[WikiEN-l] Viral swarming teenage vanity spam

[Stephen Bain]

On 7/6/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> DRV is *not* an appeals court.  The rules that apply to appeals courts
> in the USA, Canada, Australia, and I assume practically everywhere else,
> do *not* apply to DRV.  We need to remember that.  DRV is not, it's
> true, in the business of providing a venue for AfD Take Two, but neither
> is it totally uninterested in the outcome provided process is followed.

I think the analogy is a valid one. Appeals courts (mostly) are very
very reluctant to overturn findings of fact made by lower or trial
courts, and instead are interested on points of law. DRV is most of
the time interested in whether "process" was followed, and is not
usually in the business of questioning the judgment on the evidence of
people who participated in the original *fD.

Of course, DRV is generally more open to reconsidering the result when
there is new evidence (uncovering more sources establishing
notability, etc) which wasn't available to the original *fD. In these
situations it can choose to relist, or endorse/overturn the *fD right
away. Again this is fairly consistent with the analogy of an appeals
court, which can order a retrial or endorse/overturn the verdict.

Of course, I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good thing, but I
do think that the comparison holds.

So I suppose the question when considering potential reform for DRV is
how to strike a balance between the current process-only focus, and
the other extreme, "AfD Take Two", as you put it Mark. How to achieve
the ability to overturn Bad Decisions while retaining a balance
between these extremes?

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com