On 4/25/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Two of the arbitrators involved in that decision (Fred and Jay) confirmed during a recent request for clarification that the rulings applied to any attack site, not just to ED.
I note that I did not contribute to that request for clarification.
In my personal view, things in the 'Principles' or 'Findings of fact' sections in an arbitration case are not remedies. I am uncomfortable with people taking things said in that section as commands from the arbitration committee to do anything. If we wanted to explicitly rule that something should be done, it would be in 'Remedies' or 'Enforcement'.
In a sense, what we are saying there is that we believe that existing policy, precedent and/or common sense already contain those things. In this case, six Arbitrators considered not linking to attack sites as already covered by de facto policy.
The arbcom is a bad way to make new policy, since there are only a small number of us. We attempt to interpret existing policy for circumstances not explicitly considered by those policies, however.
My concern (which is a general one, not just specifically for this case) is about the danger of taking things stated in a short sentence as a principle in a specific arbitration case as being a complete and full interpretation of the entirety of Wikipedia policy on that issue, disallowing any nuance or complexity of interpretation.
Assuming that Principles stated in a case are the immutable law of Wikipedia is also a dangerous assumption to make. We do not consider ourselves bound by precedent, for one thing; the Arbcom reserves the right to change its mind in future cases, although sensibly we try not to do that too much. However, we are certainly not bound to keeping precedent if current arbitrators find the precedent an incorrect one.
Although applying a governmental model to Wikipedia is in itself a dangerous over-simplification, in most cases it's correct to see the arbitration committee as a judicial arm of government, not a legislative or executive one. We try to come down on the side of interpreting policy, not making policy, though the line is a blurry one.
-Matt