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Question from Gerda Arendt

2. Thank you for standing! Can you agree with Opabinia regalis here? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 22:40, 19 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   That's a whole lot to cover. First, I actually commented in that case, so I'm not a neutral, after-the-fact observer. As for O.r.'s content: I can't agree or disagree with the decision to vote against accepting the case, since it's a personal determination, by its nature. I understand the reasoning offered, but don't find it terribly compelling. I tend to agree that peppering someone's pages with WP:UWT tags pertaining to civility then taking the stand that one is being civil while the templated party is not, has a ring of self-service posturing. But that's not really central to the issue. (And it has a lot to do with why the {{ Ds/alert}} system is such a dismal failure, essentially guaranteed to increase rather than decrease disputes and the heat thereof).

   The reason the case needed to be accepted actually had nothing to do with civility and the F-word, but with WP:IDHT behavior – refusal of the party in question to engage and help resolve the concerns of the rest of the editorial community with which that person was coming into regular conflict. O.r.'s opposition to taking the case appears to be a "taking a stand" point about a minor subset of the issues raised in the case request. When boiled down, I actually agree with the point (see my WP:HOTHEADS essay for related material), but it's wasn't very on-point. Also harmless, given the otherwise overwhelming agreement among Arbs to take the case. I'm not sure if this addresses your question, given the number of sentences in the diff you pointed to; if I didn't address one that is more central to your question, let me know.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:10, 19 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Pointed question from Iridescent

2. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not sure I can think of any editor who's been involved in more arguments with more people over the years than you. While in my experience you're generally on the correct side in those arguments when it comes to policy, the fact remains that of the people involved in intractable disputes—that is to say, the people most likely to wind up in Arb cases—I'd guess between 1⁄3 and 2⁄3 could reasonably ask you to recuse on the grounds that they don't consider you neutral (either because you've been in a dispute with them, or because you've been a vocal supporter of another party). Do you see this causing potential issues, and if so how would you plan to address it? ‑  Iridescent 22:49, 19 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   I mostly argue about closely related things with the same group of people, and it doesn't rise to ArbCom level. Few of them are really intractable; the majority are MoS/ AT interpretation matters that eventually settle out one way or another simply through a mass of precedent at WP:RM. I would recuse from an RfArb or ARCA that focused on MoS or AT, or involved "regulars" at the talk pages thereof. I'm not deeply involved in many controversial topics, and the few I have been involved in (e.g. electronic cigarettes) are because I was doing routine cleanup work in the area ( "gnoming"), detected an ongoing substantive dispute, and attempted to moderate it to some degree. I don't come to many topics with a pre-set viewpoint, other than being anti- WP:FRINGE and pro- WP:RS.

   I can't predict who it is you think would end up at WP:RFARB about what issues, but none I can think of involve my usual topical editing spheres like cue sports, albinism, felids, and various other topics I watchlist a lot of pages in. The most likely would be articles under WP:ARBR&I already (and would probably be handled by WP:AE admins, not ArbCom, unless it's an ARCA). In that category or any other, I would have no problem recusing myself as appropriate.

   The most common complaint I'm aware of about ArbCom is "they're not content editors". The necessary consequence of fixing that is that more content-involved Arbs will have to more frequently recuse due to connections to particular content disputes and parties in them. But going down a list of topics we already have had cases about, my involvement, if any, in most of them is uncommon and minor (most often WP:FRS responses to very narrow RfCs, and without any pro or con about particular editors. I don't think it'll be a problem. I wouldn't have a personal issue setting a new record as the most-recusing Arb, though I doubt it would come to that.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC); clarified: 23:48, 7 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from User:TonyBallioni

2. In the past you have expressed that you currently have no desire to be an admin. If elected to ArbCom, would you be willing to go through RfA?

   Yes, but only if there was a real necessity for it. Part of my platform as an ArbCom candidate is that I'm not an admin, but a regular content editor who feels ArbCom should not be composed entirely of admins. I think this gives me a different perspective on the curtailing of disruptive behavior than that shared among the average first-an-admin members of ArbCom. I'm more apt to aim for actual arbitration, and for solutions that separate an editor from an area they have a problem in but keep them on-board and productive, than our historical, more "enforcement"-oriented approach, which too often appears indistinguishable from punishment. I'm also more apt to take seriously community perceptions of a "more equal than others" class system on Wikipedia, especially as the idea that "adminship is no big deal" has become decreasingly tenable as Wikipedia transitions slowly into a new phase in the organizational lifecycle.

   People keep prodding me to do RfA, most recently just a few days ago. However, since gaining sufficient experience to actually be a good admin (I wasn't a good candidate for it in 2008–10, though I didn't realize it at the time), I've not actually found a need to pursue that. As a WP:Template editor, WP:Page mover, etc., I already have the now-unbundled tools I would be most apt to use. I don't need to "collect an admin hat". I may do RfA at some point, if what I want to do here shifts into something for which I don't have to tools to be effective. As a privacy activist for much of my professional career (and subject to NDAs for the rest of it), I take WMF's Confidentiality Agreement very seriously, and signed it years ago (2008, I think) just on general principle.

   PS: in the event that a non-admin ArbCom electee were temporarily given access to some admin tools for the duration of their tenure ( not current practice), I wouldn't have a problem with that, or with restricting my use of them to ArbCom-related activity. The real point is that I'm not part of the "admin culture" on Wikipedia, and have kept some distance from it, other than slightly admin-ish activities like WP:NAC and answering {{ Edit template-protected}} requests. I believe strongly that ArbCom needs to better represent the broader editorial community's expectations, since most editors are not admins, don't have an interest in that role, and have not adopted the shifts in focus that the role usually brings.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:17, 20 November 2017 (UTC); revised: 08:03, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from Nick

2. Pick three Arbitration cases from the last six years, explain in detail what aspects of the committee you agree with, what aspects you disagree with, and what you would attempt to do differently. Where you disagree with the previous outcomes and where you would do things differently, indicate how you would attempt to gain consensus and support from the other committee members. You can copy bits of your answers to the above question from Banedon if suitable/relevant.

