[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

Mon Jun 6 17:37:34 UTC 2005

> I think theres one issue that your missing here with mediation - Most
> parties that get to the point of arbitration have no desire to allow
> mediators to get involved, and have no desire to even consider discussing
> the situation.

I don't agree with this.

It is true that there exist incurably closed minded and uncooperative
people. I believe such people form only a tiny minority of the people
involved in Wikipedia. We should not worry about them when deciding
our arbitration and moderation procedures, because the ultimate
destination for such people is ejection from our community.

We need to use triage:

1. Those who want to cooperate and find a mutual solution but need an
outsider to facilitate communication and to help cut away moot issues.
2. Those who are not interested in cooperation but can be reasoned
with and can be convinced to accept a compromise.
3. People who can't be cured. (This group consists mostly of people
who get their jollies due to disrupting wikipedia).

We should only expend substantial effort working on mediation support
for a lower group once the higher group has been sufficiently handled.

Right now we have some users who want to help with disputes whom are
very heavy handed. I think these approaches are good for class 3 users
above, but if used on the first group it often turns them into the
second.  I think a lot of the recent grumbling about our toleration of
aggressive admins is because by large they only tend to abuse #3s,
which no one cares about.. quite rightly. :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
I agree that it is a small majority that are un-cooperative. But it is this
small majority that reach the arbitration committee, because as we know
ArbCom don't deal with minor disputes.