The Arbitration Committee has a problem to pose to the community, and would like to solicit commentary and solution-suggestions from contributors.

This is a copy of an email I, Raul654, sent to the arbitration committee on June 3, 2005. In the ensuing discussion, arbitration committee members agreed that the problem description is accurate but disagreed with the proposed solution

In the light of some recent commentary [on the arbitration committee mailing list], I'm going to offer my own analysis of the situation. I think this is a very fundamental question and should have input from all members of the committee, and Jimbo too.

It very much used to be the case that arbitration was between one user who was clearly in the right and one user who was clearly causing trouble. (Because, really, until the commitee was created, there really was no way to get rid of troublemakers -- Jimbo exercised his authority so sparingly that it effectively gave them carte blanche to cause trouble). It's no surprise that most of the cases for the first 6-10 months dealt with ejecting troublemakers who had been allowed to roost for far too long.

Now, with the three revert rule acting as an "electric fence" (so to speak) to contain people from fighting revert wars of epic scale (along the lines of people reverting 100 times in a day), and the arbcom available to sort out the matters that are clearly black-or-white, things have become more, well, grey. Mark me this - from here on out, our primary problem will not be users who do nothing but cause general angst, but POV pushers -- people who edit Wikipedia with an agenda (even if they are not aware of it) While this makes our job infinitely harder, THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY A BAD THING. It is a sign that Wikipedia is maturing, that we have successfully established rules and mechanisms to ensure that good decorum is maintained

The $64,000 question is, then, what do we do about POV pushing? The arbcom has, for-better-or-for-worse, avoided getting involved in "content disputes". Now, I don't really like this way of phrasing it - many of our disputes are, ultimately, a dispute about content. We have already in several cases in which we sanctioned users for persistently editing with a particular bias, in violation of our NPOV policy. I think these are obvious examples of us getting involved in a content disputes. It would be more accurate to say that we have avoided dictating what an article should or should not say. Overall, I think this policy has been both good (in that it avoided concentrating too much power in one group of users) but it has also had a marked and demonstrable downside. Often times, POV disputes come down to two people (or groups of people) arguing that their version is better, and they are unable to come up with a compromise. Ideally, this where the mediation commitee would step in and help the disputants solve their problems. Unfortunately - at best - the mediation committee (which is currently dead and I don't see it coming back anytime in the near future) was only marginally effective in this regard. It became more of a stepping stone to the arbitration committee and then was ignored all together.

As a result of our no-content-dispute policy, the arbcom has not really had an effective means of solving these POV disputes (which is, as [arbitration committee member] alluded to earlier, why we have had so much trouble coming up with remedies). We have effectively hamstrung ourselves. More importantly, if the arbitration committee won't do it, who will?

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a quick or easy fix for this. I think the only way to remedy this would be to modify the whole dispute resolution process. It's been over a year since it was last changed, and it's about time we updated it to reflect the experience we have gained.

The solution I would pose is - we need someone (or a group of someones) to fill the vacuum we have created. For the purposes of this email, let's assume it's a group of people that I will refer to hereafter as the 'content committee' - no pun intended. This group would have the authority to decide that one particular version is better, and to impose a binding solution on the disputing parties. Ideally, they would be competent in the area of dispute or a related area. Nor do I think this job would even be particularly hard -- more often than not in a POV dispute, it is quite obvious even to a layman that one version is neutral (or mostly so) and the other is horribly POV.

This commitee would be subordinate to the arbitration committee. We would act as a sort of court-of-appeal, as well as reserving for ourselves the right to hear disputes about behavior. So to summarize -- in effect, I am proposing we replace the mediation committee with a committee (a) comptent in the subject area, and (b) capable of imposing a binding solution on the disputants, while (c) allowing users to bypass this step directly in favor of arbitration. In effect, we became a committee that looks at people behaving badly in general, while they look at specific articles that need a voice of authority to settle a disputes.

Now, just to get into a few other details that should be mentioned. Hypothetically, let's say we created this Content Committee (actually, if we want them to have comptence in a particular subject area, we would probably need to create multiple commitees or at least have ad-hoc ones handy) At first, there would no doubt be a tremendous rush to have them sort out hundreds upon hundreds of issues pertainting to every trivial dispute on Wikipedia. I think it needs to be made clear that the barriers to entry required for this group to take a particular case should be very high. Just because you have a disagreement with user:X on article Y doesn't mean you need to run to the Content Committee. I also think it's important that the people on this committee(s) be accountable to the community. Far be it for me to propose instruction creep (I coined the term, afterall), but if we were to have such a committee, it would probably be a good idea to have yearly elections alongside the arbitration commitee elections in December.

