[WikiEN-l] ArbCom Legislation

[Charles Matthews]

David Goodman wrote:
> "we want ... to keep Wikipedia out of aspects of the lives of people
> that are nothing like encyclopedic, and
> can cause potential defamation issues. "
>
>   That only sounds good until one analyses it.
>
> I think most of us  just  want to keep Wikipedia away from unsourced
> negative material about living people, and possibly some of us also
> want to keep  away from even sourced material not relevant to
> notability, & derogatory in a serious way to people the intimate
> details of whose lives  are not a matter of public concern.
>
> That's a much narrower restriction than what you said, and much more
> compatible with NPOV, and with the actual wording of BLP.
>   

The mission is to write an encyclopedia, right, not a scandal sheet?  
The disagreements I see aren't really about the term "encyclopedic". 

NPOV is not negotiable.  Any reliably-sourced facts that truly are 
required to write a neutral piece should be included.  But the whole 
point of the  BLP policy is to have a minimum standard of inclusion for 
topics (excluding the prurient, and the sort of tittle-tattle that you 
find in low-class blogging), as well as minimum standards for sourcing.  
You can go a long way about writing a neutral article about someone 
without mentioning they once kicked a dog in the street.

In real life examples of enforcement this becomes fairly clear. 
> And anything and everything dealing with living people is potentially
> defamatory if for reasons right or wrong they don't like what is being
> said. I think most of us would think it more compatible with NPOV to
> keep out only what can plausibly be considered as actually libelous,
> again a much narrower restriction.
>   
Err ... this is an international project, and "libel" means different 
things in different legal systems.  Therefore it isn't especially 
helpful, especially if you're default to US law as the baseline.  As 
Jimmy Wales as often mentioned, we should not be posting defamatory 
matter, just as a question of ethics. Let alone the possibility that the 
whole project might be closed down by a successful libel suit.
> This illustrates what arbcom did wrong: they legislated that anyone
> with a more broadly restrictive view can impose it. Possibly some of
> them may have actually known what they were doing, and specifically
> tried to impose their minority view.
>
>   
We did no such thing.  An admin isn't "anybody". but a trusted person 
with (we assume) a good working knowledge of the site policy and 
mission.  No one can impose on Wikipedia, and admins, in particular, are 
fully accountable for their actions. 

Let me explain it this way.  If the ArbCom had voted through a principle 
like this:

"Admins enforcing WP:BLP should encounter the minimum of formalities and 
dickering, and should have their judgement treated with the maximum of 
respect by other admins",

then I think there would be only a vague murmur of discussion.  The same 
ideas were put in a remedy, dressed up in some drafting to put flesh on 
the bones, and with a practical suggestion.  Namely, admins should be 
stating more explicitly what they are doing as enforcement, logging it 
as sanctions on a noticeboard, and discussion there should be treated 
under the protocol that the sanction stands until there is a clear 
consensus against. 

Just as ArbCom principles are, this is only "advisory". What people seem 
to miss, in close reading of existing policy documents, is that "policy" 
has never been entirely written on the site. Community norms and notions 
of good practice have always mattered greatly.  Arbitrators play their 
part in contributing to that wider discourse, as they are expected to.  
The judicial analogy, that this is "judge-made law", is wrong.  It 
mistakes the legalistic trappings for what is really happening.  
Arbitration cases are the only case studies on the site that come with 
anything like adequate documentation, and therefore they provide an 
unmatched, serious commentary on the site's management.

Charles