[WikiEN-l] Neutrality enforcement: a proposal

[stevertigo]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:24 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Controlling content = "this article should or should not say X"
>
> Controlling behaviour = "this editor should or should not do X"
>
> In that sense, this proposal is about behaviour, because it is about
> good-faith editing (behaviour) and not the result of it (content).
>
> However, the whole content v. behaviour thing is something of a false
> distinction. ArbCom prides itself on not controlling content,
> but it does it all the time indirectly by controlling who can edit,
> ruling on what counts as a reliable source, etc.
>
> This is a proposal to enforce behaviour that upholds our own core
> content policy, and there's no problem with that tension.
> In fact, it's quite strange that none of our core content policies are
> currently enforced, except for BLPs.
>

"Enforcement" is not the problem. We have plenty of eager admins who are
more than happy to "enforce policy." The issue (aside from indoctrinating
new people into NPOV culture, accomplished via any means ranging from
lifetime bans to inane amounts of barnstars), is getting a decent conceptual
overview of how groups of articles need to be improved and then finding
consensus to act on that impetus.

Such endeavors might be called something like "Wikipedia:WikiProject
[Scope]," though the usage of the above terminology is attributable to a
unfortunate convergence of factors (bottom)**.

The idea you have, Sarah, deals largely with bringing a certain concept of
'officiousness' to settling content disputes. You say its not about content,
but fail to say why we would need a kind of special-purpose Arbcom. I and
others have sufficiently destroyed your "enforcement" concept (perhaps
taking a little too much gusto in doing so), but nevertheless some of us
appear to want to salvage something from it, and thus can to some degree
appreciate your general idea of shaking things up a bit, making changes,
taking stands, focusing on areas which need better handling, and getting
more hands-on rather than simply staying conceptual and borking ourselves
with policy.

So I suggest not dealing with the Wikipublic at all: People such as myself
wield no power, and can at best occasionally state only chuckleworthy
things.

Make a proposal directly to Arbcom. Ask them to consider ways in which they
can implement improvements to how they do things, and how they can sort of
get people in on the game plan. Naturally we all know Arbcom (a metonym for
the Wikipedian government, whether it officially exists or not), has lots of
room for improvement. But they might not know that, and as such we would be
quite wise not be too blunt about giving them the news.

Still, as critical as I am of Arbcom at this point (not impressed with their
[mis-]re-conceptualization of the I case I filed recently), Arbcom the
institution, I mean, I understand that the committee is made up of
individuals, that not one of them is useless, and that they each and all can
and will act to make some changes, when they start to understand that they
actually can. We already know that they could (make improvements), and (dare
we say it) should shake the cobwebs loose and get creative about how to make
themselves and Wikipedia better.

But I realize, as do others, that it's important also not to suggest too
much. Because aside from the fact that they might not like people telling
them 1) that there's room for improvement, 2) that they should institute
improvements, 3) telling them why they should improve, 4) and how, most
conceptual people in general (and that's all of us) just don't like
accepting anyone's existence, let alone their intelligence and creativity;
and by extension the products of these qualities as we manifest them in what
we might consider "helpful" proposals.

In that context, we can simply say "its up to them; help them O Ceiling
Cat," and go back to our editing.

Regards,

-SV-1

**1) An unfortunate technical/technocratic inability to use the word
"Project" as a namespace (which would produce something elegant like
"Project:[Scope]")

2) A likewise unfortunate tendency to honor CamelCase as a kind of
Wikipudlian meme, and

3) An equally unfortunate propensity we all have for using the word "wiki"
in any context imaginable.

-SV