Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kww and The Rambling Man/Evidence

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerk: Liz (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Courcelles (Talk) & DeltaQuad (Talk) & Thryduulf (Talk)

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General comments

Are the instructions real or not?

Why do the instructions say "The standard limits for all evidence submissions are: 1000 words and 100 diffs for users who are parties to this case; or about 500 words and 50 diffs for other users." when Kww is at 2147 words and growing daily? Are the instructions real or not?

Related issue: those of us who chose not to waste arbcom's time with preliminary statements when it was clear that the case would be accepted get fewer words to make our case. It looks like my best strategy in the future will be to make a point of wasting arbcom's time with a lengthy preliminary statement that has nothing about whether arbcom should take the case and instead contains evidence for the evidence phase. That would roughly double my allowed word count. Is that the kind of behavior arbcom wishes to encourage? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:24, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up, Guy. I've asked the arbitrators about the statement lengths in light of the Evidence phase scheduled closing on the 13th. I was instructed to close the phase on schedule despite several editors going beyond their evidence limits. I should have seen this earlier but I didn't do an ongoing word count throughout this phase. That was my oversight as the case clerk and doesn't reflect what conduct ArbCom encourages or discourages. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 09:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! For future cases, please bring up at the appropriate place my concerns about the the effective size disadvantage that comes with moving the preliminary comments over and not counting them toward the word count. In my opinion, users should be encouraged to use the preliminary statements for reasons why the case should should not be accepted, and should be encouraged to use that evidence phase for evidence. Copying over the preliminary statements into the evidence goes against that principle.

Looking at the larger picture, we may have to face the possibility that whoever sets these procedures (is it clerk discussion with arbs having final approval or is it arb discussion?) lacks certain skills regarding predicting the probable impact of procedural decisions like what gets copied where. I am thinking of the recent case where I was made a party to a dispute about gamergate and a copied opinion on that case was entered on a different page with my signature, all against my will and without my permission. That was a bad decision on procedures and it is something that if it occured anywhere else on Wikipedia would have resulted in sanctions for forgery.

I am experienced in designing procedures of this nature and I am pretty sure there are others like me. Can we help by forming some sort of informal advisory board on arbcom instructions and procedures? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:13, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration procedures generally and for each case specifically are decided by arbitrators, but with input from others - changes in procedure are often spurred by questions from clerks for example. The wording disadvantage is unforseen side-effect of the decision to start copying over all statements from the case page - which was done to avoid duplication and for ease of reference. If you have specific comments, especially proposals to fix any issues you are finding, then we would like to hear them, but everything we do is done for a reason. Sometimes that reason might not be immediately apparent from the outside, so I'm not guaranteeing that all such suggestions will be implemented. Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee is possibly the best place to make the suggestions, but Roger Davies is the procedural guru on the current committee so he might have a different suggestion. Thryduulf (talk) 15:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Over the years I have brought up this same issue that Guy is addressing. I have several times seen the AC system tolerating and rewarding those that violate the word limits/deadlines by making exceptions and ignoring those that follow the guidelines and stay within the limits.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:21, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

If it has only been brought up in places like this that is most likely why nothing has been done about it - talk pages of individual case pages are not a good location to discuss general issues as they're too easy to miss and not really on topic. Bring it up at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee with clear statements of the problem and suggestions for how to resolve them. Highlight the discussion, perhaps by inviting comment at relevant other discussion spaces. Also, choose your time - when the committee has a big case workload or you know there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes we'll have less attention available for your discussion. It's not ideal, but we're all just part time volunteers. Thryduulf (talk) 21:01, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

My sense based on many years on these pages is that the procedures becoming consistently more complicated. This is no one's desire—every incremental change and nuance was introduced for a valid reason—but it may be time to revisit the procedures, perhaps trying to do so from the point of view of someone who was appearing on the arbitration pages for the first time. (I realize, of course, that this is easy for me to say now; but I did used to say it before, too.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:18, 15 July 2015 (UTC)