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Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2025/Candidates/Geni/Questions

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There is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.

  2. The majority of ArbCom's workload is in handling private matters, not public ones such as cases. Can you please elaborate on how you will handle the large volume of private work the Committee receives? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 00:21, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Without knowing the exact volume plough into it and hope for the best. If that doesn't work the usual fallback is triage. Focus on the stuff that either needs a response now (I keep odd hours), that particularly plays to my skillsets or no one else is dealing with.
  4. I'm asking this question of all candidates who have not previously served a term on the Committee. As I noted in my first question, much of the Committee's work happens behind the scenes. The Committee mailing list thus includes reports about many people, and frank assessments by both non-arbs and arbitrators of the behavior of other editors. Despite admonitions against doing so, there is a sort of macabre temptation for new arbitrators to search their own name in the ArbCom archives. How would you handle finding an unflattering report or frank assessment of you in the archives? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 00:33, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I've been around long enough editing in some interesting areas that most of the unflattering things have been said to my face. I know there are going to be unflattering things in there but since most of them are going to be from 15+ years ago who cares? As for recent stuff if its there its there. I can assure you I've been called worse
  6. The Arbitration Policy says To hear appeals from blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users is one of the duties and responsibilities of the Arbitration Committee. In what ways do you see ArbCom following or not following the duty and responsibility it has in this way? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:47, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not aware of any significant problems in this area but then the community has a pretty good record with blocks and bans so there is a limit to how significant any problem could be
  8. Thank you for standing as a candidate. Please describe the characteristics that you believe make for an effective arbitrator. Please describe the characteristics from that list that you possess, and identify the ones that you do not possess. (Note that it is impossible for any one person to have all of the characteristics that would make for an ideal arbitrator; it would be surprising if you were unable to identify any such characteristics that you do not personally have.) Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:34, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Understand people, understand the project and workrate. And I'm terrible at recognising socks stylistically (falls under understands people)
  10. Recently, the Arbitration Committee took the extraordinary step of consenting to the public release by an individual arbitrator of information shared by the WMF in confidence (including by breaking the ANPDP [Access to Nonpublic Personal Data Policy]) in relation to the WCNA incident. Under what circumstances, if any, do you believe that the Committee should publish material that was (a) shared with the Committee in confidence and/or (b) prohibited from disclosure under the Access to Nonpublic Personal Data Policy? Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:34, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Rare and extreme ones where the information is important and the privacy issues are limited. Trying to Taylorise this one isn’t going to work. The conditions where such a release could be considered acceptable are going to random enough that trying to produce more explicit rules isn’t going to work. I think the need to get approval from the committee is enough of a check that we don’t need to be too concerned and accidental releases and data-theft are in some ways bigger risks.
  12. What would you say you learned from the brouhaha (discussion, ArbCom case request, etc.) resulting from your 2019 unblock of Starship.paint? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 02:56, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well Starship.paint at least up until September this year continued to be a rather productive editor without further major issues so it all seemed to work out in the end
  14. The U4C currently requires its members (voting and non-voting) to be on Discord as a core part of our workflow. ArbCom does some work on Discord currently but does not require it. As a person who is active on Discord, do you support the status quo and if so how will you balance Discord and onlist discussion, and if not how do you think it should change? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:15, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm personally a bit jumpy about moving too much stuff to discord both in information security terms and the likely coming enshittification (discord is going to need to figure a way to make a lot more money to keep shareholders happy once the IPO goes through). I've made a lot of use both means of communication over the years
  16. You have previously been sanctioned by the Arbitration Committee. Knowing what you know now, if you were an arbitrator voting on those sanctions, would you have ruled in the same way as the Committee did? Why or why not? Elli (talk | contribs) 03:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Knowing what I know now would be slightly less than I did at the time since the relevant article has been oversighted at some point in the last 18 years. Overall I'd been sailing very close to the wind for quite some time by that point so not overly surprising they ruled the way they did.
  18. While most editors could simply walk away from a dispute whenever they choose, arbitrators have to work closely with a fairly large team of other people for an extended period of time. They do not get to self-select, they may disagree with each other strongly, and they still have to maintain good working relationships with each other, even under pressure. How do you plan to adapt to this shift in your working environment? Elli (talk | contribs) 03:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I've been gainfully employed for a lot years years in an industry that doesn't worry about cultural fit so nothing new there.
