Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Vote/Charles Matthews

This is the talk page for discussing a candidate for election to the Arbitration Committee.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Use third-level headers for new sections. Example: === Heading title ===. Unsure about the election process? Please review the election rules. Issue with inappropriate commentary or questions? Please notify an election volunteer.	Be civil No personal attacks Refrain from canvassing and harassment Discuss the election, or ask questions here

Vested Contributors

Just as a note, when I speak of Vested Contributors, I am using the MeatballWiki definition: meatball:VestedContributor... others may have a different definition. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 14:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Concerns about not setting a good example

Recent ArbCom cases have said that admins should set a good example. Similarly, I think arbitrators should set an even better example. In my humble opinion, Charles Matthews hasn't done so.

• "If the ArbCom cannot indef ban anyone, why should two admins and a dog at AN/I have a right to, on the basis of some piffle about the user knowing how the site works?"
• I came here to Wikipedia to write articles, not to deal with moral pygmies."
• "busybody"

(I vaguely remembered these comments, but was struggling to locate them, so I'm grateful to Durova who recently posted these diffs in a RfC.)

PhilKnight (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Selective quotation isn't really much of an argument. I have invited Durova to come and post a real question. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

For the first point see [1], where the explanation of "dog" is given in relation to "two men and a dog", a proverbial expression. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, if anyone has looked at the full text of the second diff, and is wondering what 'shower' refers to, there is an explanation at wiktionary:shower. PhilKnight (talk) 17:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

More concerns

In one of the most talked about ArbCom cases in recent time, Piotrus 2,[2] you were listed as one of the arbitrators Away or inactive since September 10, 2008 [3] – according to Template:ACA [4] – posted at the Piotrus 2 Proposed decision talk page.

Surely enough, you did not participate in our prolonged discussions, spread across a number of pages including Workshop with its own Talk page, the Evidence with Talk, Proposed decision Talk page, etc. You entered the scene on November 24, 2008 by posting your first votes [5] on the page filed with great care by Kirill Lokshin a week earlier. [6] Kirill Lokshin is an amazing guy, so is User:FloNight, and other active arbitrators who were with us since the beginning, helping us out along the way, responding to quiries, voting. They certainly earned their reputation of exceptionally well suited for the job in accordance with the good old WYSIWYG.

On November 25-26, 2008 you posted your remaining 31 votes at Proposed decision, seven of them with the same sentence repeated ad nauseam: “I am abstaining on some negative findings, not because testing the evidence was pointless, but to simplify the final decision.” [7] This seems like a lot of text for someone so firmly perched on the fence, abstaining 14 times. There’s nothing wrong with repeat copy-pasting, of course, when the sentence is of critical importance.

But than, you wrote something quite different under my name as one of the parties drawn into this case from the sidelines. Apparently, with only a single (baited) violation of BLP listed under my name from May, you wrote in Proposed remedies: “Not convinced we shouldn't look at a ban here.” Why would you see it fit to make such a passing comment while in fact abstaining at the same time? You and I have never interacted in the past, so what gives? Curious about who you are for the first time I read what Durova says, and I wonder.[8] --Poeticbent talk 20:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing special here. I never chat about cases. Instead, I write for the encyclopedia. In other words I am a worker on the site, and I also work as an arbitrator. (Look at the next section, "Edit Analysis".) It is a complicated case, with 23 parties. I certainly pasted: it is the clearest way. As I said, I didn't like what I saw in your editing. You see, my job is to look at the evidence and come to a personal conclusion, not to be friendly, talk a lot, be a regular guy.

As for Durova, I have asked her on her talk page to post an election question to me. If she doesn't like my record, she should come and explain why, and then I can answer. I hope she does, and then perhaps the matter will be clearer for everyone. (For context, you should read the blue box about the Matthew Hoffman case, and perhaps you will see why there was discussion, and even why I had to wait to answer.) Charles Matthews (talk) 22:22, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

This particular thread came to my attention by accident for the first time today. It is yet another disappointing example of Charles Matthews mischaracterizing a discussion. He articulates an expectation that I would post candidate questions, yet neglects to mention that only three hours earlier I had iterated to him for the second time why I did not do so. Hence a passerby who doesn't see the original user talk dialog (which Charles doesn't link to) could come away supposing that I had been uncommunicative. Well here it is.

