[Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content

Thu Oct 28 15:50:14 UTC 2004

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 23:17:28 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Arbitration applied directly to validity of articles may be
> interpretated by "arbitration comittee will have the authority to do
> anything it will decide to ensure neutrality or accuracy of articles.
> Anything might be reverting to a specific version or deletion."
> 
> In short, I claim that the sentence as written is allowing arbitration
> committee to become a sort of super-editor which has authority to decide
> over the community what is correct from what is not.
> 
> I do not recognise this as being acceptable within wikipedia rules, and
> I do not see that as being helpful in any way in our theoretical goal of
> reaching NPOV. Quite the opposite.

Well, very simply speaking, we have to have _some_ way to decide what
an article is going to look like in the case of conflict. There are
various possibilities for that:
* We take the POV of the one who shouts loudest
* We take the POV of the majority of editor
* We take the POV of the person with the longest breath
* We take the POV of the most civil person
* We take the POV of a group of selected editors not involved in the conflict
* and perhaps a number more

Your statement implies that #4 is not a good way to go. I was
wondering which one you _do_ agree with then?

> This said, there are two different groups of people, and each group is
> giving a different interpretation of the sentence. I proposed a new
> sentence to replace, but this does not hide the fact that some users
> indeed *want* an arbitration committee to decide for the community what
> is neutral and accurate in case of dispute, rather than the community
> itself.

The problem with letting 'the community' decide is that 'the
community' does not have an opinion. To get a community decision, you
need to have discussion until everyone agrees, or you have to have a
vote. Voting is considered not a good idea, and getting everyone to
agree is often undoable. So unless you have someone with the authority
to say "The discussion is over, and this is the outcome", community
decision means that the person with the longest breath gets to decide,
or if there is enough breath on both sides, the issue is never going
to be decided.

Andre Engels