Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Candidate statements/Guapovia

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[edit] Question

What are your views of the proposed Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct and User Bill of Rights?

--HK 16:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I approve of the Code of Conduct and fully intend to support it, if passed. It seems quite reasonable. However, a burden of proof should exist on the accuser in an Arbitration case. I would prefer to avoid hearsay as evidence. Banning should only be used in cases of extreme malice. That said, I believe the Arbitration Committee should have some voice or influence in setting policy - considering that as Arbitration members, we would be the ones with most direct contact, and eventually, experience in dealing with conflicts. Not setting policy - just having a say, based on our experiences. I think this is fair. Guapovia 17:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Concerns over personal attack templates

User:Improv, who is also a candidate for the arbitration committee, has placed the following statement on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy):

I am concerned about templates surviving AfD that appear to contrast with established policy. In particular, I feel that these templates are Poisoning the well when it comes for how we treat our fellow wikipedians. There are circumstances where knowing too much about one's neighbours politicises how one deals with them. This is, to an extent, unavoidable in society, but wearing signs of hate as badges on our shoulders takes what is a small problem that we can usually deal with into the realm of being damaging to the community. Already, there have been signs of people refusing to help each other because they are on different ends of a political spectrum -- this seems likely to get worse if this trend continues. Some people cry that this is an attack on their first amendment rights (if they're American, anyhow), but that doesn't apply here because Wikipedia is not the U.S. government -- it is a community that has always self-regulated, and more importantly it is an encyclopedia with a goal of producing encyclopedic content. We have a tradition of respecting a certain amount of autonomy on userpages, but never absolute autonomy. We might imagine, for example, templates with little swastikas saying "this user hates jews". I am not saying that such a thing would be morally equivalent to this template against scientology, but rather that we should aim to minimise that aspect of ourselves, at least on Wikipedia, so we can make a better encyclopedia. The spirit of NPOV does not mean that we cannot have strong views and still be wikipedians, but rather that we should not wear signs of our views like badges, strive not to have our views be immediately obvious in what we edit and how we argue, and fully express ourselves in other places (Myspace? Personal webpage?) where it is more appropriate and less divisive. [1]

I am inviting all candidates, including Improv, to expand on this theme on their questions pages. Do you agree that this is a cause for concern as we move into 2006? How do you see the role of the arbitration committee in interpreting the interpretation of Wikipedia policy in the light of this concern? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:38, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that this should be an issue. Why? Well, first of all, I support the community's stance on what should or shouldn't be deleted. RfD's usually have a reasonably consensus behind them. However, starting a 'witch hunt' to make sure that no Wiki user has any such 'hate badge' would be an extremely bad idea. (Yes; if someone has 'we hate jews' on his page, I would not respect him/her, would not buy him or her dinner, and to be honest, i'd avoid associating with him or her unless articles they write intrude on my field of knowledge or expertise.)

Our primary aim is to ensure that Wikipedia's articles are of the highest quality. User pages, in my opinion, are a secondary concern. If actual, provable harm exists in the form of personal attacks or vandalism, then that of course should be cleaned out and punished. But as for people being unwilling to help, or people offending via images...that's hard to show. I don't like it, but the A/C isn't the boss of that kind of thing anyway. We're supposed to be about the articles and the content. Guapovia 19:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)