Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-16/Arbitration report

Wikipedia truly is becoming more globalized, well, at least more European. We have a content-based speech discrimination now... I really don't see why Wikipedia just doesn't go the extra step and require real names in registration and mandatory reporting to national authorities of violations of freedom-of-speech-exception laws. I guess because that's not commonplace in Europe (yet). I see this as nothing but a bias against Asian speech restrictions norms (e.g., China, Russia) in favour of West European ones. Two wrongs don't make a right. Int21h (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It really can't be emphasized enough that (1) ArbCom never had purview to settle the content dispute that was at the heart of the Private Manning case; (2) that the settlement of this dispute was delayed by two or three weeks due to their ridiculous decision to bureaucratically "chime in" on a matter that didn't really concern them; (3) that the community wasted 1.5 million bytes of text on the various pages and subpages arguing about this matter at ArbCom — the equivalent of 150 beefy 10k articles flushed... It was a huge waste of time and effort all because ArbCom didn't think things through before accepting the case. Carrite (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, we can't say that Arb Com passed the buck back to the community now....can we. I don't fully understand the difference between discretionary sanctions and just handing out ridicule to those who's behavior was not to standards but I guess we get what we pay for, don't we. Having said that, let me be as clear as possible, this case is a social issue. We can't tell society how to react and to me, this comes very close to that.....and I am a gay activist in real life, have worked at the LA LGBT center and have been employed by controversial figures for their own activism against gay rights. Forgiveness, acceptance and just plain...getting over it and attempting education instead of criticism may work in the real world, but perhaps I need to understand that it doesn't in these virtual sites....and is not always the route people take....it's just the route I try to take....and in all honesty, I often fail. So others have failed in their expression of their own beliefs. I just see the above as outing behavior....if they were not sanctioned.....that is just pushing them further to the extreme. Can't say I am either happy or exactly unhappy with the decisions express above, but I will say this....I won't hold anything against any editor for expressing what they feel is right or wrong. We don't exactly have a policy to cover everything but we do need to be sure and let all of the editors who are criticized for their lack of sensitivity know that they are not being marked with a scarlet letter. Seriously, these issues need education not blame. I said my piece...and feel better.--Mark Miller (talk) 01:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Int21h, I don't think saying this is some Western European thing is a particularly accurate characterization because you're talking about governments while Wikipedia is a private entity. The United States, for example, doesn't have the sort of discriminatory speech laws that many European countries do, but a private entity in the United States (and I suspect the majority of countries without discriminatory speech laws) may forbid you from using discriminatory language within their domain. That's all that's happened here. Nothing out of the ordinary. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * And as for speech norms from Russia and China, I'm not sure about the former, but under the latter, large sections of Wikipedia are not even allowed, so I can't see that going that direction is compatible with Wikipedia's core mission. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I really hate Arbcom remedies that solve nothing. There is, apparently, no previous problematic behaviour by David Gerard related to transsexual articles; his actions were roughly in line with standard policy and practice of the time, and yet he now not only has a restriction, but an infinitely long restriction that can only be appealed once every six months. A disgracefully inappropriate and counterproductive remedy. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:56, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This remedy was far too heavy-handed, and is the kind of response that in the long run communicates to admins that they should be extra cautious rather than perhaps suffer being desysopped or hobbled by a topic ban for being bold in defense of policy. Steven Walling &bull; talk   06:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You know what? We need a principle that bad decisions get immediately appealed. I've filed an amendment request at Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)