Talk:Arbitration Committee/Archives/2010

Why ArbCom At All?

As the page says, it was originally set up on english wikipedia. Why does anything else require it?199.126.224.245 16:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The same problems that created the need for the ENWP ArbCom arise elsewhere when a project gains enough membership. As much as it would be lovely to assume that humans can get along and constructively cooperate all the time, there are issues which regularly arise that our best mediative efforts do not properly correct and need, sadly, a judicious and unbiased authority able to wield the force needed to preempt further disruption to the project in question. In essence, there's nothing really unique about the English Wikipedia and its problems that merits its ArbCom, it more makes a useful reference for other projects to look at and think, "These are the problems we're going to be facing in the future. How shall we address them before they become a problem?"

If anyone can think of a better, workable solution to the ultimate resolution of disputes, please document it here in entirety and inform us so that it may be considered. Thanks for asking! Kylu 16:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The problem with ENWP ArbCom is that it was created, not by consensus, but by the opinion of one editor. This editor cites problems that that had arisen that required such an arbitrating committee to be formed. Shouldn't these reasons, at the first, be made public? Then, shouldn't the consensus be reached before an arbitration committee be created?199.126.224.245 21:35, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the catch is that your wording "one editor" disagrees with the de facto status of Jimbo at that time and on that project: Jimbo was owner of the physical assets until the formation of the Foundation, and then continued on as chairman until his replacement by Florence Nibart-Devouard in October 2006. Compare this to the initial forming of the ENWP ArbCom in January of 2004, at which time the Foundation was significantly less independent from Wales's sense of direction. Also consider that prior to the formation of the ArbCom, Jimbo retained all authority (think "en:original jurisdiction") on matters such as permanent bans, revocation of rights, and similar sanctions.

Now, while currently a directive forming such a group would certainly require more input from the community, it's typically both unworkable and unfair to apply our hindsight to such social constructions and determine in the current environment if those decisions made previously were correct or not: At the time, and by the people whose opinions mattered the most, it was considered the best alternative and implemented.

I do hope this answers your questions. I'm not really an ArbCom expert, so if you want a more detailed answer, it might be best to request one from one of the current members of that group. I imagine the answer would be more sensible as well. Kylu 12:05, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Do we have consensus NOW? to have an arbitration committee on English Wikipedia? There is an awful lot of opposition. Just look at Wikipedia Review.199.126.224.245 23:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

A few points:

1. If there are enough votes on the English Wikipedia to do so, will Wikipedia Review close their doors? Consensus is created where it's relevant by those who are involved, not on another site.
2. According to en:special:statistics, which is automatically generated, there are 1,757 administrators and 135,750 active editors. WR has a total of 1,474 users. Notwithstanding the fact that these groups may overlap, it appears that the "awful lot of opposition" there actually is slightly over 1%, assuming that the entirety of WR were specifically opposed to ArbCom.
3. The entirety of WR is not even opposed to Wikipedia itself. There are a great many users and administrators that I am aware of who edit on a regular basis and simply have gripes against certain other users, registered to defend themselves in a thread, want to read members-only forums (50 posts to get into the Tar Pit, ain't it?) or, like many registered but nonediting Wikipedians, simply want to save their site viewing preferences.
4. As I said above, consensus to maintain the ArbCom must be held on that project: This includes our inability to judge the consensus for that project. Generally, Meta will not interfere in the business of other projects unless local consensus is simply being ignored or fundamental global policies are being violated. (Hint: These issues should be brought up locally and reviewed by the ArbCom there in a serious manner, such as an ArbCom case, rather than being thrown on someone's talkpage where it may be dismissed out of hand. If you're going to be the one to try, be professional and thorough and present what you consider overwhelming documentation of the fault, lest you be ignored or worse.)
5. Many policies that the ArbCom enforces, such as 3RR and SPAM, are quite disliked by those who disagree with them. There are many who see Wikipedia as a freely editable resource where, if you're sneaky enough, you can manipulate the contents to better position yourself or your company. I'd rather prefer the NPOV version, myself, or if you have to have some sort of bias, bias towards free information, products, and services (OSS for instance).
6. Every Arbitration case is going to have one or more "losing" sides, and there's a good chance that the losing side is going to be miffed to the point where they want to vent. That's a whole lot of venting. See next point.
7. While I can see the potential value of WR as a neutral site documenting the flaws of Wikipedia, it's generally used as a hate-site to which all manner of ousted, jaded, and perturbed gravitate. If there is a policy that Wikipedia holds, it will eventually be used as a reason to expel an editor, that (ex-)editor will search for an outlet, and he'll find it.
8. If you read the content page, you'll notice that on some projects, there actually has been consensus to dissolve the local ArbCom, and this was performed. It's not possible, but they didn't form that consensus on a random forum somewhere either.

While I don't dispute your right to doubt that consensus exists for the ENWP ArbCom, this is simply the incorrect venue for that discussion. Worst case scenario, the Board could pass a resolution forcing ENWP to hold a general referendum determining if consensus still exists for the continued existence of that institution.

