User:Wnt/Joint statement/santorum

An attempt to develop a consensus point of view

I've composed this draft from statements in the Santorum ArbCom case by User:JoshuaZ, User:Macwhiz, User:Sadads, User:Orderinchaos, User:Will Beback, User:Wnt, User:Sandstein, User:Khazar, User:Jmh649, and User:Shell Kinney. They were summarized by me from a previous revision of this page where I sorted out all the Arbitration/Case statements by apparent viewpoint. My hope was that, after a few points are explained, modified, or dropped, we could all agree on a single common position. Forming a common consensus turns out to be more difficult than that, but I hope this document can still be a useful step in formulating common principles.

1. [We] don't think this is ripe for arbitration at this time.^[JoshuaZ] There is an RFC underway that has yet to conclude, so not all steps in dispute resolution have failed yet. There's been longstanding community consensus to keep the article; it's survived three deletion discussions. An ARBCOM ruling now, short-circuiting the RFC, would seem premature.^[Macwhiz]

2. As long as [people skewer politicians and other celebrities to gain favor or publicity], we're going to end up covering these kinds of issues. This doesn't mean we repeat these stunts as if they were fact (i.e. good editorial decision making and BLP), but we can explore the instances and their effects. Whether or not this term should be its own article or covered elsewhere and what navigation templates it should be in is purely a content decision.^{[Shell Kinney]}

3. [We] note with dismay that (Sandstein's) concerns about the new arbitration policy about to be ratified, which enables the Arbitration Committee to make binding decisions about issues of content and governance rather than only about conduct issues, seem to be well-founded. So far, three arbitrators (Jclemens, Kirill and Newyorkbrad) have voted to accept a case apparently with a view to making a policy and/or content decision, that is, to influence how Wikipedia should cover the "santorum" neologism... The only acceptable way to address such content issues is through consensus-based processes as long as these remain functional, such as the ongoing RfC... The only issue that the Arbitration Committee can legitimately address is whether there has been user misconduct in the conflicts surrounding this matter, and if yes, how it should be sanctioned... The Committee should defer to community consensus (if any emerges) about whether the current article is policy-compliant or not.^[Sandstein]

4. Why propagate the Streisand effect?^[Jmh649]

5. [We] support retention of the santorum article in the reasoned belief that it is not an intentional attack on Santorum, but exists because Savage's attack on Santorum is unquestionably noteworthy and of encyclopedic value.^[Macwhiz] Many respected news sources have linked to the page directly [1].^[Wnt]

6. [Template:Sexual slang is not] making a libelous comment [or claim] about Rick Santorum.^[JoshuaZ Assume for argument that it is a neologism; in that case, it's definitely a sexual one, so it's not unreasonable to add it to Template:Sexual slang. Consensus on that template's talk page was running 16:6 in favor of retaining santorum when Coren unilaterally decided to remove it, citing BLP. [2] Shortly thereafter, Coren removed it from Template:LGBT slang, with no prior talk page discussion, again citing BLP and referring to Template talk:Sexual slang. [3] Given the lack of consensus that Santorum (neologism) violates BLP, those edits trouble me, and I can't see community sanctions arising out of Cirt's edits there.^[Macwhiz] How can one clearly and without error distinguish between listing an article in a category template because there is a reasonable belief that the article is a member of that category, as opposed to listing it to promote the use of a term documented in that article? The point of category templates is to increase the number of links. "Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia." How does one know which articles are "bad" to link? How do we distinguish between promoting a term and promoting the article? If Cirt had added links to those templates for any other article, we wouldn't be here, but because it's santorum, there seems to be an assumption of ideological motivations. Can a link be a BLP violation, when the article is not?^[Macwhiz]

7. Savage's "santorum" campaign has been discussed as a problem for his presidential campaign in ABC News,[4], Mother Jones[5], Rachel Maddow,[6] The Concord Monitor [7], CNN [8], Slate.com [9] [10], The Washington Post [11], The Village Voice [12], the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call [13], and CBS News [14] (the writer for which describes the Google Bomb as the primary reason Santorum's campaign is "widely considered a joke"). It's also been extensively referenced in the monologues of television hosts, the popular US humor programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and dozens of blogs. It's clear that the genie is out of the bottle, with or without Wikipedia. I think there's room to reasonably disagree about how this content should be titled, framed, and balanced, as with any article. But I'm alarmed at the repeated suggestions that ArbCom should preempt or overrule an RfC to erase this content outright, or disguise the increasingly famous fact that Dan Savage coined a nasty neologism that's blocking a well-known ex-senator's presidential ambitions. Suppressing some or all coverage of a political candidate's widely-reported problems--no matter how sympathetic we may be to those problems--seems like a precedent that will cause problems in many future articles.^[Khazar]

8. [Dan Savage related articles are not] a walled garden... they all have many incoming links and are all clearly reliably sourced.^JoshuaZ

