Roger Davies: Wikipedia’s Imperial Arbitrator

[Zoloft]

Roger Davies: Wikipedia’s Imperial Arbitrator

New blog post up:

So, who is the longest-serving Arbitrator? Who runs the mailing list? Who is the Coordinating Arbitrator? All three positions are currently held by the same man, possibly the most powerful leader in Wikipedia’s chaotic power structure, who has authored many of the Arbitration Committee’s important decisions.

His name is Roger Davies.

Discuss.

[Ihatemyusername]

Everything else aside, it seems overly flattering to compare Arbcom members to US presidents.

[HRIP7]

I'd seen an earlier version of that blog post when I was still part of the blog writers' team here. I didn't like it then, and predictably, I still don't like it now.

I looked at the plagiarism issues at the time; they really amounted to nothing in my opinion. I remember one example involved Roger's using a technical phrase (some kind of stirrup?) that was used independently in three different books by three different authors to describe that same thing. Sometimes a certain phrase is just what you call things.

As for Roger's supposed faux-pas at Wikimania, I'm in agreement with the comment Anthony Cole left under the blog itself. Anything to do with women's participation may not be Roger's strongest point (I did disagree with aspects of how the Lightbreather case went down), but he has that in common with a lot of other male Wikipedians.

At the same time, I remember many good ArbCom decisions Roger had a decisive hand in.

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

[Cla68]

I had almost forgotten about that Mathsci mess. I clicked on the links in the blog post and refreshed my memory. Dang, a lot of Wikipedians sure did act like pricks when Mathsci was on his rampage. Johnuniq, Professor marginalia, Red Pen of Doom, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Timotheus Canens, and, of course, you Roger, what a bunch of wankers you all made yourselves out to be in that nonsense. All of it started because I reverted a single edit that screwball made to my talk page. It then escalated because you all collectively decided to stick your heads up your arses. If Mathsci hadn't finally completely lost the plot and got himself banned, that crap would probably still be going on.

As HRIP says above, it may be true that Roger has contributed to some good decisions. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it doesn't make up for all of other people's time he wasted by sticking up for Mathsci and facilitating the jackasses who were enabling him.

[Moral Hazard]

On behalf of Arbcom, Roger Davies (T-C-L) acknowledged receipt of the material about Demiurge1000 (T-C-L).

On the one hand, this makes Roger and Arbcom better than Jimmy Wales (T-H-L) / Jimbo Wales (T-C-L), who acknowledged nothing at his Wikia email (his designated email).

On the other hand, it makes Roger Davies especially culpable for Demiurge1000's continued participation on English Wikipedia during another year and a half, until finally he was banned by the WMF.

[Zironic]

So the thing about Roger Davies is, can anyone name any sitting Arbitrator that would be a better “Coordinating Arbitrator” then he is? He appears to me to most of the time be one of the more reasonable of the Arbitrators so any problem with him probably just reflects the inherent problem with how Arbcom works.

[JCM]

So the thing about Roger Davies is, can anyone name any sitting Arbitrator that would be a better “Coordinating Arbitrator” then he is? He appears to me to most of the time be one of the more reasonable of the Arbitrators so any problem with him probably just reflects the inherent problem with how Arbcom works.

This is a reasonable point above. The Coordinating Arbitrator seems to have as one of his/her duties personnel management matters, and a lot of input in basically delegating authority to his colleagues. A few of the other arbs, past and present, I have known through e-mail and online conversations and I have to say that however much I might respect them as individuals and in some cases as people who can or should be trusted to make decisions on complicated matters, those are entirely unrelated to personnel management and delegating authority, and I know from personnel experience that those many or most people who have either one are not necessarily particularly good at the other.

[Captain Occam]

So the thing about Roger Davies is, can anyone name any sitting Arbitrator that would be a better “Coordinating Arbitrator” then he is? He appears to me to most of the time be one of the more reasonable of the Arbitrators so any problem with him probably just reflects the inherent problem with how Arbcom works.

With respect to the Mathsci case, most of the problems he caused there had more to do with the fact that he was the drafter for that case than that he was the coordinating arbitrator. I'm not as familiar with the gender politics cases, but I suspect the same thing is true of those. (Then again, I'm not sure what it would look like for someone to misuse their power as coordinating arbitrator specifically.)

Ideally, the coordinating arbitrator ought to be someone with several years of experience and ArbCom, and who's consistently shown good judgement in their arbitration decisions. Roger Davies certainly fulfills the first requirement, but there are other arbitrators who've been on ArbCom for the past three years and who haven't caused any major conflicts of the sort that Davies has caused during that time. Courcelles is probably the best example, but Newyorkbrad also would've been a good choice for the role before he retired.

[The Devil's Advocate]

As for Roger's supposed faux-pas at Wikimania, I'm in agreement with the comment Anthony Cole left under the blog itself. Anything to do with women's participation may not be Roger's strongest point (I did disagree with aspects of how the Lightbreather case went down), but he has that in common with a lot of other male Wikipedians.

I'm not horribly concerned about the first comment from Wikimania, but it is the second one that is more of an issue, especially in light of his later actions.

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

Yes, who is this mysterious figure known as TDA? Come out you coward! Surely a master of disguise.

[Captain Occam]

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

Yes, who is this mysterious figure known as TDA? Come out you coward! Surely a master of disguise.

