User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/Sam Korn

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. Since October 2004, so just over four years.

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

A. Somewhere over 20,000 edits, with about 45% to article space.

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

A. Yes, and I have been since April 2005.

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

A. I am a former member of the Arbitration Committee (I was a member in 2006; I did not seek re-election at the end of my term.) I have access to the CheckUser and Oversight tools.

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

A. No.

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

A. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Irate.

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. No.

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

A. No.

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

A. My recent work (in the last few months) has tended not to be to content. Most work that I have done has been in cricket-related areas, mostly as a consequence of my bot's work. I have never been someone who produces multiple featured articles a year (I know some people won't vote for me for that reason); most of my wiki work is dealing with users.

I did contribute to some featured articles back in the dim and distant past (though don't ask me what they were, I don't keep a scoresheet!) and am hoping to manage a decent article on Hensley Henson before the end of the year. (Advert: If anyone has any decent sources on the man, please let me know!)

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

A. No, as I already have both.

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

A. None that I recall. I used to be Smoddy until the RenameUser extension came along.

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 regularly on IRC, so I can be quickly contacted, e.g. for vandalism-related CheckUser requests. I also use (private) channels for discussing CheckUser matters with other CheckUsers when the situation warrants. I am subscribed to several mailing lists: I read WikiEN-l, though rarely contribute; I contribute to Arbcom-l as a former arbitrator; I am also subscribed to Checkuser-l, Oversight-l, WikimediaUK-l and Unblock-en-l.

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

A. No.

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

A. I don't see any inconsistency at all. Both principles say that off-site conduct will generally not be subject to Wikipedia policy/sanctions/etc. Jim63sch reads:

in truly extraordinary circumstances, a user who engages in egregiously disruptive off-wiki conduct endangering the project and its participants

while MONGO reads:

sites which are hypercritical of Wikipedia

The latter, just as much as the former, suggests that it takes unusual and extraordinary behaviour to warrant it being brought on-wiki. "Hypercritical" clearly bears this meaning.

This is not to say that the two principles are the same, merely that Jim62sch, as befits a decision made as much as fifteen months later, is a development of the principle first created in MONGO. The effect of MONGO is substantially less because, whereas Jim62sch talks of subjecting users to policy/sanctions, MONGO merely says that such editors will be subject to greater scrutiny.

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

Generally, I feel that this is a helpful process. Goodness knows the case process needs hustling along. Naturally, there is always the concern that there might be too little scrutiny applied to these motions and that they might suffer from a lack of evidence. The process should only be applied where the motion is (a) simple and (b) uncontroversial. I would, as an arbitrator, take especially great care in dealing with concerns about these motions.

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

A. Where there is an immediate threat to the project and its users or a good reason to think that such a threat exists. It is, of course, difficult to state exactly what circumstances would be sufficient to warrant such an action. I would explicitly not make such a motion in an RFAR where simply enjoining the admin from performing admin actions would be sufficient. On the other hand, I would be quite prepared to desysop someone pending an explanation of questionable activities.

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 do not oppose these in principle, but I have not yet seen a suggestion that deals with the possibility of descent into "votes for desysopping", which is obviously undesirable. I am also not convinced that such a process is necessary, as desysopping is quite such a rare event. I would consider (as a Wikipedian, not an arbitrator) any such proposal on its individual merits.

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

A. There is obviously not a simple answer to this question. We clearly have a moral obligation, as one of the leading reference resources in the world, to deal truthfully and fairly with the subjects of our biographies. Our policies must be vigorously enforced on such articles.

I think that the idea of increasing the "notability threshold" for biographies of living people is sensible. A general acceptance of a lower threshold at AFD would useful.

In particular, while I do not endorse such ideas as an "opt-out" from biographies, I would like to see us taking subjects' views into consideration when considering articles.

