David Gerard wrote ...
Basically: most of the really poisonous arseholes have in fact been kicked off en: Wikipedia, and when new ones show up they are ejected in reasonable order. (In a lot of cases, it's not even reaching the AC as they're dealt with as obvious vandals and trolls by WP:AN/I.) So now the AC is getting a lot of grey-area cases that are really a proxy for a content dispute. What to do about this?
David, this is an issue I and others have raised repeatedly over the past years: many irresolvable disputes center on content, and Wikipedia needs a mechanism for dealing with these content-based disputes. Several people (with some notable exceptions) argued that the ArbCom can handle this, and should. RJII on the Capitalism page was an attempt to take those people at their word, and have the ArbCom handle a content dispute. Fred Bauder seemed to be the only one on the ArbCom to take an interest in this case. Needless to say, after a month or more of arguing and reverts, I and several people simply left the capitalism article, to await an ArbCom decision. Then the ArbCom declared that, since we had left, there was no more conflict, so the situation was resolved!
What we need first is a ruling by or concerning the ArbCom that it will consider and pass judgements on content-based disputes, or it will not. We just need to make this clear, one way or the other.
And if ArbCom will not or cannot handle content-based disputes, we need to develop another committee or mechanism.
I am repeating something I have said several times in the past. This issue is not new.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701