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Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report

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Original mission

See Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/Guidelines

Deadline

This report was ported over to EN on August 3, 2008, and finalized on August 10.

To do

Gathered data

Observations

Some areas of cultural and ethnic dispute on Wikipedia have been the subject of multiple ArbCom cases.

However, case results were often only targeted towards the behavior of a limited number of users, so when other users came onto the scene, or new articles were drawn into the dispute, a new ArbCom case was required.

Definition of tag team

Main page: Wikipedia:Tag team

"Tag team" is difficult to define, but could perhaps be described as: two or more editors who appear to have been working in concert, in a disruptive way, on multiple articles.

This disruption could involve:

  • Attempts to intimidate uninvolved administrators from dealing with a dispute, by:
    • Attacking the administrator's "uninvolved" status
    • Denying the existence of consensus, and an admin's ability to declare consensus
    • Repeatedly starting administrator threads to challenge any admin's action
    • Threats to de-sysop an admin

Tag team members may also be identified with tactics such as:

  • Frequent blocks
  • Limited participation in other articles, except for those in the area of dispute, and the related admin board discussions
  • Coordinated participation at one or more articles that appear to be in a chronic state of dispute
  • Defending each other against admin actions. For example, when one is blocked, other members immediate attack the credibility of the blocking admin, and/or start threads at administrator boards to challenge it. Then even if the community backs up the admin's action, tag team members continue to forum shop, challenging each of the admin's future actions. See also meatball:DefendEachOther. The tag teamers may also make unfounded charges and uncivil comments, in an attempt to goad their target into responding with incivility. Any negative reaction by the target is then picked up and amplified in further attacks ("Remember when you did this? You're obviously unstable..." )
  • Consensus-blocking. Refusing to "let the matter drop" at article talkpages. Continuing to bring up the same matters again and again, and frequently agreeing with each other.
  • Intimidation and harassment tactics. Coordinated attacks at "dissenting" editors, not just on the talkpage of the article in dispute, but also at the user's talkpage, and sometimes at other unrelated articles where the targeted editor may be working. For example, if an editor is working on expanding an (unrelated) article to FA status, and suddenly receives a targeted attack from opponents who are criticizing the article and opposing the FA, it may intimidate an editor away from (or keep them so busy they don't have time to engage in) participation at another article where the dispute is occurring.

Group workflow comments

Ways that this group was successful

  • Identification of issues
  • Collection of techniques that had been used to deal with the conflicts
  • Suggestions and brainstorming on new methods
  • Creation of practical guidelines for dealing with conflicts

Completed projects

These are projects that were formed or written, either in full or in part, by the efforts of the Working Group members

Ways that the group was not successful

  • Inconsistent status reports
  • Lack of communication by certain members
  • Discussions limited between a few active members
  • Loss of interest in fulfilling the group's goals, a few months in

Observations of workflow

  • There was good enthusiasm at the beginning of the project
  • Many ideas were generated
  • Users came and went, some going inactive and others becoming more active
  • Some users started inactive and then became more active
  • A few users never participated at all, or didn't offer more than a handful of minor comments
  • Communication became more difficult, as messages were left on the WG wiki, but not seen by other participants
  • As the wiki became quieter and quieter, fewer and fewer messages were left
  • Some participants made things worse, by:
    • Being very negative for ideas they saw, and rarely offering anything positive
    • Giving orders about what "should be done" rather than actually doing it
    • Describing grandiose concepts of group projects, that, well, "sounded too much like work"
  • Having an appointed or elected leader/chairperson may have helped things to move along more smoothly or rapidly

Recommendations

Include topic-area remedies in future ArbCom cases

When a case involving an ethnic or cultural dispute is addressed by ArbCom, the remedies should focus not just on the specific editors involved, but also the entire topic area. For example, as was done with the Israel-Palestine case, discretionary sanctions should be authorized for any uninvolved administrators in the area of dispute.

Authorize discretionary sanctions for articles that are already in chronic dispute

To avoid wasting the time of arbitrators, the Working Group recommends that a guideline be created by which uninvolved administrators can be empowered to deal with a dispute, even if it has not yet risen to the level of an actual arbitration case.

