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Original announcement

• Difficult matter given the users involved, so thanks for settling it. Although not really impacting the the final outcome, it's important to stress that a reason we have COI disclosure is for readers (including editors) sake, so that they may find out if articles are autobiography, views of family, or statements of owners or financial beneficiaries, etc: Wikipedia is a publisher, and responsible writers and publications disclose COI. Wikipedia is providing the type of writing -- general interest encyclopedia -- that is meant to be, and thus presented as "independent[] of the subject" in the words of the guideline. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• I have started a related discussion at
  WT:COI#Should we upgrade this to policy? RoySmith (talk) 16:27, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I'm glad that Arbcom is taking action on how these cases should be handled in the future. Twice in the past two years, I have reported a COI case to paid-en-wiki via email that I felt was clear as day, but both times it has been ignored or closed without action, with no reason given. The editor continues to contribute and make non-neutral edits. This specific issue has been my biggest disappointment with Wikipedia and I hope that a new VRT queue will allow for better processing of complaints like this. —Ganesha811 (talk) 16:47, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Note sure that the interpretation at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Resurgence of banned paid editing business is totally what ArbCom meant... 1.141.198.161 (talk) 04:38, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• (VRT admin hat on) At this juncture, I'm not even sure that a queue like that is possible - the VRT admins have several questions to that effect. It would have been very nice to have a discussion about this before a formal announcement came. Arbcom, are you planning on reaching out to the VRT admins about the new queue? If so, when? It's been two days... ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 15:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Matthewrb thanks for reaching out. Please note I am speaking only for myself and have not consulted with other members of the committee here. We had just begun figure out what our next steps were going to be in regards to making this request and your posting here clarifies at least that point. How is it best for us to communicate with each other? arbcom-enwikimedia.org is an obvious option but if something else work better for the VRT admins I would hope the committee would be flexible. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:24, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you. volunteers-vrtwikimedia.org is our queue, if you send emails from arbcom-en to that will work best for us. ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 16:47, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Barkeep49: suggest removing COI/PAID from the current VRT mailing list, etc., and repointing the focus back at Arbom, who have been elected by the community precisely because they deemed both trustworthy enough and competent enough not to require another level of bureaucracy to assist them. ——Serial Number 54129 17:00, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  How frequently was info-paid-en used? My read of the relevant remedy is that the goal is to get more competent eyes on COI matters (remember, the old queue was CU-only) and to allow for quicker responce to credible claims of mercenary editing. Kicking it to ArbCom would likely defeat that entire purpose; there're more CUs than there are sitting Arbitrators at any given point in time, and even more still CUs, OSes, and willing admins combined. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 17:07, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  None of us, as far as I know, was elected for our expertise or interest in rooting out COIs and handling things like this by committee is a terrible idea. It's too easy as it is for things to slip through the cracks or for them to gather dust because we couldn't get a majority of arbs to agree on a course of action. Much better to handle it like CU and OS—trustworthy editors take decisive action without having to jostle a committee but with ArbCom review and supervision when necessary. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:19, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This does kind of beg the question of who the committee thinks will actually be manning this queue. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 20:12, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Just curious if the arbs could articulate what effect they hope this VRT queue will have.
  The stated reason is to accept reports of undisclosed conflict-of-interest or paid editing, where reporting such editing on-wiki is in conflict with WP:OUTING. - What reason does anyone have to use this?
  To put a finer point on it, why would anyone use this VRT queue when Kashmiri's approach seems to have been endorsed by arbcom? If you want to out someone, why not just do it directly, have nothing happen other than suppression, add google maps links to a wikipedian's place of work, and then start a thread that includes some of that personally identifying information and telling everyone that more personal information about a user exists and that they should go look for it? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:36, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If Kashmiri were to repeat 100% what they did in this case - in particular at AfD - I'd anticipate they would be blocked identically to how Fram was blocked. So I am not sure your premise is correct. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:41, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I would agree with Barkeep entirely here. firefly ( t · c ) 17:42, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Kashmiri's behavior didn't even rise to the level of a reminder in your decision and my reading of the sole FoF about him and the surrounding commentary is that Sdqraz is the only one who didn't find Kashmiri's ANI thread a fine and dandy approach to outing, so pardon my skepticism that anything would be different next time. To the extent you sent a signal, it's that doxing is a misdemeanor at worst compared to COI.
