Jimbo,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns.
Root causes of
the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
consensus editing model.
Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current
controversy? What I mean is that the article already seems much
improved over the past several weeks. So in what way is it really
true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus
editing model?
James and Erik became frustrated to the point where they each were
trying to line up support and get you involved. I consider that a
failure of the "Wiki consensus editing model," and the collateral damage
(that is, Erik and James' frustration and anger, and that of others who
tried to help) isn't worth it, even if the article is better in the end;
also, it does not scale so when we have ten times the active
participation we do today, the process, such as it is, breaks down.
Besides, we're not done yet (with the Mother Teresa article, that is),
and several key points remain unsettled.
Hmm, well, I don't think of mediation and
arbitration as being means
for settling run of the mill legitimate disputes about the content of
the articles, but rather as a means to formalize and decentralize the
_banning_ process, i.e. to deal with persistent, ongoing disruptive
and counter-productive behavioral patterns.
Perhaps there are two separate things. Most disruptive and
counter-productive behavior by longstanding users has its roots in
disputes over content. Provide a fair, effective means of resolving the
content disputes, and >poof<, the cases of disruption requiring bans
become rare.
I do not envision, and would strongly oppose, that
mediation and
arbitration committees get involved in ruling on the exact detailed
contents of articles. (There is of course some overlap, since some
behavioral problems exhibit themselves via a refusal to engage in NPOV
editing over a long period of time.)
Well, anyone involved in mediation shouldn't be ruling on anything at
all, since it is their role to marshall users through a group
decision-making process rather than to make edicts. As for arbitration,
well, if we are going to have an arbitration committee, there isn't
going to be much for them to do if they aren't going to hear article
disputes :-).
Ideally, we would find some way to bring about a culture change to
encourage more supportive and facilitative work on the part of
Wikipedians in general. Had their been a greater amount of this in the
Mother Teresa article, I think the dispute would have been contained and
resolved. Instead, Wikipedians reviewed the article and made their own
edits; though the article may have improved, that didn't help the
dispute much.
Perhaps it has something to do with the demographics of the Wikipedia
participants. Somehow I don't think there's too much background in
group dynamics.
This the latest
in a number of attempts at out-of-process methods to
control the content of the article.
I am opposed to the use of such votes, but I don't regard this as
out-of-process at all. Such votes are nothing more than expressions
of opinion, and are thus non-binding in every relevant sense. Do you
see what I mean? Voting is just one method (a bad one, in cases like
this, I think) of _talking about the article_.
Well, I think we agree that voting may not be the best choice for
creating great articles. Did you read the "votes" in question? I think
there was an intent to make them more or less binding. There were
several different things one could vote upon, and fairly good
participation.
Louis