Signposts that administrators should perhaps be empowered with the power to impose discretionary sanctions, might be one or more of the following:

  • Articles where the consensus of editors on the talkpage, is that the presence of an uninvolved administrator would help with the dispute
  • Articles that have been protected due to edit wars, at least 3 times within one year. There are dozens of articles that have devolved into a state of indefinite protection due to edit-warring, which articles could benefit from uninvolved admins being empowered to place discretionary sanctions.[1] Though some might regard discretionary sanctions as radical in certain topic areas, surely discretionary sanctions would be preferable to having articles in a permanent state of protection.
  • Articles where the majority of editors have agreed to mediation, but one or more heavily involved editors have refused mediation.
  • Articles that appear to be targeted by a "tag team" of editors.

Set up Cooperation Boards

When an area of chronic dispute has been identified, a Reconciliation Project or Cooperation Board should be considered, which allows a centralization of discussion for disputed issues. Existing examples (both successful and unsuccessful) include:

Recommendations for future such groups

  • Larger critical mass of participants, or a better pipeline of "fresh eyes" coming in the door as fast as (and, ideally, faster than) older participants are leaving. Six months is a lifetime, in wiki-time. Even arbitrators have trouble staying focused for years.
  • More of a commitment to participate, on a minimum basis. If someone doesn't log in at least 1-2x/month, consider removing them from the group
  • Regular meetings, weekly or biweekly, to help maintain enthusiasm.
  • More specific milestones at beginning of process.
    • Achievable milestones, that are doable by part-time volunteers. Major 40-hour workweek projects are unlikely to get done.
  • Some sort of reward/recognition system for successful accomplishment of milestones.

Endorsements

Working Group members who endorse this report:

  1. It was good that we avoided sweeping recommendations for new policies, as historically this has proven to be a bad thing. I think the suggestions made moving forward will be easy enough to implement and hopefully benefit this area of the English Wikipedia, and possibly even other language Wikipedias. Daniel (talk) 01:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I've worked on it on the WG wiki, so I endorse as a matter of routine (note, I'm an observer). Anthøny 12:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. This is a good summary of what we observed, accomplished, and recommend. --Elonka 22:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough of time to work on this issue last months. Other members of the group did a good job and I support recommendations, especially the idea of creation and supporting collaboration projects. It would be good if those recommendations would be implemented at Wikimedia-wide scale. --millosh (talk (meta:)) 02:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Flawless summary, and good starting points for combating this persistent issue on Wikipedia. -- tariqabjotu 14:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6. An excellent summary of the issues at hand and the working group's effort with regards to them. While I regret that a hectic meatspace schedule has basically prohibited me from interacting with this group or the Wikipedia community at all, the issues that I dealt with on Wikipedia and the experience I have from them is reflected in this report although my direct contribution to it was little, if any. I endorse this report and commend the active working group members on doing a fine job! Hopefully I'll be able to return in some capacity soon. Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 15:00, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Good summary of the WG work. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 20:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. I think this is a fair summary of what was discussed. Probably the most positive action that came out of this was Elonka's Hungarian-Slovakian experiment -- which, unfortunately, means that the solution for some of these problems is that Admins spend more time on Wikipedia doing non-content work. -- llywrch (talk) 23:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Fair summary. I apologise for my own inactivity during the later phases of the project. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  10. As someone who Elonka bounced report ideas/comments off of, I believe this is a fair summary of the WG's work. Many thanks to Elonka who compiled this report almost single-handedly. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Fair summary of our work; apologies for being one of the last to comment, the deadline was in the middle of my vacation. Maxim(talk) 20:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  12. I have been inactive for most of this period; reading through, however, this appears to be a reasonable summary. Black Kite 15:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Partial endorsement

I am grateful that I have been invited to review this page, even though I haven't been active for a long time. Readers are therefore free to ignore my comments, but I’m writing them in the hope that they are helpful.

I endorse the description of what the group did, the recommendation to ArbCom (which I take to mean that ArbCom should put more weight on topics instead of editors), the recommendation to set up Cooperation Boards, and the thrust of the recommendations for future such groups.

I do not endorse the “Definition of tag team” section because it gives POV pushers yet another tool they can use (rightly or wrongly) for personal attacks. Its verboseness in this report also sends the wrong message, as it shifts the weight of the recommendations towards focusing on people, which defies the first principle of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution: Focus on content, not on the other editor.

I also do not endorse the recommendation “Authorize discretionary sanctions” because my experience shows that admins have enough power to solve such situations already. I believe that key to solving these issues is support of the community, which each admin or mediator has to earn by showing an understanding for the conflict he or she is working on.


