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Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Review closed

Original announcement

So arbcom passed a remedy admonishing Mathsci for battlefield conduct without actually passing a finding of fact saying that he engaged in battlefield conduct. Heh. T. Canens (talk) 03:28, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Shit. Mea culpa, I thought I had voted on all the Mathsci findings of facts, but I seemingly missed the crucial one. I'm actually stumped at what the pricedural process is now... Courcelles 05:17, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Probably to vote on the FoF on the PD page now as the correction of a "slip". Then the FoF can be enacted and the Final Decision updated. I think that's the least bureaucratic route,  Roger Davies 05:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I am relieved that Roger Davies and other arbitrators have addressed and will further address the problem of proxy-editing. Mathsci (talk) 07:00, 14 May 2012 (UTC) duplicated and unnecessary comments refactored from here - apologies to Roger Davies and other arbitrators

Duplicatory. Please keep discussion centralised here.  Roger Davies 08:21, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I have replied there. Mathsci (talk) 09:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Policy on voting

How far back can arbiters change their vote? Do they need approval from the committee to make such a change? Where in the rules is the right to change ones vote after the close ensconced? Thanks! Hipocrite (talk) 10:44, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

If you're referring to the above incident, there was no change of vote. Courcelles voted on the remedy along with a comment which showed his intent, and his understanding of the issue, but had forgotten to sign off the finding. The guideline for the Clerks is "If there are any ambiguities concerning which proposals have been adopted, the Clerk should identify them so the Arbitrators have an opportunity to clarify them before the decision is finalized and announced". Slips happen, and now that the matter has been identified appropriate action has been taken. SilkTork 11:13, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Right, so how far back can arbiters go back and realize they voted wrongly? I have a very specific vote in mind where an arbiter very specifically complained about how they would have voted differently in a circumstance, so I want to know if that complaint was before or after the deadline. Hipocrite (talk) 12:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know which case you have in mind but there's a very big difference between changing your mind and promptly correcting an error or omission. There isn't arbitration-specific policy on this but the ""Not" policy says "A procedural error made in a proposal or request is not grounds for rejecting that proposal or request".  Roger Davies 12:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

How does the committee determine that something is "changing your mind and promptly correcting an error or omission," vs "changing your vote?" What is there to protect users from someone going back 3 years to change their vote on something? Can ex-arbs change their votes in closed cases? How about disgraced ex-arbs? Hipocrite (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

It's OK to change one's mind about something - indeed, it can be a sign of reflection. I am quite comfortable with the notion that an arbiter makes a vote for an action and then changes it during a case. Indeed, I did it myself in the just closed Race & Intelligence case when more information was presented. When the case is closed then a vote itself cannot be changed, but the arbiter may later change their mind about making the vote, and is entitled to say so. For reasons of stability of the project, Committee decisions are binding, but that does not mean they are always right, nor that everyone in the Committee agrees with them, nor that a Committee member will not have regrets about voting for a particular remedy. A request for amendment can be made if a remedy appears to be inappropriate, though there is an expectation that - depending on the amendment request - a reasonable time is given to allow the effects of the remedy to be felt. SilkTork 14:38, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

It appears to me that one can change their mind on something right up until the point a decision is made, and then you can't. Perhaps you disagree - as in this case, where you obviously disagree, in that you believe someone can change their vote after a decision was made, undoing the decision and reforming it in a different way. How long before a decision requires a "request for amendment," as opposed to just canvassing arbs that you think might change their vote after decision are made? Hipocrite (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not an arb, but I would compare this to the practice of judges correcting an opinion after issuing it but prior to publication with issuing an order amending the prior opinion. Either way works, but the correcting prior to publication works only so long as it hasn't been published. Translating that to the wiki-world, I would say that after the point the decision has been archived from WP:AC/N, it should require an amendment to change as it has been "published to the archive," while the notice page itself is a bit like a slip opinion. MBisanz 17:53, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