19. In 2004, the Arbitration Committee referred issues to the Mediation Committee. However, as of late, 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 do not think "referring" cases to the MC is the best language to use. I would prefer to see the Committee suggesting mediation where appropriate and taking due consideration of mediation entered into in good faith. Mandating mediation seems unhelpful but encouraging it where appropriate could make the whole process less unpleasant.

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. I do not think that defining exactly what constitutes a wheel-war would be helpful, or indeed possible. The important point is that admins should be mutually respectful and discuss their actions, especially with those who disagree. I would hold a failure to enter into dialogue over actions as far more harmful than the undoing of an action in itself. (Note that the same applies to edit-warring.)

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. Where there could be reasonable doubts raised about the ability of an admin to be impartial in either direction, they should refrain from taking action. It is important both that the action be fair and that it be seen to be fair. Where either is compromised, the admin should not take action. There are plenty of admins who can take action instead, and discussing with more people is never a bad thing.

"Praise your enemies, rebuke your friends" is a helpful rule of thumb, I feel.

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. Where an admin is acting in a capacity available to him or her as a result of his or her position as an administrator, that should be considered an administrative action.

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 do not feel that the current policy is too restrictive.

Furthermore, "fishing" is neither defined nor explicitly prohibited as grounds for a check. Our practice on the English Wikipedia is to demand that there must be good evidence of abusive behaviour to run a check.

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. I feel that our current practice -- removing identifying information of children where revealed and taking whatever action necessary to prevent the continued release of such information -- is sufficient.

Obviously, as I have access to the Oversight tool I have removed a good deal of this kind of information myself.

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. I do not see an inconsistency between the decisions. There is a finding that LevelCheck was disruptive -- the sockpuppet finding is secondary in order and importance to that. The Durova principle would have said that blocking LevelCheck would have been unreasonable unless there was that finding of disruption.

I wonder whether the LevelCheck case would have been better off without the finding about sockpuppetry (noting that I have not read the case) to prevent just this kind of misreading.

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. The name of a case should not be controversial or encourage an adversarial approach to arbitration, nor should it suggest that a user is "guilty" when he or she clearly is not. Naming of cases should proceed in accordance with this guideline, and renaming should take place when the original name ceases to be appropriate or when it becomes clear that the original name is inappropriate.

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. Earlier in my answers to these questions I answered that the principle point in "wheel-warring" cases is discussion. Replacing content without discussion when you know that there is an OTRS ticket is clearly inappropriate and deserving of censure.

My approach to the deleting administrator would depend on the manner in which he or she managed the matter. I expect of OTRS volunteers that they be good at communicating problems to other Wikipedians. If he or she did not attempt discussion of the matter, the behaviour leaves something to be desired. I would, however, give greater leeway to the removing administrator in these circumstances for obvious reasons.

Note that an abstract discussion of the matter is difficult: each case would have different aspects and would need to be dealt with differently.

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

A. Policy is binding until it fails to make sense. That is to say, we should all follow policy while the result of following policy is the sensible way to proceed -- policy is, after all, written to be the sensible option in the majority of cases and when two options recommend themselves equally but policy recommends one or the other, we should follow that. It is not unreasonable for people to expect us to enforce our policies consistently, and we should seek to do so wherever possible.

We should not, however, be afraid to go outside policy (beautifully, deliberately and well) when appropriate.

I invoked these principles rather notably at User:Sam Korn/RFC April 2006. I still feel that was an excellent application of "ignore all rules". I note in particular that when you deliberately go outside policy, you should be aware of doing so, have excellent reasons for doing so and above all be prepared to explain why you did so.

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

A: Yes, I feel the project would fall apart were it not for noble souls such as myself keeping the Committee members on the straight-and-narrow and bringing them to heel when they get power-mad.

Put another way, yes, I feel the Committee benefits from having a wider range of experienced voices to bring their knowledge about users and cases and to advise when the Committee's members are having difficulty with an issue. There is a potential for former arbitrators to abuse their position and campaign behind closed doors for their "friends", but I feel confident that I and other members of the Committee can know when to tune them out, when to listen and when to say "shut up".