what private evidence you recieved but surely any even vaguely pertaining to Loganmac would make it blatanly obvious they're the same person. There is literally nothing to weigh here. But if onwiki evidence is what you want I'll give it. Here is Loganmac admitting both the reddit and twitter loganmac accounts are his [4], note the wording "looked up my twitter and reddit". If that's not enough proof that the reddit account is his (it should be enough proof that the twitter account is), here are tweets (now deleted) of logan admitting he's the reddit moderator.[5]Bosstopher (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Um...yes? Mediation would have been a terrible route for GG, for those reasons and others. Mediation only works under two conditions: 1. Everyone with a stake can be brought to the table. 2. Everyone at the table is willing to reach an agreement. GG by definition fails to meet condition 1, even if you assume that it will meet condition 2. Protonk (talk) 17:20, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What's absurd or unbelievable about it? Ryulong's response was super hostile and battleground-y. Or are you suggesting that this would still have been cited as battleground behavior had Ryulong written "I would rather not participate in mediation" rather than "Stop fucking forum shopping"? Starke Hathaway (talk) 18:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's brash and rude, but it's not wrong, at all. Mediation was destined to fail and did fail, we're here because it failed. And we're also here, funnily enough, because gaters wouldn't stop forum shopping until they got what they wanted. Protonk (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I seem to have been mistaken about what ArbCom actually cited. My apologies. Still, being wrong about mediation effectiveness is not necessarily against policy. Being brash, rude, and hostile arguably is. Starke Hathaway (talk) 18:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. My problem is that there are conflicting principles, policies and (frankly) realities here. I think Ryulong is a dick, no doubt. But compared to me he has the patience of a saint. Compare this to the GGTF case where we had a long term editor with serious civility problems being baited by a few other editors. In that case arbcom took pains to note the mitigating circumstances (whatever your opinion of those circumstances is) when determining the remedy. Here, because we refused to consider the impact of off-wiki action the committee apparently felt such a weighing of issues was unnecessary. When we remove from the record the thousands of edits, posts and tweets aimed at Ryulong by a group of people who (let's make no mistake) don't give a shit about wikipedia beyond our popularity and accessibility then yeah, you could come to the conclusion that he's a dick and that's bad so let's ban him. Protonk (talk) 18:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well. I definitely see your point re. refusing to consider the impact of off-wiki action. Did ArbCom actually say they refused to consider that? I don't recall seeing it but I could easily be mistaken, as we have seen in this very conversation. My impression was that they simply noted the reality that they had no power, really, to do anything about those off-wiki actions. I would appreciate it if you could set me straight if I've gotten it wrong somewhere.
So they've said they had no power to stop the harassment, which is largely true. They've also said that they cannot sanction editors on wiki who harass people off wiki (less true, but let's grant it). Neither of those statements means they could not weigh the issue, but it does make weighing the issue incredibly difficult. One of the FoFs notes that "off-wiki coordination" was a problem, but almost none of the other remedies, principles or FoFs grapple with this issue at all. Perhaps there was a spirited debate about how to treat baiting, endless SPAs and harassment with respect to mitigating circumstances, but that debate didn't take place in the open and there's little evidence of it in the eventual decision. One of the principal sources of this harassment was left out of the original proposed decision and then topic banned as an afterthought--otherwise it's pretty much unmentioned. Protonk (talk) 19:27, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a personal view, I agree with Protonk's characterisation in the post above. Arguably more discussion could have occurred openly rather than in private, but numerous case participants also submitted private evidence, or were referred to in other people's private evidence, and it would have been difficult to construct useful public conversations while still respecting these issues. Theres also an annoying reality that some of the case remedies only make sense when the private evidence is considered - without that, it must appear a little mystifying as to how the committee reached its decisions.
Having only been here a month I don't know I'd this is public-private evidence split is a commonplace or a particular feature of this case, but I suspect the latter as personal privacy issues were fairly prominent here. --Euryalus (talk) 19:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your last question (or dodge it respectfully), I don't know for sure. My ad hoc feeling is that most of Ryolung's actual problems come from revert warring over borderline edits. 1RR across the project might have been an effective remedy (the word remedy being crucial here, not punishment). Protonk (talk) 19:32, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, a point of consensus! If we phrase the complaint as "ArbCom failed to adequately document its deliberations, if any, regarding off-wiki actions concerning parties to the case and the weight, if any, given to these actions in mitigating the sanctions imposed on those parties," I cannot but fully agree. Starke Hathaway (talk) 19:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
From what I've seen, his judgment of the situation wasn't inaccurate in the least. By its nature, mediation doesn't and can't work in a situation where one party isn't a discrete group of users but is instead a semi-disorganized high-turnover group that frequently brings in new participants from the various offsite social networks where said party kaffeeklatsches and occasionally plans out its strategies for (among other things) editing Wikipedia. In such a scenario, mediators can't really interact meaningfully with both parties, and in practice mediation would only serve to effectively restrain the regular users editing on the other side of the issue from said group. -gtrmp (talk) 19:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's probably helpful to mention again at this stage there weren't two groups, reflecting pro or anti views. There were various blocs reflecting various views, plus a fair number who'd heard about the controversy and were curious. Which made it difficult to identify who was involved with what and what, if any, agenda they had. Roger Daviestalk21:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, it seems at least some of your colleagues disagree with you on this point, Roger; DGG says below that he saw this as a two-group situation. In fact, I don't think I've seen any of your colleagues saying that there were multiple groups or blocs. This can sometimes be a challenge for the committee when the person drafting a decision does not interpret the evidence similarly to the others in the committee; every time I've been aware that it has happened, it's usually resulted in an unsatisfactory, overreaching, and drama-inducing result. (And yes, I wound up voting on some of those, and left before required instead of drafting the last decision because I knew it would wind up that way.) I still do not understand why gender was included in the decision, since there really was nothing to do with gender in the case. Risker (talk) 02:47, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree, to a point. Absent any evidence a discussion happened it might be premature to castigate them for merely not showing their work rather than shirking the assignment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Protonk (talk) 20:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Roger Davies: Now this may just be me, but I think its fairly obvious to identify what group a person who is moderator for KotakuinAction and is currently trying to get Jimmy Wales to do an AMA on his subreddit, who posted almost daily in that subreddit disparaging Ryulong while involved in edit conflicts against him bringing the conflict to the eyes of a massive (and angry) audience, and has been banned 24 hours for wikistalking Ryulong, falls under. I'm assuming at least some of this stuff was in the private evidence Ryulong submitted to you? Bosstopher (talk) 22:03, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I personally feel that most issues that have come before arb com do involve two sides, and this case was a good example of that (with the usual exceptions and variations), and obvious just from the public evidence. Surely the votes on the PD, let alone the comments here, show that there was some disagreement about the obviousness of this among the various members of the committee. But I find it very odd to say that the pro-GG side won the decision, or has unduly influenced the balance of the article. Certainly they tried, but they failed. DGG ( talk ) 00:18, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You may find it odd, but the "pro-GG side" is certainly celebrating the success of their "Operation Five Horseman" (although they only managed to bin 3/5 of their targets). They did take note of, among other things, who voted against the Ryulong ban, and already decided these admins will "have to go" (also here. In their eyes, the "operation" payed off, so expect more of this kind of off-site coordination trying to get rid of disagreeable editors, under whatever pretext comes handy. The ArbCom decision is pointedly neutral, but from the evidence you have reviewed - did you really get the impression that this type of off-wiki coordination and targeting of specific editors on-wiki is a common M.O. on "both sides"? GreggHamster (talk) 13:26, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would imagine the Arbs, both past and present, would practise as they preach and report all off-wiki harassment to the relevant authorities. As for on-wiki, I didn't cite RtBA's remedies for no reason whatsoever. I will grant to Roger Davies that neither side is a saint, but it's the "pro-" sides that are resorting more to battles by attrition here, and in my mind discretionary sanctions for throwaway users is a complete and phenomenal waste of time. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!19:54, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome to draft the RFC; I will be opposing most of it, including especially all of 1 and 2d. The only items I feel I unambiguously support are 2a and 4. TotientDragooned (talk) 21:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On a similar vein, I'm drafting a timeline on the events that happened between the Guardian article and the close of the case, in relation to the case and the press release published here. I expect to have it ready sometime UTC-morrow. LFaraone23:09, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If the WMF felt it important to issue a press release, why the hell didn't they do so themselves? In that regard, I think you guys did the best you could, but if what you say is true, Roger, I would say the Foundation basically set you up for a fall. Resolute00:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's 50/50, in that the Foundation failed completely but they merely added to the complete failure of ArbCom to grasp the issues concerned. Black Kite (talk)01:19, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just putting this here so we can just drop things when we realise that there's a general consensus around it instead of talking in circles.
First, I think there's a general consensus that the Press Release was a mistake, it's not ArbCom's job to issue press release, and that the statement about the ban not currently passing was unintentionally misleading. Hopefully, the lesson has been learned, and we can all drop this line of debate? --Barberio23:50, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I broadly agree. The problem is that the Arbcom should not take media perception into account when making its decisions, but *should* take it into account when communicating its decisions. Drafting arbitrators should consciously reflect on the imaging of the case before posting the first decision draft. Much of the content of the press release -- that Arbcom can remedy *only* on-wiki conduct; that it has authority only over conduct matters, and not content; that most of the worst elements of the GamerGate "side" had already been banned or topic-banned, and the article protected by general sanctions; that the committee condemns off-wiki harassment in the strongest possible terms -- could and should have been principles or FoFs of the original case, which would have nipped much of the drama in the bud. Once the negative press began, the right response was to expedite the case, which was already close to being finished, and not waste time on a press release. Finally, I would have been more comfortable if the Arbcom had left writing a press release to the communications professionals at the WMF, *if* a press release was even necessary: WP:DENY is equally effective against trolls in the media as trolls on-wiki. TotientDragooned (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think it is useful to ignore the press, entirely. "No comment" never looked flattering. In any case, this is an example of a balanced article (from my cursory read) that was probably helped by the press release, here. There have also been retractions, corrections, and subsequent writings that resulted from both inbound press enquiries and proactive contacts. And as Roger noted, the WMF was involved in the crafting of this document. LFaraone20:24, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the informational post (not sure if "press release" is an accurate description) was an ok idea in principle. The main problem is that the post itself could have used another iteration or two of rewriting before publication. I liked Philippe's version better, for example. On the other hand, when to hit "send" with things like this is always a dilemma, so I sympathize. Ultimately though, reaction to this thing seems overblown. I don't see how it's something other than the usual malcontents making the usual noise. 50.0.205.75 (talk) 02:01, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can we also say that there's consensus that there has been general confusion around submitting evidence of off-site harassment, rooted in unclear and inconsistent understanding of what the committee will consider as mitigating circumstances? --Barberio00:00, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The committee does not have a formal mandate to consider mitigating circumstances though informally it always will. The issue is that one person's mitigating circumstance is someone else's lame excuse. These are incredibly grey areas and are basically about judgment and common sense, Roger Daviestalk09:01, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll keep this simple. I consider this case result to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Arbcom failures in memory. I think that the entirety of Arbcom utterly failed in their remit in every possible manner and should be disgraced and ashamed of themselves for, basically, putting out a ruling supporting off-wiki harassment campaigns and direct harassment of Wikipedians. I will not be voting for any of you in any capacity in the next Arbcom election and I hope none of you are reelected to this or any other position of influence ever again. You are a detriment to this encyclopedia and everything it stands for. SilverserenC05:23, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Minor point, not all the decisions were unanimous. I think it's wrong to characterise everyone as having the same position, which is what you seem to be saying. On the major issue, would you like to see ArbCom mandated to consider off-wiki activities, and if so do you agree that this needs to be clarified to specify the scope within which they can do this? At the moment it isn't mentioned in either Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration or Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy. I'm not certain as to how far our role legitimately (at the moment) extends here, and I doubt that I'm the only new arbitrator that is uncertain. I'd probably support an extension into this area but think that it needs to be made formal. Dougweller (talk) 08:10, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ummm. Arbcom has frequently taken into consideration off-wiki activities, and has in the past explicitly sanctioned for such activities; less well-known is that it has also elected to either not sanction or lessen sanctions because of off-wiki activities. The committee decides what evidence it will consider in any given case; while off-wiki activity alone would rarely result in an Arbcom action, it has certainly been the main focus in more than one arbcom action, and the Sandifer desysop was pretty much all about off-wiki activity. There is nothing in the policy that specifically excludes review of off-wiki activity; in fact, the "admissibility of evidence" section is deliberately written to allow evidence other than the types enumerated. Risker (talk) 08:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Since we have two Arbitration Committee members disagreeing over this, I think that makes it clear enough that there's confusion over evidence handling and what may be submitted. I think this is a clear signal that there needs to be review of this part of the Arbitration Policy. --08:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)Barberio
No, I'm not disagreeing, I'm just new and still learning. It is at WP:OWH which says it is "admissible evidence in the dispute-resolution process, including Arbitration cases." Dougweller (talk) 13:00, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's apples and oranges, surely? The question is whether evidence of alleged off-wiki activities is persuasive enough to be acted on. And if so, where should the bar be? Balance of probabilities? Clear and compelling? Beyond reasonable doubt? And then we have all the potential implications of the committee WP:OUTING someone to consider ... Roger Daviestalk09:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Roger Davies: I'm confused by this statement, and past statements. Could you make a clear statement that sets out your position on submitting evidence of off-wiki harassment to the committee, and if the committee should consider that as mitigating circumstances? You can not blame the community for not submitting evidence on off-wiki harassment, then turn around and raise doubts over if the committee should accept evidence on off-wiki harassment.