Charles, I did you the courtesy of a simple quiet oppose in this election. Yet discovering this thread after the fact underscores the weight of my misgivings about entrusting you with matters that do not remain open for public review. I don't know whether you deliberately skew these presentations for political advantage or whether it's a lack of reading comprehension, nor do I care. What I do care about is that it risks unwarranted damage to the credibility of people who disagree with you. This is starting to take on the pattern of habitual behavior and I would very much like it to end. Durova^Charge! 18:26, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Shrug. You have not posted a question on my record, despite my request that you should do so. If you post one now, I shall try to answer it. That is how it should be. "These presentations" - does that refer to your interventions on my talk page about the Hoffman case? I have tried to be full about that in answering questions. Does that refer to the RfC? You have seemed to judge that by counting heads, not by who was talking good sense there and who not. (A measure of "reading comprehension" seemed to be lacking when the policies were in question, but not on my side of the argument.) Add a question or two to me, and we'll see who has credibility when the dust settles. I have been put through my paces on several matters. One reason I was standing was exactly to be able in future to point to the hustings afterwards, and say "we dealt with the matter you raise". Charles Matthews (talk) 22:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Durova. Your communcations regarding her issues comes across as politicized spin. In the same way that you seem to feel you don't need to participate in arb hearings other than to vote, she doesn't need to ask you questions that are not going to change her understanding of your actions. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

No doubt Durova is grateful for your support. I have been trying hard to get Durova to present her issues to me, in her own words, in an appropriate forum. Both parts matter. Oblique comments about my "record" should be made concrete; supposed connections of the Hoffman case to anything else I do onsite are the construction of an albatross I'm supposed to have around my neck. My attitude here is entirely conditioned by my experience of dispute resolution, which after all is what we are here to discuss. I believe strongly that if A has issues with B, we should see first A trying to resolve those with B, preferably privately. In the Hoffman case, it is evident now (I think) to all that I was very much constrained by private information and my inability to produce it in self-justification. The position changed only recently on that. I was certainly "letting sleeping dogs lie". The matter has been in my candidate questions. That is an appropriate forum.

In any case you would expect an Arbitrator with experience to adopt such a position as follows:

• Dispute resolution is the opposite of the use of the soapbox;
• Individuals are supposed to try to resolve difficulties themselves;
• The onus is on the complainant to present definite points, and if a direct negotiation doesn't go well, informal mediation is the next step;
• Formulation matters - B should not be trying to infer what A's concerns are;
• Forum matters, and doubly so where personal information may be involved;
• Tangential commentary doesn't help, and the key point in Arbitration is whether any actual good will come of procedures.

So much for my attitude. As for "participation" in case pages, some Arbitrators do that and some do not. Since numerous discussions go on by the email list, this is largely a personal choice. If you think this is an electoral matter, OK. I beg to differ. I don't see what that has to do with Hoffman, where I was recused, anyway. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Charles, the fundamental problem here is that key parts of my understanding relate to offsite correspondence. Naturally that demands circumspection. I have been at great pains to avoid further discussion regarding the matter because it could easily lead to an arbitration case against you. I don't want that; I merely wanted to receive your assurance that similar misunderstandings would never happen again. In response, you exhibited more of the same problem. This thread and the one at my user talk show that.

When I asked you at your user talk in October to consider striking through some of your statements at the Matthew Hoffman arbitration, you segregated my comments and called them off topic. When I raised related concerns at the RFC talk you sidestepped them again. So I posted an opinion to that RFC, and although the thing closed less than 24 hours later several experienced Wikipedians called that opinion the very heart of the matter. I wish you had taken my comments to heart a year ago, when I really supposed anyone could have a bad day.

I'm certainly not going to violate your copyright on your correspondence. For many months now I have had the full permission of Vanished User to republish and discuss the emails that led up to the Matthew Hoffman case. If you grant your permission as well, then I will publish it in my blog and ask pertinent questions. On the whole, though, it's unlikely to help you. As I requested at RFC, let's let sleeping dogs lie. Durova^Charge! 23:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you have been shown emails of mine that were part of my ban appeal investigation. I can understand how this could happen, but this of course goes outside netiquette. When you say it could easily lead to an arbitration case against you, I have two comments.

