Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki consensus editing model.
Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current controversy? What I mean is that the article already seems much improved over the past several weeks. So in what way is it really true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus editing model?
Whether this mechanism is formal (mediation and arbitration have been suggested)
Hmm, well, I don't think of mediation and arbitration as being means for settling run of the mill legitimate disputes about the content of the articles, but rather as a means to formalize and decentralize the _banning_ process, i.e. to deal with persistent, ongoing disruptive and counter-productive behavioral patterns.
I do not envision, and would strongly oppose, that mediation and arbitration committees get involved in ruling on the exact detailed contents of articles. (There is of course some overlap, since some behavioral problems exhibit themselves via a refusal to engage in NPOV editing over a long period of time.)
This the latest in a number of attempts at out-of-process methods to control the content of the article.
I am opposed to the use of such votes, but I don't regard this as out-of-process at all. Such votes are nothing more than expressions of opinion, and are thus non-binding in every relevant sense. Do you see what I mean? Voting is just one method (a bad one, in cases like this, I think) of _talking about the article_.