[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is a problem)

[James D. Forrester]

On Saturday, November 06, 2004 15:10, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:

[Snip]

> > Our failures to act in cases which are not before us are to be
> > expected. We do not initiate cases.
> 
> All I'm asking for is that every once in a while, we
> re-evaluate our dogma. You say "we do not initiate cases" as if that
> settles the matter. I don't know if your rule about not initiating
> cases is good or bad, I just wish we'd think about it critically
> every once in a while. 
> 
> Let me take the negative position. Why not act on cases that
> are not brought before you? Is this a serious balance to your
> power? If the 9 of you wanted to abuse your power and bend
> editorial direction to suit your philosophy, would you have
> trouble finding a single non-member to bring cases that you
> secretly ask to be brought? If you are aware of failures,
> trolls bringing stress and anger to honest contributors and
> damaging the quality of the encyclopedia, how can you sit by
> and do nothing in good conscience?

Well, firstly, Arbitrators have been known to bring cases before the
Committee off their own bat. The point is, in doing so they are acting as
editors, not as Arbitrators, and obviously recuse themself from the ensuing
case, if any. The main reason that we chose when formulating the policy not
to be modelled on a Napoleonic-Code type of 'court', but instead upon a
Common-Law one, was that it means that the majority of our efforts are spent
judging cases, rather than whether it is in the public interest to proceed
with prosecution. It is little fun enough, and certainly not a little
depressing, to read through logs of edit wars, personal insults, and the
like, that we would wish to burden ourselves with going out searching for
such stuff.

If a user's conduct comes to the attention of a Committee member as they go
about their normal course of editing, it is probably already past the point
where someone could (and should) have brought a case about said user before
us -- we are but a dozen of your fellow editors, scant few in the miasma of
thousands of editors. We cannot be everywhere, everywhen, and, really, do
you think that that would be a useful expenditure of our time, and not
somewhat of a waste?

[Snip]

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com