  Fram isn't a great example because (a) Fram just said indelicately what Kashmiri already said in a mix of direct and indirect comments (but to no different effect), so didn't make a good block case to begin with, and (b) if that's supposed to be a real consequence, he was blocked for all of 48 hours. For everyone who thinks COI makes doxing "worth it", a 48 hour block (or a look-the-other-way in Kashmiri's case) isn't discouraging anything. Adding a new, cumbersome process to the equation doesn't seem like it's going to make doing the right thing any more appealing. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:52, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There are already multiple competing processes. Some of these are onwiki and we're obviously not going to touch. The idea here is to take what is currently multiple blackhole processes that aren't working and unify them in a way that adds enough capacity that they will work. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:14, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And, to add, if it turns out that this unified process also doesn't work, then that's obviously something we'd want to re-assess and iterate on. firefly ( t · c ) 18:17, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What we need are two things: a process that works, and an understanding that failing to go through that process has serious consequences. The current case doesn't provide evidence that the current processes don't work; it provides evidence of current processes/policy being completely disregarded. It's not like Kashmiri contacted ArbCom, waited for you to do something, and then outed Joe. It's a squarely behavioral, not procedural problem. Yet the only remedy you've offered is the opposite: not to do anything at all about behavior, but to create a new process. When people see this case and realize they can just disregard proper process (VRT now), going about outing just like Kashmiri did (with maybe a temporary block for the direct link at AfD but not so much as a finger wag for the ANI thread), is that evidence of the process not working and the need for yet another one?
  Let me take a step back and ensure an assumption I'm making is sound (I feel quite alone in belaboring this point, so maybe attitudes have changed and I'm out of touch): does the committee view Kashmiri's ANI thread as fine and good with regard to our current policies and guidelines on outing and its relationship to COI? If so, I'll go away to recalibrate how I understand ArbCom. If not, I go back to what I wrote above. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Speaking only for myself: Everything I saw that Kashmiri wrote at AN was supported by onwiki diffs of unsuppressed information. The diffs which provoked some of those edits were suppressed which is why I noted that if Kashmiri were to act like he did at AfD again he could find himself blocked. Kashmiri not repeating that mistake at AN is in no small part why I felt nothing beyond the FoF was appropriate. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I have to admit that FoF jumped out at me because normally they are expected to lead into a remedy. You have elected to make it part of the committee's permanent record that something happened, but you didn't feel compelled to do anything about it, not even a "reminder". So, what, exactly, was the purpose of the FoF? It just seems odd to me. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 20:15, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  For me it's about establishing what the Arbitration Committee feels was the factual record. As we see here it's serving a purpose as people are noting what was found. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, if the purpose was to make it clear to people that as far as arbcom is concerned, outing deserves exactly an acknowledgement that it happened and nothing more. Sorry, Barkeep, you know I generally appreciate what you do around here, but this was a harmful decision. Fine job on the handling COI, I guess, but insofar as arbcom is supposed to be the one community entity that can be counted on to take sensitive issues like user privacy seriously... Anyway, I'm still the only one complaining and have said more than my piece now, so I'll go away. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:04, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Rhododendrites: You wrote: add google maps links to a wikipedian's place of work. Let me politely suggest to you not to read external sites about wikipedians (especially That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named) but instead focus on the actual AfD discussion. You'll then see that the most I wrote was that "the accounts... have been alleged to be affiliated with the company". Nowhere did I mention "employment", "place of work", or added any personally identifying information as you allege. As you will certainly know, affiliation may mean a wide range of professional relationships, incl. working as an off-site contractor or even an external PR agency. So, may I politely request you not to misrepresent what I wrote in the AfD? Thanks. — kashmīrī ^TALK 21:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Let me politely suggest to you not to read external sites about wikipedians [...] the most I wrote was that "the accounts... have been alleged to be affiliated with the company". Nowhere did I mention "employment", [...] As you will certainly know, affiliation may mean a wide range of professional relationships, incl. working as an off-site contractor or even an external PR agency - Is this serious? You nominated an article about a company for deletion, apparently inspired by an external site about Wikipedians. You provided a link in the nomination to that external site about Wikipedians which identifies a Wikipedian working for that company. It was in that same breath that you decided to use the euphemism "affiliated". Now you're pretending that, gee whiz, affiliated could've meant anything. I would link to WP:GAME, but arbcom has already decided it has no problem with your behavior, so what's the point? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:48, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Rhododendrites: I mentioned only the existence of allegations of COI ("affiliation") and provided a link in line with sourcing requirements. It was not my words that the said company was any editor's place of work (contrary to your insinuations). If you dislike an editor's personal details or place of work being disclosed publicly, I suggest you make a complaint on the external site, since I had nothing to do with it. — kashmīrī ^TALK 22:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I am concerned, the whole case only made things less clear, not more. My remedy is "For posting non-public information about another editor", but when I pointed out that ArbCom posted that Nihonjoe has a COI with Hemelein Publications, which is non-pubic information according to their own rules, they made up all kinds of excuses why that was acceptable, but my posts about the same weren't. The final conclusion I get from all this is that apparently COI is the only part of Wikipedia where you are required to make accusations without providing the necessary evidence, unless you are an ArbCom member of course. Never mind that the basic major crime I committed has been posted (not by me) on Wikidata since February without any issues at all apparently.

