User:Tznkai/desk/Guide to requesting Arbitration Enforcement

Introduction and basic concepts

If you are reading this guide, you are probably involved in a heated dispute concerning a contentious topic area that you are familiar with. Unfortunately, the people from whom you are requesting help are probably not familiar with the dispute at all. To get an idea of what this may feel like, go to WP:ANI, pick a section where you've never heard of the article or participants, and then try to make sense of it and figure out what should be done. It's not easy!

The administrators who patrol requests for Arbitration Enforcement are volunteers with limited resources, and a limited mandate. Their time-available may be limited as well.

So, when asking for Arbitration Enforcement, keep in mind that the readers of your request will probably have a bit of a learning curve to come up to speed as to what's going on. At the same time though, there are probably many other different situations also demanding their attention, so they won't be willing to spend hours to read several tomes of background material, they will just want a short and sweet summary. So it's important to be specific, and be succinct.

It's important to keep in mind:

• The enforcing administrator cannot and will not settle content disputes.
  • In other words, don't plead to the administrators to "save the situation".
  • Administrators are, in the main, unimpressed by appeals to emotion, or the sanctity of the Wiki, or the truth.
• Administrators may only act upon the conduct of editors. Not on article content.
• Any request for arbitration enforcement must flow from a specific arbitration remedy. These are located in the "Remedies" section of a case. If there's no specific remedy, there's probably nothing to enforce.

Preparation

• Open up a new tab, or a word processor, or create a new subpage in your userspace, such as User:YourName/Draft. In preparing your request you will likely have to link to a number of different diffs and Wikipedia pages. You will probably wish to fine-tune and revise your words. Don’t lose all your work to an errant keystroke.
• Research the case you want enforced and the context of your situation carefully. You must identify and link to a specific case and specific remedy (or remedies), along with which infringing actions (with diffs) trigger a remedy. You should also check to see if warnings may be required before sanctions can be implemented.
• Decide what you want the enforcing administrator to do. Often this will mean “discretionary sanctions”.
• Remember, going to AE is not a race in "who files first, wins". Just because an editor or topic area can fall under AE's purview doesn't mean that EVERY dispute has to go there, if it can be resolved by lesser means. Also, remember that as needed, ALL parties to the request will have their conduct and edits examined. Or in other words, make sure that the other party can't point at you and say "They're doing the exact same thing!" It is not uncommon for someone to file an AE request, but then the sanctions are directed at the filer, not the filee. So make sure your own behavior is as clean and legitimate as possible.

Writing your request

• Remember the 5Ws and one H, who, what, where, when, why, and how. Who did what, when and where, why does this trigger which remedy, and how do you want the reviewing administrators to proceed?
• Go ahead and open up [the template] now, and follow the instructions carefully for the first three sections. In the sanction or remedy section, link to the precise anchor of the remedy you want enforced. This will be in the section marked Remedies. It doesn't matter what is in the Principles or Findings sections, only what's in the Remedies section.
• When showing diffs, you are compiling evidence, and then interpreting them. Make your statements concise. Your reasoning should follow this format: WHO wrote WHAT, WHEN, which violated WHICH remedy, from WHICH case, HOW.
  • For example: Alice wrote “bob sucks” at 12:00 yesterday, which violated the “Alice shall not disparage Bob” remedy from “Alice-Bob 3” by insulting Bob.
  • You may think this is all obvious from context, but enforcing admins are not familiar with your dispute. Be as thorough as you can, but remember the KISS principle. "Keep it Simple, Stupid!".
• If warnings are required, you must link/diff to them.
• Diffs of behavior should generally be recent. Linking to someone's behavior from six months ago and asking for the remedy to be enforced today, generally isn't a good idea. Unless of course there are current and obvious infractions, in which case focus on those, and don't worry too much about what happened several months ago.
• Make any additional comments if you’d like, but keep them brief. It is generally not necessary to inform the administrators of the underlying content dispute. Administrators generally go out of their way to avoid even the appearance of allowing the content to influence their decisions.
• Useful information may include historical interactions or former accounts, but only if you can prove that things are true and relevant.
• Review your request and make sure everything complies before saving.
• Important: Immediately after saving and filing your AE request, you must go to the talk page of the user of whom you are requesting enforcement against (and anyone else you mention in a substantial way) and notify them about the request by linking to it and its anchor(the part after # in your wikilink). If you do not have one, fix it.
• Next, you must return to your request and edit it to include a diff (or diffs) that the relevant parties have been notified.

