[WikiEN-l] Blocking / moderation

[Bod Notbod]

Stevertigo:

> And of course this violating concept appears to be indemic wherever
> people feel they can neglect transparency - as mandated in their own
> mandates, perhaps - making their deliberations in private and giving
> people only decrees and motions. Wales, who was for a long time our
> most upstanding proponent of openness, and who made it a point to deal
> personally and openly with nearly every issue that came up - on this
> very list, as a matter of fact - would be quite unhappy with this
> trend.

I like transparency too.

It makes me pause to wonder whether a dispute resolution mailing list
is actually against the grain of that. I've only recently signed up to
a couple of the mailing lists as I intend to get (and am getting) more
involved with Wikipedia. These lists have a pretty low profile, I'd
say.

Whilst these mailing lists are, I believe, open for everyone to join,
it still strikes me as a bit of a back door: I would have thought it
far more transparent to deal with all dispute resolution on the wiki
itself where people can see what's going on (and people can place
relevant links easily) rather than in an email list which is going to
have a rather different audience.

To put it another way, if I were an editor in dispute with someone
else and I wasn't subscribed to the mailing list and I become aware
the other person was discussing it there, I think I'd rightly feel
that there was something "going on" in a sort of conspiratorial way
and that a conscious effort had been made to circumvent tackling my
points.

The wiki (en, at least) doesn't seem short of ways and means to deal
with disputes. I'm somewhat sceptical about the motivation in creating
a new channel for disputes that requires all parties to sign up for an
email service to be fully cognisant of where that dispute is heading.