On 18/06/2008, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Well, first off, as has been pointed out by SlimVirgin on the proposed decision talk page (sorry, can't link right now) - part of this decision contradicts the BLP policy; that is the section in BLP where even involved admins can take action, whereas this decision indicates that involved admins *may not* take action. (Incidentally, I agree with the decision on that point, it is better for uninvolved admins to step in.) But it is not the BLP policy that is changed. Blocking, page protection, reversion and deletion have always been part of that policy and remain so. What has changed is the opportunity for admins to unilaterally create sanctions. What this decision changes is the Administrator policy. There is nothing in [[WP:ADMIN]] that permits or encourages administrators to unilaterally establish sanctions other than blocks, and blocks are reviewable and can be overturned by any other administrator. They do not require a "clear consensus" to be overturned. Even if our policies are descriptive and not prescriptive, the Arbcom remedy is policy *de novo*. The description of the existing policy up until Arbcom closed this case is that 1) admin or other editor identifies problem; 2) sanctions are proposed and discussed in a public forum in which interested editors and admins may comment; 3) there is a determination of consensus; 4) action is taken (or not taken) on the basis of the consensus. Other activities can be going on at the same time; an editor may be blocked, material may be reverted/deleted/oversighted from an article, a page may be protected. Please note also that not even this Arbcom remedy authorises action specific to articles, only to editors. The closest parallels are those remedies that have been made to cover a small number of problematic topics, and there has already been one arbitration case resulting in a desysopping related to that. Yesterday, I read over an article where editing restrictions have been imposed unilaterally by an administrator that are so poorly formulated that they will practically guarantee a POV article, and one of the few really talented editors who's been willing to work on similar contentious articles (with considerable success, I will add) has essentially been told to edit to the restrictions or go away. Incidentally, it involves BLP information. Running good editors skilled at bringing problematic articles up to NPOV off of such articles is not to anyone's benefit. Risker

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: That's one opinion. Another opinion is that "ArbCom rulings do in fact hold greater authority than that of mobs, democratic or otherwise." [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=21…]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw(a)armory.com> wrote: Much to my surprise, I found an old vote where the community approved the creation of ArbCom. It was "royal assented" by Jimbo, but with him effectively removed from his position of arbitrary authority these days, I wonder if the community could vote to disband ArbCom. Probably not at that point, but it does seem the ArbCom is working hard to be unpopular these days. WilyD

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw(a)armory.com> wrote: If the project community consisted solely of individuals like you and me that might work, Kurt. But in practice society isn't ready for anarchy, even on the Internet. If the ArbCom is to lose its power it will need to be replaced with something else. Like it or not, Wikipedia actually makes a good case study for why anarchy doesn't work.

On Wednesday 25 June 2008 03:21, David Gerard wrote: I don't know where this ridiculous straw man came from. I don't have a problem with hierarchies, in general. I do have a problem with hierarchies imposed externally by the fiat of one man who's not all that special, upon what is claimed to be a "community" project. -- Kurt Weber <kmw(a)armory.com>

Anthony wrote: Sorry but, as someone who was there (volunteered and got appointed to try and make a go of the mediation committee), this is spun so far that it bears almost nil relation to the real historic record. Jimbo did not impose the arbcom structure. He asked for volunteers to see if a workable group could be convened that could take some of the work he no longer had time for. The arbcom, when it formed itself, immediately morphed into a body that had nearly zero resemblance to what Jimbo or others had at first described as how it should operate. At first it did not satisfy nearly all the wishes that were hoped it would satisfy (though it was markedly more effective than the mediation committee I was a member of, that isn't saying much - and this does really reflect badly on me individually). Despite this Jimbo said that he would give it respect and support, and try very hard to not meddle or countermand its decisions except in a very extreme miscarriage of justice. I honestly don't know if Jimbo ever overturned an Arbcom decision, but positing that Jimbo instituted the Arbcom as his own creation, is just not even close to any form of veracity. Given what I said above, I think it is obvious that "designing" a replacement for the arbcom would be an excercise in futility. Yours; Cimon Avaro

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote: As someone who was a named party to one of the very first arb com cases, and who was in contact with Jimbo regarding its progress, I must strongly disagree with you. I'm not sure if it's worth my time to go and find an exact quote, since you yourself have provided no evidence to support your assertions, but when I suggested back then that the Arb Com could be ignored, Jimbo basically said to me that my submission to the arb com was voluntary, but that failure to submit to it would result in a permanent ban. I asked him numerous times to look into the ruling, and while he often responded with a promise to look into it, he never even gave me so much as an explanation as to why he found it justified. I frankly don't even understand how that follows even if what you said above was correct, which it isn't.