If you put some effort into it, I don't think it's all that difficult to figure out who "Agahnim" is, either.

[Zoloft]

[Randy from Boise]

So the thing about Roger Davies is, can anyone name any sitting Arbitrator that would be a better “Coordinating Arbitrator” then he is? He appears to me to most of the time be one of the more reasonable of the Arbitrators so any problem with him probably just reflects the inherent problem with how Arbcom works.

Exactly.

Welcome to WPO, by the way, please do post more!!!

RfB

[Triptych]

At the London conference, Steven Walling, assisted by Mariana Pinchuk, gave a talk to a packed audience on how to make Wikipedia more attractive to women. After the talk, a group of Wikipediocrats met Davies in the corridor and mentioned the talk. Davies hadn’t even heard of Walling. It was explained that Walling was charged with retention of female editors at Wikipedia. Roger Davies was astonished. “WHAT, THE ONES WITH BIG TITS?? HAR HAR!!” Davies has a loud and penetrating voice. At that very moment, Katy Love, who is in charge of the Funds Dissemination Committee at the Foundation, passed behind us, carrying her young daughter. Her face froze in horror and dismay.

Davies, you dumb crude dope.

The article says not much is known about him personally, but there's a New York Time article ca. 2011 where he is quoted and described as a writer from London.

[MMAR]

I too think the influence of being the coordinator, or even the aspect of being longest serving, is minimal in terms of boosting their power beyond 1/15th of the committee. Far more relevant is the influence of the drafters of cases. If you were the kind of guy who scoffed at the idea of civility and the WMF's efforts to address the gender gap, then yes, drafting arbitrator on relevant cases would be exactly where you'd want to be.

As far as I understand it, it's the role of the drafter to examine all the evidence in close detail - saving the time of the rest of the committee, who are at will to look at as much, or as little of it as they see fit. It bears repeating - the Lightbreather decision didn't even come close to addressing the obvious and persistent on-wiki harassment she was subjected to, by multiple editors, even though there was copious amounts of evidence of it posted.

On so many occasions it seems, there is a clear dissonance between the Evidence posted and the eventual decision, with requests for explanation after the event completely ignored. They do not address it, even to explain why it's not relevant/not compelling.

[Zironic]

On so many occasions it seems, there is a clear dissonance between the Evidence posted and the eventual decision, with requests for explanation after the event completely ignored. They do not address it, even to explain why it's not relevant/not compelling.

My impression of Arbcom is that they're either unwilling or unable to actually solve the problems that land on their table. They'll block a few editors and maybe set up discretionary sanctions on a page after which they'll 'Appeal to the community'. This is I believe by design, the committee are not supposed to write policy or make sweeping changes to how Wikipedia works. However as Wikipedia so apply demonstrates, you can't effectively write policy through community either, frankly I think it's wondrous that Wikipedia works at all.

[Peryglus]

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

Actually, TDA is not an acronym because it has to be pronounced as individual letters, not as a word. This makes it an initialism.

[Konveyor Belt]

This article, I think, somewhat misses the mark. There are far worse current and past arbs to write articles about. Roger Davies imo is one of the best of that committee.

[Randy from Boise]

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

Actually, TDA is not an acronym because it has to be pronounced as individual letters, not as a word. This makes it an initialism.

.........................and you a pedant! ;-)


RfB

[Jim]

Lastly, I'm not overly fond of this custom of authors hiding behind fancy pseudonyms and acronyms.

Actually, TDA is not an acronym because it has to be pronounced as individual letters, not as a word. This makes it an initialism.

And, for bonus points, simultaneously confirms you again as just an annoying fuckwit.

You never did say whether Peryglus was your real name, though you you were happy to mock other users for not using theirs. Happy to wait for an answer.

May I borrow one of your dozens of admin accounts? I'd like to troll the OTRS wiki.

[Moral Hazard]

Roger Davies's jurisprudence last year: He rejected the finding of fact against Eric Corbett but still voted to ban him.

Welcome back, Jim. Can't say that WO has improved.

[Jim]

Can't say that WO has improved.

Not at all. Came back to see if there was hope. Doubt there is. Awesome to see you here. My offspring now 12. Yours must be what, 3? Good to see you Keifer.

[The Devil's Advocate]

Actually, TDA is not an acronym because it has to be pronounced as individual letters, not as a word. This makes it an initialism.

Actually, you pronounce it like "Ta-da!"

[Midsize Jake]

This article, I think, somewhat misses the mark. There are far worse current and past arbs to write articles about. Roger Davies imo is one of the best of that committee.

I actually agree with you (and Mr. Kolbe) for the most part. When this blog post was first proposed and drafted, I thought it was too long, and that a lot of the detail about questionable (if not actually bad) decisions by Mr. Davies could have been removed to better emphasize a much more important point. That point being, of course, that despite Wikipedia's much-vaunted reputation as a highly-participatory system that works on the basis of "consensus," it's still possible for one person to attain/maintain enough personal power within that system to effectively set the agenda and "drive the bus" in a particular direction.

The counter-argument would be that Mr. Davies wouldn't have been allowed so much power if he hadn't shown the kind of "Wiki-wisdom" and general in-context trustworthiness that he has over such a long period of time. But there's also a counter-counter-argument, which is that wisdom and trustworthiness can be faked, and that even if someone starts out with the best of intentions, power still corrupts eventually.

