Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Non-Notability/Workshop

This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. It provides for suggestions by Arbitrators and other users and for comment by arbitrators, the parties and others. After the analysis of /Evidence here and development of proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies, Arbitrators will vote at /Proposed decision.. Anyone who edits should sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they have confidence in on /Proposed decision.

Motions and requests by the parties

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Proposed temporary injunctions

Change template to Centrix version

Until the end of this RFAr, the status of WP:NN shall be changed to match Centrx's version. -- Chris chat edits essays 17:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed final decision

Proposed principles

Guideline tags

1) Because of the sheer size of the Wikipedia namespace, it is useful to indicate which pages are supported by consensus and which are not. The mechanism for doing so is putting {{guideline}} (and some variants), on pages which are consensual.

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• Proposed, taken from WP:POL. >Radiant< 23:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• I agree with statment 1). However, I don't believe this is at issue here - I, for one, am more concerned with *how* it is determined that a page is "consensual". Fresheneesz 19:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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No legislation

2) Wikipedia cannot be legislated (at least, not below Board level). Guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. One cannot write down a rule and expect that it will therefore be followed, and if a page describes people's behavior then modifying that page will not somehow cause people to change their behavior.

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• Proposed. It should be obvious that one cannot automatically change behavior by writing about it. >Radiant< 23:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• This is exactly what Radiant! was doing, pushing WP:DDV to guideline and then using that to help him defeat WP:NNOT! -- Chris chat edits essays 16:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• I agree with chris. Radiant was pushing guidelines with a mere *claim* of consensus. However, I disagree with statement 2) in some ways - guidelines can be either, hopfully both, as long as theres consensus - change comes with conesnsus, not with chaos. And anyway, guidelines can't be a full description of wikipedia becase they're 1. written by individuals, and 2. other individuals who are new or old, may not follow guidelines. Therefore guidelines can't *just* be descriptive. Fresheneesz 19:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Guideline based on practice

3) Most succesful guidelines are based upon what already happens. New ideas cannot become guideline until they are accepted; an idea that is already accepted (and used in practice) is a good base for a guideline. A personal dislike of consensual practice is not a valid objection against making a guideline of said practice.

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• Proposed. The most effective way of creating guidelines is by writing down current practice. >Radiant< 23:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Disagree. Consensus is everything, current practice simply can't compete with consensus. Guidelines must be based on an understanding of the efficiency and needs of wikipedia - guidelines are not directories of precedence. Fresheneesz 19:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Outcome of process

3b) The common outcome of a frequently-used consensus-gathering process is a reasonable representation of consensus, and thus a plausible base for a guideline.

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Proposed. For instance, Wikipedia has a guideline that every village, no matter how small, deserves an article. This guideline is not (to my knowledge) specifically written down anywhere but it can be easily tested by nominating an article on a small village for deletion. Not everything about Wikipedia is written down, and an obvious outcome does not require extensive debate. >Radiant< 10:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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Courtesy

4) Users are expected to be reasonably courteous to each other. This becomes even more important when disputes arise. See Wikipedia:Civility, Wikipedia:No personal attacks, and Wikipedia:Wikiquette.

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Consensus can not be reached if discussions do not remain civil. --FloNight 01:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Edit warring considered harmful

5) Edit warring is considered harmful. When disagreements arise, users are expected to discuss their differences rationally rather than reverting ad infinitum. The three-revert rule should not be construed as an entitlement or inalienable right to three reverts, nor does it endorse reverts as an editing technique.

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Agree. This is what my case is about. Fresheneesz 19:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Fresheneesz, I takes two to edit war. FloNight 19:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Discussion is needed to reach consensus not reverting. --FloNight 01:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Ban for disruption

6) Users who disrupt editing of policy or guidelines by aggressive biased (tendentious) editing or other disruptive behavior may be banned from the affected pages if there is broad agreement from the community or an arb com ruling.

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Proposed FloNight 01:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Voting is discouraged

7) Since Wikipedia is not a democracy, voting is discouraged as a mechanism for consensus building. Discussion and compromise are the preferred methods. See also the long-standing pages meta:Polling is evil and meta:Don't_vote_on_everything.

