Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-03-28/Arbitration report

Monty Hall problem: Arbitration
The article summarizes the decision well.

However, the article missed the main news story: the early drafted decision would have made it impossible to write (most) articles on mathematics, because editors would have been barred from providing simple examples that were not directly from reliable sources. The good news is that the arbitration committee listened to the mathematicians' concerns and drafted a decision that both is consistent with the WP rules and allows us to write articles for a general audience.

Another concern: I have long expressed displeasure with the statement about Gill. Gill referenced his own papers when referring to only others' results (and never his own). One ArbCom member opposed the statement about Gill; another formally abstained.

Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 19:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * For my own part and on behalf of the committee, I'd like to confirm that Dr Gill did not do anything underhand in respect to using his own material, nor was there anything "wrong" with the material itself - these were not self published blogs, but material accepted by recognised journals. The reminder issued by the committee is just that, a reminder that there is an etiquette in sourcing to one's own work, and the poor environment on the article talkpage had definitely not been conducive to etiquette. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That is another accurate and fair statement by a habitually graceful truth-teller. Elen was the principal author of the adopted statement, I should add. Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 17:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It was an interesting case, although I didn't follow the actual cut and thrust, I did review the proposed rulings. The interest came from the fact that ArbCom is generally leery of getting tangled in content issues (quite rightly) they initially allowed themselves to move further into that sphere than normal, despite, or perhaps because of, the esoteric nature of the subject.   This is a pattern seen widely, for example the well known philosopher Dr C.E.M. Joad, a member of an early radio panel show The Brains Trust was famous for invariably starting his answer "It all depends on what you mean by ...".  On the occasion that the question was "What is the law of averages." Joad replied "The law of averages says that if you spin a coin one hundred times it will come down heads fifty times and tail fifty times."  For some reason lured outside his normal cautious approach, by a subject he was less familiar with than many of the questions he did answer so well, he committed what we would today call an epic fail. Rich Farmbrough, 10:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC).


 * Suppose there are three editors and one of them is going to be topic banned. I tell you who one of the editors who is not topic banned is.... Um, nevermind. ;-P Jason Quinn (talk) 14:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)