Again, as I said on the draft RfC, it is not a matter of if mitigating circumstances should be considered... Throughout the history of Wikipedia they have been, it's just they have been considered in wildly variable ways, with little consistency and sometimes in outright contradictory ways. Sometimes within the same case. This is clearly a source of dispute, and producer of inconsistent remedies. --Barberio09:20, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the GamerGate nobody asked by email for external harassment to be treated as a mitigating circumstance. And, contra that, we had email evidence that some of those "harassing" (well, "shouting at off-wiki" more realistically) was a part of a two-way slanging match. Roger Daviestalk09:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that you're just making excuses because you don't want to take responsibility for being involved in supporting harassment of Wikipedia editors. SilverserenC09:42, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The unfortunate reality is that we can do something to protect people on-wiki (page protection, admins watchlisting, oversighting, etc) but can do nothing at all to protect them off-wiki. That can only be done by either off-wiki site management or by law enforcement. Plus, there is no WP:BADSITES policy. Roger Daviestalk09:49, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also, hey, SUCCESS! You've succeeded in having Gamergate go after other Wikipedians now! See here and here. Congrats, Arbcom, you did it! You accomplished your goal of getting more Wikipedians targeted and harassed! I knew you had it in you! Great job, Roger Davies, i'm proud of you. SilverserenC09:58, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can you tell me please whether you believe that declaring certain editors "Defenders of the Wiki" or some such, would have reduced or increased the prospect of them being harassed? Hipocrite isn't even mentioned in the decision. Roger Daviestalk10:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Roger Davies:, hey, Rodger, how do you think that syncs up with 18, exactly? Would you expect any new users to volunteer for a GamerGate ethics review along the lines of the one I'm getting? Let's see - I'm being impersonated on Reddit via some ridiculous false-flag, I'm currently the trending topic on the main GamerGate message board, I have a wife or husband and some number of kids that is greater than zero and less than eight, and GamerGate or those closely connected it it have Swatted people before. But don't worry - it's all justified because I tried to make Ryulong, a decade long contributor here, feel better about his ban by promising to read emails he'd send me and that I'd put articles he cares about on a watchlist. ETHICS! Hipocrite (talk) 13:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbcom has made it clear that anyone who tries to defend the Gamergate article or related articles from BLP violations and POV editing is going to be sanctioned. So Gamergate clearly thinks the best method then is to harass anyone whatsoever that is involved in defending the article and then will use the discretionary sanctions against them. Arbcom has already directly shown that it is fine with supporting off-wiki harassment and not editors trying to defend Wikipedia. SilverserenC10:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is, and always has been, site policy that people are expected to be restrained and calm, even in the face of provocation. If they can't do that, they are expected to leave the topic to others. Sure, people are cut some slack but nobody, ever, has been given a carte blanche to do whatever they like. ArbCom is prohibited from creating new policy by fiat but if you think the policy should be changed, you're welcome to try doing so. Roger Daviestalk10:27, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Your Arbcom speech is as good as always. Deflection of issues, pointing at policies, never taking responsibility. In this case, not caring about harassment of Wikipedians. I guess you'd make a good politician, Roger. And, no, that's not a compliment. I'm done here. I'm going to try and actually help Wikipedia and do what I can to protect and support the editors that you all have abandoned. SilverserenC10:38, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Roger, I know you are vested in defending your decision, but try to remember that there are wider considerations and you're making public statements.
I was unaware that there was a requirement that someone email you to ask for external harassment to be treated as a mitigating circumstance during a case. I assume this is not a formal policy of any kind?
Yes, of course I would (and I have plenty of times in the past). But it all greatly depends on other contributory factors, which cannot easily/sensibly/practically be legislated for. In the real world, it's covered by exercise of discretion. Roger Daviestalk09:58, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you agree that the current level of discretion has resulted in inconsistent, and sometimes even contradictory application of mitigating factors within the same case? --Barberio10:05, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a passing comment, I think its important to acknowledge that any two people can examine evidence in good faith and come to different conclusions as to its value, origins, mitigating factors etc. That's not "inconsistency" so much as a diversity of views. It's one of the reasons why there are fifteen committee members. The committee has certainly taken off-wiki issues into account, on occasion, and where relevant. But the weight given to these off-wiki issues will vary somewhat between committee members, as it should when people are asked to exercise independent judgement. -- Euryalus (talk) 11:03, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If it were just diversity of views between Arbitrators, that'd be one thing, but the problem is that there's a 'diversity' in how cases are actually handled, and the application of remedies. If it were a matter of Arbitrators disagreeing on off-site harrasment being considered, then there would not be so many instances of contradictory remedies, particularly ones within the same case, because they would still be consistent to their own views. And there certainly needs to be a clear guideline for evidence submission, which certainly can't be written off as 'diversity of views' because there needs to be one single standard there or it's not going to work. --Barberio11:20, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fair points, but I'm not sure they apply. A quantity of off-wiki evidence was providedexisted, some of it as mitigation for on-wiki conduct. I bore it in mind when considering the findings and remedies. It was relevant but was not always entirely exculpatory - sometimes there were other conduct factors to consider, and sometimes the off-wiki evidence simply wasn't enough to either impose the sanction some called for, or mitigate a sanction others opposed. I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't consider my voting in the case to have shown any great inconsistency. But I accept that that's just my opinion, based on my own assessment of the material presented and the votes cast. -- Euryalus (talk) 11:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll counter by saying that I believe the Arbcom, overall, did a decent job handling an incredibly difficult case with no obvious best answers. The central question was whether off-wiki misbehavior by one set of parties ever gives carte blanche to the other set of parties to edit-war and tendentiously edit on-wiki. They leaned towards "no," which makes sense to me: if you are being harassed off-wiki, the right response is to disengage, alert the WMF and law enforcement, and ask uninvolved administrators to step in. The wrong response is to entrench yourself in the topic and double-down on on-wiki misbehavior.
