Erik wrote:
Many users have left over the past months because of the lack of real enforcement of our policies.
This is unfortunate. Much of the work that I and others have put into the dispute resolution process aims to help in this regard by seeking consensus if possible, votes if necessary, mediation if needed and arbitration as a last resort.
I have desysopped users in the past for abusing admin powers and I will continue to do so if the arbitration committee fails to act in emergencies.
Arbitration is normally the last step of a long process (and rightly so, IMO). But I do support the idea of giving admins (and in the case of admin abuse, developers) a greater (yet still limited) ability to act in emergencies and act based on community comment in polls.
Polling on items seems to work when a quick decision is needed. Tim did that for 168's first de-sysoping and a poll was also conducted about what to do with Plautus satire. IMO, a developer or admin could perform *temporary* actions based upon the results of such a poll and then the matter could be sent to the arbitration committee if further action is needed. At least that is what I would like to see tried as the new way of doing things.
But IMO unilateral actions should really only be exercised in true emergencies (such as very obvious vandalism or an admin going on a rampage). However, any action to enforce an arbitration decision would not be a unilateral act. If the issue is not a true emergency, then a quick poll could be conducted. If more than a supermajority of a minimum number of non-sock puppet users (say 75%+ of at least 15 users polled) vote for an action, then the admin or developer could perform that action. If done correctly, such an act would be based upon the will of the community (as represented by the poll), and *not* look like it was based on the will of the admin/developer. That is an important distinction to me.
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel-
This is unfortunate. Much of the work that I and others have put into the dispute resolution process aims to help in this regard by seeking consensus if possible, votes if necessary, mediation if needed and arbitration as a last resort.
...
Arbitration is normally the last step of a long process
This amount of bureaucracy is exactly the problem. When I initially suggested setting up a mediation team, I wanted a *single* group which could act quickly -- use both carrot and stick -- to enforce policies. This whole mediation/arbitration distinction seems fallacious to me. Alas, we're in this mess now, and it is unlikely to be fixed.
I don't care if we complement this system with emergency polls, specially appointed "enforcers" or anything like that. I don't even care about being one of the people who make these decisions, I have better things to do with my time. What I care about is that our policies are enforced, and this is currently only happening to a very small degree.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
This whole mediation/arbitration distinction seems fallacious to me. Alas, we're in this mess now, and it is unlikely to be fixed.
I don't know, I'm up for radical change if the current system is not working out.
The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration". So the mediation step is slighted. And people aren't just being annoying when they do that, it's that by the time it gets to formal "mediation", things are so bad that only "arbitration" is possible.
The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise).
They want to go to arbitration over it.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration".
True. The real reason for that is not that the mediation process is broken, but that we have no formalized decision making process. We say things like "You have to search consensus", but we do not say how we determine when consensus has been found. Some people go so far to say that a 2/3 majority is consensus! We say "You can hold a poll if nothing else works", but our guidelines for polling are new, unapproved and rudimentary at best.
What I want to do is create a formal decision making process, which states clearly how long the discussion period has to be for minor, moderate and major decisions, how to determine consensus, how to collect the options for a poll, what voting methods are acceptable, who can vote, when a vote is binding, what threshold should be used.
This would have allowed settling the [[DNA]] dispute within a reasonable time framework.
The other thing is that we have no effective, quick enforcement of "no personal attacks". I suggested a policy [[Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks]] a while back. I still think it's a good idea, but it barely has majority support, let alone consensus. People are very conservative about editing other people's words.
Lastly, I still think it is very important that we enforce certain rules strictly, and sysops using their privileges to get what they want in a dispute is one of the things we cannot tolerate.
... and please, please approve the "24 hour bans for edit warring" policy. Wik is at it again right now.
Regards,
Erik
Jimmy Wales a écrit:
The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise).
They want to go to arbitration over it.
