User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/SirFozzie

Hello, below are some optional questions to help the voters at the 2008 Arbitration Committee elections get to know you, the candidate, better.

• 1. How long have you been an editor of Wikipedia?

• A.My first edit was February 6th, 2006

• 2. How many total edits do you have on Wikipedia? What is your % of edits to the article space?

• A.

• 3. Are you an administrator? If so, how long have you been one?

• A.I am an administrator, have been so since June, 2007.

• 4. Do you hold any other userrights or positions at the English Wikipedia? (crat, medcom, WPPJ, etc)

• A. Currently, at this time, I do not. I was part of the Adopt a User for a while.

• 5. Do you hold any userrights or other positions of trust at other WMF projects? Which ones?

• A. Not currently.

• 6. Have you ever been named as a participant of a Request for Arbitration? If so, please link case(s).

• A. While not named as a participant, I have either been a filing party or a joint filing party on several cases: They include: Great Irish Famine, The Troubles, Mantanmoreland, R. fiend, and Geogre-WMC

• 7. Have you ever been blocked or subject to restrictions such as WP:RESTRICT, WP:BLPLOG, WP:AER, or WP:SANCTION? If so, please link to the relevant issue.

• A. The only block that I have marring my other-wise pristine log was an accidental block by User:Chrislk02, who immediately unblocked with an apology.

• 8. Have you ever been blocked or formally sanctioned at another WMF project? If so, please describe.

• A. No, I have not.

• 9. What is your best work at Wikipedia? (an article, list, image or content template)

• A. I'd have to say the rewrite of Connie Hawkins.

• 10. If elected, would you request the Checkuser and/or Oversight userrights?

• A.Oversight, yes. Checkuser, I would request it with regards for my ArbCom duties, but I would not exercise it until I have confidence that I can use it properly

• 11. Please list any disclosed or undisclosed alternate or prior accounts you have had.

• A. This is the only account that I've used.

• 12. What methods of off-wiki communication do you use to discuss Wikipedia related matters? (IRC, Skype, WR, Mailing Lists, blogs, etc) Please link to any publicly available forums you use.

• A. I am an infrequent member of Wikipedia's EN-admins channel, and also a member of Wikipedia Review.

• 13. Do you have OTRS access? If so, which queues?

• A.I have not yet requested access to OTRS.

• 14. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/MONGO and RFAR/Jim62sch as to off-site activities by users?

• A.First off, RFAR/MONGO was over two years ago, and some of its remedies were deprecated in 2008 (see also RfArb/Attack Sites). We cannot pretend that Wikipedia exists in a vacuum. There has been numerous attempts to import off-Wikipedia battles to Wikipedia, and conversely export Wikipedia battles to other places. Basically, if behavior's meant to have an effect ON-Wikipedia, then we need to treat it like it's on Wikipedia with regards to users.

• 15. What is your opinion on the new closed motions process?

• A. I think it's useful to a point, where public discussion would inflame an already rough situation. We must make sure however, that the accused always gets a chance to defend themselves.

• 16. Besides compromised accounts, under what circumstances would you support or initiate an emergency request for desysopping?

• A.In cases of extreme disruption/wheel warring only, and only until such time that it can be formally decided to remove or re-grant administrator access.

• 17. Currently, only Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee are authorized to perform/request involuntarily desysop an administrator whose account has not been compromised. What is your view of community-based desysopping decisions?

• A. I support administrators placing themselves open to recall. Despite the oft-quoted statement that being an administrator is "no big deal", it currently takes a seismic jolt to remove the administrator status of a user who is found to misuse the tools. However, I do not support a "one size fits all" method of community-based desysops. I do recognize that many people will reflexively oppose any administrator candidate who refuses to put themselves open to recall, but administrators should be free to set their own terms of recall, as long as they are not outside the norms of expected behavior. (ie, "I will not resign unless 6 of my closest friends tell me to" is not a good set of recall options) I do recommend however, that administrators be barred from changing their terms while an active recall request is being made. Holding oneself open to the community is the promise you make when you list yourself as open to recall, to move the goal posts during a recall is to break your promise.

• 18. If you owned Wikipedia as the WMF currently does, what would you do to fix the BLP problem?

• A.We need a multi-layered response to the issues with articles that qualify as BLP issues. Wikipedia has the ability to do great harm to living people. People have been harmed due to false and libelous information in articles. We must do our utmost to limit the damage that Wikipedia can do to others. The two suggestions that make the most sense to me at this time, is invoking Flagged or sighted revisions, at least on articles that deal with BLP, and being harsher on dealing with vandals who insert false or libelous information into articles.

• 19. In 2004, the Arbitration Committee referred issues to the Mediation Committee. However, as of recent, the Arbitration Committee has not referred issues to the Mediation Committee. Would you refer more content-based disputes to MedCom or continue the current practice?

