Please put any questions here and not on my talk page :).

Questions that repeat earlier ones may not be answered. Voice-of-All 20:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Do you have dispute resolution experience in any of the following areas: Wikipedia:Mediation Committee, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal, Wikipedia:Third opinion, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, or Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates? If not successful with the Arbitration Committee, will you seek a position with the Mediation Committee? · maclean 20:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

I was appointed as a "deputy mediator" under the committee to help out the backlog. I spent a long time mediating Neuro-linguistic Programming, while staying cool despite serious tensions there. Unfortunetely, after a month, an ArbCom case was filed and checkuser revealed that one side was just meatpuppets and socks (banned now). Nevertheless, I still feel that I learned quite a bit about staying cool, getting others to show more empathy to each other, and maintaining civility. I have participated on Several RfC's, after thinking about the issues, I'd usually endorse one of the mainy listed views (usually one would match my own more or less). However, I don't do much there as I feel that it has become to much of a hostile "pile-on" fest environment. AMA is not something I am interested on the grounds that we don't really need lawyers or wiki-lawyering here. The focus is to build an encyclopedia. Our policies are not that complicated (save copyright issues) and advocates tend to just add unneeded complexity and distraction. As for the Mediation Cabal, I feel that it is a good alternative to the committee, as it is fast and less bureaucrat. I feel that bureaucracy should only be used when needed. Where I to fail this bid for ArbCom, the Cabal might be my next step. Thanks Voice-of-All 20:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Thank you for volunteering to take on this task, and for putting yourself through having to answer these questions. For what it's worth, these particular questions are going to all the candidates.

1. I've noticed that a total of thriteen people have resigned from the committee, and that there is currently one vacancy open in one of the tranches. Having members of the committee resign sometime during their term could create problems somewhere down the road. What do you think are the odds that you yourself might consider resigning during the course of your term, and what if any circumstances can you envision that might cause you to resign? Also, do you think that possibly negative feelings from others arising as a result of a decision you made could ever be likely to be cause for your own resignation?

There are a few potential personal issues that could cause it, and three years is a lot of time. Nevertheless, I doubt that should an event should case to much trouble. More so of a problem are people just being too busy to handle requests. I should not be too busy this or next year, though after that, it is hard to tell. I think this goes for most candidates. Voice-of-All 21:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

2. There may well arise cases where a dispute based on the inclusion of information whose accuracy is currently a point of seemingly reasonable controversy, possibly even bitter controversy, in that field of study. Should you encounter a case dealing with such information, and few if any of your colleagues on the committee were knowledgeable enough in the field for them to be people whose judgement in this matter could be completely relied upon, how do you think you would handle it? Badbilltucker 21:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

If both parties are in a good faith dispute, and everything boils down to the correctness of a content statement, then that is effectively out the scope of ArbCom. One solution would be to redirect discussion to an article RfC and invite all of those knowledgible about the topic to discuss it. The article may have to be protected to the status quo version or preferably to a version that does not include that statements until things can be sorted out. This especially goes for a biography of a living person (though that is less likely to fit into this senario). Voice-of-All 21:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC) reply

In the Wikipedia context, what is the difference (if any) between NPOV and SPOV (scientific point of view)?

On most topics, like Palpatine, there is no SPOV. On topics like wave function collapse there is only the SPOV, which acts as the NPOV. Sometimes NPOV containts both SPOV and ^SPOV (not scientific), but where the ^SPOV is minute and the supports lack numbers or credibility, like NLP. Sometimes they overlap in a more notable way, like Evolution and Big bang. The SPOV should generally be given priority (first mentioned, more length), but the ^SPOV, as long as it is notable, deserves mention as well. That would include creationists arguments for the two above examples. We are not her to draw the conclusion, just to give people the topic description, history, and any notable arguments; an encyclopedia. Notice the "notible", as we are not here to dig up every argument given either, but just an encyclopedia. Voice-of-All 16:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC) reply

You said "The ^SPOV should generally be given priority (first mentioned, more length), but the ^SPOV, as long as it is notable, deserves mention as well." Do you mean "SPOV" for the first one? Veinor ( ヴエノル^(talk)) 00:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Opps, fixed. Hope that didn't cost me some opposes already :). Voice-of-All 20:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC) reply

1. Express in a short paragraph, using any particular issue/incident that you feel strongly about (or lack thereof) in the past, on why editors must understand the importance of the ArbCom elections and making wise, informed decisions when they vote.