After filing but before the request is closed

• Be patient. There are a limited number of administrators available, and they edit Wikipedia from a wide variety of timezones so may not even be awake at the time you file your request. One or more administrators will eventually take the time to research the dispute. However, some may read it and then simply pass because they don’t have the content knowledge to make heads or tails of it. (If you find that an intolerable situation, push the foundation to pay the administrator corps).

If your request is poorly formed, doesn't reference a specific remedy, or doesn't supply any evidence in the form of diffs, it may be rejected outright.

• The administrators may ask you to provide more information, so please monitor the page and try to reply in a timely manner.
• Multiple administrators may engage in a discussion on the best way to proceed. There will be a section for "uninvolved administrators" to discuss the request. If you have a question or comment about this, please do not engage in the administrator section, but you can post your comment in the section above it, and refer to the administrator's comment.
• Avoid getting into a discussion with other disputants. This is to avoid the Boomerang effect. Administrators are human, and if they see a dispute is raging and unduly personal, they may decide that both sides need a sanction to calm things down.
• If you find that an administrator is about to make a decision you disagree with, consider carefully whether or not you want to get into an argument about it. What may be a clear violation to you may not seem so to someone who is not familiar with the basis of the dispute.

After the request has been closed

• If the request was closed in your favor, be mature about it. Avoid the appearance of grave dancing or taking advantage of the results if they are what you wanted.
• If the request was not closed as you would have wished, again, try to accept this in a mature fashion, otherwise you may be perceived as whining, which will weaken your case if you need to file followups in the future. Keep in mind that if someone is genuinely causing a problem in an area of the project subject to Arbitration Enforcement, there may well be other opportunities in the future to file an AE request. But do what you can to learn from the situation. If your request was not successful, try to understand why. Perhaps the behavior that you saw was not as clearcut a violation as you thought. So for your next request, don't jump the gun for behavior that is borderline, wait for something that is truly a clear violation, and things may go much more smoothly. It's also important to keep your own behavior as policy-compliant as possible. This helps decrease the noise level around the dispute, which helps administrators to perceive who exactly is causing the problem in an area.

• Ultimately, whether the AE request is closed in your favor or not, keep in mind that in the grand scheme of things, it's not the end of the world, it's not something that's going to be picked up by international news. It's just a dispute about an encyclopedia article, one article out of millions. So, set the request behind you, and carry on with your day, there's plenty of other work to be done!

Final thoughts

The bottom line is simple. Clear and concise communication is the best way to get the help you are asking for.

Administrators want to help keep the peace, to stabilize and improve the project, and allow everyone to work in as harmonious and productive a manner as possible. Administrators rely on you to use effort and care to keep them well informed.

Even if you have done your best though, it is still not a guarantee that administrators will do what you expect. Administrators may well end up doing something you do not anticipate or desire, especially if you yourself have been actively involved in the dispute on an article. So even if you're "right", the administrators may be more interested in conduct than content, and will act accordingly. Administrators are not omniscient paragons of justice, but simply human volunteers with limited resources.

If you do your best to keep your own behavior as clean and policy-compliant as possible though, and do your best to communicate the situation clearly, concisely, and in a civil manner, citing specific arbitration remedies and specific and obvious infractions, that is your best chance for a successful outcome. Good luck.