David Goodman wrote: That's in fact one of the core assumptions of administratorship, and the reason we keep emphasizing that it's "no big deal". Being an administrator *must not* give anyone unilateral special powers---only give them janitorial tasks, that anyone else can undo if there wasn't community consensus for the original change. Such a huge policy change change is a significant overstep of the Arbitration Committee's authority, and therefore cannot be regarded as binding. -Mark

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Wily D <wilydoppelganger(a)gmail.com> wrote: [snip] I'm trying to imagine the banned but not desysoped administrator.

2008/6/17 George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>om>: Just a minor point, Bureaucrats cannot desysop on the English Wikipedia. It is of course possible for them to with a setting change (and I believe it is the default in MediaWiki), and on Meta-wiki all Bureaucrats can desysop. -- Al Tally (User:Majorly)

Wily D wrote: It depends on the situation. The Arbitration Committee is only empowered to resolve specific disputes; their dispute-resolution does not literally create precedent in some legalistic sense, although it can be used as an indication of how similar disputes might be resolved in the future, barring a change in sentiment or committee membership, and may also influence how community consensus operates. To go from a ruling in a specific case to actual general policy applying to all people, though, requires the usual policy-creation consensus step. For example, the Arbitration Committee banned a few people for excessive edit-warring, but it did not invent the 3-revert-rule--- that was done through a separate community process which turned the Arbitration Committee's bans for excessive edit-warring in a few specific cases into a general policy outlining what precisely is prohibited. In this case, I think it's fair to say that the Arbitration Committee's ruling has not been accepted by consensus of the community as a general policy to be applied in other cases, and so anyone banning a person not directly involve in the case based on the "precedent" would be overstepping their authority as an administrator. -Mark

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 12:48 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: I think you misread the Arbcom's original intent, which was as a scalable Jimbo. At that point, people pretty much couldn't get banned except by Jimbo edict. Admins banning indefinitely was not supported. -Matt

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:47:40AM -0400, David Goodman wrote: Independent of BLP issues, that principle has always been a problem. Permitting any admin to unilaterally reverse any other admin's action harms the collegiality of the admin corps and undermines the individual responsibility of administrators. When it is clear that the original admin would not agree to having their actions reversed, discussion is in order, not unilateral reversal. Yes, that's how it should be. Unless there is agreement that an admin action is actually wrong, no other admin should reverse it simply because the other admin individually doesn't like it. This is simply a matter of respect for the original acting administrator, that they don't take their actions lightly and we don't reverse them lightly. Adminship is "not a big deal" because any admin action can be undone - admins can't permanently change things. We elect administrators for their judgment, however, and we need to give them sufficient ability to exercise that judgment, provided they are willing to explain and discuss their reasoning to those who disagree. The goal of such discussion is to reach compromise on the matter, something that a unilateral reversal makes difficult by adding conflict to the situation. - Carl

David Goodman wrote: I think that's actually not the position. If admin A, in any matter, claims to be acting in enforcement of ArbCom rulings, then the following apply: (1) The ArbCom will look sympathetically on those actions by A, starting from the position that they are indeed intended as enforcement; (2) If the actions exceed what is proportionate or wise for enforcement, the ArbCom is very likely to tell A so. Under (2), the main point, as we saw in the CAMERA case discussion, is that overly enthusiastic enforcement is not likely to be treated as (on the face of it) abuse of admin powers. The actions taken may be judged wrong-headed, but in a general AGF way, the point is that whether or not A's actions are appropriate to the case can be sorted out, as a matter of interpretation of enforcement. So we have these provisional conclusions: (3) Such enforcement actions by A can be reversed as a result of discussion; (4) There doesn't have to be a case to change matters, just an opinion taken from Arbitrators. The plus here is that there shouldn't be a "wheel war" feeling about reversals. The involvement of the ArbCom is now written in - what was in the past the "admin community"'s type of decision is now more likely to be taken with the ArbCom holding the ring. If I'm right about this, the situation is nothing like as black as it has been painted. A little accumulated "case law" should be enough for a workable system. Charles

On 6/18/08, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: I know that the line between a policy, and the way that policy is enforced, is easily blurred and sometimes arbitrary. However I think defining a new class of 'enforcement policy' is not helpful as it tries to annex more and more Wikipedia practice within the envelope of 'policy'. If you check recent Arbitration Committee decisions you'll see that there is concern among some members of the committee at the type of finding which "urges" or "encourages" editors to act in a certain way, the concern being that they are empty remedies because they lack any mechanism of enforcement. It's a common assumption that administrators will act responsibly, but I think the greater danger would be the assumption that administrators are bound to act irresponsibly. The Arbitration Committee should avoid falling into the trap of the crabbed old Magistrate, who only sees young people when they are brought in having committed crimes, and therefore assumes that 'the youth of today' are all criminals. Likewise when we see errant administrators we look at them as exceptions. -- Sam Blacketer