I was particularly impressed with Roger Davies and Beeblebrox, who cut to the heart of the case without getting distracted by side drama, and hope that Roger will continue to be as decisive and incisive during the rest of his committee tenure. TotientDragooned (talk) 05:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Says the SPA account that hadn't posted more than twice in the past two years and suddenly reactivated to start posting in the Gamergate case. You are the perfect example of the problem. SilverserenC05:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
SPA, huh? How many edits of mine do you see in the area of GamerGate, or for that matter gender and sexuality, broadly construed? You must not have checked very carefully ;) And yes, I haven't edited in a while, but when misinformed posts about the arbcom decision started flooding my Facebook news feed I became rather concerned. Now if you have replies other than personal attacks, I'd be happy to read them. TotientDragooned (talk) 05:55, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Then perhaps you or Silver seren could clarify; since 1) my editing history here predates the GamerGate controversy by over five years, and 2) I have never made any edits anywhere near the topic area, and certainly have no plans to go POV-war there now, I'm not sure how to characterize their remark other than as (poorly-researched) ad hominem. That said, I'm not particularly offended and don't need help from the NPA police. TotientDragooned (talk) 14:22, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The way I interpreted Silver seren's reply to your comment was that after reading your posting, he made an assessment regarding its (poor) quality before comparing it to your other recent contributions and decision to just post to this case discussion page (after being inactive for so long). I don't know if I necessarily disagree/agree with Silver seren's overall view that you are a perfect example of the problem that the topic area is regularly being subjected to (like a few other areas in this project), but if I were basing it on your last two comments including the unnecessary reference to "NPA police", I'd be inclined to agree. I thought your postings were foolish because you don't seem to read things carefully and/or seem to rely on erroneous/unnecessary assumptions. To clarify, Silver seren simply characterised you as an SPA (which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing anyway); he didn't say anything else. Rather than seek clarification about what sort of SPA, you ask for evidence as to when you have directly contributed to the Gamergate/gender/sexuality topics, suggest he hasn't checked properly (because you apparently assume he called you a Gamergate controversy SPA), and then refer to unspecified "personal attacks" in his comment (even though you were "not particularly offended"). Anyway, enough red herrings please. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If I had replied to one of your posts solely to 1) call you an SPA, and 2) call you "a perfect example of [a] problem", wouldn't you some difficulty taking them in good faith? I thought Seren's comment was a clear-cut ad hominem attack but I apologize if I was mistaken. I will disengage now as it seems my contributions here are not welcome. (And in case it wasn't clear, the last sentence of my last post was urging the IP to back off, *not* directed at you or Silver seren). TotientDragooned (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
TotientDragooned, I didn't say you shouldn't disagree with Silver seren - just that before you disagree, at least know exactly what it is you're disagreeing with and frame it properly. If you take offence to being called an SPA at all re: any topic, then at least frame your reply to him accordingly rather than asking for evidence as to why you're an SPA in one area which he didn't otherwise specify. And if you aren't genuinely offended, don't make the accusation which will end up turning a molehill into a mountain. To be clear, my criticism of your last couple of comments was not intended to be a reflection of suggesting you are unwelcome to comment at all; it's just a reflection that you can and should take a bit more care when you do comment in future rather than repeating the same issues like you did on these two occasions. (And while I know who you were referring to, it's just as bad if the IP then accused you of making a personal attack by calling it NPA police when there are other ways you can get the point across to it.) Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:38, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I have to pluck this out, Roger Davies. You say "nobody asked by email for external harassment to be treated as a mitigating circumstance" first of all, WHAT? If, as you say, arbcom has no policy about mitigating circumstances, how could parties be expected to know that they need to file their evidence under "mitigating circumstances"? Protonk (talk) 14:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In a nutshell, ArbCom policy is "use common sense". There is no reason that mitigating circumstances couldn't be presented now in a request for modification. Before doing that I suggest showing that evidence to somebody uninvolved to see if they think it would be a good idea to file such a request. There shouldn't be a flood of frivolous requests, however, ArbCom should entertain legitimate requests to fix errors in decisions. JehochmanTalk14:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If "use common sense" were such an easy thing, then ArbCom wouldn't need to exist in the first place.
I do think that ArbCom do need an explicit direct mandate to consider mitigating circumstances, in particular off-site attacks. The current position is "we don't but we will, maybe", and we can patently see what this has resulted in. People need to clearly know they can submit evidence of mitigating circumstances, and that evidence will be considered as a part of the process not just on the whim of any particular arbitrator. --Barberio16:36, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm "characterizing" as personal attacks:
You are a detriment to this encyclopedia and everything it stands for.
- addressed to all of Arbcom, not justified beyond a personal opinion on the ruling.
It seems to me that you're just making excuses because you don't want to take responsibility for being involved in supporting harassment of Wikipedia editors.
- addressed directly to Roger Davies.
Congrats, Arbcom, you did it! You accomplished your goal of getting more Wikipedians targeted and harassed! I knew you had it in you! Great job, Roger Davies, i'm proud of you.
Your Arbcom speech is as good as always. Deflection of issues, pointing at policies, never taking responsibility. In this case, not caring about harassment of Wikipedians. I guess you'd make a good politician, Roger.
