Interview: outgoing and incumbent arbitrators 2016

For this issue of the Arbitration report, we interview some of the outgoing and incumbent/returning members of the Committee.

Incumbent/Returning

1. First off, congrats on becoming an Arbitrator.

• Drmies: Thanks! And thanks for your vote.
• GorillaWarfare/Keilana: Thank you!
• Opabinia regalis: Thanks!
• Kelapstick: Thank you, is that a question?

2. Why did you want to run for a seat in the Committee?

• Drmies: I don't know—I think that like many others I was not happy with various aspects of the process, and a sort of lack of transparency. Plus, I was unhappy with a few "emergency" decisions made by ArbCom. And I thought I could be of some use and maybe put my money where my mouth is
• GorillaWarfare: Although it was occasionally exhausting and disheartening, I enjoyed my 2013–2015 (sic) term on the Arbitration Committee. I think institutional memory and experience with the processes is as valuable as fresh faces, so I felt that I could be valuable in that sense. I also think the Arbitration Committee has a lot it can improve on in the near future, and I would like to help with that improvement.
• Keilana: I thought I'd be able to bring a fresh perspective as a primarily content-focused editor.
• Kelapstick: I wasn't going to initially, but at the time of my decision to run, there were only seven other people who had put their names forward. At that time I wasn't overly confident with the candidate pool (that isn't to say I didn't have confidence in any of them, just not enough to form a committee). I thought that the least I could do to remedy the situation was to run myself. As I had an overseas trip coming up in the middle of the election (where I would have spotty internet and no access to an actual computer for about a week or so) I decided if I were to run, I would have to nominate myself early in order to maximize the time I had to answer questions. In fact if a couple of the later candidates had put their names in earlier, I quite possibly would not have run at all.
• Opabinia regalis: At first I thought it was a totally daft idea. I was a bit of an outlier as a candidate, having had a long period of inactivity on Wikipedia before returning just short of a year ago. (Unless I get a windfall of free time this week, I expect I'll take office with under 10k live edits.) After waffling a bit early in the nomination process, I made the decision to run after I noticed 10+ candidates on the list and no women. Fortunately, I wasn't the only woman for very long at all, and I'm very happy to see four women on the 2016 committee! To be honest I think the basic motivation behind deciding to run is the same as watching someone fiddle with a gadget that isn't quite working right and instinctively saying "Oh! Let me try!" despite not actually having any clue about how the thing works either ;)

3. How did you feel about the election as a whole?

• Drmies: I really have no opinion. I went, I voted, no one bothered me. It was kind of fun, you know, people wishing me well, others digging up dirt.
• GorillaWarfare: I was pleased with it! I was really happy about the increased voter turnout, and the results included many people that I am excited to work with in the next two years.
• Keilana: The introduction of mass messaging shook things up a bit, but overall it went smoothly and allowed a wider segment of the community to participate.
• Kelapstick: It was interesting, and not as painful as I had imagined. Although having said that, since mid-2013 I have gone through an RfA, stood for Oversight Access, and now the Arbitration Committee, so maybe I am just getting used to this sort of thing.
• Opabinia regalis: It would have been interesting to watch even if I hadn't been a candidate. The mass messaging of all >100k eligible voters inspired a lot of interest in the voting dynamics and how the change in the composition of the electorate would affect the results. Being kind of a data nerd, I did some analysis of voter characteristics while votes were coming in and while we waited for the final results. (If you're curious, see here for the summary or here for the [very long] real-time talk page thread about mass messaging.)

4. What are your thoughts on the outcomes to cases from the previous year (e.g: GamerGate, Lightbreather, Arbitration Enforcement 1/2)? Did you think they were handled the best that they could have? Why?

