I think that Erik's suggestions here have great merit, and I'd like to open the floor to a discussion. Obviously, he's given a fair amount of detail, and I may not want to adopt all of the detail that he's suggested, but I think in broad outline we're going to have to move to something like this.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
It seems likely that he's angry enough to never come back anyway, in which case we can all just talk about how to best avoid this sort of thing in the future.
Ban faster? :-)
Seriously, I don't see how you can avoid dealing with problematic persons, and I don't see how the persons attacked by RK should have acted any differently, and I still think that a temporary ban was the best action in this case. There are some people who believe that I am somehow working on a grand strategy to usurp power on Wikipedia, which is kind of funny, because the first thing I would do it if I had it is democratize everything ;-).
We should avoid developing too much of a behavioral double standard. RK was tolerated because he contributed good material. But how much good material has not been contributed because of his well documented behavioral problems? In my opinion, we need to set clearer rules on Wikiquette and be serious about enforcing them, with a well-defined protocol of warning, temporary banning, permanent banning etc. Maybe there could be a 5-10 member Wikiquette "committee" where violations could be reported and decisions would be made by voting. By making it proprietary (totally unwiki, but so is reporting directly to you) we can avoid having the lists and talk pages cluttered up with these complaints and can make sure that users will not have to fear repercussions for reporting Wikiquette violations.
Implementation wise, this could be a mailing list with non-member posting rights (perhaps with a web-based submission interface to avoid spam -- this could actually be done inside Wikipedia by creating a fake user with that email address and using the "Email this user" feature, how about [[User:Mediator]]?). Right now, it's really difficult for users to deal with insults and personal attacks. I would love to be able to say in 5-10 years that the discussion climate on Wikipedia is the best anywhere on the Internet.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com I think that Erik's suggestions here have great merit, and I'd like to open the floor to a discussion. Obviously, he's given a fair amount of detail, and I may not want to adopt all of the detail that he's suggested, but I think in broad outline we're going to have to move to something like this.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
that email address and using the "Email this user" feature, how about [[User:Mediator]]?). Right now, it's really difficult for users to deal with insults and personal attacks.
Mediation has become a good tool for trying to resolve disputes. E-bay has an online mediation service. I was thinking that the submission standards which I drafted (I previously posted the URL here and at Wikitech about Mav's suggestion for updating the edit page text and linking pages) suggests not only mediation but eventually arbitration (that may be eating too much into our Fearless Leader's prerogatives).
If two users are fighting should it be open or should there by a closed mediation process? Mediation is typically confidential and only involves those directly involved in a dispute. If mediation fails the agreement between the parties (and this can all be done by agreement very easily because everything on Wikipedia is in writing) then it goes to whatever dispute resolution process is otherwise there.
The advantage of private mediation is it allows the parties to vent and get their disputes off their chests withouf the fear that somehow what they say will be used against them. The ideal is that by communicating (through a third party that is trained in conciliation and compromise) that the parties actually understand each other better.
I think this might be useful on Wikipedia because it is such a communal and cooperative environment. Of course the privacy is done is a way that there is no record, but if the mediation resolves, then there is no need for there to be a record, it is all reduced to a mediation resolution agreement and anything discussed during mediation is not recorded.
Arbitration can also be done fairly easily with very relaxed rules (the ICANN/WIPO domain name dispute policy is an example of a _very_ stripped down mediation).
In arbitration this is going to be someone who acts as an impartial decision maker. That might be Jimbo, but there could be a committee that has a few online members who have some training in this area and who are prepared to see the process through. Many arbitration proceedings also use three arbitrators. One chosen by each side and the third chosen by the two arbitrators in order to insure some kind of impartiality. They could also make a decision that could be submitted to Jimbo and he could either confirm the decision or decide to grant the user clemency in his discretion as our personal Lord and Master. (Hear ye, hear ye, the Court of Jimbo's Bench is now is sesssion!)
Thus, when users complain about someone there could be a complaint officer (CO) whose job is to represent the complaints to the mediator or arbitrator (having a group against one person is not really fair is it?). There may also be people who volunteer to advocate for the person whose been accused of breaking Wikiquette to the point that they should be banned either temporarily or permanently. That advocate would work with the "contributor alleged to be offending" (CATBO). The process could be acheived by a secure private site (it is very important to mediation for this not to be disclosed) or maybe with a telephonic mediation session between the CABTO hiers advocate, the complaint officer (CO) and the mediator.
If they reach an agreement, i.e. we will withdraw our complaint if the user agrees to the following conditions, (i.e. no edits on the following pages for a month, no nasty accusations on user talk pages, etc. then the dispute is resolved. If they do not reach an agreement the parties prepare for the arbitration hearing. the CO prepares a complaint that lists all the alleged transgressions with links to page histories and references to the Wikiquette that has been alleged to be violated. This is a public document and they may even be a period where suggestions are submitted to the CO to amend the written complaint. (this need not be a long document, just a refactored succinct statement of all the complaints against the user).
This is deposited with Jimbo who then picks a arbitrator (different each time and maybe also by random number generator). The arbitrator is contacted and asked to serve. After that point all communications with that arbitrator must be copied to the User Advocate assigned to the case. The UA is given a deadline to respond to the written complaint. The UA discusses the choice of arbitrator with the CATBO and the CATBO can go forward with one arbitrator or three. If three, they request their arbitrator who has the power to accept or decline the appointment. Then the two arbitrators pick a third arbitrator.
Once the UA and CATBO know the arbitrator or committee they can write the response to the complaint. We might even be able to get a law school to give our UAs credit to participate in this kind of program. When I was in law school I worked as a student advocate for the University disciplinary committee.
Anyway it could be something that is easily organized with a few people and all the posts could be short term appointments. The CO could be a monthly job as could the UA. You can' also make being an arbitrator being contingent upon serving either as a CO or UA so that they are There could also be a list of UAs and it is up to the CATBO to contact the UAs and convince them to enter into the volunteer representation. (I would consider this pro bono, in the US all lawyers are asked to do at least 50 hours pro bono a year for the community).
This is really a very simplified version of the commercial or international arbitration programs of the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) Most arbitration and mediation programs have similar structures. If the person wants to represent themselves without an advocate, they can do that, but there should be someone who represents the complaints by other users of Wikiquette violations, I stress that strongly.
I think one big problem now is that someone who is accused feels like everyone is ganging up on him or her. Being in such a defensive position can make one act irrationally. If all the allegations are channeled through one person and if the person who is accused has someone impartial to talk to about it the debate should be more rational and reasoned.
This whole thing may sound very complex, but in practice it will not be. The mediation procedure can be implimented with one or a few volunteer mediators. The whole arbitration procedure can be implemented with 6 COs (everyone volunteers to work on that committee for two months a year) 6 arbitrators and a few UA, so we are talking about 12-15 people tops giving on the average a few hours a week. There are people who might consider contributing to such a process here. We have at least 6 lawyer members who we could probably convince to volunteer once and a while and there must be a few social workers, psychologists or philosophy types who could play a role. some of these positions could even be voted upon. Vote for Anthere for Arbitrator! or, Angela for User Advoate in 2004! Erik for Complaint Committee, etc. Little Dan for Mediator of the Month! (yes L'Dan you are old enough to be a mediator, in the NYS school system they have a peer mediation program where HS students mediate disputes between students to resolve problems between students).
The advantage of creating such a type procedure is that it would calm things down and once people complained the process would not consume everyone's time the way it is doing now.
Jimbo would still have his foothold [[royal prerogative]] which he could use for temporary restraining bans or in extreme cases where the CATBO is engaging in serious destructive activity. he could also be appealed to to overturn a particularly harsh decision by the arbitrators or unbanning (like [[clemency]]. T the whole process shouldn't take any longer than the amount of time that goes into discussing these issues right now, so it takes about a month or something before the decision about a ban (or lifting a temp ban) comes down.
Anyway, this is just another legal beagle suggestion, and as usual it is not "legal" advice, just a suggestion.
Alex756
I say we should have such a committe. This would allow us to decide on bans more quickly where they are needed, as well as making the process more open to the at-large community. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 5:32 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com I think that Erik's suggestions here have great merit, and I'd like to open the floor to a discussion. Obviously, he's given a fair amount of detail, and I may not want to adopt all of the detail that he's suggested, but I think in broad outline we're going to have to move to something like this.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
that email address and using the "Email this user" feature, how about [[User:Mediator]]?). Right now, it's really difficult for users to
deal
with insults and personal attacks.
Mediation has become a good tool for trying to resolve disputes. E-bay has an online mediation service. I was thinking that the submission standards which I drafted (I previously posted the URL here and at Wikitech about Mav's suggestion for updating the edit page text and linking pages) suggests not only mediation but eventually arbitration (that may be eating too much into our Fearless Leader's prerogatives).
If two users are fighting should it be open or should there by a closed mediation process? Mediation is typically confidential and only involves those directly involved in a dispute. If mediation fails the agreement between the parties (and this can all be done by agreement very easily because everything on Wikipedia is in writing) then it goes to whatever dispute resolution process is otherwise there.
The advantage of private mediation is it allows the parties to vent and get their disputes off their chests withouf the fear that somehow what they say will be used against them. The ideal is that by communicating (through a third party that is trained in conciliation and compromise) that the parties actually understand each other better.
I think this might be useful on Wikipedia because it is such a communal and cooperative environment. Of course the privacy is done is a way that there is no record, but if the mediation resolves, then there is no need for there to be a record, it is all reduced to a mediation resolution agreement and anything discussed during mediation is not recorded.
Arbitration can also be done fairly easily with very relaxed rules (the ICANN/WIPO domain name dispute policy is an example of a _very_ stripped down mediation).
In arbitration this is going to be someone who acts as an impartial decision maker. That might be Jimbo, but there could be a committee that has a few online members who have some training in this area and who are prepared to see the process through. Many arbitration proceedings also use three arbitrators. One chosen by each side and the third chosen by the two arbitrators in order to insure some kind of impartiality. They could also make a decision that could be submitted to Jimbo and he could either confirm the decision or decide to grant the user clemency in his discretion as our personal Lord and Master. (Hear ye, hear ye, the Court of Jimbo's Bench is now is sesssion!)
Thus, when users complain about someone there could be a complaint officer (CO) whose job is to represent the complaints to the mediator or arbitrator (having a group against one person is not really fair is it?). There may also be people who volunteer to advocate for the person whose been accused of breaking Wikiquette to the point that they should be banned either temporarily or permanently. That advocate would work with the "contributor alleged to be offending" (CATBO). The process could be acheived by a secure private site (it is very important to mediation for this not to be disclosed) or maybe with a telephonic mediation session between the CABTO hiers advocate, the complaint officer (CO) and the mediator.
If they reach an agreement, i.e. we will withdraw our complaint if the user agrees to the following conditions, (i.e. no edits on the following pages for a month, no nasty accusations on user talk pages, etc. then the dispute is resolved. If they do not reach an agreement the parties prepare for the arbitration hearing. the CO prepares a complaint that lists all the alleged transgressions with links to page histories and references to the Wikiquette that has been alleged to be violated. This is a public document and they may even be a period where suggestions are submitted to the CO to amend the written complaint. (this need not be a long document, just a refactored succinct statement of all the complaints against the user).