   I'll give this some thought, but a lot of care would be required. These cases involve real people. Second-guessing a case that's already closed, e.g. to suggest that sterner measures should have been taken with regard to someone, or that an Arb was in error, is likely to make someone(s) rather unhappy. Update: The more I look into this, the less enthusiasm I have for answering it directly. My material in response to DGG's first question may answer this question in part, for one ArbCom case without getting into personal specifics; my answer to Banedon's third does so with a second case, involving a retired user. I also allude throughout to various others (including a number of WP:ARCAs), while eliding individually-identifiable details but addressing specific problems. I hope that is sufficient.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC); updated:  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:03, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. You're not an administrator, so I would like to know what experience you have with potentially sensitive information which may need revdel or suppression/oversight. Please discuss the differences between these two types of information removal giving hypothetical examples of what material you would revdel and what you would suppress/oversight.

   RevDel is used for material that is offensive, degrading, threatening, or otherwise disruptive and which the project has no interest (internal or public-facing) in retaining, as well as blatant copyright violations, and a few technical purposes. Suppression/oversight is used in cases of defamation (libel), outing (revelation of private PII), massive copyright violation when WMF attorneys say to suppress it, plus some technical actions (removal of attack user names, and especially bad vandalism) that now appear to be handled by RevDel, though WP:OVERSIGHT needs an update in this regard). RevDel can be undone by administrators, who can still see the edits in question; oversight cannot, and the material is inaccessible to anyone who does not have the oversighter bit. RevDel is also used as an interim measure by admins for material they believe will be subject to oversight, such as outing and defamation.

   If it's libel or the disclosure of non-public private information, it should be suppressed; if it looks like it might qualify as either of these, it should be revision-deleted pending oversight investigation. If it's none of the above, but clearly something that should not remain publicly visible, use RevDel. And we don't use either for material that's not clearly "across the line", subjective as that may be. Somewhat insulting material between editors is regularly left in place, and often the subject of ANI, AE, RFARB, and other dispute resolution.

   Some examples of RevDel material: racial-epithet labeling, gross misogyny, material copy-pasted from another website, threats. Oversight material: posting another editor's wiki-undisclosed real name, the home address of a living biography subject, unsubstantiated claims of illegal or immoral behavior by a subject, or anything that WMF counsel says to suppress, such as a whole article plagiarized from another site.

   I don't regularly run into material of any such sort, though I have recommended that RevDel be used in a few instances of potentially defamatory material.

   My own background as a privacy activist for a decade+ should address any questions about how seriously I take privacy and what experience I have with the issue. I worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for nine years, during the key era of the legal system starting to catch up with computers and the Internet, including the Steve Jackson Games v. US Secret Service case, which ensured that the then-extant US privacy laws covered stored e-mail, and set the stage for later online privacy protections; legal defense of private use of strong encryption, the assault against which by the intelligence establishment was a threat to the viability of online commerce as well as personal privacy; and the founding of what is now TrustArc (I was at the inaugural meetings and helped develop the TRUSTe commercial privacy "rating seal" assessment system). After EFF, I was with CryptoRights Foundation (CRF), developing communications security for human rights organizations, war-zone journalists, and others for whom personally-identifiable information is a life-or-death matter.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from Collect

2. Should the existence of a "case" imply that the committee should inevitably impose "sanctions"?

   No. Part of my platform as a candidate is that ArbCom and AE have displayed too much of a "punishment" mindset, or at least have been producing results that are difficult to distinguish from punishment, versus prevention. Furthermore, some of the prevention is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, e.g. long blocks when a topic ban would suffice, and imposition of topic bans when a voluntary agreement to self-topic-ban would suffice, and so on. I would prefer to see the Arbitration Committee more often actually arbitrate between parties (and between a party and the community) rather than act as a court handing out sentences.

   It's been my experience that editors led to conclude that they need to step back and re-examine what they're doing and why end up being more productive than those slapped with a restraint that isn't strictly necessary (even aside from the fact that some restraints like blocks make productivity impossible for their duration). The latter leads to resentment and recalcitrance too often. The former – convincing someone that the change to make is their own idea – is a key principle everyone with a background in management, psychology, and problem-solving understands, but which is too infrequently applied here.

   Sometimes a sanction is unavoidable, especially with WP:TRUTH / WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:SOAPBOX PoV pushers, and the habitually incivil. But often it's just a matter of changing approach, from an adversarial accusation stance to a question of how to get parties back to improving the encyclopedia instead of fighting. Sometimes it's just a matter of detecting whether a party is angrily defensive, and shifting them from focusing on their besmirched honor to focusing on resolving anti-collaborative disruption. Another shift that's also often needed is from the conviction that one is right to the understanding that one has to prove one is right with reliable sources and cannot suppress well-sourced alternative perspectives. "Teach the controversy." Obvious to most of us, but central to a large number of cases, especially all the "your people/religion/country versus mine" kinds of RFArbs.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:22, 20 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   PS: Relatedly, I encountered a great statement by Opabinia regalis in a recent RFARB: "There's a meme going around that being on the list [of parties] means you're scheduled for sanctions no matter what, and I really prefer the model where it's just a boring old factual list of the people who are involved in the dispute and who should receive notifications about the case should they want to contribute." [1]. I endorse this view wholeheartedly.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:07, 28 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. If an administrator has openly stated a strong aversion to an editor's article edits on that editor's talk page, is that sufficient to indicate that the administrator is no longer impartial concerning that editor?

   Sounds like a "probably" to me, but the question is a bit vague. If the admin is hostile toward the other editor's edits in general, then obviously this is a personality conflict and another admin should be acting with regard to that other editor, if action is actually needed. If the admin is an editor at a particular article and is striving against the other editor's contributions to the same topic, that's clearly WP:INVOLVED. If an admin was critical of a new editor's unconstructive edits and WP:UWTed them a lot, and even blocked them for vandalism, this isn't likely to have any bearing on interaction between them years later and about something more substantive and unrelated to the "not doing it right" issues from that editor's rank-beginner days.

   Determining INVOLVED isn't particularly difficult, for Arbs and experienced admins, and the greater community at noticeboards. A few (mostly new or habitually troublesome) editors seem to think (or posture that they think) any time an admin has interacted with them in any capacity before then the admin is INVOLVED; this isn't correct. Simply having taken administration action with regard to another editor doesn't automatically make that admin INVOLVED with that editor; it's standard operating procedure for an admin who has imposed some kind of sanction to review the same editor's later behavior to see if the sanction was effective, and it's not uncommon for the same admin to impose another, stronger sanction if the earlier one didn't get the job done.

