Wikipedia talk:Town sheriff/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Intro and theory

I made edits to the intro and theory sections without changing any policy issues.[1] It was mostly to make it more policy-like, and to better segregate the theory from the practice. There's an active discussion about the goals issues at "How's it going to work" above. Are there any issues about the intro and theory that need to be settled?   Will Beback  talk 

I changed "privileges" to "authorities". Blocking someone is not a privilege.   Will Beback  talk  09:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I combined moth terms. blocking is an authority, yes, but refactoring or redacting is closer to a privilege. But if you want to set it back, I'm not too worried about the distinction. --Ludwigs2 19:14, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

RFS

Let's just focus on the RfS for a moment. Who sets the minimum number of edits? Do automated edits count? Is someone who's main activity on Wikipedia has been using AWB to fix typos automatically qualified for sheriff? Who decides whether there are sufficient objections to reject a sheriff and make the appointment? A bureaucrat, right? If so they would make a judgment call. If I understand you correctly, one candidate could get 40 editors claiming that he's inappropriate for the job, but the bureaucrat could decide they are not reasonable objections and approve the nomination, while another candidate could be supported by 99 editors but if one editor provides a sufficient reason to reject him then that'd be sufficient for the bureaucrat to close the nomination as rejected. Is that right?   Will Beback  talk  07:33, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Will, you're nitpicking. My point (as I said originally) is that pretty much anyone should be allowed to be a sheriff, so long as they have a sufficient edit history to demonstrate a commitment to the project, and don't have some obvious red flag (like a "Death to Wikipedia!" banner on their user page). The community can decide the details when the proposal is under discussion.

Sheriffs do not really need to be vetted much in advance, because they are controlled by the restrictions of the office. --Ludwigs2 17:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Then I think, if we're to rely on rules so much, that we should have a system of de-Sheriffing in place, which is strict enough. First, that the system is based on matters of fact, not popularity or anything else: if the Sheriff is determined to have actually done X, then that counts, and if he's warned more than 3 times (or whatever) for doing something against the rules, automatic de-Sheriffing, without having the popularity of the editor (or lack thereof) come into play. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 17:54, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd even be more specific about it, I think:

• Sheriffs who grossly violate sheriff's restrictions, try to directly affect content, or clearly engage in unequal application of their powers get desheriffed automatically
• Sheriffs who are 'arguable' - do things which violate restrictions in clear but mild ways, and seem to be well-intentioned - get a chance to explain themselves, and if necessary get warnings or reminders about their limited mandate. Third warning on a given assignment means replacement, two replacements means desheriffing.
• Sherrifs shouldn't generally be warned for pushing the boundaries on their restrictions, but sheriffs should always be ready and able to explain the rationale for any act they take.

hmm? --Ludwigs2 18:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, it sounds good on paper. It sounds strict. I guess we can't entirely insulate the process from popularity contests. And we've given the Sheriff enough power, I hope, that he doesn't have to overstep his bounds to modify the behavior of even the most popular POV pusher. That's the test: can a popular POV pusher be tamed without the Sheriff getting whacked, and also, can a Sheriff be whacked if he's a popular editor who is supporting a popular POV? Might be worthwhile to state somewhere that that is the goal, so that we can adjust the rules as necessary? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 19:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's focus on the RfS. "Nitpicking" is important. With a proposal like this, which would create a large bureaucracy, the "devil is in the details". We should either pin down how someone becomes a sheriff, or put a message in the proposal saying it will be determined later. Right now it's just vague, which is pointless. I've added more specific language.   Will Beback  talk  22:30, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm confuse about why you think this would create a 'large bureaucracy'. mostly this would be a bunch of volunteer editors with certain powers and oversight by sysops. it would not make any more of a bureaucracy than becoming, say, a reviewer or a rollbacker. It would just take a somewhat higher standard for getting there and a bit more coordination with whatever sysops originally call for a sheriff. --Ludwigs2 22:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Admins are just "a bunch of volunteer editors with certain powers and oversight" by the arbcom. Yet most would agree that the administrators form a large bureaucratic element of the project. The powers and responsibilities of a sheriff, as described in this proposal, are much more extensive than those of a rollbacker. Anyway, I've clarified the RfS process in the proposal based on this discussion.   Will Beback  talk  22:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

