[Wikipedia-l] Arbitration/mediation on en

[Toby Bartels]

Eclecticology wrote in part:

>Delirium wrote:

>>In my view, the arbitration committee should really only be taking
>>over powers previously reserved by Jimbo, which are basically to make
>>decisions on banning and procedural matters.  He's never reserved a
>>right to dictate resolutions to content disputes, and I don't think
>>the new committee should either.

>We have a number of contributors who are otherwise very good
>contributors, but who tend to go off the deep end when dealing with
>certain subjects.  Depending on how the meta-data discussion ends up it
>could be possible to block a user from editing a range of articles.
>Thus a person who loses perspective over the Middle East conflict could
>be barred from editing any article that are classified with the words
>"Israel" and "Palestine".  Arbitrators would still primarily deal with
>disciplinary matters.  (I don't know about the procedural)  They could
>still have a wide range of solutions available.

Note this distinction:

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]] is hereby banned."

may be softened to:

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]] is hereby banned
 from all articles relating directly to politics of the State of Israel."

which is rather unlike

"The arbitration committee rules that [[User:X]]'s edits to [[Palestine]]
 are wrong and [[User:Y]]'s version is the one that we will keep."

I believe that Ec is arguing for #2 (the ban of limited extent),
while Mark is arguing against #3 (the direct ruling on content).
So there should be no conflict here.

And inasmuch as the arbitration committee is known to have #1 available,
I also would support allowing #2 but not allowing #3.


-- Toby