Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Vote/Risker

Risker

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Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It’s created by people from all over the world, drawn to the opportunity to share their knowledge, skills and talent, without material benefit. From brilliant writers to wikignomes, with many in between, there is one common thread: we all have hopeful hearts. We see value and potential in freely sharing knowledge with the world, in a single, widely encompassing source.

The same thing that makes Wikipedia special is also its Achilles heel. Bringing together such a large group of people from different cultures, social skills and educational levels means there is plenty of room for normal human disagreements. Disputes are magnified and can quickly escalate as a result of the imperfection of written communication combined with strong feelings and divergent interpretations of policy, English usage, and intention. When behaviour violates our policies, we employ dispute resolution. These processes seem to have more good intention than good effect, because they often fail to change the behaviours or resolve the dispute.

Arbitration is intended to address editorial behavioural issues with the goal of removing roadblocks to the continued improvement of the encyclopedia, yet it tends to do this in a remarkably superficial way. Instead of drilling down to identify the root cause(s) of the problems, it is largely dependent on the commentary of interested parties and context-free “diffs” that give only snapshots of often complex situations. Transparency is not a priority. Well-considered commentary is drowned out by acrimonious hyperbole and self-serving rhetoric. Arbitrators frequently fail to identify the heart of the problem, and their decisions give the appearance of taking the path of least resistance rather than the path to resolution. All who are involved come away disillusioned and disheartened, regardless of the final decision. The process itself exacerbates the harm it seeks to halt.

My contribution, should I be appointed to the Arbitration Committee, will be to ask questions and expect—and give—straightforward responses; to prevent arbitration pages from becoming just another battleground; and to encourage editors uninvolved in the conflict to develop evidence that dispassionately illustrates the core issues instead of the peripheral distractions. We need to re-establish the Arbitration Committee as a place to resolve disputes in a collaborative and positive way without inflicting further harm on ourselves, our hopeful hearts. Because, at the end of the day, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.