In order to give this a fighting chance of success, I strongly recommend that admins are not able to become sheriff/moderators, at least until the proposed system is bedded in (six months?). I'm still undecided about the proposed system, but I can predict it will be an utter failure if the ranks of sheriffs are full of sysops, as it will be seen by many as 'another flag'. Also, rather than make the candidacy about edit-counts, I would prefer to see nominations list three (3) content pages which they have actively participated in during heated debates, and the person is evaluated primarily on the basis of how well they were able to help those disputes without any tools. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with both points.   Will Beback  talk  23:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly totally agree. I was already thinking that but didn't think it would be acceptable. Also totally agree about the edit count not mattering, but rather previous experience in mediation-type disputes. Thanks John Vandenberg for saying these things. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 01:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any objection to excluding sysops, but I don't really think the 'nominations' idea is practical. The phrase "content pages which they have actively participated in during heated debates" is odd. many people who might be good sheriffs retire from heated debates when they see them, so couldn't be seen as 'actively participating'; anyone who engages a heated debate directly is likely to say something (at some point or other) which will be used to make them look bad. The number of people who would qualify (if this metric were used in an aggressive and narrow way, as seems likely) would be practically zero. I certainly wouldn't qualify, because I have an occasional temper and a generally pithy attitude, but I'd be an excellent sheriff (if only because I understand the system better than anyone else). The minute you make this a popularity contest, you're going exclude a lot of reasonable people and jockey in a lot of people with implicit biases; that's why an objective metric like edit counts is better. again, I'll repeat: we shouldn't try to pick and choose sheriffs at nomination time; we should control sheriffs by making sure they stay within the restrictions of the office. That may mean we have high turnover for the first little while, but we'll develop a stronger and more versatile core of volunteers. --Ludwigs2 16:26, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but I'm a couple thousand edits away :( and I don't see what edit counts have to do with good judgment. I simply don't trust our rules that much yet that I don't think editors should be vetted somehow. I think being a Sheriff would be manipulable by non-action, by just not noticing when one editor is goading, albeit nearly politely, but noticing when the other side does something similar. Maybe other ways it could be manipulated. There are editors, also, who fear to go to noticeboards because they will get whacked even when they have a legit complaint. The intent of the Sheriff is going to matter. Yet, I see what you mean, you'd make a great sheriff but wouldn't get in via a debate. So I just don't know what to do here. But... how about an automatic review process, after about 5 cases/a couple months automatically review and revise this proposal? Start out choosing a small number of sheriffs the way you say, but forget about edit counts: you aren't going to get a lot of new editors applying and edit counts have little to do with knowing the rules. I've seen editors with huge counts and hardly any comprehension of policy. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 17:02, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit counts don't indicate good judgement - they indicate commitment to the project, and sufficient time to have been thoroughly acclimated to wikipedia policy and guideline.

Also, I'm starting to wonder why this particular point is not sinking in - I think it's a bad idea to try to pre-judge or pre-evaluate sheriffs on their character, their moral turpitude, their likability or popularity, or other subjective/emotional factors. Sheriffs are controlled by their behavior. People will surprise you: the ones you worry about might prove to be very capable and dedicated sheriffs, while many people with good reputations have questionable ethics. --Ludwigs2 12:24, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

What will keep these (thankfully) unnamed "people with good reputations" who have "questionable ethics" from becoming sheriffs? Since we're not judging prospective sheriffs by their character, and only by their dedication to the project (or their POV), there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for excluding unethical editors. If I understand correctly, that's OK because unethical sheriffs can be punished and removed easily through a consensus on ANI. So it's easy to approve a sheriff and easy to fire them. in other words, being a sheriff is no big deal.   Will Beback  talk  12:38, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Controlling talk pages versus content pages

In practice, a Sheriff has two goals:

• To ensure that content discussions can progress meaningfully, peacefully and quickly, either to a consensus conclusion or to a recognition that mediation or arbitration is required.
• To guide editors away from bad discussion practices towards a better, more civil communication style, by encouraging the latter and inhibiting the former.

If the aim of the job of Sheriff is to handle how discussions proceed, why is it necessary to allow them to protect and revert article pages? Reverting can be a powerful method of affecting content, and could be quite difficult to do without compromising the perceived neutrality of the sheriff. Maybe it'd be better to restrict the sheriff to the talk pages and leave the article page off-limits.   Will Beback  talk  23:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I've added this text to "restrictions"

• No content editing: A sheriff may protect articles for 24-hour periods. However they may not make any other edits to the articles, including removing vandalism and BLP violations, as those may require judgment calls which would affect the appearance of impartiality.

If this is acceptable I'll change other text in the proposal to make it consistent.   Will Beback  talk  23:30, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

yes. I'd assumed that would be assumed, but it's probably a good idea to spell it out explicitly. However, it might be better just to add it as an extension of the first point (strict non-involvement), rather than give it its own section. --Ludwigs2 23:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a significant restriction. But the exact formatting is a minor issue.   Will Beback  talk  23:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I removed the ability to "semi-protect" articles, since that just differentiates anons from registered users and has no clear place in this process. I also removed a clause about edit warring on articles, since that is outside the scope of this proposal.   Will Beback  talk  00:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I want to quibble on the second point. edit warring is a tactic used to inflame other editors, win discussions through non-discursive means, and otherwise disrupt consensus discussions in talk. I think it's useful to point out that the sheriff should ensure that that tactic doesn't give satisfaction, otherwise editors will still continue to do it. Remember, the real purpose of a sheriff is to make skanky editing behaviors unrewarding and unviable, so that editors have to return to good editing practices to be effective. it's good to keep reminding people of that point. --Ludwigs2 00:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It will be necessary for a Sheriff to revert the article pages sometimes to versions prior to the start of POV pushing in order to ensure that bad behavior by editors, before or after the Sheriff appears on the scene, is not rewarded. But the Sheriff would not prevent consensus edits arrived at by proper process from getting in the article. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 00:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

