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User:MBisanz/ACE2008/Guide/Wizardman

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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. 31 months as of this writing. (First edit March 06)
  • 2. How many total edits do you have on Wikipedia? What is your % of edits to the article space?
  • A. Over 50,000 (under 51k though). Roughly 30.8% of my edits are to article space, however most of my talk page edits are automated. Take those out and I likely have 50% mainspace with ease.
  • 3. Are you an administrator? If so, how long have you been one?
  • A. Yes, nearly 2 years; 21 months as of this writing. (End of January 07)
  • 4. Do you hold any other userrights or positions at the English Wikipedia? (crat, medcom, WPPJ, etc)
  • A. Yes, MedCom.
  • 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. No
  • A. No; I probably wouldn't be qualified if I was :P
  • 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. Best article would be Art Houtteman. Ideally all candidates would have an FA, if for no other reason then to say arbcom knows the goal of Wikipedia and has contributed to that goal. I also consider Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Elonka to be one of my better actions, as it was an issue that I likely would have made enemies for no matter which way I closed it, yet made sure I made the best possible decision.
  • 10. If elected, would you request the Checkuser and/or Oversight userrights?
  • A. Oversight yes, Checkuser I might wait on a bit (since we have new ones) to make sure I understand all aspects of it.
  • 11. Please list any disclosed or undisclosed alternate or prior accounts you have had.
  • A. No. :P I mean I don't have any alt or old accounts and don't plan to have any.
  • 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 prefer to keep things on wikipedia, though I do use IRC. I have access to WR and a couple mailing lists, but I use them very rarely.
  • 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. It's not inconsistent, rather I believe that the Jim62sch case is a tweaking of what was established in the MONGO case. There will naturally be users who use critical sites, and by contrast there will be users critical of those other users. The Jim62sch case tries to explain that it's acceptable to post elsewhere, but to be careful, as they will still be held to Wikistandards there.
  • A. Love it
  • 16. Besides compromised accounts, under what circumstances would you support or initiate an emergency request for desysopping?
  • A. If an admin goes crazy and starts disrupting wikipedia severely, such as continuous wheel-warring without explanation, I would support it. (a la Bedford)
  • 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. The lack a way for the community to desysop someone is troubling. If there's a major issue with an admin, it will take a while for arbcom to look through everything, and they are reluctant to desysop unless the evidence is fairly damning. Should there be one? Of course, but obviously it would need to be an airtight process so that good admins aren't desysopped just because they pissed off a few people.
  • 18. If you owned Wikipedia as the WMF currently does, what would you do to fix the BLP problem?
  • 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?
  • A. If you look at MedCom's workload in the past 6-8 months or so, you'll find that it's very light. Ergo, as an arbitrator I would at least create a request for mediation should the case that was brought to arbcom warrant it. If they refuse, then it's rejected just like any other MedCom case when that happens. If it's accepted though, then it is one more dispute dealt with.
  • 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. Wheel warring is something that can be iffy at times (how much consensus is needed to undo an admin action if it's at ani, for example, and if consensus is shaky is the reverting admin wheel warring?). However, if a user reverts an action multiple times without seeming to understand that there's consensus against the action, then we need to be a lot firmer in this regard, and desysop them. Obviously, desysops would be on a case by case basis. I can certainly say my stance has really hardened compared to last year.
  • 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. Administrators need to err on the side of caution when handling something they are involved in loosely (noninvolvement and close involvement should be obvious). If you think someone could make a valid claim that you're involved in a dispute that you're using tools in, don't use the tools. We have several hundred active administrators, someone else will notice the problem and see if action is merited.
  • 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. I support them having the ability to do these actions, and also agree that they should be recognized as administrative actions.
  • 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.
  • 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. We don't have a "policy", yet we do a lot in practice to protect children's privacy. So long as we continue to remove personal information of minors and try to protect them, there's no need for a radical transformation here.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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