[WikiEN-l] Your golorous [sic] leader.

Fri Apr 8 16:52:19 UTC 2005

On Friday, April 08, 2005 5:29 PM, John Bradley <john at ontobus.co.uk> wrote:

> The mail Mr Wales sent to me was copied [snip] to:
> arbitration at nohat.net.

Yes. The private email that Jimbo sent you was part of a series of emails
conducted between yourself and the Committee (which includes Jimbo, as it
were). Note that word there - "private". That you didn't respect the
convention of standard etiquette, which, extended onto the Internet, becomes
"Netiquette", that private email stays private (as with any other form of
correspondence) unless permission is granted from the author(s) is ...
unfortunate.

> It's strange but I get a bounce when I try to copy in my
> replies to the mail, not being a member of the list.

Indeed. The list is a private list. Gosh, that word again. It is for the
private deliberation of that problematic users and situations collectively
known as "Arbitration cases".

> Just another way in which wikipedia places everyone at the mercy of the
> arbcomm. 

Wikipedia is "at the mercy of" Jimbo. Jimbo has delegated his "mercy", to
use your term, to the Arbitration Committee that he convened over 15 months
ago, and which he periodically refreshes the membership thereof as guided by
the wishes of the community. Significant disciplinary matters in Wikipedia
are thus guided by a number of editors who are held in high esteem by the
community at large (or, at least, so one hopes).

> A bunch of people who cannot even be bothered to make there
> reasoning clear.

Their reasoning seems quite clear to me. Perhaps I'm standing in some sort
of reality distortion bubble, along with the rest of the Committee and
Wikipedia community?

> The more this goes on, the more obvious it becomes, that the people
> running the show aren't here for the data.

If you mean, "[..] aren't here for the good of the Project", I sadly have to
agree with you - there are indeed some people who have contributed to
Wikipedia who do not seem to follow the goals of the project. This is
greatly saddening. Indeed, the various forms of dispute resolution, of which
Arbitration is oft seen as the most serious (and is very much often the most
terminal) form, sometimes see users who are evidently out to disrupt the
Project.

Those from whom the community judges it receives more trouble than their
contributions are worth, however, are another class of user, and a much more
common form. They, too, are to be excluded from the Project, because we are
all but as cogs in the great machine that is Wikipedia, and not one of us is
irreplacable. Cogs who feel that they are often end up being forcibly
removed, and, with time, their position is filled by another, and so on it
goes.

[Snip sig]

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com