You're asking the wrong question. The purpose of arbcom-like body is to
check that the policies are being correctly interpreted, but the policies
like:
wp:blocking policy
is so full of words like 'may' and vague words like 'disruption' as to be
functionally useless.
"You got into a discussion with another user and reverted each other. That
disrupted Wikipedia. You are hereby banned for life."
^ that isn't against the policy
In most cases another admin would reduce the length. Maybe... but they don't
have to.
On 28 October 2011 20:30, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I agree with much of what you say, Ian. But I see the
issues of "crime and
punishment" and getting and keeping the playing field level as just one
function of an oversight body. There are many other areas that need
monitoring in such a complex project such as WP. The question I still have
is how do you get such a body established in the first place in the
Project?
Marc
on 10/28/11 3:01 PM, Ian Woollard at ian.woollard(a)gmail.com wrote:
The flaw isn't the oversight body, it's
the almost complete lack of
policies
about 'crime and punishment'. It's
not leadership; having a leader is
very
good, but only if they do the right things. No,
what is lacking is a
workable theory about what the right thing to do about conflict is in the
context of the wiki.
The way it works at the moment is anarchy at the administrator level and
above. Other than a few rules about not administrating when directly
involved, admins are allowed by the policies to do just about anything;
and
there's essentially nothing to stop admins
ganging up on users; and this
happens not as infrequently as you would hope. That's where it goes all
Stanford Prison Experiment.
The reason it's like this is because Sanger was a philosopher of
knowledge,
and he shaped the policies to collect knowledge
really well, but he
doesn't
have the slightest clue about crime and
punishment.
The areas that work the best are things like 3RR; because it's fairly
clear-cut. But even then, the length of punishments for going 3RR
occasionally range from nothing to permanent bans,* more or less entirely
on
administrator whim (modified only somewhat by the
administrators fear of
the
crowd).
It's basically the problem is that editors have no 'civil rights';
there's
no policy against severe punishments for trivial
transgressions.
*- they don't usually ban people outright for 3RR, they just mark people
as
'trouble makers' and then ban them for
increasingly minor infractions
later.
It's sort of like a death penalty for parking
offenses because you've
parked
in the wrong place before, and 'know what you
were doing' and therefore
'deserved it'
On 28 October 2011 18:52, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net>
wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Marc Riddell
>> <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree with you completely, Phil. ArbCom, as it presently is, is a
>>> disaster. And is a major obstacle to achieving a healthy,
collaborative
> and
>>> fair creative community. My questions are: Who has the power to change
> that?
>>> How would the process that could evaluate ArbCom, and bring about
> change,
>>> get started? I would be interested in helping.
>
> on 10/28/11 12:40 PM, Carcharoth at carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com wrote:
>>
>> ArbCom has far less influence than people give it credit for. What you
>> are looking for is leadership, and that has to come from the community
>> (or a body elected for that purpose by the community), not a dispute
>> resolution body (which is what ArbCom is, or at least what it started
>> out as). What is needed is a body other than ArbCom to provide
>> leadership. That is what Wikipedia is lacking. There have been
>> attempts (by both ArbCom and the community) to institute such a body,
>> but the "community" tends to resist radical change, which is of course
>> part of the problem (though it is also a safety feature against too
>> radical changes).
>>
>> The upcoming ArbCom elections might be a good time to air some of
>> these matters, but only if done in a well-thought out manner, by
>> someone with the time and motivation to see through a process that may
>> take months or years to come to a conclusion.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>
> I agree with you completely, Carcharoth, that "What is needed is a body
> other than ArbCom to provide leadership". It is this lack of a formal,
> structured full-oversight body this is the fatal flaw in the entire
> Wikipedia Project. But to try and establish this body via ArbCom doesn't
> register with me. I believe such a new concept such as this will require
a
> formal resolution, or whatever mechanism such
additions or alterations
to
the
structure of the Project require.
Marc
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