Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Waterboarding/Workshop

Discussion of the Workshop page should take place below. Anthøny 16:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Does the scope of arbitration include principles about content?
I am new to the arbitration process and seek clarification from ArbCom members or those with prior experience in such cases. So far, my understanding is that ArbCom does not rule on content disputes — as in, a statement like "Waterboarding is a form of torture" is not something ArbCom is supposed to decide. Is that right?

My question is — what about disputes regarding principles that guide content? For example, interpretations of NPOV, WEIGHT, and so on? Is it in scope for ArbCom to make a ruling about how to make decisions about content, i.e. a "meta-content ruling", such as "An article cannot say X if a reliable source says X is disputed"? I ask this because I think it would be helpful to have clarification on such things, but I'm unsure what is acceptable to bring up on this workshop page.

Thanks for your help and advice. —Ka-Ping Yee (talk) 00:47, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

NPOV clarifications
Hi guys, if possible, I think it would be of extreme benefit if possible for the arbs to weigh in (at the least, on the Workshop) on the various NPOV related mini-debates. I think the two sides are completely breaking down from fundamentally different interpretations of NPOV. My take is generally that all value goes to the sources, and we're subservient to them, in a "try for hard NPOV, and shoot OR dead" mindset, which may be extreme. Others take differing views, and with some in the middle, and some where they seem to allow for slight deviation from NPOV on a case by case basis, or if certain conditions are met. One of more of us is obviously getting it wrong, or the fighting wouldn't be so intractable. Help on this would be very much appreciated. Lawrence Cohen 22:34, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Repeating the debate here considered harmful?
Forgive me if I've misunderstood the process, but I strongly doubt that it is productive to replay the arguments from Talk:Waterboarding on this Workshop page. I fear that it is on the verge of turning into yet another (quite large) battleground on which emotions will flare and all the same problems will repeat themselves. Can I encourage the parties in this discussion to present their positions and proposals to the arbitrators, and then stand back and let the arbitrators consider the evidence (instead of continuing to argue directly with each other)?

Again, this is my first time participating in this arbitration process, so I'm only saying this because it makes sense to me. Feel free to let me know if I'm out of line. Thanks. —Ka-Ping Yee (talk) 09:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Blue Tie's evidence/presentation on consensus
Can we see sources and diffs for each editor? I don't know who half of these names are. Are you including names going back years? Thats not appropriate to do so. You should limit this to editors October-November 2007 onwards.

You excluded the various flagrant BryanFromPalatine socks. Thanks. Lawrence §  t / e   14:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I also see methodological problems with the data. For one, it ignores people who have not participated in the edit war by directly editing the first paragraph, but tried to build consensus on talk instead. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't even realize that at first glance (it was a fast review). If this is excluding all the talk page commentary, and I see it is, this evidence from Blue Tie is functionally useless for anything on consensus. Note also that if it's redone, *ALL* the Sprint Wireless IPs MUST be counted as one person, regardless of whether they signed as "Bob" or not, because of the fact that "Bob" doesn't always sign as himself but is clearly himself. Anyone disputing this, please find me edits by these same IP ranges that aren't to any pro-conservative, or waterboarding related topics from before this RFAR began, to demonstrate that multiple people use those IPs.  Lawrence  §  t / e   20:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Retroactive editing
Please avoid editing comments that people have already replied to, as e.g. here. If you have something to add, make a separate comment. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)