• I can't think of any major failure of arbcom, though forcing a desysopped user to re-run on RfA stands out as annoying. But I don't see that as a major failure. Nevertheless it is always important to have a good fair ArbCom, so as to avoid not just misjudgement, but its wake, which can divide the community even further and cause ArbCom Enforcement to either be wheel-warred over or people may leave. Voice-of-All 17:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC) reply

2. Imagine. Say Jimbo grants you the authority to make, or abolish one policy with immediate and permanent effect, assuming no other limitations, no questions asked. What would that be?

• I don't see any policy that bad that it really hurts the encyclopedia. And if there was one, I'd rather the community remove it as a)if its that bad they hopefully would see it, b)it would look more fair, and c)I, just one person, might be wrong, and the policy may not be bad.

3. It is expected that some successful candidates will receive checkuser and oversight privileges. Have you read and understood foundation policies regulating these privileges, and able to help out fellow Wikipedians on avenues (e.g. WP:RFCU) in a timely manner should you be granted either or both of them?

• I have read up on Oversight and even helped to write that page. I've been an RfCU clerk for a while now as well. Voice-of-All 17:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC) reply

4. What is integrity, accountability and transparency to you on the ArbCom?

• Integrity - fair, reasonable, recuse when involved
• Accountability - this is fairly voluntary given current policy, but members should apologize for bad actions, take breaks, recuse from further involvement, or even resign in the case of a really bad faith or lazy wreckfull action.
• Transparency - explain reasoning, use the "finding of facts/principles", try not to always use backrooms like the ArbCom mailing list. Voice-of-All 17:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC) reply

5. Humour, a tradition of Wikipedian culture, has seen through several controversies in recent history. This is including but not limited to bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, parody policies/essays, April Fools' Day, whole userpages, userboxes... Do you think that they are all just harmless fun, or that they are all nonsense that must go?

• As long as it does not a)cross the line and attack people or b)possibly look like actual policy to new users, its fine. Voice-of-All 17:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Warning: Most of these are intended to be tough. Answering them properly will be hard. I don't expect anyone to actually withdraw themselves from nomination rather than answer these, but I do expect at least some to seriously think about it!

The one consolation is that your competitors for the positions will be asked them too. Notice that there are about one thousand admins, and about a dozen arbcom members, so the process to become an arbcom member may be expected to be one hundred times harder. (Bonus question - do you think I hit that difficulty standard?) :-)

1. A current Arbcom case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy is concerned with the decision of whether or not a proposed policy has consensus or not, and therefore whether or not it should be a policy/guideline. Whether or not the Arbcom has or should have the power of making this decision is hotly disputed. Does Arbcom have this power? Should it have this power? Why or why not?

   The policy was ridden with poll rallying and discussion was ongoing. If a new policy is only supported by one poll (one I never even heard of till now) that involved rallying and serious discussion about its standing (not just ironing out issues or appending it), then it should be re-tagged as "proposed". "Rejected" is bad because it makes people look at it and think that discussion is done, and so they don't comment, which creates the "self-fulfulling" prophecy. The tag is only used for dead proposals, either clearly rejected by a representative [1] poll, or that never gained consensus and had been long inactive or only a handfull of the same people keep commenting on it to make it look "active". I have not looked at the merits of that particular discussion, however. Nevertheless, those are the principles. As for AC's scope, I'd say that there issues of protection and possible serious mis-tagging to be considered. In the broader sense, these principles are fairly obviously implied by the idea of gaining consensus and using discussion, so AC may simply be re-affirming these parameters in whatever "finding of principles" they use. That does not seem out of the scope of AC, however, anything more specific, such as "how many months of no discussion make it inactive" or "the poll must have X+ participants" such should be left to the community. Voice-of-All 16:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

   Bottom line: Arbcom has the power to consider policy protection and "rejected/historical" tag misuse when normal dispute channels failed and it had some possible noticable affect (such as the policy needlessly failing without discussion). Voice-of-All 23:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

2. Similarly, a recently closed Arbcom case Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano barely dodged the possibly similar issue of whether the Arbcom can, or should, determine whether Bureaucrats properly made someone an administrator. (Discussed, for example, here). The current arbcom dodged the question (didn't reach agreement one way or the other, and ended up leaving it alone by omission), but you don't get to. :-) Does the arbcom have this power? Should it?