Says the SPA account that hadn't posted more than twice in the past two years and suddenly reactivated to start posting in the Gamergate case. You are the perfect example of the problem.
For the arbs, can you tell us one thing the committee--not the community, not the parties, not the complexity of the case, the committee--did wrong in this decision? Alternately if you feel the committee did nothing wrong, would you be willing to say that simply and explicitly? Protonk (talk) 16:03, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, we published the PD onwiki too early. There are other proposals that I think we should have passed and didn't, but that's pretty clear from my votes. GorillaWarfare(talk)17:59, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think we did a lot of things wrong. And I'm thinking of them now, some of which I am sorry to say I failed to note operationally. I think we should have passed remedy 11, which would have helped admins control conduct within the topic area without as much rigamarole. Another thing I'm guilty of (and didn't realize as a problem until neck-deep), is that newly-elected arbs likely should not be allowed to participate in a case if their terms begin after the evidence and workshop phases have concluded, particularly on cases that take several days to read. After this one, I think the system of drafting arbs needs some reform; while a subset is needed to drive the writing of a PD, it allows too much for the rest to vote to take a case, and then forget it exists until a PD is posted. And I agree with GorillaWarfare, a few more days and a few more eyes on the PD before it was posted would have been very useful here, something that would have likely happened had it not been posted two days earlier than the target date. Courcelles18:32, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't even realise newly-elected arbs got involved in the voting on this case. I would have figured only the arbs who were active at the time of the case's being accepted would vote on it. —Jeremyv^_^vBori!19:49, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As do I. Courcelles, you say "it allows too much" - not sure what you mean but I get the gist. So far as the new arbs go, there was a big turn over and that would have left at best 6 arbs to vote on the case. Would the community be willing to let us adjust the timetable of cases to better suit the timetable of new arbs coming in? I guess new arbs could be asked if they are willing to commit to a case and start reading the evidence when they are 'inducted'. That would minimise any timetable changes. But it would still mean that cases taken on at the end of the year would take longer to settle. This would probably only be important and major cases such as GamerGate with large numbers of participants and a lot of evidence to read through. I didn't take part because I had no idea before I became an arb what it was all about, and then didn't think I could digest such a large amount of material in an area where I had no background knowledge. Dougweller (talk) 20:28, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with GW. I think that the committee needs to ask more targeted questions in relation to private evidence; we can't just expect people to send us things and then wonder why the info we would like to see isn't there. --Guerillero | My Talk18:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Wrong?" I think that's too declarative. However with all the experience of precisely one month in the Committee, I'd agree some things could have been done better. First, I agree with most of the points Courcelles made, especially the importance of keeping in top of the evidence at an early stage. Second, there should more of a bias towards on-wiki evidence. On a couple of occasions people emailed the committee asking for things to be considered as private evidence or private requests, that had no privacy implications at all. In hindsight they should have been asked to post it on-wiki. Third, I believe the outcome was a good reflection of "the rules" even though I didn't agree with all the remedies that finally passed; but as a statement of the obvious, rules enforcement must be tempered with a view of what's best for the encyclopedia. It's the reason we have IAR. It's part of the reason why there are occasional heated debates over "content contributors" getting free passes. Now perhaps this is not the role of Arbcom, which gets disputes only at their most intractable and where nothing but a rigid rules-based approach will do. And the application of IAR is always controversial, so perhaps a less rules-based outcome would have simply magnified the subsequent drama - it's Arbcom's responsibility to calm disputes, not make them worse. But it's something worth consideration. Just some thoughts - feel free to disagree and/or throw stones. -- Euryalus (talk) 20:36, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"rules enforcement must be tempered with what's best for the encyclopedia" – yes, if only ArbCom had considered what's best for the encyclopedia. Banning POV pushing but somewhat civil throwaway accounts who don't agree with the media coverage of their movement or long-standing productive editors whose mistake was to crack under the off- and on-wiki harassment, all in the name of a false impartiality. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 20:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No fact-based interpretation of the case could lead to that conclusion. If you think that's what happened, I suggest you read the case and carefully examine the histories of all the parties involved, starting perhaps with the dates they registered their accounts and their block logs. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:16, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I join with Courcelles in saying that a significant issue, and always has been, getting enough of the committee to focus far enough in advance to make significant input on a draft. We have so many things happening in so many different areas that this is a systemic, rather than a behavioural, issue. So we tend to firefight as things bubble to the service. The solution to the focusing issue is to draft things in public, or at least workshop them in public before moving to vote. That brings its own problems though ... notably by encouraging people to exert pressure to sway things one way or another. It may also reduce further the number of people prepared to run for ArbCom. Roger Daviestalk20:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Wrong" is a bit too declarative, I agree, but it would have been nice (bearing in mind that hindsight is always 20:20), that to have had the general remedies like the discretionary sanctions from the get-go, perhaps as a temporary injunction. The community sanctions were something, but ArbCom discretionary sanctions come with broader powers and greater visibility, and they were left in state of limbo while the case rumbled on. That would have allowed misconduct to have been dealt with more rigorously during the case, leaving ArbCom to sort out what's left at a more suitable timescale. Arbitrator participation in the evidence phase (perhaps with arbs going through once all the evidence was complete and asking for clarification/diffs as necessary) would have been nice, as would better clerking to deal with feuding, petty bickering, and personal attacks disguised as evidence or workshop proposals. But big cases like these don't come around very often; had I been an arb (and I'm very grateful that I'm not!), I would have voted differently on a few proposals, but I think the arbs made the best they could of a horrible case. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:16, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The point about clerking is one that applies to many cases over the recent years. While much of the conduct during this case was appalling, it's often particularly striking how cases revolving around civility over the past couple of years have always been riddled with PAs and uncivil behaviour, and rarely limited to the accused parties. Just like RFA, too many RFARs and open proceedings are rule-free zones where anything goes. This exacerbates tensions further during the months long cases, and most certainly participates to the establishing of the toxic grudges parties to past cases keep dragging for years, sometimes closer to a decade, after their sanctions expire. Much stricter enforcement of decorum and WP:NPA could help. MLauba(Talk)23:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I think the problem was more that the clerks were too timid, and don't have (or don't see themselves as having) a strong enough mandate to enforce standards of conduct, with the result that parties can make baseless attacks with impunity. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:56, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
RFC on reforming the appeals process for banned or long-term blocked users
Topic bans relating to "gender or sexuality, broadly construed.”
Can someone give a succinct summary of why these sanctions were meted out with the TB on GG itself? The ban on GG makes seems obvious, but I just don't understand the rationale for the overly broad ban.--Two kinds of porkMakin'Bacon09:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned at the time, that's still a very broad area. With the given example that at it's most "broadly construed" the topic ban covers The History Channel for having documentaries about Suffragettes. Functionally, this is exactly what the combatitive parties wanted, prevention of the editors targeted from editing in a wide scope of articles.
I'm sorry that you dislike the criticism people are making, but I think people are starting to get tired of your dismissive and deflective attitude towards it. --Barberio10:00, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as the History Channel is neither (a) Gamergate, (b) a gender-related dispute or controversy, or (c) a person associated with (a) or (b), I don't think your concern about the ban's scope covering it is realistic. Now, I could see how the documentary itself would be covered under the topic ban, or how the History Channel could be covered under it in some alternate universe where the channel is primarily known for its coverage of suffragettes, but I see that as more of a feature than a bug. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 13:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The topic area of suffragettes is very definitely linked to gender, and there are lots of controversies related to suffragettes. In addition, there are also lots of controversies related to gender-specific actions within the animal kingdom (for example, same-sex coitus or sexual congress has been discussed extensively on- and off-wiki for many species), and it would also cover just about anything related to sex, reproduction, some aspects of genetics, etc. Risker (talk) 18:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I must confess to being a little confused by your response, since you seem to be agreeing with me while your tone suggests you don't agree. To be clear, my position is as follows: Suffragettes are definitely covered under (c) as people related to a gender-related dispute or controversy. A network that runs a documentary on suffragettes is not itself covered, as it meets none of the enumerated criteria, unless the network itself somehow becomes predominantly known for its position in a gender-related dispute or controversy. (Here's an interesting edge case: Lifetime.)
As for the rest of your response, you seem to be confusing gender with sex (they aren't interchangeable). I don't think it's common at all to talk about "gender" in biology or genetics, or among nonhuman animals, although admittedly that's not my area of expertise. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 18:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One reasonable workaround might be "admins can, if asked at AE or AN, make reasonable exception to this for constructive edits to more peripherally-related topics". Guettarda (talk) 18:37, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In response to Starke hathaway, the problem is that the decision itself does not differentiate between gender and sex, either; in fact, it's not particularly clear why "gender" is added to discretionary sanctions based on the findings and principles. And unfortunately, in a lot of topic areas, "gender" and "sex" are used fairly interchangeably. To be honest, it would have made more sense to add "philosophies related to social justice" to the DS than to add "gender", because it's the former that have been bigger battlegrounds in relation to the overall GG topic, even without mentioning the term "Gamergate". Most of the problem edits in that general topic area wouldn't fall under the GG DS.
Guettarda, are you suggesting that anyone who's already been warned/advised on the GG topic should have to go to AE to get permission to (for example) improve the referencing for same-sex relationships in penguins? It's a controversial subject, it's gender-related.... Risker (talk) 18:42, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Er, with respect, I think the decision does differentiate between gender and sex in that the topic ban uses the word "gender" and does not use the word "sex." Expressio unius est exclusio alterius, after all. Incidentally, a quick Google Scholar search of "penguin gender" (without quotes) returns no relevant results on the first page ("relevant" here meaning they contain the word "gender" in the sense of meaning something a penguin has). -Starke Hathaway (talk) 18:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps reading our article on gender might be helpful; gender is generally considered to encompass aspects of sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender identity, gender-specific behaviour, sex-specific behaviour, and a large number of related subjects. That would encompass my penguin example. Risker (talk) 19:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid WP is not authoritative on use of the word "gender." The reliable sources are clear that gender and sex are not the same thing. Also you may want to have a look at this as the language you are citing was not in fact adopted as part of the topic ban, as Roger Davies noted above. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Missed your correction edit. I'll grant you that gender encompasses elements of sexuality in humans, but it makes no sense to consider penguin sexuality to be under the umbrella of "gender" as penguins don't have genders. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 19:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now. That's one of the controversies about penguins. On what authority would you say that they do not have genders? And if gender is a broadly encompassing term (whether or not Wikipedia is authoritative, it's certainly got lots of references linked there which correlate with my statement above), why do you believe it is a concept restricted to humans? Risker (talk) 19:37, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll count that as a controversy I remain blissfully unaware of. We're going a bit far afield here, but I say it's a concept restricted to humans because it's a human social construct. As well to say ants have "architecture," birds of paradise "fashion," and sloths "satori." -Starke Hathaway (talk) 19:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I always thought ants were supposed to be engineers, not architects? Nonetheless, I think I've made my point, that there's a huge amount of room for interpretation here, and that the restriction isn't actually on-point. I've left you a link on your talk page for your reading amusement as I think we've pretty much taken care of this issue. Risker (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I wonder if simply adding the word "human" in part b would be enough to clarify the necessary scope, without getting into all the arguments about penguins and such? Courcelles20:01, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The whole point of broad remedies and phrases like "broadly construed" is to prevent wikilawyering. Sure, an absurd reading of the remedy would put penguin sex in the scope of the topic ban, but there's a reason we have humans to enforce these decision and not robots; I can't imagine any admin at AE interpreting these remedies as applying to penguins. I certainly wouldn't, and I've been active at AE for several years. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:13, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I know that the arbitration committee has never undertaken any kind of review of the application of its discretionary sanctions, but there were plenty of times when I saw "broadly construed" stretched a very long way in its interpretation when I was an arbitrator. That you wouldn't do it is good news, HJM. There is no proscription from others doing it, though; in fact, some might see this as a feature, not a bug. Risker (talk) 16:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Should the committee have a direct mandate to accept and consider evidence of mitigating circumstances?
I think the overwhelming consensus is that evidence of mitigating circumstances should be considered. I see no one above arguing against that. I do see a realm of confusion and inconsistency over how they should do so, and a clear statement that they don't have a mandate to do so right now.
