Wikipedia:Arbitration rationale
PLEASE NOTE: This is and will always be non-official - the wikipedia:arbitration policy will be the official stuff. This page is a non-official set of addenda to a currently unofficial set of policies, so it's free of anything official-like.
Rules of Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee will judge cases according to the following guidelines, which we will apply with common sense and discretion, and an eye to the expectations of the community:
- Established Wikipedia customs and common practices
- Wikipedia's "laws": terms of use, submission standards, byelaws, general disclaimer, copyright license.
- Sensible "Real world" laws
Former decisions will not be binding on the Arbitrators - rather, we intend to learn from experience.
Jurisdiction of the Committee
The Arbitrators reserve the right to hear or not hear any dispute, at their discretion. The following are general guidelines which will apply to most cases, including some sense of reasoning behind each guideline; however, the Arbitrators may make exceptions. These guidelines may change over time:
- The Arbitrators will hear disputes that have been referred to it by the Mediation Committee.
- ...
- Where a dispute has not gone through Mediation, the Arbitrators may refer the dispute to the Mediation Committee if it believes that mediation is likely to help.
- We see mediation generally, and Mediation in particular, as a vital part of the process, and not something that should be circumvented lightly; it is our belief that we should be a court of last, not first, resort, and that the resolution of complaints go through due process.
- The Arbitrators will occasionally request advice on whether to hear a particular dispute from Jimbo Wales.
- Our experience being slight, and Jimbo's being significantly more extensive, having been the entire system of government in years past, we may well seek his advice on some matters where we are not sure whether we should hear them.
- The Arbitrators will primarily investigate interpersonal disputes.
- This is because the Committee believes that most disputes that it will be asked to oversee will be inter-personal ones, as it forsees that most article disputes will be able to be solved through other means, and that other disputes, such as those about electoral process, are beyond its abilities and authority to oversee.
- The Arbitrators will hear or not hear disputes according to the wishes of the community, where there is a consensus.
- The Committee seeks to be part of the comunity, and not to be seen as handing down judgment from on-high, divorced from the comunity's viewpoint.
- The Arbitrators will not hear disputes where they have not been requested to arbitrate.
- The Committee sees itself as a judicial body in the style of English Common Law, rather than a pro-active team of independent prosecutors.
Outcomes
The initial solution to most problems will be to issue an Arbitration Decree. For example:
- "User X, you are making unhelpful edits to article A. Stop it, and take a broader lesson from this as you edit other articles."
- "User X, you are making personal attacks on a wide variety of pages. Don't do that, personal attacks are inappropriate."
- "User X, limit your reverts to article A to one per day."
- "User X. refrain from editing this group of articles."
The second option will be to require that a user does not edit Wikipedia for a given time frame: up to thirty days to start with, up to a year in severe cases. These may be enforced by, for example, sysop blocks on IP addresses and usernames. Such bans may be appealed to Jimbo Wales, who retains the right to veto such decisions.
In due course, the arbitrators will review the possibility of additional software-based security measures, but will not request such features at the present time, relying instead on Decrees.
Transparency
The Committee will work in the following way:
- We plan to take evidence in public, but reserve the right to take some evidence in camera in exceptional circumstances.
- Each Arbitrator will make their own decision about how much personal information about themselves they are willing to share, both publically, and with the rest of the Committee.
- Arbitrators with multiple accounts on Wikipedia will disclose the usernames of those accounts to the rest of the Committee, but are not required to disclose them publically.
- Initially, we will keep our deliberations private, based on a semi-formal vote amongst Arbitrators. However, both Fred Bauder and The Cunctator have expressed strong distaste for this option, so the Arbitrators are far from unanimous on this point.
- We will make the rationale for all our decisions public, based upon our private deliberations.
- The Committee feels that being heavily observed, as would be the case if people could read our thoughts as we were writing them, reduces our ability to brainstorm, table radical ideas, and, in general, hinder our flexibility of thought. Further, we feel that public discussion is liable to reduce the Committee's cohesiveness, encouraging factiousness.
- Also, being in public makes certain types of discussion impossible - discussing the idea of whether some user is a reincarnation, for example, would be impossible to do publically, as it would be incendiary and potentially libellous. Another facet to this is the lengths to which some people have been known to take conflicts, rising to the level of death threats; by having private discussion and group declarations, we hope to decrease the chance of retaliation against individual arbitrators.
- The Committee, further, would like to point out that we aren't actually a government; our practical control over events of Wikipedia is minimal - any and all rulings that we make are effected by the general Wikipedian populace, and if we make unpopular decisions, or are seen to be operating unfairly in any way, they merely won't be heeded.
- The Committee is also stuffed with realists, who feel that there will be private discussion whatever is actually decreed, and enforcing one would merely drive the private discussion 'underground', where certain members of the Committee would have had the benefit of more information than others, so unfairly unbalancing our overall decision-making process.
- Finally, we feel that what's important is the product, not the process - our decisions and rationale given, and not the details of how we came to the conclusions we did.
Requests
The arbitration committee accepts requests for arbitration from anyone; however, in most cases, the arbitration committee will only hear cases referred to them by the Mediation Committee or directly from Jimmy Wales. The arbitration committee will decide whether to accept cases based on its Jurisdiction, as described previously.
The arbitrators will accept a case if four arbitrators have voted to hear it. The arbitrators will reject a case if one week has passed AND four arbitrators have voted not to hear it. Individual arbitrators will provide a rationale for their vote if so moved, or if specifically requested.
- We believe most cases will be self-evident anyway, we don't believe
coming to a consensus over our reasons is a good use of our time.
Who takes part?
to be written
Trial
to be written
Judgement
to be written
Emergency Session
The Arbitration committee will continue their deliberations towards a more permanent policy, and when they are finished, there will be an open community vote "yes or no" on he final policy.
In the meantime, the arbitration committee will handle emergency cases that Jimbo Wales refers to them. It is understood by all that they are merely acting in Jimbo's stead now, so as to begin the transfer of power in an orderly and timely fashion.
There being 11 members of the committee currently, the voting procedure for the emergency session is as follows:
- An appeal to the arbitration committee will be officially heard upon referral by Jimbo and approval by any 4 committee members. That is, 4 votes to hear a case will result in the case being heard.
- Upon those 4 votes, a final decision will be made within 1 week.
- A quorum of the committee will consist of a majority of members, i.e. at least 6 members must vote within that week, or no decision is made, and no action is taken.
- When a quorum has been reached, then after 1 week is up, or after enough members have voted such that the conclusion is inevitable, the majority decision will be the arbitration committee decision.