[WikiEN-l] A modest proposal - a recap of resolution-l

[stevertigo]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:49 AM, Charles
Matthews<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> stevertigo wrote:

> Can you not do this thing of bad-mouthing people who disagree with you?
> (See your attitude to Cary Bass.)

How have I bad-mouthed anyone? My "attitude" toward Cary has actually
been quite positive - before I ever tried to communicate with him, I
had already imparted to him such human qualities as a bright and an
outgoing personality, and a fair and balanced approach to new
concepts.  Hence when I made my plain and open request - via wikein,
mediazilla, and a private email - I had no doubt that we would soon
get a response from him. I was simply expressing my disappointment in
how things turned out, and in fact I attribute his lack of
responsiveness not to him, personally, but to whatever
behind-the-scenes artifices may be constricting his degrees of motion
and general sense of freedom.

> I seem to remember a thread with a very different feel. You had some support from Fred Bauder, who likes
> the idea of discussing dispute resolution.

Fred's an intelligent being, and when I'm not deliberately pouring
fuel on the fire - he might even agree with me. He understands this is
an open project, and that in all but a few special cases, its issues
that are best discussed openly. Pretty simple, actually.

> You had very definite opposition from me. You can call me sub-articulate all you like, but I
> don't think it will stick.

I would never call you sub-articulate, Charles. In fact you are one of
the most articulate people I've ever dealt with.  However, with that
said, as I recall in this case you just didn't have much of a point to
make other than you didn't like it. I would not say this means that
you were sub-artculate, personally, but rather that your posting on
the matter lacked the substantive and articulated argument we've
generally come to expect from you.

> And my point is that your broad brush means the second sentence would
> self-contradict, in a welter of meddling and advocacy. If that's the
> intended remit (everything up to and including the kitchen sink) then
> there was no misunderstanding at all about the scope.

I don't see the contradiction. A large part of 'being helpful' is in
fact just being open and available. If a private, closed, proprietary
system thinks that openness is unhelpful, then the fates usually
demand that such system get retooled.

I understand that you were Arbcom for a while, and you might suspect
that resolution-l would just be a forum by which I could lambaste
Arbcom, inline with the points I have been making recently about its
lack of openness and responsiveness - concepts made clear in the
WP:RFAR/OAR case.

The real point here is that we don't need to get into that territory
too much more, if we establish an open forum - not a closed one, mind
you - at resolution-l.

-Stevertigo