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

[Charles Matthews]

Ken Arromdee wrote:
> However much anyone says that Arbcom doesn't make policy, given that the
> rules are complicated and often ambiguous, "deciding whether something fits
> existing policy" is often the same as "making policy".  So you just end up
> with Arbcom making policy and pretending not to. 
I think you need to recognise that the community can then clarify in 
whatever direction it likes: removing the ambiguity in the same way as 
the Arbcom went, or not, as the mood takes it. Since the drafting cannot 
be expected to be watertight, adjustments may be needed. But we know who 
has the last say. And a given case is not a precedent (such examples as 
there are for people using Arbitration cases as direct precedents are 
rather discouraging).
>  And then you get
> Wikipedians who need a policy decision and recognize on some level that
> Arbcom makes policy, but need to go through hoops phrasing their complaint
> so that Arbcom can answer it "without making policy".
>   
That is a somewhat periphrastic way of saying that people nonetheless do 
take notice of the decisions. As we know, people tend to think they 
"need" some policy to win an argument they currently are in engaged in, 
without great regard to the overall needs of the project. So no doubt 
cases are brought for those kinds of reason, and if the case has to be 
accepted for the common good, the Arbcom has to make some sort of sense 
of it all, by writing down principles that give some proper context to 
what is decided.

If it is all as fraught as you imply, I wonder why no one has brought 
out a codified form of Arbitration "principles", so we can see the 
"policy made by Arbcom" in the round. (I have certainly pondered this in 
the past, but really there is perhaps less in this than meets the eye. 
Only if you assume that the community's norms are limited to what is 
written down on official policy pages - which is undoubtedly an 
incorrect view - does the production of Arbcom's principles seem like 
major innovation.)

Charles