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Posted by: No one of consequence

Almost everything in the leaked Arbcom communications can be explained by 2 simple principles.

1. If they like you, they will go to great lengths to defend you, and to think well of you, and to credit even the most flimsy and implausible excuses for your otherwise damning conduct.

2. If they don't like you, they will reflexively believe any negative information about you and will continue to hold that belief long after the objective evidence shows the information to be false or misinterpreted. If they don't like you, they will also go to great lengths to avoid taking action against editors that you don't like, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.

Maybe it's the Arbcom culture, or maybe it's just human nature. It certainly hasn't gotten any better since I left.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Um, since it sounds exactly like standard politics and government, you might guess it's pretty-much human nature.

The advantage of democracy is not that it eliminates this kind of thing. It just makes it not-quite-as-bad as happens with clan feuds, where the idea that "my family member can do no wrong" really causes chaos. And eternal feuds and wars. Which was the natural state of humans for their entire history up to about 2500 years ago when the Greeks started experimenting with other ways of running a goverment (no, the Greeks haven't done much for us lately, ie, for 1500 years, the bums. Talk about running on your laurels-- the Greeks invented that). Later, the Roman Catholics experimented with non-clan government also, with celebacy and meritocracy.

IOW, blood is thicker than water. But to a lesser extent, so are friendships and social networks and "who you know." Even if it's only who you know as electrons on a BBS.

Posted by: Abd

Yeah. It is human nature, unconstrained. That's why functional social structures have developed that constrain this. By abandoning them in favor of this great new model, the wiki adhocracy, Wikipedia returned to some very old problems, without protection other than very inefficient and often ineffective restraint by users who saw the problem, most of whom eventually gave up or were banned.

Moulton was right about this, and the "Moulton problem" was merely that he was obsessed about it. The functional governance solutions that are known do allow a community to restrain participation by outliers, through devices like not allowing discussion of a motion if not seconded, through the use of committee structure where detailed deliberation takes place before questions are presented for broad consideration, etc., through separation of judicial and executive powers, through open meeting laws, etc., as well as general protections for freedom of speech and, to some degree, of action, i.e., the principle that if it is not illegal, it's lawful, through due process guarantees, etc.