   AC can interpret "consensus" from our community build BCrat policy about when to promote to see if it was abused in an instance. However, it does not have the right to decide whether "broad considerations" or "narrow precent ranged" are the right way to use descrection as WP:BCRAT ambiguously says "Determine whether there is a general consensus that the person should be sysopped". "General" could mean "community at large" [2] or "those on RfA". Its up for the community to have that (needed) discussion. If the community decides to change it to include the community at a whole (as approximated by crats), then the 70-75% would become ideally mathematically illogical. However, a crats "approximation" may not be perfect either, just like assuming that the votes on RfA are representative of the whole community. Any discussion of this drifts from direct policy interpration far out into imagination. For example: Instead of using a precent range, you could count all "active" users with X+ edits as "the whole" using an SQL query, and then look at the margin of error of the # of votes out of "the whole" and set a range there for discretion (say value a<=x<=b). Perhaps you could combine the percent range with the "margin of error"! There are many undefined constants there, and I just went through some possible mathematical models, each having some reason and merit. Maybe crats could have total descretion without the ranges. As you can see, this is no place for Arbcom, but lengthy community discussion. There is just no clear, implied, answer. It is an open-ended question. Now I said earlier, that AC can decide if the policy definition of "RfA consensus" was abused, however it is ambigious. Therefore, currently, AC has even less power to decide this, as its is not allowed to just "pick" one over the other. Voice-of-All 16:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

   Bottom line: Arbcom can determine if consensus was ignored and abused if the dispute can't otherwise be resolved, *however*, we need a community dialogue to clear up the meaning of "wikipedia consensus". Is it those who comment on the poll/talk page or the whole community (if so, can this can be determined by some bureaucrat)? Without that discussion, as an arbitrator, I'd stay out of it, as I refuse to legislate. Voice-of-All 23:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

3. Various arbcom decisions (can't find a link right now - bonus points for finding a link to an arbcom decision saying this!) have taken into account a user's service to the Wikipedia. Several times they have written that an otherwise good user that has a rare instance of misbehaviour can be treated differently than a user whose similar misbehaviour is their main or sole contribution to the Wikipedia. Do you agree or not, and why?

   We are here to build an encyclopedia, and "anyone can edit". This is a foundation principle. We only WP:BLOCK to "prevent disruption", one way or another. Some users, like SPUI, are often incivil and mass edit war. If thats all he did, then yes, he would have been banned by AC. However, since he has done a lot of good, the resulting contructive edits and disruption result in a new gain. Also, to be honest, sometimes having banned using socks trying to get past blocks is worse than not banning them. Its not ArbCom's job to be the Supreme Court, nor a morality court, but a pragmatic dispute court. Use of principles and consistent adherance to them should be maintained, but it is not a philosophy court of high scholars :). Voice-of-All 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

   Bottom line: we are not here to punish, but to prevent disruption. We may try probation or lighter means to "steer" problem user that do contribute content but not on those who have minimal contributions. This is somewhat of a cost/gain factor, we don't want to hurt the project overall, but contributions are also an indication of some good faith. Voice-of-All 23:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

4. If you agree with the above point, which service to the encyclopedia is more valuable - administration, or writing very good articles? For example, what happens when two editors, an administrator and a good article writer, come into conflict and/or commit a similar infraction - how should they be treated? Note that there are relatively the same number of current administrators and featured articles on the Wikipedia - about 1000 - however, while relatively few administrators have been de-adminned, many former featured articles have been de-featured, so there have been noticeably more featured articles written than administrators made. This is a really tough one to answer without offending at least one important group of people, and I will understand if you weasel your way out of answering it, but it was one of the issues brought up in the recent Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano, so you can imagine it may come up again.

