[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

Mon Jun 6 22:08:57 UTC 2005

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005, sannse wrote:

> That's what we do at the moment, look at the conduct and leave the
> content to work itself out.  The question is whether we are missing the
> underlying problem by doing this.  Are we missing the frustrations that
> /lead/ to good people loosing their temper and acting badly?  And would
> it be better for there to be some other means, outside of the AC,  to
> solve these content disputes before that happens?

Much of this conversation has been in generalities over hypothetical
examples. One place where some kind of attention to the content would
have been useful was [[2004 U.S. Presidential election controversy and
irregularities]]. It was placed on VfD twice, currently has about 8
pages under Talk, & is an article that remains *very* controversial to
the point that no one except POV-pushers will have anything to do with
it. (I would expect after all of that work, something worth submitting
to Featured Articles would be at that location.)

The original conflict can be reduced with little difficulty as lying
between 2 different opinions about this article:

* There were no irregularities in the election, it's all partisan lies,
& it's not important enough for Wikipedia to bother with it
* There were irregularities, this is the undeniable evidence, & only a
partisan hack would deny it

Not much room for compromise, huh? While I leaned towards the second
school of opinion, what troubled me was that it concerned itself with
creating a base of Original Research, & not with an NPOV treatment, say:

* There are people who believed that there were irregularities
* This is the evidence (news reports, incidents) that convinced them that
there were irregularities
* This is how the story has been playing out (e.g., recounts in Ohio,
Barbara Boxer challenging the results in Ohio in January of this year, etc.)

I feel that this article should have been written this way because if my
understanding is someday proven wrong, the materials need to be there to
show later generations why people thought it was true. On the other hand,
if history does prove that the election was stolen, then what Wikipedia
then needs in this article is not proof that it happened, but an explanation
of how the truth was suppressed. And an NPOV approach would best meet both
of these needs.

And that is why I believe that the ArbCom should consider in cases like
this that they appoint an uninvolved experienced Wikipedian -- say someone
who has written Featured Articles (preferrably those not dealing with
politics) -- to insist on things like No original research, & Cite sources,
& other guidelines formulated to improve Wikipedia.
>
> I have mixed feelings on all this - I see that there are problems, but
> am not fully convinced that the majority of them won't be fixed with a
> little time and a little faith in the good will of editors.  I'm not
> saying we ignore things until they go away, just that a proactive
> solution may give disputes an emphasis that might be harmful - maybe
> without intervention the eventualist approach will work in a lot of cases.

Given enough time, any controversy will come to an end -- if for no other
reason than the participants will all be dead. And if we don't have a
date for Wikipedia 1.0, then we can afford to let these controversies
rage on with a minimum of intervention.
>
> But that said, I realise we are in a whole new situation with the
> growing Wikipedia, and maybe what worked a year ago won't do so
> nowadays.  And content does seem to be the key issue in many disputes
> that we have looked at recently.
>
I agree with sannse about this: the POV-pushers have gotten craftier
as Wikipedia matures. It used to be that our greatest worry was cult-like
groups who had the funds to advocate their POV everywhere, & would not
compromise; however, the more like a cult these groups were, the more
rigid was their embrace of specific strategems.[*]

However, the new batch of POV-pushers are more likely to manuever their
opponents into violating Wikipedia guidelines & thereby letting the
ArbCom do their work. While I have confidence that the current membership
of the ArbCom won't be fooled by these tactics, I keep wondering how
long we can go until one group finds the magic key that allows them to
get their POV included -- to the excusion of all of their rivals.

But I admit, I do have a persistent streak of pessimism in how I
view everything I care about.

Geoff

[*] The Church of Scientology is the example that I have in mind here.
Wikipedia has not been the target of a CoS campaign, most likely, because
their vaunted cash box has been depleted over the years by bad investments,
embezzlements, the usual gouging from investment houses, & fighting critics
on the Internet. Add to that the poor public image the CoS has & their
usual turn-over rate in that disfunctional organization, & it's no
surprise that they'd rather ignore something like Wikipedia than directly
confront it.