• Drmies: I don't have many thoughts on those. The whole Lightbreather case still fills me with sadness. With the GamerGate case, every time I think about it I have to wrap my head around the fact that such a thing as GamerGate exists. I mean, racism is over and world hunger is solved and world peace is around the corner, I get that—but I don't get gaming in the first place. In general, I think every case could have been handled better, but that's easy to say; it's like saying that humans aren't perfect.
• GorillaWarfare: I think some of the cases were handled quite well. However, your examples are cases that I do not think were handled well. In a number of them, the PDs were very incomplete when they were posted. I have found that although many people urge the Committee to do as much work as possible onwiki, they still often see PDs as final, so I think it's best to wait until a draft PD is fairly complete before posting. I also think that in some of the cases, the evidence that was presented did not necessarily accurately represent the issues. This leaves the Arbitration Committee in a bit of a predicament, because the decisions are based off the evidence, and it's not always seen as kosher for arbitrators to go find evidence of their own while drafting. Some of these cases I think did little to address the issues at hand, particularly AE1 and AE2.
• Keilana: They were all complex and I disagreed with portions of each. In terms of how things were handled on the bureaucracy side, both cases were quite slow and agonizing, and I hope this year's committee will be able to speed things up.
• Kelapstick: As I said during the election, I haven't followed many cases up to this point. I did make a preliminary statement in AE2, where I effectively said that we should just have a do over, but that didn't happen (and I can appreciate why).
• Opabinia regalis: I talked a bit about this in my candidate questions (see especially this one and this one) and I believe I commented in all of those cases except Gamergate – which occurred while I was not active on Wikipedia, and which was reported widely enough in the outside media that it partly explains why I returned. So I'm not sure that yet more rehashing of this series of cases from me would be of much interest to anyone :) At this point, I think we're all aware that matters broadly related to the gender gap are complex and controversial and are likely to give rise to additional cases over the next two years.

5. (For first time Arbs) Now that you are part of the Committee, how do you feel about this new position?

• Drmies: It's a lot trickier than I thought it would be. Especially privacy concerns are huge, and it quickly became clear to me that in some cases there really can't be much transparency. There can be more better communication, that's for sure, and we're working on that. But what folks—me included—don't always appreciate is that a committee works by committee, so there's no instant response or whatever to questions and concerns. I certainly don't feel all mighty and powerful—if anything, I feel more wary. Words really mean things.
• Keilana: I'm excited to serve the community in a new way and hope I do well.
• Kelapstick: I am looking forward to it. It is going to be an interesting couple of years.
• Opabinia regalis: It's weird. I think I'm The Man now.

6. What would you say would be the challenges of this position? What do you plan to accomplish from this?

• Drmies: For me, getting all the mailing lists and arb sites and stuff figured out, and the new email program I use for the dozens of messages every day, that's the first challenge. The bigger challenge is to always balance what's best for the project with what's best for individuals in any of the cases we look at, be they victim or, you know, the opposite. Yes, they get to keep their privacy too.
• GorillaWarfare: The perception of the Arbitration Committee is definitely a challenge. It can be difficult to motivate yourself to work on a Committee that is often reviled. There are also a fair number of people who do not trust the Arbitration Committee, which can lead to a lot of pushback when we handle issues in private, which is unfortunately sometimes necessary. I'm not sure there's much that can be done about these issues, other than for the Committee as a whole to try to handle issues as fairly, transparently, and expediently as possible.
• Keilana: Personally, I'm a bit worried about burning out and am going to try to do some content work every day to avoid burnout. I'm not sure what the challenges will be in terms of the bigger picture because I'm not yet on the committee, but I imagine getting so many people to agree is like herding cats.
• Kelapstick: Keeping up with the paperwork will be the biggest challenge. I don't have any specific plans, and I didn't run on a platform. I am just here to lend a hand.
• Opabinia regalis: Well, we are supposed to provide solutions to otherwise intractable community problems; what could be so challenging about that? ;) I don't know if I can claim specific goals or intended accomplishments, since arbcom is structured to be responsive to issues arising from the community rather than to provide leadership on its own initiative. Certainly one area I hope to see further improvement in is handling of harassment cases, particularly where there is an identity/bias element.

