[WikiEN-l] ArbCom Legislation

[Risker]

On 18/06/2008, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> > ArbCom says as a matter of ideology that it doesn't make policy
> Correct.
> >  and
> > is not obliged to follow precedent,
> Correct.
> > but in this case they seem to
> > have made policy,
> No, the policy on BLP is unchanged, and is at the community's disposal.


Well, first off, as has been pointed out by SlimVirgin on the proposed
decision talk page (sorry, can't link right now) - part of this decision
contradicts the BLP policy; that is the section in BLP where even involved
admins can take action, whereas this decision indicates that involved admins
*may not* take action.  (Incidentally, I agree with the decision on that
point, it is better for uninvolved admins to step in.)

But it is not the BLP policy that is changed. Blocking, page protection,
reversion and deletion have always been part of that policy and remain
so. What has changed is the opportunity for admins to unilaterally create
sanctions.

What this decision changes is the Administrator policy.  There is nothing in
[[WP:ADMIN]] that permits or encourages administrators to unilaterally
establish sanctions other than blocks, and blocks are reviewable and can be
overturned by any other administrator. They do not require a "clear
consensus" to be overturned.

Even if our policies are descriptive and not prescriptive, the Arbcom remedy
is policy *de novo*. The description of the existing policy up until Arbcom
closed this case is that 1) admin or other editor identifies problem; 2)
sanctions are proposed and discussed in a public forum in which interested
editors and admins may comment; 3) there is a determination of consensus; 4)
action is taken (or not taken) on the basis of the consensus. Other
activities can be going on at the same time; an editor may be blocked,
material may be reverted/deleted/oversighted from an article, a page may be
protected. Please note also that not even this Arbcom remedy authorises
action specific to articles, only to editors.

The closest parallels are those remedies that have been made to cover a
small number of problematic topics, and there has already been one
arbitration case resulting in a desysopping related to that. Yesterday, I
read over an article where editing restrictions have been imposed
unilaterally by an administrator that are so poorly formulated that they
will practically guarantee a POV article, and one of the few really talented
editors who's been willing to work on similar contentious articles (with
considerable success, I will add) has essentially been told to edit to the
restrictions or go away.  Incidentally, it involves BLP information.
Running good editors skilled at bringing problematic articles up to NPOV off
of such articles is not to anyone's benefit.


Risker