[e/c] Is the sheriff supposed to handle all varieties of bad editing behavior, or mainly talk page problems? The stated aims are restricted to talk page issues. Applying article page protection is a major exception to that, and understandable to avoid talk page arguments from being carried out on the article page. But the ability to revert to a preferred version before protecting is another matter entirely, and would give the sheriff control over content.   Will Beback  talk  00:34, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I thought that was one of the powers a Sheriff would have... I think we started out with that? Anyway, I've seen it where POV pushing got a lot of stuff in an article. By the time the Sheriff shows up, there is often going to be lots of stuff POV pushed into the article, and just going back to a version before that happened would really send a message, as well as really mollifying the editors who weren't POV pushing or disrupting. And reverting to a version which was arrived at by proper consensus process, or before non-consensus process started is not a content decision, it's a decision based on the very processes that the Sheriff is there to control. If the Sheriff were to control content that way, then he needs to be removed. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 00:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

And if admins abuse their tools they should be removed too. How well has that worked out, in your opinion?   Will Beback  talk  22:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If a sheriff can revert to a preferred version that they have determined has a consensus then that changes the job entirely and puts them in the position of determining content, not just helping to settle talk page disputes. I'd object strongly to putting sheriffs in charge of article content, unless that's the explicit aim of this proposal. If that's the case, it should be stated in the goals section in the intro.   Will Beback  talk  00:45, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Well let's see what others think. I think that if based solely on process, not content, reversion of the page is acceptable. If not, then there is an incentive to POV push as much as possible before a Sheriff shows up, and there is the usual incentive to try and get a page protected in your preferred version. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 00:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

How would the "consensus version" be determined on an article where there's edit warring and POV pushing, and by whom? Granted, in some cases there is a clear point, perhaps long before the sheriff was appointed, when the article was stable before the disruption began. If that point were determined somehow, then allowing the sheriff to keep reverting to that point would be neutral. But allowing a sheriff to determine which newer versions have consensus and to revert to that version he thinks is preferable, and to protect the page on that version and to revert endlessly to keep it, is way beyond what's allowed any sysop.   Will Beback  talk  00:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

This would be something it would be nice to have flagged revisions for. I'd say that if there is a clear and relatively recent version the sheriff could use that, and if no clear version is available the sheriff can add a tag template indicating that the passage is under dispute, so that whichever version is left on the page does not appear unquestioned. --Ludwigs2 01:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

If folks agree on this I'll add that one of the aims of the policy is for sheriffs to determine consensus and enforce it on article pages using blocks, bans, page protection, and unlimited reverts, since that seems to be what is being considered.   Will Beback  talk  01:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

not helpful, Will. do you have any constructive input? --Ludwigs2 01:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Like an article, the intro or capsule version of a policy should reflect the contents. If this policy includes a provision for allowing sheriffs to determine the contents of an article and keep anyone from changing it then we should make that clear. If that isn't the aim then we should change the provisions to keep that from being possible.   Will Beback  talk  06:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Yes I put that in formally once, but it was reverted [2]. I wonder if reverting to consensus versions would be an acceptable compromise, or whether that also goes too far. The concern seems to be that it is determining content by use of admin tools or powers. If that were the case, I'd object to it also. Say, do we need a Sheriff on this page? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 01:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Either we need to remove the job of deciding which version of the article has consensus, or we need to make that a clear part of the job description. In the latter case, I'd suggest renaming the page to "content czar" instead of "sheriff" or "moderator".   Will Beback  talk  06:04, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

This might do well as the proving ground. Would this proposal offer itself as a trial run for the Town Sheriff theory? They shouldn't need any tools or authority officially. The appointee should just act as one. And we see how it plays? Professor marginalia (talk) 05:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The first step in that process is to find an uninvolved editor with community support. ;)   Will Beback  talk  06:04, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm confused about what you all are talking about. the entire idea here is that sheriffs do not deal with content. If a sheriff were to do a revert on a page it would only be to stop problematic behavior, not to control content. Now either we want to do that, or we don't want to do that, but wandering off into 'content czar' territory is a pretty lame direction for the discussion to go, since it contradicts the stated purpose of the proposal. Will, ether take the concept seriously and help develop it, or leave the development to people who will take the idea seriously and restrict yourself to objecting to it when it gets opened for discussion. Ok?

That being said, I'm perfectly happy not giving sheriffs revert power, so long as they can tag the page as disputed and assure that the tag remains until the dispute is resolved. that should serve well enough to keep edit wars from being successful. --Ludwigs2 07:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I take this proposal very seriously, which is why I'm helping to work out the details.

