[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Commitee Seeking Comment

Sun Jun 5 12:44:03 UTC 2005

MacGynerMagic 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.

But there are indeed cases where people keep editing while discussing it ad 
infinitum, and discussions may take up over 100 kbs, and still the dispute 
is not resolved.  These are disputes where it is simply not enough to judge 
behavior; we need to judge the content.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia first and an on-line community 
second.  Personal behavior is very important and it is good that we have 
mechanisms to deal with conflicts over user conduct.  But content is more 
important, and we need mechanisms to deal with conflicts over content.

sannse wrote...

>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.

I agree completely.  I do think most disputes can be and are resolved 
through time and good faith.  But the fact remains that some disputes over 
content do not get resolved.  In my experience (biased, I acknowledge) this 
is usually because the two people have different ideas about what 
constitutes research or appropriate sources.  NPOV and NOR may enter into 
it, and in some cases these policies alone are sufficient to resolve the 
case -- but in some cases, they are not.  In such cases, someone needs to 
determine what kind of research has been done, what kinds of sources are 
being used, and decide on that basis.  This is the kind of thing ArbCom has 
traditionally stayed away from.  At one point (around the time of my 
conflict with RJII), some suggested that ArbCom can deal with content 
disputes -- but,ultimately, they did not.

We need either a firm commitment that ArbCom will deal with content 
disputes, pure and simple, or we need another mechanism.

Steve

Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701