User:NuclearWarfare/ACE2010
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Notes: These guides represent only the views of their authors. All guides are welcome for inclusion.
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My thoughts on the 2010 ArbCom elections. Format of the page adapted from User:Lar/ACE2010.
Hi all. I'm NuclearWarfare. I have been editing Wikipedia since late 2007, and I have brought one and a half articles through the featured articles process, and have also created other content as well. I was elected as an administrator in August 2009. I currently serve as an Arbitration Committee clerk and OTRS volunteer. As part of the latter, a good portion of my work focuses on replying to subjects of biographies of living persons. By my own request, I do not serve as an administrator for the time being. What does that mean for you? Nothing. I just want alert you to my own background, which shall undoubtedly affect my decision to vote the way I do.
I continue to believe that the problem with biographies of living persons constitutes one of the three greatest issues that our project must address. While ArbCom of course does not set policy directly, the actions it takes, or as we saw in January 2010, chooses not to take, directly affect the project's trajectory. I personally have very strong views about the BLP problem. I do not expect the candidates to agree with me on every aspect of my views. I do however wish to see evidence that they have thought hard about the scope of the problem and perhaps even how to address it. (A hint for now: Arguing that a limited use of pending changes on a couple thousand articles with a history of problems might be enough to solve the BLP problem will earn yourself a strong oppose from me. Think about the issues and defend your position strongly.)
Candidates and community members, please feel free to leave feedback at User talk:NuclearWarfare/ACE2010.
Quotes by Wikipedians
[edit]I like these quotes. I don't agree with them entirely, but they do represent my philosophy on how some things with Wikipedia are really wrong and need to change. They will be guiding my voting to some extent.
- On Administration
JzG was actually a role model for me when I started here, because he had a real knack for seeing through bullshit and grasping the essence of a dispute...I can think of a number of other admins who used to work that way - that is, WP:CIV doesn't mean you have to endlessly tolerate obvious bullshit. Those people are all completely burnt out, if they're still here at all. And they've been replaced by people who are equally high-handed, but without the saving grace of underlying clue - the worst of both worlds. At some point, "the community" made a decision that rudeness was a greater threat to the project than blatantly partisan, agenda-driven, or batshit-crazy editors. Honestly, if you're capable of staying superficially civil (emphasis on "superficially"), avoiding edit-warring, and avoiding sockpuppetry, you can basically stay here indefinitely pushing whatever nonsensical, pernicious crap you choose. The end result is that we constantly hemorrhage good editors when they burn out, but the real bad apples stay with us forever.
— User:MastCell, 04:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
My primary criticism of the committee is that it is generally so focused on our conduct policies that it ends up leaving the actual encyclopedia behind. This is a direct consequence of the committee's refusal to adjudicate content disputes combined with the lack of any other available form of binding content dispute resolution. The model in use seems to be that if we keep editors in line with our conduct policies, the content will fall into place. This is absolutely not the case. The idea seems to be based on the entirely false notion that editors with conduct issues and those who advocate inappropriate content on Wikipedia are the same people. Absolutely not so. Wikipedia has many editors highly devoted to neutrality and verifiability who, alas, are also prone to behavioural lapses (often during the course of their attempts to improve or maintain the encyclopedia's neutrality or verifiability), and many highly civil POV pushers. The effect of this conduct-only focus of arbitration is to sanction editors advocating neutrality as harshly, nearly as harshly, or even more harshly than POV-pushers. As an example: two editors enter a long-term edit war over a matter. The one seeking push a POV is exceedingly civil, while the other, who seeks to enforce neutrality and verifiability, lashes out with four-letter words from time to time. In an arbitration case, who will be sanctioned more harshly? That's right: the second, because he violated our conduct policies more. That this is completely wrong and that an editor who compromises the integrity of our articles should always receive more severe sanctions than one who violates conduct policies while seeking to uphold content policies is abundantly clear for both practical and principled reasons, but this is not how our ArbCom is set up. Even in the case that both editors in the dispute are about equally civil and both receive similar sanctions, we have still sanctioned an editor trying to enforce our content policies. Such a person is likely to be discouraged from advocating neutrality in contentious areas in the future when they see that POV-pushers and neutrality advocates are treated exactly the same by the committee (indeed, they're likely to say "screw this" and leave the project completely).
