Erik Moeller wrote: I don't know, I'm up for radical change if the current system is not working out. The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration". So the mediation step is slighted. And people aren't just being annoying when they do that, it's that by the time it gets to formal "mediation", things are so bad that only "arbitration" is possible. The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise). They want to go to arbitration over it. --Jimbo

Jimmy Wales a écrit: Jimbo ahum, ahum Mav and 168 requests for mediation then arbitration were NOT over the content of the DNA article The initial request of Mav (I copy it, so to ensure I do not deform words) As noted on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/168 (I have to refer to a diff because 168... has been reverting my changes to that and other pages) I feel that 168... has abused his sysop user rights and has been a disruptive force in the community by engaging in revert wars (often using the rollback feature as a tool in those wars and on at least two occassions using page protection as a revert war tool as well). What I want is for 168... to stop abusing his sysop user rights, stop engaging in edit wars and for him to start cooperating with others (as noted on the RfC page he has ignored the consensus on the DNA talk page). 168... indicated on my talk page that he was willing to start mediation. --mav 06:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC) The initial layout of the problem by 168 (I have some more detailed and more constructed ones, but these were privately given) is this one 168..., an admin, feels that mav, another admin, has attempted to intimidate him by citing what are regarded by many others as rules of thumb as if they are absolute rules that demand de-adminship when breached ([example below]). 168... feels that the manner of mav's continuing inquiry into 168...'s actions shows a prejudice, which continued to characterize Mav's conduct, despite evidence of more tolerant views among other admins around him. Even before Mav made his first public calls for scrutiny of 168...'s conduct, 168... feels mav should have consulted with Cyan, an admin that mediated the disputed page and who is much more familiar with the context of the objected-to behavior than himself. 168... sees this failure to consult Cyan a failure of due dilligence and evidence of a disregard for principles of fairness and neutrality. 168... also sees this as an exploitation by Mav of Mav's notoriety and 168...'s lack of notoriety as a do-gooder. Other accusers could not have rallied so much support so quickly, 168... contends, and the presence of any bias or unjustified zeal in Mav's accusation can be expected to have had a very large impact on the public perception of 168..., which 168... could not effectly balance through self-advocacy. 168... would like to note that this whole conflict, involving many admins and many pages and many kilobytes of text, has only occurred because of the failure, despite the calls of many, to permanently ban User:Lir. 168... would also like to point to a bias or discrimination implied by Mav's having discouraged others from participating in a poll of opinion that 168... attempted to conduct about Lir [1] and Mav's failure to speak against a poll that others conducted about 168... here, and which resulted in 168...'s public condemnation and stripping of sysop powers. Mav claims to have brought accusations against 168... justly and without prejudice. On top of many other accusations (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168) Mav accuses 168... of raising accusations against Mav only in order to distract from the accusations against 168.... 168... says this is untrue and typical of how Mav has been prosecuting his case against 168, which 168... sees as involving at every turn either an assumption of bad faith and/or an action tending to bias public opinion against 168... and favor a resolution that Mav prefers: That the current version of community rules and guidelines should be obeyed "to the letter" and that 168... be harshly reprimanded for having interpreted them liberally. An example of Mav's use of what 168... calls "guideline exaggeration" is this: (cur) (last) . . 00:42, 3 Feb 2004 . . Maveric149 (putting Ed's note back again; Note that 168 used the auto revert feature to erase it last time; another abuse of sysop user rights)[2] You may find this statement at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/M… As you may see, this is of a different nature than the two paragraphs in question.

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, sannse wrote: I feel that this is important to acknowledge, speaking as a Mediator. We are trying to settle disagreements & get contributors to talk to each other, which too often is unsuccessful. In other place, I wrote about feeling discouraged after my one stint of mediation. There were a lot of issues that led to this discouragement, but a good part of it is that I'm an information nerd, not a social butterfly. Given my druthers, this is my ranking of what I like to on Wikipedia: 0. Research for articles (which I know I spend too much time on ;-) 1. Contributing material 2. Discussing with other people issues regarding contributions 3. Mediation And I suspect I'm not the only one with a ranking like this. I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of contributors to Wikipedia end up in conflicts because they lack strong interpersonal skills. I can't help but suspect that mediation is often slighted in its value -- which only guarrantees that more conflicts will end up before the Arbitration Committee. Geoff

Erik Moeller a écrit: This is precisely why I decided (unilaterally :-)) to have the top of the DNA article virtually frozen while the page itself is unprotected, and to ban any person who would edit it. Mix of mediation and arbitration somehow.