   Untoward, INVOLVED actions can happen without it being about content. I can think of some instances of editors claiming harassment and inappropriate, punitive action by an admin who clearly had a strong viewpoint about the non-content locus of the dispute and who was imposing or recommending excessive sanctions other admins did not agree with. But these matters often do not rise to ArbCom level; usually, just the objection of some third-party admins is enough to resolve the matter. And this is as it should be (cf. WP:DRAMA).
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:22, 20 November 2017 (UTC) reply

6. a. In cases where the person involved in a case is actually out of the country during that case, ought there be a delay to give that editor sufficient time to address "new evidence"?
   b. Where multiple editors present evidence against such a person, ought space and time for rebuttal be given?
   c. Where evidence is added at the last minute, should the clock be stopped to allow actual time to rebut the last-minute evidence?
   d. Under what circumstance, if any, should arbitrators be allowed to present evidence in the proposed decision which was not previously presented by anyone else?

   A. In theory and within reason. More a matter of "not able to get to it immediately for real-life reasons" in general. Simply being "out of the country" isn't necessarily a show-stopper; other countries have Internet access and not every trip abroad (e.g. to a dull industrial city for a conference) makes one unable to respond to ArbCom in a timely manner. Take on good faith that someone who says they're seriously indisposed is so, but don't permit indefinite stalling.

   B. Yes, and this is always the case as far as I know. I do not recall an instance where ArbCom has refused to grant some extra space, within reason. However, this is not true of WP:AE, and ArbCom needs to ensure that AE is corrected on this. E.g., I'm aware of a case where the evidence presented by the accused, in defense, was truncated by an admin, who then proceeded to seek strong sanctions on the basis of the evidence presented by the accusers, under the pretense that these accusations were unrefuted. That should not be possible. In both ArbCom-controlled venues, the amount of space granted should be commensurate with the volume of accusatory evidence [and invective] presented, perhaps with an instruction to avoid heated counter-attacks and to focus on diffs. After the initial acceptance phase is over, the evidence phase already allows for longer commentary, and this can sometimes get out of hand. Making ArbCom pages non-threaded helps to an extent, but people skirt this by just making a long series of "About what SoAndSo said, ..." posts. ArbCom might be able to resolve this problem by moving or having clerks move extraneous back-and-forth comments to the case talk page. We're already doing this to some extent with RfAs and their talk pages, and it seems to work pretty well. Ramble if you want in talk, but stick to the point on the real page.

   C. Yes, even in cases where this might seem pointless because the die is already cast, the body of evidence already very strong. The reason it should is due process and transparency. I.e., it's worth an extra day or whatever to let someone try to defend themselves, and not have much as Arbs to say about that attempt at defense (unless it's surprisingly on-point) than to spend way more than one day actively defending the decision to not allow the extra time, as people point fingers about the matter again and again over the next two years in multiple venues. Never miss an opportunity to avoid future trouble, especially if it costs nothing but a little patience. :-)

   D. I'm not sure we need specific rules about that, or what they should say. I actually take a very dim view of Arbs acting as "prosecutors"; it's another role confusion or failure of separation of powers (see below, in answers to DGG's 1st question). Arbs should not be barred from presenting evidence they've run across, but doing so should definitely permit extra time to address the evidence, and if the presentation of the evidence or the digging for it were pursued in a non-neutral manner, then the arb in question should do a last-minute recusal. It's the purpose of Arbs to weigh the evidence and try to resolve the issue(s) presented by it (or, more accurately, assuage and prevent disruption surrounding the issue(s)), not to take a side in the matter. To be more specific than that, I'd need to see actual cases where a problem of this nature is alleged (beside the one "prosecutorial" ARCA I know enough about to have said what I did so far).
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from DGG

2. Officially, Arbcom is supposed to deal primarily with conduct disputes, not content, and to interpret and apply policy, not make it. But it has always seemed to me that most conduct disputes have their origin in disagreements over content, and that Arb Com has in fact been most successful when actually dealing with content concerns, as in the pseudoscience and nationalism related cases, even though it may have to word it indirectly. And it has also always seemed to me that the necessary interpretation of policy can in effect amount to making policy, as with the cases involving BLP. What do you think? DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   I was hoping you'd ask me these questions, having seen them at other candidates' pages. Most of these have been on my own mind for some time.

   To get to this one: I agree with your analysis of what is happening. I don't find it troubling or problematic at this time, since it seems to be "the nature of the beast" to an extent. There is obviously potential for future trouble, if ArbCom comes to a policy interpretation that conflicts sharply with the general view of the editorial pool. This possibility is one of the reasons I think it's important to have non-admins in ArbCom.

   I think the way this scope-creep has played out so far has been pragmatic and workable, both from an ArbCom perspective and a community one, but this may be just happy accident, as it's fairly easy to muck this up. I would like to see ArbCom be more conscious of the " WP:Writing policy is hard" nature of what it's doing. Far too often, various remedies and sanctions, findings of fact, and statements of principle, are worded in ways that don't parse with an unmistakeable single meaning, or which can be extrapolated to imply things they were not intended to (e.g., specific issues about a particular case to all disputes involving the same topic). As just one example (but without getting into details), a single word in one finding of fact helped perpetuate (to the present day) a years-long feud between two editorial "camps" when that dispute should have dissipated years ago. It's too difficult at present to get ArbCom to revisit and revise old wording, other than to change individual sanctions or reconsider whether DS should be applied to a particular topic.

   A more serious, though related, concern to me is ArbCom overstepping its raison d'etre – arbitrating user behavioral conflicts that arise from content disputes – and instead interfering with the ability of the community to formulate policy internally, which is not a public-facing matter and has nothing to do with editorial productivity and collaboration in producing encyclopedic output, but is entirely a "meta" matter. It's a separation of powers problem.

