[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>   
>>> Hm. Actually, your first point (arbitrating in extraordinary
>>>       
>>  > circumstances) is related to the Meta ArbCom, which in the future
>>  > shouldn't be a part of VC. An, of course, I don't think that we should
>>  > have a body which would take care about about every article. However,
>>  > one of the jobs of VC should be taking care about systematic
>>  > tendencies inside of the communities.
>>
>>  Do you mean like systematic bias as it is manifest on the
>>  English language wikipedia?
>>     
> Yes, but en.wp made a tool for fighting systematic bias. A lot of
> other projects have their own systematic biases produced by cultural,
> political or whatever background.
>   
Fighting systemic (rather than systematic) bias is not the sort of thing 
that can be done with a tool.  Systemic bias is often the product of 
deep-seated attitudes whose proponents may not even imagine to be be 
biases.  The best tools for that problem are education and patient dialogue.
>>  I do expect you mean in most cases telling the outsider to get lost,
>>  stop trolling and the usual...
>>
>>  ...but if there was something real at the bottom of it, then waiting
>>  patiently for their own community to deal with it, perhaps waiting
>>  even longer than would be strictly speaking necessary to be sure
>>  the community itself cannot deal with it (just to avoid the appearance
>>  of being a bunch of jackboots ready to parachute into any dispute)...
>>     
> I am talking here about "outsiders" in Brigitte's sense: usually
> contributors of some WM project not involved in a particular project
> where they find a problem.
>
> If there is a problem, process of solving it doesn't require
> aggressive approach. It may be enough to analyze it and try to make
> sophisticated influences toward a solution. Time may be helpful, but I
> don't think that approach "wait and see what will be" is a wise one.

Most projects resent, and rightly so, attempts to impose another 
projects solutions.  It's quite predictable that people who are 
regularly fighting amongst  themselves in a project will find common 
cause when a stranger comes along insisting that he has the best 
solution because, "It works in Wikipedia."  Unless the participants in a 
project develop a personal sense of ownership in a policy it won't work, 
no matter how objectively logical that policy may be.

Ec