I do hope this answers your questions. Kylu 12:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the ideas. In your last point, did you mean it is not impossible?199.126.224.245 11:46, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, that's what I meant. While I'm not going to state that the ArbCom is a perfect fixture, I do think that in an absence of a better and more effective alternative, the status quo will maintain its consensus. Others have suggested various "government" models, but we still have fundamental issues blocking most of them:

1. The only real legally-binding authority we have (beyond defined policies, procedure, and tradition, which legal entities may well take into consideration, but that's neither here nor there) is the Board of Trustees, and while many volunteers misunderstand their position to be one of laziness, I have spoken with a few and it seems that it's an active hands-off approach, wanting the community to define roles itself. The community, by and large, does little about such things except defer to tradition, and thus we find ourselves continually outgrowing our shoes when we get too big: There's no authoritative mechanism or body to manage change.
2. Those non-Board positions we have are all completely staffed by volunteers. Unpaid volunteers, such as myself, have responsibilities and can be held accountable for inaction, but only to the extent of losing our rights (nonwithstanding legal consequences, which again is beyond the scope of the talkpage on some little-known wiki) - If a user wants to be promoted to admin and no stewards are sure that the election carries clear consensus and validity, for instance, then there's a veto of the request by simple inaction in effect. Any and every volunteer position at a Wikimedia project has this same shortcoming: Nobody can actually require someone else to do something, here.
3. Similarly, Meta and its contributors are hindered from being a central policy-planning project due to a missing majority: We can set local policies well enough, and some functions (Steward elections, for instance) are held here due to fiat from years past, but many important policies and future expansions simply don't have enough eyes to force them past the sovereignty that local projects claim. Projects are only forced to set this claim aside when the Board speaks, and as I'd mentioned, this is a very rare occasion. Useful and desired social mechanisms like the oft-proposed Global Arbcom are dismissed out-of-hand typically due to the understanding that many leaders of local projects simply don't want to give up their fiefdoms.

Without being a boardmember and forcing projects to comply (and I certainly don't intend to run!) I can't think of anyway of making a better system of dispute resolution. Can you? Kylu 22:23, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Access to WMF private information

English Wikipedia is currently discussing whether Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) members must be identified, and whether or not they must have access to WMF private information.

English Wikipedia ArbCom currently does involve a lot of WMF private information, but is this necessary?

Do the other ArbCom's handle private data?

I believe German Wikipedia does not have access to WMF private information because of the community decision de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Aufgabentrennung. How does German Wikipedia ArbCom made decisions when there are oversight and checkuser issues that relate to disputes?

John Vandenberg 04:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

John, of the 12 cases closed so far in 2010 by the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, 8 of them involved information that is covered by the privacy policy (checkuser and/or oversighted information) and/or would have been covered (and probably suppressed) if it had appeared onwiki instead of being submitted by email. That is 2/3 of the cases. In 2009, one of our largest and most complex cases was entirely focused on information that could not be posted onwiki or it would have violated the privacy policy. I have to wonder how other projects address user behaviour issues where so much of the evidence is covered under the policy; or perhaps they have a less restrictive policy and it is acceptable to post emails and private email addresses and other personal details of individuals and link accounts to real life identities. All of those things are, in the interpretation on enwp, covered by privacy policy, and would likely result in a very lengthy block on the part of the poster. Risker 05:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I've checked the recently elected Arbitrators on de.wp are not on the Identification noticeboard, and the only previous arbitrators that I can see were identified are user:Stefan64 and user:Thogo. John Vandenberg 07:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Of whom the first one is an elected oversight and the second one an elected steward. —DerHexer (Talk) 22:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

In Russian Wikipedia, the Arbcom members do not identify themselves and fo not have access to confidential data (like CU logs), but some of the confidential information can be disclosed to them by checkusers in the franework of CU Policy as to "universally trusted persons"--Yaroslav Blanter 12:28, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Yaroslav, thank you for explaining how things work on Russian Wikipedia. Would you be able to estimate how many Russian Wikipedia arbitration cases involved a) private information not held by WMF (e.g. the EEML and Azeri ML) and/or b) WMF private information such as checkuser/oversight? It would be interesting to compare how much private information each ArbCom needs to handle. John Vandenberg 01:33, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently a member of the German Arbcom and have been for a little over one year. AFAIK: Until now there was no case that involved "private information" (as defined above). We had some cases that involved other types of private data, which were provided by an involved party or third person (mostly emails with background information). I don't see that we would need access to private information (oversight & chechuser). One thing is that the Ombudsman commission is responsible for everything checkuser related and we're not. We had one case in 2007 were one complained about a checkuser against him, but that case was more or less declined. In general terms speaking: ArbCom isn't the same on every project. From my perspective the english ArbCom is the most structurally advanced ArbCom, but although the closest to a GovCom. We in the German Wikipedia are generally skeptic about a GovCom. Blunt. 08:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)