QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 9th March 2010, 11:34am)
QUOTE(One @ Tue 9th March 2010, 10:27am)
Thanks again for persevering. Now that your message has reached even me (through my inch-think ArbCom skull), I think you can take a break. Thanks!
Great, I'm glad you agree with me about this travesty. Now, can you see about maybe getting it through Risker's thicker skull? She essentially re-banned me thanks to her inability to realize that what Cuerden was doing was unethical and sinister. Appreciate your assistance!
Existing defacto process more or less assumes that any problems are due to disruptive persons and can be addressed by getting rid of them. Since you continually raise inconvenient questions, Kohs, you are the problem, to someone like Risker. Not the issues you raise questions about. And without process to address difficult questions, in detail, neutrally, so that any decisions are based in full information and complete argument, it's impossible for an ad-hoc body like ArbComm to make deeper decisions. The individual arbitrators don't have the time. Hence they must fall back on simple solutions, like banning. It's a system, interwoven and intertwined, and very limited in social intelligence, when it comes to dealing with conflict.
It's fascinating: Wikipedia has continual conflict where there are real-world disputes, but, there, much of the conflict revolves around what sources are reliable. One would think that creating reports on Wikipedia situations would be trivial, in that History is a reliable primary source; that is, the basic facts are generally very clear and definitely easily accessible. From there, though, for a report to be effective, what is
notable about the history must be extracted, and that's the problem. Nevertheless, it's known, quite well, how to do this in such as way as to be rigorously neutral. The sign of neutrality is that all participants will agree that the report is, overall, neutral and accurate, or they will be exposing themselves as so biased that they cannot accept plain facts -- or that they are totally isolated, with no support at all from anyone. Any neutral report would include minority report(s) that are set off and available.
The same skills that would make for good editing (as to NPOV) would make for good reporting on Wikipedia behavior and the basis for decisions, but ... it's commonly considered a waste of time and boring. Yet ArbComm did, in my case, see the need for Talk page refactoring, which would create, effectively, such reports, explaining the basis for decisions made at the article. Some do understand the problem, to a degree, but are completely helpless as to how to make it happen. And, in fact, they made it impossible, by completely topic-banning the only editor with the knowledge and skill on the topic, and the interest in such backstory, to do it. I was far more interested in neutrality than in any POV. Thus ArbComm is shooting itself and the wiki in the foot. And, I'm pretty sure, it's done this over and over. It's not about me. And it's not about Kohs. "Principles before personalities."