[WikiEN-l] Arbcom Overstepping

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

James D. Forrester wrote:
> IIRC, the wording of that was slightly unclear; it was not what seemed be
> Lance6Wins's personal POV, which we noted was very similar to that Daniel
> Pipes's, that was the problem, but that he was apparently unable to prevent
> himself from inserting it in a non-NPOV manner in said articles.

Very very well said.

It is appropriate in these cases for the ArbCom to consider a "soft"
solution like this rather than a complete ban on all participation.  It
is important to recognize the following general principles:

1.  The ArbCom deals with behavioral issues, and not directly with
content issues.  When the behavioral issue is persistent bad POV
editing, then of course there is an interface to the content issue.
But it is the behavior which is the problem.

2.  The ArbCom can not and should not (and in my opinion has not ever)
attempted to subject certain points of view to extra restrictions.
There was some confusion about this in the case of LaRouche, but I
think this was an unfortunate wording and misinterpretation.

----

In the LaRouche case, the problem is that publications produced by
LaRouche and affiliated organizations are not suitable for routine
citation as ordinary documents in the same way as other documents.
This is not unique to LaRouche, of course, but is true of a wide
variety of pov publications.  The decision of how to handle this is
complex and not easily (nor properly) subject to a hard and fast rule,
but is rather a job for serious editors to undertake thoughtfully.

--Jimbo