This is deposited with Jimbo who then picks a arbitrator (different each time and maybe also by random number generator). The arbitrator is contacted and asked to serve. After that point all communications with that arbitrator must be copied to the User Advocate assigned to the case. The UA is given a deadline to respond to the written complaint. The UA discusses the choice of arbitrator with the CATBO and the CATBO can go forward with one arbitrator or three. If three, they request their arbitrator who has the power to accept or decline the appointment. Then the two arbitrators pick a third arbitrator.
Once the UA and CATBO know the arbitrator or committee they can write the response to the complaint. We might even be able to get a law school to give our UAs credit to participate in this kind of program. When I was in law school I worked as a student advocate for the University disciplinary committee.
Anyway it could be something that is easily organized with a few people and all the posts could be short term appointments. The CO could be a monthly job as could the UA. You can' also make being an arbitrator being contingent upon serving either as a CO or UA so that they are There could also be a list of UAs and it is up to the CATBO to contact the UAs and convince them to enter into the volunteer representation. (I would consider this pro bono, in the US all lawyers are asked to do at least 50 hours pro bono a year for the community).
This is really a very simplified version of the commercial or international arbitration programs of the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) Most arbitration and mediation programs have similar structures. If the person wants to represent themselves without an advocate, they can do that, but there should be someone who represents the complaints by other users of Wikiquette violations, I stress that strongly.
I think one big problem now is that someone who is accused feels like everyone is ganging up on him or her. Being in such a defensive position can make one act irrationally. If all the allegations are channeled through one person and if the person who is accused has someone impartial to talk to about it the debate should be more rational and reasoned.
This whole thing may sound very complex, but in practice it will not be. The mediation procedure can be implimented with one or a few volunteer mediators. The whole arbitration procedure can be implemented with 6 COs (everyone volunteers to work on that committee for two months a year) 6 arbitrators and a few UA, so we are talking about 12-15 people tops giving on the average a few hours a week. There are people who might consider contributing to such a process here. We have at least 6 lawyer members who we could probably convince to volunteer once and a while and there must be a few social workers, psychologists or philosophy types who could play a role. some of these positions could even be voted upon. Vote for Anthere for Arbitrator! or, Angela for User Advoate in 2004! Erik for Complaint Committee, etc. Little Dan for Mediator of the Month! (yes L'Dan you are old enough to be a mediator, in the NYS school system they have a peer mediation program where HS students mediate disputes between students to resolve problems between students).
The advantage of creating such a type procedure is that it would calm things down and once people complained the process would not consume everyone's time the way it is doing now.
Jimbo would still have his foothold [[royal prerogative]] which he could use for temporary restraining bans or in extreme cases where the CATBO is engaging in serious destructive activity. he could also be appealed to to overturn a particularly harsh decision by the arbitrators or unbanning (like [[clemency]]. T the whole process shouldn't take any longer than the amount of time that goes into discussing these issues right now, so it takes about a month or something before the decision about a ban (or lifting a temp ban) comes down.
Anyway, this is just another legal beagle suggestion, and as usual it is not "legal" advice, just a suggestion.
Alex756
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Alex R. wrote:
Anyway, this is just another legal beagle suggestion, and as usual it is not "legal" advice, just a suggestion.
I'll say, judging by the length of your message, this not only looks legal, it looks like a full-fledged license agreement. I have to be honest here and say I could only go thorugh half of it (maybe less) before my attention span spanned to something else (such as writing this e-mail). I highly doubt the average Wikipedian's attention span spans considerably wider than mine. Can you please resume? For as long as I've been able to follow, you make sense, just KISS please!
Gutza
A summary of that giant message would be nice to help those who would like a shorter version.
Vancouverguy
Gutza's point is right on the money -- too many man/woman hours have been spent on this and too many bytes sent. Keep it simple.
SHORT TERM - Temporary ban on RK, lift after 1-3 days - Make sure he understands difference between "User" and "User talk" - Reinstate RK fully and keep eye on activities
LONG TERM We need due process for these cases not because we're legal eagles, but because 1) it captures the state of affiars and 2) it will save everyone's time. There's discussion ad nauseum because folks think democracy means having to consider every case by individual vote. It has to be compartmentalized and captured in some way.
A more defined, comprehensible and fair way would be an escalating set of warning levels, like DEFCONs (or to be more crude, seven stages of hell). This way a user knows where he/she stands, and where he/she's going. It would be measureable, well defined and *brief*, something I know Wikipedians have a tough time doing. :)
A sample system, variations encouraged...
0. NORMAL 1. WARNING 2. AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user) 3. TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically) 4. LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)
I know folks hate labels, "branding" folks or creating classes of users. However, the RK episode shows it's necessary and far more fair than the vigilante system we have now.
-Fuzheado
Fuzheado's system:
- NORMAL
- WARNING
- AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user)
- TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically)
- LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)
...sounds good to me. I think 24 hours for temporary ban is reasonable... and I'm not against there being a mechanism in code that auto-unbans after that time, perhaps even by default. On a side note... I think a lot of issues are conected to there being no official level of authority between J. Random User and Jimbo. Though there's certainly unofficial ones... *shrug* it's definitely something to work out.
-- Jake
That's good for vandals, but what about problem users. For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have made POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their behavior, to orchestrate bans.
- Vancouverguy
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jake Nelson" jnelson@soncom.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 7:14 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
Fuzheado's system:
- NORMAL
- WARNING
- AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user)
- TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically)
- LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)
...sounds good to me. I think 24 hours for temporary ban is reasonable... and I'm not against there being a mechanism in code that auto-unbans after that time, perhaps even by default. On a side note... I think a lot of issues are conected to there being no official level of authority between J. Random User and Jimbo. Though
there's
certainly unofficial ones... *shrug* it's definitely something to work
out.
-- Jake
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
----- Original Message ----- From: "blairr" blairr@telus.net To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 11:04 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
That's good for vandals, but what about problem users. For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have made POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their behavior, to orchestrate bans.
- Vancouverguy
I would keep the mediators and arbitrators two distinct groups. If you go in front of a mediator and know they have been or might be an arbitrator then you may not consider them your friend.
Mediation and arbitration are two very different processes. Mediation is trying to get people to talk, communicate and come to some kind of compromise. Mediators allow people to take any position they want and then they try to have the parties see the position of the other side to appreciate it and see if there is any merit in the other side's POV. It is really a lot like the NPOV process we encourage here.
An arbitratror (from ancient Roman origins) is a neutral decision maker who looks at the differentPOVs and tries to find the proper interpretation of the parties differing POVs to find the controlling opnion in terms of rules and events and the interpretation of those rules in relation to the events. While the arbitrator (or arbitration committee) must only come to one opinion it may not even be the opinions of the parties, they may decide on a third opinion. Also the parties going into arbitration basically agree that whatever decision the arbitrator comes to will be binding on both of them. Thus they are giving up their particular position in an appeal to the impartiality of the arbitration process.
You can't talk to an arbitrator the way you talk to a mediator. Also the arbitration process is open to some scrutiny (though it may not be public as in a court because it is done by the consent of the parties not through the coersion of the state). Mediation cannot really work unless it is confidential and the parties do not fear a penalty for somehow failing in the mediation process.
Sorry for goiing on but these are two incredibly complex processes that have very long histories and many different types of manifestation in the behavior of groups of people so it is very difficult to take all the knowledge I have about these two processes and condence them down into layperson nutshells. Please excuse my verbosity!
Alex756
If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no need for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article, then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the article is actually POV.
If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like JoeM
-Vancouverguy
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 8:42 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
----- Original Message ----- From: "blairr" blairr@telus.net To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 11:04 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
That's good for vandals, but what about problem users. For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have
made
POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their behavior, to orchestrate bans.
- Vancouverguy
I would keep the mediators and arbitrators two distinct groups. If you go in front of a mediator and know they have been or might be an arbitrator then you may not consider them your friend.
Mediation and arbitration are two very different processes. Mediation is trying to get people to talk, communicate and come to some kind of compromise. Mediators allow people to take any position they want and then they try to have the parties see the position of the other side to appreciate it and see if there is any merit in the other side's POV. It is really a lot like the NPOV process we encourage here.
An arbitratror (from ancient Roman origins) is a neutral decision maker who looks at the differentPOVs and tries to find the proper interpretation of the parties differing POVs to find the controlling opnion in terms of rules and events and the interpretation of those rules in relation to the events. While the arbitrator (or arbitration committee) must only come to one opinion it may not even be the opinions of the parties, they may decide on a third opinion. Also the parties going into arbitration basically agree that whatever decision the arbitrator comes to will be binding on both of them. Thus they are giving up their particular position in an appeal to the impartiality of the arbitration process.
You can't talk to an arbitrator the way you talk to a mediator. Also the arbitration process is open to some scrutiny (though it may not be public as in a court because it is done by the consent of the parties not through the coersion of the state). Mediation cannot really work unless it is confidential and the parties do not fear a penalty for somehow failing in the mediation process.
Sorry for goiing on but these are two incredibly complex processes that have very long histories and many different types of manifestation in the behavior of groups of people so it is very difficult to take all the knowledge I have about these two processes and condence them down into layperson nutshells. Please excuse my verbosity!
Alex756 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
From: "Vancouverguy" blairr@telus.net
If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no
need
for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article, then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the
article
is actually POV.
I am not sure that an article/NPOV dispute is actually the subject of banning. Though I guess that one could use an arbitrator to decide what NPOV is, but is that really very contentious? Can't most people who are here for a while understand that? Am I giving our users too much credit?
I thought what we were talking about is the problem with behaviour of users that is a violation of Wikiquette, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiquette and this is the basis for some kind of sanction or penalty (i.e access to the holy grail of wikis).
If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like JoeM
That is what I was suggesting when I mentioned a temporary restraining ban for really outgrageous activity. There would have to be strict guidelines for that and an appeal to Jimbo so that there is some due process. Perhaps it got lost in my verbosity!
Alex756
Vancouverguy wrote:
If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no need for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article, then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the article is actually POV.
If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like JoeM
Who is JoeM? With 300,000 articles each of us necessarily only works on a small subset of the articles. It's perfectly understandable that we may never have heard of a person raising hell over a completely different topic area.
Ec
JoeM was a recent American ultra-conservative vandal who put POV in numerous articles ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 9:22 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
Vancouverguy wrote:
If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no
need
for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article, then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the
article
is actually POV.
If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like
JoeM
Who is JoeM? With 300,000 articles each of us necessarily only works on a small subset of the articles. It's perfectly understandable that we may never have heard of a person raising hell over a completely different topic area.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Alex R. wrote:
I would keep the mediators and arbitrators two distinct groups. If you go in front of a mediator and know they have been or might be an arbitrator then you may not consider them your friend.
Mediation and arbitration are two very different processes. Mediation is trying to get people to talk, communicate and come to some kind of compromise. Mediators allow people to take any position they want and then they try to have the parties see the position of the other side to appreciate it and see if there is any merit in the other side's POV. It is really a lot like the NPOV process we encourage here.
An arbitratror (from ancient Roman origins) is a neutral decision maker who looks at the differentPOVs and tries to find the proper interpretation of the parties differing POVs to find the controlling opnion in terms of rules and events and the interpretation of those rules in relation to the events. While the arbitrator (or arbitration committee) must only come to one opinion it may not even be the opinions of the parties, they may decide on a third opinion. Also the parties going into arbitration basically agree that whatever decision the arbitrator comes to will be binding on both of them. Thus they are giving up their particular position in an appeal to the impartiality of the arbitration process.