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• Proposed. This old practice seems relevant to mention. >Radiant< 16:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Radiant, however, does not see the difference between voting and a straw poll. Polls are to help gather consensus, but WP:NOT a democracy, so ... yeah. -- Chris chat edits essays 16:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• Um.. yea.. totally disagree. Straw polls are not binding, therefore have nothing to do with the democracy thing. Information.good, binding-vote.bad. Please note that consensus building means the same thing as gauging conensus and information gathering. Consensus building is not a means to *create* consensus, or some such garbage. Fresheneesz 19:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Guideline process

8) Since there is no formal process for making guidelines, a statement that a guideline was created out of process is meaningless. For the same reason, an assumption that a proposal must go through "stages" or must be "promoted from essay status" is incorrect. Similarly, since guidelines are not enacted through a vote, an objection to a guideline on grounds that it was not voted upon is groundless.

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• Proposed. Clarify that WP:NOT a bureaucracy. >Radiant< 16:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Disagree. Yes, there is no formal process for making guidelines - but there should be. Why don't we all go and make up any guideline that comes to our minds? Lets just call it a guideline, and revert anyone who brings up valid points - like "theres no proof of consensus". ... Fresheneesz 19:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Guideline rejection

9) A proposal is rejected if, after some discussion, there is no consensus for it. There does not have to be "consensus to reject" a proposal; if there is no consensus either way, the proposal has still failed. The tag {{rejected}} is used to indicate this fact; that tag does not in any way prohibit people from discussing the matter further.

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Taken from WP:POL with slight expansion. >Radiant< 16:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

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Vexatious litigation

10) If a proposal is rejected, any minor rewording of it or small variation to it is likewise rejected.

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• Taken from old experience with Zen-master. Once more, WP:NOT a bureaucracy. >Radiant< 16:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Your legacy experience does not equate to consensus. Fresheneesz 19:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Consensus can change

11) Consensus opinions about both encyclopedia articles and established guidelines/policies can change and discussion aimed at evaluation or looking into alternatives is encouraged.

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• Of course! Fresheneesz 19:42, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed -- To clarify that this policy does not only apply to the articles, but also to policy and guidelines itself. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

"Voting" is necessary

12) Although simple vote counting is not the way in which consensus is formed in Wikipedia, many processes in the development of the encyclopedia have strong characteristics of voting, e.g. WP:AFD or WP:RFA. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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• Agree, voting seems to be the only efficient way of determining who thinks what. Discussion is important for resolving a problem, but it cannot efficiently gather information - discussion is for argument, polling is for opinion. Fresheneesz 19:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed, because several processes use voting as a major part of reaching consensus. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Voting on proposals is not useful

13) Because vote counting is not the way in which consensus is formed in Wikipedia, and because a vote tends to represent issues as binary, discourage discussion and preclude compromise, it is not generally useful to poll or vote on proposals.

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Corollary of 8. Again, it is a common misconception that proposals must or should be voted upon. >Radiant< 10:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Another term for 'common misconception' is 'existing practice'... which is one of the ways we define guidelines and policies. Polling opinions can indeed be very problematic in some cases, but it has also always been a part of the Wikipedia process of making decisions... as will be seen again when the arbitrators "vote" on the elements of this RFAr. --CBD 12:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• There is no contradiction here. I say it is not generally useful (not that it's never useful). You say that in some cases it is useful (not that it's always useful). So we're really saying the same thing. >Radiant< 12:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• No you're really not saying the same thing at all. Voting is a neccessary part of wikipedia - and it is beyond useful. Fresheneesz 19:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of the ArbCom

14) The ArbCom exists for conflict resolution. Its purpose is not to create or decide upon policy.

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• Corollary of Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy#Rules. >Radiant< 10:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• The purpose of arbcom is to resolve dispute - and one of the disputes is how policy is made. However, I don't have an opinion about how arbcom should work with respect to making policy. Fresheneesz 20:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Appears to suggest that the arbitration committee should not deal with this matter. The arbitration committee, however, can judge on how policy is made (when disputes occur over that, as is the case now) rather than make policy themselves. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Exactly. I believe that is the point of this case; however, we should not establish a system where proposals are submitted to the arbcom for approval. >Radiant< 11:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Heh, wouldn't a ruling on "how policy is made" inherently be an instance of the ArbCom 'creating or deciding upon policy'? If '8' is correct and 'there is no formal process' then how is the ArbCom to define one without violating this principle 14?--CBD 12:06, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• There sure is a paradox there. But the same is true for all other cases taken on by the committee. They start (usually) off as a content dispute, leading to a tense situation, edit warring and eventually an arbitration committee decision (in which the committee does not make content, but it sure decides who was right). The same is true here, but now for policy pages rather than an article. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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15) Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism.

