The crud factor

Many thanks to Vassyana for opening a page within user space to brainstorm for solutions to Wikipedia's chronic conflicts. This post is related to his excellent drive.

One thing to be alert for within arbitration is the crud factor: disruptive editors fill the case pages with crud. The principle is simple: when the evidence is against you and you don't have a useful rebuttal, clutter the case and make it harder to read. Crud appears at Wikipedia arbitrations across many unrelated topics because crudism is an intuitive strategy. Crud is the noise in the signal-to-noise factor of Wikipedia arbitration. This post describes crudism and how to defend against it.

First, what exactly is the crud factor? A simple example of pure crudism occurred at the Gundagai arbitration of 2006. All of the participants except one substantiate their assertions with diffs, while a single individual makes a long series of aggressive claims backed by no evidence at all. See if you can spot the crudite at this page.

Most of the cases the Arbitration Committee gets in 2009 are more complex than that because the community has gotten more effective at dealing with simple crud at the community level. One well-known example of recent crudism was the John254/Kristen Eriksen sockpuppet team that played both sides of the fence at the Scientology arbitration workshop until the sockteam was identified and banned by the community through independent action.

Community action doesn't stop crud from occurring, though, because John/Kristen was a rare type of crudite. Most crudites are either directly involved in the dispute being arbitrated or else strategically aligned with one or more partisans. Most crudites pursue three goals:

• Protection of one or more allied partisans against arbitration sanction.
• Aggressive sanction against one or more opposing partisans.
• Establishment of arbitration principles that can be leveraged to the crudites' advantage in future disputes.

These days, when a case reaches arbitration it often comes with multiple crudites acting in tandem and subtle forms of crud. Instead of long rants with no diffs they provide cherry picked or irrelevant diffs. Crud expands and migrates across case pages the longer the case remains in evidence phase.

The really damaging thing about subtle crud is that it resembles evidence; other editors may consider themselves compelled to rebut it. If they do, more crud follows. If they don't, exhausted arbitrators might suppose no defense was attempted. The result of this double bind is a negative feedback loop during which the case grows exponentially.

The Solution to Crud
Arbitrators can put an effective cap on crud by putting up proposed decisions sooner. Note the time frame of the Gundagai arbitration mentioned earlier:

Case Opened on 21:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Case Closed on 18:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

In most arbitrations the useful evidence gets posted within about three weeks of opening the case. Occasions when useful evidence gets delayed are usually identifiable because someone has asked for more time due to health, work, or other tangible reasons. By contrast, crud accumulates at a steady trickle according to whenever the crudites have enough free time to generate more crud.

The key defense, from the arbitrators' standpoint, is not to rush the voting upon a proposed decision but to initiate the proposed decision sooner. Once a case moves to voting, crud naturally migrates to the proposed decision talk page--which slows the growth of crud at the evidence and workshop. It is more useful to distract hardened crudites off those pages and to leave the arbitrators somewhat at leisure to sort out the existing mess.

Fred Bauder was brilliant at that while he served on the Committee. Many of the old Bauder proposed decisions are superb demonstrations of crud management.

Remember, the most important response to crud is to identify it, separate it from useful input, and redirect the crudites' attention where they cause less damage until the case closes. For the most part, only arbitrators can achieve this.

Fred the great

I miss the old days of arbitration. Fred Bauder read the evidence, read the diffs, and determined whether the claims held up. Then he'd figure out who the primary antagonists were and write up a decision to deal with them. He didn't sanction everyone willy-nilly and he didn't try to pass the buck. Usually he got it right. Then Fred Bauder's term ended. Slowly this website drifted away from the notions that arbitration is the final step in dispute resolution and that it has something to do with justice.

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Image credit: self-portrait by Fred Bauder.  Slightly edited for color balance.

Why arbitration enforcement usually fails

David Hoffman sent a very polite reply to my email yesterday about his paper. If he wishes to post his response as a comment to this blog it will certainly get published here. As Sage Ross noted in yesterday's comments, some of Hoffman's findings certainly are provcative.

The most intriguing part of that is the negative correlation between multiple varieties of policy violation, and actual sanction. Although my observations are anecdocal rather than statistical (and it would be very difficult to assemble statistical date on community sanctions for reasons described yesterday), it looks like that counterintuitive finding would not only hold up but would worsen at the community level. In the end this leads to insights about why arbitration enforcement and discretionary sanctions usually fail. First, we'll identify the dynamic: wiki discussion is not well suited to handling multifaceted problems.

