[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

Mon Jun 13 14:28:30 UTC 2005

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> steven l. rubenstein wrote:
> 
>>Moreover, no one has mentioned "unpopular" content and Sean is just
>>waving a red herring to distract us from a serious problem.  In one of
>>my own messages -- here or at the project page -- I pointed out that one
>>use of such a committee is to ensure that the content is being presented
>>in an NPOV way, or to ensure that the sources are properly represented. 
>>Anyone can assert something and cite a book.  But in some cases readers
>>need to know whether the author of that book was published by a
>>university press, a trade press, or a vanity press, or whether the book
>>was written by someone with a PhD. in Biblical Studies or Geology.  You
>>might think that disputes revolving around such questions would be easy
>>to resolve, and of course, in many cases, they are.  But sometimes they
>>are not, and there is a need for some mechanism to arbitrate content.
> 
> 
> I fully and totally agree with every bit of this.

I realize that I made a mistake by agreeing to every bit of a very long
paragraph.  I do not think Sean is "waving a red herring to distract us
from a serious problem" -- I think he has serious and genuine concerns,
concerns which I think are not compelling given the nature of the
proposal under consideration.

No one _has_ mentioned unpopular content, but nonetheless it is of
course very worthwhile to ask the very legitimate question of whether
some proposal new rule would lead to the outcome of unpopular content
being banned.  Sean is right to raise those concerns.

I apologize to Sean.

--Jimbo