Another thing we might ask is, what's the backup plan? If Mr. Davies leaves WP, or is somehow incapacitated, what happens? Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, who's likely to fill it in? I'm not seeing an obvious successor. Personally, I think Mr. Davies would be smart to divest himself of one of his two primary roles at some point in the near future - presumably the mailing list one, though that's probably even more influential than "Coordinating Arbitrator." But the role he gives up will have to go to someone they trust at least as much as him, and maybe they don't have such a person yet.

[JCM]

This article, I think, somewhat misses the mark. There are far worse current and past arbs to write articles about. Roger Davies imo is one of the best of that committee.

I actually agree with you (and Mr. Kolbe) for the most part. When this blog post was first proposed and drafted, I thought it was too long, and that a lot of the detail about questionable (if not actually bad) decisions by Mr. Davies could have been removed to better emphasize a much more important point. That point being, of course, that despite Wikipedia's much-vaunted reputation as a highly-participatory system that works on the basis of "consensus," it's still possible for one person to attain/maintain enough personal power within that system to effectively set the agenda and "drive the bus" in a particular direction.

The counter-argument would be that Mr. Davies wouldn't have been allowed so much power if he hadn't shown the kind of "Wiki-wisdom" and general in-context trustworthiness that he has over such a long period of time. But there's also a counter-counter-argument, which is that wisdom and trustworthiness can be faked, and that even if someone starts out with the best of intentions, power still corrupts eventually.

Another thing we might ask is, what's the backup plan? If Mr. Davies leaves WP, or is somehow incapacitated, what happens? Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, who's likely to fill it in? I'm not seeing an obvious successor. Personally, I think Mr. Davies would be smart to divest himself of one of his two primary roles at some point in the near future - presumably the mailing list one, though that's probably even more influential than "Coordinating Arbitrator." But the role he gives up will have to go to someone they trust at least as much as him, and maybe they don't have such a person yet.

There are some really good points here, and I would love to have Brad jump in the discussion here at some point. From what I can remember, it always seemed to me that Roger at least in substantial part got the role he did because he succeeded Kirill as lead coordinator of MILHIST. Having for a short time attempted to similar things in other topics, I know it has a lot of duties and responsibilities that, frankly, I ain't up to. I'm guessing that Kirill and some of the other arbs at the time reviewed his work with MILHIST, or spoke to individuals involved, and thought that he displayed the characteristics they were looking for. He had done so far as I can tell a very good job at MILHIST, and that might be the closest approximation in-house to be a coordinator arbitrator out there. Maybe. And, should that happen, maybe, again I dunno, one of the successors at MILHIST lead coordinator, if they want to put themselves through being an arbitrator, might be one of the few other people who will have demonstrated such abilities in-house there.

Not saying that I really want to see being lead coordinator of MILHIST as a stepping stone to being coordinating arbitrator or anything like that, but MILHIST is one of the few places where someone can really display that they might have the required talents somewhere other wikipedia people can see them.

[Cla68]

This article, I think, somewhat misses the mark. There are far worse current and past arbs to write articles about. Roger Davies imo is one of the best of that committee.

I actually agree with you (and Mr. Kolbe) for the most part. When this blog post was first proposed and drafted, I thought it was too long, and that a lot of the detail about questionable (if not actually bad) decisions by Mr. Davies could have been removed to better emphasize a much more important point. That point being, of course, that despite Wikipedia's much-vaunted reputation as a highly-participatory system that works on the basis of "consensus," it's still possible for one person to attain/maintain enough personal power within that system to effectively set the agenda and "drive the bus" in a particular direction.

The counter-argument would be that Mr. Davies wouldn't have been allowed so much power if he hadn't shown the kind of "Wiki-wisdom" and general in-context trustworthiness that he has over such a long period of time. But there's also a counter-counter-argument, which is that wisdom and trustworthiness can be faked, and that even if someone starts out with the best of intentions, power still corrupts eventually.

Another thing we might ask is, what's the backup plan? If Mr. Davies leaves WP, or is somehow incapacitated, what happens? Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, who's likely to fill it in? I'm not seeing an obvious successor. Personally, I think Mr. Davies would be smart to divest himself of one of his two primary roles at some point in the near future - presumably the mailing list one, though that's probably even more influential than "Coordinating Arbitrator." But the role he gives up will have to go to someone they trust at least as much as him, and maybe they don't have such a person yet.

There are some really good points here, and I would love to have Brad jump in the discussion here at some point. From what I can remember, it always seemed to me that Roger at least in substantial part got the role he did because he succeeded Kirill as lead coordinator of MILHIST. Having for a short time attempted to similar things in other topics, I know it has a lot of duties and responsibilities that, frankly, I ain't up to. I'm guessing that Kirill and some of the other arbs at the time reviewed his work with MILHIST, or spoke to individuals involved, and thought that he displayed the characteristics they were looking for. He had done so far as I can tell a very good job at MILHIST, and that might be the closest approximation in-house to be a coordinator arbitrator out there. Maybe. And, should that happen, maybe, again I dunno, one of the successors at MILHIST lead coordinator, if they want to put themselves through being an arbitrator, might be one of the few other people who will have demonstrated such abilities in-house there.

