Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Policy/Proposed amendment

This is a suggestion made by James F. in a personal capacity, and is not policy, nor an official statement in any way.

I have noticed over the past few (err, 8) months of Arbitration cases that our policy needs, in my opinion, tweaking somewhat. Here are some suggestions:

Jurisdiction

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2. Where a dispute has not gone through Mediation, the Arbitrators may refer the dispute to the Mediation Committee if it believes Mediation is likely to help.

... to:

2. Where a dispute has not gone through Mediation, or the earlier steps in the dispute resolution process, the Committee may reject, suggesting that such steps should be taken first, if they believe that it is likely to help.

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7. The Committee has jurisdiction over the official mailing list "WikiEN-l" and the English Wikipedia only; its jurisdiction does not cover the IRC channels, private email exchanges, nor any other arena of conflict or dispute.

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8. As a body reporting to the Wikimedia Foundation Board, with the ability to direct the Committee to reach a verdict or otherwise act in a particular way, the Committee has no jurisdiction over the members of the Board.

Requests

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The Arbitrators will accept a case if four or more Arbitrators have voted to hear it. The Arbitrators will reject a case if one week has passed without this occurring AND four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it. Individual Arbitrators will provide a rationale for their vote if so moved, or if specifically requested.

... to:

The Arbitrators will accept a case if four or more Arbitrators have voted to hear it. The Arbitrators will reject a case if four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it. Individual Arbitrators will provide a rationale for their vote if so moved, or if specifically requested.

Hearing

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Litigants involved in cases heard by the Arbitration Committee will present their cases and evidence on a page titled something like "Case of [Username]". Litigants shall be defined as the user or users named in the case or any advocates they identify.

... to:

Litigants involved in cases heard by the Arbitration Committee will present their cases and evidence as directed on a sub-page of the case page, itself a sub-page of Requests for Arbitration, titled as "[Username]" or "[UsernameA] vs. [UsernameB]" or the like, at the discretion of the Arbitrator responsible for opening the case. Litigants shall be defined as the user or users named in the case or any advocates they identify.

Judgment

Rename Section to "Judgement" (oops)

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Once the hearing has ended, the Arbitrators will release one or more detailed Arbitrators' opinions on the case. The Arbitrators will also release a judgment detailing their resolution to the dispute, which will be binding. The Arbitrators will seek to reach consensus amongst themselves on this remedy. If consensus can not be reached, a vote will be taken, with the view of the majority of the Arbitrators prevailing. Majority shall be defined as a decision supported by more than 50% of all Arbitrators who were active at the time the decision was made (see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee for the current number of active members). If no option has majority support, no decision will be made, and no action will be taken.

... to:

Once the hearing has ended, the Arbitrators will construct an consensus opinion made out of Principles (general statements about policy), Findings of Fact (findings specific to the case), Remedies (binding Decrees on what should be done), and Enforcements (conditional Decrees on what can further be done if the terms are met). Each part will be subject to a simple-majority vote amongst active non-recused Arbitrators, the list of active members being that listed on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee. Dissenting votes for and opinions on parts that pass will be noted. In the event of no options for action gaining majority support, no decision will be made, and no action will be taken.

Amendment

Add Section "Amendment"

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Amendments to the policy are subject to the following rules:

• Exact suggested wording changes should be suggested on a page, and the presence of the page made well known.
• Discussion should continue for at least a fortnight.
• A small straw-poll should be taken of those discussing the suggested amendment; if there is strong support (>70%) for this amendment to go to a vote, a widely-announced full vote should be taken.
• The vote shall be considered passed when at least 100 users have voted, and at least 80% of the votes are in support
• When the vote has passed, the Arbitration policy shall be altered to reflect the amendment. This should be widely noted.

No changes, no matter how small or insignificant, may be made to the policy without the due process of an amendment being made in the above manner.

Comments on the proposal

Thoughts? James F. (talk) 03:17, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

All looks good to me. --mav 03:56, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If this page is meant for ArbCom members only, I'll remove this comment, but about the section "The Committee has jurisdiction over the official mailing list "WikiEN-l"", how are you going to guarantee that an email user that identifies themself as an editor is, in fact, that Wikipedia user? -- Netoholic @ 03:59, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No no, "normal" users are of course welcome. :-)

As for that, well, the same way that we "guarantee" that particular users are sockpuppets of one another - we don't, really, just make sure that we are satisified that it is highly unlikely to be the case.

James F. (talk) 04:06, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've got some comments -

Firstly, the proposals under "Jurisdiction". I'm not sure about the first one. Referring cases to the mediation committee when mediation clearly wasn't likely to work was a patently stupid practice, and one that thankfully seems to have stopped. However, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of simply rejecting cases, and leaving disputes raging.

While I agree that the second point re: IRC and private email needs to be clarified, I also have some misgivings about this. It seems that "IRC is not part of our jurisdiction" has been the general position of the AC lately. However, in the Lir case, the "Lir is a repeated liar" finding of fact was carried, citing three piece of evidence, two of which came from IRC. As this case was only decided pretty recently, the contradiction concerns me.

As far as the third proposal there, I strongly disagree - it's very unlikely that this would ever happen, but a board member, should they screw up, should be able to be dragged before the AC just as much as everyone else, IMHO.

I agree with the changes under "Requests", "Hearing" and "Judgment" - they all seem to be quite sensible moves to bring the policy into line with current procedure. I dislike the "Amendment" section, however - why should amending the arbitration policy be different to any other? Ambi 09:13, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

All of the changes to the "Jurisdiction" section are to make it better reflect the current situation - the realpolitik, as it were. We have rejected cases out of hand beforehand (and if we weren't able to, then what on Earth is the point of voting to accept them in the first place?) If a Board member screws up, that is a matter for the Board to decide - it's out of our jurisdiction. This is in the same way as that, were the (British) Queen to commit some criminal act, she could not be prosecuted, as the prosecution acts in her name, and for her to prosecute herself makes no sense. Indeed, it would probably precipitate somewhat of a constitutional crisis, but at least if we make it clear in the policy that this is a potential point.

As for the amendment, it should be pointed out, I feel, that the "Arbitration policy" is meta-Wikipedia policy: it's policy about policy (specifically, about how it is interpretted, and so on), and so it has been suggested that it should in some way be afforded a more explicit enumeration of the manner of it being changed. I'm not entirely in favour of such a policy, I'm just tabling these suggestions that I've picked up from others as well as invented myself.

James F. (talk) 09:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)