[Wikipedia-l] Arbitration/mediation on en

[The Cunctator]

> From: Jimmy Wales Friday, December 05, 2003 7:26 AM
<snip>
> We have just begun a process on en of formalizing the decision
> procedures for banning people, through the use of two committees of
> volunteers.  The first "line of defense" is a mediation committee,
> which attempts to work with parties to find a mutually agreeable
> solution to a problem.  This committee has no power to ban or to do
> anything other than act as an outside recommendation for a solution.
> 
> The second "line of defense" is the arbitration committee, which will
> be tasked with the difficult and painful and regrettable task of
> banning someone from editing.
> 
> This is mainly an experiment, and we shall see over time how it works
> out.  I hope it works well.

If it is to be an experiment, we should try to figure out beforehand
what our metric of success is. Total success would be if neither
committee ever needs to act. But the gradations in between are more
complicated.

For example, which is better: if a high or low percentage of cases
reviewed by the arbitration committee end in sanction or banning?

Which is better: if the arbitration committee agrees or disagrees with
the mediators' actions?

That second relates to an important point: if a case is presented to the
arbitration committee, what is being judged is not just the actions of
the user(s) that resulted in mediation, but the entire process that led
to arbitration, including what the mediators did.

I think using bulletin boards for this is good, because I think it will
be very important to establish a reviewable case history.

The nearly immutable law of government is that while over the short term
dangers to the health of society come from individual actors, over the
long term the dangers come from the system.

It should be everyone's goal to figure out ways to eliminate potential
problems before they can happen. 

A good real world example of that is drugs; because it is a criminal act
to use illegal drugs, millions of dollars and manhours and lives are
spent in combatting drug use (the "war on drugs"). But if the drugs
(such as marijuana) are decriminalized, a host of downstream costs to
society disappear. There *are* different complications and needs
(tobacco is a good example of the potential problems of having drugs be
legal to use) but it's a lot easier to deal with drugs as a health issue
than a crime issue.

Yours,
--tc