This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This is a proposal for a content committee, a board of editors empowered by the community to make binding decisions on content issues where all other methods of dispute resolution have failed.
The idea of a group of Wikipedians having the right to make final, binding decisions about content issues flies in the face of the wiki principles of Wikipedia. At the same time, however, intransigent battles over content - those in which the parties cannot come to consensus about the content, but continue to wrangle over it - are often resolved by default rather than by consensus: the proponent of one position becomes so aggravated that he commits conduct errors which causes him to be banned or blocked, thus allowing the other editor's position to prevail, or more often one party simply gives up the fight with the same result. When a position prevails under such circumstances, it is often not because the edits in question are proper under Wikipedia standards but rather because the editors involved in the dispute were the only ones who had taken notice or cared about the dispute. Months or years can pass before the questionable edits are noted and tagged for review and months more can pass before any review is forthcoming. In such circumstances, the quality of the encyclopedia suffers to the point that failing to strictly adhere to Wikipedia's collaborative principles does less damage to the encyclopedia than leaving the errors in place. There are also certain content disputes which are so influenced by canvassing or by strong real-world positions that the regular editing processes break down or cannot reliably function.
Binding resolution of content disputes has happened in the past, through remedies at Arbitration cases that have set up RFCs of which the final result has been binding for a period of time, generally a few years, but there is no present way to resolve these issues without arbitration, and at times this can cause severe disruption to the community.
A proposed way of addressing this issue would be the formation of a "Content Committee" which could help the involved parties by providing some sort of binding resolution in regards to the content issue. This would be most likely used with disputes over article titles.
The committee would have the following features.
This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This is a proposal for a content committee, a board of editors empowered by the community to make binding decisions on content issues where all other methods of dispute resolution have failed.
The idea of a group of Wikipedians having the right to make final, binding decisions about content issues flies in the face of the wiki principles of Wikipedia. At the same time, however, intransigent battles over content - those in which the parties cannot come to consensus about the content, but continue to wrangle over it - are often resolved by default rather than by consensus: the proponent of one position becomes so aggravated that he commits conduct errors which causes him to be banned or blocked, thus allowing the other editor's position to prevail, or more often one party simply gives up the fight with the same result. When a position prevails under such circumstances, it is often not because the edits in question are proper under Wikipedia standards but rather because the editors involved in the dispute were the only ones who had taken notice or cared about the dispute. Months or years can pass before the questionable edits are noted and tagged for review and months more can pass before any review is forthcoming. In such circumstances, the quality of the encyclopedia suffers to the point that failing to strictly adhere to Wikipedia's collaborative principles does less damage to the encyclopedia than leaving the errors in place. There are also certain content disputes which are so influenced by canvassing or by strong real-world positions that the regular editing processes break down or cannot reliably function.
Binding resolution of content disputes has happened in the past, through remedies at Arbitration cases that have set up RFCs of which the final result has been binding for a period of time, generally a few years, but there is no present way to resolve these issues without arbitration, and at times this can cause severe disruption to the community.
A proposed way of addressing this issue would be the formation of a "Content Committee" which could help the involved parties by providing some sort of binding resolution in regards to the content issue. This would be most likely used with disputes over article titles.
The committee would have the following features.