Take an example from about a month ago: an editor gets reported to one of the adminitrative noticeboards for edit warring. Simple edit warring results in a block when it reaches a certain level of disruption. Our administrators are usually quite good at handling that alone. In this particular instance, though, the editor might also have used an ethnic slur.

The discussion accordingly went askew, with the distinction between non-pejorative 'Pak' and pejorative 'Paki' debated at length, while the actual edit warring got ignored. One experienced administrator even argued that there was no rationale for a block.
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User:Yousaf465 on an Anti-India Propoganda

Yousaf465 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been on an Anti-India propoganda for sometime now.He began with complaining of too much India bias for FAs on Mainpage at time when there was 59 Indian FAs and 1 Pakistani FA. He is now on a spree to get all images that decipts Pak as terrorist hub like [1]. His new interest is to push Anti India POV on State-sponsored terrorism (history) article. With this edit he removed everything related to Pakistan and replacing with India and Israel. His edits were repeatedly revereted by many users including YellowMonkey. YM blocked him for edit waring and POV push on the article. User:Seicer who is soft on Yousaf , unblocked him ( saying that YM didnt respond back in time) and blocked User:24.28.83.178 who had been also reverting Yousuf's POV additions. A new user Maijinsan (talk • contribs • count) came up from no-where an adding sock tag to many usernames including the above IP editor... It is evident that he himself is a sock. Seicer semi-protected the article and allowed Yousuf to continue to add Anti-India POV statements referenced to Pak dailies which cannot be considered as reliable . I dont want to "edit war" with him and request for third opinions here. -- Tinu Cherian - 05:24, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

First, I suggest that you take the effort to add "istan(i)" to the (likely insulting) diminutive "Pak" if you wish to be taken seriously as desiring a neutral consideration of this problem. I would further suggest that you take this complaint to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Geopolitical ethnic and religious conflicts for review by sysops who are better able to disregard the nationalistic rhetoric of the differing parties. I trust you will update your notices to the above mentioned editors to reflect the new venue. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:49, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

"Pak" is a common abbreviation for Pakistan used in English language publications both in India and Pakistan; it is no in way shape or form pejorative or insulting. E.g. "Pak-Afghan border situation needs urgent attention: US" The Daily Times, "Pak serious about fighting extremism: NATO chief" The News International (both Pakistani publications), "With Pak alleging links between the Samjhauta..." The Times of India. 87.112.89.175 (talk) 17:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I would note that the diminitive "Paki" is considered an extremely pejorative insult in British society and, this being the English language Wikipedia, similar terms may strike the readership as antagonistic. Cultural sensitivities should work both ways. LessHeard vanU (talk) 17:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Pak is short term for Pakistan,but "Paki" is not acceptable.User:Yousaf465

If I see no rationale given for the block, and his contribution history looks fairly legit, and the unblocking administrator makes no comments regarding the block in a reasonable matter (I did notify the blocking administrator), then I will unblock in most instances. Case closed for YM's old block.

It should be noted that I am not "soft" on anti-Indian propogandists. I frequently get asked to block or review the contributions of specific editors (check my user talk page), and I have done sweeping blocks on this in the past. Perhaps you didn't bother to do a little check of my contribution history??? seicer | talk | contribs 12:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If someone thanking you is evidence of "being soft" then we are all soft, and that's the way I like it. Theresa Knott | token threats 12:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, I'm just confused. seicer | talk | contribs 14:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

will replx in detail.User:Yousaf465

I havent used the term 'Paki' anytime above ,instead used only "Pak/Pakistani" terms which are generally considered acceptable. Secier, you have unblocked a good faith block by YM and allowed Yousuf to continue with his disruptive edits like [2][3] [4] while you blocked an IP editor who has been reverting yousuf's POV push. -- Tinu Cherian - 04:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

1) Personal commentary in edits/synthesis/OR/POV 2) Engages in IND/PAK battlefield mentality per the main page gripe, also assumes everyone else is campaigning/soapboxing, per his complaint ages ago that DYK people were promoting homosexuality 3) nominating pictures for deletion on bogus criteria (images were US govt -> PD, the other was already marked as FU as a magazine display of Pakistani terrorists but he keeps on saying it isn't needed and replaces it with a another magazine display that doesn't show related at all 4) per battlefield/sectarian mentality, has an Israeli flag on his talk page, with the Star of David replaced with a swastika.... 5) Also BLP violations and personal cynical commentaries inserted on this page along with another Pakistani Strider11 with battlefield mentality which Seicer reinserted; although it is a banned Hkelkar IP, the Pakitani edit needs to be excised because of a BLP violation implying a terrorist conspiracy on the part of the subject "it is worth noticeable..." YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 05:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

