User:Arcticocean/Arbitration and content

My views on this topic are not finalised, so this essay is in development. Comment by all readers is welcome at

User talk:AGK/Arbitration and content. Essays may not represent widespread norms and must be considered with discretion. This is not a Wikipedia policy

.

Case study

Forthright, blunt editor Frank puts a 'POV problems' template on a BLP, and removes content (with a note on the article talk page) which misrepresents the BLP subject's views on the Money Doesn't Grow On Trees theory. Polite, less direct users Theo and John contest the removal on the talk page, and restore the content. Frank reverts them, starting a minor edit war before the article is locked down by administrator Niall. Niall issues a final warning to Frank for revert-warring; Frank only gets out of a block by playing the "I was protecting a BLP" card.

Theo and John are tag-team POV-warriors misrepresenting a Wikipedia article in a contested topic area, but Frank takes most of the heat for the edit war. This topic area came to arbitration, and the committee came close to banning Frank from the topic area. No attempt was made to sanction Theo and John.

On Wikipedia, some individuals abuse our

reliable sources

—or manipulate the sources to give undue weight to one viewpoint. The result of this new approach would be that ArbCom would decide if an edit was meritorious or utter claptrap, which is editor-conduct arbitration in its purest form.

At present, the committee typically only neutralises editors who interact problematically, such as by being

Wikipedia:Three revert rule

. These tactics wear down the opposition, resulting in flame-wars that allow the collation of evidence and their rival's banning.

Recently, the Committee has come to focus on contributions as well as behaviour, for instance in Kehrli, but must do so more often. As an example, here is a description, with the details anonymised, of a real Wikipedia dispute that went to arbitration. Decide who the problem editors are, then compare who the Committee sanctioned. (See box on right.)

Like most contributors, I thought that such behaviour does not exist. It does, and has gotten us a bad name among academics and others with specialist knowledge in contentious areas. If the Committee won't combat serial POV-pushing, then who will? The WMF are too aloof. The community is too disjointed. Jimbo does not have the community's support. Wikipedia is not too big to fail, and such behaviour can breed irreversible decay. The Committee must neutralise these POV-pushers; the only way to do so is to determine, when necessary, whether their edits violate our NPOV policies.

See also