Erik Moeller wrote,
I will state here for the record that I'm strongly opposed to any content arbitration committee. Decisions like this should be made by the community, not by elected or appointed representatives. The solution to dealing with prolonged disputes is to establish clear community procedures to make decisions, such as binding votes under clear conditions (e.g. a discussion has been going on for X weeks, all arguments have been summarized, all options of the vote have been agreed upon in consensus ..). Wikipedia does not need an editorial staff.
As I've often stated, if you absolutely rule out voting as a last resort, you end up with clubs and cabals which make decisions instead. This is exactly what a content committee would eventually become. Don't destroy the village in order to save it.
I share Erik's concern about cabals, but I think this is an issue Mav has addressed, satisfactorally, at length. Rotating elected members with term-limits, and an appeals process, provide checks and balances.
I fundamentally disagree with Erik about the community vote. We all come to Wikipedia because we offer different things -- some people know a lot about the Bible, others about Cricket, others about linux, and so on. We also all come here to learn things we do not know. I do not really understand quantum mechanics -- you really think I should vote on whether content is accurate or not? I do not know the physics literature -- you really think I can vote on the repute of a given source?
There are some things I know a great deal about, and will argue my position forcefully with anyone -- and can also recognize, easily, when someone else's position is better than mine. This is far from true, however, concerning most issues at Wikipedia. I think what motivates these proposals, and Jguk's and Mav's proposals particularly, is the recognition that no one here is an expert on everything, and the community needs people to turn to for reliable, well-informed evaluations of content and disputes over content. I think this is undeniable. And a full-community vote, far from helping, will make things worse.
Checks, balances, and accountability, yes. But knowledge and experience, yes too.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701
Steven-
I fundamentally disagree with Erik about the community vote. We all come to Wikipedia because we offer different things -- some people know a lot about the Bible, others about Cricket, others about linux, and so on. We also all come here to learn things we do not know. I do not really understand quantum mechanics -- you really think I should vote on whether content is accurate or not? I do not know the physics literature -- you really think I can vote on the repute of a given source?
You appear to be operating under the assumption that someone not interested the least in quantum physics would participate in a vote on whether this or that study result should be included in an article about it. This does not seem very likely to me. Moreover, I am strictly in favor of a process whereby all arguments from all sides *must* be properly summarized before a binding vote can take place, so that anyone who has an interest and a basic understanding can quickly get an overview of what the arguments are.
Furthermore, in many disputes, there will be two or more sides from different fields of knowledge. For example, a debate might rage about whether [[quantum physics]] should include a link to [[postmodernism]]. Should that debate be limited strictly to physicists? Should a debate about the Sokal affair be limited to postmodernists?
Wikipedia has always been based on the idea that you can trust reasonable people to do the right thing, and that the unreasonable ones will be a minority that we can deal with. I think that principle should be applied here as well.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
You appear to be operating under the assumption that someone not interested the least in quantum physics would participate in a vote on whether this or that study result should be included in an article about it. This does not seem very likely to me.
Nor to me. But this is one of the problems. Most of us aren't interested in pedophilia. Pedophiles are. Let's hold a vote on what the pedophilia articles should so, a vote on which references are valid, and see what happens.
Instead what we should do is use serious judgment to determine how to find out which references are valid, and rely on those judgments. We can consult with psychologists and sociologists and get an idea of whether or not a particular user is acting in good faith or just citing crackpot sources to push a POV.
Wikipedia has always been based on the idea that you can trust reasonable people to do the right thing, and that the unreasonable ones will be a minority that we can deal with. I think that principle should be applied here as well.
Indeed, I think that no one really questions this. The real question is whether a formal voting process is the right way to deal with it.
--Jimbo
Jimmy:
Nor to me. But this is one of the problems. Most of us aren't interested in pedophilia. Pedophiles are. Let's hold a vote on what the pedophilia articles should so, a vote on which references are valid, and see what happens.
Instead what we should do is use serious judgment to determine how to find out which references are valid, and rely on those judgments. We can consult with psychologists and sociologists and get an idea of whether or not a particular user is acting in good faith or just citing crackpot sources to push a POV.
Thanks for giving me such a nice example to work with. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al.
This is perhaps the only scientific study (a meta-analysis of existing studies) that was condemned by the US House of Representatives. It concluded that, contrary to mainstrean opinion, child sexual abuse does not necessarily cause pervasive harm in later life.
Many "experts" would characterize Rind et al. as a "crackpot source".