I think that we need to make the small modification to the policy, to grant a direct mandate to consider evidence of mitigating circumstances, including evidence of off-site harassment. This probably shouldn't have needed to be directly said, perhaps it was simply assumed that would happen and everyone would know it would happen as a given. But as I said above you can't depend on "common sense", and it's clear that this isn't working very well at the moment.
So I'm going to present the following question that I think needs to be answered. Should the Arbitration Policy include a direct mandate for the Committee to accept and consider evidence of mitigating circumstances, including off-site harassment? --Barberio16:48, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No threaded discussion please. In the interests of readability and directed discussion, only make individual statements in support or opposition to this idea. Threaded replies should be moved to user talk pages.
@Barberio: Giant custom-made warning banner notwithstanding, it's fundamentally problematic to demand a vote on a change to a Wikipedia policy without any discussion—with the exception, of course, of the argument in favor presented by the original proposer. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:48, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(And yes, I welcome threaded replies to my statement.)
I think that policy should be clarified in the opposite direction from Barberio's good-faith suggestion above. I understand and sympathize with his suggestion, but in my considered opinion such a policy would have undesired unforeseen consequences. I would suggest the following alternative:
No amount of misbehavior (real or imagined) by those on one side of a dispute (on-wiki or off-wiki) justifies or excuses misbehavior by the other side. Editors should disengage if they feel that they are not able to follow Wikipedia's behavioral standards and should resolve disputes using the standard Wikipedia dispute resolution process.
If there is community support for strictly enforcing this, and thus restraining ArbCom from ever considering mitigating circumstances, then so be it. I would then expect the ArbCom to be ruthless and strict about user conduct. I look forward to a future where practically everyone who ends up in an arbcom case gets some kind of ban out of it, it'll trim the herd. --Barberio20:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And to make it explicit. I Support either this or changing policy to better reflect practice. Sure, there may well be side-effects to tying the ArbCom's hands to use strict liability for 3RRs and such when applying remedies, and it'll make being an Admin a much bigger deal, but so be it. --Barberio20:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(In response to "Should the ArbCom, as Guy Macon suggests, never accept mitigating circumstances, what-so-ever?" question asked below)
My statement said absolutely nothing about arbitrator behavior and instead focused on user behavior. This was intentional. So let me address the question you raised above. Consider two cases: in the first case editor A spends a long time patiently staying within Wikipedia behavioral guidelines while being viciously harassed on-wiki and/or off-wiki, then snaps and misbehaves in response. In the second case editor B misbehaves despite his opponents patiently staying withing Wikipedia behavioral guidelines and being nice off-wiki as well. Both editors are doing the wrong thing, but most would agree that B's behavior is worse, and arbitrators are human and would naturally tend to take the harassment of A into consideration.
However, this does not imply that there should be any hint in any policy that arbcom should do that. The reason is that any such policy will encourage misbehavior by A -- and will encourage misbehavior by editors who think they are editor A when they really are editor B. There is, however, a solution (one that is already in place) to this problem. Arbcom's job is to prevent, not to punish. It is very likely that A will stop misbehaving with a reminder, and it is likely that B will require a stronger sanction to prevent future misbehavior. Thus the two can be treated differently purely on the basis of preventing probable future problems, without any hint in any policy or any arbcom ruling that A is in any way justified or excused for his misbehavior. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:29, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a valid point... If not for the problem that it doesn't reflect at all the current circumstances where those who know-the-system, have often been able to claim mitigating circumstances, and point to their "good works" on the wiki in order to avoid bans on civility and conduct issues. In theory, yes, possibly adding language about it might lead more people to try to game the system. But not much more than already do so. And without clear guidelines, it does look a lot like those who try to game the system have a better chance under the current practice. --Barberio23:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Request to Roger Davies
@Roger Davies:Since you strongly objected to an RfC process, I attempted to implement a "directed discussion on a single topic" above. It was a very very narrow question, with an attempt at preventing threaded slanging matches and "point of order!" objections. Roadblocks are already being thrown up to that. I'm at a loss as to what the "right" way is, since no matter what it appears someone is going to step in and drag the whole thing down crying "This is the wrong way to go about this!".
So I'm going to put the whole thing in your lap. I appoint you chief in charge of sorting out this mess, or chiding the ArbCom into appointing someone to do it. Reform is wanted, you said you want reform. You're in a position to direct people to make a civil attempt at discussing reform. And at the moment the only way this process is going to get started at all is from someone within the committee starting it and warning people off from being disruptive and wiki-lawyering it into oblivion. --Barberio18:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And yes, reform is absolutely needed for one reason...
Current practice is that ArbCom members may consider mitigating circumstances resulting from personal attacks, and this has been a very long standing practice.
It's possible to have a strict reading of the current policy that ArbCom members should never consider mitigating circumstances resulting from personal attacks.
This conflict must be resolved. But no one seems to actually want to resolve it by making policy match practice, and to be frank I'm pretty sure no one who made their practice match the "strict" reading of policy would ever get a second term in ArbCom. So what are we going to do about it? For myself, I'm growing quickly bored of being told what the "wrong" ways are for the community to make what appears a pretty simple decision.Barberio18:41, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going say much other than to offer an opinion. I' don't think that freshly minted policy that flatly contradicts WP:DR and offers endless opportunities to argue over was mitigating circumstances are and what constitutes off-wiki harassment is a constructive way forward. I'd like to see a more streamlined and more focused process (though I don't know how to achieve it); more realistic expectations of what ArbCom can actually do; and found ways to reduce ripples from disputes spreading throughout the community. There's an analogy with WP:RFA here: there's wide consensus that arbitration isn't perfect but little consensus about how to fix it. Roger Daviestalk19:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitration has absolutely nothing to do with arbitration as the word is commonly understood in the real world, that's the fundamental problem. All it has to do with is handing out sanctions. EricCorbett19:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing in WP:DR that directly conflicts with current practice of allowing consideration of mitigating circumstances conflicts. The phrasing used there is "In all cases, and even in the face of serious misconduct, please try to act in a professional and polite manner.", and "arbitration may result in a number of serious consequences up to totally banning someone from editing" (emphasis mine).
