User:Drcrazy102/sandbox/Reforms for Wikipedia/Administration; WMF and Sysops
Administration; WMF and Sysops[edit]
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has, by its design and charter, no accountability for content on Wikipedia. It cannot be made accountable for content due to the legal liabilities this would entail. Aside from the requirements of WP:OFFICE, content has generally been in the purview of the community. As such, content has been under the purview of the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) – in extreme cases; Formal Meditation Committee (MedCom) – in pure content disputes; and editorial consensus for the remaining majority of article content. However, this allows for many editors to insert original research into articles without interference.
Admins and dealing with Original Research[edit]
It is proposed that after an administrator[1] warns an editor[2] regarding original research (WP:OR) material that the editor has added to an article, that the editor may be blocked for a period of one week if they restore the same OR material, and continued restoration of the material should result in increasing block-lengths. If another editor supports the original research being added into the article, then the issue should be taken to the No Original Research Noticeboard (WP:NORN), the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard (WP:DRN), or a Request for Comment (WP:RFC) should be created – for community discussion and consensus-building. The contentious material should be removed from the article during the discussion, until a consensus is found in favour of its addition to the article; editors that attempt to force its addition should be given due warning, followed by short blocks of escalating lengths to deter such disruptive and tendentious behaviours.[3]
WP:Consensus is currently the only way of altering existing procedures, policies and guidelines, as well as many of the disputes and miscellaneous issues that arise on Wikipedia. Consensus gives no guarantees of a beneficial resolution to an issue, or that any resolution at all, will surface.
In mainspace this does not work well: the fact that consensus and vote-counting is used, means that attempts to flood a debate with arguments not grounded in policy, has succeeded. Editors state vote-counting should not be used, but it is often the case. For example, a debate is closed by consensus based on the number of votes rather than reviewing the strengthen of the arguments. There may be a small clique of editors with a vested interest, and in this case consensus can result in a non-compliant article. Consensus also breaks down when there are substantial camps with entrenched views, and this can often lead to arbitration. Administrators claim consensus is what matters and ignore whether the change was inaccurate or was original research and refuse to review the change because they claim it is explicitly not the job the community elected them to do. Volunteers are not here to help administrators to enforce the rules. Administrators increase damage done by disruptive editors to article content when they refuse to enforce policies that would improve article content. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable, yet the rules are not being actively enforced. Editors have replaced sourced text with WP:original research, yet administrators refuse to police article content and help fix the ongoing problems. Editors delete sourced text claiming the statement was not supported by the citation, yet administrators will agree with consensus rather than read the citation to determine whether the citation verified the claim. Administrators could be trained to enforce WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR policies rather than continue to ignore the rules. WP:Consensus should not override WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR policies; on many occasions bad-faith or incompetent editors ignore those policies. The Wikipedia community has no leader, but that could change when there is a new non-profit organization enforcing the rules. They can vote who is the leader or co-leaders. Wikipedia:Administrators and WP:ArbCom, and also other WP:WP processes such as WP:DR must actively enforce the rules, including WP:NPOV and WP:V policies.
ArbCom does not, but should be used to, enforce policies regarding article content. This would help ensure editors do not "game" the system of WP:Consensus and continue to make counterproductive edits.