   E.g., the entire WP:ARBATC case – especially the discretionary sanctions, which were probably never needed and certainly have not been needed in years – should be vacated. It's the judicial branch, as it were, dictating to the legislative one (editors who chose to work on WP:POLICY formulation) how the latter are permitted to debate while "in session", and it has not only had a palpable chilling effect, but has exacerbated rather than alleviated tensions, and permanently cost us valuable editors (who didn't actually do anything wrong). The amendment to that case in February made the entire thing pointless, because it no longer applies to the locus ( WP:RM) of most AT/MoS-related disruption (and, notably, this motion was passed after ARBATC already had been held at WP:AE to cover RM, with sanctions already applied accordingly, i.e. the damage was already done).
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC); revised: 12:51, 29 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. There have been very few actual arb com cases in the last few years, which might indicate that the community is doing better with its problems, and that the basic rules are becoming well understood. It seems to me that most of the business at arb com has been dealing with ban appeals, which is done on the mailing list, and often involves considerations of privacy. I'm not sure we do very well at this. What do you think about this? DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)) reply

   First, I expect an eventual up-tick in substantive cases, especially if ArbCom becomes less bureaucratic and more "accessible", if you will. The amount of disputation does not appear to have decreased, it's just become sneakier. As WP has become one of the most-used websites in the world, and one of the most-used sources of mostly-trusted information for the general public, the urge on the part of off-WP entities – governments, corporations, religious groups, social movements, individual activists and hucksters, you name it – to bend Wikipedia's content to serve their messaging purposes increases day by day, and this is not going to let up. This relates strongly, albeit sideways, to your outing question, below.

   I'm not privy to how the ArbCom mailing list operates on a day-to-day basis, so it's difficult to comment meaningfully on the privacy versus transparency issues. I did find the "we can't talk about it in any way" act during a recent ARCA about a specific former admin to be counterproductive. It's not really plausible that it was impossible to give any hint at all about the nature of the discussion, and the refusal to do so in this and some previous cases has exacerbated the "Star Chamber" perception. A reasonable compromise would perhaps to be to open an ARCA (or some other process page) about each such appeal, and annotate in it what can be publicly annotated in it, while eliding anything of a private nature. This might require some kind of negotiation with the banned party, e.g. "We'll consider unbanning you, based on these promises you've made, but the community isn't likely to find this acceptable unless we can post a copy of these quoted paragraphs from your message", or whatever.

   Another approach would be to change the procedure, such that banned parties were permitted, like indeffed ones, to edit their own talk page and a specified appeal page, for the purpose and duration of the appeal. Another would be to have a different appeal process, such as filling out a form that created an appeal page (and made it clear that it would be creating a public page with the information submitted) without it using e-mail. In short, this appears to be a technology and medium problem – because it's e-mail, it's "private" even if the content wouldn't necessarily need to be. This prison of ArbCom's own making is easy to unlock.

   PS: I might be inclined to un-ban more than some Arbs, on a WP:ROPE basis. It's easy to just re-ban, and a "re-un-ban" request later would be met with intense skepticism. An ongoing amendment request right now illustrates this principle, and is a time-consuming mess in this one case only because of a farce of an ANI RfC led up to it, instead of it being kept within ArbCom's orbit. "Interesting" experiment, but not one to repeat.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

6. When I joined arb com 3 years ago, most arbs thought that the terms of use were not necessarily enforceable policy at the English Wikipedia, and that arb com has no role in its enforcement. I strongly disagreed at the time--I think they are inherently policy to the extent they are applicable, and arb com has the same jurisdiction as for other behavioral policy. (Of course, we may want or need to interpret it further--and certainly can extend it.) To some degree, I think it possible that the prevailing opinion may have been changing a little towards the position I hold. Where do you stand? DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)) reply

   I lean that way myself, though cautiously. The principle problem is that most editors have not read the ToU; we should be linking to it more prominently from "basic" pages like WP:POLICY. It is a form of meta-policy imposed on the community from WMF, exactly like WP:OFFICE actions. The only difference is we haven't written an en.WP internal community policy "shell" around much of that material, as we have with WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:HARASSMENT and WP:BLP. The fact that we haven't doesn't make any of it magically inapplicable; they're (legally if not entirely practically) rules each of us agreed to before we made a single edit or created an account. I don't like the "clickwrap" nature of it, which is why I suggest making what the ToU say more integrated into WP policy. Aside from linking to it more, we should probably be making explicit reference to its wording where applicable in various WP policies and guidelines.

   That said, this cannot be taken too far. I've seen attempts to apply or "import" various WMF employee policies like Friendly Space into WP policy (especially into WP:HARASSMENT), which doesn't work because we don't work for WMF, and WP:NOTCENSORED, and various other factors. It's not that elements of the WMF paperwork couldn't be borrowed, it's just that the policies as written are not for the website users, but people in WMF's offices and on their payroll. It's just a radically different scope and intent, like the difference between a sport's rules on the field, versus the employee policies of the people who work in the league's business offices, even if both might have some things in common, like not being intoxicated on the job or showing up with a nazi flag.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

8. As I see it, most arbs are of the opinion that the requirement that editors avoid outing applied equally to good faith and bad faith editors. I however think that it ought to be interpreted to apply with much less rigor to those who appear to be editing in bad faith or deliberately against the terms of use. (I recognize the difficulty in deciding initially who is editing in bad faith) Where do you stand? DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)) reply

   That difficulty is probably why it has to be applied evenly, at least within the sphere where WP:AGF has not been bowled over yet by WP:DUCK / WP:SPADE. We assume good faith, but we don't keep assuming it after it's been proven bad beyond reasonable doubt. If I lose a finger every time I try to pet the badger, I stop trying to pet the badger, even though it looks cute and fuzzy.