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At this point it became necessary to point out the other factor.
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One dynamic to watch out for in admin discussions with multiple issues is that one hot button point dominates the discussion, and if that gets resolved as a nonissue the other outstanding issues may get overlooked. This discussion has determined that 'Pak' does not carry the derogatory connotations of 'Paki'. What it has not resolved is whether this person is edit warring. And it may be arguable that block-worthy edit warring has been going on within the last few hours. Please examine all issues at hand before declaring a determination. Durova^Charge! 05:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

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Notice how the discussion changed direction afterward: a swift and uncontroversial 48 hour block for edit warring.
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I have blocked Yousaf for 48h as he continued disruption after his previous unblock. If the block would not help, I think a longer block is warranted Alex Bakharev (talk) 06:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC) here is my reply

the main page controversy is baseless.I wasn't trying to be natinalist or any such thing.My only point was that it should be diversified.2)If you see the file history it can be seen,that,this file at first had dead links.I tagged it that way.Another editor provided the links to it.I asked him to check with the mentioned lab. whether they provide it for wikipedia.The herald has also been questioned by other non-concerned editors[5] ,[6],[7],so there is no point in blaming me for that.4)Be sensible and Read carefully a)Image description b)Tag description c) talk pages[8].Before accusing anyone of racial bias.5)I didn't revert this any further because a valid reason was given.I can't see any reinsertion by User:Seicer at this [9] User:Yellowmonkey is going out of his mind.He and other involved editor didn't even took pain to discuss these articles and file on the talk page.Instead have constantly removing content while hiding behind ips as it mentioned here.[10].Taquiyya is actually Taqiyya. I myself removed content which was questionable but Instead of making on it they just kept on reverting edits.User:Yousaf465

I don't know about the other issues, but this tagging (repeated 3 times) is simply disruptive behavior in Yousaf's part. Despite being reminded that the image is work of a US Federal agency, Yousaf retagged the image again with a meaningless comment. He also tagged a fair-use magazine cover as "possibly unfree image", despite the presence of a fair use rationale. These actions are all correlated, and not isolated events. --Ragib (talk) 06:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

While PUI is not quite the right venue, the fair use rationale on the Herald image is complete bogus. This is an understandable error. I'll put it up for WP:NFCR.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

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So the introduction of a second issue hampers Wikipedia's ability to address policy violations that are obviously block-worthy. Notice what occurs in a more recent discussion where three issues are at play:
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Commons:Deletion requests/File:Allys a rubbin (1421413596).jpg

The subjects of this photo have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Burning Man festival is a private event, see http://www.burningman.com/press/ . There is no indication that the subjects have given their consent to have this image used in Wikipedia; without consent this kind of picture can do real-life damage. As an alternative to deletion, pixellating the faces would address most of my concerns. --Clayoquot (talk) 16:23, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment The stipulations in the url given are probably not legally valid. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it's questionable whether the festival could legally enforce the rules given in the URL. I'm not primarily concerned with the rights of the festival. What I'm primarily concerned about is the rights of the subjects, and the URL gives evidence that subjects would have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Clayoquot (talk) 03:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment the festival is a private event... that doesn't mean that it takes place in a private place! And place is the issue linked to privacy not events. For instance, the Tour de France is a private event but one may not be able to forbid pictures of its public audience next to the roads because those roads are public places! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 03:11, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no distinction at this particular festival between the event and the place. The question we have to address is basically whether it is both legal and ethical to keep this photo on Wikimedia Commons, in its current state in which the subjects are identifiable. Think about it: You go to a festival, thinking you can be a bit more relaxed about things like nudity because it's a private event and photography is restricted, and you take off your clothes for a massage. Then one day you or someone in your family realizes that there is a naked picture of yourself on Wikipedia. Not nice. Let's not have that happen. Clayoquot (talk) 04:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry but it seems that the law deals with private places so even in the case of a private event held in a public place, I'm not sure it can be considered a problem with the law. I understand your argument but we have to understand the law too! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment There are three separate issues here: the event's photography policy, the participants' privacy rights, and Commons custom. Dealing with these one at a time:

