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_.