If we don't want sheriffs to control content then we shouldn't give them the power to revert to a preferred version. The point of the sheriff is to patrol the talk page, not the article page. Content decisions will make sheriffs quickly lose their appearance of impartiality.   Will Beback  talk  10:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Beback, I don't know why reverting to a consensus version or version before disruption is content controlling. If it is, could you please explain specifically why you think so? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

And BTW, I just want to say this also: it's highly frustrating for good editors to have to try and "gain consensus" to remove material which was put in disruptively or to put back material which was removed disruptively. That's another main reason for this, in addition to not rewarding past bad behavior. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

you know, I'll tell you, this is a very difficult psychological problem. I can see concerns on all sides:

• we don't want to let editors edit war in the article, obviously.
• we don't want editors using the article itself to claim victories or needle other editors (in the "neener-neener-neener my version is on the article" way that's so unfortunately common)
• we don't want sheriffs looking like they are dictating content, because that would destroy their legitimacy

Finding the right balance is really tricky. I mean, the real solution is to get editors to understand that the appearance of the page in the short term doesn't matter, and that they should focus on getting it right for the long term, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. so, here's how the options look to me:

1. reverting to a stable version: effective at stopping the first two points above, and would be the best approach if we could work around the third point (retaining neutrality and legitimacy). that's rough, though. we might want to revisit this idea a year after the sheriff project is adopted (if it is adopted) because by that time sheriffs might have enough innate legitimacy (just from a year's worth of experience) to pull it off.
2. tagging the page as disputed and dealing out 24hr blocks to anyone who even 'looks like they are trying to edit war: i.e., as I said earlier, first revert on a passage by anyone is fine per BRD, second revert on the passage by anyone gets that editor a warning and a dispute tag placed on the page, any revert on that passage after that inside of 24 hours by anyone earns a block for incitement. less effective, but maybe enough (assuming that editors want their version to be accepted as truth and aren't just looking to disrupt the other side's point of view).
3. upsetting stability: stop the edit war on whichever version, then tell editors they have 48 hours to reach a compromise or you will revert back to the other version, then another 48 hours or the page will get clocked back to an even earlier version... It's kind of gamey (which I dislike) but it would keep the page from being claimed by one side or the other except in the very short term.

I'm open to other suggestions though. can anyone think of a better way to keep the article itself from being used as a skanky tool in talk page disputes? maybe we could figure out a middling form (e.g. the sheriff tags the page and then insists on starting a RfC where uninvolved editors get to choose a compromise version?) --Ludwigs2 17:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's say a biography has received few edits for a long period. It might not be a good article, it may be a lousy article, but it's "stable". Then the subject makes news and suddenly there is a flurry of editing. The figure is somewhat polarizing, perhaps a politician, so there are arguments over how to handle the new material. Meanwhile, during the fighting, the article is expanded. Finally, the talk page disputes grow so fierce that a sheriff is called in. Obviously, he needs to quell the talk page problems, but what about the article? Does he revert to the old, poor quality version from three months ago, even though the contentious material is only a portion of the new version? Does he pick and choose which parts to keep? Or does he stay out of it and focus on being a neutral arbiter on the talk page, slapping on an occasional article page protection when edit warring breaks out?

dealing out 24hr blocks to anyone who even 'looks' like they are trying to edit war: that's a huge power grab. The aim here is to deal with talk page disruption, not to patrol the article content.

tell editors they have 48 hours to reach a compromise or you will revert back to the other version That's pretty harsh, and again it's putting the sheriff in control of the article, not just the talk page.

I think page protection, maybe longer than 24 hours, is all that a sheriff would need to stop edit warring. Reverting brings up many additional issues which would muddy the waters.   Will Beback  talk  23:02, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes I can see there are situations, at least, where it wouldn't work. Would the Sheriff be able to suggest that the contentious material be removed to the talk page, and characterize as disruptive anyone who reverted? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 00:10, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The emphasis should be on adding sourced information, not taking it away. In my and others' experience, the quick removal or reversion of sourced material is a sign of POV editing. The sheriff should make clear that, unless it's a BLP, sourced information added to the article should not be removed until there is consensus on the talk page to do so. By applying this evenly, the sheriff is not making content decisisions, merely enforcing WP's rules for consensus decision-making. Cla68 (talk) 00:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That's one view of activist editing, but a sweeping rule that source material may not be removed would be impractical in practice. Sourced material may be irrelevant, have undue weight, misrepresent the source, etc. The more the sheriff gets involved in deciding acceptable content in the article, the more quickly they'll lose legitimacy.   Will Beback  talk  00:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If sourced material is wrong for the article, I think consensus on the talk page would develop rather quickly for its removal. Otherwise, it stays. If it makes the article look horrible, so be it, it will serve as a message for editors that if they had cooperated better in the first place, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a sheriff with the article imposing rules like that one. If the sheriff is consistent on doing it this way, then I don't think it will be a problem. Actually, I mistakenly put the comment above in this thread, I meant it to be a response in the next thread below. Cla68 (talk) 00:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Becritical wrote: Would the Sheriff be able to suggest that the contentious material be removed to the talk page, and characterize as disruptive anyone who reverted?

Do you mean "suggest" a move or actually actually perform such a move? If there's a consensus to remove it then there's no problem. If he does it without a consensus then he's action on his own. To put the worst possible spin on it ;) the sheriff unilaterally decides that some text he doesn't like is "contentious". He deletes it from the article and pastes it onto the talk page pending the never-to-come consensus, with the threat of topic banning or blocking anyone who dares to restore the material. This seems like it would put the sheriff in charge of deciding the content and gives him broad powers to enforce that decision. Unless the material is an clear BLP violation, why would it need to be removed in order to improve the talk page discussions? If editors are bragging about what they forced into the article then that's an unhelpful talk page behavior for which the sheriff has adequate tools to handle without reverting or deleting material from the article.   Will Beback  talk  00:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Will - just a quick comment, because I have to run. I am not worried about sheriffs being harsh - the nature of policing is that sometimes harsh actions are called for. Harsh actions are justified by being applied under clear necessity and with scrupulous fairness. You cannot separate what happens on the article from what happens on the talk page, and giving a bunch of editors 24 hour blocks to make it absolutely clear that there is zero tolerance for mainspace monkey-business is harsh, but reasonable and highly cost effective. a 24 hour block doesn't do much to an editor except bruise his ego, but once you've done that once on a page, you can be damned sure that no further edit wars are going to crop up in the near future.

yes, it's a huge power grab. that's what a sheriff is (here or in the real world): someone who can dominate a page by brute force in ways that are highly restricted, so that other people cannot dominate the page through brute force in unrestricted and problematic ways. Sheriffs are a distinct evil roped into the service of good editing, by making other evils ineffective. The more you water down the sheriff's power, the less point there is in having a sheriff. --Ludwigs2 02:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that allowing a sheriff to block an editor just because he thinks they might edit war, and not allowing admins to review that block or potentially lift it, is not going to be acceptable to the community. If we did manage to pass a proposal with that provision, any sheriff who imposed such a block would probably be fired promptly. There seems to a tension here between making the sheriff a very limited role, and giving them sweeping powers far beyond what admins is allowed to do. Since sheriff's actions cannot be overturned, the only way to fix an overeager sheriff's actions is to fire him.   Will Beback  talk  09:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Where did someone propose that "and not allowing admins to review that block or potentially lift it"? And they can't block without banning first. (added) So there would be no reason that an admin would need to review a block. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Authoritative control: Sheriffs are monitored by sysops—generally through the administrator's noticeboard—but have the final say on pages where they are installed; sysops or other sheriffs who wish to act authoritatively on the talk page must clear it with the sheriff first, and the installed sheriff can revert the actions of anyone without being guilty of wheel warring or edit warring.

A sheriff has total control of the article and talk page, the power to "dominate a page with brute force". If an admin disagrees with a block or protection, the sheriff may wheel war with the admin without penalty. If one or more admins overseeing the sheriff disagree with the sheriff's action the only thing they can do is initiate a discussion to remove him. Until that is resolved, the sheriff continues to have complete control of the article and its editors. It's not explicit in the text now, but Ludwigs2 suggests above allowing sheriffs to impose bans or blocks for the mere appearance of intent to edit war. I just don't think the community would accept having someone with that much sole power.   Will Beback  talk  22:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

"Do you mean "suggest" a move or actually actually perform such a move?" I did mean "suggest." However, if one side of a debate removed it, should the other side be warned not to edit war it back in? That would go a long long way toward enforcing consensus as I was advocating. But hopefully in an acceptable way. And I don't think Sheriffs should give blocks before they've given bans. Block only if a ban is violated. That should be directly in the proposal don't you think? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 03:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's say we have an article on Italian nationalism. The pro-nationalists add a well-sourced paragraph about about an incident committed by French immigrants. The "anti-" side complains that the issue is irrelevant, and removes it. Alternatively, there's a well-sourced passage on atrocities caused by Italian police that's removed by the "pro-" side and restored by the "anti-" side. Why would these be handled differently?

Who said they should be handled differently? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

See your response below: "The Sheriff would enforce removal of content ..." Why only the removal but not the addition?   Will Beback  talk  22:20, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as bans and blocks, are we addressing talk page problems or article problems? If the Sheriff is the enforcer of his preferred version of the article and an editor dares to add something he doesn't like then he'd issue warnings and perhaps eventually topic ban the editor for 24 hours. Let's say the editor sits out the ban and returns making the same point 25 hours later. As currently drafted, there must be a waiting period before the sheriff can reimpose the ban. That period passes and the editor is still wanting to make the same point, so the sheriff imposes a second ban. After 12 hours the editor breaks the ban by posting a complaint on the talk page about the sheriff's heavy handed activity. That's sufficient to earn a 24 block from the sheriff. Is that an accurate scenario?   Will Beback  talk  09:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The Sheriff would enforce removal of content (by others) pending further discussion; none of the above is the way I see it. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

