WP:Involved is similar to
WP:COI in that the aim of both is to ensure that any decisions a user makes is purely impartial. However, while COI is a guideline, INVOLVED is a policy. The reason being that anyone can oversee a COI edit and amend or reverse it, while only another admin can reverse an admin action, and even then with great care in case they fall foul of
WP:WHEEL.
I'm curious as to your choices of ArbCom cases. Would you let me know why you chose them?
Climate Change was over twelve years ago, and while the possibility of Involved was raised, it wasn't settled in that case. The case was set up to look into "the actions of Lar and Stephan Schulz in the global warming field", and concluded with topic bans for 17 users, and discretionary sanctions for the topic area, but Lar and Stephan Schulz were not sanctioned, though Lar was found to have behaved inappropriately and Stephan Schulz was advised. The case is too old and too complex to relitigate it, but it appears from a glance that the question of Involvement wasn't one that ArbCom was going to get too involved in (other than the usual citing of related principles), especially when the community - at the time of the workshopping - was still looking into the issue itself:
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lar, and that the RfC appears to have been unresolved when the ArbCom case finished.
The Manning case was over nine years ago. David Gerard appears to be the only party to that case to whom the term Involved was applied, and that was via two pieces of evidence. The claim of Involved appears to be slight (I have not read all of Gerard statements made around the time of the case, so it might be made clearer in something he said). The claim appears to be based on an assumption that Gerard was making decisions based primarily on a political, emotional, or intellect support of transgender people, and this support somehow interfered with Gerard's ability to make impartial decisions. The depth of Gerard's support for transgender people appears not to have been explored, and I'm not entirely sure such exploration was needed anyway. Of more interest to me in that case is the notion of doing the right thing even when it is against Wikipedia's rules (should
WP:IAR have been looked into in the case?). My view is that I can, depending on the circumstances, admire someone who stands up for what they feel is right, even when the rules forbid that stand. However, to prevent encouraging people to unwisely ignore rules, anyone who makes such a stand should be sanctioned (and should expect to be sanctioned). The amount of such sanction to be determined by how much disruption they caused alongside the probability of the action having been done anyway if the rules had been followed. Preferably, everyone should open a discussion and get consensus for an action that is or possibly might be controversial and/or against the rules.
The Athaenara case is very recent, and we are still dealing with the repercussions from that incident and case - TNT had their admin tools restored on request
just yesterday. I should imagine we all understand TNT's frustration and anger at the situation, and empathise with their actions. And I think we all understand that they needed to be sanctioned.
Because there are subtle variations and degrees of being Involved, each case needs to be taken on its merits. Of primary importance in any future case is a study of the incident and current guidelines; and though past cases can sometimes help inform current decisions, the older those cases are the less relevant they become to the here and now.
SilkTork (
talk) 16:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
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