It's OK for an arbiter to change their view, opinion, allegiance or religion, and they can express regret for decisions they have made, but they can't unilaterally go back to a closed case and change a vote. Outcomes of a closed case can only be changed by amendment when there is an open and accountable discussion voted on by the whole Committee. If there is an instance of an arbiter going back to a 3 year old closed case and changing their vote that would need to be pointed out as that would be an error. SilkTork 23:45, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

• It might be a good idea for the Committee to update its Rules & Procedures to clearly explain when an Arb may return to cast additional votes after a case has been closed. MastCell  21:56, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Quick question

Hello, just a quick question. It appears Risker gave the net fourth vote on closing the Rich Farmbrough case a bit of 24 hours ago. Could an arbitrator clarify whether it will be closed within the next, say, 12 hours? I'm asking so I know whether to list the RF case as closed for my Signpost article. Best regards, Lord Roem (talk) 12:28, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Probably not, as it's a weekday and the clerks may not be immediately available to do it.  Roger Davies 13:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

All right. Thanks! -- Lord Roem (talk) 13:05, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I might try to get to it today or tonight. --Guerillero | My Talk 17:36, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough closed

Original announcement

This has been a very bad decision. Undue weight was given to Brad being a bit stubborn, uncommunicative, and a bit uncooperative, and short shrift was given to the opinions of the many people who thanked him, gave awards to him, feel themselves and the project indebted to him, and the quite serious disruption to important projects and harm to the entire project that results from this action. Several of the "charges" against Rich seem to be very petty indeed. The words used to support "abusiveness" on his part were the kind of thing more mature Wikipedians would laugh off and take on the chin for the sake of the project. How many of us have suffered much clearer cases of "abuse" but didn't feel the need to push a formal process to have the person banned, effect on the project be damned, just because you have been insulted? And this man was very useful! This was no ordinary editor. His bots do the work of thousands of manhours in very short time and move the whole increasingly unweildy project forward by keeping an eye on thousands of things, catching serious errors that had stood for a very long time, making a mockery of the project. For more details, check out his user and talk pages, look at the praise for and accompishments of this good Wikipedian. For the other "offensives", they these ten administrators point to nothing that can be shown to have harmed the project, it was all depicted as a sort of defense of principles, only, and a look at the long list of accomplishments, praise, and Wikilove was not given due weight! There was even a kerfuffle about him changing tiny bits of whitespace, my lord, who cares? Let it go, for crissake, or better said for the sake of the project. Please run the process again, this time taking into consideration a thourough investigation into his accomplishments and the serious disruption to the project that results from this rash, uninformed, disruptive, and punitive decision. Chrisrus (talk) 20:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you meant Rich above where you said Brad. Kumioko (talk) 23:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

"Let it go, for crissake, or better said for the sake of the project." That would have been excellent advice to have given to Rich when he used his administrative privileges to do things like adjusting whitespace or capitalization against consensus and/or prior community restrictions. Misplaced Pages has a high tolerance for individual idiosyncrasies, which tends to evaporate when people try and use administrative and bot operator privileges to enforce theirs on the entire project. It is unfortunate that prior dispute resolution failed to communicate this message to Rich. Jclemens (talk) 01:37, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe the benefits from his bots and abilities are important to consider when banning such important bots as helpful pixie bot and femto bot and others that we all rely on when deciding what to do about such things as whitespace adjusting. Let the committee consider both when coming to their decision this time. This is not just a case about unauthorized whitespace adjusting, it's also about lots of very important and good things that are done as well. It was not right to make such a decision without weighting the pros and cons properly. Chrisrus (talk) 05:07, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a dangerous notion, that the transgressions of an editor can be mitigated or even absolved purely on the basis that they have a certain weight of good contributions. This mindset would allow the doctor that saves a hundred lives to murder his wife, or the soldier who protects his country by serving overseas to steal from people's homes. It sets double standards for editors that are entirely unreasonable - Rich is allowed to break the rules, but someone else isn't, and the decision isn't in any way related to what they actually did wrong, but how many brownie points they've earned? That's an untenable position for one to hold if it is one's goal to maintain the fairest possible environment. There should be no special treatment. It shouldn't matter if Jimbo himself broke the rules. If the rules were broken, an appropriate and consistent response should be given.