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• From WP:VAND, since people keep bringing this up. >Radiant< 13:55, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• I disagree. Repeated misguided actions, after attempt has been made to warn or inform that person, can be considered vandalism.

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Normally, removal of talk page comments (other than users acting on their own talk page) is considered 'vandalism' by default because talk pages exist to facilitate communication towards forming a consensus and removal of comments interferes with that. An exception is sometimes made in regards to removal of personal attacks or private information, as these things can be vastly more disruptive. Unless we are to include 'polling' in the category of things which are so disruptive that they may be removed I do not see a difference between this and other cases of removing talk page content. Users who remove arguments they disagree with doubtless think they are acting to 'improve the encyclopedia', but in this case we classify that as 'vandalism' anyway because they are very wrong in that belief... removing the efforts of others to communicate towards a consensus is massively disruptive - as was demonstrated in this case. If this were meant to apply only to 'random' removals of talk content then it is identical to the 'blanking' form of vandalism and would not exist as a separate category. If it is henceforth not to apply to 'good faith' removals of the consensus building efforts of others then every user who removes the talk comments of others can credibly claim that it 'wasn't vandalism' because they believed suppressing those views/discussions was better for the encyclopedia. Radiant is correct that this isn't technically 'vandalism' by the definition above. However, it IS something just as damaging which has routinely been classified alongside vandalism for convenience, as it is dealt with in the same way. --CBD 11:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Removing talk comments is treated like vandalism

16) Removal of talk page comments is inherently disruptive to efforts to form consensus and thus is usually treated the same as vandalism regardless of the intent of the user performing the removal. Exceptions are made for removals of private information, personal attacks, vandalism, and other highly disruptive material.

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Counter proposal to '15'. --CBD 11:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed findings of fact

Non-notability

1) The proposal at WP:NNOT is not supported by consensus, and therefore rejected.

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• Obvious. >Radiant< 16:14, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Disagree. "Obvoius" is not any kind of argument in any way. We have not actually had a definative gauging of consensus for WP:NNOT, but the extensive straw poll we put together showed that many people agree with some of the things NNOT stands for - if not the entire proposal. Fresheneesz 19:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Non-notability conflicts

2) The proposal at WP:NNOT conflicts with key policy and guidelines such as such as CSD A7. .

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• No. There is a difference between asserting notability and actually having it. If my article asserts that 30 people know me, as bad an assertion of notability it is, it is still nonetheless an assertion. -- Chris chat edits essays 16:28, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• No. (agree with chris). Assertion of notability is a different thing - exactly why people would use the term despite it being twice as long to write/say. Assertion of notability/significance or whatever, is basically saying that articles that don't presupose that their topic is significant or unique in any way, shouldn't be kept. Notability is far different from uniqueness. Fresheneesz 19:48, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed. --FloNight 17:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Notablity

3) The many users against WP:N makes establishing true consensus for this proposal impossible.

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-- Chris chat edits essays 17:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

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Notability debate

4) Although supported by many editors, the proposal/essay at WP:N is often highly debated and does not have community-wide consensus at this time.

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• Exactly. -- Chris chat edits essays 16:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• Its been that way for years. Fresheneesz 19:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed, the fact that there is an arbitration about this (with multiple editors on each side of the dispute) already shows that true consensus will be impossible here. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 08:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Most arbitration cases are about editor behavior. Think they will look at how Wikipedians establish policy and guideline. [1] I could be wrong, but I doubt that Arb Com will out and out declare that WP:N is not valid based on the few people that opposed compared to the large number that use it every day. FloNight 20:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:N

5) The guideline at WP:N is an accurate description of current practice at Wikipedia.

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• Although I don't see why the arbcom would have to judge on this (per principle above). >Radiant< 10:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Current practice is not one thing. There are people that use notability, there are also others who rather use verifiability in their arguments on AfD for example. Both NN and NNOT are basically "in use", just by different people. Fresheneesz 20:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

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Reply to Radiant: True, but that holds for all findings of fact (1-5) at the moment. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

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Proposed enforcement

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Analysis of evidence

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General discussion

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