[WikiEN-l] How and When is Arbitration Invoked?

Mon Dec 8 21:13:18 UTC 2003

From: "Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> sannse wrote:
>
> >>I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
> >>and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
> >>communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
> >>seems to make no contributions other than comments on
> >>talk pages criticising and provoking RK.
> >>

> I think this is definitely a good idea.  Especially if you can convey to
> the person that the role of the mediation committee is explicitly to try
> to resolve disputes to the mutual satisfaction of all, and *not* as a
> "first cut" vetting candidates for the arbitration committee to ban.

I agree with this approach. The whole point of mediation is to get people
to talk, listen, try to think things through logically and reasonable
(emphasis
on reason) so that some compromises can be reached to everyone's
satisfaction.

> People naturally get very defensive when things like potential bans come
> up, so I think it'll work better if they understand that being involved
> in mediation is not really a first step towards banning, but instead an
> honest attempt to resolve the problem.  They need to understand that any
> concerns they have will be given a fair hearing.

Here, here (or is that Hear, hear!?) That approach will give the mediation
committee, however it decides to operate more legitimacy and usefulness
in the long run.

> Not being on the mediation committee myself I'll leave it you who are to
> decide how to best organize things, but I think having some sort of
> central information repository might be a good idea, where each person
> on the committee can check up on disputes and see who has done what,
> like "[x] emailed MNH, got a friendly response'" or "[[blah]]: dispute
> between polish and german nationalists; [y] is currently trying to find
> a compromise on the talk page".

This is a good idea as far as giving it some transparancy, but there should
also be a way to make the communications private at some point so that
people don't think it is a public fight. Also, by posting it on the talk
page
it will become part of the public record, and even though the arbitrators
will be told to ignore all mediation attempts it might be hard to ignore
something
that is said when the record of it is imbedded in the Wikipedia database.
And truly if it is about dialogue sometimes it is better said privately, no?

Alex R. (en:user:alex756)