v t e Arbitration Committee Election 2022 candidate: Tamzin Candidate statement Questions for the candidate Discuss this candidate

Add your questions below the line using the following markup:

#((ACE Question
|Q=Your question
|A=))

There is a limit of two questions per editor for each candidate. You may also ask a reasonable number of follow-up questions relevant to questions you have already asked.

Questions from Red-tailed hawk

2. Hello. Thank you for volunteering to serve on the Arbitration Committee. Would you please explain your understanding of WP:INVOLVED, and would you summarize the extent to which you agree and/or disagree with how the Arbitration Committee has applied the principles of involvement with respect to administrator conduct in Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block, Manning naming dispute, and Climate change? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:14, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Starship.paint

2. Noting your six-month tenure as admin, and within the last month, you were involved in an incident with Volunteer Marek where you partially blocked him from a page, Volunteer Marek protested, you called it the most unbecoming conduct I've seen from an experienced user in response to a block, the dispute continued on his talk page, and you site blocked Volunteer Marek and removed talkpage access. According to Newyorkbrad, the site block was unwarranted and should be overturned ... Adverse comments by sanctioned users against sanctioning admins are part of the territory ... it can be especially escalatory for an admin who perceives herself as the target of an attack to place the block, except in cases of gross abuse or harassment, and this was not that, and the removal of talkpage access was unneccesary. Subsequently you said you miscalculated badly, restored talkpage access after soliciting community input, while another admin removed the siteblock.
   
   Having made an error in judgment so recently, and yet continued to run for ArbCom, how can voters be sure that your judgment has vastly improved to become an ArbCom member who should handle disputes well? starship.paint (exalt) 00:21, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

   I would hope that the community sees my willingness to seek and heed feedback about my actions as indicative of good judgment, not bad, so I'm not sure how to answer this question, with the presuppositions it has. Also, to be clear, I reversed the siteblock myself; the intervention of another admin (with my support) was to remove the partial block as "time served".

Questions from Rschen7754

2. Going off your RFA and the aforementioned incident, some might say that you seem to get involved in a lot of controversy. Do you think this is true? How would this affect a potential term on ArbCom? --Rschen7754 01:50, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

   I don't think that's true, no. Most of what I do is content work. Most of the rest is routine admin work. When I've taken "non-routine" admin actions (DS/GS enforcement, blocks of experienced users, etc.), I have with one singular exception avoided any significant controversy, even with actions where I was braced for it (e.g. my indefblock of Philip Cross or my tempblock of BrownHairedGirl). I feel bad about that one exception. I don't want that to get lost here. I apologized to Marek, and he responded with a compliment about an article I'd written, and I was glad we got a resolution to that extent. There's also one non-admin action I've taken that I knew would be controversial, which was proposing the siteban of Athaenara. I didn't like the idea of causing further drama there—it was the first top-level AN/I thread I'd started since 2013. But it was a conversation I felt needed to happen, and I thought better it come from someone who could make a case beyond "ban her for believing the wrong thing".

   So, while I don't deny I've been involved in a few controversies, I think if you look at the totality of what I do here, it adds up to well less controversy than most similarly-situated editors. I dislike conflict, and spend most of my time doing noncontroversial things like writing about memes and blocking sox. I made a decision in 2017 to mostly avoid "the busier parts of projectspace". As an admin I've modified that to allow for engaging in an administrative capacity at some of those venues, although since my nightmare in August I've made sure it's never to such an extent that I'm dealing more with people than with words.

   As to how my controversiality, to the extent that it exists, would affect a term on ArbCom, I think it's more how a term on ArbCom would affect it. It's generally best for arbs to avoid making potentially controversial blocks (as regular admin actions) or proposing community sanctions, and I would follow those principles.

Questions from Izno

2. As an arb, you will have to deal with messes which often have a lot of reading attached to them. Some of them will be the reasonably ordered messes most cases are. Some of them won't be. One mess I regularly think about is this case request (last revision before archival and first revision). Assuming (for simplicity's sake) that the entire discussion was held onwiki, can you share some thoughts on how you might have responded to the original case request, the changes in aggregate that occurred while the request open, and the ultimate case request? Izno (talk) 02:17, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Beyond My Ken

2. Considering the very short period of time you have been an admin, do you really feel that you have enough experience to qualify to be an arbitrator, especially considering the concerns about your temperament which were raised at your (very close) RfA, and the recent incident with Volunteer Marek? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

   I've long hoped to see a non-admin arb. If we don't get that this election (and I hope that we do!), then I hope there will at least be some benefit in having an arbitrator who can freshly remember what it's like to not be an admin. Many ADMINCOND cases involve understanding how an administrator's actions affected non-admins, and I think I still understand that perspective very well. If there's one thing I gained from my RfA, it's that by the end I was thoroughly disabused of any notion that adminship is something special.