Now, there has been, over the last 25 years, a gigantic amount of hysteria about child sexual abuse in the United States. Thousands of innocent individuals have been accused of abuse in a wave of allegations, mostly based on the pseudoscientific theory that memories of abuse are "repressed" and have to be recovered by "trained therapists" in special "repressed memory therapy" which involves suggestive questioning, hypnosis, "scenario exploration", and drugs. Respected anti-pseudoscience organizations such as CSICOP have tried to alert people to this problem.
Good starting points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Ritual_Abuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder
An excellent book on the topic is "Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria" by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=05202...
Also highly recommended: "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex" by Judith Levine: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=08166...
(With a foreword by Jocelyn Elders, the former US Surgeon General who was fired by Bill Clinton because she said about masturbation that "it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.")
Suffice it to say that there was and, to some extent, continues to be an entire "therapy industry" that profited massively from creating "child sexual abuse" claims (including the most bizarre allegations of murder and torture you can imagine). Some of these "trained experts" have now moved on to "therapize" victims of abductions by extraterrestrials.
What does this have to do with Rind et al.? Many of the same people who work in that industry have massively attacked the Rind study. There were methodological problems with it (particularly from a European point of view, where "child abuse" typically refers to acts with children under 14, while in the US, it often refers to persons under 18), but many of the criticisms were simply very vile personal attacks against the authors of the study.
Of course, pedophiles near and far have trumpeted Rind et al. as evidence that child abuse is not harmful. To some extent, they are correct: The ridiculous assumption that a 16-year-old cannot decide to have sex and will be instantly traumatized when they do so deserves to be questioned. The age of consent is something that needs to be carefully examined on the basis of scientific evidence. To exclude individual scientists who challenge the emotional mainstream as "crackpots" is not a good way to do this.
I am absolutely confident that if a pedophilia or child abuse related article was brought before the ArbCom, and they consulted with an "expert" on child sexual abuse, the chances are pretty good that said expert falls into the group of questionable psychologists described above, and that they would strongly recommend to entirely ban any mention of Rind et al. from child abuse related articles.
A villified user would be positioned against a trusted and respected expert. They wouldn't stand a chance.
Such a decision would be highly POV and absolutely incorrect.
It is questionable whether a democratic process would lead to a better result, but at least someone quoting Rind et al. would not be treated as a crackpot by some committee which decides the dispute. At least they would have a chance to submit their arguments to the whole community on equal footing with everyone else, and the community would have a chance to read all arguments and *judge for themselves* which ones are plausible.
Hence, the child sexual abuse / pedophilia example is an *excellent* reason not to delegate any kind of authority to credentialed experts. Credentialed experts are largely responsible for creating the hysteria around this topic, and many of them made a lot of money by doing so. *Especially* in cases where a topic is highly emotionalized, making decisions based on "expert opinion" is the wrong thing to do, because the expert is very likely to be biased one way or another.
And I absolutely challenge the notion that, if a decision were made in a democratic process, nobody would be interested. In fact, I believe that an emotional topic like pedophilia, if properly announced, would attract a very large number of commenters and voters.
Yes, there are pedophiles on Wikipedia. That doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong by default, and that we need some expert to tell us so. We can deal with these people on our own.
As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and open community processes. If we choose credentialism, then we implicitly assume that experts can be trusted to do the right thing. But history shows that this is a very, very dangerous assumption to make. Open processes are the only way that we can reliably challenge experts when they happen to be wrong.
Erik
On 6/13/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and open community processes.
This totally mischaracterizes what this is about. It's a choice between voting and reasoned discourse. Both are community processes.
A good point to bring up is the sort of participants that each of those methods will bring... Votes are far more likely to bring around the fear and emotion driven, reactionary, and mob mentality crowds than something that actually requires time and thought.
But the problem with things requiring time and thought is that often it discourages so many people that the decision is ultimately made by a small group with a special interest.. and many of the more neutral people are too disinterested or two annoyed from dealing with the click that they avoid it.
Which is one of the things about a number of our voting processes.. they are not strictly votes but rather the interpretation of a poll by a trusted member of our community who must answer for his or her call if it comes into question. I'd like to see more of that, and less implying that it's actually a vote.
Jimmy Wales:
Erik Moeller wrote:
As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and open community processes.
This totally mischaracterizes what this is about. It's a choice between voting and reasoned discourse.
Well, if this is your definition of "reasoned discourse", then you may be right. This is exactly the kind of "reasoned discourse" that I would expect if content disputes are handled on a regular basis by the ArbCom.
"You're wrong. Go away."
I am absolutely against a simplistic voting model without discussion and fallback options and you know it.
Erik