Jimbo
ahum, ahum
Mav and 168 requests for mediation then arbitration were NOT over the content of the DNA article
The initial request of Mav (I copy it, so to ensure I do not deform words)
As noted on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/168 (I have to refer to a diff because 168... has been reverting my changes to that and other pages) I feel that 168... has abused his sysop user rights and has been a disruptive force in the community by engaging in revert wars (often using the rollback feature as a tool in those wars and on at least two occassions using page protection as a revert war tool as well). What I want is for 168... to stop abusing his sysop user rights, stop engaging in edit wars and for him to start cooperating with others (as noted on the RfC page he has ignored the consensus on the DNA talk page). 168... indicated on my talk page that he was willing to start mediation. --mav 06:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The initial layout of the problem by 168 (I have some more detailed and more constructed ones, but these were privately given) is this one
168..., an admin, feels that mav, another admin, has attempted to intimidate him by citing what are regarded by many others as rules of thumb as if they are absolute rules that demand de-adminship when breached ([example below]). 168... feels that the manner of mav's continuing inquiry into 168...'s actions shows a prejudice, which continued to characterize Mav's conduct, despite evidence of more tolerant views among other admins around him. Even before Mav made his first public calls for scrutiny of 168...'s conduct, 168... feels mav should have consulted with Cyan, an admin that mediated the disputed page and who is much more familiar with the context of the objected-to behavior than himself. 168... sees this failure to consult Cyan a failure of due dilligence and evidence of a disregard for principles of fairness and neutrality. 168... also sees this as an exploitation by Mav of Mav's notoriety and 168...'s lack of notoriety as a do-gooder. Other accusers could not have rallied so much support so quickly, 168... contends, and the presence of any bias or unjustified zeal in Mav's accusation can be expected to have had a very large impact on the public perception of 168..., which 168... could not effectly balance through self-advocacy. 168... would like to note that this whole conflict, involving many admins and many pages and many kilobytes of text, has only occurred because of the failure, despite the calls of many, to permanently ban User:Lir. 168... would also like to point to a bias or discrimination implied by Mav's having discouraged others from participating in a poll of opinion that 168... attempted to conduct about Lir [1] and Mav's failure to speak against a poll that others conducted about 168... here, and which resulted in 168...'s public condemnation and stripping of sysop powers. Mav claims to have brought accusations against 168... justly and without prejudice.
On top of many other accusations (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168) Mav accuses 168... of raising accusations against Mav only in order to distract from the accusations against 168.... 168... says this is untrue and typical of how Mav has been prosecuting his case against 168, which 168... sees as involving at every turn either an assumption of bad faith and/or an action tending to bias public opinion against 168... and favor a resolution that Mav prefers: That the current version of community rules and guidelines should be obeyed "to the letter" and that 168... be harshly reprimanded for having interpreted them liberally.
An example of Mav's use of what 168... calls "guideline exaggeration" is this:
(cur) (last) . . 00:42, 3 Feb 2004 . . Maveric149 (putting Ed's note back again; Note that 168 used the auto revert feature to erase it last time; another abuse of sysop user rights)[2]
You may find this statement at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Ma...
As you may see, this is of a different nature than the two paragraphs in question.
Jimbo wrote (in part)
The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise).
They want to go to arbitration over it.
Jimbo, have you read any of Anthere's messages on this? She has written to the list and privately to the mediators (copied to you).
mav and 168 *have* been in mediation. Anthere has spent considerable time and effort in trying to find solutions. Suggesting the mediation step was slighted is really unfair to her.
The real issues are *not* the DNA paragraph, they are issues of perceived sysop abuse on one side and perceived unfairness on the other. I realise you have a lot of reading to do, not a lot of time and so are likely to miss things, but this is an important point to acknowledge.
--sannse
On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, sannse wrote:
Jimbo wrote (in part)
The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise).
They want to go to arbitration over it.
Jimbo, have you read any of Anthere's messages on this? She has written to the list and privately to the mediators (copied to you).
mav and 168 *have* been in mediation. Anthere has spent considerable time and effort in trying to find solutions. Suggesting the mediation step was slighted is really unfair to her.
I feel that this is important to acknowledge, speaking as a Mediator. We are trying to settle disagreements & get contributors to talk to each other, which too often is unsuccessful.