Namely, first, I kind of doubt it. Just on the evidential basis, the ArbCom would rarely take emails of this kind as a basis for a case. As for similar misunderstandings would never happen again, I sincerely hope never to be involved in any similar investigation, where at the end of it is a very troubled student with life in meltdown, temporarily. Anyone who stands for the ArbCom should understand that this is a possibility, amongst many others. It is part of the human context of the work. I spoke of the "backroom" in my candidate statement, and that is a euphemism. The real content is often stuff anyone with decent feelings would find upsetting. Another reason I doubt there is a case in this is that Arbitrators are conceivably told that they didn't handle matters in the best way, by the ArbCom, but this is in effect peer review, not a judicial matter.

Secondly, of course, your diagnosis of the "problem" is your judgement, to which you are entitled. The connection firstly Jehochman and then you made of the Slrubenstein unblock issue with Hoffman strikes me as irrelevant. In fact the only connection I can see is through a looking-glass. Situation I: admin P is asked by admin Q to review a block in a private email discussion, but admin P refuses to undertake the private review, instead going to AN in a hurry. Situation II: admin S lifts a block of admin T after a few hours, without attempting to contact T before acting. The connection of course is that there is a protocol, which is that Q is correct in asking P to review in private first; and S is incorrect in not approaching T privately. Both P and S here are admins acting too quickly, thereby cutting across the intention of the protocol and setting up potentially dramatic situations that would be avoided if email were used. I of course would be Q and T here, and of course I advocate on their side in this business. Other things being equal (no special urgency) these are not trivial matters but essential points of admin conduct. We do have a problem of scale, with over 1000 admins. Collectively admins should agree that the protocols we have are the way to do almost all inter-admin business.

Now, back to me and character, conduct, or whatever you think this is really about. I have never wanted a higher profile on WP than my article work earns me (cf. Vanished User not knowing my name). This works, though, if admins follow the ground rules and ask first "who, why, what is going on?". No admin will know all the others, so this is the safe approach. I expect this. The ArbCom has worked in all my time there to have admins understand that casual disregard of protocol is destructive of admin collegiality. Once that breach is made, I see no reason to let the matter drop. Here we have it: my credo is that admins are supposed to be reasonably responsive, though private exchanges make that often much more likely. Admins who simply shrug off the idea that they operate in the sort of context that implies should expect a very thorough discussion of what on earth they think they are doing. You have said some things I can't at all accept about SlrubensteinII, the RfC. It was completely warranted, from where I stand. You have targeted Jehochman for simply being the person certifying, which is penalising him for his good offices in trying to clarify the ground between "S and T".

The reason I can't accept those comments, and the whole approach you are building on them, is that I think using dispute resolution correctly matters. Dispute resolution is a layer cake with many layers. Arbitration, in a sense, is the icing on the cake; but you seem not to accept even my approach to the first layer, namely frank discussion. Followed by informal mediation. I, frankly, don't see the whole complex of issues in the same light. These debates will come up, and your targetting of an RfC as "unpopular" seems to me to miss the point of the system entirely (as well as the other point about my motivations). You were in effect part of a pile-on there, and I discount any "comment" in a "Request for Comment" that comes down to ad hominem. Further, you seem to miss the key point, anyway. The dispute was resolved, and it was established that those involved were acting in good faith (in my case, I was not free to say in public my reasons, which was precisely why the other party erred in never mailing me to ask for them). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

General comment. – When making references to specific discussions on issues dealt with by the ArbCom in recent past, please have the courtesy of providing us with links to where your observations can be confirmed. This has already been mentioned earlier and would add a much needed substance to an interesting discussion especially with such long individual speeches. --Poeticbent talk 04:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Edit Analysis

A detailed breakdown of this candidate's edits in article and Wikipedia spaces can be found here. Franamax (talk) 02:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on Question from ElinorD

The below discussion was moved from a section of the Candidate's Questions page, found here. The question and its initial response from the candidate remain at that page; everything else should remain here, since it is discussion with and regarding the candidate, not really questions for the candidate. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Question from ElinorD

SlimVirgin has asked you questions above about your passing information about Carl Hewitt to a British reporter, who published it in The Observer. I have not yet followed it closely enough to know how justified her concerns are. But in addition to the public exchange above, I understand that you and she have been recently engaged in a hostile email correspondence over the same issue. To me, that is an indication that you should have recused from the very recent case where you have just voted to desysop her. Can you state the conditions under which you would feel obliged to recuse, and why you did not feel that way in this case? And do you feel that off-wiki disputes (such as private email squabbles) are less a reason for recusal than public unpleasantness on talk pages, seen by everyone? ElinorD (talk) 18:34, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