   The more central matter to me is that the community has no clear agreement on what outing really is, and this needs to be rectified, though that's not an ArbCom matter. Examples to ponder:

   • Someone says "SMcCandlish should be topic-banned from Manx cat for WP:COI reasons. I saw him post a lot on a cat forum that he's a Manx cat breeder, and he keeps promoting the breed as more intelligent than all others, and he just isn't neutral on the topic at all. His edits at the article are clearly promotional." [That's all fictional, but run with it.] Would that be outing? I edit under my own name here, and if I posted in public under the same or essentially the same name on another site, do I have any on-WP privacy interests at stake?
   • Actual case: At a long and tense RfC, a sudden influx of "new editors" all show up to explicitly vote in one direction. Someone posts that they saw one of the proponents of this viewpoint (also editing under real name) post to an insider mailing list of professionals in the field in question, soliciting their input on WP in the RfC. Blatant WP:MEATPUPPETRY, and called out as such by an admin, who did not admonish the reporter for outing. Was it outing? The off-WP forum in question wasn't totally private, but not entirely public either, so it's slightly distinguishable from the Manx cat hypothetical.
   • Common type of case: An editor with a username of, say, TVonS-McNutts writes and frequently edits an article on McNutts Manufacturing. A spot-check of http://mcnutts-mfg.biz/aboutus.html shows that the VP of marketing is one Thora Von Snorkelweasel, and the editor is identified by someone on-WP as this company's marketing VP and thus a CoI SPA. Is this outing, or is it just not pretending we're brain-damaged?
   • Common type of case 2: Exact same scenario, except the username is McNuttsMktg, without revelation of personal name or elements thereof on-Wiki.
   • Based on several cases combined, with details fudged:

     An editor called IDigNewts makes a big credentialist deal about being a herpetology professor at the University of Florida, discloses on Wikipedia (in old discussion threads, not on her user page) that she's female and an Armenian immigrant, and that she's an anti-Turkey activist seeking justice for the Armenian Genocide. In the course of reviewing a troubling pattern of editwarring to a) demonize Turkey and Turks in various articles; b) insert sources into newt, salamander, and frog articles published in questionable journals and on arXiv, written or co-written by Xana Y. Zystanian, listed as chair of the herpetology department at the University of Florida at the institution's website, and self-disclosed as Armenian in her official bio there; and b) to insert claims into the article on the newt subspecies Triturus cristatus vanensis that it's commonly called the Armenian newt among other names and claimed as a cultural symbol among Armenians (with weak but permissible sourcing for this) while removing similar claims with similar sourcing that it's [also] called the Turkish newt and "claimed" by Turks.

     Someone posts that they think IDigNewts is Xana Y. Zystanian based on these partial but incomplete disclosures and the clear editing patterns. Outing or common sense?

   If you ask 20 Wikipedians what their takes on these are, you'll get 20 conflicting answers, and this is a problem. Where is the community willing to draw the line between treating privacy matters extremely, as a "fruit of the poison tree" thing, and treating them practically, the way a typical organization would? It's not so much whether rules against outing apply [identically or at all] to bad actors, as "what really is or isn't outing?". ArbCom seems to be tolerant of people sending private info to ArbCom in e-mail, so I don't think what ArbCom's "collective personal" take on outing is really matters much, compared to what WP's broader collective take is.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from power~enwiki

2. You describe Arbcom as the judicial branch of Wikipedia. What are the legislative and executive branches, and what leadership does Arbcom (as the most prominent elected body) need to provide for them to function properly?

   To the extent that analogy is viable at all, WP's legislative/parliamentary branch consists of all editors who participate in WP:POLICY discussions, broadly defined; the executive one is a mixture of admins and WP:OFFICE. I don't think WP needs any elected leadership, since it's effectively a meritocracy that is "led" (to the extent it is at all) by competent activity level. WP:RFA is essentially an election of admins, and it works the same basic way for bureaucrats and stewards. Prior attempts at other elected bodies like the WP:Mediation Committee have not been particularly fruitful. The "legislative" side of WP doesn't need elections, since formulation of policy is open to everyone; this isn't a representative democracy.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:24, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. (Optional) Do you feel that the differences in English usage in different countries are large enough to justify having multiple English-language Wikipedias (i.e. US-English Wikipedia and UK-English Wikipedia)?

   No (and I'm not sure what that really has to do with Arbcom :-). That would result in a tremendous amount of make-work and wasted productivity, as well as serious WP:POVFORK problems. I think this could eventually be handled technically, to some extent, on the same site – if we wanted to bother. E.g. we could use something like {{Eng|UK=tyre|US=tire|CA=tire}} or {{Eng|UK=colour|US=color|CA=colour}} (and have AU, NZ, VG etc., default to UK, but PH, JP-47, VI, and a handful of others default to US, if not otherwise specified); then have a user preference render the output desired (could also be made to work for non-logged-in users by setting a cookie based on whether they went to en-us.wikipedia.org or whatever).

   Just one of various possible approaches. None would be perfect, since there are syntactic not just vocabulary differences between dialects of English sometimes; it's not always just a difference of individual word spelling or choice. But such divergences are actually fairly few; formal written English is largely divided into US and British/Commonwealth, with very few meaningful differences in an encyclopedic register between British, Irish, Australian, Jamaican, Hong Kong, etc., etc., varieties of English. Most of our profusion of MOS:ENGVAR-related templates are superflous.
   Canadian is the real outlier, and has been in serious flux, especially since the 1990s, with successive but not terribly successful attempts to survey and standardize orthography in Canadian English. There are now several competing would-be "standards", and the Canadian dictionaries and style guides I own (not all of them, but more than average for a non-Canadian!) conflict with each other sharply.

   ENGVAR-related dispute seems to be at an all-time low today on en.WP, so I don't think there's any urgency or a serious problem to resolve. The more we're all exposed to the Web (and adjuncts thereof, like mailing lists with international participation, and TV shows formerly unavailable in our respective countries), the more familiar we get with more dialects, and the more they actually move in the real world toward increased mutual intelligibility, above the slang level. All sorts of Briticisms are entering American English and vice versa through the memetics of mass-media exposure.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:24, 21 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from Banedon

2. You write in your statement that Arbcom cases should be "resolved quickly and with as much community buy-in as can be mustered". Does this mean you view arbitration as some kind of super consensus-judging committee?

   Further, suppose an editor approaches Arbcom because they feel they can't get a fair decision at ANI (e.g. they believe nobody at ANI is capable of understanding their side of the story). How would you handle such a situation? Based on your statement it sounds like you would suggest they approach ANI first for community buy-in. Is this correct?