   This is an age-old question of society. However, there is a "distorter" coming from the pryamid like grouping: there are less admins that other active user. Since both site administration and content writing are needed in order to maintain and protect the content, then it follows that they both have an importance level of "needed". Comparing them is like saying "which is more needed, brain or heart?". Well the brain is more of the end product (like content), creating the mind, but if you remove the heart, it doesn't get blood and dies. So the question is somewhat moot. Now, the "distorter", is that any one admin, using simplistic probability, is more important than any one "non admin active user" as there are less admins than non-admins and non-admins can only work on content, whereas admins can do maintanence and content work. The admin and non-admin groups are equally needed, one just has more members and the loss of one is less noticed using simple models. However, since both tasks are needed, this is again moot, like the heart/brain example, and also, some non-admins do more than some other admins, as the activity levels are not normalized. I'd treat each equally important. Voice-of-All 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

   Bottom line: If we just look at this as admin importance = 1/admins and non-admin importance = 1/nonadmins, we get that any admin is more important than a nonadmin (because there are less admins that nonadmins total). However, because both are needed, and content is our end goal, not maintanence and process, the issue is moot: we should treat them as equals, just doing different things. Voice-of-All 23:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

5. While some Arbcom decisions pass unanimously, many pass with some disagreement. I don't know of any Arbcom member who hasn't been in the minority on some decisions. Find an Arbcom decision that passed, was actually made that you disagree with. Link to it, then explain why you disagree. (If you don't have time or inclination to do the research to find one - are you sure you will have time or inclination to do the research when elected? If you can't find any passed decisions you disagree with, realize you are leaving yourself open to accusations of running as a rubber stamp candidate, one who doesn't have any opinions that might disagree with anyone.)

   I've seen a good deal of cases and I don't recall any major disagreements. I've seen minor points like "Kelly Martin should be thanked for her service" (paraphrased) or "[arbitators] are expected to maintain the decorum of an arbitor" (paraphrased) that seemed a bit pointless or "out of left feild", though I suppose that I'd agree with the later from a personal standpoint. I'd dig through and try to find one, but I don't feel the need as I won't really use all that time to do that much other than answer a single optional question that won't be used later. Voice-of-All 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

   Actually, I just remembered a case where Stevertigo had to auto re-RfA after a time perioud to "re-affirm" or not his standing as an admin. IMO, either he should have been desysopped and coult re-run if he wanted to or could re-run with AC permission (in this case, the former would have been best). Making [3] him re-RfA was just not needed. Especially as it was clear that he would probably fail miserably. Voice-of-All 18:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

6. It has been noted that the diligent User:Fred Bauder writes most of the initial Arbcom decisions -- especially principles, and findings of fact, but even a fair number of the remedies. (Then a fair number get opposed, and refined or don't pass, but he does do most of the initial work.) Do you believe this is: right; neither right nor wrong but acceptable; or wrong? When you get elected, what do you plan to do about it?

   See my candidacy. After I've been on for a while, long enough, I'd try to start drafting up some proposals myself. As long as Fred puts up a broad range of options (and he often does judging my their severity), it works I suppose. Voice-of-All 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

7. For those who are administrators only - how do you feel about non-administrators on the arbcom? Note that while "sure, let them on if they get elected" is an easy answer, there are issues with not having the ability to view deleted articles, and either not earning the community trust enough to become an admin, or not wanting the commensurate duties. Or do you believe that non-administrators are a group that need representation on the arbcom?

AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC) reply

ArbCom is not "congress", it always scares me when people want to stick different people on courts/judical committees just to "be representative" (in some extreme cases, in might be a good idea, where the typical judge's neutrality is hard to tell and questionable). I don't think we are at that kind of extreme situation. Also, if someone is trusted as an arbitrator, they have already surpassed the trust level of the average admin. They may need to see deleted pages, and perhaps a policy can be drafted to give them the "sysop" rights if they win. For now, I'd say "if they win" but that doesn't address the deleted page issue, which is why some policy could be proposed maybe...but its easier for non-admin AC members who win to just RfA. If they fail, then I suppose that they would just have to work around it. Making the aforementioned policy would resolve that, but thats just more bureaucracy and instruction creep. Voice-of-All 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

If elected to the Arbitration Committee will you continue active editing? Will you not lose interest in contributing to articles. Will you be available to any users who seek your help or advice.