You can't talk to an arbitrator the way you talk to a mediator. Also the arbitration process is open to some scrutiny (though it may not be public as in a court because it is done by the consent of the parties not through the coersion of the state). Mediation cannot really work unless it is confidential and the parties do not fear a penalty for somehow failing in the mediation process.
Sorry for goiing on but these are two incredibly complex processes that have very long histories and many different types of manifestation in the behavior of groups of people so it is very difficult to take all the knowledge I have about these two processes and condence them down into layperson nutshells. Please excuse my verbosity!
Compared to some of your previous legal explanations, this one was remarkably succinct. :-)
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Compared to some of your previous legal explanations, this one was remarkably succinct. :-)
But ironically, you copied the entire thing, making your response longer than the comment. ;)
~S~
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Stevertigo wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Compared to some of your previous legal explanations, this one was remarkably succinct. :-)
But ironically, you copied the entire thing, making your response longer than the comment. ;)
Mea maxima culpa!
Ec
blairr wrote:
That's good for vandals, but what about problem users. For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have made POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their behavior, to orchestrate bans.
Simply making strange edits is not an offence. Even POV changes are not in theselves offences. How a person goes about doing these things is much more important.
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
Ec
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
I for one would not go to a mediation panel if they were going to recommend banning to anyone. What kind of mediation would that be? Mediation should be independent of Jimbo (except maybe Jimbo can be the filter for now to decide who might make a good mediator). Also the accused user should be able to pick between a few mediators, so they pick someone comfortable. Also at the mediation stage having an advocate for one's position may not be necessary, but appointing someone to represent the community's gripe about the accused user would make the mediation manageable so that the accused is not facing a whole bunch of accusers, but one who takes all the complaints against that user and presents them to the user for hiers feedback.
The point of mediation is to try and resolve the problem amicably. With the consent of all involved (granted the representative of the community has some power there, but it is power to resolve differences and stop a ban, not the power to agree to a ban, unless the accused user also agrees and in that case, fine the person does not want to be on Wikipedia any longer).
My proposal is that only when mediation fails that arbitration kicks in and only in the context of arbitration can a ban be recommended.
As far as the arbitration panel (the panel is the particular three mediators that are chosen for a particular arbitration, the rest of the committee would have nothing to do with that arbitration) is concerned I was suggesting that they do make a recommendation that is reviewable by Jimbo. It would not take effect (except for the temporary "status quo" ban to insure someone does not cause damage to Wikipedia in the interim period where mediation and arbitration occur).
We could decide to give Jimbo "de novo" review or just have him be like an appeal court that either upholds or overturns a ban decision. It would then be implemented by the powers that be. He could always retain the pardon power, i.e. on his last day in office he could pardon the 140 banned contributors who gave Wikimedia a lot of money [illusion to Bill Clinton ;-)]
I hope that is clear, but I think it is really important to get this distinction between mediation and arbitration straight. That is the way that the process can be made most effective and the transaction cost to Wikipedia volunteers kept to a minimum. This is a fairly standard process I try to put a mediation and an arbitration clause in most contracts I draft as it makes sense from a practical point of view (some lawyers who like to drag their clients into litigation are very much against such clauses).
So now I am writing shorter emails, but more of them! I guess I thought putting it all in one email would make it clear, but it is too much information for someone who is not involved in these kinds of issues on a daily basis (a lot of being a lawyer is about mediation or arbitration, it is much more common than litigation).
Alex756
--- "Alex T." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
(except for the temporary "status quo" ban to insure someone does not cause damage to Wikipedia in the interim period where mediation and arbitration occur). Alex756
"Status quo" ban? Discussion needs to come before any sort of banning. Otherwise, in accordance with the procedures, someone could say that I was in an edit war with an article I made one comment about to someone and reverted their edit (I'd be the one initiating it, of course, because I could have just let his edit go), and then, while you're considering the evidence, I'd be banned. That would be an extreme case, and you'd probably change the rules somewhat if it came to that, but I really think that this is a bad idea in general to ban someone while the decision is pending. LDan
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
"Status quo" ban? Discussion needs to come before any sort of banning.
I think that Alex was talking about emergency bans for simple vandalism. There's some controversy in the current RK case as to whether what he was doing constituted an emergency or not, and I think that reasonable people can differ about that. (I think I would have judged that it wasn't, but as I've said, I'm not going to bother with second-guessing Erik on this, because like yourself and many others, he's proven himself to be good in so many ways.)
The best example to illustrate the need for the power of sysops to temporarily impose emergency bans is the case of the infamous MIT Vandal who kept switching ip numbers and logging in to go on a real old-fashioned vandalism spree, blanking articles and writing curse words in their place, and so on.
If the MIT Vandal had not logged in, the sysops could have banned him easily enough. But because he was logging in over and over, the sysops were rendered powerless, so that only developers could do anything. Since no developers were online at first, this meant that hours were spent battling him. It wasted a lot of time for a lot of people!
People didn't join our noble project to gift humanity with a treasure of knowledge in order to combat drunken Bosnian misogynists at 5AM!
Where I do agree with you is this: unilateral banning decisions by sysops should always be *emergency* and *temporary* unless quickly ratified by the official process, which *right now* is just me, but which will soon be formalized into something else more scalable.
--Jimbo
I like the track your on Alex, in helping Jimbo fit his changing role to better fit the times. I for one would not like to see him (you Jim) as an individual to be the target of a libel lawsuit for sanctioning a ban on someone, under the premise of 'defamation of character' - given that he has 'last word.' On the other hand, hes said in the past that hes better able to defend the WP if its under him, rather than the other way around.
Maybe you guys can talk about formeruser Isis as a case precedent, if youre not doing so already, and explain to us some of your thinking on the matter when you're ready.
~S~
--- "Alex T." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
I for one would not go to a mediation panel if they were going to recommend banning to anyone. What kind of mediation would that be? Mediation should be independent of Jimbo (except maybe Jimbo can be the filter for now to decide who might make a good mediator). Also the accused user should be able to pick between a few mediators, so they pick someone comfortable. Also at the mediation stage having an advocate for one's position may not be necessary, but appointing someone to represent the community's gripe about the accused user would make the mediation manageable so that the accused is not facing a whole bunch of accusers, but one who takes all the complaints against that user and presents them to the user for hiers feedback.
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Stevertigo wrote:
I for one would not like to see him (you Jim) as an individual to be the target of a libel lawsuit for sanctioning a ban on someone, under the premise of 'defamation of character'
Despite our openness, this is a private club entry to which is subject to my personal whims. There is nothing about a ban in and of itself which should be interpreted by anyone as a statement about anyone's character. There is no legal right of any kind for anyone to edit the website of the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia, it's a privilege and shall always remain so.
Maybe you guys can talk about formeruser Isis as a case precedent, if youre not doing so already, and explain to us some of your thinking on the matter when you're ready.
Isis was not banned, Isis chose to leave after coming to what she saw as irreconcilable differences with another user. Isis did threaten to sue that user, but nothing came of it.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Stevertigo wrote:
I for one would not like to see him (you Jim) as an individual to be the target of a libel lawsuit for sanctioning a ban on someone, under the premise of 'defamation of character'
Despite our openness, this is a private club entry to which is subject to my personal whims. There is nothing about a ban in and of itself which should be interpreted by anyone as a statement about anyone's character.
Sometimes the fear of lawsuits is completely out of proportion to the circumstances. There is nothing defamatory about saying that you can't get along with somebody. With many of these people the archives would also show the defamatory claims that they had made against other Wikipedians. Seeking equity in the courts often depends on entering with clean hands. That sword too has two edges.
It's lamentable that many people avoid doing things because of their often erroneous perception of the law. Perhaps guided by a paranoia about even having to appear in court they quickly interpret the law to their own disadvantage. I also believe that for a large part of the population the term "law" is equivalent to what the more sophisticated would call "criminal law". It focuses on punishment and the fear of punishment.
Maybe you guys can talk about formeruser Isis as a case precedent, if youre not doing so already, and explain to us some of your thinking on the matter when you're ready.
Isis was not banned, Isis chose to leave after coming to what she saw as irreconcilable differences with another user. Isis did threaten to sue that user, but nothing came of it.
Isis was probably more aware of legal issues than most Wikipedians. All she had to do was sleep on it before realizing that such a suit would be a dumb idea.
Ec
Alex T. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
I for one would not go to a mediation panel if they were going to recommend banning to anyone. What kind of mediation would that be? Mediation should be independent of Jimbo (except maybe Jimbo can be the filter for now to decide who might make a good mediator). Also the accused user should be able to pick between a few mediators, so they pick someone comfortable. Also at the mediation stage having an advocate for one's position may not be necessary, but appointing someone to represent the community's gripe about the accused user would make the mediation manageable so that the accused is not facing a whole bunch of accusers, but one who takes all the complaints against that user and presents them to the user for hiers feedback.
The point of mediation is to try and resolve the problem amicably. With the consent of all involved (granted the representative of the community has some power there, but it is power to resolve differences and stop a ban, not the power to agree to a ban, unless the accused user also agrees and in that case, fine the person does not want to be on Wikipedia any longer).
I have no problem with this. What you quoted from me above was written before your post making the distinction between mediation and arbitration. Having someone who is representative of the accusers makes sense, but there is a potential can of worms when the accusers start arguing among themselves about who best represents their POV. :-) Identifying the accused should seldom be a problem.
My proposal is that only when mediation fails that arbitration kicks in and only in the context of arbitration can a ban be recommended.
As far as the arbitration panel (the panel is the particular three mediators that are chosen for a particular arbitration, the rest of the committee would have nothing to do with that arbitration) is concerned I was suggesting that they do make a recommendation that is reviewable by Jimbo. It would not take effect (except for the temporary "status quo" ban to insure someone does not cause damage to Wikipedia in the interim period where mediation and arbitration occur).
One possibility is that the accuser and accused would each choose one of the arbitrators from the list of those available. The first two could chose the third one together, or he could be named by Jimbo. . . . or is that too cumbersome? A mediator would be disqualified from being an arbitrator in the same case.
In many of these situations we will probably need some basic rules of evidence and procedure. Thus, when a person makes an accusation he should carry a certain burden of proof. It is his obligation to cite the pages where the offences have taken place. No mediator or arbitrator should be required to look at anything other than the stated sites to help establish the accuser's case.
We could decide to give Jimbo "de novo" review or just have him be like an appeal court that either upholds or overturns a ban decision. It would then be implemented by the powers that be. He could always retain the pardon power, i.e. on his last day in office he could pardon the 140 banned contributors who gave Wikimedia a lot of money [illusion to Bill Clinton ;-)]
Illusion? Had this come from a person with poor language skills I would dismiss it as a typo. From Alex I can't be sure if the ambiguity was intended.
I'm confident that Jimbo would use his royal prerogative wisely and parsimoniously. To do otherwise would undermine the process that we are discussing.
I hope that is clear, but I think it is really important to get this distinction between mediation and arbitration straight. That is the way that the process can be made most effective and the transaction cost to Wikipedia volunteers kept to a minimum. This is a fairly standard process I try to put a mediation and an arbitration clause in most contracts I draft as it makes sense from a practical point of view (some lawyers who like to drag their clients into litigation are very much against such clauses).