   Not really the way I would put it. Rather, it's not ArbCom's job to set policy, or to interpret policy is novel ways that the community doesn't agree with. This generally doesn't happen, so I don't see a problem to resolve in this regard. To the extent various ArbCom decisions have interpreted policy's applicability to a particular circumstance or range of circumstances, and there wasn't a pre-existing community interpretation in this regard, it appears to not have met with notable community opposition, though as I mentioned in a previous answer something like that could happen, and should be resolved in favor of the community's collective interpretation not that of a handful of Arbs.

   ArbCom already routinely turns down WP:RFARB requests if sufficient and appropriate prior attempts at resolution have not been made. (See, for example the accept comments in the case you highlight below: "Accept. Seems like arbitration is really the only next step here.", "Accept as I can't see another way around this", etc., in a dispute with long history of previous attempts at resolution). I don't think I would change this, though it is not always applicable (e.g. a desysop case can only be heard at ArbCom).
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. You describe in your statement several issues that you think can be rectified. How do you intend to rectify them?

   Generally through proposals and through casework. The most likely means of steering ArbCom is leading it, with good rationales, away from poor decisions (either poorly worded or poorly reasoned) toward better ones. Similarly, I would tend to support amendment requests that clarified unclear or limited overbroad remedies. Some changes might need more direct proposals on the ArbCom mailing list or elsewhere, and others (like improving Template:Ds/alert, and moving old enforcement actions out of case pages and into the WP:Arbitration enforcement log pages) might simply be a matter of hands-on work to just get it done.

6. You write in your statement that "too much emphasis has been put on blocking productive people for transgressions rather than removing them from the areas in which they're not productive or hamper others' productivity". Earlier this year we had a case after which one of the participants, Keysanger, retired from Wikipedia. This happened in spite of the current committee's attempts to retain Keysanger as a valued contributor (see Euryalus's comments here: "The reason we are spending so long discussing the PD is that we are broadly seeking to retain both of you as valued contributors to this and related topics.") What would you have done instead to achieve the goal you describe in your statement?

   The most obvious things to have done differently here (and it didn't involve a block or even a topic ban) would be to either let Keysanger skate without the civility warning (potentially reasonable, given that this party had been warned in user talk already, and the IBAN might have been sufficient), or to issue a similar warning to both parties (which also would have been feasible – the fact that ArbCom determined that the other party's behavior had improved since their last visit to RFARB doesn't mean that the behavior was exemplary). But warnings don't really mean all that much, as far as sanctions go; Keysanger could actually have received more than a warning, for things like accusations of neo-fascism without evidence, while the other party had not crossed accusatory lines like this since ca. 2013 – Keysanger got off light.

   Another approach would have been short-term topic bans for both parties – I'm skeptical there's any question both of them were being disruptive, in different ways – with an instruction that these could become longer if disruption resumed. However, this might have angered both parties, would still probably have cost us Keysanger as an editor, and might have cost us the other editor if of a similar temperament.

   Nothing in the history of User:Keysanger and its talk page directly connects the result of this RFARB case with Keysanger's retirement, other than both being in March 2017; the retirement appears to have been across all WMF projects by May, at least under that username [2]. This seems to suggest a retirement reason that was some off-of-en.wikipedia concern.

   If Keysanger really quit all WMF projects over having received a simple warning for genuinely uncivil aspersion-casting, that suggests a temperament-related WP:CIR issue; if every editor who received a warning quit in a huff, we'd have very few editors left. ArbCom, like ANI, etc., cannot be reluctant to address clear behavioral problems just because the criticized party might get their feelings hurt, and we have no principle that if no parties have had perfect behavior that all must be sanctioned; we only issue sanctions when we think they'll have a preventative effect, not as forms of punishment.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from Biblioworm

2. On this page, I have drafted some detailed proposals (already written as formal motions) which would reform ArbCom's policies and procedures. As an arbitrator, would you propose and/or vote for these motions? If you only support some of the proposals, please name the ones that you support and the ones that you do not support. If you do not support a particular proposal, please elaborate as to what, if anything, would make the proposal acceptable to you.

   I'm not apt to just "!vote" in support of or against any of these without significant discussion. I can offer some quick, superficial policy analysis on these proposals, in the order they're presented:

   • Regarding points 1.1 and 1.3, I'd be curious how such matters would be handled if not via ArbCom, since you don't propose an explicit alternative to deal with "matters unsuitable for publish discussion for privacy, legal, or similar reasons", including "off-wiki harassment and child protection". We'd need to know what WMF had in mind before agreeing it was a good idea.
   • 1.2 seems reasonable, since we already use community elections for admins, bureaucrats, stewards, and arbs (whether all of us like to call them elections or not). However, 1.2 and 2.1 seem to be conceptually at cross purposes.
   • 2.1 seems iffy to me because WMF appoints the Ombudsman Commission [3] (i.e., this would remove community oversight and give it to WMF employees), and it's mostly not en.wikipedia people; there's no logical connection between the OC and disciplinary matters at this particular Wikipedia with its own policies. To formulate a clear on opinion on this one, I would need to look in more detail at what aspects of CheckUser and Oversight are particular to en.wp, and which are cross-project. If the former category is trivial, then 2.1 might be viable, though it would also add a layer of bureaucracy, which might not be worth it.
   • 2.2 sounds entirely reasonable, and it might alleviate several problems for us to set a case's scope after acceptance.
   • I don't think I agree with 2.3; the evidence and workshop phases of a case are distinct for good reasons. I might revise my take on this after direct experience as an Arb.
   • 2.4: I don't see the point, and think this could be counter-productive. Not everyone with something salient to add is going to notice that a case is open until well into the evidence phase. And it wouldn't prevent "peanut gallery" additions, since anyone who cared to comment could simply make themselves a party to the case, with minimal if any risk (unless they have been naughty within the scope of the case, whereupon they deserve what they get, per WP:BOOMERANG).
   • 2.5 doesn't appear to actually change anything; to the extent it's just documenting what we do already, it seems fine.
   • 3.1 and 3.2 (amendments to WP:AE rules) all seem reasonable, and I agree AE needs some reform.
   • However, 3.3 misses the fact that WP:AC/DS can be applied, where applicable, by any uninvolved admin, and is not limited to blocks, so "imposing blocks under the regular blocking policy" is over-narrow. It's not terribly usual for DS to be applied in mid-AE, but it has happened and will happen again (most often in response to disruptive behavior being carried from the locus of the dispute into the AE proceeding itself).
   • And 3.2 would be better split into two points, since the two sentences in it are making largely unrelated points.
   • 4.1 is reasonable in spirit, but has flawed wording. The first bullet is just awkward ("Any motion must be endorsed" implies that it is not permissible to not endorse a motion), and the second doesn't make sense because "January 1 of the following year" is no time at all for a motion that didn't carry on December 31; this should be rewritten as a proposal for a full calendar year since the closure of the proposal, if that's what the intent is. However, I doubt that consensus would support arbitrary (in the negative sense) bureaucracy of this sort. The "one year" bureaucracy already surrounding WP:AC/DS and {{ Ds/alert}} is already problematic.
   • 4.2 makes sense if a repaired version of 4.1 were put into place.