7. Would there [be] a chance to bring back the Ban Appeals Subcommittee in the future?

• Drmies: I don't see that happening, but I'm really new on the job. We're handling a bunch of ban appeals trying to get up to speed. I can tell you one thing: if banned editors would follow Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks a bit better, they might have a higher success rate.
• GorillaWarfare: I hope not. I think it's reasonable for the Arbitration Committee to handle a small subset of block and ban appeals (namely, those involving private evidence, AE blocks, bans based on Arbitration Committee decisions, etc.) However, I think the community is completely able to handle the majority of appeals that the BASC was handling. I'd generally prefer the Arbitration Committee take on as few responsibilities as possible. Furthermore, the BASC appeals were coming in at such a volume that they were overwhelming a Committee that was already slow to handle other matters.
• Keilana: I wouldn't support it.
• Kelapstick: I don't see that happening, but never say never. Maybe it will come back in another form, but I think that taking it off the committee's plate was a good idea.
• Opabinia regalis: Frankly, I was glad to see it go. I think any task that can reasonably be done at the community level should be. But this is a matter we can revisit if it becomes clear that the new system isn't working well. It's important that we offer an appeal mechanism, and that we make reasonable decisions on those appeals in a timely manner, and we should be pragmatic about how we organize the appeals bureaucracy to make that happen.

8. Any additional comments?

• GorillaWarfare: Nope. Thanks, and good luck with your article!!
• Keilana: Thank you again!
• Opabinia regalis: Just want to thank the outgoing arbs for all their work in an unusually difficult year.

Outgoing

1. First off, thank you for your work as an Arbitrator.

• Seraphimblade: Appreciated.

2. What would you say was the biggest challenge while being an Arbitrator?

• Seraphimblade: Being an arbitrator means handling difficult and often sensitive issues that take a great variety of types, and probably don't have an easy to see good outcome. The greatest challenge was having to choose between several options when all the options were terrible and the only possible goal was to choose the least bad.

3. Has there been any cases or motions you thought could have been handled differently while on the Committee?

• Seraphimblade: The reason we have several people on the Committee is to check and balance one another, and we certainly did that. I don't, however, recall any time that I had a glaring, absolute disagreement with the rest of the Committee. In the end, we were generally able to come to solutions that, even if they were not any one arbitrator's ideal, we could come to agreement on and live with. I do wish that more was able to be done with the Arbitration Enforcement 2 case, but I don't fault the drafters or anyone else for that. It was very challenging to come up with anything that wasn't just going to add fuel to the fire and make the whole mess worse.

4. Do you feel that you did enough during your time on the panel? If not, what were you hoping to accomplish during your time?

• Seraphimblade: Depends on the definition of "enough", I suppose. I certainly spent a great deal of time doing it, but it is a volunteer position and we all have real lives too. I did hope to work with the Committee to get a better system of task management set up, as right now a great deal comes in through email and it's easy to lose track of things that way. Unfortunately, though, and perhaps ironically, there was never time. I'd certainly encourage the 2016 Committee to give it some thought.

5. What advice would you give to hopefuls who want to take part in the Committee?

• Seraphimblade: You better have a thick skin and some free time. Like I said above, sometimes you're choosing the least bad of several terrible options. But since it is still terrible, well, it's going to be your fault (even though you're not the one who made the mess; much like the good old balloon joke). Also, no one's kidding about the amount of time it takes. Plan to spend at absolute minimum five to ten hours a week on it, more if you're drafting a case.

6. Would you consider running for Arbitrator again?

• Seraphimblade: I didn't run again this year because I know 2016 will not be a year when I'd have the free time to devote to it, due to several factors in my own life. If at some point in the future I thought the next couple of years would suit doing it again, I would consider running again. Otherwise, no, it wouldn't be fair to anyone to accept the position when I wouldn't have the time to do it well.

7. Any additional comments?

• Seraphimblade: There's been, for whatever reason, the idea that relations among the 2015 Committee were acrimonious. We disagreed at times, certainly, but reasonably amicably in every case I saw. The people I worked with were reasonable and open to changing their minds for a good reason. Quite realistically, if disagreements on Wikipedia were handled as peacefully and reasonably as those among the Committee, the Committee would have very little to do.