I'd appreciate hearing what all of you think of my idea.

--Mark

I see no reason to replace the Mediation Committee. All that needs to happen there is for some folks who are skilled in mediation to take an interest. That will come as more people are aware of our problem. I will certainly do it after I leave the Arbitration Committee. Although I have only basic training in mediation and no actual experience.

The problems of POV pushers and content disputes are important but not necessarily linked with mediation. In fact, having some definite procedure is vital for making mediation work. If you can say to a POV pusher, "Ok, I can see that you are pushing a point of view and if you go on to further proceedings, others will see it too and you may end up with your editing restricted" then you can start bringing them around to a discussion of how they can ensure that that their point of view is included but not to the exclusion of other points of view. One reason mediation works in life is that litigation, and strikes, are ruinous. Our arbitration procedures are only onerous. Fred Bauder 21:25, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

If a POV pusher can see, by looking at previous cases, that other point of view pushers have not only succeeded in fighting off charges of point of view editing, but been complimented by the Arbitration Committee for their "good work", it is rather difficult to negotiate or mediate with them. Fred Bauder 22:05, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

I believe that the original scope of the arbcom allowed them to handle content disputes. Why not return to that original mandate? Snowspinner 23:16, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see this delegated to someone else, frankly - the discussion that led to this RfC was sparked by a long letter of mine suggesting that we're becoming too interfering in the community. I'd personally like to some form of binding mediation - or a less formal and rigid arbitration process - to handle these disputes - so basically decent users never need to come before us at all. I'm really becoming quite against our practice of doling our paroles hand over fist in order to solve these disputes - I think it's going to cost us a lot of good editors if it continues. Ambi 23:26, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you have an alternate idea that you think could solve the problem, please place it below.

A "content arbitration committee" which merely decides whether a given fact is adequately sourced should be set up - ideally in a way that enables it to give quick binding answers. Anyone ignoring binding answers could be taken immediately before the existing behavioural arbitration committee.

Users will be able to approach the content arbitration with new information/sources even once a decision has been made - but the old decision would remain until explicitly overturned.

For instance: Suppose User 1 adds the following statement to the Bill Clinton article: "Bill Clinton was the best president America has ever had". User 2 removes this as POV. A content arbitration committee would find that the statement isn't adequately sourced. It may be then that User 1 adds the statement "According to the organisation XYZ, Bill Clinton was the best president America has ever had". User 2 removes this as POV, but in this instance User 1 provides a source, so the content arbitration committee would accept this statement as sourced.

What the content arbitration committee would not do is say whether a given statement should actually appear in any given article.

• This idea seems a bit dangerous to me, since it will, in effect, become an editorial committee, something which the community has long agreed we should not have. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 19:34, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

• I'm suggesting something far more restrictive than that. A committee that just states whether a particular statement has been adequately sourced. It would make no comment as to whether that statement should be included in any article, jguk 20:01, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Define "adequately sourced"--it's tougher than you think. For example, could I cite any number of websites and articles to claim that the Bush family controls the Illuminati (or vice versa)? Many fringe theories have actually never been refuted, simply because nobody's even heard of them except for their adherents. Thoughts? Meelar (talk) 20:30, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • The best thing you will be able to substantiate is the "[Website A] stated that the Bush family controls the Illuminati" (whatever that is), jguk 20:41, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • See Illuminati, btw. But anyway, I suppose I should have worded my criticism better. Essentially, these committees you're proposing have an exceedingly narrow mandate (is a fact adequately sourced), which wouldn't give a lot of guidance as to broader POV issues. For example, maybe something is true, but is given undue prominence in an article; maybe something is true, but is presented in such a way that it's not neutral. A real example might be in pro-life, which had a picture of President G.W. Bush signing

a bill barring some abortions; the caption in the picture said "Ten pro-life politicians, all male, were present at the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act". This is true and well-sourced, but POV nonetheless, and had it escalated into a real controversy, would not really have been solved under your proposal. An even better example is the recent kerfuffle over BC/BCE, in which both sides were essentially matters of opinion. If you ask me, consensus on talk pages is capable of handling most matters of factual accuracy; it's other types of disputes that present the largest challenge to the current system of dispute resolution. Meelar (talk) 21:01, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

