[WikiEN-l] Re: Erik, a couple of requests

[Anthere]

Jimmy Wales a écrit:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> 
>>This whole mediation/arbitration distinction seems fallacious to me. Alas,  
>>we're in this mess now, and it is unlikely to be fixed.
> 
> 
> I don't know, I'm up for radical change if the current system is not
> working out.
> 
> The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget
> mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration".  So the mediation
> step is slighted.  And people aren't just being annoying when they do
> that, it's that by the time it gets to formal "mediation", things are
> so bad that only "arbitration" is possible.
> 
> The Mav/168 situation strikes me as being like that.  Here we have two
> valued contributors arguing endlessly about something that outside
> parties see as entirely pointless (the wording of the introductory
> paragraph of [[DNA]], where there's nothing transparently wrong about
> either alternative, and it seems impossible that there could be no
> compromise).  
> 
> They want to go to arbitration over it.
> 
> --Jimbo

Could you be more specific Jimbo ?

You write here that to your opinion, there has been no mediation between 
168 and Mav. You write here that they both want to step directly to 
arbitration without having gone through mediation.

I may be wrong here, but I have in my mail box perhaps 400 ko worth of 
discussions. I also sent several times reports to mediation, for which 
you were in copy. As far as 168 is concerned, he said he appreciated my 
efforts, and felt better from them. I doubt he told you the opposite. I 
discussed much less with Mav, because I had no trouble understanding 
what he was waiting from 168, and saw quickly that 168 would not agree 
with Mav wishes unless other wishes were offered back.
So, I would like to know if your feeling that no mediation occured is 
just a personal opinion.

Also, I regret I was just leaving on holidays when the conflict took 
place. So it was a week before I started talking to 168. Just a week. It 
does not seem to me so much of a long time that it would mess any 
attempt of discussion. The hardest for me was to understand the whole 
mess, and to convince 168 to talk privately rather than publicly.

This is just the mediation as we laid it down together. Roughly.
It was also meant to relieve you of some discussions, that we thought we 
could handle like adults. For example, some people could discuss 
conflicts and then take decisions, without you having to spent enormous 
amount of time on these cases. Which necessarily induced longer time for 
processing.

Now, if each time we want to step from mediation to arbitration, we have 
to justify it is the only way possible, and to make you fill all the 
holes, so that you can evaluate whether the request is valid or not 
valid, perhaps we will lose even more time than before and you won't 
gain time you could use more constructively.

If not, perhaps we could decide that you are in copy of ALL mails 
exchanged during mediation, so that you can judge by yourself whether 
the decision to stop mediation is correct or not.

Now, what I decided to do yesterday (before Erik unsysoped 168 and led 
him to quit) was to try a mix of mediation and some arbitration. It may 
be a wrong solution in the sense a mediator should stay neutral, but on 
the other hand, it can compensate the lack of arbitration conclusion. I 
view this as a possible solution. A sort of mediation with some direct 
enforcement of certain rules. I do not know what people think about 
that. It is just a proposition.

I am personally not very happy to see that my efforts did not have any 
good conclusion. I am more unhappy to see that 168 quit, without being 
granted either public trial as he initially wished, nor arbitration as 
he requested. I am even more unhappy to see that the current 
mediation/arbitration process is broken, because of all the hopes I had 
in it, and all the time I invested in it. I am disappointed that it 
seems that the reasons why Mav and 168 requested arbitration are 
misunderstood. I may have reached the limits of my ability to make 
myself understood. I am definitly not happy to hear that the mediation 
job was not done.

Grumble grumble grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble