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Requesting feedback from Arbitrators

In DGG's recently closed amendment request, CaptainEek and Barkeep49 both said that they were going to look into the issue of editors misrepresenting sources (and the persistent inability of talk pages and noticeboards to resolve that issue), and have a discussion about how it could be addressed. However, the amendment request was closed by the clerks before that discussion could happen.

Could either of you please clarify the status of that planned discussion, and how you think this issue ought to be addressed? As I said in my last comment there, if someone is going to request another amendment or a full case, I think first there needs to be more clarity about what Arbcom considers to be within their remit in this respect, and which case (Fringe science or Race and intelligence) it should be filed under. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 14:53, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Ferahgo the Assassin I say this with the caveat that the committee might not agree with me. I think the answer needs to be either a new case request, i.e. "Race and Intelligence 2", "Fringe 2", or a better constructed ARCA. Alternatively, a community discussion of some caliber with the intent of brainstorming a solution/distilling the problem might be useful.

Part of the difficulty is that ArbCom is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. We can't intervene in individual content disputes or choose which sources are good or bad (except in a general sense). Further, the connection between the fringe principles and the issues at hand seemed tenuous at best. Part of the issue is that the topics of contentions were not made clear. I know DGG did this with noble intent, hoping not to drag us into a particular topic area. However, what we do is inherently topic specific. So if the problem is with race and intelligence and not Fringe, then it's race and intelligence we need to be amending or revisiting. If there are problematic editors who are citing things they shouldn't be, then for starters they should be taken to AE, and if that can't resolve the matter, then a new case request.

Although I have some interest in making ArbCom more of a mediator, in practice we just aren't. Thus, until an issue has been thoroughly exhausted, it is not generally within our remit. I'm not so sure that this issue has been exhausted. In fact, I think the underlying problem is the issue is unclear. There is some poor source usage, and both fringe and race and intelligence of course remain highly contentious topics. If someone thinks they can provide a concise summary of the underlying issue, we would be better suited to help fix it. But as long as the problem remains vague and nebulous, I don't see what exactly we can do.

This was a long and winding way to ask for more info and input, and to encourage some critical thought :) CaptainEek ⚓ 18:38, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll largely echo what Eek said in terms of advice. Personally my wikipedia bucket is full at the moment between WP:RFA2021, extensive writing I have been doing for the UCoC drafting committee, and my "everyday" Arb work. I will admit I simply did not have time to explore the diffs presented and hoped that another colleague of mine would have more capacity to do so. That didn't seem to be the case at that time. However, I agree with Eek that you and DGG shouldn't take this as a refusal to engage at all but that something more focused and more in line with past ArbCom practices and is more likely to at least generate discussion. For this request it became hard to recover from "please amend these old cases" for which there was no appetite on the committee. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I know this issue hasn't been discussed by the community quite as extensively as is typical before Arbcom will open a case, but that's because everyone involved is aware that any future attempts to discuss it will be futile for the same reason as all of the earlier discussions. It's also very clear that if we make any further attempts to raise the matter of misrepresented sources with the community, there will be attempts to get us topic banned (this was the main discussion about it in my own case). When I initially described this situation to Barkeep49 via email, I referred to this trend as having a "chilling effect" on discussion.

Before someone makes another arbitration request I'd like to hear from DGG, as well as from some of the other arbitrators, about what approach they think would be best. I know that DGG is very reluctant to recommend a case request. So if someone is going to request a case, first I would like to make sure Arbcom considers that the best option, and also clarify what scope it should have.

One thing I'd appreciate Arbcom clarifying about the scope: in his comment on the amendment request, Gardenofaleph raised the issue that lower-quality sources (such as newspaper and magazine articles) are being used as a basis for excluding those of higher quality, such as academic papers and textbooks, and linked to a recent RSN discussion about this issue, which failed to resolve anything. This approach to sourcing is contrary to the article's sourcing restriction, which says that only "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers" may be used. Would this other issue of sourcing be something that Arbcom considers within their remit to address, or would any arbitration request need to be more narrowly focused on misrepresentation of sources? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

The purpose of any dispute-resolution process, including ArbCom, is to support the writing of a collaborative encyclopedia – that is, to ensure that the process of determining and implementing consensus is unencumbered. It is not the purpose of dispute resolution to give a minority viewpoint additional voice, nor to allow a few editors to manipulate a discussion or an article against the wishes of the majority. Therefore, any suggestion that there is an issue that needs resolving should be focused on how this process is being disrupted or impeded. For example, if you are being prevented from implementing an edit that you believe has consensus, that is something I would be interested in helping to address. But if the edits that you want to make are against consensus, no adjustments to rules or restrictions are going to change that. – bradv 23:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Where does this sourcing restriction actually come from? I can't find any mention of it in the cited case. – Joe (talk) 12:11, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Race and intelligence is under discretionary sanctions, and going by the history of the editnotice Ferahgo linked, Barkeep added the sourcing restriction to the article last March. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh I see, it's just the edit notice for the article race and intelligence; I mistook it for a general template. Thanks. That seems to also be a point of confusion in the linked RSN discussion. – Joe (talk) 13:14, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I also would be okay with a non-arbitration solution here, if the view of Arbcom is that there's a solution that doesn't require the involvement of the full committee. The most important thing is that there needs to be a way for the sourcing restriction to be enforced, especially the part about misrepresenting sources, however that's accomplished.