Wikipedia is singularly ill-adapted to deal with nationalist troublemaking. Overmuch of the mentality of the Arbitration Committee, who will not rule on content, has filtered down to the administrative corps. Living-persons issues apart, most admins are too scared to block for POV pushing, even though neutrality is supposed to be our most important principle. Nor are such blocks readily endorsed, no matter how justified, largely because the majority of those expressing an opinion are not familiar with the subject matter, and either cannot or will not properly check the issues concerned. As a result, admins are unable to deal with pure POV-pushing, and can only address the other symptoms of the nationalist disease. Typically the nationalist troll does, in fact, infringe user conduct rules, but this cannot be universally relied upon. Even if he does, the nationalist cannot be relied upon to violate the user conduct regulations to the extent that he can be removed permanently. It is also worth noting that most nationalist editing focuses on humanities-related subjects, where Wikipedia does not possess the same volume of expert editors that we do when it comes to science-related topics. As a result, the number of those able to refute nationalist crankpottery head-on is smaller.
- For this one, I have to disagree on the last two sentences.
- On Governance
I've always believed that the WMF need to grow a pair and enforce a governance model on Wikipedia. If the American Revolution had been conducted by RFC, the Continental Congress would still be bickering over what color the flag should be and Thomas Jefferson would have been blocked for incivility to King George.
— User:Iridescent, 00:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- On Biographies of Living Persons
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the living people about whom we write. There is a deadline for them: it is the moment that Google puts our article about them in their top-5 results. That is something that was never contemplated at the time that Wikipedia was created. We must be responsive to changes in circumstances; this is about as big a change as can be. This is part of Wikipedia maturing and becoming a responsible citizen of the information world; when we were small and unnoticed, we had almost no impact on the life of an article subject. Now, what is published in our pages can (and sometimes does) cause long-lasting harm. Why do you think Google now crawls our articles incessantly to ensure it reflects the most current version of a page? We are no longer a little upstart in a distant corner of the Internet: we are now a top-10 website whose words, whether they should be or not, are taken as relatively accurate if not entirely authoritative. Not a day goes by that someone being interviewed on radio or television isn't confronted with a question that starts "I looked up your Wikipedia entry and it says..." The failure of individuals to recognise this collective responsibility to get things right about real people does more to harm the reputation and credibility of this project than any other error that is made.
— User:Risker, 03:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
Clearly could have been handled with less dramah, but the deletions did have a sound basis in policy. Let's not get so carried away with "procedure" that we miss the big picture here - the community needs to have a way to deal with articles of this type that doesn't involve deciding its Somebody Else's Problem.