Lawyers dragging their clients into litigation here would not find it cost effective. The pockets here are not just not deep; they're sewn shut.
So now I am writing shorter emails, but more of them! I guess I thought putting it all in one email would make it clear, but it is too much information for someone who is not involved in these kinds of issues on a daily basis (a lot of being a lawyer is about mediation or arbitration, it is much more common than litigation).
Good point about the shorter emails!
Ec
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex T. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
...
I have no problem with this. What you quoted from me above was written before your post making the distinction between mediation and arbitration. Having someone who is representative of the accusers makes sense, but there is a potential can of worms when the accusers start arguing among themselves about who best represents their POV. :-) Identifying the accused should seldom be a problem.
My proposal always intended the two procedures to be distinct, perhaps that is clear to me in my verbosity because I know the difference and know that they are basically very distinct approaches.
I think that the accusations can be presented to someone who is chosen ( this person could be chosen by Jimbo), it should not be people arguing over who is making the complaint, there should be someone who decides if there is a complaint and then they can go forward or reject it as a minor transgression, otherwise everyone will be fighting about making allegations and taking things to arbitration. That is not a method to calm things down it we result in a lot of cross complaints of members pointing the finger at each other IMO. A somewhat unconcerned user will just review the complaints of users and then at a certain point decide to go forward. I do not think we should have a system of private prosecutions. There should be some investigative role that is played and some discretion not to bring a complaint if the users are not complaining enough about someone. Of course there should be some guidelines about this, but I trust that serious cases will get through to mediation and possibly arbitration. ...
One possibility is that the accuser and accused would each choose one of the arbitrators from the list of those available. The first two could chose the third one together, or he could be named by Jimbo. . . . or is that too cumbersome? A mediator would be disqualified from being an arbitrator in the same case.
The idea of the third arbitrator being chosen by the first two is to give the third one some impartiality. The arbitrator chosen by the accused may be pro accused, and the arbitrator chosen by the accuser may be pro banning, the idea is that as arbitrators they will have to agree on someone that they both believe they can convince. Having the third arbitrator chosen by Jimbo would reduce that appearance of legitimacy of the arbitration panel. I would either say Jimbo picks the first one and if the accused thinks that person is fair they go with one arbitrator (it is easier for one person to reach a decision usually than three) but otherwise the accused gets to pick the second one and the two arbitrators pick a third. This is well recognized in the writings about arbitration as a well established procedure for chosing an arbitration panel and it is used in practically all arbitration procedural rules. I agree that mediator and arbitrator must be distinct in a case, a mediator should never arbitrate the same case as the mediator may have information that was disclosed in the mediation session that could compromise the impartiality of the process. ...
In many of these situations we will probably need some basic rules of evidence and procedure.
True for arbitration but entirely inapplicable to mediation. It can be extremely informal because it is private. People can say whatever and be as irrational as they want. Sometimes venting like this serves a purpose in mediation (remember it is private) in arbitration the process or result is public (everyone knows the outcome).
Regarding the arbitration my proposal in short form is that the petition is drafted by one group who is authorized to present such petitions (or it can be a group of people who accept complaints from all members). Of course it would have to be specific citing specific pages, etc. There is no need for rules of evidence, everything here on Wikipedia is evidence. I cannot imagine that anything outside of Wikipedia has any relevance. There may be an issue of what constitutes vandalism on talk pages for instance or abuse of user talk pages but generally speaking the only evidence we have is the wiki and its file history. That is what makes this such a straightforward process. I cannot imagine what other documents would ever have any merit (except if the problem leaks into the talk pages but will that happen often, and even then the talk pages are also archived so it is also in writing, there is little case for these archives to be "fixed" unless some developer goes crazy or starts accepting bribes -- such a scenario is highly unlikely if technically impossible.
The procedure should be simple stuff like deadline dates and text limits, i.e. your response cannot be any longer than X characters. The decision must be rendered in Y days. We could adapt it from the adr.org rules for international arbitration or something similar (the Quebec Code of Civil Procedure has a very handy set of rules on arbitration.) There are many examples that could easily be adapted. Once some consensus about the structure of the process is achieved a few of us can refactor it and draft the necessary pages.
Also I would suggest that arbitration decisions not be based upon other arbitration decisions (there may be exceptions and there may develop a body of jurisprudence of arbitration decisions), but that definitely there should be no binding precedent. The arbitrators can but are not required to explain their decision, i.e, the decision can be we decide not to ban user:ABC. It can also be reasoned (probably better if they want a ban to be upheld by Jimbo) i.e., we decide to ban user:EFG for the following three reasons: a) b) c).
should carry a certain burden of proof. It is his obligation to cite the pages where the offences have taken place. No mediator or arbitrator should be required to look at anything other than the stated sites to help establish the accuser's case.
That is what an accusation is, and if the accusation is not sufficient the arbitrators can just dismiss the complaint and in that case I would argue that it should not be appealable by Jimbo (this gives Jimbo some distance and it means that the decision to keep a member can be made by members without any fear that the power above us will take away our compassion towards each other). ...
Illusion? Had this come from a person with poor language skills I would dismiss it as a typo. From Alex I can't be sure if the ambiguity was intended.
...Lawyer's love ambiguity, it is our stock in trade...
I'm confident that Jimbo would use his royal prerogative wisely and parsimoniously. To do otherwise would undermine the process that we are discussing.
I have no doubt that Jimbo has the best interests of Wikipedia at heart. Long live Jimbo!
Alex756
Two quick points:
1. My own thinking is that the mediation and arbitration committees should be given the prerogative to organize their own work according to the results of an internal vote, subject to my review especially at first. And I can tell you that the primary goal of my review of whatever process is chosen will be to push for simplicity and transparency without an excess of a priori agonizing over weird problems that might not happen.
2. I also think that at first, each committee will consist of 11-15 people and that rather than appointing specific people to mediate or arbitrate specific cases, we can just be more free-flowing than that. With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload actually demands it.
My thinking is that we will have a quorum requirement (to account for the fact that people go on vacation or have periods of inattention) on votes, but that all arbitrators will vote on all cases when possible.
--Jimbo
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com
With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload actually demands it.
My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia) then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).
The only other alternative is to have the committee chosen by some "random" process. In the SDNY judges are assigned to cases with one of those bingo or lotto ball type cages where the different judges are each assigned a number, so you can't choose your judge, but neither can the other side. This is a commonplace process in US courts.
My thinking is that we will have a quorum requirement (to account for the fact that people go on vacation or have periods of inattention) on votes, but that all arbitrators will vote on all cases when possible.
Once again I am worried that this has less legitimacy than some form of randomness or some ability for the accused to chose an arbitrator so that the accused does not feel coerced into a process in which choice has been completely removed from the user (if the accused user is someone who is part of the process of creating the procedure I would say that would be o.k. to submit one's will to the committe, but at least some people who might face bans are people who have not yet contributed to Wikipedia and thus they will not in any way participate in this process of forming mediation or arbitration committees.
BTW arbitrators are usually allowed to make their own rules as long as they exhibit a minimum of fairness or due process such as giving both sides an opportunity to makes submissions to the arbitrators.
It is important to keep this in mind because by creating an arbitration system you are giving a banned user the possibility of submiting such a decision to a court of competent jurisdiction to review and either set aside the arbitration decision or to confirm it (sorry Jimbo even though you are almost a God King to us all, beyond the realm of Wikipedia there are other even greater powers that we must bow to). Usuallyarbitration decisions are overturned when the process is totally without reason or it is something that the parties did not really agree to (all the more reason to have somethiing like the proposed Submission Standards (or Terms and Conditions in mav's nomenclature). Key to agreeing on arbitration is that it is of a basic form that has some similarities to generally accepted arbitration schemes. Such as the mutually agreed upon arbitrator or third member chosen by first two members and that the arbitrators also have a chance to consider objections to the rules or create a process that has some responsiveness to the demands of the two sides seeking a binding arbitration decision.
Regarding the rules, yes having the whole committee vote on those rules is a good idea.
I would point out that en banc hearings are usually reserved for appellate bodies so this begs the question: Are you thinking of a two level arbitration process (i.e. a preliminary decision by one or three arbitrators appealable to the whole committee) before you give the final yes/no ratification Jimbo? That could have another added feature much like the Cour de cassation in France the appelate body could "break" the decision and then send it back to another panel for review (in that case the other panel should be chosen by random).
The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or overturned.
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com
With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload actually demands it.
My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia) then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).
I suspect that anything bigger than a 3-judge panel could soon become unworkable. The RK problem ended up on this mailing list where it produced interminable chatter without very much being accomplished through it. Fairness requires that the members of the panel take time to objectively review the evidence, and produce a reasonably quick decision. There will also be a need to eliminate from the panel, anyone who was previously a mediator in the matter, or who is himself involved in the dispute.
The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or overturned.
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
Ray
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
The cost would not be expensive and there are "summary" procedures that allow arbitration awards to be reviewed at very low cost. Reviewing arbitration awards is not a full blown law suit under the laws of most jurisdictions.
Stating over and over that no one is ever going to sue is not a good rational way to deal with the issue and then suddenly find the whole matter in front of a judge. It would be much more proactive to prevent the problem before it occurs.
Regarding jurisdiction I don't think it is difficult to contemplate that the jurisdiction is anywhere anyone who is involved in the case may be (unless we clearly create a juridiction locus in the "contract" between users (and don not assume one already exists, it just needs to be codified).
Regarding witnesses, usually they are not necessary in an arbitration. There is a writen record (it will be created by email, IM files, and wikipages). It is this record that will be presented to a court of competent jurisdiction (as opposed to exclusive jurisdiction). In other words reviewing arbitration proceedings is often a type of "appeal" procedure, it is based on the record of the arbitration, though the scope of appeal is often limited (see art. Article 1484 of the French code de procedure civile:
Where, following the distinctions drawn under Article 1482, the parties have renounced to a right of appeal, or where they have not expressly provided for this right in the arbitration agreement, a review to vacate an instrument termed arbitral award may nevertheless be brought albeit contrary stipulations to the same. The same shall lie in the following cases:
1° where the arbitrator has ruled upon the matter without an arbitration agreement or where this agreement is null or has lapsed;
2° where the arbitration tribunal has been unlawfully constituted or a sole arbitrator unlawfully appointed;
3° where the arbitrator has ruled upon the matter contrary to the assignment given to him;
4° where the adversarial principle has not been respected;
5° in cases of nullity as referred to under Article 1480;
6° where the arbitrator has acted in contravention of a rule of public interest.
There are always going to be ways that arbitration can be appealed, especially if it is done in a manner that is contrary to the principles of fundamental justice.
I should point out that in France arbitration appeals are broadly entertained under article 1482: The arbitral award shall be appealable save where the parties have renounced to an appeal in the arbitration agreement. However, it is not open to appeal where the arbitrator has been appointed as an amicable compounder, save where the parties have expressly provided for this right in the arbitration agreement.
This is not true in a lot of other jurisdictions were the review of arbital awards are based upon something similar to the rule expressed in art. 1482, see for example the rules in NYS under art. 75 of the CPLR (Civil Practice Law and Rules) (too long to reproduce here). http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=16&a=55
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
The cost would not be expensive and there are "summary" procedures that allow arbitration awards to be reviewed at very low cost. Reviewing arbitration awards is not a full blown law suit under the laws of most jurisdictions.