You mean the sheriff can't ban and block an editor for adding or removing text? I think that's a wise solution, but not what had been suggested.   Will Beback  talk  22:20, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The Sheriff should be able to use powers for all sorts of disruptiveness except content decisions. If a user edit wars text into or out of an article, especially that which has been removed pending discussion, that's disruptive behavior and sanctionable without reference to content. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 01:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think this is conversation is drifting into somewhat bizarre territory. let me try to address some of the concerns, though:

• A sheriff would not block, ban, or otherwise sanction an editor for adding or removing content. sanctions would only occur where editors are doing things designed specifically to inflame other editors. it's like this:
  • Editor A adds (or removes, or edits) some contentious content: this is fine per BOLD.
  • Editor B does something tantamount to a revert. this is fine per BRD
  • Editor A (or a different editor C) does something tantamount to a re-revert. At this point, any reasonable editor should be aware that the proper move is to go to talk and discuss. Continued reverts at this point are not about content (because it's already clear that the material is objected to, and likely to be reverted again); continued reverts are primarily emotional (an angry response, an effort to score points, a baiting game...). If a sheriff blocks here s/he is blocking the continued escalation of the emotional responses, not defending content.
• A sheriff would not block someone for complaining about the sheriff's actions (that would be well outside his mandate), but he might redact the complaint from the article talk page and direct the editor to enter the complaint at AN or wherever sysops are monitoring the sheriff. A smart sheriff would even alert sysops himself that he is redacting the complaint and directing the editor to the appropriate forum.
• There is no effective way a sheriff could consistently block editors to maintain a particular POV without getting desheriffed - again, it simply can't happen, short of massive corruption among sysops monitoring the system (and if that's the case, it has nothing to do with the sheriff). The sheriff's authoritative control over the page only exists so long as the sheriff stays within the restrictions. A sysop cannot countermand a sheriff so long as the sheriff is playing by the rules. However, if there's a discussion and sysops decide that the sheriff made a bad block, then the sheriff would be obliged to undo it and refrain from doing similar things in the future, and probably there would be some editing to this project to clarify the situation in the rules. if it's truly bad, the sheriff will lose his position and his authority over the page.

Final point: Will, you may be right that the community won't accept this. However, I would prefer to present the idea in its proper form and have it be rejected than to present some watered-down or minimized version of the concept. Again, the sheriff is supposed to be a powerful agent restricted by a clearly limited mandate: he needs to have some explicit extraordinary powers to overpower the more noxious forms of implicit power that other editors regularly use on-project. the trick here is not to reduce his power, but rather to restrict his power to a narrow range of actions that allow him to impose order without giving him the ability to interfere with the development of content.

This discussion is useful, but let's not get over-focused on on the idea of malicious sheriffs intent on breaking the rules to muck with content. most people who will choose to be sheriffs are going to embrace both the letter and the spirit of the project, really wanting to stop the nonsense and improve the consensus process. There is no way to anticipate what every bad egg might do, and we can trust that the sysops monitoring the situation will use both good faith and common sense when dealing with sheriffs and their actions. --Ludwigs2 03:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Every bad behavior that is attributed to admins can also be attributed to sheriffs. When making rules, it's wise and necessary to consider the worst case scenarios.

As for using tools to enforce contents of articles, I think it's a bad idea. If there's edit warring then a sheriff can call in an admin to make blocks. Edit wars are already handled well by the community. The issue that this proposal addresses which isn't handled well now are talk page disputes. I support giving sheriffs strong authority on talk pages, and little or no power on content pages.

If admins cannot undo what sheriffs do, and can only initiate a week-long removal process that includes sanctions on the sheriff, then the oversight is faulty. Let admins handle the admin duties, and sheriffs handle sheriff duties.   Will Beback  talk  04:47, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

"As for using tools to enforce contents of articles, I think it's a bad idea" Are you saying that someone is suggesting this? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 04:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that there are proposals for allowing sheriffs to revert content changes and block editors for article-page behavior like edit warring or having the intent to edit war. This proposal started as a way of addressing talk page behavior, and I think it should stay focused on that.   Will Beback  talk  05:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

BC - Will is misunderstanding, and at this point I'm not sure he's going to understand without seeing the thing in operation. I could try to explain it to him again, but he seems to be getting annoyed at my explanations, so I'm hesitant to do that unless he requests it. I think the best we can do right now is take what he says as useful considerations, but get on with developing the idea the way it should be developed. We can deal with all these misunderstanding when we present it to the community, because no doubt there will be others who share his confusion.