• A. I think it could be a reason to reject a case (that MedCom could handle a situation before it disrupts the encyclopedia as a whole) However, once the Arbitration Commitee has accepted a case, I do not think handing it off to another body would be useful.

• 20. In the past the Arbitration Committee has taken a checkered view of wheel wars, desysopping in some cases and not desysopping in others. What do you believe constitutes a wheel war which would result in a desysopping?

• A. It's fairly simple: If you know an action will be controversial, you better have gotten consensus from the community before you do it. When you start putting YOUR judgement against another administrator's... directly.. no attempts at getting others involved.. well.. don't be surprised if others find your judgement lacking.

• 21. How involved must an administrator be to be unable to enforce policy on a user? Given that it is expected that all admins understand policy when they pass RFA, under what circumstances would you not desysop an administrator who was clearly involved with a user they blocked or an article they deleted/protected?

• A. An administrator might be involved but still be able to enforce policy. Indeed on, some of the more conten tious areas, there are literally dozens of administrators who might be considered "involved" on a case. The question is whether the tools were used to further one's side in an ongoing dispute. That would be a lack of judgment.

• 22. Besides the technical capabilities administrators have, the Arbitration Committee has granted administrators the rights to enforce certain general sanctions with regards to specific editors and articles. What is your view on these new non-technical privileges being considered part of the "administrative" function for purposes such as RfC, Recall, and RfAR?

• A.I think it's a good thing. A user may be disruptive in a certain narrow swath of articles, but be a net benefit to the encyclopedia outside that narrow swath. Sanctions do not always have to be a blunt instrument, but instead, a surgeon's scalpel.

• 23. Current checkuser policy at the English Wikipedia prohibits checkusers from fulfilling "fishing" requests. However, global privacy policy does not prohibit such requests from being fulfilled, so long as personal information is not disclosed. Would you support the alteration of the en.wp policy to permit fishing requests?

• A... I'm of two minds of this. Checkuser generally runs on a "least harm done" policy. While there could be a benefit to the encyclopedia to check a large swatch of users.. the potential for privacy violation rises. I would not make it policy that fishing is a valdid reason for checkuser, but leave it up to the checkuser's discretion and good judgement.

• 24. In 2006 the Arbitration Committee asked the community to address the issue of protecting children's privacy on Wikipedia. To this day there is still no policy on how to handle children's privacy on Wikipedia. What steps would you take to ensure children's privacy is protected under policy?

• A.Well, considering the fact that the ArbCom has recently received a great amount of opprobrium for making policy, I'm not sure that any policy created by ArbCom would find a great deal of traction with the general comunity. But indeed, Wikipedia, the community and the Foundation all need to take a second look to determine what obligations it needs to take to ensure children's policy.

• 25. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/LevelCheck and RFAR/Durova as to what may be considered justification for blocks of educated new users?

• A.

• 26. Originally RfARs were named in the style of Party X v. Party Y in line with the idea of two groups in opposition to each other (eg. User:Guanaco versus User:Lir). Later it was changed to naming an individual user (eg. Husnock). Now cases get random names like Highways 2. What naming convention do you believe is the appropriate one for ArbCom to use in designating case names? under what circumstances should a case name be changed after opening, such as in RFAR/Zeraeph?

• A. ArbCom should not pre-judge a case, or appear to have pre-judged a case. Some will take a look at the case title to see where ArbCom is looking to apportion blame. If there's a single user, then there is less problems involved, but by positioning it as a battle "A versus B".. you run the risk of A) It being considered a battle in the ArbCom text, and B) people taking sides on that battle.

• 27. A case is presented between two administrators who have repeatedly undone each other's administrative actions with regard to the deletion of an article. The basis for the deleting administrator's action was an OTRS ticket showing the article to be a copyright violation. In performing the deletion, the administrator clearly referenced the OTRS ticket number. Assuming the undeleting administrator did not have OTRS access, do you penalize him more or less for wheel warring? Do you penalize the deleting administrator for wheel warring?

• A.The undeleting administrator is wheel warring here. Wikipedia does NOT need to be battling with the world at large. OTRS is there for a reason, to provide people who think that Wikipedia is doing them wrong a way to get their concerns answered. One should stop and get more information ON the OTRS ticket before seeking to counter the actions of an OTRS ticket.

• 28. To what extent do you believe policy on Wikipedia is or should be binding?

• A. Policy can change, as can consensus. But when people sign up to contribute to Wikipedia, they agree to abide by Wikipedia's policies. So this is fairly easy. Policy is binding upon Wikipedia's users

• 29. Do you believe that former arbitrators should be on the Arb Comm mailing list? Why or why not?

• A: Former Arbitrators can provide a useful "institutional memory" on issues. In general, I have no problem with former arbitrators being on the mailing list.