User:Mackensen/Thought experiment

This is a page devoted to a problem I've been turning over in my head for some time. Wikipedia lacks a method for protecting content editors embroiled in disputes with POV pushes. That is to say, we do not recognize in principle the idea that edit warring can be "good" in some instances, save that of "simple vandalism" (a nebulous term if there ever was one). An oft-cited page on this topic is The Wrong Version–I've cited it myself in numerous cases. However, its application can be misleading. There are wrong versions of articles. Some time back, I was engaged in an edit war with a gentleman who maintained, wrongly, that Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, is not a Jew. By the simplest definition available he is–his mother was Jewish. There are other more complex reasons for asserting that he is Jewish. But the simple fact is that he is Jewish and any assertion to the contrary is wrong. Not a minority viewpoint. Not another possibility. Wrong. Under the circumstances I was prepared to revert-war until doomesday, although I did take the time to explain why this was so.

Now, the question is, was I edit-warring? Yes. Do I feel justified in doing so? Absolutely. Should Wikipedia protect me if the matter comes to arbitration or any other dispute resolution mechanism (three-revert rule included)? There the matter becomes complicated. I know I'm right. I know I'm right because I have a shelf full of verifiable sources. By any measure of encyclopedic standards I'm correct. However, under the current system, I put myself at risk by reverting to the correct version of the article.

The Arbitration Committee, as demonstrated most recently by Requests for arbitration/Irishpunktom (not that I'm singling it out), does not have and does not claim to have juridiction over content disputes. However, it deals with content disputes through the back door, by handing out article bans to editors who edit-war over an article. This is faintly ridiculous to my mind–without condoning Dbiv's abuse of admin tools, he is surely right to say that banning both he and Irishpunktom from the same article (Peter Tatchell), is "a statement that an editor's contributions to the article in question are, taken overall, harmful." Otherwise, the only reason to ban him (and Irishpunktom) is punitive. Therefore, we're left with two possibilities: Dbiv's edits to Peter Tatchell are harmful to the encyclopedia, or it is of value to the the encyclopedia to punish Dbiv.

The former possibility is, by definition, beyond the purview of the Arbitration Committee, which does not handle content disputes. By their own admission, and speaking as a former arbitrator, the committee is not competent to judge content disputes, nor should it. The committee exists to resolve disputes between users and should limit itself to such matters.

This is the crux of the matter: the Arbitration Committee is adjucating content disputes through the back door. I'm not competent to say whether Dbiv's or Irishpunktom's edits to Peter Tatchell were of greater encyclopedic value; I do know that the committee decided that they were equally valueless, otherwise they wouldn't have banned both of them from editing the article for a period of one year. What we have to ask ourselves is whether we want the Arbitration Committee adjucating content disputes in this matter, particularly as the findings of fact didn't address the content of the edits (but, of course, this isn't a content dispute!)

I welcome comments. Mackensen (talk) 23:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Content arbitration
This is a proposed policy for resolving content disputes. It does not address user dispute resolution; there exist already suitable mechanisms for that.

Wikipedia lacks at present a formal mechanism for resolving truly intractable content disputes. Three, at present, come to mind: the naming of Gdansk/Danzig, the so-called "Style Wars," and the various disputes over highway naming conventions. All three led to various forms of user conduct dispute resoluton, but these did not address the underlying problem. In the end, all three had to be resolved through a series of compromises and polls which took months (if not years) and filled a hundred talk page archives. While it is tempting to claim that this validates the consensus method, the struggle left all parties involved exhausted and bitter. Some people left Wikipedia altogether. What was needed was a formal way to bring the matter before a third party whose ruling on the question would carry the force of policy.

Ideally the body hearing such cases would be composed of veteran article editors, not necessarily administrators, whose expertise and neutrality had been recognized by the community at large. I would imagine a docket of twenty to thirty people, with three to five necessary to hear a case. This would differ from arbitration in that the body as a whole would not hear an individual case.

Any editor could suggest a case to the body, probably in a format similar to an RfC (not an RfAr). A summary of the dispute, if possible one that could be endorsed by both sides, with a demonstration that attempts to resolve it on the talk pages in question, and possibly though other means, had failed. Furthermore, parties would need to show why applying existing policies didn't work. In many cases it may simply fall to this body to interpret existing Wikipedia policies to fit a specific case.