Not saying that I really want to see being lead coordinator of MILHIST as a stepping stone to being coordinating arbitrator or anything like that, but MILHIST is one of the few places where someone can really display that they might have the required talents somewhere other wikipedia people can see them.

The MILHIST project was definitely one of WP's early success stories, producing such good content that it was actually starting to get favorable mention in the historical community at large, from what I observed. After Kirill left as lead coordinator, it's productivity started to wane under Roger, and really started to die after he become an arbitrator. It wasn't only the leadership vacuum that affected the MILHIST project, IMO, it was also the general lack of effective administration throughout WP that led MILHIST's active contributors to start finding other things to do with their time.

[Captain Occam]

[...] even if someone starts out with the best of intentions, power still corrupts eventually.

This is basically what I suspect has happened, and it's one of the reasons why I think arbitrators (like U.S. presidents) should be limited to a maximum number of years in office. Most arbitrators are initially aware that in order to get re-elected, they need to put some effort into maintaining the community's trust. But after they've been in power for long enough, they can eventually count on getting a certain number of votes from people who just don't want to "rock the boat". The longer someone has been in power, the less they have to worry about bad decisions endangering their status.

I also think there sometimes can be early warning signs that someone will eventually turn out to be this sort of person. In Davies' case, the early warning sign would have been the plagiarism.

Another thing we might ask is, what's the backup plan? If Mr. Davies leaves WP, or is somehow incapacitated, what happens? Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, who's likely to fill it in? I'm not seeing an obvious successor. Personally, I think Mr. Davies would be smart to divest himself of one of his two primary roles at some point in the near future - presumably the mailing list one, though that's probably even more influential than "Coordinating Arbitrator." But the role he gives up will have to go to someone they trust at least as much as him, and maybe they don't have such a person yet.

Aside from Davies, the three arbitrators who've been on ArbCom for the longest are AGK, Salvio, and Courcelles. I'd personally be okay with any of those three as a successor. I know a lot of the people here don't trust AGK, but if it's true that the position of coordinating arbitrator doesn't provide much additional influence over decisions, AGK might be an appropriate choice for that role. (Although not for the mailing list role.)

[Vigilant]

Roger Davies as Immortan Joe

[The Devil's Advocate]

This article, I think, somewhat misses the mark. There are far worse current and past arbs to write articles about. Roger Davies imo is one of the best of that committee.

Well, in some of the initial drafts I did of the R&I section, there was a brief and somewhat humorous mention of how Timotheus Canens threatened a walk-out of AE admins and talked about undoing every discretionary sanction he ever imposed if ArbCom made the one-way interactions bans imposed on me and Cla68 regarding Mathsci into mutual interaction bans only for him to successfully run for ArbCom a month later. It got left out because my proposals were a bit long. You don't need an entire blog post on T. Canens, though. That one incident pretty much damns him and anyone who was fool enough to vote for him.

So the thing about Roger Davies is, can anyone name any sitting Arbitrator that would be a better “Coordinating Arbitrator” then he is? He appears to me to most of the time be one of the more reasonable of the Arbitrators so any problem with him probably just reflects the inherent problem with how Arbcom works.

I think this is missing an important point in that we don't really know of an ArbCom that has a coordinating arbitrator other than Davies. He has held the position nearly as long as it has existed. People here can go on about how he was the best man for the job, but it seems questionable that was really the consideration. You look at the make-up of ArbCom at the time and you had a wide assortment of arbitrators with more seniority and experience. Newyorkbrad, in particular, was already on ArbCom at the time and he would have the professional experience necessary to hold the position. I may detest how Brad voted in the GamerGate case, but I do not believe you can say Davies got the position by being the most qualified. He got it because he knew the most senior arbitrator on the Committee at the time, the arbitrator who was the natural choice to hold the position, and was selected as his deputy.

Another thing we might ask is, what's the backup plan? If Mr. Davies leaves WP, or is somehow incapacitated, what happens? Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, who's likely to fill it in? I'm not seeing an obvious successor. Personally, I think Mr. Davies would be smart to divest himself of one of his two primary roles at some point in the near future - presumably the mailing list one, though that's probably even more influential than "Coordinating Arbitrator." But the role he gives up will have to go to someone they trust at least as much as him, and maybe they don't have such a person yet.

On the Committee the person who has held an on-wiki position of similar weight is AGK, who was the Chairperson for MedCom for about two years and is second in seniority to Davies.

[Captain Occam]

I think this is missing an important point in that we don't really know of an ArbCom that has a coordinating arbitrator other than Davies. He has held the position nearly as long as it has existed. People here can go on about how he was the best man for the job, but it seems questionable that was really the consideration. You look at the make-up of ArbCom at the time and you had a wide assortment of arbitrators with more seniority and experience. Newyorkbrad, in particular, was already on ArbCom at the time and he would have the professional experience necessary to hold the position. I may detest how Brad voted in the GamerGate case, but I do not believe you can say Davies got the position by being the most qualified. He got it because he knew the most senior arbitrator on the Committee at the time, the arbitrator who was the natural choice to hold the position, and was selected as his deputy.

I think this is a pretty significant point. Perhaps it should've been mentioned in the blog post?