  20. What have you done to prepare yourself to understand the arbitration committee's workload, and to manage your time to handle it? isaacl (talk) 04:04, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm well aware of the amount of work involved in a case. Emails I expect varies but doesn't appear completely unreasonable. I'll probably have to give up chasing battlefield unlocks
  22. Assume you see an editor who is blatantly POV-pushing. They make sure to always stay within our policies and guidelines, and you can't find any incriminating evidence against them. They have not edit-warred, have not met the criteria for bludgeoning, have not engaged in personal attacks (they may be the most civil individual you've met), have not fabricated sources, and have not publicly or privately stated any intent to push a certain POV. They have a clean block log, and may even have a few good or featured articles under their belt. However, they always vote for the side they support, bending or selectively applying policies to fit their rationale. The community is well-aware of this, but can't do anything since they haven't violated any of our policies, and they know that discussing this onwiki would be seen as casting aspersions. You are aware that some community members have left the topic area because of having to deal with this editor (or perhaps several such editors, on all sides). How would you deal with this type of editor as an admin and as an arbitrator? To be absolutely clear, I don't have anyone in mind. I'm just aware that this is a problem previous committees have tried to tackle with varying levels of success. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 04:08, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    POV pushing is against policy. As an admin if nothing previous has been done throw a warning on their talk page. Might make a difference and if not it provides documentation for future action. For arbcom this is the kind of thing that gets delt with in cases.
  24. When, if at all, do you think it is appropriate for ArbCom to sanction or warn a user without a minimal onwiki disclosure of the reasoning? What about ArbCom not disclosing the existence of the sanction or warning at all? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 04:09, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Its obviously highly undesirable. I'd say it should only be considered where the practical alternative (due to the sensitivity of what needed disclosing say) would be no action being taken at all. But I also suspect its the kind of thing that no matter how carefully a list of when you draw up life will come up with some thing unexpected
  26. Do you agree to put Wikipedia readers first in every ARBCOM decision? (t · c) buidhe 04:25, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No. Beyond a sort of "whats good for the wiki is good for readers" I'm not sure thats even desirable and in any case not supported by policy which arbcom is ultimately beholden to.
  27. Besides all its other duties, ArbCom is sometimes not just a deliberative body, but a representative of the EN-Wikipedia editing community. If you were representing us, what would you say or do about the removal of Lane and Ravan from last month's WMF board election? --GRuban (talk) 15:02, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    While it does happens sometimes this is something arbcom should try to avoid doing as much as possible. Its important that that the expectation be that the community express itself directly (you do not want the foundation ignoring things just because arbcom hasn't chimed in). So the responce I would go for would be pointing any foundation bods that asked in the direction of the existing community response.
  29. What should be done by ArbCom, by the community, and by the WMF, to address the use of large language models and similar artificial intelligence in Wikipedia? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:19, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not much to be done beyond backing up the frontline editors dealing with it. If actual hard gen AI shows up then that could be a very different matter but we'll worry about that when one runs for arbcom
  31. There have sometimes been said to be unblockable editors. These editors often actually have long block logs, so that they are not really unblockable, so much as unbannable, in that there is no community consensus on how to deal with them. Should ArbCom sometimes accept cases about particular editors? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:19, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The whole unblockable thing was overplayed mostly due to the foundation catching onto a term that was relevant for maybe three people. And for people with long block logs none of them have have anything on SPUI. The move from blocks to bans was one of the original purposes of arbcom (early on there weren't many mechanisms to ban people) and while I'd consider it unlikely to come up in this day and age with any regularity if someone wanted to file such case its certainly something arbcom should consider
  33. This is a very long time ago, but back in 2010 you blocked another admin for unilaterally deleting unreferenced BLPs, something that is now done as a matter of routine via WP:BLPPROD, which drew immediate criticism such as "We don't just block admins because we don't agree with what they're doing. You made much more drama out of this than was necessary, and you made yourself look bad." Looking back on these events, how do you feel about them now, and what would you do differently these days compared to way back then? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:34, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    BPL prod is not a speedy deletion. If you mean literally these days (25 Novemeber 2025) then I expect the first I would have heard of it would have been due to the user being desysoped and checkusered for a possible compromised account. In 2025 I don't think trying to use the tools to force a policy change would be seen as a reasonable application of IAR.
    In the context of 2010? I still stand behind that process and policy are important mechanism by which the community retains ultimate control rather than absolute power being in the hands of whatever admins happen to be awake(part of the driving force behind the whole unblockables mess mentioned above was editors feeling that admins were not sufficiently beholden to policy so it was unfair that content editors should be). Throw in policy changes being under the active discussion at the time and if you wish to maintain the idea that admins are just editors with extra tools you really can’t have people doing things like that.
    As for the specific comment you’ve highlighted I would reject the characterisation of what I was doing and the complaint about causing drama kinda misses the point.
  35. Should ArbCom remedies ever require administrators to take specific actions, removing their discretion to evaluate individual circumstances? More specifically, what do you think of the requirement in WP:CT/A-I to apply extended confirmed protection by default without requiring prior disruption or even recent editing activity on articles, and the effect of this on WP:RFPP? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 07:12, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Arbcam can't strictly make admins take any positive action although obviously enough of them are admins that a pinch they could do a lot of stuff themselves. Admin and editor workload is something that needs to be taken into account with decisions
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