   At first blush, the ones I'd be most likely to propose/support in some form are 2.2; 2.5 (as documentation of extant practice; if I've missed a substantive change, I'd need to review that); and 3.1–3.3 (if cleaned up). The rest either seem problematic as currently envisioned, or I'm not understanding them clearly enough, and in either case I would have to see them discussed out in detail before supporting them in whole or in part.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from SilkTork

2. Hi. Thanks for stepping forward. I am asking this same question to all candidates. What can the committee do that the rest of the community cannot? SilkTork ( talk) 06:40, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   That's mostly covered in detail at WP:ARBPOL. To boil it down to "can do" actions:

   • Issue binding decisions about conduct disputes, and hear (or decline) appeals thereof (and from otherwise restricted editors), and modify or vacate its own previous decisions (or those taken on its behalf, e.g. at WP:AE)
   • Approve access to CheckUser and Oversight tools, and remove access to same and to Admin tools
   • Deal with complaints and evidence of a sensitive nature that should not be aired on-wiki, though with a burden of confidentiality
   • Read the arbcom-l mailing list, also with a confidentiality imposition
   • Create additional or modify existing ArbCom procedures (including enforcement ones), subcommittees, and delegation (e.g. to clerks), as long as it stays within ArbCom's actual scope; this extends to policy interpretation
   • Hold private hearings, in rare cases of "exceptional circumstances"
   • Actually vote on the resolution of a case or a motion
   • Issue a behavioral temporary injunction, pending case resolution
   • Ignore the precedent of its own prior decisions

   There are a few others that aren't specifically enumerated there, but which can be observed in action and which descend from those generalities (especially from ability to create new process):

   • Edit (along with clerks in some cases) various pages and sections of pages with restricted-to-ArbCom access, and to require others to not edit them (not a technical restriction)
   • Interpret the policies and guidelines and their application in ways that are effectively binding (unless the community disagrees strongly enough to clarify the applicable page in a way that precludes that interpretation); see DGG's first question on this page
   • Create novel and editor- or topic-specific sanctions, within reason, including entire new classes of sanctions (e.g. WP:AC/DS)
   • Direct AE admins how to (and not to) enforce ArcCom decisions (covered in detail at WP:AC/P)

   Some of these have come at considerable cost and are not uniformly positive. E.g., discretionary sanctions have helped rein in many disputes and disruptors, but are also the primary cause of adminship no longer being considered "not a big deal" by most editors.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  06:16, 25 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from Smallbones

2. I’m asking all candidates this question and will use the answers to make a voter guide. Please state whether you will enforce the Terms of Use section on paid editing. Should all undeclared paid editors be blocked (after one warning)? Are administrators allowed to accept payment for using their tools for a non-Wiki employer? Can admins do any paid editing and still maintain the neutrality needed to do their work? (Note that only one admin AFAIK has declared as a paid editor since the ToU change). Do you consider the work done at WP:COIN to be useful, or is it just another “drama board”? Smallbones_{( smalltalk)} 00:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   To answer these in the order presented:

   1. That seems entirely reasonable, given sufficient evidence. The WMF ToU, the WP:PAID and WP:BLOCK policies, and the WP:COI guideline are not so specific about blocks and a warnings. However, the blocking policy already provides that SPAs that appear to "exist for the sole or primary purpose of promoting" something can be indeffed without warning (which is WP:SANCTIONGAMEable by regularly doing a non-trivial number of non-COI edits). So, we should have some standard, and given the rising tide of paid and otherwise compensated/professional PoV pushing, this is worth a try. The one warning provides room for "I didn't really know better" new arrivals to wise-up, per WP:BITE, while giving bad-acting paid COIs only enough WP:ROPE to hang themselves, not enough to range.

      A little more leeway might be permitted to not-strictly-paid COIs who are nevertheless deeply involved with the subject – e.g. an actor editing their own bio, or the high priestess of a new religious movement editing the article about that group. Some of these people can be guided into more appropriate editing (I know – I've worked with several, including a pro pool player, a scientist citing his own research a lot, and two people who were official representatives of religious organizations) while some have difficulty with it or just will not adjust (e.g. another pool player, who got indeffed). They generally are unlike people editing WP for paying clients or as part of their job as the PR manager at a company.

   2. I'm entirely against paid admin work. I have yet to see a single plausible justification for it. In theory, someone who does paid work regarding a topic could be an admin in good faith, though it would require extra care. (And I'm aware of two such cases off the top of my head, one currently ongoing; update: found more here). But the community is going to continue to take a dim or at least suspicious view of this indefinitely, and I think it unlikely that such an editor would pass RfA. I don't think summary desysopping is in order, however; if anyone loses the admin bit it should be for actual cause (or because they became inactive for too long). PS: As of this writing, there's an ongoing RfC about this at VPPOL, here.
   3. Whenever I review COIN, the majority of the threads appear to be raising legitimate concerns, and they're not being regularly addressed elsewhere, so overall the venue is doing its job even if, like all noticeboards, it does have a WP:DRAMA quotient. I'm not opposed to exploring an alternative, but am unaware of any solid proposals for one.

