User talk:Barberio/sandbox

This will become unmanageable

Four major categories, 11 options, and perhaps more to come. I don't think you're likely to get any traction with so much happening in one RFC. You might be better off picking the most important or most pressing of the main categories and focusing on that first. Then work down the list over time. Resolute 17:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Resolute: Refactored to address this. --Barberio 17:20, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Reform

Though well intentioned, these proposals will be swiftly rejected due to:

1. Instruction creep.
2. WP:BURO
3. Rules can't create common sense that isn't there already. In fact, rules usually interfere with the employment of common sense, which is why we have WP:IAR.

This is never going anywhere. Take a break for a few days and see how the dust settles instead of launching this to immediate failure. Perhaps if you ponder the situation for a while, some really good reforms will come of it. Jehochman ^Talk 21:59, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jehochman:Hi. Thanks for your comment, but I'm proceeding with this following the direct suggestion of an Arbitrator inviting community review and reform of their process.

As a suggestion, to save time in the future you could turn this comment into a template that you can apply to any attempt to change or review wikipedia policies. --Barberio 22:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

What I said is "From what I've seen of trying to getting ArbCom stuff through the community, RFCs are a complete waste of time. What you don't [want] is drive-by supports but people who will hang around and commit the time to effective producing solutions. What is much more effective is a moderated discussion which is moved on from time to time as consensus develops."

You also need to be aware that the impetus for the press statement came from the WMF. And that it was linked to on behalf of ArbCom not Wikipedia.  Roger Davies ^talk 22:17, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Roger Davies: Then please suggest the format you want to engage with the review and reform process in? You've said you want to proceed with some kind of review and reform with the community. I'm just confused as to how you see that starting out without an initial RfC or RfC like process setting out the scope of reforms.

This is also the first I've heard that the WMF prompted you to make a press release. This was a mistake on their behalf then, since that is not your role. It would be impossible for the ArbCom to make a press release that would not be seen as making a press release on behalf of Wikipedia. -Barberio 22:23, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Go and have a look at this ArbPol review and this for two very successful reviews. The first resulted in the current policy which had 85% or so support in the ratification referendum. The situation is that ArbCom is like RFA, it's far from perfect but nobody can come up with anything better.

The press statement and the WMF blog post worked very effectively in calmly the media storm. And no, it's not impossible at all. The media reporting it have identified it as an ArbCom statement.  Roger Davies ^talk 22:32, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and it didn't prejudge the outcome of the case. It explicitly it was accurate at the time of posting,  Roger Davies ^talk 22:35, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Quick summary of the first part in case you missed it - don't you dare rock the boat. Processes to reform arbcom must not involve actual meaningful reform of the voting or deliberative process. Hipocrite (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I've seen it reported as both a statement from ArbCom and one from "Wikipedia". --Barberio 22:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

That's the press for you. What are we supposed to do, leave them to report exclusively from Mr Blogger's perspective? With all the collateral damage that was causing?  Roger Davies ^talk 22:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Roger Davies: Am I right in understanding you that you would rather there be an attempt to re-write the entire policy and put that up for vote, than an RFC on a small number of targeted modifications? --Barberio 22:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I would rather there was an attempt to identify resolvable issues and find solutions, which yours doesn't even try to do. For instance, all that stuff about mitigating circumstances is just going to lead to monstrous wiki-lawyering and make cases even more difficult to resolve. For example, the community is very divided about whether copious contributors should get a free pass for obnoxious conduct. Plus, if you say that harassment is mitigation at least some of the people are going to start sending themselves threatening emails. It's happened before. Then deciding which misconduct carries less weight. How long is a piece of string? How do you weight misconduct? What's 50% of an indefinite topic ban?  Roger Davies ^talk 22:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Roger Davies: Okay, from discussion, I think there is a firm consensus that it's not good that there's highly variable and often contradictory practice on how ArbCom currently consider mitigating circumstances, and how it accepts evidence for those mitigating circumstances. The problem is not that consideration of mitigating circumstances is not made, because it clearly has been, it is that there is such a variation in how it is applied with no apparent consistency.

There seems to be consensus that there was significant off-site harassment, but you've said you didn't get sufficient evidence for it. So there's a clear disconnect between what the community thinks happened, and what evidence ArbCom saw. There is the distinct possibility that evidence was not submitted because of confusing statements that ArbCom would not do anything about off-site harassment, which would certainly indicate to me that you were not going to accept evidence of it.

There are also lingering concerns over the possibility that ArbCom does not consider wikipedia's systemic-bias issues, or make consideration as to how remedies might re-enforce that systemic bias. In particular with regard to chilling-effects on areas of dispute.

Would you accept on principle that ArbCom should conduct an internal review, and come up with some guidelines on how they consider mitigating circumstances, how they accept and collect evidence on that, and how they consider issues of systemic-bias and preventing chilling-efects? And if so, would you think that ArbCom could start the ball rolling on that? --Barberio 23:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

With regards to 3)

I believe the arbitrators already do this. At least, I don't see any evidence that they are predisposed to dualities. Shii (tock) 23:09, 29 January 2015 (UTC)