I'm sure there are other errors, or at least misleading statements, but here's two of your statements that are in error. "this is spun so far that it bears almost nil relation to the real historic record" For this one, I'll have to put it back on you. What part of what *I* wrote did you find in error? "positing that Jimbo instituted the Arbcom as his own creation, is just not even close to any form of veracity." I'm not sure how you can say this "is just not even close to any form of veracity", as it is quite literally true. Jimbo instituted the Arbcom as his own creation. It may have morphed into something different from what he initially intended, but that doesn't change the fact that he created it. More substantively, I'd say it doesn't even resolve him of the responsibility for having created it. But on that point, I'll probably find myself in the minority of people on this list, since the consensus of Wikimedians seems to be that there's nothing ethically wrong with letting others run amok on the property for which one is the caretaker.

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think I have about the exact opposite opinion, but I'm willing to bow back out of this discussion. I've waited years for the circus court called the Arb Com to be disposed of. I can wait a few more.

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 6:29 PM, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: Certainly. A brief summary would be that I see this as harmful to NPOV. NPOV is one of our core founding principles, and should trump -all- other concerns, even BLP. This decision seems, instead, to raise something else as more important than that critical, core part of our mission, neutrality. Concerns of harm should be primary when they -do not- impact neutrality, or when neutrality is also harmed by excessive negative information about a living person, but should never be when concerns of "harm" and "neutrality" are in genuine conflict.. Tellingly, the ArbCom decision does not even mention NPOV. Further, just because an article is a BLP does not mean that there cannot be a legitimate content dispute about what to include or not include. This gives a rather powerful weapon to the hands of the "don't include it" side in any given debate, unbalancing the consensus process. This, again, is harmful to neutrality and our normal community processes of deciding how to best write a good NPOV article. There are threats of severe sanctions against those who -undo- actions taken under this policy, but again quite tellingly, no similar threats against those who use this policy to stifle legitimate disputes rather than to remove blatantly bad material. I think the problems caused by this policy and previous interpretations much like it are already visible. In many articles, it has been argued that we should not include a real name despite its wide dissemination by highly reliable sources. NPOV and NOR would demand that we -follow- our sources' example, whether we personally agree with it or not. Our goal should be to spread, not suppress, information, provided that it can be verified through reliable sources and follows our other content guidelines. We should never suppress reliable information on the basis of "harm" if it violates no other content policies-if a source has already spread the information, it's already available to the public, and if it can't be sourced or is OR, well, we don't even need BLP to say "That doesn't belong in an article", though it is helpful to say in the case of a BLP, unsourced information should be removed with increased speed and vigor. Those of us concerned about BLP at its inception were assured that it was mainly intended to prevent another repeat like the Seigenthaler incident, to remove -unsourced or poorly sourced- information about living persons. Despite our concerns about creep, we were assured that a tight leash would be kept on this thing, and so we assented. After all, who could argue anything but that "John Smith is a member of the Nazi Party", with no sourcing, should be removed immediately and, unless sourceable, permanently? However, it is now being used to stifle -legitimate- dissent. Many believe real names should be used when reliable sources provide them. Certainly legitimate disputes can arise over whether -well sourced- negative information can be included in an article. (What if highly reliable sources confirm that our Mr. Smith really is a neo-Nazi?) It is time for that scope creep to be reined in, not expanded. BLP enforcement should apply to -unsourced or poorly sourced- negative or possibly controversial information. To everything else, where reliable sources do exist, consensus-seeking should be the order of the day, as with any content dispute. We should not tie one side's hand behind their back in a legitimate content dispute backed by reliable sources. In this decision, the ArbCom involves itself directly in policymaking and indirectly in content disputes, two areas it has traditionally and very properly avoided. It should have stayed out. The expanded scope of the BLP policy does not enjoy anything like community consensus, even though its original form did. -- Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 10:41 AM, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: How quickly factions and power grabs form *is* why anarchy doesn't work. On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 4:21 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Absolutely. I'm going to make one of my rare "me too" posts echoing this. Kurt, as a self-declared objectivist, maybe you will appreciate this quote: "It is a grave error," writes Ayn Rand, "to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable." (http://www.tafol.org/bulletins/b07.html quoting "Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason," in The Objectivist Newsletter (February, 1962) 5.) Simply ignoring the "Arbitrary Committee" is not enough. It must be replaced with a stable, predictable, system of governance.

