Revision as of 15:00, 12 September 2008

This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. The Arbitrators, parties to the case, and other editors may draft proposals and post them to this page for review and comments. Proposals may include proposed general principles, findings of fact, remedies, and enforcement provisions—the same format as is used in Arbitration Committee decisions. The bottom of the page may be used for overall analysis of the /Evidence and for general discussion of the case.

Any user may edit this workshop page. Please sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they believe should be part of the final decision on the /Proposed decision page, which only Arbitrators and clerks may edit, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.

Motions and requests by the parties

Checkuser request Molobo and Koretek

1) I'm urging you to perform a CU under this rationale on Molobo (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) in connection with Koretek (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki). For more data to check against: . Sciurinæ (talk) 14:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

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Checkuser shows nothing interesting, useful, or helpful. --jpgordon 18:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

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Koterek has not been doing any puppetry, right? Has Molobo been asked to discuss his connection to Koterek? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Creating a new account only to help you with an ad hominem attack against Deacon in the light of his RfAr and, furthermore, defaming Deacon while being under remedy against personal attacks with the main account, is a textbook example of abusive puppetry. Although I didn't need to, I did inform Molobo the moment I gave evidence some days ago and he did not reply while going on editing. You'd officially deny anything other than CU as evidence against him anyway. That's all I have to say to this. If you want him to make a confession, talk to him yourself. Sciurinæ (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

While it is obvious Koterek is somebody's sock, it has not done anything disruptive. Providing evidence is not a personal attack.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Attacking Deacon's argument as "an old grudge attack by polonophobic" rather than the content of his message is a personal attack. WP:PA: Comment on content, not on the contributor. Sciurinæ (talk) 22:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

A noble sentiment - one, however, that is already dead by the time people get to ArbCom, I am afraid.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

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Proposals by Sam Blacketer

Proposed principles

Purpose of Misplaced Pages

1) The purpose of Misplaced Pages is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, publishing or promoting original research, and political or ideological struggle, is prohibited.

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Proposed. Standard wording. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

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Decorum

2) Misplaced Pages users are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other users; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, disruptive point-making, and gaming the system, is prohibited.

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Another standard finding. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

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Editorial process

3) Misplaced Pages works by building consensus through the use of polite discussion – involving the wider community, if necessary – and dispute resolution, rather than through disruptive editing. Editors are each responsible for noticing when a debate is escalating into an edit war, and for helping the debate move to better approaches by discussing their differences rationally. Edit-warring, whether by reversion or otherwise, is prohibited; this is so even when the disputed content is clearly problematic.

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Another standard finding from which the latter point going into more detail on revert-warring has been dropped as not especially relevant. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

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Content disputes

4) It is not the role of the Arbitration Committee to settle good-faith content disputes among editors.

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This will not be the last word on the disagreements highlighted in the case, but is needed to set the limits on the case. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

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A couple of policy questions. It seems that content disputes are sometimes artificially inflated only to make a targeted user angry by removing his edits. How one can distingush such "bad faith" content edits and "good faith" edits? I know, we should always assume good faith. Do we assume that "bad faith" content edits simply do not exist? And if they exist, how can we identify them? Of course, lying about sources is an example of bad-faith content edits. But would an outright deletion of numbers from scholarly books (e.g. book by Robert Conquest) qualify as a bad faith edit? Biophys (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In other words: Is it the role of the Arbitration Committee to settle bad-faith content disputes among editors? How to identify bad faith content? The problem here is that ArbCom lacks the manpower/skills to deal with most content edits. It's easy to deal with revert warring, feasible to deal with incivility, but answering your question regarding Conquest would require them to read the book, read the reviews, and spend days familiarizing themselves with just one tiny aspect of one of one million content conflicts out there (since, obviously, we will get editors claiming that Conquest is controversial/etc.). How many of the arbcom members are familiar with the discussion of biases of modern Russian historiography, for example? Just today, I have one discussion (here and section below) were my opponent is accusing two scholars of being fringe/controversial/unreliable/biased/nationalistic/unblanced and so on. It is possible that one of us is attacking/defending them because of bad faith; but to answer this, ArbCom would need to read through their work, compare it to others, read reviews, and so on... and what about a content dispute about global warming, or abortion, or issues somewhat more familiar to arbcom members but also, issues were they are much more likely to have their own biases? Asking them to judge content opens a gigantic can of worms. For that, truly, we would need panels of academic experts. PS. I do think that ArbCom can answer whether editors have biases, and whether their editing pattern is constructive (NPOV) or aims towards a particular POV and/or creating a battleground. But that's not easy. The ArbCom may be able to speak of good- or bad-faith among editors, but not among their sources. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In other words: WP:NPOV and WP:Verifiability policies can not be enforced. A lot of WP articles are ridiculously biased and collectively owned by teams of nationalistic POV-pushers. If I see those articles, I should not go there to avoid being in your position or much worse.Biophys (talk) 13:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Not quite. They can be enforced, by the open source bazaar paradigm. We are assuming that most editors are neutral, respect our policies, can be civil and so on. And in most cases, this is correct (hence Misplaced Pages works). The problem arises in controversial topics, were you get above average number of uncivil extremists, who are pushing their POV and creating battlegrounds when they are challenged. They chase away other contributors (who wants to play in a mud arena?), and the job of the ArbCom is not to decide which side speaks the truth, but to plonk the uncivil one, since once you get the trolls down, the civil editors from various sides (POVs) should reach a neutral, verifiable version of the article. To give an example: it doesn't matter if a troll is pro-Soviet, or anti-Soviet; as long as he is a troll, we kick him out.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

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Proposals by User:Y

Proposed principles

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General discussion

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