Will, would you mind stepping back and letting us do that? Your input is useful, but having to spend this much time correcting misconceptions is really slowing down progress on the proposal. --Ludwigs2 05:52, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

If you'd prefer to userfy this proposal then it'd be appropriate to exclude editors from it. Otherwise, it's just as open as any other page. If you look at the talk page and the proposal, I think it's obvious that I've helped clarify a number of issues which were vague or undefined. I endorse the basic goals of this proposal: To ensure that content discussions can progress meaningfully, peacefully and quickly, either to a consensus conclusion or to a recognition that mediation or arbitration is required; and to guide editors away from bad discussion practices towards a better, more civil communication style, by encouraging the latter and inhibiting the former.   Will Beback  talk  06:38, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that John Vandenberg's suggestions need to be considered, but otherwise I think we're about to the place where we can present it to the community. To be clear though, we do not want the Sheriff to control article content, and their behavior such as edit warring on article pages is relevant, well, to the wellbeing of the article dynamic and can't be left out. I think we've come a long way in this discussion, partly because of Beback's input, and we've answered a lot of the questions that the rest of the community would put to this proposal. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 08:15, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We've all worked to better define the nuts and bolts of how a sheriff system might work. However the intro and the definition of the purpose and goals of the sheriff plan are still vague and some if it would be better in a "cover letter" than in the proposed policy itself. There's an ongoing discussion about the purpose/goal in "How's it going to work" below. We might all look over the intro and theory sections again. Let's start a new thread on that.   Will Beback  talk  08:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Will, I agree that you've helped a lot, but my point was that you are (i) missing some of the key ideas here, (ii) chaffing at reading through my (in your words) 'wall of text' responses that explain those ideas, and (iii) seemingly opposed to certain central ideas straight out. Of course you have the right to edit anywhere you want to on wikipedia, but as a long-term editor and a sysop you should recognize there are times when good faith contributions hinder more than they help. Many of the concerns you're raising (in this thread and elsewhere) are more imaginary than real, I'm having a hard time getting you to see that they are imaginary (and why they are imaginary), and we're going to have to go through these same discussions again for the general community anyway. You're basically forcing me to duplicate and reduplicate a whole lot of explanations. If I have to spend the time and effort doing and redoing it, I will, but I really wish we cold focus on making the idea itself clear and concrete, rather than spending all this time quibbling over what strike me unfounded fears about degenerate cases.

I'm not asking you to leave (and would actually rather you didn't), but I would like it if we could keep our eyes on the ball and stop worrying so much about the foul line.

BC is right, we've come a long way and you've helped a lot, so enough of this tangent. let's get back to clarifying the intro. --Ludwigs2 16:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

If we hand out big tools with little oversight then we do need to make sure that they are not abused. You've expressed disdain for how the ArbCom and Admins work, yet those bureaucracies were also established with the best of intents. If admins can abuse their tools, then so can sheriffs.   Will Beback  talk  22:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Will, you keep saying things like this, and I keep telling you that it's impossible for a sheriff to do abuse their powers this way without getting caught at it. And franlky, your use of the phrase 'little oversight' after what's been said on this talk page just astonishes me - where is that coming from?

Put your money where you mouth is: give me an example of a sheriff abusing his powers that would not get caught and corrected in a matter of hours (or a couple of days at the outside). If you give an example and we can talk about how to resolve it; if you can't give an example, you should acknowledge that you've misunderstood and drop this entire line of debate. agreed? --Ludwigs2 12:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Consequences

You do realize, don't you, that some people would deliberately escalate disputes in the hope of getting a sheriff appointed? I assume this already happens with Arbcom. I've certainly come across an editor who admits to having deliberately got himself blocked in the hope of gaining publicity for an issue. Always think about incentivization. If it's to people's advantage to do something, sometimes they'll do it. Peter jackson (talk) 10:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I was just reading a dog training book. It said that when puppies are being house-trained and make a mistake it's important to move them out of the area before cleaning up the mess, otherwise they'll just learn that it's your job to clean up after them. Perhaps that's a similar effect.   Will Beback  talk  10:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Um... hey... just an aside to this thread, but that's why the Sheriff should have revert power, so other editors won't be stuck cleaning up disruptive editor's non-consensus mess. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 16:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

lol - well, I think that would qualify as shooting oneself in the foot. If one wants to escalate a problem to get some kind of notoriety on it, the last thing to do is get a sheriff sitting on the page making sure that everyone is squeaky clean and polite. it's as the post-modernists sometimes say: history is made by the vile, the violent, by angry, aggressive, thundering bastards. quiet, unassuming, decent people never make the evening news. --Ludwigs2 17:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

People do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. That's what I was illustrating. If someone thinks a sheriff might get the articel moving in the direction they want they might behave that way. Peter jackson (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

And given that most POV pushers believe that their view is 'THE TRUTH!' they might well think that if they can get a truly neutral (rather then those POV pushers at Admin office) their self evident truth will win out.Slatersteven (talk) 16:04, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. and the result will be that the sheriff will make certain that the discussion focuses on content, and everyone will see whether or not the POV-pusher has a valid point to make. Sometimes POV-pushers are closer to NPOV than the other editors on the page, you know; even a broken clock is right twice a day (unless it's a broken military clock, which is only right once a day). --Ludwigs2 19:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

