Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-03-31/Arbitration report

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“Tides”? —Floquenbeam (talk) 13:51, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Floquenbeam: Tides of March, a pun on Ides of March. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:32, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a note, I think it's worth avoiding statements that give the impression ArbCom's public workflow represents all (or even a majority) of the work we handle. February was far from tame, I believe. It was just that most of our business occurred off-wiki that month. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:28, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: We don't publicize what you don't publicize. Perhaps ARBCOM could provide notes to The Signpost if there are concerns about reportage. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:17, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: I've been writing this month's Arbcom report - anything I've missed? Its at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Arbitration report, and so far I've covered a policy amendment, 2 procedure changes, 2 case rejections, 1 new case, 1 other motion, and 1 new bot currently in trial. --DannyS712 (talk) 23:35, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not suggesting you can/should report on things that aren't public. All I'm suggesting is that it's worth avoiding statements that suggest this is all we do, or that ArbCom has been particularly busy/idle (since it's impossible to know that). There have been months where are on-wiki workload has been busy while our overall activity has been less than normal, and there have also been months where our on-wiki workload has been basically nil while our overall activity has been extremely high. (That last case often occurs in January, as many long-term banned editors decide to appeal their bans to a new Committee in hopes they'll get a different result.) ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That seems difficult. ARBCOM won't reveal what it does off-wiki but does not want to appear to be doing little, if anything, based upon what we see on-wiki. We could avoid making statements about "a fairly tame February" but it seems natural to compare this month's activity compared with last month's activity. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's more that we can't say what we're doing off-wiki, in almost all cases. If we could, we would be doing it on-wiki. We could perhaps bring back publishing the number of appeals we get in a month, which I think was done once upon a time. Not a bad idea. But often, the most time consuming things we do definitely can't be disclosed on-wiki in any meaningful way unless you want statements like "We talked about something for an entire 150 email thread, but it was private, so we can't tell you what it was." That seems unhelpful. As for your last statement, I suppose you can choose to do what's natural or what's accurate, and it's up to the Signpost which they care about. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:53, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]