User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/Coren

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?
   • I've registered my account in early 2003 to flesh out a stub, although I've only started editing regularly since spring 2006.
2. How many total edits do you have on Wikipedia? What is your % of edits to the article space?
   • A midge over 11,000 edits, although roughly a quarter of that have since been deleted (A great deal of my edits were vandal fighting and new page patrol).
3. Are you an administrator? If so, how long have you been one?
   • I've been an administrator since november 2007.
4. Do you hold any other userrights or positions at the English Wikipedia? (crat, medcom, WPPJ, etc)
   • I have been a clerk of the Arbitration Committee for the past year, allowing me to gain a great deal of familiarity with the arbitration process, the arbitrators, and the general running of arbitration cases.
5. Do you hold any userrights or other positions of trust at other WMF projects? Which ones?
   • No.
6. Have you ever been named as a participant of a Request for Arbitration? If so, please link case(s).
   • I have participated in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sadi Carnot.
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.
   • No.
8. Have you ever been blocked or formally sanctioned at another WMF project? If so, please describe.
   • No.
9. What is your best work at Wikipedia? (an article, list, image or content template)
   • My best work at Wikipedia has not been in the article space. While I'm pleased with Ouimetoscope, one of my rare forays into significant article editing (as opposed to minor contributions here and there), I feel my best contributions to the encyclopedia have been on the technical side and behind the scenes and in the boiler room. In particular, CorenSearchBot has been valiantly (if sometimes a little dumbly) ferreting out hundreds of copyright violations for over a year.
10. If elected, would you request the Checkuser and/or Oversight userrights?
    • I would request Checkuser, as this is the tool I have the technical ability to use to good effect, and the ability to properly investigate cases where sockpuppetry has been alleged. I have no use for Oversight, and would not request the right unless I was specifically requested to have it. I feel that the sensitive nature of edits which are oversighted makes it important that the total number of people with the right should be as limited as possible.
11. Please list any disclosed or undisclosed alternate or prior accounts you have had.
    • I have never edited under an account other than this one. When I registered this account, I thought I already had an account but failed to find it (or its password); it may have simply been a bad impression.
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.
    • I tend to use whichever method is most expedient for the task at hand. I am often on IRC, both for strict socialization as well as for the occasional "sanity check". I use mailing lists when appropriate (I am, for instance, on an OTRS mailing list and on the Clerks' mailing list). Specifically, however, I never make on-wiki actions on decisions taken off-wiki without an explicit on-wiki trace.
13. Do you have OTRS access? If so, which queues?
    • Yes; info-en and permissions. Admittedly, my OTRS access has been mostly used in support of Wikipedia work (such as double checking permissions, and handling controversies in articles I have made administrative actions on). I do, however, occasionally give a hand by hacking at some of the queues when they get long.
14. How do you resolve the apparent inconsistency between RFAR/MONGO and RFAR/Jim62sch as to off-site activities by users?
    • There is no conflict. MONGO explains that off-site activities may justify increased scrutiny of an editor on-site, and Jim62sch clarifies that this increased scrutiny generally does not justify on-site sanctions on its own, but that particularily egregious or damaging off-site activities might.
15. What is your opinion on the new closed motions process?
    • This is a very big net gain towards transparency and institutionnal memory. As Wikipedia grows, "finding" our own past becomes increasingly difficult (especially as the continuous renewal of the editor pool makes it increasingly unlikely that someone just plain remembers personally). A more organized, durable record of what has happened alleviates that difficulty, especially in cases that do not have an obvious case to attach to.
16. Besides compromised accounts, under what circumstances would you support or initiate an emergency request for desysopping?
    • I think any wheel-warring is of such grave danger to the stability of the encyclopedia that it deserves expedited handling; I would support emergency desysopping of any administrator who persists in reverting another administrator's actions after a single warning. In all cases, wheel warring needs to be taken very seriously and examined by the Committee.
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?
    • Because administrator duties have, almost unfailingly, the potential to be unpopular even when necessary, it's important that they have the ability to act without being at the mercy of popularity or collective mood swings. The Arbitration Committee serves an important "buffer" function that should not be bypassed. Any editor, or group of editors, that have significant concerns can bring them to the Committee who can then examine them.

      I am, in principle, supportive of setting up a distinct group serving the same buffer function outside of the Arbitration Committee (Bureaucrats have been suggested for this task, but the proposal did not reach consensus), but that's a Big Step that requires careful planning and a difficult selection process.

18. If you owned Wikipedia as the WMF currently does, what would you do to fix the BLP problem?
    • Personally, I would restrict BLP to the "paper standard": unless the subject is so notable as to warrant an article in a current paper encyclopedia (chiefs of states, major religious leaders, etc) then Wikipedia would avoid a great deal of potential liability, self-promotion and controversy by not allowing biographies of living persons at all. Yes, this means that Jimbo probably shouldn't have an article at all in my opinion. Persons who have been dead for some amount of time (I would suggest three years) have considerably more reliable coverage, and most especially more stable coverage, and are considerably easier to have articles.
19. In 2004, the Arbitration Committee referred issues to the Mediation Committee. However, as of recent, 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?
    • I think the previous practice was a very good idea, and would support both a return to that practice and its converse: the MedCom should have the authority to refer issues where user conduct or policy integrity have taken the forefront to ArbCom for special consideration.
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?
    • I believe that any reinstatement of a previously undone administrative action without a strong consensus is wheel warring. All such warring needs to be examined by ArbCom, and most should lead to a swift desysopping. It is important to remember, however, that every case must be examined on their own merit and there may exist a number of justifications or mitigating circumstances that would obviate the need to desysop.
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?
    • I believe that, in general, there is a bright line between "administrative" actions (enforcing policy, maintenance) and "editor" actions (working on article contents). The fact that an administrator has been involved with an editor in an administrative capacity in the past is not "involvement" in regard to future enforcement. Administrators who have been "editorially" involved with a user (contents dispute, adversarial editing) should never then act administratively towards that editor, even in apparently clear and uncontroversial cases; they should instead solicit the help of another administrator, who will be able to evaluate the situation and act accordingly without risking the appearance of conflict of interest.
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?
    • I think that, above and beyond the technical abilities, administrators have been selected because of community trust. That trust is justifiably transposed to other, less technical, aspects of policy enforcement including application of sanctions.
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?
    • Yes and no. I would be in favor of not forbidding exploratory use of checkuser in cases where there is reasonable cause to believe that abusive socks are being used, but I would neither encourage the practice nor make it standard modus operandi. In other words, I agree that it is a valuable tool to place at the disposal of the Checkusers, but that its use should be limited to specific circumstances.
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?
    • I am not generally in favor of blanket measures based on editor age where not otherwise strictly mandated by legal concerns. I think that the current practices, such as counselling children against divulging personal information, coupled with the explicit reminder that disruption to the encyclopedia may be acted against (whether by impersonation or improper behavior) is sufficient to address the issue.