1. The event photography policy is a contract stipulation between the event and the photographer. If the photographer violates that contract, it has no effect on downstream users such as Wikimedia Commons. So, for example, we do host public domain artwork that was photographed in museums that restrict photography. That's the photographer's risk, not ours.
2. Privacy rights are a gray area here. On the one hand, the event occurs in the open area on public land. On the other hand, access to the event is rather tightly controlled with checkpoints, barricades, law enforcement, etc. So one could argue this either way and I'm no confident which way that would go. On the one hand, this is outdoors in a public location. On the other hand, do these participants have a reasonable expectation that their likeness will not be taken and misused? I'd lean toward the former by hunch more than experience, and would defer to individuals who know specific instances where this has come up before (in some twenty years of festival history it probably has).
3. Commons custom has sometimes been more considerate than strict readings of privacy rights. We have, on occasion, deleted instances of 'wardrobe malfunction' that occurred in public places. This isn't quite the same situation as plumber's trousers, since the nudity is intentional. Yet the intention here appears to be massage rather than pure exhibitionism. It's a regular massage table. So primarily on the basis of this third consideration I'd lean toward deletion. Durova (talk) 03:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Durova. I should mention for transparency that I asked Durova on her enwiki talk page if she could comment here. Clayoquot (talk) 03:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

• Delete I have to say that my first comments (see above) were an overall statement about the event (on the base of the difference between "public event" and "public place") but that I may lean toward deletion for that specific picture (but not for other pictures of the same event) because I follow the same remarks as Durova (3rd point above). Actually we also have to consider that this picture seems to have been taken in a tent so it may be considered as private for that reason (even if the tent was in a public place!) --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

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In both instances, all that I did was identify the multiple factors that were confusing the discussion, and attempt to rate them. What's curious is that no one else had tried that approach. Many of our site discussions that degenerate into 'drama' are actually multipoint issues, and could conclude rationally if someone steps in at an early stage to identify those points and articulate them as separate issues.

A portion of our site's disruptive editors intuit that weakness and create confusion in order to avoid remedies for their behavior. On rare occasions one of them even confesses that this is deliberate strategy. This occurred in the Gundagai Editors arbitration of late 2006:
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Failure to sign posts

The anon editor has consistently failed to sign posts. This is a deliberate strategy on her part.[68]: In response to an explanation by Golden Wattle: "Navigation on talk pages is normally by linking using signatures by the way. If somebody wanted to follow the conversation, and you had signed - they would come here very easily - they can't when you don't sign - have I mentioned signing before? Maybe you might if you could see the benefits." She responded on 6 July "Maybe I wont too. Do you think I dont know about how to make a maze? Its pretty amazing. If you lose the thred though your lost. Have fun"

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Arbitration occurs when other site processes have failed. Deliberate smoke-blowing increases the chances that other site processes will fail, so there is a high probability in arbitration that at least one party is a smoke-blowing disruptor. There may even be multiple parties using this tactic, some of whom have formed strategic alliances. A critical mass of disruptive smoke-blowers, acting in tandem, can thwart nearly any Wikipedian process. If they are skilled enough they may even draw in the allegiance of confused but well-meaning editors who are not disruptive themselves, but who fail to see through the disruptive tactics and lend their own reputations in innocent advocacy for the disruptors.

A central responsibility of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee is to identify individual disruptive smoke-blowers and remove them from the conversation. If the Committee fails to do that when they enact discretionary sanctions on a case, then those same disruptive smoke-blowers proceed to arbitration enforcement and employ the same tactic there. Usually those disruptive editors succeed in their efforts to stymie arbitration enforcement because noticeboard format is less formal, and therefore easier to misdirect than arbitration formats. In these situations, implementing sensible structure is not 'bureaucracy' but a defense against trolling.

Wikitruth through Wikiorder

Browsing the Signpost today led to a scholarly study by two Temple University law scholars. The abstract looked intriguing enough that it overcame my natural antipathy toward PDF files and read the whole 45 page paper. Posting a few thoughts about it here.

More than is usual for this kind of work, the prose is readable and at times engaging. It prompted a few fond chuckles to see the following:

There are over thirty distinct ways to irritate other Wikipedia users, including being incivil, disruptive, or tendentious; researching the wrong way, attacking others’ gender or race...

Ah yes, but aren't there much more than thirty? Surely an enterprising spirit would generate new ones. Otherwise life might get boring.

On the whole, though, their analysis is structurally flawed. David A. Hoffman and Salil Mehra write about arbitration as if it were the only means of banning editors, but of course there are more. The period January 2005 through Septemer 2007 was a critical one in Wikipedia's development of community-based remedies, none of which are mentioned in the study.