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 4:27 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Indeed, extreme and unworkable. The ArbCom certainly has enough support that it has de facto community empowerment, it seems to have de jure community empowerment too. If the community rescinded its de jure empowerment? Personally, I'm not pro revolt. I probably would support a move that took out Jimbo's proxy role for English ArbCom, and more closely modelled it on other such bodies, with direct, community empowered appointment. If you believe that the ArbCom was de jure created by the community, we probably can force these kind of changes through with clear consensus. WilyD

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Chris Howie <cdhowie(a)gmail.com> wrote: A better term might be "informed zealot". That's someone who knows current policy and knows how things are suppose to work but simply has a strong belief that it should be otherwise.

2008/6/23 Wily D <wilydoppelganger(a)gmail.com>om>: The most disturbing thing about this idea is what we'd vote in to replace it. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Mike R wrote: "Mob" is of course a pejorative, as are "pile-on" and other such terms. The difference can be seen in the discussion structure. Threaded discussions can be particularly poor at clarifying matters. Arbitration cases are generally better at clarification than other options, short of wiki editing done by a skilful bunch of people. Which is why policy pages that have been worked over have the standing they do, and it's not just a question of how many people have actually edited them. Charles

On 6/19/08, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: You should run. —C.W.

Charles Matthews wrote: There are policies about enforcement as well, though. Things like [[WP:3RR]] are policies not about content, but about how editors are expected to interact. The Arbitration Committee generally enforces such policies; it cannot create them itself. -Mark

2008/6/18 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>om>: BLP is 36K of messed up text. I doubt many people with the interests of the project at heart have actually read it. As written it is broadly equivalent to our copyright policy reading as a long version of "we must keep in mind and respect people's intellectual property rights" which would result in either wikipedia being overrun by copyvios or the deletion of about 90% of wikimedia commons. Worse than that it can't even be fixed because people don't seem to be sure what it is actually meant to be doing. About the only thing it's clear on is that it doesn't apply to dead people. Heck we haven't even settled the status of legal persons yet and you want to make this enforceable beyond our normal methods? -- geni

2008/6/18 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>om>: And where can I find this 1K? There is more than 1 way of making things enforceable. Interesting claim. See I've also run into claims that BLP is mostly about people staying within the law. If it's bloat you can isolate the core policy. Wikipedia:Non-free content is fairly long but the core policy is less than 2 screens. And indeed they are. No your problem is that there are a large number of people from different backgrounds with very different world views who will read ultra vague text in very different ways. Sure you can technically get a one line version along the lines of "Articles should not contain content which would not be reasonably possible to successfully defend under US civil law" but I'd probably need a second line to clarify which states. However at least that would be clear enough to build an enforcement system on so perhaps thats what you should go for. You see policy is our first line of defense when it comes to getting admins to do what we want since it lets them know what we want. The odds of two admins looking out our BLP page and coming to the same conclusion about that are minimal. The odds of them looking at WP:EDP and coming to the same conclusion are rather higher which is why it is brutally enforceable. -- geni