In other place, I wrote about feeling discouraged after my one stint of mediation. There were a lot of issues that led to this discouragement, but a good part of it is that I'm an information nerd, not a social butterfly. Given my druthers, this is my ranking of what I like to on Wikipedia:
0. Research for articles (which I know I spend too much time on ;-) 1. Contributing material 2. Discussing with other people issues regarding contributions 3. Mediation
And I suspect I'm not the only one with a ranking like this. I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of contributors to Wikipedia end up in conflicts because they lack strong interpersonal skills. I can't help but suspect that mediation is often slighted in its value -- which only guarrantees that more conflicts will end up before the Arbitration Committee.
Geoff
Jimmy Wales a écrit:
Erik Moeller wrote:
This whole mediation/arbitration distinction seems fallacious to me. Alas, we're in this mess now, and it is unlikely to be fixed.
I don't know, I'm up for radical change if the current system is not working out.
The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration". So the mediation step is slighted. And people aren't just being annoying when they do that, it's that by the time it gets to formal "mediation", things are so bad that only "arbitration" is possible.
The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that. Here we have two valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no compromise).
They want to go to arbitration over it.
--Jimbo
Could you be more specific Jimbo ?
You write here that to your opinion, there has been no mediation between 168 and Mav. You write here that they both want to step directly to arbitration without having gone through mediation.
I may be wrong here, but I have in my mail box perhaps 400 ko worth of discussions. I also sent several times reports to mediation, for which you were in copy. As far as 168 is concerned, he said he appreciated my efforts, and felt better from them. I doubt he told you the opposite. I discussed much less with Mav, because I had no trouble understanding what he was waiting from 168, and saw quickly that 168 would not agree with Mav wishes unless other wishes were offered back. So, I would like to know if your feeling that no mediation occured is just a personal opinion.
Also, I regret I was just leaving on holidays when the conflict took place. So it was a week before I started talking to 168. Just a week. It does not seem to me so much of a long time that it would mess any attempt of discussion. The hardest for me was to understand the whole mess, and to convince 168 to talk privately rather than publicly.
This is just the mediation as we laid it down together. Roughly. It was also meant to relieve you of some discussions, that we thought we could handle like adults. For example, some people could discuss conflicts and then take decisions, without you having to spent enormous amount of time on these cases. Which necessarily induced longer time for processing.
Now, if each time we want to step from mediation to arbitration, we have to justify it is the only way possible, and to make you fill all the holes, so that you can evaluate whether the request is valid or not valid, perhaps we will lose even more time than before and you won't gain time you could use more constructively.
If not, perhaps we could decide that you are in copy of ALL mails exchanged during mediation, so that you can judge by yourself whether the decision to stop mediation is correct or not.
Now, what I decided to do yesterday (before Erik unsysoped 168 and led him to quit) was to try a mix of mediation and some arbitration. It may be a wrong solution in the sense a mediator should stay neutral, but on the other hand, it can compensate the lack of arbitration conclusion. I view this as a possible solution. A sort of mediation with some direct enforcement of certain rules. I do not know what people think about that. It is just a proposition.
I am personally not very happy to see that my efforts did not have any good conclusion. I am more unhappy to see that 168 quit, without being granted either public trial as he initially wished, nor arbitration as he requested. I am even more unhappy to see that the current mediation/arbitration process is broken, because of all the hopes I had in it, and all the time I invested in it. I am disappointed that it seems that the reasons why Mav and 168 requested arbitration are misunderstood. I may have reached the limits of my ability to make myself understood. I am definitly not happy to hear that the mediation job was not done.
Grumble grumble grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble
Erik Moeller a écrit:
This amount of bureaucracy is exactly the problem. When I initially suggested setting up a mediation team, I wanted a *single* group which could act quickly -- use both carrot and stick -- to enforce policies. This whole mediation/arbitration distinction seems fallacious to me. Alas, we're in this mess now, and it is unlikely to be fixed.
This is precisely why I decided (unilaterally :-)) to have the top of the DNA article virtually frozen while the page itself is unprotected, and to ban any person who would edit it. Mix of mediation and arbitration somehow.