To highlight the developments:

• May 2005: Wikipedia formalizes its banning policy.
• July 2005: David Gerard provides a definition of community bans: "Some editors are so odious that not one of the 500+ admins will unblock them." In slightly less colorful phrasing this becomes the de facto standard for community sitebans.
• September 2006: Wikipedia formalizes a disruptive editing guideline.

In the time since then the community has become increasingly proactive in enacting, reviewing, and lifting sanctions. Unfortuantely these are not easily studied because the documentation of these sanctions is extremely diffuse. A page exists to record full sitebans, but not for any other type of community-based sanctions (topic ban, article ban, single revert restrictions, etc.), and the definition of community banning is itself diffuse enough to be disputed: when is an editor banned by the community, as opposed to placed under a block of indefinite duration? Discussion of bans (which may or may not require consensus discussion, depending on who you ask) has roamed across at least three noticeboards. Although automated search tools have been developed in attempt to compensate, they can search only for specific instances where the editor's username is known and the tools may fail to turn up the appropriate result.

Additionally, although the community enacts bans and other sanctions of indefinite duration, it has almost no articulated standards for reconsidering an indefinite sanction. Generally the blocking administrator is held responsible and should be consulted, but there is very little provision for what to do if that administrator is unavailable or under what circumstances sanctions should come to an end. The results of that lack are predictably chaotic.

So although it would be fair to say that a majority of sanctions were enacted by the Arbitration Committee or Jimbo Wales at the beginning of 2005, by September 2007 the minority of editor sanctions were coming from these sources. The nature of disputes heard by the Committee was also changing substantially as the community adapted to handling simple and obvious cases, so by the end of the period under study the character of cases before the Arbitration Committee had shifted toward complex and intransigent disputes for which no easy solution was at hand.

So, setting aside other criticisms (I had originally intended to mention the absence of analysis on wheel wars and other causes of administrative desysoppings, and a few smaller points), Hoffman's and Mehra's attempt to apply complex statistical analysis and game theory to Wikipedia arbitration is fatally flawed.

Requests for arbitration

Currently there are two requests for arbitration at English Wikipedia.  This post pertains to both of them, and also to that process generally. When contemplating opening a request for arbitration there are really three questions that need to be asked:

• Is this an urgent problem that cannot be resolved by anything else?
• Is this a non-urgent problem that cannot be resolved by anything else?
• Is it clear to uninvolved people that it cannot resolved by anything else?

The times to request arbitration are where the first condition has been met, or else when both of the other conditions have been met.  One big cause of strife and drama happens when the third condition hasn't been satisfied.

This is a good metric for determining when other formal dispute resolution is appropriate.  Non-arbitration dispute resolution serves two purposes:

• To resolve a dispute.
• To provide a fair (if slim) chance at resolving a dispute, while demonstrating to uninvolved people that the appropriate attempts have been made.

It's important to remember what constitutes dispute resolution.  Administrative noticeboards are not dispute resolution.  Other than arbitration, formal dispute resolution comes in six flavors.

• Wikiquette alerts
• Third opinion
• Requests for comment (content)
• Requests for comment (user)
• Mediation cabal
• Mediation committee

A while ago the dispute resolution navigation box used to list these clearly.  It no longer does, which may explain why requests for arbitration have been getting filed recently that cite nothing other than article talk discussions.  Those filings get rejected but waste everyone's time.  On other occasions, people try to list administrative board threads as if they were prior dispute resolution.  

It's a requirement when filing an arbitration to list prior steps at dispute resolution.  It's been my longstanding opinion that non-formal dispute resolution should be removed from that list on any request for arbitration.  The one exception is when the arbitration enforcement board has failed repeatedly, which indicates that a prior arbitration decision was unsuccessful.

If a situation is not urgent, usually two or three attempts at formal dispute resolution should be tried before filing a request for arbitration.  That's enough to demonstrate good faith efforts to resolve the problem.  

A key mistake that many editors make is to fail to open enough formal dispute resolution because they don't think it would work.  They might be right about that, but there's no way for the larger community to see that until it's tried.  

A lot of difficult RFAR discussions occur when the filer is technically right, but hasn't taken enough formal steps to demonstrate that to the community at large. Even if the case opens it could place all of its named parties at the center of a storm for one to three months afterward.  Usually it's better to open another formal dispute resolution process--even if it's mostly to clear the air and make the eventual arbitration more straightforward.  Optimism is worthwhile too with other dispute resolution; pleasant surprises have been known to happen.

Lady Catherine de Burgh

"Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold
them into harmony and plenty." - Jane Austen