Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-22/Arbitration report

Prof. Dr. John R. Brews was never really disruptive. While there were certainly issues with the way he edited Wikipedia, this was never a serious enough problem that would warrant a broad topic ban for all of physics, let alone a site ban. Brews was basically bullied/pestered away from Wikipedia. The ArbCom system is set up in such a way that they will always choose the side of a cabal that opposes a single editor or a small group of editors without much regard for content issues.

In case of the climate change topics, the opposition against climate sceptical editors was far more justified than the opposition that existed against John Brews. At least this is true if we assume that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not some online social medium like facebook. However, the ArbCom system focusses only on social interactions. Then, because the climate sceptics form a rather large cabal, ArbCom appeased them. They topic banned good contributors including two out of the only three expert editors we have in this area (definition of expert I'm using: someone who has published papers in peer reviewed journals on the topic area).

The motion ArbCom passed was prompted by complaints by some editors that a topic banned expert was placing notifications of compromized articles on his userspace. That expert was blocked for two weeks even though what he did fell within the boundaries of the topic ban. A motion was passed that explicitely forbids this sort of activity. The fundamental issue of maintaining Wikipedia articles was not addressed, largely because it is politically incorrect to contradict the official rationale for the topic bans: Topic banned editors are supposed to have nothing useful to contribute to the topic area, even if they are big experts in the topic area.

Count Iblis (talk) 02:18, 29 November 2010 (UTC)