10. This article [is a very rare instance in which we see] the Senator's own response to [the neologism] - something which presented him in a significantly more mature light than the comments which sparked this off.^{[Orderinchaos]}

11. [We are] sensitive to Wikipedia's press reputation,but it should not drive our policy decisions; that would be a reaction expected of a political, not academic, body.^[Macwhiz]

12. Cleaning the article off the map doesn't solve anything. If anything it looks like coverup or censorship.^[Sadads] [We] think there are some people who genuinely believe BLP should be about censorship, and that any negatives whatsoever must be avoided by Wikipedia. However, BLP basically means "cover it sanely and safely", not "don't cover it at all". It says as much itself: "Material about living persons added to any Wikipedia page must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoiding original research."^{[Orderinchaos]} Is what is written verifiable? Are the sources reliable? Is it NPOV? If not we have places to address that. If it is than move on. We do not need policies to "protect" people who say what they shouldn't have.^[Jmh649] [We] cannot find any evidence that the content of [Santorum (neologism)] is either unverifiable, non-neutral or original research, even though the entire subject offends some people's sensibilities.^{[Orderinchaos]}

13. Wikipedia [may be] "at risk of being abused for advocacy". But by making a strong community decision to include discussion of all reliable sources about well known politicians, we limit people to what the sources actually say. By contrast, if we allow the deletion of things people don't like, there is no bound to the distortion and whitewashing that can happen, as different groups of people try to blot things out.^[Wnt]

14. I believe it is entirely wrong to criticize an editor for making "too many" edits, when those edits individually are appropriate. People should never lose rights because they registered for an account rather than contributing as a variable IP address. The decision of which articles to work on and what sources to look up and summarize is one of the few legitimate ways Wikipedians have to express their bias, and it underlies nearly every edit made to the encyclopedia. Scientists create articles about their favorite species and tools and concepts; nationalists write articles about their state parks and famous forefathers. And political supporters write the truth - when we're lucky - about their candidates and opponents.^[Wnt]

15. If writing neutral, well-sourced articles becomes a cause for punishment then we might as well shut down this website.^{[Will Beback]} If we are to use BLP to cover up this article or bend it to the will of some 3rd string candidate we can just shutter the place right now as we are no longer an encyclopedia. Either we allow sourced and vigorously edited content within the confines of our policy or we give it up. ^[Protonk]

17 (edited). We are disturbed that Coren, an ArbCom member, is making an assumption of pretty bad faith in his claims about Cirt and other editors.^[JoshuaZ] Absent a clear reason to believe Cirt's edits were intentionally malicious, characterizing them as deliberately SEO or "egregious and vicious" seems unsupported.^[Macwhiz] We would like to Assume good faith in Coren's actions, however, Coren's actions at Template_talk:Sexual_slang have been very aggressive and the comments have assumed deliberately malicious intentions by other users. His rhetoric has been very similar to several users who have overtly assumed bad faith of other editors, especially Cirt, in discussions related to Santorum (neologism).^[Sadads] We find it deeply offensive to suggest that editors work on the article simply to promote it, especially when the concerted campaign to stamp out this article, or greatly reduce it, or suppress all mention of it, started just a few days after Rick Santorum's announcement of his candidacy for the American presidency.^[[15]] It is wrong to presume the worst motives for those who add reliably sourced information about public figures, while not even considering the motives of those seeking to remove such information.^[Wnt]

18. [We] think there are other underlying reason for the escalation of the articles issues: users with vendettas against Cirt are forum shopping. The same group of editors have taken this controversy as an opportunity for forum shopping for the same issues, many of them in bad faith, at Jimbo's talk page, the various templates Cirt has created, ANI, AN, BLP noticeboard, Cirt's talk page, Wikipedia-en, even Did you know's talk (and now apparently ARBCOM requests about content issues [16]...). We have a concentrated group of editors that show up in opposition to Cirt's content in almost all of the conversations and connecting them, no matter what the position and what the consensus of other editors is (as far as [We] can tell, Jayan466, SlimVirgin and Off2riorob [and Coren...] are the most prominent). This has created a very large pool of people being drawn into discussions from all over the place, and finding their way to other areas and making decisions based on gut political opinions, misrepresentation of policies to meet certain ends and in defence against bad faith accusations (and these same gut opinions have led to edit warring). Recently, the conversations have all become focused on the talk page for Santorum (neologism), but some of the embers are still burning on some of the side arguments.^[Sadads]

21. In the straw poll on Talk:Santorum, nearly every Support vote mentioning Google considered the effect of having the article name and content on the Google results, while nearly every Oppose vote mentioning it was either unconcerned or skeptical that it had an effect. So who is using SEO?^[Wnt]

The remainder of the comments from the Arbcom page have not yet been summarized; see a previous revision of this page where I sorted out all the Arbitration/Case statements by apparent viewpoint

Other discussions (as listed by User:Coren)

The dispute has spread to multiple venues with no end in sight, and RFCs fail to reach anything resembling consensus. Amongst other, the dispute can be viewed on Talk:Santorum (neologism), User talk:Jimbo Wales, Template talk:Sexual slang.