geni wrote: That's an interesting point in the context of the topic of this thread. When it comes to policy documents, there is no "authoritative interpretation". Let's remember a few things here. Firstly, responding to complaints of "vagueness" by supplying huge amounts of detail comes close to "feeding the trolls". The editors who want it all spelled out in black and white aren't those busy with compiling an encyclopedia (with the exception of a few areas such as "fair use"). Secondly, we aren't talking in this thread about "policy" but what the Arbitration Committee hands down. There you can get an "authoritative interpretation" - ask the AC what they meant (and whether they still mean it). And thirdly - well, I'd see the current position as transitional. There are a few areas of content - maybe four distinct issues - where some more sophisticated arrangements are going to be required by the time enWP enters its second decade. BLP seems to be the most pressing (I calculate 200 biographies of living people per admin, so really policing those could become a huge drain on admin time, as it arguably is already). Putting aside the usual comments (ArbCom is damned if it behaves like an unadventurous committee, and damned if it doesn't; and any proposed change needs its "activation energy" to be viable, which individual editors can find an obstacle), we ought to be addressing the "governance issue" or the "constitutional deficit" or the "management of long-term content problems" - whatever your favourite formulation is - with some courage and imagination. Charles

"we want ... to keep Wikipedia out of aspects of the lives of people that are nothing like encyclopedic, and can cause potential defamation issues. " That only sounds good until one analyses it. I think most of us just want to keep Wikipedia away from unsourced negative material about living people, and possibly some of us also want to keep away from even sourced material not relevant to notability, & derogatory in a serious way to people the intimate details of whose lives are not a matter of public concern. That's a much narrower restriction than what you said, and much more compatible with NPOV, and with the actual wording of BLP. And anything and everything dealing with living people is potentially defamatory if for reasons right or wrong they don't like what is being said. I think most of us would think it more compatible with NPOV to keep out only what can plausibly be considered as actually libelous, again a much narrower restriction. This illustrates what arbcom did wrong: they legislated that anyone with a more broadly restrictive view can impose it. Possibly some of them may have actually known what they were doing, and specifically tried to impose their minority view. -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

David Goodman wrote: The mission is to write an encyclopedia, right, not a scandal sheet? The disagreements I see aren't really about the term "encyclopedic". NPOV is not negotiable. Any reliably-sourced facts that truly are required to write a neutral piece should be included. But the whole point of the BLP policy is to have a minimum standard of inclusion for topics (excluding the prurient, and the sort of tittle-tattle that you find in low-class blogging), as well as minimum standards for sourcing. You can go a long way about writing a neutral article about someone without mentioning they once kicked a dog in the street. In real life examples of enforcement this becomes fairly clear. Err ... this is an international project, and "libel" means different things in different legal systems. Therefore it isn't especially helpful, especially if you're default to US law as the baseline. As Jimmy Wales as often mentioned, we should not be posting defamatory matter, just as a question of ethics. Let alone the possibility that the whole project might be closed down by a successful libel suit. We did no such thing. An admin isn't "anybody". but a trusted person with (we assume) a good working knowledge of the site policy and mission. No one can impose on Wikipedia, and admins, in particular, are fully accountable for their actions. Let me explain it this way. If the ArbCom had voted through a principle like this: "Admins enforcing WP:BLP should encounter the minimum of formalities and dickering, and should have their judgement treated with the maximum of respect by other admins", then I think there would be only a vague murmur of discussion. The same ideas were put in a remedy, dressed up in some drafting to put flesh on the bones, and with a practical suggestion. Namely, admins should be stating more explicitly what they are doing as enforcement, logging it as sanctions on a noticeboard, and discussion there should be treated under the protocol that the sanction stands until there is a clear consensus against. Just as ArbCom principles are, this is only "advisory". What people seem to miss, in close reading of existing policy documents, is that "policy" has never been entirely written on the site. Community norms and notions of good practice have always mattered greatly. Arbitrators play their part in contributing to that wider discourse, as they are expected to. The judicial analogy, that this is "judge-made law", is wrong. It mistakes the legalistic trappings for what is really happening. Arbitration cases are the only case studies on the site that come with anything like adequate documentation, and therefore they provide an unmatched, serious commentary on the site's management. Charles

Bryan Derksen wrote: Ah., that wasn't what I was meaning here - I was meaning the inclusion or not of sub-topic areas in a biography, not the question of whether the biography itself should be in Wikipedia. Sorry for the confusion caused. Charles