{"id":218,"date":"2008-07-22T01:35:14","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T09:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=218"},"modified":"2009-09-23T20:59:55","modified_gmt":"2009-09-24T04:59:55","slug":"things-fall-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"Things Fall Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've been looking at background discussion on Wikipedia<\/a>, and it seems to be doing a fair job of tearing itself to shreds.<\/p>

There is a set of intertangled disputes involving two camps. The Request for Arbitration to which I earlier linked<\/a> seems to be illustrative; it's certainly not the only example. See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard\/Incidents\/Tony Sidaway<\/a> and the resulting request for more<\/em> arbitration.<\/a> [(2008:07\/24) I have up-dated the previous link.]<\/p>

The requests<\/em> for arbitration between these camps don't seem to be producing actual<\/em> arbitration, even when the Arbitration Committee had earlier agreed to take a case. The Arbitration Committee is beginning to be hammered for failing to reach any<\/em> decisions in that case to which I earlier linked.<\/a> One member of the Arbitration Committee is trying to get the others to agree to just dismiss the case<\/a>, but the Committee isn't even deciding to flee from responsibility. (There are grumblings that the Arbitration Committee should be abolished if it does<\/em> flee.<\/a>)<\/p>

Now, as to that case, I'm not sufficiently informed to condemn all<\/em> of the parties, nor to exonerate any<\/em> of the parties, but I am sufficiently informed to identify the behavior of some<\/em> of the parties as egregious. And those parties all happen to be in one<\/em> of those two camps, which camp has strongly allied itself with Jimmy Donal Wales — that's right, the Jimbo<\/q> Wales who provided the funding that launched Wikipedia<\/a>, the Jimbo<\/q> Wales who reserved the general right to over-turn any decision of the Arbitration Committee.<\/p>

If the Arbitration Committee fails to come down on those parties hard<\/em>, then those parties are going to become even more out-of-hand, and the committee will lose a lot of respect all-around (though one camp may prize<\/em> them as fine toad-eaters<\/em>). On the other hand, if the Arbitration Committee does<\/em> come down on those parties, then they may alienate Jimbo<\/q> Wales, who may even over-rule their decisions or so weaken the measures taken that they become not so much meaningless<\/em> as ironic<\/em>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I've been looking at background discussion on Wikipedia, and it seems to be doing a fair job of tearing itself to shreds. There is a set of intertangled disputes involving two camps. The Request for Arbitration to which I earlier linked seems to be illustrative; it's certainly not the only example. See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard\/Incidents\/Tony […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,69,104,4],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-information-technology","category-news","category-public","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}