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.

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 consensus model to impose content that does not conform to the neutral point of view (NPOV). Behaviour of this kind is called Wikipedia:Advocacy or Wikipedia:POV pushing. Editors who employ such behaviour are skilled at manipulating discussion, and often derive their views from a real-life, nationalist bias. To counteract this behaviour, we must reform the approach of the Arbitration Committee to nationalist disputes. In future arbitration cases, ArbCom should evaluate whether a disputant has used a non-neutral point of view. It can undertake this evaluation by determining whether edits comply with the available 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 uncivil. Such an approach is deficient, because most individuals whose goal is to subvert NPOV are skilled at behaving properly whilst contributing disruptively. Many advocates are unblinkingly civil, and contribute to consensus-building discussion (even mediation) with no intention of ever compromising. Many of these editors will edit war slowly, over many months, to ostensibly abide by Wikipedia:Edit warring and 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.