— User:Shell Kinney, 16:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
My votes
[edit]Currently Running
[edit]| User | Statement & Questions | Rights | Edits | Since | My thoughts | Vote |
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| Casliber • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,(ex)Arb | 76277 | 2006-05-05 | I think SandyGeorgia got it spot on two years ago with her analysis. The last two years certainly seemed to have changed Cas' view on BLPs, for the better, I think. Certainly enough so that I no longer feel that those views prevent me from supporting. |  Support
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| Chase_me_ladies,_I'm_the_Cavalry • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 22036 | 2005-08-08 | Not entirely sure on this one. Chase me does a fantastic job with OTRS, which is primarily how I have run into him. His answers to the questions were OK—not wonderful, but still pretty good. I'm just not seeing anything in his history that indicates that he would be a particularly good arbitrator. |  Abstain
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| David_Fuchs • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 26502 | 2005-10-15 | Solid content contributor and seems to have his head planted firmly on his shoulders. Reviewed his comments for about the past two years at WT:FAC and a couple of other project areas; I didn't see anything terrible. Answers to questions seem all right. Will be supporting. | Support
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| Elen_of_the_Roads • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 7892 | 2008-05-11 | Seems to be OK—no major flaws in thinking or in their attitude towards what is important for the encyclopedia, though I was slightly concerned her views on the BLPs. She has it right that we can't maintain them with our current system, but it seems that she hasn't thought of a way to move forward. Perhaps I am wrong, and if I am correct, perhaps that is something that will be changed with time—another concern of mine. Elen is relatively new to Wikipedia and certainly rather new to adminship. I have changed my mind. Originally, I was planning to oppose Elen because of her relative newness to Wikipedia. However, she has a good head on her shoulders, and everyone else I am supporting has been around here a very long time. Might as well give her a shot. |
Support
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| Georgewilliamherbert • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 13526 | 2005-07-31 | My gut is telling me I should support. Per Wizardman, mostly. Sorry that I don't have a better reason than that. | Support
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| GiacomoReturned • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
None | 40093 (total) | 2004-11-08 | Also has edited as: Giano (talk · contribs); Giano II (talk · contribs)
A number of people I respect very much have come out saying that they back Giano strongly. A number of reasons have been given; his previous election page and User:Lar/ArbCom2007/Giano probably summarize them the best. I find this somewhat surprising and disappointing. It is important to have non-administrators on the Arbitration Committee. It is even more important to have editors on the Arbitration Committee that don't respect all that the body has done over the past several years. But Giano is not that editor. His behavior on noticeboards has consistently been unhelpful (1, 2, 3). On the occasions where he does uncover issues that need to be fixed, the information is conveyed in such a tone that seemingly indicates that Giano does not have an ounce of respect for anyone he disagrees with. You can be a fantastic content contributor, even one who disagrees with the status quo, without acting in such an uncollegial manner. Plenty of administrators and non-administrators alike manage to do that. But Giano is not someone who is willing to do so (Tznkai here probably best summarizes it), and for that reason, I am unwilling to support his candidacy. I don't think it is wise or helpful to go further. My vote shall be to oppose, but please, do your own research on this one. As always, I welcome comments on the talk page. |
 Strong Oppose
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| Harej • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 15497 | 2004-11-26 | Decent answers to questions, solid and steady contributions history. Has the ability to understand the underlying problems behind disputes, which is nice. However, I am concerned by lack of recent (and likely future) activity as well as a lack of content contributions. Abstain for now, might change my mind later. | Abstain
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| Iridescent • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 156163 | 2006-02-15 | My head says yes, but my heart says no. Iridescent certainly has the intelligence for the role. They is dedicated to the encyclopedia, clearly has thought about the issues that really matter and would judge disputes fairly. But...I don't know. Something about them has always seemed...I don't really know how to express it—"off" is the best word I can think of to describe it. Bring it up on the talk page if you know what I'm talking about or think I'm completely nuts. |
Support
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| Jclemens • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 26102 | 2006-08-24 | If we are not counting Casliber and maybe Georgewilliamherbert (?), I believe that Jclemens is the only candidate who has any experience with graduate-level sciences. But I have just been too concerned in the past with some of Jclemens actions and tendency to be process-driven to support. Unfortunately, I feel like I have to oppose. |
 Oppose
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| John_Vandenberg • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,(ex)Arb,C,O | 47969 | 2004-09-05 | John Vandenberg seems to have thought about the issues that matter. That's good. He was elected to the Arbitration Committee in 2008, but resigned because of this mess. It was a pretty ridiculous resignation, I think, but there you have it. John was also the drafting arbitrator of Date delinking. I was disappointed by how this case turned out. I felt that some of the remedies were very disproportionate, and the length of the case allowed allowed many of the rather simple issues to go unaddressed for a long time. It also looks like he will be inactive for a pretty big chunk of his term if he is elected. On those two counts alone, I will be opposing. I was also somewhat unimpressed with his behavior towards FT2 this election cycle In addition to onwiki posts, see log for #wikipedia-en-admins connect on 2010-11-27 between 05:29:43 and 05:35:26 (UTC) That issue looks like it still has not resolved itself, so reserving judgment for now. |