[turnedworm]

It seems that there are two parts of this post that have bubbled to the top, so I thought I'd comment on them as I have a fair amount of knowledge about them.

Firstly, regarding the "gaffe" at Wikimania, I was standing beside Roger when he said it. My recollection matched Anthony's (in the blog comments section), he was highlighting the absurdity of having a young man in charge of retaining women. In context, the comment made sense and whilst it was understandably taken out of context then, taking it further out of context now just serves to discredit the article.

So, moving on to the "co-ordinating arbitrator" role and "mailing list administrator".
We had a few "mailing list administrators", who would add new arbs, remove olds ones and do the moderation. That moderation was a big job when I started, hundreds of spam messages to clear down each day. Roger was one of a few of us who spent their time wading through. Eventually, I got annoyed and implemented some regex to reduce the spam and the role became easier. So, I'd certainly say his role there is overstated.

The co-ordinating arbitrator role has also been overstated. Different arbitrators pick up different tasks and focus on them. This is most clear on cases, where there are different drafting arbitrators. While I was on the committee, I kept a page up to date on a private arbcom wiki, listing all the things that were going on at the time, and highlighting which needed attention. A number of arbitrators would send emails to the list to try and get the slower members of the committee to make their thoughts known. As such, there were a number of people co-ordinating at any given time. Kirill may have been an active co-ordinator, indeed, Roger may have been an active co-ordinator at one point. But certainly in 2013-2014, the role meant next to nothing.

[Moral Hazard]

WHAT, THE ONES WITH BIG TITS?? HAR HAR!!

Roger was likely getting in character for cosplay.

King o’ the Wildlings?
Har!
King o’ My Hairy Butt Crack, more like.

[Zironic]

[...] even if someone starts out with the best of intentions, power still corrupts eventually.

This is basically what I suspect has happened, and it's one of the reasons why I think arbitrators (like U.S. presidents) should be limited to a maximum number of years in office. Most arbitrators are initially aware that in order to get re-elected, they need to put some effort into maintaining the community's trust. But after they've been in power for long enough, they can eventually count on getting a certain number of votes from people who just don't want to "rock the boat". The longer someone has been in power, the less they have to worry about bad decisions endangering their status.

Well, what should the maximum term length be? Roger Davies has only been an arbitrator for 6 years which while long by Wikipedia standards, is fairly short by real life standards.

Well, in some of the initial drafts I did of the R&I section, there was a brief and somewhat humorous mention of how Timotheus Canens threatened a walk-out of AE admins and talked about undoing every discretionary sanction he ever imposed if ArbCom made the one-way interactions bans imposed on me and Cla68 regarding Mathsci into mutual interaction bans only for him to successfully run for ArbCom a month later. It got left out because my proposals were a bit long. You don't need an entire blog post on T. Canens, though. That one incident pretty much damns him and anyone who was fool enough to vote for him.

It's so fascinating that he wrote that in 2012 because the interaction between Arbcom and AE appears to be exactly the same now as Timotheus described in 2012. Did Arbcom perform any better in 2013 and 2014 while he was an Arbitrator? I suspect not as the limp-wristedness of Arbcom is somewhat inherent to the bureaucratic process involved.

[Carcharoth]

I agree with the points WTT made about "co-ordinating arbitrator" role and "mailing list administrator". The potential influence of those roles are massively overstated. Trying to co-ordinate arbs is more like herding cats than anything influential. If arbs that were slack in carrying out their duties in a measurable way could actually be pulled up and disciplined in some way, then the role might have some meaning. But arbs are just volunteers and the worst that happens is people get unhappy with them for a while and (possibly) they don't get re-elected. If it was clearer what arbs were actually doing, then it would be much easier to call out those who do too little, or commit to do things and don't actually do them, or do things badly. (It would also be much easier to manage the workflow and delegate things to others outside the committee.)

What ArbCom might have benefited from at some point was a dedicated secretariat - a set of non-voting roles dedicated to truly organising things and keeping things going. Sometimes arbs fill that role, but they tended to end up either failing to do it properly, or being overwhelmed by the amount of work it involved, or the need to chip in and help themselves.

The one point in the blog post that is arguably correct is this: "its membership is changed in part every year by elections and resignations, leaving its longest-serving members with substantial influence over its operations". This is correct, but even there I was at pains (when on the committee myself) to try and make sure the senior members saw themselves as providing advice and help to those who had just joined, not being dictatorial, overbearing, or playing the seniority card. Hopefully that is still how it works.

One final point, Tim's comment on the blog post is correct: the graph is wrong, Courcelles does not hold continuous membership on ArbCom from 2012. See here: "Courcelles (January 2012 – December 2013, January 2015 – present; current member)". You could also make clear that the graph only shows current arbs. Past arbs with long service history include Kirill Lokshin (around 6.5 years), Newyorkbrad (7 years), and Risker (5 years). A more rounded article would have compared Roger with them in more detail and talked about their influence, and whether shorter-serving arbs (even those only serving 1-2 years) can have comparable influence (I think they can).

[Captain Occam]

Well, what should the maximum term length be? Roger Davies has only been an arbitrator for 6 years which while long by Wikipedia standards, is fairly short by real life standards.

When he's up for re-election at the end of this year, it'll have been seven years. I think either four or six years would be a good maximum length. This is all hypothetical, though; I really doubt Wikipedia will actually implement term limits for arbitrators.

