[WikiEN-l] Vigilantism or due process (was: Plautus)

[Lee Pilich]

At 14:44 26/02/2004 +0000, Gareth wrote:
>It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a
>troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration."
>The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can
>tell, achieved anything of any note.

I don't think the committees are supposed to be achieving anything new, 
really, so if they achieved anything of note, it wouldn't necessarily be a 
good thing...

Think back to 18 months ago: if there was a very serious dispute that was 
causing a lot of trouble, then Jimbo would talk to the involved parties and 
try to resolve it. If it couldn't be resolved and the problem really was 
serious, then he might ban somebody. I think this system worked well.

Now Jimbo has said that he wants to slowly withdraw from having such a big 
role in these sorts of decisions (him doing everything wasn't scalable in 
any case). So we have the mediation committee which exists to amicably 
resolve disputes between arguing parties, and the arbitration committee 
which exists to consider bans or other binding solutions in serious cases. 
They're just doing the same job that Jimbo used to do on his own.

The past couple of months have been a bit rough. We've had some dodgy users 
come along and cause some upset, and those people they've upset haven't 
seen any clear way to complain and get something done about the situation. 
Hopefully the committees will give them a way. Yes, it's another layer of 
beaurocracy, and yes that's awful, but we've got to deal with these 
problems somehow, and I'm not sure there's a credible alternative at the 
moment (vigilantism may solve one problem but it creates another).

We've got to remember that the nature of the Wikipedia is such that there 
will always be conflict to some degree, and there will always be trouble. 
There's no magic way to stop it altogether. We're in the business of damage 
limitation really, and that's no easy task either.

Lee (Camembert, off to write some articles)