Again, there is a clear conflict between policy as written, and what the actual practice of the ArbCom has been. Can you give a clear yes/no answer... Should the ArbCom, as Guy Macon suggests, never accept mitigating circumstances, what-so-ever? --Barberio19:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@ Barberio. What is a mitigating factor? On one hand, if someone says "I'm really sorry. I got sucked into something and completely lost my cool. I won't do it again and will move away from the topic", that will attract almost universal sympathy. Unless it's the second or third time they've done it. On the other hand, if someone says "I did bad stuff but I don't care because I was responding to equally bad stuff, and I will continue to fight my corner on-wiki" it's a whole different can of worms. Policy on this clear: read WP:DISENGAGE. Roger Daviestalk20:36, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See, if you just alter the phrasing of those two statements, then you have a nice clear and bright guideline for Arbitrators on how to accept mitigating circumstances. All you have to do is draft it, have it accepted by enough other Arbs, and publish it as a guideline, then see if that standard has community support. Albeit I think you're confusing "move away from the dispute" with "move away from the topic", we do not want a wikipedia where a single moment's of incivility results in an automatic broad-scoped topic ban. --Barberio22:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Roger Davies:Here's sample language based on your comment - "Where editors formerly in good standing have provided evidence of mitigating circumstances, and accept that they failed to uphold conduct standards, the Arbitration committee may issue a caution for their conduct." Possibly with additional language such as "Evidence for any mitigating circumstances must be provided to the Committee.". This seems a non-contraversial reflection of practice, and provides a nice clear guideline for ArbCom and the Community. --Barberio22:57, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Quick revision "Where editors formerly in good standing have provided evidence of mitigating circumstances, and accept that they failed to uphold conduct standards, the Arbitration committee may take that into consideration. Mitigating circumstances will not be considered without evidence supporting it, and giving a recorded commitment to good behaviour. Evidence for any mitigating circumstances must be provided to the Committee."
As it stands, ArbCom basically have a "double secret probation" system, where someone might get mitigating circumstances. But then that hangs over them as a virtual suspended sentence if they ever end up back in arbitration. But this isn't written down anywhere, and it's hopelessly unclear how it's supposed to work.
This is strongly why people got upset about the Ryulong ban, because it doesn't seem warented in sole reference to the case in isolation. So if you don't know that Ryulong has basically been on "double secret probation" for years, it looks like ArbCom came down on him like a ton of bricks, and sent very bad signals about off-wiki harassment campaigns. And this is probably going to keep happening for as long as the "double secret probation" undocumented pseudo-policy. --Barberio12:21, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary section break the Nth
You said you want a "directed discussion on a single topic". But you put up a banner saying no threaded discussion, just statements of support or opposition. That's not discussion. What do you think justifies misbehavior, and what kind of misbehavior does it justify? Answers to those questions might help others understand what you are trying to achieve. Dougweller (talk) 19:50, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No, Roger wanted that, after I tried to draft a more open ended RfC. And "Make your own statements" was "make your own statements". If anyone wanted to propose something else, they could do so in their own sub-heading, I just wanted to limit that sub-heading to that question so it wouldn't end up a free-wheeling debate. --Barberio19:56, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And watch as we get bogged down in a debate over painting the bikeshed rather than adressing the actual issue of when/if/how ArbCom should consider mitigating circumstances, and that they already do so despite there not being a clear remit for it and some people thinking they should be explicitly barred from doing so. --Barberio19:59, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Don't try to make "rules" about people can comment. As you've seen, those don't work.
Finally, I'll tell you right out I sincerely believe you're wasting your time because I don't think you'll get the necessary one hundred supports. (And be prepared for pointless haggling over what the "good standing" in the linked policy actually means.) NE Ent20:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this, but the only way to get to the hundred supports for amendment, is to work out the best change to suggest before hand. Your suggestion would in fact, be one more of those "Wrong ways to change policy". --Barberio20:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbcom can and always has taken mitigating circumstances into account, so the suggested amendment seems like unnecessary bureaucracy and instruction creep. If there's a particular editor who you think got a bad rap, it would be more informative if you named the editor and commented on the specific issue, instead of going off on flights of abstraction about policy changes. 50.0.205.75 (talk) 06:48, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that this practice is not reflected in policy, and it's causing a great deal of confusion with some people interpreting current stated policy as saying Arbitrators should never consider mitigating circumstances and confusion over if evidence of mitigating circumstances will be accepted. This also means that yes, there are currently people who act inappropriately because they assume they'll receive more leniency from ArbCom than they actually would. Leaving it this unclear is not less bureaucracy, it's just hidden and unclear bureaucracy.
As an aside, I've very rarely seen anyone argue "instruction creep" on wiki when it's not been the case that the practice required knowing all the stuff that the instructions would contain, but for some reason people strongly objecting to writing those instructions down. --Barberio11:59, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience [6], which includes 1,000 WP:WQA and 2,500 WP:ANI contributions, well intentioned efforts to clarify practice do not work because more words on policy pages simply lead to more confirmation bias driven out-of-context cherry-picking of phrases and wiki-lawyering. It is the principles that ultimately matter, not the nuts and bolts. By definition, any thing that ends up at arbcom is of sufficient nuance and complexity that the community has been unable to resolve it using boilerplate application of existing policy. Additionally, that also implies some non-trivial portion of the community is always going to be unhappy with some or all of the committee's final decision. What's of primary importance is not the the committee makes perfect decisions so much as they make closure. NE Ent13:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
{reply-to|NE Ent}} I think the mistake is in thinking that wiki-lawyering isn't already happening. It's just happening with the people who know the "unwritten" rules. So we get to the point where an editor who is well known to have conduct problems has been able to avoid remedy for a long time by knowing how to claim "mitigating-circumstances", and when they finally get sanctioned it happens in a high profile case and sends entirely the wrong message to the community. Unwritten rules are just as much subject to abuse as written ones, it's just much much harder to identify and avoid that abuse with unwritten rules.
And yes, the principles are what matters... But that's the point that is entirely unclear. What are ArbCom's principles in regard to considering mitigating-circumstances? I've already outlined phrasing that appears to cover the current practice and makes it clear what the principles are, but the principles need to be stated not just assumed to be understood by the community. --Barberio14:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