The one point in the blog post that is arguably correct is this: "its membership is changed in part every year by elections and resignations, leaving its longest-serving members with substantial influence over its operations". This is correct, but even there I was at pains (when on the committee myself) to try and make sure the senior members saw themselves as providing advice and help to those who had just joined, not being dictatorial, overbearing, or playing the seniority card. Hopefully that is still how it works.

The thing that I think is the greatest concern isn't that arbitrators will flaunt their seniority in order to get their way. It's that other arbitrators will tend to defer to their seniors, especially when one of their seniors is the drafter of a case, without exercizing independent judgment.

There was a pretty clear example of this during the 2012 R&I review case. During the voting on that case, SilkTork pointed out that several of Davies' findings of fact were inaccurate, or were supported by bogus diffs, and Davies subsequently admitted he'd gotten them wrong. He admitted to that here, here, and here. But by the time Davies recognized and fixed these mistakes in the findings of fact, most of the other arbitrators had already voted to support them. In other words, none of the arbitrators before SilkTork bothered to check whether or not what they were voting for was accurate.

One final point, Tim's comment on the blog post is correct: the graph is wrong, Courcelles does not hold continuous membership on ArbCom from 2012. See here: "Courcelles (January 2012 – December 2013, January 2015 – present; current member)".

Yes, we're aware of that issue. There's a corrected version of the chart here. Hopefully one of the admins will eventually update the post with the corrected graph, but it hasn't been done yet.

[The Devil's Advocate]

Firstly, regarding the "gaffe" at Wikimania, I was standing beside Roger when he said it. My recollection matched Anthony's (in the blog comments section), he was highlighting the absurdity of having a young man in charge of retaining women. In context, the comment made sense and whilst it was understandably taken out of context then, taking it further out of context now just serves to discredit the article.

How is the comment taken out of context? We note he said exactly that. I am curious what you have to say about the other one, the one no one defending him seems interested in talking about.

[Cla68]

Firstly, regarding the "gaffe" at Wikimania, I was standing beside Roger when he said it. My recollection matched Anthony's (in the blog comments section), he was highlighting the absurdity of having a young man in charge of retaining women. In context, the comment made sense and whilst it was understandably taken out of context then, taking it further out of context now just serves to discredit the article.

How is the comment taken out of context? We note he said exactly that. I am curious what you have to say about the other one, the one no one defending him seems interested in talking about.

Even if he meant it in a sarcastic or ironic way, you can't be saying things like that in that type of situation.

[turnedworm]

Firstly, regarding the "gaffe" at Wikimania, I was standing beside Roger when he said it. My recollection matched Anthony's (in the blog comments section), he was highlighting the absurdity of having a young man in charge of retaining women. In context, the comment made sense and whilst it was understandably taken out of context then, taking it further out of context now just serves to discredit the article.

How is the comment taken out of context? We note he said exactly that. I am curious what you have to say about the other one, the one no one defending him seems interested in talking about.

It's taken out of context because the flow of the conversation implied what Roger explicitly said. The individuals discussing the matter were implicitly pointing out what Walling's motives may be, whilst Roger explicitly said it.

As for the other comment - I wasn't there and there's zero context with respect to who he said it to or why, which makes it very difficult to defend. You make it clear that the comment was intended as humourous "(har har)", so a simple context of "here's what I should have said, it would be much funnier" would explain it perfectly. I may not know the context, but given how the one I did know about was poorly written, I'm not willing to just accept the one I don't.

[turnedworm]

Firstly, regarding the "gaffe" at Wikimania, I was standing beside Roger when he said it. My recollection matched Anthony's (in the blog comments section), he was highlighting the absurdity of having a young man in charge of retaining women. In context, the comment made sense and whilst it was understandably taken out of context then, taking it further out of context now just serves to discredit the article.

How is the comment taken out of context? We note he said exactly that. I am curious what you have to say about the other one, the one no one defending him seems interested in talking about.

Even if he meant it in a sarcastic or ironic way, you can't be saying things like that in that type of situation.

In what type of situation? We were in a secluded corridor, apparently empty. The group were discussing the individual who had been put in charge of the gender gap, especially that it was a man. More than one person in the discussion implied the individual would be happy as he got to work with the girls.

Personally, I would say there was a very large chance that Roger was attempting to make the people who were making the implicit comments uncomfortable by explicitly stating what they were implying. It's a technique I've seen work many times in the past to shut down gossip and innuendo, away from Wikipedia.

That said, I can't speak for his motives, I'm not Roger. I'm surprised at the people who are trying to though, given they weren't there.

[Captain Occam]

Personally, I would say there was a very large chance that Roger was attempting to make the people who were making the implicit comments uncomfortable by explicitly stating what they were implying. It's a technique I've seen work many times in the past to shut down gossip and innuendo, away from Wikipedia.

That said, I can't speak for his motives, I'm not Roger. I'm surprised at the people who are trying to though, given they weren't there.

At the end of this year, Wikipedia will have to decide whether they want to re-elect Roger Davies to another term. In this context, I think scrutinizing whether his motives are compatible with the goals of the project is exactly what we should be doing. Isn't that what's always done for ArbCom candidates?