Apologies for the double post; seems the first at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2008-June/094246.html was truncated somewhere along the line. On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 8:26 AM, Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com> wrote: action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s)." The distinction you mention is semantic and academic at best. We have here a committee which is not only manifestly decreeing policy in a way that toys with the philosophical foundations of this project, but even preparing itself to make content decisions, both things the committee was and is (supposedly) not supposed to do. I welcome you to make your case, but to pretend this isn't a big deal is an insult to the intelligence of the community that you represent -- it is a very big deal. Administrator status is "not a big deal" precisely because we can self-police amongst ourselves. Reprehensible actions are less problematic on a wiki precisely because they can, in most cases, be quickly reversed. This ability of anyone to edit, more than anything, is what makes a wiki a wiki. Obviously, with blocking and protection, we have made necessary concessions to the reality that too much chaos can be damaging. As a community, we expect that consensus will show us a proper path, further reducing chaos. But here and now, we're providing an avenue by which adminship is absolutely a "a big deal" because any admin will, for any reason, be able to take any action of any kind against any user or article, without any need for petty things like consensus or discussion, and without any easy way to reverse that action. It takes that pesky "wiki" process out of the picture; so much easier to run the project when people can't easily edit, no? We're even threatening dire consequences for any user, admin or not, who dares to challenge one of these actions without filling out the proper paperwork to request permission to do so. "Be bold!" we say -- just not if you're the second person on the scene. Specifically, I see a lot of mention that we should trust the good judgement of administrators, and yet this policy decree seems to do the exact opposite. Where are the consequences for abuse or misuse of this power? We as a community should be very careful when erecting systems which will inevitably become barriers to the creation of content and the free editing of the wiki, or which will enable users acting unilaterally to create such barriers arbitrarily and without easy oversight or accountability. We as individuals should be very careful to scrutinize the Arbitration Committee when it seems to overstep its bounds, as many users seem to think it has here. The remedy is, as of yet, untested, and I believe predictions of impending doom are a bit overblown, but the fact remains: this is not a minor issue and should not be dismissed as one.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Luna <lunasantin(a)gmail.com> wrote: The two messages I got from this list are exactly the same as on your blog. Sure that the truncating isn't happening on the receiving end of your pipe? -- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers

Minor correction, because I think I've been insufficiently fine grained in this paragraph. A slight re-wording: (Snip) BLP is an example of this latter role. There are good reasons why BLP matters, and yet instead of focussing on them, we have some degree of persistent issues over the interpretation and enforcement of this norm. This has led to editing concerns surrounding some BLP articles (or as some see it, BLPs generally). Arbcom's role here is to identify the issue, and to identify its best resolution within communal principles, if we are able, and take the steps we deem necessary to ensure communal norms do in fact get taken seriously in this most crucial type of article, as near to "all the time" as we can. To be plain, we do that in /every/ case we hear, whether the principle forgotten by the parties is BLP, NEUTRALITY, or some other. That is where "serving a project to write an encyclopedia" comes into its own. Whilst the communal voice matters, it is only half of the equation, and sometimes (often), it needs balancing by re-affirming the other half (that the community's role is to write an encyclopedia). Despite much discussion and debate, and many attempts to find a working consensus by talk page and project page posting, the community has not fully achieved what it hoped to on BLP, and concerns persist. There is so much dispute over BLPs as a principle, that the simple issue we all agree on as a practical requirement - very high quality - is being insufficiently enforced. This may help remedy that, and although there may be many approaches and many views, this along with the guidance being drafted is the one we feel goes directly to the point. Given the singular lack of strong and effective enforcement measures that the community has produced for itself by dialog in the areas of communal concern, and which are needed to back the essentials of writing encyclopedic BLP articles to the standards aspired by the spirit of BLP policy in contentious cases, this may help. If not, we'll try something else. Second paragraph slightly reworded to make clear what exactly is being referred to here. My apologies, and consider my first email amended. FT2

