From: geni geniice@gmail.com
On 11/8/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Hence the observable lack of a concerted effort to get rid of Tony Sidaway. Oh, wait ...
- d.
It doesn't appear to have worked and he appears to have made it to admin so it can't have been that sucessful. Anyway most of the issues raised in the RFC have to do with him failing to follow AFD practice rather than any individual cases.
As much as I'm sure we'd all like to have another debate about just how completely broken/absolutely perfect AfD is, I think there are far more serious issues that are generally ignored. In particular, Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes are in sorry shape.
Mediation is intermittent at best, and (from what I can tell) almost never achieves a positive outcome, but that's nothing compared to RfC.
Article RfCs are numerous, and rarely attract the attention of more than one or two outside editors. Frequently they attract no outside interest at all.
User RfCs are a mess - in theory they are a platform for addressing and solving community issues. In practice, they are often venues for warring camps to air grievances, and for certain notorious individuals (who feel they don't get enough attention) to use as soapboxes for their own speechifying (i.e. yet another "outside view"). Obvious trolling is rarely addressed - the complainants outline their case, and a dozen or so regular editors vote in support. The troll provides a lengthy response, and three or four troll buddies/generall trolls/people with grievances against the complainant line up and vote in support of him, or add another "outside view" that has little to do with the case at hand, and is mostly about their own issues with the complainants. Nothing changes, and everyone goes away bitter.
The "toxicity" of AfD is nothing compared to what you find at RfC, and in the end it's often only a precursor to RfAR, just a perfunctory "tick-box" on the "attempted previous dispute resolution" form.
Jay.