I do think it's possible that Roger Davies meant his "big tits" comment in the way that he claims to have meant it, but you ought to consider how bad this looks in the broader context of his decisions as an arbitrator. In every case this year where gender politics disputes have come before ArbCom, Davies has shown a lack of sympathy for female editors who experienced harassment, even when this contradicted his previous positions about how to handle harassment in Mathsci's case. As an analogy, imagine how it would look if along with his anti-immigration policy suggestions, Donald Trump were also occasionally cracking jokes about Mexican people. He could claim he didn't intend the jokes in a disparaging way, and maybe he'd be telling the truth, but something like that is still ridiculously insensitive when it's coming from a person who's policies in that area are already questionable.

[evouga]

I'm rather disappointed this article was allowed to see print -- it's a pretty transparent hatchet job against the most competent sitting arbitrator. The "plagiarism" allegations are much ado about nothing and the (unsourced) sexist comments might be of concern, but it's hard to tell because of the glaring ideological bias of the authors in describing the context (Mark Bernstein and his blog being taken seriously is one huge red flag).

Instead of a reasoned weighing of the pros and cons of Roger's tenure, the article instead sounds like the writing process went along the lines of, "whoah this guy has a lot of power, let's dig up as much dirt as we can and blow the little that we do find outrageously out of proportion."

[The Devil's Advocate]

it's a pretty transparent hatchet job against the most competent sitting arbitrator.

I obviously disagree with characterizing him in such a glowing manner, but even if you were right that he really is the best of them, then what does that say about the rest of them?

the (unsourced) sexist comments might be of concern, it's hard to tell because of the glaring ideological bias of the authors in describing the context (Mark Bernstein and his blog being taken seriously is one huge red flag).

Uhhh, most of that section was my work and I would hardly be accused of having the kind of bias you ascribe to me. Pretty much the opposite to be honest. Also the comments are not unsourced, just anonymously sourced, though one of them has at this point been corroborated by several different people in this thread and in the comments, none of whom dispute the accuracy of it.

[Poetlister]

it's a pretty transparent hatchet job against the most competent sitting arbitrator.

I obviously disagree with characterizing him in such a glowing manner, but even if you were right that he really is the best of them, then what does that say about the rest of them?

Somebody has to be the best one, and Roger has a fair claim to the title.

[Captain Occam]

There's something I find kind of strange about the arguments people are using to defend Davies in this thread and in the comments to the post. All of his supporters are focused on providing an alternative explanation for his plagiarism and/or for his "big tits" comment, but neither of those things are the post's main point. I'd say the central point of the post is contrasting the lengths that he went to in his efforts to defend Mathsci from harassment, at a lot of other people's expense, against the lack of sympathy he's shown about harassment when it's happened to people like Lightbreather. The significance of his comments at Wikimania isn't just to point out a pair of ill-judged things Davies said. It's that in the context of his arbitration decisions about gender politics, they suggest a possible reason for his lack of sympathy towards female editors, the same way that Mathsci's comment about Davies being "almost a neighbor" explains why Davies would have had the opposite bias in that case.

If people want to argue that Davies is a good arbitrator, this is the argument you ought to be addressing. A good arbitrator applies (or at least tries to apply) a consistent standard across all arbitration cases. They don't base their decisions about whether to protect or punish someone on their personal relationship with the editor in question, or on their attitude towards the group that the editor belongs to.

[Vigilant]

it's a pretty transparent hatchet job against the most competent sitting arbitrator.

I obviously disagree with characterizing him in such a glowing manner, but even if you were right that he really is the best of them, then what does that say about the rest of them?

Somebody has to be the best one, and Roger has a fair claim to the title.

Jesus.

Talk about damning with faint praise....

[The Devil's Advocate]

Something that I noticed a little after this post was published is an interesting detail from the ArbCom mailing list leaks:

Don't let me stop you Just keep disruptive or battleground in the headings (for the benefit of hard of thinking onlookers).

I'll recuse on Cla68 anyway (including FoF drafting) as he and I go back a long way on Milhist.

Roger

Davies had recused from voting on any sanctions for Cla68 or being involved in any drafting that involved him during the Climate Change ArbCom case. He cited his time on the Military History WikiProject as the reason for the recusal. Davies consistently did not recuse when the one-way interaction bans with Mathsci imposed on me and Cla68 kept coming before ArbCom, but voted and strongly argued against doing anything about them at all. Kirill, from the same WikiProject, did recuse in those cases and in past cases involving Cla68.

After the flurry of ArbCom cases involving the one-way interaction bans, two other times matters concerning Cla68 were brought before the Committee. The first was when Kevin unblocked Cla68 after he promised not to repost the oversighted blog post here that gave out Russavia's real name. ArbCom voted to temporarily desysop Kevin with Kirill recusing and Davies not voting. Since Davies was one of four arbitrators to not vote it was not particularly notable, but later when Cla68's appeal was approved Davies again did not vote and, this time, he was the sole arbitrator to not vote on the matter.

It would seem that Davies either knew at the time he first got involved or realized at some later point that he should have recused regarding the one-way interaction bans with Mathsci given his past recusal regarding Cla68, but recusing in those later instances would have revealed that he should not have been involved in the discussion about the one-way interaction bans at all. As such he simply didn't vote when Cla68 came up again on other matters. That looks like an attempt to sweep a very serious mistake or abuse under the rug.

