"He even contacted me directly, begging me to apologize, presumably so that
he wouldn't lose face for backing off his ultimatum. (What person
using a pseudonym worries about reputation? It was very weird.)"
I will observe that 172 wasn't anonymous, unless the name that he used on
wikien-l , Abe Sokolov, was an alias.
--
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.as…
In that case, I would like to nominate JamesF. A former arbitrator, he has proven himself highly capable of dealing with some of the really complex issues.
Danny
Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you
want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and
you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else,
and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you.
There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In
fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely
disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from
Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the
manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave
it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can
easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something
resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no
problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing
down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted,
covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it
into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
This is what the inherent failure of wikipedia is. It's that there's a
small set of content generators, a massive amount of wonks and
twiddlers, and then a heaping amount of procedural whackjobs. And the
mass of triddlers and procedural whackjobs means that the content
generators stop being so and have to become content defenders. Woe be
that your take on things is off from the majority. Even if you can prove
something, you're now in the situation that anybody can change it. And
while that's all great in a happy-go-lucky flower shower sort of way,
it's when you realize that the people who are going to change it could
have absolutely no experience with the subject whatsoever, then you see
where we are.
(I plagiarized the above from Jason Scott, but I agree with every word.)
Uncle Ed
David Gerard wrote:
> There's *supposed* to be a rule that if half the arbcom recuses, then all
> are unrecused and back on the case. It doesn't appear to have made it
> into
> the rules. It or something like it really really needs to be in there.
The rule wasn't included in that form because I raised objections, and
still would. The image of properly recused arbitrators suddenly
un-recusing themselves can look really really bad to people skeptical
about our commitment to fairness (about as bad as, say, a properly
blocked admin deciding to unblock himself).
"Something like it", as in an alternative solution to deal with this
scenario, would be much better. My suggestion was for the matter to
bypass the Arbitration Committee and go straight to the Board, or else
for Jimbo or the Board to appoint emergency arbitrators to substitute
for those who are recused.
I think the idea of "pro tempore" arbitrators for these rare cases is
adequate to handle the problem. Wikipedia is big enough that nobody can
get their oar in on every dispute, a principle that applies to the
arbitrators as well and means that almost certainly at least a couple
sitting arbitrators will not need to recuse themselves. Also, it
wouldn't be necessary to reconstitute a full committee of twelve; I'd be
satisfied if emergency appointments brought the number of arbitrators
hearing the case back up to seven or so.
So at most Jimbo would need to come up with four or five people who have
good sense at how to handle these things. I don't think this would be
terribly difficult for him. We have several experienced former
arbitrators whom I at least would happily trust to deal with a case in
an emergency. And I could name a number of other people who might be
qualified, depending on the particular case that presents itself. This
would also be a helpful way to get in some practical observation of
people who may be candidates for election to the Arbitration Committee
in the future.
--Michael Snow
------------- Original message --------------
> This isn't the scenario here though---there are no cases against
> specific people, only disputes *between* multiple people. We require
> that earlier steps of the dispute-resolution process be followed first,
> such as mediation. If these are unsuccessful, the matter goes to
> arbitration. The arbitration is thus arbitration of the dispute between
> two people, and is charged with resolving it in some way.
>
> The proper analogy, as the name implies, is to arbitration hearings, not
> to court cases. It is standard practice in arbitration that sanctions
> may be levied against either or both of the parties to a hearing.
I think I can speak for Neutrality. His post on the request for arbitration page implies a case against a specific person at least as far as recusal goes:
" I'd only recuse if you were the respondent rather than the petitioner."
-- Silverback
In the main text about "Junk DNA' "repressor" is quoted as a kind of junk DNA. Repressors are proteins coded by DNA. The position of the word, just after "enhancer", suggests that may be the author thought about "silencer", the sequence of DNA silencing expression of a given gene.
Magdalena Fikus
Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics Polish Academy of Sciences.
-------------- Original message --------------
> This isn't the scenario here though---there are no cases against
> specific people, only disputes *between* multiple people. We require
> that earlier steps of the dispute-resolution process be followed first,
> such as mediation. If these are unsuccessful, the matter goes to
> arbitration. The arbitration is thus arbitration of the dispute between
> two people, and is charged with resolving it in some way.
>
> The proper analogy, as the name implies, is to arbitration hearings, not
> to court cases. It is standard practice in arbitration that sanctions
> may be levied against either or both of the parties to a hearing.
I think you are correct about the intent when the arbitration process
was set up. But, de facto, because admins also err and abuse and the
arbitration committee is the only check on their power, it has had
to act on cases that are more violations than disputes.
-- Silverback
"He even contacted me directly, begging me to apologize, presumably so that
he wouldn't lose face for backing off his ultimatum. (What person
using a pseudonym worries about reputation? It was very weird.)"
I will observe that 172 wasn't anonymous, unless the name that he used on
wikien-l , Abe Sokolov, was an alias.
--
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.as…
> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
>
> Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you
> want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and
> you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else,
> and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you...
[snip]
> But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing
> down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted,
> covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it
> into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
> (I plagiarized the above from Jason Scott, but I agree with every
> word.)
> Uncle Ed
> From: Richard Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com>
> Except...it's not your car!
Ah, that old problematical analogy. The magic thing about intellectual
"property" is that if someone takes your car and puts polka-dots on it
and covers it in chrome pussycats the result is that... now you have
TWO cars.
For example, if Ed Poor borrows Jason Scott's car, Ed Poor has a car
and Jason Scott still has his. (In this case, I certainly remember the
phrase about moving from creating content to defending content. I may
be recalling incorrectly but I don't remember chrome pussycats. Is it
possible that _Ed_ added chrome pussycats to _Jason's_ car?
Anyone else know Malvina Reynold's "Magic Penny?"
Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away,
Love is something if you give it away, you end up having--more!
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
-------------- Original message --------------
> actionforum(a)comcast.net wrote:
>
> >Desysoping is too minor an action and abuse of sysop powers is too serious an
> offense to wait for the arbcom or community all the time. Any serious mistakes
> can be corrected later.
> >
> If the police had their way the kangaroos would be running the judicial
> system.
I'm not sure what your point is, if you mean admins=police, apparently, they are running the judicial system too, and they are loath to cost anyone their "jobs", read sysop privilege. Do the admins here unite behind their own version of "The thin blue line"?
-- Silverback