Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:53, 30 November 2005

Jayjg

I'm Jayjg. I joined Misplaced Pages on June 15, 2004, was made an administrator on September 13, 2004, and in July of 2005 Jimmy Wales appointed me to the Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee. I'm a pretty active Misplaced Pages editor, having made over 30,000 edits.

I believe the Arbitration Committee is an unfortunate, but necessary, last step in Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution process. In the past I've felt and raised concerns about the effectiveness of all of the formal dispute resolution mechanisms (including mediation, RfC, and RfAr). RfAr in particular has suffered from slowness (mostly related, I believe, to having far too many inactive members), and from decisions that tended to be too narrow to be effective (e.g. prescribing remedies on one specific article, when the issue is an editor's behaviour in general). I think it's important for Arbitrators to keep in mind that our primary and ultimate goal here is to create a great encyclopedia.

I have found the Arbitration process itself quite interesting, but extremely time consuming; reading through the evidence on a single case can take many hours. I've been actively involved in almost all cases started after my appointment to the committee; in addition to regular involvement in votes on whether to accept or reject case, and regular contributions to the Arbitration Committee mail-list, I've also worked on the Skyring, Alfrem, Gabrielsimon, Ed Poor, AI, Coolcat, Davenbelle and Stereotek, Rktect, Rainbowwarrior1977, DotSix, Keetowah, Onefortyone, BigDaddy777, Everyking 3, Regarding The Bogdanov Affair, jguk 2, Louis Epstein, REX, Polygamy, Stevertigo, Lightbringer, Maoririder, Rex071404 4, Silverback, and Ultramarine cases. In the future I'd like to get even more involved in trying to build the workshop pages, which is where the decisions are crafted by the arbitrators, the involved parties, and any other member of the community who wants to make suggestions.

questions from FuelWagon

questions posted FuelWagon 22:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

On the Terrorism talk page, you stated: "Being described in a Dictionary of Philosophers as a critic of American policy does not make one an expert on terrorism. Chomsky's opinions have no relevance to an article on terrorism to begin with, but adding gratuitous and irrelevant flattery only compounds the error." Jayjg (talk) 20:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC) This comment was in line with this revert on the Terrorism article with the edit summary: "being cited in a Philosophy Dictionary as a critic of American policy does not make you an expert on terrorism - removing gratuitous flattery, we have a link for his name if people care", where you deleted the Dictionary of Philosopher's quote.

But if you read the URL, it doesn't say Chomsky was "a" critic of "American" policy, it says Chomsky was "one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy". And Chomsky also happens to be a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. (1) Given that, how would you characterize your revert and your description of Chomsky's being described as one of the most influential critics of American foreign policy as "gratuitous and irrelevant flattery"?

The "Courage to Refuse" group signed a letter in which they state their intention to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. (2) If the Courage to Refuse group uses the term Occupied Territories in their letter, why did you change it to "west bank" and "gaza strip" here, with the edit summary "remove POV pushing"? The letter by the group uses the term "Occupied" or "occupation" a total of five times, and uses the term "gaza strip" zero times. (3) Would you generally consider quoting a group or using their words to be POV pushing? (4) If not, why did you call using the words from the group's letter to be POV pushing?

More recently, I added a verbatim quote from the group's letter, using their words to describe themselves, and again, you revert the edit. (5) If the group calls themselves reservists who have served in the "occupied territories", and if they say what they are being ordered to do is to "occupy" palestinian land, then how is using their words to describe them POV pushing? (6) Would this have anything to do with your personal dislike for the term "occupied territories"?

The Historical persecution by Jews article contained a block of text concerning itself with contemporary history and contemporary persecution by Jews against non-Jews, and was critical of the modern state of Israel. The block of text contained four URL's for verifiability of it's content. You removed that content here. (7) Would you say this (and the Courage to Refuse article) reflects a bias to be a pro-Jewish or pro-Israel editor?

question from MPerel

In light of the question above, as an arbitrator, what do you think is the best course of action for dealing with annoying, troublesome, perpetual trolls? --MPerel 00:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Question from Marsden

In my extensive experience with you, you have promoted and defended your POV with regard to matters related to Israel in ways that have been belligerent and contemptuous of the possibility that you are strongly biased in what you consider a neutral point of view. I do not know whether this is deliberate on your part or due to an honest blindspot in your thinking such that you are simply incapable of recognizing that yours is only one point of view among many, and that it is often completely biased. In any case, I consider your attitude to be a disqualifying characteristic for any sort of general arbitration function, and I intend, barring an unforeseen explanation from you, to campaign vigorously against your candidacy here.

I honestly cannot think of anything you could say in any reasonable amount of time to change my mind about you, but given that I am going to recommend that people oppose your candidacy, is there any sort of rebuttal you'd like to make to my characterization above of your behavior on Misplaced Pages?

Marsden 01:51, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Question for Marsden

Logically, what would be the point in doing so, since you've already blatantly declared that you don't have an open mind? Tomer 04:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)