    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:00, 25 November 2017 (UTC); revised: 12:43, 29 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from Beyond My Ken

2. Above, you wrote "I seem to recall that a non-admin ArbCom electee is temporarily made an admin for the duration of their tenure." If you have a cite for that, I'd be interested in seeing it. My understanding is somewhat different. From what I've heard, for legal reasons, to retain their status as a common carrier, the WMF is adamant that all admins must go through an RfA-like process in order to justify their being able to see deleted files, block editors etc.. So -- if that's true -- then I highly doubt that a non-admin Arb would be handed admin status, and without admin status I believe that they cannot get CU or OverSight status, which all the other Arbs would have. If all this is the case, do you think it would be worthwhile being an Arbitrator without the same tools that other Arbs would have as a matter of course? Beyond My Ken ( talk) 07:31, 25 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   I don't right off-hand (update: RfC found, and consensus was against), and have revised that text; I know this was discussed at length in a prior deliberation, and I did not follow it the entire time, or to conclusion, because I really don't care about adminship now that the tools I think I would most use have been unbundled. WMF did determine in 2013 [4] that being elected to ArbCom meets the "rigorous community selection process" test to qualify for Checkuser/Oversight rights (which stands to reason – it's harder to become an Arb than an admin). This may be the end result of the discussion I was thinking of, and regardless it directly addresses the legal matter. In answer to your final question: Yes, since anything I didn't have the tool to go do, another Arb could do. It's not like we'd each be building our own secret stash of evidence and not communicating with the other Arbs. :-)  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:01, 26 November 2017 (UTC); updated: 08:06, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

4. Thanks for your response. I've seen a few discussions of this issue, but, frankly, I'm not certain what the final result is. I suspect, however, that the WMF is not going to be handing out admin status to elected non-admin Arbs without their going through an RfA -- but I could be wrong. I guess we'll see if any of the non-admin candidates are elected. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 11:19, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

   It actually won't happen any time soon, after all. The RfC I didn't originally follow to its conclusions did conclude against the idea.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:06, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Questions from Nuro Dragonfly

2. Hello, my question is simple; how will you correct the arbitrary removal of musical/band articles by specific types of 'editors' who claim a lack of 'notoriety' due to not being able to find some link to another website as somehow being the only standard WikiPedia excepts? I personally barely, if at all in my original works, will cite a website, with some exceptions. The arbitrary attitudes of these types of 'editors' is the reason that the Wiki has a serious lack of editors, who have the time and energy to correctly and with good faith write articles, to fill those missing ones, are falling by the way side. To be specific the individual attitudes of Admin Editors who have very little care for the efforts of others, regardless of some attempt at a non-biased and neutral Wiki adherence. I consider the complete body of works by musicians and bands to be the goal, not some mistaken interpretation on 'notoriety' on a specific album/song, and therefore it to be omitted. How will you deal with this matter in the Wiki Admin sphere post haste? Nürö ^{G'DÄŸ MÄTË} 01:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC) reply

   This isn't an ArbCom matter, but a combination of an article content dispute and a disagreement over what WP policy should be (another form of content dispute, just an internal one).

   What you're thinking of is WP:Notability. I'm not sure what you're trying to tell us exactly; if you mean that when you write off-Wikipedia articles you don't cite sources, that's up to you; you can write your own website, or reviews for the local newspaper, any way you want. If you mean that when writing on Wikipedia, you don't cite sources, then you can expect much of what you add here to be removed, per our core content policies. Wikipedia is not your blog and does have some rules. It's not a matter of admins not caring about the time you've put in, but about whether the material you're writing is encyclopedic versus just your personal opinion, memory or analysis. You appear to be asserting that your material is factual, because you know it to be true, yet being unwilling to prove it. If you maintain that position against clear policy to the contrary, that's not going to work out well.

   It's perfectly fine for something like The Beatles discography to be complete; this is a stand-alone list article and is expected to be comprehensive. The notability criterion (non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources) applies to whether a song, album, etc., may have its own separate article, not whether it can be listed in an already-existing, relevant article – like a discography article, or the discography section of a band article, or the track list section of an album article. I hope this addresses your questions and concerns.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:20, 7 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from Berean Hunter

2. Viewpoint 1: Policy should be interpreted as it is written and enforced as such. If the goals are not being met then the policy should be reviewed and perhaps changed but in the meantime this is the status quo. Viewpoint 2: Policy should be interpreted for its intent over the wording. Where conflict arises between wording and intent, either do not enforce or possibly customize enforcement to try to achieve the intent per IAR. How would you describe your own viewpoint relative to the two opposing views above? ...and of all the candidates, I think you will enjoy this question the most. :)
    —  Berean Hunter (talk) 02:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC) reply

   Mine is Viewpoint 2, since that's the viewpoint we're instructed (directly or indirectly) to use with regard to policy, at WP:POLICY, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOT#BUREACRACY, WP:GAMING, etc.; however this doesn't mean any interpretation anyone thinks they can come up with is plausible, again per WP:CONSENSUS and WP:GAMING, and per how WP:IAR is actually interpreted in WP:Common sense practice.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Question from Tony1

2. I strongly support your candidature, though I should reveal that we've collaborated in the past on several issues, so I have a conflict. Nonetheless, I want to raise the matter of succinctness. You're quite well-known for writing gigantic posts in talkpage debates. Would your ArbCom-related posts—publicly and within ArbCom—be more succinct? Do you think ArbCom text should more generally be made more accessible to the community through a greater emphasis on succinctness? (Loaded question.) Tony (talk) 02:51, 7 December 2017 (UTC) reply

   Yes, they would necessarily be more succinct. It's not ArbCom's job to explore, explain, research, elaborate, convince, or defend; that's what the parties do in presenting their relative cases, and even that has fairly strict length limits.

   ArbCom's output is a focused and collective interpretation and decision, with the twin goals of addressing the matter at hand and the specific parties involved, and forestalling future recurrence of essentially identical disputes. The decision itself is also a vote of active, non-recused Arbs, with prepared statements, not a loose consensus discussion. Most of the "philosophical" materials – the statements of principles – have already been formulated and are reused from case to case with little if any modification. Even most of the remedies are according to formulas at this point.

   My policy analysis experience, both professionally and on-wiki makes me especially well qualified to help keep this output compact and clear. The times I can think of where ArbCom has issued confusing decisions that needed considerable later revision and clarification were when the committee was crafting unusual and excessively detailed remedies when simpler ones could have sufficed – a form of instruction creep.
    —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:56, 7 December 2017 (UTC) reply