It's a fair question in its way. I terminated the email exchange formally before participating in the case. I asked for further mails only through Jimmy Wales. Since SlimVirgin ignored two requests to terminate and then sent a further mail through Jimmy Wales which added nothing she hadn't said before, I sent her yesterday a comprehensive mail covering 29 points, but asking that she stop mailing me the same stuff. "Hostile" is fair enough for such a proceeding, I suppose; but on her side. You can see further up that she believes she can do the Jeremy Paxman thing. It's called "nuisance mail", actually, when the recipient asks you to stop and you don't.

As she herself concedes, I started the exchange. I was informing her of something that had just come up, namely the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) judgement on Carl Hewitt's complaint to them. On three major points the PCC has found against Hewitt. This is not a libel proceeding, I should add, but the complaint of Hewitt against The Observer has now been properly heard. The PCC hasn't yet updated its website. I was doing a few things, namely passing to SlimVirgin the highly relevant news, putting her in touch with Jenny Kleeman who is in a position to clarify all this, and passing on the code number of the case. All in a spirit of co-operation with a colleague. The PCC is in a much better position to answer on all this, having spent some months before concluding there is nothing to the complaint that stands up. My position is that when we have fuller details SlimVirgin and I can go over the same ground. At present I have nothing more to add. That's it.

There is nothing to recuse about here. The email exchange was taking on a sour tone so I said "here we stop". By the way, it sounds as if you have some version of this, but I don't know where from. I'm certainly glad to be able to deal with rumours as they crop up. I can comment more on Hewitt, but essentially if you go over to Reliability of Wikipedia you can see someone is citing his knol, and you can see why it is nonsense. He moves from saying I was one of the "senior academics" (see Slim's question) to pointing out that I didn't get tenure at Cambridge and therefore failed to become one. Self-refuting. I wish someone else could reason with SlimVirgin on this point - I've had enough to pointing out the fallacy.

Generally, I repeat this point: "recuse" is a reflexive verb not a transitive verb. Arbitrators have to get used to the idea that others are going to try to "recuse" them. Nothing to hide, in my case. I voted for the compromise that the bulk of the Committee lined up with. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Charles, some clarification is in order. First, I have no e-mail from you yesterday, so please resend. We had two bouts of correspondence on this issue — the first on December 20, 2007, initiated by me, and the second November 18-23, 2008, initiated by you because I had raised the issue on this page [9] (and I raised it publicly only because you're standing for re-election). When you said on November 23 that you regarded the correspondence as over, I wrote again once to say I assumed it wasn't private, given that you'd copied my e-mails to a journalist without my consent (that was my "nuisance mail"). You didn't reply. I'd be perfectly happy to have our correspondence posted on a subpage so that people can judge it for themselves. Do you agree?

As for the Press Complaints Commission, two points: first, neither of us has read their ruling. More importantly, it is your actions I asked about, not the reporter's, not the newspaper's, not the PCC's. Yours. At each point in the correspondence, you tried to change the subject to the behavior of others, who were only doing their jobs. I feel it was unethical of you as an arbitrator to take an editor and BLP subject you were in conflict with to ArbCom, then report him to a newspaper because of poor onwiki behavior — even if you were 100 percent right about him. It violates the entire spirit of our BLP policy. If it had been seriously outrageous behavior, I could see the justification, but the Hewitt situation was commonplace, yet now he has a very public stain on his character thanks to you. I'm asking about it here because I feel it's inappropriate behavior for an arbitrator, as, indeed, is failing to recuse in a case involving me initiated just hours after our last e-mail exchange about my criticism of you. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 14:22, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Please note that this section is headed "Question from ElinorD". It is not headed "forum about SlimVirgin". Charles Matthews (talk) 14:30, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The question is important, and I hope you'll address it fully, even if it isn't formatted correctly. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are doing here, either. But I wish an election official to sort out the position before I do anything. This not - repeat not - a general discussion forum for threaded comments. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:17, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Restarting as discussion

SlimVirgin, if you haven't had the mail I mentioned yet, prompt Jimmy Wales. It is a mail to him to forward, subject line "To forward to SlimVirgin". Charles Matthews (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)