As for Rich's bots, nothing his bots do can't be done by bots written by someone else. He isn't indispensable - nobody is indispensable - and that's a good thing. Others will step in to fill the void. I looked at the BAG page last week and already saw a proposal or two for bot tasks to replace HPB. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 06:20, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

We're not here to have the fairest possible environment. We're here to build an encyclopedia. I don't have enough understanding of the issue one way or the other to weigh up the damage he was causing over the good he was doing, but my instinct is that the former was outweighed by the latter. I am not confident in the decision anyway. Egg Centric 22:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

We're here for everyone to build an encyclopedia. That doesn't happen when the environment in which you're doing so isn't conducive to teamwork. Fairness is an essential component of meaningful collaboration, because its absence breeds contempt and an 'every man for himself' mentality. This is basic leadership knowledge, really. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 23:22, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

(e/c_ I thought the idea was leave the damn whitespace and similar non-rendering cosmetic issues alone. And those bots did a mix of useful and useless stuff, and of the useful stuff, nothing jumped out at me as being especially important that couldn't be done by someone else without much fuss (and anything important and hard to replicate shouldn't have been approved without published source code). I commented for a while in the workshop (then disengaged because of RL stuff etc.) and supported somewhat different remedies, but I think we will get along ok without those bots. More importantly this decision makes me feel like arbcom's eyes are starting to open about automation misuse, compared to some earlier decisions that didn't do enough. Misplaced Pages is not a programmers' playground.

A quibble: I don't think the reminder to Elen should have equated Rich with his bots. Blocking a bot that's causing problems shouldn't be considered a big deal in general, unless there's wheel warring or similar involved. I can accept that in this particular situation it would have been better for someone else to do the block. So the remedy's rationale was mostly ok but I think it should have been framed as "Elen advised" rather than "reminded" (since reminding implies there is a pre-existing notion that someone didn't remember). 66.127.55.46 (talk) 06:30, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I take your point - Elen didn't forget, so much as think of the bot purely as a chunk of malfunctioning code, rather than an extension of Rich (who I wouldn't have actually blocked, regarding myself as WP:INVOLVED). It was a mistake in that it's obvious when you think of it that the bot could be seen as Rich-by-extension, so it was always going to be contentious. I certainly shan't do it again, should I find myself in that situation. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Understandable, but that comment cuts both ways. The main reason (from my reading) that Rich was desysopped was because he unblocked his own bots – who's to say he wasn't working under the same misapprehension (i.e. that bots are not users-by-extension, just bits of code)? Jenks24 (talk) 22:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Now again, I thought the problem was more editing through protection, and various things to do with deletion/recreation, other than one?? cited instance where he unblocked the bot without taking any notice of the problem...? Again, don't want to impinge on what was in the decision makers heads. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I can't see editing through protection mentioned at all in the final decision (and rightly so, see workshop discussion). I also see no mention of deletion/recreation. It's interesting that you say there was only one instance where unblocking his bot was improper, as that was also my understanding – the FoF states that he did it "on many occasions", though fails to cite specific instances. Makes the case for desysopping him look rather flimsy. Jenks24 (talk) 23:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Prohibited

I don't see "prohibited" on Misplaced Pages very often, so I'd like a clarification. Is this just another way of saying "banned", or is there some significance to this usage? Nyttend (talk) 05:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Prohibited is the same as banned. SilkTork 21:52, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Have a bad feeling about this...

