This report was ported over to EN on August 3, 2008, and finalized on August 10.
Some areas of cultural and ethnic dispute on Wikipedia have been the subject of multiple ArbCom cases.
However, case results were often only targeted towards the behavior of a limited number of users, so when other users came onto the scene, or new articles were drawn into the dispute, a new ArbCom case was required.
"Tag team" is difficult to define, but could perhaps be described as: two or more editors who appear to have been working in concert, in a disruptive way, on multiple articles.
This disruption could involve:
Tag team members may also be identified with tactics such as:
When a case involving an ethnic or cultural dispute is addressed by ArbCom, the remedies should focus not just on the specific editors involved, but also the entire topic area. For example, as was done with the Israel-Palestine case, discretionary sanctions should be authorized for any uninvolved administrators in the area of dispute.
To avoid wasting the time of arbitrators, the Working Group recommends that a guideline be created by which uninvolved administrators can be empowered to deal with a dispute, even if it has not yet risen to the level of an actual arbitration case.
Signposts that administrators should perhaps be empowered with the power to impose discretionary sanctions, might be one or more of the following:
When an area of chronic dispute has been identified, a Reconciliation Project or Cooperation Board should be considered, which allows a centralization of discussion for disputed issues. Existing examples (both successful and unsuccessful) include:
Working Group members who endorse this report:
I am grateful that I have been invited to review this page, even though I haven't been active for a long time. Readers are therefore free to ignore my comments, but I’m writing them in the hope that they are helpful.
I endorse the description of what the group did, the recommendation to ArbCom (which I take to mean that ArbCom should put more weight on topics instead of editors), the recommendation to set up Cooperation Boards, and the thrust of the recommendations for future such groups.
I do not endorse the “Definition of tag team” section because it gives POV pushers yet another tool they can use (wrightly or wrongly) for personal attacks. Its verboseness in this report also sends the wrong message, as it shifts the weight of the recommendations towards focusing on people, which defies the first principle of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution: Focus on content, not on the other editor.
I also do not endorse the recommendation “Authorize discretionary sanctions” because my experience shows that admins have enough power to solve such situations already. I believe that key to solving these issues is support of the community, which each admin or mediator has to earn by showing an understanding for the conflict he or she is working on.
To the recommendations for future such groups, I would have added:
Because these two conditions were not met, most of the discussion lacked a connection to real-life, practical experience. A notable exception was Elonka, who meticulously chronicled her “experiment”. — Sebastian 09:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
As others might have noticed, once actively participating in the workgroup, I stopped being active for a mix of reasons. Having seen my critical comments to one proposal simply removed by Elonka rather than discussed or addressed was too much of a discouragement. Further events at Wikipedia related to most fundamental wikipolitics issues, the Arbcom completely discrediting itself by arbitrators' glaring lack of personal and judicial ethics, as well as the sorry state of affairs in some of the very same nationalist conflicts this group was supposed to address made me feel like withdrawing from participation in the Wikipedia altogether, at least for a while, until I feel like I can handle the stress. Once, when I've checked in briefly, I saw a note at my talk pointing to the draft of this report at the workgroup wiki. I read the draft and noted my opinion at the draft's talk but it was ignored and the report was posted here anyway without comment. So, I am posting my dissent here as well, for the record.
Unfortunately, I cannot co-sign this report in its current form. During the months I've been active in the workgroup I spoke multiple times of the dangers of the policies (as well as the arbcom decisions) that would give the block-happy admins a free reign in dealing with the superior editors in any way they see fit. The fallout from the past discretionary sanctions ArbCom cases has been tremendous. Good editors left and newly joined editors found themselves fearful of getting involved in contentious topics.
The Wikipedia admin corps is a diverse body. A disproportionately visible part of it are admins who just love to run the Wikipedia and put the content editors in their place. These discretionary sanctions tend to be a honey pot for exactly such admins.
What's worse is that these sanctions developed a new "method" of dispute resolution. Some unscrupulous editors mastered perfectly how to game the system and achieve the "victories" in content disputes by setting the field for the content opponents blocks, using the free reign of block-happy admins as a tool.
I feel that the recommendations from the group along these very same lines would make the situation worse, and not better. I bear part of the responsibility for this too not being active lately which, perhaps, facilitated this disagreeable to me line of thought to dominate the further developments towards the final conclusions. However, in earlier stages I did state publicly both at the wrokgroup wiki as well as at enwiki, the dangers of this type of solutions. I am sorry, I failed to convince the group members back then, but I cannot cosign the report. -- Irpen 04:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
This report was ported over to EN on August 3, 2008, and finalized on August 10.
