English wiki Unsourced BLP Drama Pragmatic Review
English wiki Unsourced BLP Drama Pragmatic Review
For those who are not aware of it there is currently a Request For Comment on Unsourced BLP in the English wikipedia
I think i will good to keep watch of the whole "Negotiation" process because at least 2 recommendations could benefit from a pragmatic & thoughtful review of this ongoing RFC.
The concerned recommendation:
- Task force/Recommendations/Wikipedia Quality Re-emphasize core values ("Baseline quality standard")
- Task force/Recommendations/Community health Decisions and dispute resolution
Baseline quality standard because each BLP article have to be sourced. Yes there is an issue on source quality and whatever it will be enough for all those article to qualify the English notability guidelines.
Decisions and dispute resolution because the English Arbitration Committee put an injunction to the community "Find a compromise or else we may end up nuking 50-65K articles". That rallies previous discussions on the use of constraint to achieve dispute resolution.
KrebMarkt's comments:
Decisions and dispute resolution:
- Using a motion ++
- Calling for a RfC with an obligation to find a comprise backed with a big stick +++
- Leaving a motion that could interpreted as designing a "good side" in the issue ---
- Arbiters making summary in the RFC -
- Not merging views/proposals or removing views/proposals on an arbitrary basis ++
Baseline quality standard:
- Obligation to source ++
- No criterion on source origin and quality --
- No question on whatever the sourcing is enough to pass inclusion/notability criterion ---
I'm glad to see ArbCom taking affirmative steps to encourage consensus building. (Instead of the usual negative step of "not our problem, figure something out you guys".) I'm not sure I read the motion as being under the knife like you do. Is ArbCom really saying that 50,000 articles will be deleted if they don't compromise?
I don't see it. But if they are, you're right, they'd be designing a "good side" in the dispute. It would give that side a huge advantage in the negotiations, and make consensus-building more difficult. The "big stick" approach will encourage compromise much more if editors think the big stick will come down somewhere in the middle. If people think the big stick will just back them up, they might stonewall and take advantage of that.
But again, to be clear, I'm not sure I see ArbCom doing that here.
here the motion
ArbCom motion was everyone move forward and find a solution to unsourced BLP.
ArbCom position is something like we will support any proposal that will get us rid of unsourced BLP even if the proposal means nuking 50K articles. However ArbCom will obviously pick the workable proposal that would gather most support.
By designing a "good side", i mean that Jimmy Wales even thanked one of the editors who started it the "party".
That said the scales are even because when some editors mention "wiki civil war" (read some of the statements), it smells Pyrrhic victory. One side pushing to far would lead to much hatred, strife, bitterness, people leaving the project & bad Public Relation. Wikipedia can't afford that level of general distrust. See the fellow-up ArbCom request to see how fired up are the non on their sides editors.
This looks like an ugly one. But it's exactly the kind of situation that needs to be resolved in a way that ends in a compromise. My greatest fear isn't that one side gets their way, because that's extremely unlikely on Wikipedia, where consensus is king. My greatest fear is, instead, this conflict continues on with both sides nibbling around the edges. Someone gets blocked for a revert war, someone else gets de-sysopped, someone else gets blocked for canvassing, and another person gets blocked for incivility... all while every attempt at a compromise results in "no consensus".
We know that both sides have power in numbers, and both sides have legitimate grievances.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#View_by_Jehochman
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#View_by_Collect
The question is if this is going to lead to both sides endlessly blocking each other... or both sides working towards a middle ground.
This ugly one is worth watching.
The ArbCom motion was a "technically faulty".
What is grievously missing is the "carrot". No one had some thoughts for the handful of "happy idiots" who will fix the unsourced BLP. That illustrates again the "There is no recognition for those improving Wikipedia from the bottom" and bear ill to the success of greater project like the "Baseline quality standard".
Guess i have to jump in this circus too :(
What kind of carrot did you have in mind? To me, I can only imagine a stick: ArbCom threatens to design a process that will result in a compromise if the editors don't work towards one:
In every single case, ArbCom either threatened to design a process, or threatened to exclude people who wouldn't take part in the process in a collaborative way. In this new case, ArbCom used their stick to back up one side, when they really should have used it to threaten any party who refused to sit down and negotiate.
Mind you, when 73% of participants (140 total) come down on one side... maybe ArbCom is right to recognize that differently than a 50/50 split.