Oppose
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| Loosmark • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
Rv | 8057 | 2007-12-26 | Non-administrator, OK-at-best content contributions. The attitude I have seen the few times I have looked over his editing has been very poor. I do not think that he is likely to be helpful in providing a fair hearing in arbitration cases. | Strong Oppose
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| Newyorkbrad • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,C,O,Arb | 25894 | 2006-02-25 | Despite the fact that he tends towards writing monologues, I have always respected Newyorkbrad for his opinions on BLP and other serious project issues. He is definitely one of the most eloquent writers on the matter, and no matter what you think of him, I highly encourage you to read his answers to Lar's questions as well as the discussions he links to. Brad is sometimes slow when it comes to Arbitration matters. But when he does sit down and get to work, the results are generally decent to excellent. I am happy to support. |
 Strong support
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| Off2riorob • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
Rv | 43780 | 2008-12-04 | Off2riorob is generally a fantastic editor, especially when it comes to biographies of living persons. He does an excellent job in cleaning them up, and also understands that there are more important things for articles to meet than just the general notability guideline, let alone those atrocious special notability guidelines that allow articles to exist without any real in-depth reliable source. However, I simply do not see his strengths as someone who would be an effective person to help settle a dispute once and for all. This, just a month ago, worries me a little too. Unfortunately, I shall have to oppose. | Oppose
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| PhilKnight • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 62274 | 2006-07-17 | Seen excellent work with him in mediating complex disputes, including Israel-Palestine, always a contentious issue. A lookover of his work left me fairly favorably impressed. On the other hand, I was not impressed by his endorsement here, as it seemed to brush off a serious concern about misuse of admin tools (and more seriously, a failure to understand and rectify the mistake). His answers to the questions were not really helpful. I feel like I didn't receive a proper answer to my question, and the answer to Mbz1's question was almost a classic lawyer/politician answer. I was also disappointed that even a week after Lar asked his questions, they had not been answered yet.
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Support
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| Sandstein • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 41849 | 2005-07-31 | I have concerns about Sandstein having a tendency to follow the letter of the policy over all else. However, I also think he tries to be as fair as he can be within the boundaries of that mindset. An unwillingness to answer Lar's questions without giving a good reason is very disappointing. He's a decent administrator, but I am not sure he would be suited to the role of an arbitrator. | Oppose
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| Shell_Kinney • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,C,O,Arb | 28921 | 2005-06-10 | Shell's answers to the BLP problem were very fine, so I don't have a problem with her on that. This year, I saw Shell's work mainly in the Climate change case. Near the end of the case, where it looked like only a few editors were to be sanctioned, Shell sat down and dug through the evidence and proposed a number of additional topic bans. They weren't all good, but they did reflect willingness to dig through the evidence and remove from the area participants who had not overtly been violating the rules, but had been a problem in the area. A quick review of her OTRS work looks fine as well. Other guides have brought up Shell's behavior in the events surrounding Rlevse's resignation (SG). That was a problem, but unless I missed a major thread somewhere, the whole matter seems a bit overblown, perhaps because it happened so recently? Both Climate change and OTRS show that Shell has a willingness to really sit down and read through things to come up with the best possible solution. On the balance, that is good enough for me. I shall be supporting. |
Support
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| SirFozzie • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,C,O,Arb | 8873 | 2006-02-06 | Excellent thoughts on BLP. Surprisingly, that doesn't translate into practice exactly how I thought it would (see Fozzie's vote here for an example). I disagreed with several of Fozzie's admins actions while the Climate change case was going on (he recused himself from acting as an arbitrator because of prior interactions with WMC but did not recuse himself from acting as an admin in the area), but I could also usually see his reasoning very clearly. In other cases, I think he did a fine job in analyzing evidence and moving ahead with things. As a whole, he definitely leans towards the positive. I shall support, same as last year. | Support
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| Stephen_Bain • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 12092 | 2004-10-08 | I generally thought he was a pretty decent arbitrator in some cases, but occasionally a not-so-terrific one in other cases1. He has just twenty or so edits this year though, and that in itself is enough of a concern to oppose. | Oppose
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| Xeno • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,B | 82632 | 2006-07-14 | I have always liked Xeno. If I remember correctly, he was one of the first editors on Wikipedia I interacted with to a great extent. I am not sure though if he would be a good arbitrator. I have always felt that, like HJ Mitchell, he seems to follow the letter of the rules and not employ his own judgment often enough. This and this are unfortunate. His answers to Lar's questions are short and do not show evidence of any great reasoning-through. If it were just a few questions, I might understand, but many of those questions are of some of the most important questions that Wikipedia faces. I will be voting to oppose, with regret. | Oppose |
Withdrawn
[edit]This was the way my comments stood at the time the candidate withdrew.
