On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, sannse wrote:
Jimbo wrote (in part)
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, have you read any of Anthere's messages on this? She has written to the list and privately to the mediators (copied to you).
mav and 168 *have* been in mediation. Anthere has spent considerable time and effort in trying to find solutions. Suggesting the mediation step was slighted is really unfair to her.
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