• • • • The BC/BCE debate is an interesting case here. What would a committee decide here, especially as if they were to choose the politically correct option they would end up driving readers away? Readers prefer language they understand - but a committee would decide what its committee members understand (which is not the same as what our readers understand), jguk 21:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Revive the Mediation Committee. - Mgm|^(talk) 19:37, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

• What makes you think that more of the same-old-thing (which failed once already) will work this time? →Raul654 19:40, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Hold elections and get in more fresh blood. A lot of cases get to arbitration, simply because "Mediation is broken". Mediation would never have "failed" if the mediators weren't getting overworked. Mgm|^(talk) 21:26, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
• I would love to see the mediation committee revived, but the question is how do we revive it? Attempts so far don't seem to have gone anywhere. And an another question: how do we make a mediation committee that is effective in the sort of content dispute that Raul is talking about -- sannse (talk) 20:19, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Effective mediation should make the parties come to an agreement, effectively stamping out any POV problems or arbitration issues. If it's up it should take away at least part of any content dispute as long as the disputants are willing to compromise.

• • They should be made aware that wiki is a collaborative project. Anyone not willing to discuss, should step away from the issue to cool down or face arbitration for disrupting the collaborative process. Mgm|^(talk) 21:26, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
    • This is basically what we tried to do, though. With the exception of those done by Ed Poor, they rarely worked, and when he quit the committee, it was effectively useless. Ambi 23:29, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• I like this proposal, though #3 has some good points in that the committee needs some reforms. I've wanted to serve on the mediation committee for a long time, but every time I went to nominate myself I found another user had been discouraged from nominating themselves, so I directed my energies elsewhere. In my work as an advocate, I have found mediation is often an attainable solution, and I've kept several conflicts from reaching ArbCom because I was able to convince the users I was helping and the users they had conflicts with to reach an understanding and in some cases better their behavior. I know mediation is possible and I see no reason to eliminate or drastically reshape the committee— just a few changes here and there. -JCarriker 00:06, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Overhaul the mediation committee into something huge, w lots of members and a carefully crafted ability to facilitate binding decisions. These decisions would need to be able to be reviewed, as often as necessary. The current committee is failing due to its smallness in size, and its lack of power. I suggest basic changes like:

• Requiring mediation, rather than allowing it to be voluntary, in contentious cases

• Allowing anyone to be a member

• Possessing an ability, carefully restricted, of facilitating binding decisions

• I have some reservations about this model, but as a whole I don't think it's a bad idea. In my experience, I don't think the problem with the original committee was a lack of people. More, it was a lack of mediation skills - we lacked the people who could drag two parties who'd been fighting for weeks together and make them come out with an acceptable compromise. But as to your suggestions - I think requiring mediation would be a useful step - although there's always going to be some cases which will need to head straight to arbitration. And while I'm fond of the idea of binding mediation, I think this could be very very bad mixed with "anyone can be a member". Ambi 23:33, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

For the most part, do nothing. POV editors often cause an improvement in an article because they draw attention and cause refactoring. If all parties are behaving civilly and attempting to be constructive, then the end result should be an improvement. If they are not, then ArbCom can act without considering the POV edits directly. A related idea is that myopic editing should be discouraged, in that we should be more liberal in asking people to take a break from a specific article or set of articles if that is all they are editing, especially where the subject is controversial. We can do this because our community is large enough that it should never cause an article to go without an editor. Wikipedia is not a open pulpit, and we should discourage editors from only working on a small number of articles so that all our articles can be a community project. The discouragement should apply to all users, not just ones we judge to be POV pushers, but we should look the other way for articles where there is no controversy since there is no evidence that there are other editors who wish to contribute.--Gmaxwell 21:25, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hold tight and wait for Mediawiki 1.5, and hope that the m:Article validation feature can save us.

Or to phrase this more appropriately, look for formalised, structured ways of bringing outside editors into contentious articles. The ideological basis for not having a content committee from day one was sound - the aim was not to concentrate editorial powers into the hands of a small number of users. And feel free to criticise me for being too postmodernist here, but surely all Wikipedians edit with bias, whether conscious or not. A better way might perhaps be to allow either MedCom or ArbCom to enforce policies like WP:V, which are long-standing and well understood, rather than grant them sweeping new powers. WP:RFC is my preferred option for now, although it could be expanded. At least with a well-formed RfC to start from, ArbCom can act without being seen to be editorialising. --bainer (talk) 00:05, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)