| User/Talk/Contribs | Statement & Questions | Rights | Edits | Since | My thoughts | Intended vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balloonman • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
(ex)A | 22882 | 2006-04-01 | I was unimpressed with his views at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase I. But more importantly, he has been retired and semi-active, back and forth, for the last year or two. I am concerned that as an arbitrator, he would either burn out very quickly, or have long spells of inactivity. | Oppose
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| FT2 • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A,(ex)Arb,C,O | 41900 | 2004-07-11 | Probably the most controversial of all the candidates this year. I have spoken to him at length many times, and I generally have a favorable impression of him. He is clearly dedicated to the encyclopedia and has done a great deal of work for it in a multitude of areas. His ideas on how the project should progress are certainly not the same as mine, but I do admire that he is willing to think deeply (and write extensively!) about the important issues. I am now not terribly worried about the events of resignation, assuming his extended statement is accurate. We shall see though. A lot of this vote is based on what my gut is telling me, and not for any immediately logical reason. Sorry this isn't more help to anyone reading this. |
Support
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| HJ_Mitchell • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
A | 39817 | 2009-03-30 | Very unimpressed by his answer to Lar's questions about BLP. Recent block of SarekOfVulcan on SoV's request seems to indicate a very "stick-to-the-rules" attitude rather than use judgment, which is something consistent that I think I have seen in his postings to ANI. Not entirely happy with him claiming credit for Brad Pitt on his userpage. This was the article before he edited it; This is the article today (changes). |
Oppose
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| N419BH • talk • contribs • logs • block log • editcount • rights |
R,Rv | 6280 | 2009-01-15 | Non-administrator with no significant content experience. I did N419BH the favor of reading their answers to the questions, on the off chance that they might have had some brilliant insights. Unfortunately, it seems that they did not. | Strong Oppose |
Factoids about the candidates
[edit]- Please post on User talk:NuclearWarfare/ACE2010 if any of this is incorrect
- All information here is based on easily available self-declared information, and is therefore likely incomplete.
- Five of the 23 candidates edit under their real names—Casliber, David Fuchs, Georgewilliamherbert, John Vandenberg, PhilKnight, Stephen Bain. Five others' real names are fairly well-known or seem to be derivatives of their full names—Harej, HJ Mitchell, Jclemens, Newyorkbrad, Shell Kinney.
- Casliber seems to be the only a professional scientist—he is a psychiatrist and therefore must have a MBBS or equivalent. Jclemens has done some graduate work as well; see the talk page for details.
- Newyorkbrad and Sandstein are the only two lawyers running (Stephen Bain has an undergraduate degree in law and may have practiced it before joining his graduate program).
- The only academic is Stephen Bain (although John Vandenberg also works at a university).
Notes
[edit]- Positions
- Arb=Current Arbitrator
- Ex Arb=Former Arbitrator
- Admin-level-or-higher rights
- A=Administrator
- B=Bureaucrat
- C=Checkuser (requires identification to WMF)
- O=Oversighter (requires identification to WMF)
- S=Steward (requires identification to WMF, no other non en:wp rights will be shown)
- Non-admin rights (only mentioned if they have no admin rights)
- AC=Account Creator
- AF=Abuse Filter Manager
- AR=Autoreviewer
- IPBE=IP Block Exempt
- R=Rollbacker
- Rv=Reviewer