UDWiki talk:Administration/Arbitration Guidelines

Good idea putting up guidelines - it should help to make clear what's good practice. --Toejam 23:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think _sometimes_ arbitration is the best available option for limiting the damage from personal attacks. As made-up example, if someone was attacking another editor at every opportunity and this nasty behaviour continued for weeks and weeks, arbitration to get him to stop is then likely to be a good option. It won't make the two parties like each other, but at least the attacks would stop. That's an extreme situation, but even in more moderate personal disputes I think arbitration can be useful.

I think also the existence of arbitration can have an effect on certain types of negative behaviours similar to the effect that a police force has on crime - even if police don't arrest anybody, their presence and the fact that people know that if they commit a crime they could be arrested is similar to the way that people know if they do Bad Things on the wiki, they could have restrictions imposed on them by arbitration. Since they don't want those external restrictions they'll control their behaviour. So even if arbitration is never used, its very presence can have an effect on the way people behave on the wiki.

Because of this, I'd like to change the article to say that using arbitration is sometimes okay to use on personal disputes. --Toejam 16:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

That is not the purpose of arbitration, it's never ok to use on personal disputes as it almost always results in someone getting banned for some period of time.--Karek^maps?!13:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, but honestly, I don't see any point in us going through the arguments. We'd get nowhere, neither of us would change our positions, and at the end we'd like each other less. We can do it if you want though. --Toejam 19:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I'd prefer working on setting up a method/type of Arbitration better suited to addressing specifically personality disputes, if at all possible. That way cases like the Jjamesgate ones can't happen again.--Karek^maps?! 19:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Like Karek said, this is not the purpose of arbitration. Arbitration should only be used to solve personal vendetas in the extreme cases, when all other attemps to solve the situation has only aggravated it even further. A good example of that is the whole wikigate problem, where amazing was being harassaed in all page he was active on, and no one was interested in leaving him alone. Jjamesgate, in the other hand, was a silly case where several users where simply calling jjames "scinfaxi" and "jjamesfaxi" because they shared a room/computer/ip and were both vandal pricks. While the first had room in A/A, the second should be dealt in the talk page of the users involved --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 19:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

So people should only use arbitration on person-to-person matters after talking to the "enemy" directly has been tried and failed (or talking never had a snowball's chance in hell of success). Only then, and not before, should they turn to arbitration. Is that what you're saying? --Toejam 13:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Exactly what i am saying. (and i like the snowball thingy) --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 14:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool, I agree with that. And good luck Karek with the new type of Arbitration - there's lots of pitfalls to be avoided! --Toejam 17:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

policy

Is there anyway we could make this into a policy? instead of just guidelines? this clears up some major loopholes.--'BP^Tmz 20:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

you can always try. I wrote this, but i dont seek for it to weight more than it already does. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 22:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Minor typo alert

Hi all. I've just noticed a small typo in the "Can I arbitrate?" section. The text reads "..it's advised that the user maintain am active stance of contributions of the wiki...". Of course this should read "an active stance" - could someone fix this please? Chief Seagull (talk) 14:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It also says "how far he can drawn [sic] the line of no-interaction between the involved users." I'm guessing that should be "draw" instead. —Aichon— 14:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Should "no-interaction" actually be "non-interaction"? Or am I being a bit ultra-pedantic today? Chief Seagull (talk) 15:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

not at all, the guy who wrote these guidelines surely lacks in his english skillz and should be demoted. That cunt. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 02:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hagnat speaks the truth. :) -- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 11:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)