User:Heimstern/ArbCom

Those familiar with me will know that I'm generally critical of the Arbitration Committee. I've decided that the time has come for me to sum up my criticisms as neatly as possible.

My primary criticism of the committee is that it is generally so focused on our conduct policies that it ends up leaving the actual encyclopedia behind. This is a direct consequence of the committee's refusal to adjudicate content disputes combined with the lack of any other available form of binding content dispute resolution. The model in use seems to be that if we keep editors in line with our conduct policies, the content will fall into place. This is absolutely not the case. The idea seems to be based on the entirely false notion that editors with conduct issues and those who advocate inappropriate content on Wikipedia are the same people. Absolutely not so. Wikipedia has many editors highly devoted to neutrality and verifiability who, alas, are also prone to behavioural lapses (often during the course of their attempts to improve or maintain the encyclopedia's neutrality or verifiability), and many highly civil POV pushers.

The effect of this conduct-only focus of arbitration is to sanction editors advocating neutrality as harshly, nearly as harshly, or even more harshly than POV-pushers. As an example: two editors enter a long-term edit war over a matter. The one seeking push a POV is exceedingly civil, while the other, who seeks to enforce neutrality and verifiability, lashes out with four-letter words from time to time. In an arbitration case, who will be sanctioned more harshly? That's right: the second, because he violated our conduct policies more. That this is completely wrong and that an editor who compromises the integrity of our articles should always receive more severe sanctions than one who violates conduct policies while seeking to uphold content policies is abundantly clear for both practical and principled reasons, but this is not how our ArbCom is set up. Even in the case that both editors in the dispute are about equally civil and both receive similar sanctions, we have still sanctioned an editor trying to enforce our content policies. Such a person is likely to be discouraged from advocating neutrality in contentious areas in the future when they see that POV-pushers and neutrality advocates are treated exactly the same by the committee (indeed, they're likely to say "screw this" and leave the project completely).

The effects on administrators are even worse. Administrators willing to step into contentious areas are put under heavy stress from the dogged POV-pushers who seek to eliminate anyone who causes trouble for their POV, and this almost inevitably leads to failures in admins' civility. The committee has been particularly desysop-happy lately. Desysopping admins who are trying to enforce neutrality sends one message: Enforce neutrality in contentious areas and you are gambling with your sysop bit. This is exactly what the committee taught us with its ruling in the second Macedonia case (to be fair, they did lessen the impact toward the end by making one of the desysoppings temporary). Yes, there are admins who've remained models of civility through contentious disputes, but only a small handful, and many of them have given up after a while.

Other criticisms do exist also, notably the lack of proper control over the evidence and workshop pages. The arbs and clerks generally seem to be quite happy to let users insinuate anything they feel like as long as they're polite about it on the surface, while those who react angrily to such insinuations are told off or even sanctioned. It is my opinion that unsubstantiated insinuations are every bit as uncivil as swearing and angry comments, but they are not enforced as such. (Insinuation is also the height of cowardice: if you have an accusation to make, have the cojones to make it openly. But I begin to digress.)

Having said all this, I will emphasize that much of this is an indictment of the system more than of the current arbitrators themselves. It is not they who established the idea that the committee emphasize conduct policy; it is a long-standing tradition, and I recognize that such a tradition is hard to move past (even if the arbs are willing to, they will face considerable resistance from those opposed). Wikipedia as a whole has not nurtured a culture that emphasizes content first; it has set up a Ten (plus several) Commandments of User Conduct, and this culture is easily fed by editors and even admins who spend little time on content and all their time on enforcing Da Rules on other editors. (There are people on the internet with an essential need to lord rules over others, and a place like this, with its many rules and its open environment, alas, attracts such people.) I'm not surprised our Committee has not been able to move beyond this Rules-based approach as an institution (some individual arbs show signs that they have) given the community's attitude.

Perhaps an even more significant point is that the arbs are facing a task that is well beyond daunting. The cases they receive are constantly becoming more contentious, as little areas that have festered on Wikipedia since its dawn continue to grow out of control. The cases are also increasingly complex (part of this is simply that the community is handling more of the simple cases without committee intervention). I admit that I don't place long odds that I could do better than the current arbs, myself. Indeed, the current committee still seems to me to be an improvement over previous committees in many areas, notably openness.

I don't really have any solutions to the problems I've mentioned, except to advocate that some form of binding content resolution be developed for cases that need it. If the Arbitration Committee is not willing to do this, let another system be set up for this purpose. As it stands, we waste countless editor an administrator hours on circular discussions with POV-pushers who have no interest in conceding any ground, anyway. Furthermore good editors are frustrated to no end with the inability to deal with persistent POV-pushers, and tend to disappear or to react angrily. This needs to be stopped. That's what I've got thus far.