@Barkeep49: when we discussed this issue via email, you felt that DGG's upcoming amendment request would be a reasonable way to try to resolve the problem of your restriction not being enforceable. But now that the proposed amendment has been declined, what do you think is the best solution? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Go to WP:AE and ask that it be repealed. I will explain why I levied it at the time, explain that I am neutral on it today as I have not been keeping abreast of the article, and offer if there is a consensus it should be removed to do so as an individual action (that is it wouldn't necessarily have to get the higher level of consensus necessary to overturn it). Barkeep49 (talk) 01:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I was hoping there could be a solution that actually stops sources from being misrepresented, not one that amounts to accepting this is impossible to prevent. And I think the other editors who've raised similar objections about source misrepresentation (Literaturegeek, Stonkaments, Gardenofaleph, AndewNguyen, Sesquivalent and DGG) were hoping for that, too. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferahgo the Assassin: I haven't been following this dispute, but if you believe that a current AE-imposed restriction is not working and have an amendment, alternative and/or additional restriction that you think will work then propose it at AE, AN or other suitable venue. If you think it needs workshopping first, then start a discussion and workshop it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:56, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: There have already been multiple attempts to raise the issue at noticeboards, but all of them have either been shut down prematurely, or failed to reach a consensus. Ferahgo and I linked to several of these noticeboard discussions in our statements in the recent amendment request. There comes a point where it's apparent an issue can't be resolved at noticeboards, and any further attempts to raise it there will just result in accusations of forum shopping.

Also, nobody has a problem with the current sourcing restrictions themselves. I think they're what the article needs. The problem is that the current restrictions are being totally ignored, and nobody is willing to enforce them. That's what needs addressing. I don't know whether ArbCom can solve that problem, but I hope it'll be solved somehow. Gardenofaleph (talk) 02:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I entered the Arb request not with the realistic hope of it having any immediate successful effect--I am not quite so naive as that-- but in order to keep alive the issue of our prejudiced presentation of controvesial topics in general, our tendency to bias article content not on the basis of actual NPOV but on the bases of what we would prefer to be the POV, our biased and unreasonable manipulation of sourcing in orde to pretend to have a NPOV, and the encouragement of these unfortunate tendenccies by multiple arb com decisions going back to the initial ones in the area, and by the increased use of the inherently unfair technique of Discretionary Sanctions. I do hope for change in these areas--I do not expect it to come quickly, because I think the participants in WP, just like people in the world generally, are not actually prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads, but rather look for evidence to support their own preconceptions. There was the original hope in 2001 that the method of working here would to some extent free us from those common practices--and perhaps it has to some extent, but it breaks down on subjects where we really have strong conviction that it is we who are priviledged to understand correctly--especially when we fear that following the science or the facts more generally may have undesirable social consequences. The method by which I hope change will come is by keeping the issues alive to encourage users not bound by old prejudices, and trying as far as possible to maintain the still substantial amount of open-mindenessand flexibility in our system.

To some extent I was trying to probe the opinions of the arbitrators, but I was not really surprised to find only very few of them with even slight sympathy, almost all remaining convinced that none of these problems actually exist. I know from my own experience there for 5 years that the general predilictions of most of those attracted to serve on the committee is towards a purely formal and legalistic adherence to the technicalities of Misplaced Pages, while trying to remain oblivious to the actual effect of their decisions. As in all past years, there is the hope that next year's committee will be better. As always, it rarely changes very much.

The problem Ferahgo works on is only one example. In some sense we did work together. She encouraged me to pick this time to try to actually do something; I tried to persuade her to rely upon the slow change of attitudes and to adopt a more general perspective than her only issue. We both seem to have failed, at least in the short run. The key difference, is that I have always been much more interested in the long one, and have never been focussed on a single instance. I cannot tell from the comments above whether there is any chance of a succesful case; the best likely result would be a repetition of the platitudes about our devotion to NPOV that has very little effect on how matters work out. We might get some enlightened statements to use in argument, but this is very distant from the statements actually affecting the outcome of the arguements. As I said several times near the close of the discussion, I intend to return to what I can do best, which is to argue a few selected individual sourcing questions as they arise. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• There is a related discussion underway at the Village Pump: I think DGG already knows about that discussion, but the arbitrators might be interested in reading it as well.

The statement there that "Editors begin to use the status of a viewpoint as mainstream or fringe as the basis for picking sources and facts to include in the article, rather than using mainstream sources and facts to determine what views are fringe" is a good summary of the issue that was raised in the recent RSN discussion linked above. A specific example I mentioned in DGG's amendment request was the decision to remove most of the material cited to Earl Hunt's textbook as "profringe", despite that book being one of the most highly regarded sources available about human intelligence. But it looks like the discussion at the Village Pump probably isn't going reach any consensus, just as the RSN discussion didn't.

If the Village Pump discussion is unable to reach a consensus about whether this approach to sourcing is compatible with NPOV policy, this is something I'd like to see examined in a "Fringe Science 2" case. Can Arbcom provide any clarify as to whether they would be able to address that question? To clarify the question I asked about this a few days ago, it's impossible to determine whether this approach to sourcing is supported by consensus or opposed by it. There are only a small number of editors who actively support this approach, but every attempt to discuss it with the broader community has been unable to come to any conclusion. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

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