My opinion as to how some of the questions posed this year might well be answered:
- Wikipedia is starting to have a reputation for bullying and misogyny, see, e.g the recent article in The Atlantic by Emma Paling, "Wikipedia's Hostility to Women”.
Are you willing to take serious steps to stop bullying of editors on Wikipedia? especially bullying directed toward women editors? Is this one of your top 2 priorities? What would you consider to be a more important priority than stopping the bullying? Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:26, 10 November 2015 (UTC)- Bullying and misogyny are just two of the myriad "bad" human traits found just about everywhere in this world. If Wikipedia can solve these issues, then it has powers above all the religious leaders who have ever lived.
- User:Foo get's into an edit conflict on Wikipedia with User:Bar, and end up as parties to a large Arbcom case. Soon afterwards on reddit someone going by the username Bar begins posting lots of critical and disparaging threads about Foo. In these threads they claim to be Wikipedia user Bar. The Bar account on Wikipedia is older than the Bar account on reddit by several years, however the Wikipedia account had only really begun active editing a few years after the reddit account had been created. Foo notices these posts and complains on Bar's talk page and ANI. Bar responds by accusing Foo of WP:OUTING and claims that the account might not even be his. Is it OUTING to connect the Bar reddit account with the Bar Wikipedia account?
- User:Alice is a party in an Arbcom case. She is browsing the internet one day and decides to google her Wikipedia username. She finds that somebody has uploaded naked photos of another woman to a pornsite and labelled them "Alice of Wikipedia." She looks into the account that has uploaded these files and comes to the conclusion that it is owned by Wikipedia User:Bob, an editor she had clashed with heavily on wiki. In the process she also finds out his real life identity. She emails her evidence to Arbcom. Alice then decides to go to Wikipediocracy's forums, and makes a thread informing them of this porn site account. She asks them if they can guess which Wikipedia editor is behind it, and mentions that she also knows his real life identity. They independently come to the conclusion that it is User:Bob and figure out his real life identity without Alice giving the game away. Alice confirms that this is the case. Nobody in the forum finds it remotely questionable that Bob owns the account in question. In such a situation is it appropriate for Arbcom to pass a finding of fact stating "Alice posted inappropriately to an off-wiki website apparently with the objective of having the participants identify a Wikipedia editor by name." Furthermore is it appropriate for them to then use this supposed violation of WP:OUTING as part of their justification for site banning Alice?
- The issue here is "comes to the conclusion." Wikipedia policy is clear - it is improper for editors to come to such conclusions. Alice ought not proceed to seek out "real identities" unless she is willing to also pay the price for violating current Wikipedia policy. This clearly does not apply to actual third parties, and I would suggest Alice furnish the name of the website to appropriate authorities within whose ambit such investigations lie (noting that new laws clearly would be applicable in many jurisdictions).
- Hi, I'm Dave, I was on Arbcom between 2013 and 2014. I can tell you now that being an arbitrator is tough - you become a target. Comments you make will be taken out of context, your motives and abilities will be insulted, you may be threatened or harassed. Have you thought much about the "dark side" of being an arbitrator? How have you prepared for this?
- I promise not to give into the "dark side"..
- What are your standards for banning someone from the project compared to a topic ban or some lesser sanction?
- Draconian solutions, aren't.
- Nearly every case involves violations of the civility policy in some way. At one time, a remedy call a "Civility Parole" existed but it fell out of vogue. Today, the only tools in the current Arbitrator's toolboxes to deal with civility issues are interaction bans, topic bans, and site bans. What new and creative ways would you bring to the table to solve this problem?
- Common sense instead of a belief that if a tool exists, one must wield it.
- Do you see value in Admonishments and Warnings as remedies at the end of a case?
- Soft words often yield better results than lashes from a cat-o-nine-tails.
- Please divulge as much of your demographic information as you are comfortable making public. Specifically: your gender, including whether you are cis, trans or other; your sexual orientation; your race and/or ethnicity; where you live (feel free to specify you live in Triesenberg if you want, but a country or continent will do just fine — even just "Southern Hemisphere" or "Western Hemisphere" is helpful); whether you have any condition considered a disability (even if you're not so disabled you're unable to work) including deafness, physical disabilities, developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, again being only as specific as you wish; and what social class you belong to (e.g. working class, middle class, etc.). ¶ If you prefer not to answer any or all of those categories, I won't count it against you. My intention in asking for this information is not to out anyone or try to force affirmative action. However, when deciding between two otherwise equally qualified candidates, I would prefer to be able to vote for more diversity on ArbCom rather than less.
- I am descended from Kings and murderers, pilgrims and heathens, men and women. As are we all in general. My class is that of ancient scholar, and young adventurer, of seeker of truth, and denier of "truth." My faults and disabilities are those of all beings made of flesh, and I suspect this is true of at least a small majority here.
- Please list at least one pro and one con of having non-administrators serve on ArbCom.
- The wider the base of experience, the more points of view based thereon are available. I do not find that "administrators" have some strange monopoly on "experience".