Endorsements

Please specify which points you reject or need altered or clarified.

Wnt (talk) 21:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC) But I need clarification who is involved in 19 and 20.
Sadads (talk) 21:27, 13 June 2011 (UTC) I too would need some more clarification with 20, but support all of the other statements.
⌘macwhiz (talk) 17:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC) I endorse the version of the statement present on this date as reflecting my views.
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC) Yes seems to be a reasonable description of the issues.

Discussion

I would like to propose adding a statement to the effect that the Committee should construe the question put forth by (Committee member!) Coren narrowly, with regard to the propriety of the template alterations, and not turn it into an excuse for a fishing trip into the santorum-filled lake. Doing so would look an awful lot like picking their own case, rather than waiting for one to appear.

I do have some concern about such a joint statement; namely, that it would tend to inflame the conspiracy-minded amongst our fellow editors. "Look! We told you there was a liberal cabal behind this!" I came to my decisions by myself, and you yourselves, and they're compatible. If nothing else, the header should make that crystalline clear.

I can't agree with 9, because I frankly don't know Cirt that well. I'm open to the possibility that he has some hidden motive, but I see no non-circumstantial evidence of that, and I can see how a reasonable editor with no hidden motive could have made the edits Coren complained about. So, I am assuming innocence until proven guilty. (Just as any American who was awake the day that our legal system was discussed in middle-school Civics class should!)

We might add to 16 that other editors have suggested that there is some conspiracy at work, and that while we acknowledge that it's entirely possible that professional political spin doctors are involved in this somehow, that we don't think they are solely or primarily responsible for the page, and that those who endorse this document are not part of any such hypothetical, unproven conspiracy. Plus, we find the implication that we are to be deeply offensive, bad faith, and unworthy of a Wikipedian.

Agree with the questionable provenance of 19; I looked at the AfD for The Gore Effect, and the supposed overlap in the cast of characters wasn't immediately apparent to me. Before signing off on that statement myself, I'd have to see the overlap. The decision in that AfD, though, was right on point. (Another interesting precedent is the discussions at Talk:Macaca (term).)

I presume this would be something to be submitted if the case is accepted, during the evidence/workshop phase?

Sorry for the new section, but I'd rather talk about these things before I apply my name to a section titled "Endorsements" :) Aside from these qualms, however, I agree with the remainder of the restatement. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 22:40, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't very sure about my support of 9 either, though it seemed reasonable based on a very quick look. I agree that 9, 19, and 20, mentioned by one or the other of you, hinder the overall principle-based thrust of this draft, so I've I think we should just drop them entirely. There was actually a "defense of Cirt" subcategory in the sort of the original ArbCom comments I'd made, in which I'd excluded the purely character-based defense, and I really should have excluded 9 and 20 on this basis to start with. Wnt (talk) 16:10, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I've combined 16 and 17 and edited it in a way that I hope addresses your suggestion. Wnt (talk) 16:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

One suggested tweak: "the campaign to stamp out" in 16/17... Perhaps "the concerted campaign to stamp out" or something similar? There's been a low level opposition to this for years. It's just since it came up again on The Daily Show that the scorched-earth campaign has appeared. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 17:10, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I had to abandon some of that, both here and at the Case page, because there actually was an earlier announcement I hadn't been aware of. I don't understand how an announcement of a presidential candidacy is "news" if you've already announced you're going to make that announcement before that... anyway, that was my mistake. I've reworded it to be less contentious in light of the fact that actually, I don't see activism against the article before the May 26 pre-announcement. Wnt (talk) 16:03, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I should add that there are now quite a few excellent comments I think we'd agree with that have been added to the page since the time I took this. I don't want to keep spamming the people who endorsed to approve new changes, nor to add new points to the statement without having them look it over. I'm not quite sure how best to proceed at this point, and might just end up waiting until the case begins. Wnt (talk) 19:12, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of working through points to make a consensus version. It's a better, more Wiki-like, model to follow instead of the current practice of flooding an RFAR with text, diffs, and confusing claims from a dozen editors. If we can describe all points of view on international controversies then we should be able to do the same with local disputes. However the process of achieving a consensus version is not easily compatible with the short schedule of an arbitration request. Maybe the answer is to ask Arbs to wait a week before looking at a case, giving everyone enough time to get their submissions ready and to clarify the issues. Will Beback talk 08:45, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

My hope is that ArbCom will not take the case, or if they do, that they will focus on Coren's actual complaint rather than wading into content. (I wouldn't mind if they also burn some of the conspiracy theorists that add so much rancor to the discussion.) Perhaps we should consider how to distill each of these points into proposed findings of fact, if it comes to that? One of us could add each point, with a comment linking back here...? // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 12:43, 16 June 2011 (UTC)