I'm not going to lie, when I saw that Finding, it raised my eyebrows a bit. I'm a bit surprised that the FoF wasn't private, given all the concerns early on. I'm not drawing any conclusions (nor agreeing or disagreeing with you), just saying I was a little surprised. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 05:10, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No answer from arbs? I guess it is tough having to justify such blatant double standards.

Fram (talk) 07:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

Fram most editors in this thread haven't gotten a reply for their comments. I haven't replied because getting into a back and forth with a party who just got admonished doesn't strike me as wise. But since I have been thinking about your comments since you first wrote them, I will say I'm entirely open to the possibility that we handled this wrong. In my mind we were continuing a practice set with Tenebrae where we attempt to give the enwiki community information about COI without specifics that would OUT a person. But some Arbs have felt that's a bad precedent and so it's entirely possible that we should abandon that practice. I think the end result of this would be to let people with COIs escape scrutiny and/or cause for ArbCom to have to impose greater sanctions and not answer questions about them. In the abstract that doesn't seem so bad to me but when I've had to deal with specific situations I've wanted to try and find a difference balance between these competing needs. But yeah maybe we're getting them wrong. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:46, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. While I often don't agree with you, I respect that you try to listen to what people say and try to answer openly. My issue isn't that you shouldn't mention such things for fear of outing a person, but that you should be more realistic in what is real outing, and what is using "outing" as a screen to hide behind while everyone knows the facts anyway, as the culprit has done very little to hide them previously, adding his presumed real name to articles here (and creating a Wikidata entry for it). When you are openly stating that Nihonjoe has a paid COI with a very small company (three people), then it gets rather ridiculous to draw some line between "what we did is perfactly fine, but adding an actual link to the company website is a deadly sin", never mind the aggressiveness some arbs displayed in making clear how terrible this was and how "hopelessly naïve" others are for taking a more moderated stance.

Fram (talk) 07:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

Original announcement

• I want to thank GeneralNotability for his work as an arbitrator, to express my hope he sticks around as an administrator and checkuser, and to lay down a marker so that when I rail against this as a non-arb I can't be accused of being hypocritical. I dislike when defined thresholds and processes are ignored by Arbs in favor of some new process that does not match what is supposed to happen. I dislike it when arbs say we don't need to act on net 4 to open or close a case and can instead wait for a majority. I dislike it in this instance as well as following Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Arbitrator access to mailing lists and permissions would have resulted in the same outcome only 16 days ago. Arbs can set their own rules, trhough the procedures, but once set I strongly believe Arbs are constrained by them and shouldn't invent new rules on the fly in order to prevent actions from happening that the procedures say should happen. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:16, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Barkeep49: I (unsarcastically) admit it's probably my cluelessness, but ... I don't really understand what you're annoyed with here. I get a feeling it's for something that would be clear if one had access to the ArbCom mailing list? Is it that GN had OS access for 16 days, because some Arbs wanted to wait to hear from them before removing? Anyway, a clarification would help me (and possibly others). --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:43, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah I'm not sure how much I can say about the specifics without getting into confidentiality issues so any lack of understanding is a result of my holding back and thus making things confusing. As I wrote in my comment, and edit summary, I write this so there would be a public diff, rather than just repeated emails, of me saying I think Arbs need to follow the procedures. If a procedure is truly not working and needs to be ignored that probably means it needs to be changed rather than just left to be ignored again in the future. Many things that ArbCom does are not in procedures and so Arbs can make reasonable decisions on those. But for stuff that is in the procedures it is my opinion Arbs need to follow them just as much as anyone else. This has typically come up when I am like "a case has net 4 it we open it" or "a case has net 4 it should be closed" and another arb responds along the lines of "What's the rush? It's not like it has a majority". The circumstances here behind not following the procedure are different - and what I don't feel I can publicly just reveal - but I wanted to take this moment to note that a procedure hadn't been followed and my disagreement with that decision. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:57, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure that's what

  WT:ACN is for, but meh. I at least understand now why I don't understand. Thanks. Floquenbeam (talk) 19:01, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  @Floquenbeam, I think the framing missing here is that the procedures were recently made to say that users who leave ArbCom ("at the end of their term") lose access to permissions unless they elect to keep them. I think Barkeep is implying that GN did not elect to keep them (where them is OS specifically? or maybe the CU permissions he still retains?) but some quantity of the 14 remaining arbs (excluding Barkeep) did not do the paperwork and/or argued against having his permissions removed. There is maybe a valid argument that "end of the their term" means at the end of the 2 year mark, but I do not think that was necessarily the intention when that motion was passed. ... If this is about the CU permission, I think Barkeep's annoyance is not totally unfounded, but given that GN got his goggles by appointment rather than election... I would not see that as worth raising a bug a bear about. So he will need to clarify whether he is annoyed about the fact it's OS being removed or CU being not removed. :)

  I don't think this case is at all the same kind of case as Barkeep's annoyance with how slow ArbCom is to open cases; the current procedure is framed as "eligible to be opened", so his position that "it must be opened" is not at all how it works. In fact, he was willing to propose a motion to change it to that wording, which is current practice. Izno (talk) 20:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  By any reasonable reading, "at the end of their term" means 'when they cease to be Arbitrators', whether by the expiry of the 2 year period or by an earlier resignation. Rotary Engine ^talk 20:40, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That is my recollection also of where the drafting for that motion settled. Izno (talk) 20:41, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What I am getting is that Barkeep is explaining why GN had to request for their OS to be removed (as the statement says) despite procedures saying the default would be a removal and GN would have had to make a request to retain it when they resigned. Without Barkeep's clarification, the public records would imply that GN must have requested to retain OS when resigning and changed their mind later. And more importantly, Barkeep is putting into public record their dissenting opinion that OS should have been removed when GN resigned as per procedure, instead of waiting for GN to request removal which it appears is what arbcom did. Also, Izno, please don't say "annoyed". I don't think CU is relevant here since no one's mentioned it, presumably for reasons that you give. But I would find it interesting (and disagreeable) if appointed functionaries would lose tools that they had before being elected to arbcom. I don't think that was what was intended... as long as they're meeting activity requirements. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:03, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  FWIW that motion is an example of doing things the "right" way in my opinion. The procedure wasn't working so rather than continuing to ignore it we change the procedure to one that can work. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  In my opinion, the most important use of this page is to communicate with the wider Community, not to log statements for future use. While I'm speaking as someone who believes pretty strongly in transparency on the Committee, I'm not a fan of this being taken out here because a proper debate on this matter would need to take the full circumstances into account, which we cannot (and arguably should not as a matter of courtesy) publicise.

  However, since the procedure (which passed last year) has been linked to above, I would say that it works as intended when people leave the Committee after ACE because there is a deadline for removal (1 January) and we usually find out who is leaving with reasonable notice. However, with mid-term resignations, the situation is vaguer as resignations are usually with immediate effect. As Barkeep states, we had the ability to handle this sooner. But the human side of this issue makes me think that it didn't need to be so. Sdrqaz (talk) 02:17, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I genuinely look forward to Barkeep's holding us accountable both during and after his term (in his words, when [he] rail[s] against this as a non-arb), because I think it makes ArbCom function better when it is subject to external scrutiny when possible. I agree with Sdrqaz's observations, both about the purpose of this page and the circumstances here (timing of resignation, etc.). KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I did express my concerns about all of this privately, so it shouldn't be a surprise to any Arb that I felt that the committee violated procedure in this matter, in ways intended to consider the human side of things, but which one could argue does the opposite (though I have not because I didn't/don't want to suggest anything but good intentions from my arbitrator colleagues). As for the idea that it works for Jan 1 but not other resignations I'm not sure that's at all true. An arbitrator can just as easily say "I will keep this, not this" in their resignation statement or in some statement to the committee beforehand or immediately after. A resigning Arb in fact has a great deal of control over the timing of the resignation. We see with arbs who've chosen to resign after 1 year on the committee which has in the last few years has been as common as immediate resignations (I count GN and OR as immediate, ST and Donald as timed). That said, I do take on board the idea that this was the wrong venue for me to call out the procedural violations, from both those on and off the committee. In that (hopefully) unlikely situation I will consider more appropriate venues if I need to do so for the limited time I have left on the committee. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, where else may one ask if a kind of precedent is now set on how to handle permissions access for midterm resignations differently from end of term? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:38, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a precedent that on one occasion ArbCom delayed a low-priority procedural action pending some routine communications for two weeks. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear then, the 'rule' is still removal upon end of service and end of term includes resignation? Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:29, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, provided the outgoing Arbitrator does not indicate otherwise. Primefac (talk) 12:44, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Original announcement

Original announcement

Original announcement

• Noting that the contentious topic page is at
  WP:CT/SL, and the template code is likewise sl. firefly ( t · c ) 14:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  I'm using "SrL" for the abbreviation in my Arb-related pages due to a conflict with an existing case. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 15:35, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]