Expensive depends on what's involved. For the possible consequences that we have been discussing, of which a lifetime ban would be the most severe, $200 would be expensive. If the action were begun in a U.S. court costs would not be recoverable, except perhaps by a different suit. Would something won in one jurisdiction be necessarily enforceable in another? Probably not. Article I-3 of the U.N. Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards allows a state to "declare that it will apply the Convention only to differences arising out of legal relationships, whether contractual or not, which are considered as commercial under the national law of the State making such declaration." British Columbia has so declared, and I doubt that it is alone in that. Wikipedia participation is not commercial in nature.
Let's keep in mind that what we are trying to do is establish a technique for dealing with difficult contributors. We have introduced the concepts of mediation and arbitration, but not the entire corpus of world law relating to these. The procedures of several jurisdictions have been mentioned, but only to the extent that some of their ideas might serve as models
Stating over and over that no one is ever going to sue is not a good rational way to deal with the issue and then suddenly find the whole matter in front of a judge. It would be much more proactive to prevent the problem before it occurs.
The maxim that it is easier to get forgiveness than to get permission should always be considered. This is really a question of risk analysis. Trying to cover every possible eventuality isn't cost effective. Considering the probability of a suit is perfectly rational. Once you have determined that the probability is low, and that opportunities for rectification may be available, so what if it ends up in court.
Regarding jurisdiction I don't think it is difficult to contemplate that the jurisdiction is anywhere anyone who is involved in the case may be (unless we clearly create a juridiction locus in the "contract" between users (and don not assume one already exists, it just needs to be codified).
Perhaps it's better not to create such a locus when doing so would only make life easier for the potential complainant. Also the absence of consideration could be a basis for questioning any such contract.
Regarding witnesses, usually they are not necessary in an arbitration. There is a writen record (it will be created by email, IM files, and wikipages). It is this record that will be presented to a court of competent jurisdiction (as opposed to exclusive jurisdiction). In other words reviewing arbitration proceedings is often a type of "appeal" procedure, it is based on the record of the arbitration, though the scope of appeal is often limited
I can appreciate this point
I question the relevance of the mass of French law that you presented.
There are always going to be ways that arbitration can be appealed, especially if it is done in a manner that is contrary to the principles of fundamental justice.
Of course, but nobody is suggesting that we ignore fundamental justice.
I should point out that in France arbitration appeals are broadly entertained under article 1482: The arbitral award shall be appealable save where the parties have renounced to an appeal in the arbitration agreement. However, it is not open to appeal where the arbitrator has been appointed as an amicable compounder, save where the parties have expressly provided for this right in the arbitration agreement.
I'm not familiar with the term "amicable compounder" I suspect that it may cover the kind of amicable arbitration that we are trying to establish, but I can't be sure of that.
Ec
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
The cost would not be expensive and there are "summary" procedures that allow arbitration awards to be reviewed at very low cost. Reviewing arbitration awards is not a full blown law suit under the laws of most jurisdictions.
Expensive depends on what's involved. For the possible consequences that we have been discussing, of which a lifetime ban would be the most severe, $200 would be expensive. If the action were begun in a U.S.
In NYS the cost for filing is $210.
court costs would not be recoverable, except perhaps by a different
What we call court costs are recoverable. What are not recoverable are legal fees. But someone could easily file a suit "pro se" and would not have legal fees. Of course, if legal fees were included in the arbitration agreement, that would be recoverable. Regarding the costs, someone may be doing it to prove a point, and what is the cost of a plane ticket to Florida. Filing the petition to uphold the arbitration could be done by mail. Only the appearance at the actual hearing would be in person. The petitioner could even hire a lawyer to appear for that one occasion. Someone spending a few thousand dollars to prove a point? Highly likely if they feel they have been wronged.
suit. Would something won in one jurisdiction be necessarily enforceable in another? Probably not. Article I-3 of the U.N. Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards allows a state to "declare that it will apply the Convention only to differences arising out of legal relationships, whether contractual or not, which are considered as commercial under the national law of the State making such declaration." British Columbia has so declared, and I doubt that it is alone in that. Wikipedia participation is not commercial in nature.
One way around that is to have a choice of venue clause in the arbitation agreement. Wikipedia could set the arbitration jurisdiction to be in the County Court in St. Petersburg Florida. Thererfore anyone would have to go that court to get the arbitration overturned. That would be prohibitively expensive for the banned user and these jurisdiction/venue provisions are routinely upheld by US courts. If someone goes to a foreign court they might get a decision but only a decision that is made in the "home" jurisdiction of Wikipedia would be binding.
Let's keep in mind that what we are trying to do is establish a technique for dealing with difficult contributors. We have introduced the concepts of mediation and arbitration, but not the entire corpus of world law relating to these. The procedures of several jurisdictions have been mentioned, but only to the extent that some of their ideas might serve as models
Unfortunately the entire corpus of world law relating to arbitration does apply, it is not like copyright law. If someone wants to limit the law that applies then that should be done in a properly drafted arbitration agreement. That is one reason that it needs to be done properly.
Stating over and over that no one is ever going to sue is not a good rational way to deal with the issue and then suddenly find the whole
matter in front
of a judge. It would be much more proactive to prevent the problem before it occurs.
The maxim that it is easier to get forgiveness than to get permission should always be considered. This is really a question of risk analysis. Trying to cover every possible eventuality isn't cost effective. Considering the probability of a suit is perfectly rational.
The probability of knowing if someone will sue is _unknown_. No one can ever predict that. It is not "trying to cover every possible eventuality" it is just being reasonably prepared. Why is it not cost effective? What is the cost? I don't see any cost involved. It is just a matter of good sense to organize it in a way that minimizes any potential exposure to the courts. That is what I am suggesting, keeping out of the courts. Thinking that you can ignore the legal systems that are out there is naive.
Once you have determined that the probability is low, and that opportunities for rectification may be available, so what if it ends up in court.
So what? If you could have taken fairly simple and straightforward steps either to make sure any arbital award is upheld in court or is only enforceable in a certain court, then you have minimized the cost of dealing with this problem. I for one would not want Wikimedia donations to go to pay the cost of some litigator $300 per hour for 50 hours to defend a petition to vacate an arbitration award when it could have been avoided by some simple straightforward policies that could have been easily understood by non-legally trained individuals.
Regarding jurisdiction I don't think it is difficult to contemplate that
the
jurisdiction is anywhere anyone who is involved in the case may be
(unless
we clearly create a juridiction locus in the "contract" between users
(and
don not assume one already exists, it just needs to be codified).
Perhaps it's better not to create such a locus when doing so would only make life easier for the potential complainant. Also the absence of consideration could be a basis for questioning any such contract.
Absence of consideration? How can you say that? Of course there is consideration in the contract between any contributor and Wikipedia.
Thre is a bargained for exchange. You get to use Wikipedia and make contributions Wikipedia gets to release your contributions over the internet. Consideration is a bit of an old fashioned idea. Remember in civil law systems the concept of consideration has never been recognized and that in most common law systems there are lots of ways around this "conisderation" problem. There are all kinds of estoppel arguments that could be used. Anyway the terms of use of an internet site have been upheld as being enforceable. You present the site and allow individuals to use it. It is a two way bargain, definitely a contract. Money does not have to exchange hands for there to be a contract.
Regarding witnesses, usually they are not necessary in an arbitration. There is a writen record (it will be created by email, IM files, and wikipages). It is this record that will be presented to a court of
competent
jurisdiction (as opposed to exclusive jurisdiction). In other words reviewing arbitration proceedings is often a type of "appeal" procedure, it is based on the record of the arbitration, though the scope of appeal is often limited
I can appreciate this point
I question the relevance of the mass of French law that you presented.
It was also presesnted with US law; by reading these laws in comparison you can see that there are underlying similarities. Even in civil law countries arbitration is dealt with in the same manner. This is to show that the principles are the same and can be applied across jurisdictions. It is not a complex jumble of conflicting laws, it was a system that has been used in ancient Roman times, by the "law merchant" and in internatinonal trade contracts. Arbitration is one of the most settled areas of law that there is because of that history.
There are always going to be ways that arbitration can be appealed, especially if it is done in a manner that is contrary to the principles of
fundamental
justice.
Of course, but nobody is suggesting that we ignore fundamental justice.
That is all I have been suggesting. Create a simple straightforward system of arbitration in line with the principles of fundamental justice or due process or fairness (different names in different contexts for essentially the same thing), make the arbitration hard to appeal or overturn by limiting these rights by agreement and that will make the decisions of the committee final.
Alex756
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Alex R. wrote:
[snip]
The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or overturned.
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that the possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is unrealistic. As I understand what we are talking about concerns simple banning -- whether or not someone could contribute to Wikipedia for a definite or indefinite period of time. And I doubt that as long as Wikipedia is a volunteer activity -- where no one is making any money from contributing -- any court would find merit in hearing the case.
And if there was some conceivable tangible advantage to being a contributor or editor (e.g., a clear pattern of contributors to Wikipedia being hired to, say, a publishing job), by that point I'd expect we have hammered out some kind of predictable pattern for how people get banned -- other than the vague "this contributor does not play nice with others."
Geoff
From: "Geoff Burling" llywrch@agora.rdrop.com
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Alex R. wrote:
[snip]
The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or overturned.
The idea of the panel's decisions being overthrown by an outside court is unrealistic. Such litigation is bound to be expensive, with little chance of recovering costs. Add to this the difficulties involving jurisdiction or bringing witnesses from around the world, and you have an effective deterrent against starting any such suit.
IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that the possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is unrealistic.
Why is it unrealistic? Volunteers who have been snubbed by organizations often bring law suits against such organizations. Parents whose children are thrown out of an after school activity. Sometimes they do it to just to get publicity. Why is it US-centric? Arbitration is actually much more common in Europe than the US, after all it was created by the Roman jurisconsults, it is not an American invention, such a statement shows a lack of knowledge of the history of arbitration and the interplay between private contract and the rules of public order. Courts confirm and overturn arbitration decisions all the time, check any legal reporter and you will see this is a daily fact of life in most societies. That is why practically all societies have arbitration rules in their civil law.
As I understand what we are talking about concerns simple banning -- whether or not someone could contribute to Wikipedia for a definite or indefinite period of time. And I doubt that as long as Wikipedia is a volunteer activity -- where no one is making any money from
contributing --
any court would find merit in hearing the case.
What the court would do is overturn the ban, yes, then Wikipedia would have to reinstate the user. That is what we are talking about, not a court awarding damages, but reviewing the arbitration proceeding and saying "you guys did it wrong, you think you can do whatever you want, well, you cannot, there are some basic principles that must be followed in a democratic society and you did not follow them."
And if there was some conceivable tangible advantage to being a
contributor
or editor (e.g., a clear pattern of contributors to Wikipedia being hired to, say, a publishing job), by that point I'd expect we have hammered out some kind of predictable pattern for how people get banned -- other than the vague "this contributor does not play nice with others."
All I am saying is that reinventing the wheel is a pretty stupid idea, especially when you decide it is oblong when for thousands of years they have been making it round. If you are going to create a system of arbitration make sure it sticks, that way when someone takes Wikipedia to court the judge will be on Wikipedia's side, not the agrieved user who was banned without respect to there rights under arbitration.