      Indeed, there is considerably more danger that overreaction to this issue causes us to become needlessly antagonistic and turn younger editors away that could otherwise have brought a valuable perspective to the encyclopedia. Reacting to behavior should be the rule, here, and not reacting to presumed future behavior according to some arbitrary classification.

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?
    • There does not appear to be any inconsistency: apparently knowing "too much" about Wikipedia is usually a good indication that the editor may not be as new as the account, but blocking an editor on that basis alone is inappropriate. Certain behavior from editors with short histories may well rouse reasonable suspicions, but suspicions (no matter how justified) do not guilt make. Coupled with otherwise disruptive behavior, however, it reverses the presumtion that a new editor simply didn't know better and may significantly affect handling of that editor.
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?
    • Having been a clerk for some time, I'm actually well aware of the concerns that go into the current conventions on the naming of cases. In particular, the concerns of (a) avoiding being needlessly adversarial, (b) avoiding telegraphing a conclusion and (c) avoiding needless controversy, are the guiding principles. In general, a name will be picked that illustrates the focus of the case; whether that is a topic area, an event or a specific user.

      There are (fairly rare) cases where the focus of the case does shift as evidence is presented or as examination of that evidence progresses. Especially in cases where a single user was named as the focus, renaming the case may become indicated both for clarity and for fairness.

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?
    • OTRS actions are nearly as critical as office actions, and undoing one is amongst the most legaly dangerous acts that can be made. While OTRS volunteers have no strict power over the editorial process on the Wiki, they are very trusted editors that are privy to confidential information having a legal impact on the encyclopedia and the foundation. Accordingly, acts they make in this capacity (supported by an OTRS ticket number) should be afforded a strong presumption of both importance and correctness, and should almost never be overturned unilaterally.

      The undeleting administrator needs to be severely penalized, almost certainly with a swift desysop; if there was doubt about the validity of the invocation of the OTRS ticket, then the admin should have sollicited the help of another OTRS volunteer, the ArbCom, or the foundation legal counsel and not acted themself.

      The deleting admin may need to be reminded that getting help in order to avoid warring is generally preferable, but has acted to protect the encyclopedia and should not be penalized at all. Indeed, the deleting admin would have been perfectly justified in blocking the undeleting admin in that situation.

      Again, as all cases where wheel warring has occured, this would need scrutiny from ArbCom and specific circumstances may dictcate an interpretation different than in this black-and-white hypothetical case.

28. To what extent do you believe policy on Wikipedia is or should be binding?
    • I strongly believe that policy should be mutable, but binding. Disagreeing with policy is perfectly reasonable; and there are a great many cases where it could be tweaked for the best. The correct way to do so is by modifying the policy through consensus, not simply ignore it for the sake of expediency.

      Certainly, rules may not cover reality in all cases; and there are occasions where blindly applying the letter of a rule would be detrimental to the encyclopedia; this is the very reason IAR exists and must remain. Editors are well advised to keep in mind that, in practice, the good of the encyclopedia is dependent on policy being applied evenly and consistently. If nobody knows for certain what is considered appropriate or not, then no behavior is truly incorrect and either editors feel entitled to break every rule, or they live in fear of being slapped down by some unevenly applied arcana of policy. This is why invocations of IAR to ignore a rule should be rare, and thouroughly justified every time.

      Wikipedia policies are editable as any other page, and for good cause: the consensus changes, and what Wikipedia is changes over time. Either we change our application of the rules to match, or we change the rules themselves. Only the latter allows everyone to be on the same page at the same time.

29. Do you believe that former arbitrators should be on the Arb Comm mailing list? Why or why not?
    • This is difficult to state definitely without knowing the exact nature of the ArbCom communications on the list, and the extent to which former arbitrators involve themselves into current cases as a matter of fact. In principle, former arbitrators (that did not resign under a cloud) were trusted with the privacy of the information and are still bound to it, so it should pose no problem; and they might contribute valuable perspective (or memory of past cases) that can be informative and useful— but if that extends to influence over the current ArbCom or "meddling" then it would need to stop.

      The community selects arbitrators according to the current concerns, and having a collective of éminence grises tugging at the strings of the currently elected committee is a dangerous game to play. This danger of a hidden "shadow committee" of sorts (or even the perception that one exists) is so great that I would be hard pressed to defend the current status quo without persuasive arguments.

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Some of the other potential candidates have had the great idea to invite comments and further questions and comments on the talk page. I'll do the same. — Coren ^(talk) 13:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)