AndyL wrote:
Well if the complainant is acting or has acted badly
that should be taken by
the ArbComm as a mitigating factor in favour of the respondant when
considering the complainant's complaint but no more than that. While I could
see an ArbComm suggesting to a respondent (or other participants) that
he/she/they file their own arbitration request against the complainant for
the ArbComm to take that step unilaterally is improper.
The court analogy is flawed, we are not a court of law - we're just a
group of users trying to solve disputes in the most practical and fair
way for the project.
A much better analogy is of a school headmaster sorting out who did what
after a playground fight. We want to know who hit first, who hit most,
and who chucked in a sly boot from the side-lines.
There is no way that I would be content to just look at one side of the
argument, because arguments are rarely one-sided. That's not
overstepping our remit - that's part of the fundamental definition of
arbitration.
If someone /uninvolved/ brought a dispute to the arbitration committee,
then I wouldn't see a need to scrutinise their edits. But if you are
part of the dispute, then we certainly should look to see if you are
part of the cause of it.
I think the ArbComm
has rather unilaterally expanded its powers without seeking any sort of
consent from the wikicommunity. Is there a space where we can debate and
vote upon a resolution re the ArbComm's rules and authority?
There are the talk pages of [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee]] and
[[Wikipedia:Requests for Arbitration]], but I'm a bit concerned that the
discussion may get lost there. Perhaps we need a page specifically for
discussing how the arbitration committee works? In particular, I'm
interested in hearing more about the suggestion that we are /making/
policy - it's important to me that we don't do that, so I'd like to hear
more about it is people think we are doing so (I don't keep up with this
list fully - I'd prefer the discussion to be on Wikipedia)
--sannse
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