Also if you do go to such court and the ban is enforced you have the extra added effect that if the user tries to circumvent the ban they may then be held in contempt of court as the court's confirmation of an arbital award converts it into a judgment that is enforceable by the courts.
If you want to create an arbitration scheme why not do it along the well recognized legal principles that exist so that you do not have your decisions overturned by people you do not even know (i.e. judges who have jurisdiction if Wikipedia does not play fair with contributors). Is that so unreasonable?
Alex756
Alex T. wrote:
What the court would do is overturn the ban, yes, then Wikipedia would have to reinstate the user. That is what we are talking about, not a court awarding damages, but reviewing the arbitration proceeding and saying "you guys did it wrong, you think you can do whatever you want, well, you cannot, there are some basic principles that must be followed in a democratic society and you did not follow them."
A basic principle is that the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers, is a private organization creating a private publication, accepting no goverment funds and with no other contractural encumberances of the sort, and can therefore admit or reject editors and authors more or less at whim. I can't really see any valid grounds for any claim to the contrary.
That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of someone we don't want to publish.
If you want to create an arbitration scheme why not do it along the well recognized legal principles that exist so that you do not have your decisions overturned by people you do not even know (i.e. judges who have jurisdiction if Wikipedia does not play fair with contributors). Is that so unreasonable?
It's not unreasonable, but I find this particular argument for it unpersuasive.
My concern here is that people will be so intimidated by the notion that if we don't do arbitration just right, according to some complex legal rules, a judge is likely to overturn it and require us to reinstate someone. It's pretty easy to make sure that doesn't happen.
We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with our procedures as we like. (Of course we shouldn't do that!)
--Jimbo
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com To: "Alex T." alex756@nyc.rr.com; "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org
A basic principle is that the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers, is a private organization creating a private publication, accepting no goverment funds and with no other contractural encumberances of the sort, and can therefore admit or reject editors and authors more or less at whim. I can't really see any valid grounds for any claim to the contrary.
Yes, but once you admit people and create all kinds of policies then those individuals have reasonable expectations. Arbitrary power is frowned upon but courts. If you want to keep it arbitrary, then make sure that it is all kept private by taking away the right to go to the courts and let people know that it is such a private organization so that they cannot get confused and run to the courts when they should have resolved their differences within the Wikimedia realm.
That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of someone we don't want to publish.
But isn't this inconsistent with the NPOV principle? that would be the opening that someone might use to go for the courts. A legal decision reviewing what NPOV would be fascinating reading, but do we really need this? Arbitration would be a much easiier safer way to resolve such disputes without open the door to litigation.
My concern here is that people will be so intimidated by the notion that if we don't do arbitration just right, according to some complex legal rules, a judge is likely to overturn it and require us to reinstate someone. It's pretty easy to make sure that doesn't happen.
Doing it right is really pretty simple (but beleive me clients can screw up even the simple rules that are associated with making arbitration binding and unappealable). If one agrees to an arbitration plan (remember it is a contract) it is to keep matters out of the courts. Only if the arbitration scheme is violated, in some very fundamental way that allows one to appeal to the courts. What is the violation of an arbitration scheme? It is not easy in most jurisdictions to violate an arbitration clause. However sometimes it is possible by being totally unfair, unresponsive and unwiling to listen to some one put forward their perspective.
In most cases (probably 95%) just listening will not change anything, but it says to the courts, hey, we believe in due process, we are not just crazy pirates who want to control the world (but we are crazy corporate pirates who have figured out how to control the world).
Does this mean complex rules of procedure? No. Does it mean doing anything more than having three more or less impartial individuals review all the submissions of the person who is being removed? No, not really. It is a way to protect Wikipedia, not to expose it to more problems. This is why arbritration is often adopted by savvy corporations that operate across international boundaries. It is a less expensive and expeditious way to resolve issues rather than have them drag through the courts for a long period of time with no resolution and hey, you can even do it in house without appeal to some outside arbitration board (as long as the arbitrators are somewhat impartial going into the decision making process). Most courts do not want to overturn arbitration decisions they want to confirm them and clear the court docket.
We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with our procedures as we like. (Of course we shouldn't do that!)
Who is the we? If Wikimedia Foundation is a membership organization then no, that is not true. Even if it is not a membership organization the Attorney General of any state where Wikimedia solicits will have some jurisdiction to deal with user complaints. Unfortunately Not for profit corporations are subject to the jurisdictions of the courts regarding their decision making processes so I cannot agree with the above statement. Having said that one can take steps to limit the outside interference that someone may try to impute to the organization by being clear how limited such rights might be.
However, it does not say that anywhere (I have been trying to get an approach adopted, but everyone seems to think that it is just an inordinate amount of legalism). The reality is that you have to protect your rights as when you let people collaborate they all own the intellectual property in common, why does the guy (or org.) that owns the server have any more right to decide what goes on the computer than anyone else once the floodgates have been opened? The argument is that short of shutting down the server there is some expectation of fairness in the matrix of obligations that is created through various Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is not a tabla rasa anymore.
Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will protect Wikipedia more, not less. Leaving it to the hope that some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue. Everyone, generally speaking, is subjected to the jurisdiction of the courts unless they opt out of it through some arbitration scheme (generally called a contract). After all the GFDL is just a free copyright/left license, it does not deal with all the implied wiki issues that are unique to a collaborative wiki project. These are contractual and association contract matters that will either be figured out later by a judge or by the drafting of an solid user submission standards or terms and conditions now.
Unffortunately we live in a country where there are rules and procedures even if they are not accurately articulated by an organization. That is why so many organizations create policies, manuals and other documents that they apply in a more or less reasonably fair handed manner to everyone in the organization.
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of someone we don't want to publish.
But isn't this inconsistent with the NPOV principle? that would be the opening that someone might use to go for the courts.
I can't imagine that they'd get very far with that argument. NPOV is not a legal requirement for us, it's just something we do. If we wanted to abandon it tomorrow, we could. Whether or not a particular ban conflicts with NPOV is an interesting one, but it strikes me as highly difficult for someone to come up with an argument that isn't risible that we have any obligations at all in that area.
Wikimedia Foundation has a strong first amendment right to publish whatever it sees fit, NPOV or no. The fact that we strive for NPOV is not different from Fox News striving to be conservative, or the NYT striving to be liberal, or Hustler striving to be pornographic. Each organization retains the sole right to determine the content of it's own publication, and to change policy about that at will.
If one agrees to an arbitration plan (remember it is a contract)
Why is it a contract? I say that it is not a contract any more than me reflecting for weeks on end about whether or not to ban someone is a contract. The person banned at the end of the arbitration (if that's what happens) is just banned, whether they agreed to it or not.
It is not easy in most jurisdictions to violate an arbitration clause. However sometimes it is possible by being totally unfair, unresponsive and unwiling to listen to some one put forward their perspective.
What bothers me about the thrust of what you're saying is that it sounds like you believe that by instituting more formal procedures for deciding this sort of thing, we are thereby changing things so that people could at least conceivably have standing to complain that the process is arbitrary, i.e. we are somehow allowing outselves to foolishly give people some sort of legal right not to be treated arbitrarily.
I'd like to avoid that, obviously!
Does this mean complex rules of procedure? No. Does it mean doing anything more than having three more or less impartial individuals review all the submissions of the person who is being removed? No, not really. It is a way to protect Wikipedia, not to expose it to more problems. This is why arbritration is often adopted by savvy corporations that operate across international boundaries. It is a less expensive and expeditious way to resolve issues rather than have them drag through the courts for a long period of time with no resolution and hey, you can even do it in house without appeal to some outside arbitration board (as long as the arbitrators are somewhat impartial going into the decision making process). Most courts do not want to overturn arbitration decisions they want to confirm them and clear the court docket.
I guess the problem I'm having with all of this is that we are not talking about entering into formal arbitration agreements with people like EofT. That's just asking for trouble, if you ask me.
Perhaps we should drop the name 'arbitration' if that's what it implies. If we want arbitration with someone to avoid a lawsuit, that's a WHOLE OTHER THING.
This is not about avoiding lawsuits. This just about finding a way to ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal culture.
We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with our procedures as we like. (Of course we shouldn't do that!)
Who is the we? If Wikimedia Foundation is a membership organization then no, that is not true. Even if it is not a membership organization the Attorney General of any state where Wikimedia solicits will have some jurisdiction to deal with user complaints. Unfortunately Not for profit corporations are subject to the jurisdictions of the courts regarding their decision making processes so I cannot agree with the above statement. Having said that one can take steps to limit the outside interference that someone may try to impute to the organization by being clear how limited such rights might be.
But I can't conceive of any sensible grounds for user complaints of any kind. We absolutely should make very clear that users have the absolute minimum legal rights against the Wikimedia Foundation as possible!
However, it does not say that anywhere (I have been trying to get an approach adopted, but everyone seems to think that it is just an inordinate amount of legalism). The reality is that you have to protect your rights as when you let people collaborate they all own the intellectual property in common, why does the guy (or org.) that owns the server have any more right to decide what goes on the computer than anyone else once the floodgates have been opened?
Can you really imagine a court buying this argument? I can't. I can't really conceive of a case like this getting very far at all.
Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will protect Wikipedia more, not less.
Well, I agree with that! I think we should do whatever we need to do, with legalistic formalism and all the bells and whistles to make sure that if some crank does try to take us to court to get us to let them edit the site willy-nilly that we can just point to Exhibit A (whatever that might be) and the Judge will say "Oh, o.k., well this whole thing is frivolous, good day!"
Leaving it to the hope that some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue.
Well, I totally agree with that.
--Jmibo
Jimbo worte (in part):
This is not about avoiding lawsuits. This just about finding a way to ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal culture.
And (I hope) about finding a way to avoid banning people in the first place!
Actually that is, I would like to think, covered by "respects our internal culture".
Wikilove and all that :)
sannse
sannse wrote:
This is not about avoiding lawsuits. This just about finding a way to ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal culture.
And (I hope) about finding a way to avoid banning people in the first place!
Absolutely! I was on a bit of rant there.
My goals for the procedure are of course all about keeping and extending the peace, and a culture of mutual helpfulness, and the prevention of the need to ban people any more than absolutely necessary.
We want a procedure that is widely viewed as credible and fair, so that even if people disagree with a specific decision, they will agree that the process is worth supporting.
(Even my retaining a right of executive clemency or pardon, is something that I would exercise judiciously, deferring to the decision of the committee in almost all realistic cases, even if I didn't *quite* agree. I only want everyone to understand that I intend to be there to keep the process from going wildly haywire with dozens of bans per month or whatever.)
However, and I think that Alex and I agree much more than my rant yesterday would suggest, I really want to make sure that our putting in place a process does not give rise to anyone thinking that they suddenly have new legal rights to edit the Wikipedia website, regardless of the wishes of the other users, or regardless of the final decision of the Wikimedia Foundation.
--Jimbo
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
However, and I think that Alex and I agree much more than my rant yesterday would suggest, I really want to make sure that our putting in place a process does not give rise to anyone thinking that they suddenly have new legal rights to edit the Wikipedia website, regardless of the wishes of the other users, or regardless of the final decision of the Wikimedia Foundation.