-- Dakota 05:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC) reply

I have just been resysopped after a two week break. I spent that time trying to see what content tasks I could do. Ultimately I decided to remain active in AfC, and additionally to expand sections of articles that I am interested. I did create an article myself as well, though I often expand rather than create, as with 1,000,000 articles, its hard to find topic I that wasn't started that I have the time and interest to look into. I expect to continue AfC and page expansion as an arbitrator. Maintanence tasks will be confined to RfPP and WP:PP, as things like WP:OP and RFCU can really swallow time, so I'll just check those on occasion. Voice-of-All 18:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Open-mindedness and the ability to revise one's own position in response to new evidence seems to me to be an important factor in considering ArbCom cases. Can you please provide an example of a situation where your initial judgement of a situation turned out to be wrong, and show how you dealt with it? Guy ( Help!) 13:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC) reply

I remember an AC member on IRC telling me to look at the edits of a large group of user for a Kosovo case. I was also linked to some history pages. I accidentally mistook User:LaughingMan as a troll and blocked him. He left a comment on his talk page about it and when I looked into it he was not a troll at all. I promptly unblocked, explained the matter, and later left a 1 second null block to clearify the that the first block (which already expired) was in error. Voice-of-All 19:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC) reply

I'm asking these questions all applicants:

1) How would you handle a situation where an error of judgment has occurred, especially if evidence is provided to confirm that the position is incorrect?

You reverse the relavant actions, post it on AN/I, and leave the relavent users a note, apoligizing for any inconvenience. AC makes its decisions as a whole though, so in that case, one or some of the AC members would do this, though it may be better for a clerk to do it in some cases. Voice-of-All 04:41, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

2) If a decision of yours, while technically a correct one, would knowingly be unpopular en masse, how would you present your decision?

Just give the reasoning and its praticality, and avoid strong comments. People will still get mad no matter what though. Voice-of-All 04:41, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

3) Place each of these policies/guidelines listed in order of precedence (to you) starting with highest priority. There is really no right or wrong answer. I'm interested in seeing what you would normally look at first when assessing an article. WP:V WP:BLP WP:NOT WP:NPOV WP:NOR WP:C WP:RS WP:N

I want a page, in order, that is NPOV,V/NOR/RS foremost. Things like N,C and WP:NOT (like a dictionary term) follow afterwards. BLP really just enforces the first group more stricly, so I won't put it on the list. I'd expect such bios to be more rigirous though. Voice-of-All 04:41, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

1. You didn't answer the question about making or abolishing a policy. I think the point of the question is to establish that you understand policy well enough to have found at least one weak spot somewhere, even if you don't feel strongly enough to campaign to change it. Let me put the same question another way: which is your least favourite policy? Where do you think we need more in the way of rules or guidelines?

I did answer the question. As for this one, we are drifting far away from AC tasks and into policy legislation. Voice-of-All 04:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

2. Which of the follow roles should arbcom members fulfill: judge, jury, executioner, detective, lawyer, psychoanalyst, teacher, leader, parole board, parole officer, weighing machine, opinion poll, weathervane, policeman, keeper of the vision, guardian of peace, visionary, psychic, nurse, other?

I don't see much in this question. Voice-of-All 04:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

3. What would wikipedia lose if you were appointed to the ArbCom? All the best, Ben Aveling 21:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Thats an odd question. Hopefully nothing much. I might scale back a few maintanence tasks, but I am confident that new admins will fill those anyway. Voice-of-All 04:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC) reply

1. I, like you, am a fairly moderate guy, but I would just like some clarifications. On your user page, you state "I strongly dislike reactionaries, liberals and right-wing zealots." Do you mean that you dislike those ideaologies or actually the people that hold them? How would you treat a person that openly holds such beliefs in an Arbcom case (especially if the case did not involve political pov pushing)? Do you feel that someone described as a "liberal" is as far to the left as a "right-wing zealot" is to the right?

Thats odd, I always though it said "reactionary liberals". I just changed the wording as I was referring to immature irration pundits and their herd followers, not all "liberals". I don't like irrationalism, organized or not. Actually, I am very liberal myself in many regards, so I am glad you pointed that out. Anyway, if someone in either of those two categories was in a case, I'd act just like in any normal case; anything else would not only be "punishment", but it would be for the wrong thing. I am always careful about where I direct things. Voice-of-All 01:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC) reply

How would you deal with abuse of authority by administrators, meaning by this application of blocks as punitive measures and use of blocks in unclear PA cases, as per WP:BLOCK. Would you protect the sysop no matter what or would you defend policy above all? In other words, what do you consider more important: strict discipline or strict application of policy? Thanks.

a)I would not auto-side with anyone. Though I tend to look on punitive blocks dimmly, and have refused to perform them on several occasions even upon request.

b)Application I suppose, though we need not be "strict", its a matter of disruption and gain/loss, not doing moral analysis to punish people, we should try to avoid that when possible. Voice-of-All 02:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

These are copies of questions initially asked by John Reid.