Some areas of cultural and ethnic dispute on Wikipedia have been the subject of multiple ArbCom cases.
However, case results were often only targeted towards the behavior of a limited number of users, so when other users came onto the scene, or new articles were drawn into the dispute, a new ArbCom case was required.
"Tag team" is difficult to define, but could perhaps be described as: two or more editors who appear to have been working in concert, in a disruptive way, on multiple articles.
This disruption could involve:
Tag team members may also be identified with tactics such as:
When a case involving an ethnic or cultural dispute is addressed by ArbCom, the remedies should focus not just on the specific editors involved, but also the entire topic area. For example, as was done with the Israel-Palestine case, discretionary sanctions should be authorized for any uninvolved administrators in the area of dispute.
To avoid wasting the time of arbitrators, the Working Group recommends that a guideline be created by which uninvolved administrators can be empowered to deal with a dispute, even if it has not yet risen to the level of an actual arbitration case.
Signposts that administrators should perhaps be empowered with the power to impose discretionary sanctions, might be one or more of the following:
When an area of chronic dispute has been identified, a Reconciliation Project or Cooperation Board should be considered, which allows a centralization of discussion for disputed issues. Existing examples (both successful and unsuccessful) include:
Working Group members who endorse this report:
I am grateful that I have been invited to review this page, even though I haven't been active for a long time. Readers are therefore free to ignore my comments, but I’m writing them in the hope that they are helpful.
I endorse the description of what the group did, the recommendation to ArbCom (which I take to mean that ArbCom should put more weight on topics instead of editors), the recommendation to set up Cooperation Boards, and the thrust of the recommendations for future such groups.
I do not endorse the “Definition of tag team” section because it gives POV pushers yet another tool they can use (wrightly or wrongly) for personal attacks. Its verboseness in this report also sends the wrong message, as it shifts the weight of the recommendations towards focusing on people, which defies the first principle of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution: Focus on content, not on the other editor.
I also do not endorse the recommendation “Authorize discretionary sanctions” because my experience shows that admins have enough power to solve such situations already. I believe that key to solving these issues is support of the community, which each admin or mediator has to earn by showing an understanding for the conflict he or she is working on.
To the recommendations for future such groups, I would have added:
Because these two conditions were not met, most of the discussion lacked a connection to real-life, practical experience. A notable exception was Elonka, who meticulously chronicled her “experiment”. — Sebastian 09:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
As others might have noticed, once actively participating in the workgroup, I stopped being active for a mix of reasons. Having seen my critical comments to one proposal simply removed by Elonka rather than discussed or addressed was too much of a discouragement. Further events at Wikipedia related to most fundamental wikipolitics issues, the Arbcom completely discrediting itself by arbitrators' glaring lack of personal and judicial ethics, as well as the sorry state of affairs in some of the very same nationalist conflicts this group was supposed to address made me feel like withdrawing from participation in the Wikipedia altogether, at least for a while, until I feel like I can handle the stress. Once, when I've checked in briefly, I saw a note at my talk pointing to the draft of this report at the workgroup wiki. I read the draft and noted my opinion at the draft's talk but it was ignored and the report was posted here anyway without comment. So, I am posting my dissent here as well, for the record.
Unfortunately, I cannot co-sign this report in its current form. During the months I've been active in the workgroup I spoke multiple times of the dangers of the policies (as well as the arbcom decisions) that would give the block-happy admins a free reign in dealing with the superior editors in any way they see fit. The fallout from the past discretionary sanctions ArbCom cases has been tremendous. Good editors left and newly joined editors found themselves fearful of getting involved in contentious topics.
The Wikipedia admin corps is a diverse body. A disproportionately visible part of it are admins who just love to run the Wikipedia and put the content editors in their place. These discretionary sanctions tend to be a honey pot for exactly such admins.
What's worse is that these sanctions developed a new "method" of dispute resolution. Some unscrupulous editors mastered perfectly how to game the system and achieve the "victories" in content disputes by setting the field for the content opponents blocks, using the free reign of block-happy admins as a tool.
I feel that the recommendations from the group along these very same lines would make the situation worse, and not better. I bear part of the responsibility for this too not being active lately which, perhaps, facilitated this disagreeable to me line of thought to dominate the further developments towards the final conclusions. However, in earlier stages I did state publicly both at the wrokgroup wiki as well as at enwiki, the dangers of this type of solutions. I am sorry, I failed to convince the group members back then, but I cannot cosign the report. -- Irpen 04:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)