(CAVEAT: This can only be my own view, other Arbitrators will have theirs.) Firstly, a clarification to the Footnoted Quotes case remedy will be issued shortly, which may answer many questions. That was noted on the propose decision 3 days ago, before it went final. In the meantime, here's what is being ignored in the debate: the community is only half of the equation. Wikipedia is not just "a community". It is a community to write an encylopedia of a certain standard and with certain mandatory policies and norms, including some at WMF level (NPOV) some traditional, some emergent, and some created by the community. Within that system, the Arbitration Committee serves a number of purposes. Its first role is to handle cases the community cannot, and to decide what handling will allow the project to move forward effectively and best resolve the problem that led to the community failing, if it happens again. In that aim (doom-sayers not withstanding) Wikipedia arbitration has proven in fact, fairly successful. Of about 400 arbitrated cases I can find from the start, where a full case was heard on the wiki, less than one in ten (7.5%) come back for a second time or more. (A number come back purely for change of remedy, not the same thing, and cases are not shy to come back if unresolved.) Around 1 - 1.5% come back a third time. Users who breach a ruling and their second chance find that the scope for misconduct and "smoke" following an Arbitration case is usually quite severely limited and readily backed by a ban. There are reasons for this, which are obvious to arbitrators, but which the community has probably never really had explained in detail. We can discuss them another time. And indeed the cases Arbitrators see are capable of more fine grained solutions now. (And note... these are the site's most complex cases, and rough statistics only.) A second role is to handle serious privacy-related issues. Harassment is one, access to privacy policy information another. A third role is ban handling/serious admin misconduct allegations. The aim of a ban is that content-writing editors should not be troubled further. The Arbitration Committee takes these cases on, including the safeguard of appeal case handling, for the community, for that purpose. This may change or may not in future. A fourth role is exceptionally complex investigations and situations - high profile, prolific sock operators, a number of known active sock farms, unusually delicate cases, and so on. Arbitrators, who are elected by the community (despite Jimbo's notional input, all arbitrators in the last 3 annual elections were "community choices" with minor adjustment 3 elections back for a couple of existing members re-standing) handle these cases, which would burn out many other editors. A fifth and final role, which in a sense is integral to all of the others, is relevant here. Arbitrators also, as a committee, act as a check and balance, ensuring the pendulum does not move so far to "the community" that it moves away from its principles and away from the "writing a neutral encyclopedia", so far as to be itself damaging to the project. The community is not monolithic, and at times, needs a reminder what matters, what priorities are, to let go of the past more and not dramatize the present, and to resolve disputes (not escalate them) -- even if prurience and external parties wants all the gossip, or loud voices and strident parties want a damning verdict. We aren't a court or legal system, we're encyclopedia writers. We have traditional norms on a range of editor interaction to ensure that's possible, that guide us pretty well, and those norms include things like second chances, or keeping the good and removing the bad (non-punitive blocks, topic bans, restrictions etc). Sometimes that can be lost in the shouting. BLP is an example of this latter role. There are good reasons why BLP matters, and yet instead of focussing on them, we have some degree of persistent issues over the interpretation and enforcement of this norm. This has led to editing concerns surrounding some BLP articles (or as some see it, BLPs generally). Arbcom's role here is to identify the issue, and to identify its best resolution within communal principles, if we are able, and take the steps we deem necessary to ensure communal norms do in fact get taken seriously in this most crucial type of article, as near to "all the time" as we can. To be plain, we do that in /every/ case we hear, whether the principle forgotten by the parties is BLP, NEUTRALITY, or some other. That is where "serving a project to write an encyclopedia" comes into its own. Whilst the communal voice matters, it is only half of the equation, and sometimes (often), it needs balancing by re-affirming the other half (that the community's role is to write an encyclopedia). Despite much discussion and debate, and many attempts to find a working consensus by talk page and project page posting, the community has not achieved what it hoped to on BLP, and concerns persist. There is so much dispute over BLPs that the simple issue we all agree on - very high quality - is being insufficiently enforced. This may help remedy that, and although there may be many approaches and many views, this along the guidance being drafted is the one we feel goes directly to the point. Given the singular lack of strong and effective enforcement measures that the community has produced for itself by dialog, and which are needed to back the essentials of writing encyclopedic BLP articles to the standards aspired by the spirit of BLP policy, this may help. If not, we'll try something else. Lastly, recognize that as a communally elected committee we have spent time looking into it, and take a lead from the work we have already done in reviewing the community's difficulties. This problem needs addressing, and not just in theory, or at some vague future time. Consider this situation - if a couple divorce with $500k assets, but spend $240k each arguing over it, it's rather ineffective, if your goal is in fact a constructive, productive outcome. Moral:- a reasonably good working solution that is adopted without interminable dispute and wastage is likely to be better than years of argument. That is part of the nature of arbitrated solutions in the real world as well. Plus, on wiki, we can adapt further from our current standpoint. Many things we are fine with now were seen as controversial at the time - checkuser was one, so were some ban types. This probably will be too. Guidance and comment on the whole area - a crucial part - will be posted up shortly. Best and regards, and once again, this is a rough comment only and I acknowledge the fact. FT2