[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

Sat Jun 4 22:33:16 UTC 2005

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Don't judge the content, but the user conduct. If people keep editing
> without discussing it and trying to reach common ground, you can take
> the case because of conduct. It's the controversial cases in which
> large numbers of people disagree that are the problem. Unfortunately,
> those take time, and can't be properly handled by a small group of
> people (they're probably divided on it themselves).
> 

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?

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.

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.

--sannse