[SB_Johnny]

I'd say the central point of the post is contrasting the lengths that he went to in his efforts to defend Mathsci from harassment, at a lot of other people's expense, against the lack of sympathy he's shown about harassment when it's happened to people like Lightbreather.

Well, that's not the post you wrote, nor was it the "elevator pitch" someone ( ) requested a few weeks ago.

[The Devil's Advocate]

Well, that's not the post you wrote, nor was it the "elevator pitch" someone ( ) requested a few weeks ago.

That's a little different from the pitch he gave, but I think it is essentially the same idea and it is certainly what I thought was the central point of the piece. Davies bent a lot of rules to protect his friend Mathsci under the guise of harassment to the point of compromising himself by acting as an "uninvolved" arbitrator on a matter where he was previously recused as I just mentioned, but when it came to a matter where he had no attachment to the people involved nor much sympathy for their perspective, he gave them a thrashing even when he agreed they were being harassed.

[Captain Occam]

Well, that's not the post you wrote, nor was it the "elevator pitch" someone ( ) requested a few weeks ago.

Well, the "elevator pitch" listed several separate ways he seems to have abused his power. But since this post's critics seem prefer focusing on one argument at a time, I'd say the contrast between his treatment of Mathsci and his treatment of Lightbreather is the most important one. (Along with the circumstantial evidence about what his motives were in either case.)

There's one other detail about this contrast that didn't make it into the post. Now that TDA has mentioned the additional detail about Davies' inconsistency with respect to recusing, I guess I'll also describe the additional detail about Mathsci compared to Lightbreather.

As the blog post mentions, the worst harassment that Lightbreather experienced was off-wiki, when someone uploaded pictures of naked women at a porn site and tagged them with Lightbreather's username. Davies' final decision in the Lightbreather case punished Lightbreather from trying to identify the user responsible for that. His decision took no action against anyone else for harassing her, because he considered there to be no proof who was responsible. But in Mathsci's case, there was a somewhat similar situation in which Davies took the exact opposite stance.

Sometime in 2011, Mathsci discovered that someone had created a parody account under his name at another website. Mathsci spent most of the next year trying to prove who was responsible for it, which in some cases involved posting off-wiki information about Ferahgo that she didn't want posted. But during the 2012 R&I review, Davies showed no sympathy towards her about that, and did not criticize Mathsci for doing it. Instead, Davies came to suspect it was either SightWatcher or TrevelyanL85A2 who had created the account, and in several of his comments (such as the one here) he implied that this was part of his reason for the vaguely-defined interaction bans he gave both of them. In some of his e-mails to Ferahgo during the review, he said that he also thought those two users were responsible for some of the sockpuppets trolling Mathsci, even though everyone else--including everyone who'd run checkuser on the socks--attributed them to the well-known sockmasters Mikemikev and Echigo mole. As far as I know, there was never any evidence for Davies' theories about who was responsible for the off-wiki account or for the socks, so he only mentioned these justifications for his sanctions in e-mails and in his comments on talk pages, not in the findings of fact.

In this area there are two major differences between Mathsci's and Lightbreather's cases. First, the off-wiki harassment against Lightbreather was a lot more obviously malicious, whereas the off-wiki "Mathsci" account came across as more of an immature prank. And second, the off-wiki harassment of Lightbreather occurred during the arbitration case about her, whereas the account parodying Mathsci was already a year old by the time the R&I review happened. Both of these things would argue for Davies making more of an effort to deal with the off-wiki harassment in Lightbreather's case than in Mathsci's case, but instead Davies did exactly the opposite. This is one of the most blatant double standards I've ever seen from a member of ArbCom.

[Poetlister]

Somebody has to be the best one, and Roger has a fair claim to the title.

Jesus.

Talk about damning with faint praise....

Thanks. That was intentional of course.

[Triptych]

Roger Davies: Wikipedia’s Imperial Arbitrator

New blog post up:

So, who is the longest-serving Arbitrator? Who runs the mailing list? Who is the Coordinating Arbitrator? All three positions are currently held by the same man, possibly the most powerful leader in Wikipedia’s chaotic power structure, who has authored many of the Arbitration Committee’s important decisions.

His name is Roger Davies.

Discuss.

TDA and whoever the other author is obviously put a lot of work in on this article, so I wanted to comment it. I think they did a real good job. It's organizationally good with a beginning, some middle sections, and a good conclusion. Years from now, when historians are going over the incredible levels of corruption and bullying and sexism and various other nonsense by Arbcom, this will be a solid reference point for them.

I don't buy where others are saying in this thread that Davies was just an innocent with his crude "big tits" comment in earshot of the mother and her young child. They say he was sarcastically criticizing the implications of others in that group in the lonely hallway (and what sort of group was that then really). But how does one "imply" that the young male designated to work on female editor retention was just trying to meet girls and so forth? That's stupid. A male can work on female editor retention, nothing "absurd" about that, Worm. Plus, without denigrating the appearance of female Wikipedia editors, it's safe to assume it's not like he angled for a back stage job at the Victoria's Secret lingerie show. So the apologetics just don't add up. We know what Davies said.

"Civility case? (Har har) no fucking way you cunts!" speaks for itself pretty loudly as well.

Anyhow, good job on the article, folks.