As my detailed rant reply to your rant states is that yes, we do agree and no we are not granting new rights by having an arbitration type procedure that deals with cranks who are disrupting the collaoborative nature of the Wikipedias and their communities of user/volunteers.
Actually I am all for limiting the rights to access to Wikipedia because that will make it easier for more people to contribute and will hopefully cut down on the time that those of us who would like to contribute more seem to be spending on these policy issues.
Alex756
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
Alex R. wrote:
That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of someone we don't want to publish.
But isn't this inconsistent with the NPOV principle? that would be the opening that someone might use to go for the courts.
I can't imagine that they'd get very far with that argument. NPOV is not a legal requirement for us, it's just something we do.
"Something we do" has legal consequences. Behavior, generally speaking can easily have legal consequences, especially when it is community behavior and standards are involved.
Wikimedia Foundation has a strong first amendment right to publish whatever it sees fit, NPOV or no.
Yes, but who is this Wikimedia Foundation? It is no longer the property of one person but it is now a not for profit corporation. If it were about a specific point of view, then yes it makes sense that the board could decide what could and could not be published.
But adopting the NPOV policy it should be applied evenhandedly. People contribute and each has equal rights to contribute. Someone does not have more rights to contribute than someone else. So the perimeter of this right is behaviour that is distructive. People who are distructive are not operating within the NPOV after multiple warnings, continue to do destructrive things to the goals of Wikipedia as an project and thus, should be banned. I think that is pretty clear to me. (see my point about Wikipedia being a trust below).
not different from Fox News striving to be conservative, or the NYT striving to be liberal, or Hustler striving to be pornographic. Each organization retains the sole right to determine the content of it's own publication, and to change policy about that at will.
Once again, none of these are not-for-profit corporations that have all the policies of openness and inclusiveness that Wikipedia has developed.
If one agrees to an arbitration plan (remember it is a contract)
Why is it a contract? I say that it is not a contract any more than me reflecting for weeks on end about whether or not to ban someone is a contract. The person banned at the end of the arbitration (if that's what happens) is just banned, whether they agreed to it or not.
Because they make a contribution in exchange for it being released under the GFDL. That is why it is a contract. It is a bargained for exchange. You log onto a web site and you accept the terms of use of that site. That is an agreement. You get the right to view the site and they get "eyeball time" that they can sell to third parties. That is a contract. Here the contract is make a contribution and it will be released to the public under certain terms.
It is not easy in most jurisdictions to violate an arbitration clause. However sometimes it is possible by being totally unfair, unresponsive and unwiling to listen to some one put forward their perspective.
What bothers me about the thrust of what you're saying is that it sounds like you believe that by instituting more formal procedures for deciding this sort of thing, we are thereby changing things so that people could at least conceivably have standing to complain that the process is arbitrary, i.e. we are somehow allowing outselves to foolishly give people some sort of legal right not to be treated arbitrarily.
They can complain now. So why not make it clear to them that the rules are that you cannot complain except under some very limited circumstances. If you call it arbitration or the "NPOV Violatons Committee" or " review of user status" it is all the same thing legally. It does not have to be called arbitration for it to be arbitration, nor does it need to be called mediation. It only needs to be structured with minimal fairness; you are listening to the person before locking them out. You can call it wikilove or whatever. Whatever you want to call it. It is not giving them a legal right, it is limiting it or making sure that it is not abusable. That is what businesses do all the time, that is perfectly reasonable. Leaving it formless and just up to scrutiny of anyone who decides to scrutinize it is not putting it into a form that will give Wikimedia the power to control user conduct. If you want to control user conduct then set up a policy that addreses that and have some decision making process. If you want to make it bullet proof give it the semblance of fairness (or due process or fundamental justice depending on your legal tradition) and then apply it in an even handed way. The fact is that people already beleive that there is some "rule" about banning. It is not done to anyone arbitrarily, it is only done in a very rare instance of behavior that is unacceptable. All institutions have the right to limit such people and I have not suggested that Wikipedia give this up. I am suggesting that Wikipedia make it clear to all users so that they must comply or will face a banning procedure that will be final, unappealable and cannot be discussed in court because Wikipedia's ill defined policies have opened the doors to them to discuss it there at great expense to the projects of Wikimedia. Resources are scarce, so let's conserve them.
I guess the problem I'm having with all of this is that we are not talking about entering into formal arbitration agreements with people like EofT. That's just asking for trouble, if you ask me.
What does "formal" mean? Contracts are formed constantly. When you use a ISP, when you log onto a web site, when you go to the store and buy a quart (or liter) of milk or a newspaper you enter into a contract. It happens millions (if not billions) of times every day. Yo set up a standard form to it and then everyone follows it. They do not even think about it or know that there is a contract. It only comes up when someone feels that the contract is a problem (like getting sour milk or if you ISP keeps bumping you off line). Otherwise everyone is bound by the contract and must follow it. There is a contract, make it formal, easily inforceable and to the community's benefit and that disempowers those cranks who are being disruptive.
Perhaps we should drop the name 'arbitration' if that's what it implies. If we want arbitration with someone to avoid a lawsuit, that's a WHOLE OTHER THING.
This is not about avoiding lawsuits. This just about finding a way to ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal culture.
That is exactly what I have been taking about. Do it internally in a way that respects the internal culture and one of the benefits is that it also avoids lawsuits; nothing wrong with that added benefit, no? You just say, "you have no right to appeal the decision of of 'whoever that is in authority decides these things.' Their decisions are final decisions of Wikimedia. If you do not like it start you own online encyclopedia and do what you what there." ...
But I can't conceive of any sensible grounds for user complaints of any kind. We absolutely should make very clear that users have the absolute minimum legal rights against the Wikimedia Foundation as possible!
That is what I am proposing. Putting in an internal "dispute resolution scheme" is only limiting such rights even more. They can't complain to anyone except a limited number of people. Someone reviews the complaint, listens to the user that might be banned, and unless they have some persuasive argument not to be banned (which most likely will not be the case in 99% of the cases when someone is engaging in negative, unsocial behavior) then they will be banned. It is transparent so other members see that the process is fair and do not quit Wikipedia because they don't want to participate in a project where power is abused arbitrarily and the goals of the project are progressed Wikipedia is more stable and more valuable contributors continue to contribute. I can't see any problem with this in terms of Wikimedia limiting any of its "rights" to create an online encyclopedia.
However, it does not say that anywhere (I have been trying to get an approach adopted, but everyone seems to think that it is just an inordinate amount of legalism). The reality is that you have to protect your rights as when you let people collaborate they all own the intellectual property in common, why does the guy (or org.) that owns the server have any more right to decide what goes on the computer than anyone else once the floodgates have been opened?
Can you really imagine a court buying this argument? I can't. I can't really conceive of a case like this getting very far at all.
Courts do things that are unexpected; smart business people try to prevent that from happening so that their is less intereference. Wikis and the internet are still areas of law that could be interpreted in new ways. We see that there are people trying to subvert Wikipedia in any way they can. Limit their ability to do so while appearing to be fair. That is what it is all about. The fact is that when one gives their contribution to wikipedia they still own the copyright, Wikipedia is only getting a GFDL license. That opens the door to a lot of questions. Is Wikipedia a trust that all contributors have contributed to and those who maintain Wikipedia now have a fiduciary duty to all those contributors? I think this is a valid question. If there is a fiduciary duty to all contributors then, yes the courts may try to exert a lot of scrutiny over how Wikimedia deals with those contributions in a fair way.
Let us make it clear what is going on so that no one can bog us down with lots of legal issues because of the evolutionary nature of a wikis without some minimal amount of policy it will just self destruct.
Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will protect Wikipedia more, not less.
Well, I agree with that! I think we should do whatever we need to do, with legalistic formalism and all the bells and whistles to make sure that if some crank does try to take us to court to get us to let them edit the site willy-nilly that we can just point to Exhibit A (whatever that might be) and the Judge will say "Oh, o.k., well this whole thing is frivolous, good day!"
Leaving it to the hope that some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue.
Well, I totally agree with that.
I think we are really on the same page, just maybe forget to call it arbitration call it something that fits in with the culture, and make it simple, straightforward and something that anyone who logs on can understand. It may be long, but there are a lot of issues now that Wikipedia is a community.
Alex756
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will protect Wikipedia more, not less.
Well, I agree with that! I think we should do whatever we need to do, with legalistic formalism and all the bells and whistles to make sure that if some crank does try to take us to court to get us to let them edit the site willy-nilly that we can just point to Exhibit A (whatever that might be) and the Judge will say "Oh, o.k., well this whole thing is frivolous, good day!"
Leaving it to the hope that some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue.
Well, I totally agree with that.
Here are my proposals to change the edit page announcement add warranty disclaimers to the copyright page and create a submission standards page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Annotated_edit_page_announcement_(pro...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights_and_Warranty_Disclaimers_(...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights_and_Warranty_Disclaimers_(...)
These three texts need to be read together, they are meant to function together.
It should be noted that I wrote the section on arbitration prior to the topic being introduced about the Wikiquette committee. It can be changed to be more internal or to reflect subsequent discussions. I have just been too busy to deal with it in the last month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Submission_Standards_(proposal)#Choic...
Most contracts that include arbitration use the AAA, there is no reason not to make it internal and limit it to banning. That can be clarified. Any other comments (and some suggestion that this should either be abandoned or adopted) would be appreciated on the relevant talk pages (or on the Wikilegal-l discussion list if that is more appropriate) .
Alex T. Roshuk (user:Alex756)
Geoff Burling wrote:
IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that the possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is unrealistic. As I understand what we are talking about concerns simple banning -- whether or not someone could contribute to Wikipedia for a definite or indefinite period of time. And I doubt that as long as Wikipedia is a volunteer activity -- where no one is making any money from contributing -- any court would find merit in hearing the case.
I think that's totally right. Anyhow, editing the website is always a privilege generously extended, but no one has a right to edit the website, period. At my whim, I could start banning people for the most random and idiotic of reasons, and there would be no legal way to stop me. The GNU FDL protects the right to fork, of cousre, but if I wanted to do something stupid to run the project into the ground, I could.
"Arbitration" has to be understand in light of that, it can not create new legal rights for random users that they don't already have.
If someone ever did decide to appeal an arbitration or banning decision of any kind to a court, then, they'd basically be wasting their time.
--Jimbo
Jimbo sez?
With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload actually demands it.
Alex R sez
My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia) then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).
The usual procedure is for each party to a controvery to pick one arbitrator, the two arbitrators picked then pick the third.
Fred
From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@ctelco.net
The usual procedure is for each party to a controvery to pick one arbitrator, the two arbitrators picked then pick the third.
You can check my original post, that is what I first suggested.
Alex756
At first read, I thought it said, "The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."
That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the guy who owns the servers and the domain names." ~S~
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
blairr wrote:
That's good for vandals, but what about problem
users.
For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
and users that have made
POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
users, as well as
empowering these users, if the user-in-question
does not change their
behavior, to orchestrate bans.
Simply making strange edits is not an offence. Even POV changes are not in theselves offences. How a person goes about doing these things is much more important.
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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You're right- it does say it should be able to ban Jimbo. Not likely to happen.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Stevertigo" utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 1:25 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
At first read, I thought it said, "The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."
That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the guy who owns the servers and the domain names." ~S~
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
blairr wrote:
That's good for vandals, but what about problem
users.
