[WikiEN-l] ArbCom - too attached to 'equal treatment'?

Mon Mar 7 16:45:07 UTC 2005

>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>
>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>JAY JG said:
>
>>>Actually, you are incorrect; there are obvious ArbCom cases right now
>>>that  no-one is willing to bring before ArbCom.
>
>>Make an evidence page.
>
>
>Or rather, make it a Request For Comment.

I've done one user-related Request for Comment.  The evidence for placed in 
it for violations of policy (particularly around personal attacks) were so 
obvious that if they had been used in a RfAR, they would have undoubtedly 
warranted at least a month block.  Yet the RfC was itself turned into a 
two-way trial, with partisans on his side, and his buddies, lining up and 
complaining about me ("e.g. true, he called you an asshole etc. but you 
provoked him by reverting his edit, so you're both equally guilty").  This 
of course is not how RfCs are supposed to be used, but it was justified on 
the basis that other people had done it in other RfCs.  In the end nothing 
came of it, and the effort was mostly wasted, because the person in question 
did not modify his behaviour in the slightest, and when it came to the 
inevitable RfAR months later (after which the person in question was banned 
for over a year), none of the evidence presented in the RfC was even 
considered.

In my experience (and as I've said before on this list) people-related RfCs 
do no good whatsoever, and are simply a necessary bit of bureaucracy one 
must slog though in order to prepare for the real event, ArbCom.

Jay.