1. Who are you?

A university student and wikipedian :). Voice-of-All 02:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

2. Are you 13? Are you 18?

Keep guessing, a bit older... Voice-of-All 02:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Would you mind providing a ballpark figure for the table here? Some candidates chose to provide no details, some their age, and some a ballpark figure. Carcharoth 02:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

3. Should ArbCom arbitrate policy disputes or any other matter outside user conduct issues? Why or why not?

Not really, AC is to decide on conduct, not so much on policy interpretation (save the more obvious). Voice-of-All 02:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

1. Do you think there should be an age requirement for ArbCom? Anomo 12:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

No, as long as the person is reasonable. However, age, to an extent, can be a decent heurestical factor. Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

2. I have read on several websites (they even gave links to block logs) of Wikipedia admins who do things like indefinitely blocking accounts who have not edited for months, there was no CheckUser anything, no reports, and the admin didn't give any reason, just put personal attacks as the block reason (e.g. saying "troll"). Basically such cases seem done beyond punative, but just out of bullying. I saw at least ten of these, but so far I can only find one here [4]. I don't feel like digging for hours, as I just want to ask your opinion of whether you support or oppose such admin activity because it's clear most support it. Anomo 12:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

If the user trolled/vandalized a long time ago, and no longer does anything, it would be as well to just leave the account alone rather than block. Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

3. What is your view on the current policy often called "kicking them while they're down" of deleting the user and talk pages of people who are blocked? Anomo 12:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Well this depends on how bad of a troll the use was. If it was a strict troll and thats it, then I'am OK with deleting and tagging it. If it was a user that actually helped, but was banned by arbcom, I'd tag the page but not delete it. Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

4. What is your view on the practice on Wikipedia where a person blanks out text on talk pages because the text mentioned something wrong the person did or defeated them in an argument? The text blanked usually has no reason given. When there is a reason given, it's only a fake reason. In rare cases, the text is not blanked, but the entire talk page is archived including discussions hours old, blanking it out. Anomo 12:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

If its the user talk page, then I'd just frown on it. If its another talk page (like article talk), then it is rollbackable, as you do not just remove people's comments without a really good reason (personal attacks are not usually good enough unless truly virulent). Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

5. What is your view on the frequent practice of locking the talk page of someone who is banned to avoid communication with them? Anomo 12:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Only do this if they use unblock abuse. I wrote the bot that maintains WP:PP for user pages, and it is quite a list, that is often not dealt with (as far as looking the user's IP page goes). I'd be cautious about that. Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

6. Why is it that in the past when in a conflict in ArbCom between non-admins and administrators that ArbCom has usually sided with the admins? Anomo 16:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC) reply

Most likely, a user who had been here for months and was deemed trusty enough to be an admin will be unlikely to be the unreasonable party in a case. However, its not impossible, and has happened before (Freestylefrappe, Karmafist). Voice-of-All 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Q: How would your membership in the bot approvals group affect being a member of the arbitration committee. Surely the arbitration committee should require a significant time investment. Would you have time to do both, would it force you to split your limited time, or would you cease being active on BAG? -- RM 21:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC) reply

I will likely resign as a CU clerk were I elected, I'd still have time for Approvals though. Voice-of-All 02:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC) reply

In one sentence, what will you bring to the Arbitration Committee? Dfrg.m s c ^{1 . 2 . Editor Review} 23:42, 1 December 2006 (UTC) reply

More proposed opinions and some expedience hopefully. Voice-of-All 01:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply

Hello, the ArbCom elections are coming up very soon and I was wondering if you would give your public assurance not to vote or comment on other candidates. I think this will help keep friction to a minimum. Imagine how ugly it would be if two people who vehemently publicly attacked and opposed each other both ended up sitting on the ArbCom together. I think, in the best interests of decorum, these kind of conflict of interest issues should be avoided. Do you agree? -- Cyde Weys 20:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC) reply

I'll recuse. Voice-of-All 01:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC) reply