For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
and users that have made
POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
users, as well as
empowering these users, if the user-in-question
does not change their
behavior, to orchestrate bans.
Simply making strange edits is not an offence. Even POV changes are not in theselves offences. How a person goes about doing these things is much more important.
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 22:50, Vancouverguy wrote:
You're right- it does say it should be able to ban Jimbo. Not likely to happen.
The Wikipedia's licensing allows us to ban Jimbo. If for some reason, Jimbo needs to be banned, we can do it. If Jimbo pulls the plug, we can use the GPL'd database and the GPL'd software and start our own fork. That's hardly ideal. There are some very difficult problems to deal with, such as domain ownership, which will hopefully be resolved as power is transferred to a group, rather than a single person.
Not to say, of course, that there's any foreseeable reason to ban Jimbo.
--- cprompt cprompt@tmbg.org wrote:
Not to say, of course, that there's any foreseeable reason to ban Jimbo.
ROFL. But of course, every good starship needs a self-destruct sequence. It only makes sense. :-D
~S~
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Vancouverguy wrote:
You're right- it does say it should be able to ban Jimbo. Not likely to happen.
May I suggest "Hooked on Phonics"? Recommending a ban to Jimbo is not the same as recommending to ban Jimbo. Perhaps switching those two little words could indicate a dyslexia problem. At least Steve humourously recognized that he had misread the "to" as "on".
Ec
From: "Stevertigo"
At first read, I thought it said, "The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."
That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the guy who owns the servers and the domain names." ~S~
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
blairr wrote:
That's good for vandals, but what about problem
users.
For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
and users that have made
POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
users, as well as
empowering these users, if the user-in-question
does not change their
behavior, to orchestrate bans.
Simply making strange edits is not an offence. Even POV changes are not in theselves offences. How a person goes about doing these things is much more important.
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
Ec
Well, I no longer own either of those things, the foundation does, which means that I have a legal responsibility to the goals of the organization. But, in any case, in the spirit of the rule of law, I do authorize a temporary emergency ban of me if I start posting goatse.cx images on the homepage. :-)
Stevertigo wrote:
At first read, I thought it said, "The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."
That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the guy who owns the servers and the domain names." ~S~
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
blairr wrote:
That's good for vandals, but what about problem
users.
For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
and users that have made
POV changes, as well as other things.
I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
users, as well as
empowering these users, if the user-in-question
does not change their
behavior, to orchestrate bans.
Simply making strange edits is not an offence. Even POV changes are not in theselves offences. How a person goes about doing these things is much more important.
The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a delegated person. That recommendation could also include a length of time for the ban. If they become involved directly in the ban themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Jake Nelson wrote:
Fuzheado's system:
- NORMAL
- WARNING
- AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user)
- TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically)
- LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)
...sounds good to me. I think 24 hours for temporary ban is reasonable... and I'm not against there being a mechanism in code that auto-unbans after that time, perhaps even by default.
I think there may be a need for several lengths of "temporary ban" perhaps depending on the offence, perhaps depending on the number of repetitions of the offence, perhaps depending on factors I haven't thought of, but which discussion might determine have an impact.
Perhaps within #3 there could be a 24-hour ban, then a 7-day ban, then a 30-day ban...gives lots of opportunity for the user to reform...seems better than constant 24-hour bans or leaping too quickly to long-term ban.
Cafemusique
In response to Gutza's request, here is what Alex said, but with 1100 words removed. I hope this is an accurate summary. Apologies if not. Angela.
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving disputes.
This would only involve those directly involved in a dispute. The advantage of it being private is that comments you make can not be later used against you.
How it would work: You would have a mediator and an arbitrator (impartial decision maker). This could be Jimbo or a group of trained users. You could have 3 arbitrators (one per side and one impartial).
All complaints are made to a complaint officer who passes these on to the mediator. Someone else could act as advocate for the problem user. All this should be done in private, maybe by phone. This group then tries to solve things. If they can't, the complaint officer makes a record of all the allegations.
Jimbo then chooses an arbitrator. The advocate of the problem user has to reply to the complaint. The problem user has some say over who the arbitrators are. The posts (complaint officer/ advocate/ arbitrator) could be short term appointments.
This is a simplified version of what the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do.
There should be one person to represent the complaints by other users.
Aim: more rational and reasoned process.
You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers, psychologists or philosophy types especially could help. You could vote for certain people to be given each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo could still overrule it.
This would calm things down and not be so time consuming.
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From: "Angela" sloog77@yahoo.co.uk
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving disputes.
This would only involve those directly involved in a dispute. The advantage of it being private is that comments you make can not be later used against you.
This is a simplified version of what the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do.
There should be one person to represent the complaints by other users.
Aim: more rational and reasoned process.
You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers, psychologists or philosophy types especially could help. You could vote for certain people to be given each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo could still overrule it.
This would calm things down and not be so time consuming.
Thanks for that Angela. Very good summary. Alex756
A good idea. Vancouverguy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 7:24 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"
From: "Angela" sloog77@yahoo.co.uk
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving disputes.
This would only involve those directly involved in a dispute. The advantage of it being private is that comments you make can not be later used against you.
This is a simplified version of what the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do.
There should be one person to represent the complaints by other users.
Aim: more rational and reasoned process.
You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers, psychologists or philosophy types especially could help. You could vote for certain people to be given each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo could still overrule it.
This would calm things down and not be so time consuming.
Thanks for that Angela. Very good summary. Alex756 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Angela wrote, summarizing Alex:
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving disputes.
I agree with that. One of the things that I realized in reading through Alex's discussion is that I've been trying to do all three of the following:
1. Mediation, and I've asked people to email me privately to try to sort these things out *before* a public explosion.
2. Arbitration, meaning that I eventually have to make enforceable decisions. Here, I've been the district count, court of appeals, and supreme court all in one.
3. Executive clemency, or 'pardons', meaning a final check on the process to let people back even after they've been banned.
But these are all different things, and there are sometimes tensions between them.
The only one power I really need to keep in the long run is #3, the ability to be the final "release valve" if some process for mediation and arbitration goes haywire and I think people are being banned left and right for little reason, or if after a period of time I think that a person has reformed, or if I think some terrible injustice was done in a particular case.
----------
If I understand Ed Poor, he likes being a mediator, but doesn't so much like being a 'gatekeeper' or 'arbitrator'. (If that's not right, no matter, I'm just making up an example.) I can see that -- some people would like to help others resolve disputes, but don't want to be in a position of having to make a decision for or against that person. I can testify that trying to do both is, well, exhausting.
Other people may feel, with justification, that although they can judge cases fairly and reasonably, their own personal style isn't likely to be so helpful in terms of mediating disputes.
--Jimbo
From: "Gutza" gutza@moongate.ro
Alex R. wrote:
Anyway, this is just another legal beagle suggestion, and as usual it is not "legal" advice, just a suggestion.
I'll say, judging by the length of your message, this not only looks legal, it looks like a full-fledged license agreement. I have to be honest here and say I could only go thorugh half of it (maybe less) before my attention span spanned to something else (such as writing this e-mail). I highly doubt the average Wikipedian's attention span spans considerably wider than mine. Can you please resume? For as long as I've been able to follow, you make sense, just KISS please!
Gutza
That was the KISS version. but the super kiss is as follows: We have mediators who privately review disputes with someone who is a complaint person and the person who has been accused (they can have a advocate). If that private session is not resolved, then they go to arbitratoin. Jimbo can always set it aside (so it is not strictly speaking arbitration). but there can be one or three arbitrators, the arbitration is in writing, generally reviewable by other members and results in a written decision and submitted to Jimbo.
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
If that private session is not resolved, then they go to arbitratoin. Jimbo can always set it aside (so it is not strictly speaking arbitration). but there can be one or three arbitrators, the arbitration is in writing, generally reviewable by other members and results in a written decision and submitted to Jimbo.
And I'm willing to give up the power to declare 'guilty' if the arbitration process says 'innocent'. I'd just like to retain the ability to set aside a ban in case I think the process has gone horribly astray.
In practice, I doubt if that would happen.
--Jimbo
If two users are fighting should it be open or should there by a closed mediation process? Mediation is typically confidential and only involves those directly involved in a dispute. If mediation fails the agreement between the parties (and this can all be done by agreement very easily because everything on Wikipedia is in writing) then it goes to whatever dispute resolution process is otherwise there.
The advantage of private mediation is it allows the parties to vent and get their disputes off their chests withouf the fear that somehow what they say will be used against them. The ideal is that by communicating (through a third party that is trained in conciliation and compromise) that the parties actually understand each other better.
I think this might be useful on Wikipedia because it is such a communal and cooperative environment. Of course the privacy is done is a way that there is no record, but if the mediation resolves, then there is no need for there to be a record, it is all reduced to a mediation resolution agreement and anything discussed during mediation is not recorded.
This looks useful, but it sounds like it would either: a) require everyone's email address, which we don't want to do, but it would make an effective mediation system. or b) make a complex messaging system within wikipedia, which would be beneficial, but might be difficult or time-consuming to code and would also slow Wikipedia down.
In arbitration this is going to be someone who acts as an impartial decision maker. That might be Jimbo, but there could be a committee that has a few online members who have some training in this area and who are prepared to see the process through. Many arbitration proceedings also use three arbitrators. One chosen by each side and the third chosen by the two arbitrators in order to insure some kind of impartiality. They could also make a decision that could be submitted to Jimbo and he could either confirm the decision or decide to grant the user clemency in his discretion as our personal Lord and Master. (Hear ye, hear ye, the Court of Jimbo's Bench is now is sesssion!)
[lots of complex procedures]
Wikipedia's goal is to make an encyclopedia, not a judicial system. Any big debates that are not solved by mediation could just go on village pump, an article talk page, or, if it's really hard to resolve, the mailing list. A private messaging system would be useful (but possibly difficult to impliment), but more than that would be too much. The user talk system seems to work well currently; maybe I missed something about an actual problem with it that's come up. LDan
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From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" littledanehren@yahoo.com
[lots of complex procedures]
Really, it is very simple I'll explain it to you so you understand it and I bet you will agree it is not complex. I am just writing three things at the same time and you are getting to see what the mind of a lawyer is like (and for free!) "Oh my do they really think like that!"
Wikipedia's goal is to make an encyclopedia, not a judicial system. Any big debates that are not solved by mediation could just go on village pump, an article talk page, or, if it's really hard to resolve, the mailing list. A private messaging system would be useful (but possibly difficult to impliment), but more than that would be too much. The user talk system seems to work well currently; maybe I missed something about an actual problem with it that's come up. LDan
People need privacy to discover problems. It does not need anything really complex. I used a secure email service that is free. There are also secure chat programs that you can use. It does not have to be done "on Wikipedia" just like this discussion list. And the mediation will not be GFDL it is a private discussion between the parties (one being a representive of the users).
Alex756
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com
I think that Erik's suggestions here have great merit, and I'd like to open the floor to a discussion. Obviously, he's given a fair amount of detail, and I may not want to adopt all of the detail that he's suggested, but I think in broad outline we're going to have to move to something like this.
--Jimbo
This is another reason that a policy/procedure regarding bans should be in place. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512
Title 17 USC section (512(i)(1)(A)):
(i) Conditions for Eligibility. -
(1) Accommodation of technology. - The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider -
(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers; and
Alex756