To the recommendations for future such groups, I would have added:

  1. Clearer membership selection criteria. This is necessary to build up trust and respect among the group members. A problem in this group was that some members' only qualification was that they had participated in ethnic conflicts, and others with great credentials were not even invited, or only reluctantly admitted as "observers" - after a Kafkaesque back-and forward.
  2. A common understanding that arguments need to be backed up by real life experience. There were too many arguments whose only justification was the word "should".

Because these two conditions were not met, most of the discussion lacked a connection to real-life, practical experience. A notable exception was Elonka, who meticulously chronicled her “experiment”. — Sebastian 09:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Decline to endorse

  1. I have no faith in the ArbCom's competence to enact such remedies and cannot endorse. In the absence of oversight, some admins will use discretionary sanctions under flimsy claims of non-involvement to obtain "victories" in content disputes. (With this concern I echo Irpen.) Deputizing admins like this only works when there are consequences for admin misbehavior, for overstepping that discretion. This would require the Arbitration Committee to provide some sort of check and balance on administrative oversteps. Currently they are derelict. I do think cooperation boards may be a step in the right direction for many issues. I endorse the recommendations for future groups, but believe it omits the most important recommendation of all: such groups should be on Wiki or at least a publicly viewable Wiki. The benefits of secrecy (and there are some) do not outweigh the benefits of sunshine and oxygen. --JayHenry (talk) 02:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong dissent

As others might have noticed, once actively participating in the workgroup, I stopped being active for a mix of reasons. Having seen my critical comments to one proposal simply removed by Elonka rather than discussed or addressed was too much of a discouragement. Further events at Wikipedia related to most fundamental wikipolitics issues, the Arbcom completely discrediting itself by arbitrators' glaring lack of personal and judicial ethics, as well as the sorry state of affairs in some of the very same nationalist conflicts this group was supposed to address made me feel like withdrawing from participation in the Wikipedia altogether, at least for a while, until I feel like I can handle the stress. Once, when I've checked in briefly, I saw a note at my talk pointing to the draft of this report at the workgroup wiki. I read the draft and noted my opinion at the draft's talk but it was ignored and the report was posted here anyway without comment. So, I am posting my dissent here as well, for the record.

Unfortunately, I cannot co-sign this report in its current form. During the months I've been active in the workgroup I spoke multiple times of the dangers of the policies (as well as the arbcom decisions) that would give the block-happy admins a free reign in dealing with the superior editors in any way they see fit. The fallout from the past discretionary sanctions ArbCom cases has been tremendous. Good editors left and newly joined editors found themselves fearful of getting involved in contentious topics.

The Wikipedia admin corps is a diverse body. A disproportionately visible part of it are admins who just love to run the Wikipedia and put the content editors in their place. These discretionary sanctions tend to be a honey pot for exactly such admins.

What's worse is that these sanctions developed a new "method" of dispute resolution. Some unscrupulous editors mastered perfectly how to game the system and achieve the "victories" in content disputes by setting the field for the content opponents blocks, using the free reign of block-happy admins as a tool.

I feel that the recommendations from the group along these very same lines would make the situation worse, and not better. I bear part of the responsibility for this too not being active lately which, perhaps, facilitated this disagreeable to me line of thought to dominate the further developments towards the final conclusions. However, in earlier stages I did state publicly both at the wrokgroup wiki as well as at enwiki, the dangers of this type of solutions. I am sorry, I failed to convince the group members back then, but I cannot cosign the report. --Irpen 04:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse Irpen's summary. I was deeply upset when I learned of the removal of his comments and regret that I was unaware of the situation when it occurred. I was unsure whether to mention this in my own objection, especially since it was tangential to my objections to the finding, but since Irpen has brought it to light I can confirm that this occurred and that it was unacceptable. --JayHenry (t) 05:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This situation could have been avoided by both Elonka and Irpen. The deleted comments were in a section Elonka had labeled "brainstorming" with the request not to post negative comments. Irpen overlooked or ignored this. I believe it would have helped if either side had AGF. Elonka could e.g. have written a friendly note to Irpen, alerting him to the meaning of a brainstorming, and asking him to wait till the brainstorming was over. Irpen's reaction to take this incident so serious as to leave the project, OTOH, added unconstructive drama to the project. An easy compromise would have been to just write the comments in some other suitable place. — Sebastian 09:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Members who have not yet endorsed / commented

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