What kind of "carrot" did you envision?
From what i'm trying to do in En Animanga project. You make a "Call for arms" within your project to clean up the project unsourced BLP. You keep account on who fix what and award Cookie, Barnstars and whatever form of recognition on based on participation, on numbers of fixed articles, most fixed articles among project members, ...
That's somewhat similar to what Animanga did to make project whole assessment.
Had i been me, i would have created a set of Barnstars exclusively for the unsourced BLP clean up awarded depending of editors degree of involvements. The different projects will award them but the set and the criterion to award them will be the same. The objective is to create the feel that you contributed to a small chunk of the collective history of En Wikipedia and it what happen ever again. In others words an I was there feeling.
What it's baffling is that editors are volunteering to clean up the shits source the articles and some people consider those editors support as a given. The threat of mass deletion might give them that feeling and some editors are de-facto blackmailed to fix those articles. However you know as i that there will be other days and others battles, and in those times what was thought as granted will be sorely missing.
Yeah, this leads us back to the fundamental debate. Are the articles being worked on or not? Has there been ample time to improve them already or not? Are the articles in bad enough shape to delete them or not?
Any answer that's going to have buy-in from both sides will probably need to be in the middle. Some articles have had enough time to improve, and aren't being worked on, and are in bad shape worthy of deletion. Other articles need more time and will get some attention, or are in decent shape and don't need to be deleted. The compromise will recognize that different articles will require different approaches.
I like your answer. But this strategy session can't enforce that answer. What we can do is find a process that will arrive at an answer. Why aren't people rallying behind some kind of compromise? What's missing from the current process? Where did ArbCom go wrong?
Few comments. I will make few explanations on the BLP issue first before going back to dispute resolution process and baseline quality article.
What's mean really fixing an unsourced BLP article and by extension any unsourced article?
- The level Zero of sourcing is just prove et verify the existence of the subject covered by the article and nothing more. Removing craps and libelous contents is optional. Asserting notability using sources is optional.
The premises were more fix the unsourced BLP to get rid of the potent craps and libelous contents which hurt Wikipedia badly and to get higher quality BLP articles.
Given the context where some editors fear to run out of time (Thanks the Big stick), expecting them to go further in the level of sourcing and thus doing more qualitative edits is worth Facepalm.
From there you can foresee part of the objections raised in the RFC. Unsourced BLP is a real issue but the issue fixed by sourcing them is clearly not the one "stated" initialy.
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In term of process building:
- Using a non adequate rational for a real problem
- => People will make you know that your rational is flawed. That a lot of energy wasted in discussions on what brought you on the negotiation table and not on the negotiation itself.
- ArbCom should have done its best to be perceived neutral by both party and yet very firm that the issue must be solved but the motion could be interpreted to support one group.
- => The perceived "slant" toward one group may lead to an absence of perceived "Neutral" party which job is to regroups the proposals and views into something cohesive & workable based on support and consensus. This will delay even more the final compromise redaction due to possible redactors recused for alleged PoV pushing.
- Centralized negotiation but decentralized execution (bad side)
- Projects are already anticipating the compromise so editors from those projects may not feel in hurry to enact a compromise. Any additional delay is more time for their project to be prepared. (This one apply to BIG negotiations with lot of ramifications)
In term of baseline quality:
- Sourcing unsourced article is nothing more than proving the existence of a subject. (English Wikipedia had +260K of those)
- Quality edits is unlikely when using constraint like deletion. Editors will aim for quantity of edits to jury ring as many articles as possible.
- Improving Wikipedia from the bottom is not worth recognition (current etat de fait).
I'm sure i missed some of those.
2 is spot on. Definitely want to clarify that ArbCom needs to seem neutral, so as to put pressure on BOTH sides to come to a compromise. If they lean too strongly one way, they only put pressure on the other side to cave in... or organize a protest.
3 I'm not sure I understand.
1 makes sense, but it's tricky. You're right that the rationale missed the mark. The problem isn't any old lack of sources. (And indeed, sources are likely to exist for a lot of these biographies -- virtually anything that verifies their existence.) The problem is the potential for erroneous information, with no real way to know which seemingly innocuous statement is going to be harmful.
But should ArbCom be deciding what the rationale behind the problem is? I don't think ArbCom is always well-equipped to decide this. At the end of the day, they parrot the debate as it is presented to them. And in its presentation, it was "there is a lack of sources at BLPs".
