User:Tznkai/desk/Reports/Report on administration enforcement

Report

Overview Arbitration enforcement

The Arbitration Committee is supposed to be the last stop for disputes - where disputes are resolved, sometimes in an ugly fashion, sometimes not, but the idea is, the problems are supposed to be contained, the disputes' back broken. ArbCom has created a number of tools, namely general and specific discretionary sanctions to give admins a wide tool box to break disputes, and encourage problematic behavior to stop. The idea is, simple 3 line complaints will go to Arbitration enforcement, any number of admins will look at the problem behavior, see if it falls within sanctions, and apply a remedy, and move on. No drama, and the dispute resolves itself. The header of WP:AE states clearly that " This is enforcement, not dispute resolution. The case has already been ruled on. The question here is whether they engaged in conduct that breached that ruling." This by necessity presumes that strict enforcement will solve the dispute.

It doesn't work.

Entrenched disputes

AE disputes, or at least the ones worth worrying about, are in fact entrenched disputes. These are disputes that have gone to Arbitration because of the collective unreasonableness of the involved editors, and the related failure or absence of administrative intervention. Related problems also include sockpuppeting (thwarting the vast majority of our technical tools), genuine POV warriors and a total lack of trust. In general, by the time the Arbitration Committee has accepted a dispute, it is long past the time when an outside opinion, polite word, a more formal community admonishment ((RfC/Us usually contain all three, along with a lot of useless insults, but that is a separate discussion) or most formal dispute resolution processes could help.

Problematic editors are in a word, "stuck", in the very behavior that is problematic. This is not necessarily to say we should blame them. There are systemic problems that lead to the entrenched dispute. These disputes also sometimes make traction with the "real world" either because of a deep personal connection to the subject matter, or direct personal gain from changing Wikipedia. See also #Problematic editors, below.

Dispute management

In the end AE is dispute management instead of dispute resolution. Disputes are handled by attempting to contain the dispute, not resolve it: quarantine the involved users, send them off on blocks for short periods at a time and isolate them from certain pages. Often, the problem editors have been problematic for so long, that the problems simply fade in to the background, and only the excesses are addressed. The most interested users in a AE related dispute are usually the disputants themselves. A large part of the work of arbitration enforcement is managing the abuse of the Arbitration enforcement board itself. Most attempts to actually fix, or provide long term containment of the underlying problem usually are creative and outside of the actual Arbitration remedy and the mandate of WP:AE. See also #Creative enforcement and #Appendix A

Limited input

In further detail in #Administrators

Known issues

Problematic editors

In almost every case, problem users are most of the following

• Convinced they are in the right
• Convinced they are following policy
• Well versed in policy
• Deeply suspicious of Wikipedia administration in general
• Entrenched in a battleground mentality
• Deeply mistrusting of editors on the "other side"
• Engaged in a very real but oft denied personal conflict
• Valuable contributors in some way. (Otherwise they would just be indef'd)
• Emotionally or philosophically committed to editing. (Stubborn)
• Unable or unwilling to
• Unable or unwilling to restrain themselves in various ways. This includes
  • Avoiding furthering content disputes on WP:AE
  • Baiting
  • Dealing with baiting
  • Generalized incivility
  • Otherwise being capable and willing to to shut up when needed.

Administrators

First, the number of competent editors who can do this "full time" is incredibly small. Arbitration enforcement is easily the most difficult dispute resolution task. So much so, that it is more accurately called dispute management because very little is ever resolved. AE tasks are not only intrinsically difficult (these are entrenched usually with a near total loss of the assumption of good faith, with entangling factors), there is support disputes AE tasks self-select for extremely and stubborn admins - the situation To quote myself from earlier "You need to have the magical triumvirate of stubbornness, adaptability, and measured responsiveness to criticism. What admin has that all the time, let alone at all? Most people (rightfully) wimp out of the difficult problems, and [those who don't] often become problems in their own right."

• Second, related to the first, is good admins go bad. The best case scenario is that admins after working on AE style disputes for too long, begin to learn tricks of the trade, but ultimately will suffer from group think. The tendency to apply the same solution to every problem is a common human flaw.
• Third, progress only comes from trust. Progress in entrenched disputes (AE's bread and butter) only comes after having established a long history of some combination of trust, and respect, however grudging between involved admin.

Appendices

Appendix A

A list of things that (may) have worked

Appendix B

Burnout analysis

Appendix C

Known failures.