[WikiEN-l] Oversized criticism sections and WP:UNDUE (was: Notability and ski resorts)

[Charles Matthews]

stevertigo wrote:
> George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Arbcom's job description and writ of authority don't include
>> adjudicating policy.
>> Suggestions that they might expand to do that, generally made by
>> community members, have been shot down by the community writ large and
>> by arbcom.
>>     
>
> Hm. This came up recently at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=312162973
>
> Wikidemon wrote: "In short form, Arbcom is not the place to propose
> changes to policies and guidelines. It is not empowered to do so, so
> there is nothing actionable for Arbcom to decide based on this
> request."
>
> Me: 'A court that cannot legislate from the bench - strike
> down law, uphold current law, (or portions thereof) - is not called a
> "court," it's called a "police station." [Which] makes the
> concept plain that an unempowered court cannot even "uphold" law, as
> it has no power to do otherwise. It can however, "parrot" law. Which,
> sort of sums up Wikipedia's dispute resolution affairs quite nicely.'
>
>   
The "strangeness" mentioned in your initial query should certainly not 
be laid at the door of Arbcom, as has already been pointed out. Calling 
Arbcom a "court" and then arguing against that, or whatever this straw 
man is supposed to be doing, seems rather pointless to me. If you want 
to get into all that constitutionalism, there is a quite strict 
"separation of powers" operating, and Arbcom's part is (a) to show what 
happens when a few dozen supposedly self-consistent policies have to be 
applied together, given that they are separate pieces of legislation, 
and (b) to take a view on the implementation of policy so that people 
can have some idea of the "tariff" for infringement (and, in extreme 
cases therefore, to show up any policies which are in effect 
unenforceable or dead letters as they stand).

Arbcom principles certainly don't "parrot" policy.

You wrote:

 >Strange, isn't it Charles, that the deprecation of criticism 
sections/articles would be the convention for "quite a few years now"and 
yet no attempt at its formalization has "made it past being an essay 
into a guideline" let alone policy?

That rather assumes we do need a policy for everything, that is 
explicit. I have said before that requiring everything in 
black-and-white tends to benefit wikilawyers who like to exploit 
drafting weaknesses.

Charles