Maybe the lesson is that ArbCom cracked down too soon. The debate hadn't had enough time to evolve and realize that the problem was much more specific. ArbCom should definitely reserve the right to push a compromise. But if the incident is relatively young in its history (I mean, someone just randomly got up and started PRODing BLPs), they maybe owe it some time to work itself into a stalemate. ... Seems weird, but maybe that's the best thing, process-wise.
What do you think?
For point 3.
I start an unsourced BLP clean-up driven within my project. I have a relative control on How we fix them, At what pace we fix them and Which one to fix first. From the moment the compromise is enacted, i relinquish part or all the control i have on the clean-up agenda and is put in the position of the one reacting instead of having the initiative. Because the clean-up is under way in my project, i don't feel in hurry to see a compromise made. I won't do delaying action, just that i won't pressure both sides and go to a corner watching the bouts and keeping the score. Meanwhile my project is fixing the articles at its own paces.
For point 1.
I have to jury rig unsourced BLP then i only need one reliable in-line citation to fix one article. At the worst i can put a ref to the BLP blog and be done with it. Reading thoughtfully in search for libelous contents is out of question because there are hundreds articles needing to be fixed. Finding enough sources to assert notability is also out of question because it isn't a BLP notability assessment drive and again a waste time that could be used to "rescue" others unsourced BLP.
That illustrates to some extreme how to have it done by the book but not in the spirit.
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From my perception ArbCom should have separated the most clearly the decision on the involved editors and the one on the unsourced BLP. In present case the decision on editors clearly overshadowed the strong statement of the ArbCom to have the unsourced BLP issue resolved once for all.
Once the situation went awry with one party having suspicions of partiality the options are rather limited one is to have an uninvolved Arbiter jumping in. Another is to have Senior editors jumping in. The last is keep going and do your best to salvage the situation which is what Risker do with skill and chutzpah.
Sorry it took me so long to reply.
I agree that people have gotten stuck on the policy rather than the spirit. I can't help but think that's part of how broken our dispute resolution process is, though. Because it's so hard to arrive at a consensus (it took barely more than 25% of the volunteers to raise enough stink to block things from moving), the few areas of consensus get mangled into these really narrow and technical interpretations. No one is going to agree on the basic principles.
Seems to me that this reaffirms the general principle that ArbCom should stay out of content issues. But I don't think it invalidates the idea that ArbCom sometimes needs to force a dialog and a compromise on content issues. Just that they have to sometimes recognize when the community is still trying to work it out, and sometimes recognize when the community is failing and needs some structure and support.
This is a situation where the community was still working on it. Not that they could have settled it... but maybe they'd have eventually identified the real issue: not a lack of sources, but an overwhelming proportion of unsourced material.
I waited a bit for the fellow-up.
Things split into 3 discussions:
Discussion 1 is still discussing the relevance of whole process and again arguing on the flawed premises of the RFC.
Discussion 2 is the real negotiation. Number of actives negotiators and onlookers dropped drastically because it has become more technical, people left the matter to the de-facto "representatives" of their views and projects (minus the BLP project) don't feel anymore the need to press for a compromise as their own clean-up processes are under way.
Discussion 3 is somewhat a stalemate and will probably remain so because it's too much related to the current unsourced BLP negotiation for either party to try a significant move here because of the risk of duplicity accusation. Giving from one hand "Discussion 2" while taking from the other "Discussion 3".
It seems to me like there won't be any coherent solution to this. That's not always a bad thing. Sometimes people realize that you just need to get back to work, and chip away at the problem bit by bit. But someone will inevitably chip away at the problem enough that it pisses someone off, because they don't like their solution. So I expect this to erupt into another big RFC, with people complaining about too many prods and too many stubborn defenders of bad content.
Maybe the second arbcom decision will be able to learn from the mistakes of the first.
Too soon, but not surprising that it happened this quickly. ArbCom will shut it down and tell them to go back to their corners -- not because of the merits of the case, but because they don't want the community to feel like they can bring every single BLP-related incident to them. It will probably make things worse, because one side will be frustrated about a lack of fairness, and the other side will feel like they have de facto immunity without anyone willing to sanction them. Things are about to get a lot more chaotic.
Maybe from the chaos will come another ArbCom incident further down the line, which can aim for a better solution.