I hope that I'm proven wrong, but I don't think the automation restriction will work well. I think the suggestions on the talk page of the proposed decision (by CBM, IIRC) would have been better for all involved. Anyway, I have the first of what will probably be many questions about this automation restriction: I notice Rich has (without requesting it) been given the rollbacker userright; would using that be considered a breach? What about Twinkle? Huggle? Semi-automated scripts? Jenks24 (talk) 20:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed it's not a perfect solution, but it is the one we cobbled put together in an attempt to deal with the situation. The essence is that the community had expressed concern about Rich's use of automation and trusted tools, and those concerns had not been adequately addressed by Rich; as such the Committee have taken away Rich's access to the admin tools and prohibited him from using any other form of automation. This, by implication, would include the Rollbacker, Twinkle, Huggle and AWB tools. Rich is advised to edit manually and in a manner that could not be mistaken for automated. If in doubt if he is permitted to use an aid he would be advised to avoid using it, and if he feels he needs or would like to use it, to seek clarification if he can use it. SilkTork 22:03, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

If you cobbled it together does this suggest this is temporary, and you are going to come up with a better solution given time? Egg Centric 22:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

My bad. I didn't mean to suggest hasty or temporary - I had misunderstood the phrase "cobbled together" to mean put together out of the available material rather than the "ideal" material. I think the solution is understandable and workable and not too complicated. That doesn't mean that it is faultless, or there won't be an attempt to subvert it, but it is what we have, and will work with the right attitude. SilkTork 10:02, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Gotcha, cheers Egg Centric 12:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, I'm disappointed with your answer, but at least it's clear. Thanks.

On a side note, if the decision was just "cobbled together", what was the rush? I know each year incoming arbs pledge to get through cases more quickly, but surely if the solution was imperfect, a few more days could have been spent discussing and trying to improve it? Jenks24 (talk) 22:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

rollback a form of automation? suddenly I've got a bad feeling about this... Rd232 22:19, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe SilkTork meant cobbled as in crudely constructed instead of quickly constructed. Arbcom has never found a good definition of automation to deal with editors who do quick/mass edits that are controversial. See Betacommand and Lightbot for two multi-year examples of trying different restrictions that ultimately failed. MBisanz 22:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Understood, but surely the point still remains that if it is crudely constructed, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests (including ArbCom's) if some time had been spent refining it? Jenks24 (talk) 22:31, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

You may find Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Δ instructive. That set of pages documents a small part of the efforts of dozens of editors over 3 years to refine the definition of automated editing as applied to that user. They failed, as did Arbcom in at least three cases on that user. Time won't refine this matter, only rather crude and blunt restrictions. MBisanz 22:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't wish to contradict my colleague here, and of course I wasn't in on the decision, but I thought the discussion had concluded that because Twinkle and Huggle can't be 'hacked' but have to be used out of the box, and Twinkle certainly forces the user to confirm the edit, they would be OK. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:22, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

The discussion on the talkpage was that Twinkle, Huggle and Rollback would be included in the restriction. The alternative proposal (that was being drawn up but wasn't implemented) did specify their inclusion: "No automation on the main account. This includes semi-auto editing, AWB, Twinkle, custom javascript, everything." . I'm seeing "any automation whatsoever" along with "any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so" as a bright line that is easy to monitor. SilkTork 10:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Since WP lets anyone nobody Me! use Twinkle it should be fine per common sense. Pushed to its illogical extreme "no automation" would preclude using brower spelling auto-correct. Nobody Ent 22:46, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Automated spell correctors can make mistakes so they need to be checked. I have a spell checker which underlines what it thinks are spelling mistakes, but allows me to make the decision. We have different spellings for British and American articles, and sometimes we use quotes that may have archaic or incorrect spelling. So, yes, it would make sense for Rich to turn off any automated spelling changes and allow his browser to instead indicate what it thinks are spelling errors. SilkTork 10:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

The issue of rollback, specifically, may be something Arbcom wants to nail down, because among the non-admin rights restored to him after the close of the case is - you guessed it! - rollback. If it is the case that arbcom feels that rollback is subsumed under "automation Rich is banned from using", it may be better for an arb or clerk to remove that right, rather than leave him with it and see drama happen when someday he accidentally or absentmindedly clicks the button. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with SilkTork, for the purposes of restrictions like this one, rollback is automation, and, as such is prohibited from those restricted from using all automation. If this becomes contentious, though, it would be better to discuss this as a formal clarification request than here... Courcelles 14:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)