Questions from TheresNoTime

2. How do you foresee the role of the Arbitration Committee changing with regard to the adoption of the Universal Code of Conduct (namely, due to the enforcement guidelines, and the introduction of the global Coordinating Committee)? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

4. Is ANI pronounced A-N-I or Annie? Thank you for standing, and good luck. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 05:58, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Joe Roe

2. How you would approach a situation where somebody you considered a friend was party to an arbitration matter? For example, how would you decide whether or not to recuse? Would it be different for public versus nonpublic matters? – Joe (talk) 08:19, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

   I would recuse from any matter involving someone I consider a personal friend. If it were a large case where that person's role were separable from everything else, that might mean just a partial recusal; if they were integral to the full situation, it would mean a full recusal. This would be the same in both public and private matters.

4. WP:VPP#RfC: Updating BLOCKEVIDENCE arose from a difference of opinion between you and the majority of the functionary team (including ArbCom) on our policy on nonpublic-evidence blocks. My concern at the time was that, despite still being quite new to adminship, your reaction to ArbCom's statement of their understanding of policy was apparently that they were wrong and you were right, and you escalated the situation to a community-wide RfC on that basis. Is that a fair assessment of the situation? If elected, are there circumstances where you would expect functionaries, admins or other users to simply defer to the committee's judgement, i.e. accept what you say whether or not they agree with it? – Joe (talk) 08:19, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

   No, that is not a fair assessment of the situation. I blocked a user and, on advice of a sitting arbitrator, designated the block as "appeal to ArbCom only". I believe that was consistent with policy as written at the time, and to my knowledge you are the only person to suggest that it wasn't, or that ArbCom's subsequent statement was meant as a repudiation of it. That statement did not overturn that provision of the block, and in fact did not mention the block at all, nor did any arb communicate with me privately about it, nor did the statement have any retroactive effect on blocks previously made in compliance with the old policy. Which makes clear the issue with ArbCom's statement: It made new policy. ArbCom cannot make new policy. If arbs find an inconsistency in community policy that affects ArbCom, they should refer that question to the community for resolution, not try to fix the situation by issuing a third set of rules that contradicts both of the existing policy provisions and has no clear constitutional basis. I am proud of having called ArbCom out for overstepping its authority, and glad that L235's and my proposal led to a clarification of the policy ArbCom had tried to unconstitutionally supersede, and thus the restoration of community supremacy on the question of blocks for private evidence.

   are there circumstances where you would expect functionaries, admins or other users to simply defer to the committee's judgement, i.e. accept what you say whether or not they agree with it? There are situations where only ArbCom possesses relevant information justifying some action, but for privacy reasons cannot share those reasons. In those cases, ArbCom should give as much detail as possible, but there are still cases where that means no detail. In which cases, arbs should be understanding of community members who are confused (and likewise community members should assume good faith on the part of the arbs). But other than private-evidence situations, no, there are no situations where people should just have to listen to arbs because they are arbs. I strongly reject any notion that places arbs as hierarchically above other community members, just as I rejected ArbCom's attempt to place checkusers hierarchically above other admins, and as I reject the notion that there's a tenure requirement for an admin to criticize a Committee decision.

Question from Iridescent

2. As you know, because of how recent both your RFA and the incident alluded to above were, a significant number of Wikipedia editors are explicitly and recently on the record as expressing concerns about your judgement. Those people most vocal (both pro and anti) are likely to have a significant overlap with the group of people most likely to be sucked into Arbcom cases. If on the committee, how would you handle situations when participants raised concerns that you potentially wouldn't be impartial, and how would you handle situations where people said they were unwilling to disclose relevant details to the committee because they didn't trust you with sensitive personal information? (Arbcom does have mechanisms such as parallel mailing lists for excluding a particular arb from discussions in which there are potential issues with their participation, but it obviously wouldn't be practical to exclude you from any case involving one of the 400+ participants in the RFA.) This isn't intended as a gotcha question; there genuinely isn't a right answer, but it's a situation I can virtually guarantee will repeatedly arise. ‑ Iridescent 08:56, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]