On 30 October 2011 11:30, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
I'm not a big fan of abstract calls for strong
leadership, and I genuinely
don't see Arbcom as being a disaster - though there could be things it has
done that I'm not aware of. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to changes that
would make the pedia a "healthy, collaborative and fair creative
community", just not convinced that reforming or replacing Arbcom is the
place to start.
Without knowing which aspects of the pedia Marc and Phil diagnose as
unfair or unhealthy it is difficult to know if your diagnosis is the same
or the reverse of mine. Though our preferred solutions are certainly
dissimilar. I'm not convinced that "lack of a formal, structured
full-oversight body this is the fatal flaw in the entire Wikipedia
Project". Remember the wiki is at its strongest as a self organising
community where people don't have to file requests in triplicate with some
commissar. I like the flexibility of being able to launch things like the
death anomaly project without having to seek approval from some central
authority. To me "a formal, structured full-oversight body" isn't a way to
achieve a "healthy, collaborative and fair creative community", if anything
its the reverse.
That said we are a community in a longterm decline, which isn't in itself
healthy; But we are a large and committed community that is still getting a
lot done, so one shouldn't exaggerate the unhealthiness. We are still in
large parts an astonishingly collaborative community, despite the
unfortunate shift from fixing things to tagging them for others to fix. As
for the fairness, I'd be interest in knowing which specific aspects you
consider unfair. If there are any current or potential Arbs who you
consider unfair then the time to say so is during the election for Arbcom.
A well constructed case demonstrating that a candidate had a tendency to
unfairness would probably tank any candidate for Arbcom.
That's a reasonable overall analysis, though I might want to pick up
specifics.
Bear in mind, though, the multiplicity of points of view with which people
approach these themes. One can single out:
(a) Management consultant: Breezy views from outside the community that
ignore the fundamental difficulty of implementing anything.
(b) Doomwatch: Extrapolation to the point of radical failure (usually of
enWP to the exclusion of all the other projects) based on some
one-dimensional view and ignoring trends that favour the work (e.g. new
stuff that is helpful coming online all the time).
(c) Constitutional theorist: A better written constitution would be, well,
better. Ignoring therefore the "WP works only in practice, not in theory"
riff.
(d) Golden Ager: Thinks things used to be better, against most experience
of what things really used to be like.
(e) Backlogs will kill us ecologically: A Doomwatch theory that ignores the
way that editors reassign themselves.
(f) Jimbo is dead: As with Paul McCartney, not true, just better known for
other roles these days. This seems to be a Golden Ager theory based on the
idea that it was all much better once, when Jimmy Wales had to do 14 hours
a day reading emails to keep things on track (with a few phone calls and
some IRC).
(g) ArbCom doesn't do what it might: This gets a bit closer, ignoring the
fact that the community view is skewed toward ArbCom not doing what it
might, at least among enWP's "political activists".
(h) More central control: Given community views on ArbCom, this is one of
the least likely solutions to anything, I believe. This a recurring
debating point, both on content and on behaviour. Any further elected body
is likely to have just the same issues with interfacing with the community.
Perhaps there is some mileage in the concept of a deliberative body that
gets round doing everything by "direct democracy".
(i) The whole system is bent: See a few vocal Wikipedia critics, passim.
But that is clearly neither true, nor even arguable except on the basis of
selective use of anecdotal evidence (of which of course there is an
overwhelming supply by now).
That is probably nearly enough from me, but a potted version of my
"solutions": (i) Discuss the history in a more informed and conceptual way;
(ii) Divide out community roles where the WMF could step in, from those
where they really can't; (iii) Get to the point where the "management
consultant" approach on civility and newbie-biting is replaced by a more
concerted community effort to tell rude folk on the site that they are
problem editors, no matter what they write. In particular I have felt for
quite some time that the Marc Riddell diagnosis really falls at all three
of these hurdles.
Charles