But who is this "everyone" & what are they going to do about it? It's all very well people seeing things but that's no use (unless it's the readers of course) unless they're actually going to do something about it. No amount of visibility of misbehaviour will deter it without actual sanctions. Peter jackson (talk) 16:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter... what the hell are you talking about? people come here because they want to revise what the encyclopedia says about a topic: that's not going to change. The choice is between requiring them to undertake those revisions as calm and reasonable adults, or allowing them to fight and spit and moan over those revisions like rutting baboons. The calm reasoned approach may or may not affect the outcome of the discussion, but the issues will certainly be clearer and the process infinitely more pleasant. are you griping because the idea doesn't do more than that? --Ludwigs2 18:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't use the wrod "griping", but I would like something more. That doesn't mean I actually oppose this proposal. But if you keep saying things that seem to imply it'll solve everything then I'm liable to keep pointing out ways it won't. Peter jackson (talk) 11:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Remarks

I have doubts about this proposal, even though I've had some vaguely similar ideas in the past. I would suggest (i) change the name to "Discussion Assistant" or "Discussion Mediator" or something in that direction, to emphasise the primary purpose and get rid of a name ("town sheriff") which is slightly silly and substantially misleading/counter-productive (ii) remove the power to issue blocks, but keep the power to issue short page bans (violation of which is blockable by an admin on request by the mediator) (iii) emphasise that the aim is to mediate, help discussion along, prevent low-level disruption, kickstart dispute resolution when needed, and assist newcomers - not be a sort of "admin lite" (iv) admin powers, if the person has them, not to be used on that page (barring dealing with obvious vandalism). This position doesn't need any technical powers like blocking or page protection - requests can be made in the usual way as necessary. There, that's my 2 cents... Rd232 ^talk 17:20, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Some articles need more than that. You may be right on the name, and we should probably emphasize mediation. Blocks are only there to back up bans, and so the power would be very rarely used... but is necessary so the Sheriff doesn't have to go running to mommy every time he needs his gun. Sheriffs are not going to be sysops at first (I think). Also this isn't "admin lite," it's "admin heavy" but with restrictions. Less easy to attack than an admin (one reason they need blocking power), but under more specific rules. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:02, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Rd232: I hear what you're saying, but I can't emphasize enough that this is intended to be a cop, not a mediator. Mediators are useful for pages where well-intentioned editors with a commitment to project ideals are having trouble coming to an agreement; they are useless (or worse) on pages where editors follow an ends justify the means approach and are willing to use all sorts of chicanery to get their way on a page. How do you mediate in a case where editors are more interested in getting people they disagree with blocked or otherwise shut out of the conversation so that they can have their way with the page?

every community, when it reaches a certain size, needs to have functionaries whose purpose it is to make certain everyone plays nice according to the community ideals (because at a certain point you will invariably get someone who thinks he can get away with playing dirty, and once one person starts doing it, the entire community starts getting nasty out of sheer self-defence). I watch pages where I see long term, reputable, otherwise decent editors turn into (pardon my french) fucking trolls at the drop of a pin, because being a troll is the only way they know to fend off editors they think are problematic. put someone with a (metaphorical) badge and gun on the street to deal with problems in a clear authoritative manner, and everyone can unwind and get back to normal life. --Ludwigs2 19:12, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

(after-thought) Let me put this another way, which might be clearer. Once a community gets to a certain size, if it doesn't have something like sheriffs, it will most definitely end up with vigilantes, and vigilantes (as everyone knows) are a very, very mixed blessing. I can only point you to the fairly extreme case of ScienceApologist (talk · contribs) (aka <vanished>) - an editor whose perspective I agree with on many points, but who engaged in sock-puppetry, baiting, edit-warring, general tendentiousness, and other violations of wikipedia policy, always declaiming his service to the community - as evidence that wikipedia is already at the vigilante stage. --Ludwigs2 20:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Admins function rather like cops, don't they?   Will Beback  talk  23:52, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

In some respects, yes, and you might say the "town sheriff" approach is merely duplicative admin-qua-cop-lite. But the real problem isn't inability to act, it's inability to fully understand a problem, prevent it spiralling out of control if possible, and clearly and neutrally ask for dispute resolution / sanctions when appropriate. A mediator can do that much better than a cop. This way the Mediator position is genuinely supplementary, doing things admins cannot because by the time they understand a situation WP:INVOLVED is often an issue; the Mediator is reasonably protected from this by virtue of their function, focus, appointment process and limited-but-useful powers. Rd232 ^talk 01:20, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)That's all very well about the problems of vigilantism, but the new position you're advocating is fundamentally antithetical to Wikipedia's culture, and I don't think it stands a snowball's chance in hell of being approved in what you correctly describe as "cop" form. I'd expect even the quite different "mediator" form to get substantial resistance (because of WP:OWN issues), but I think that might fly on a trial basis. Rd232 ^talk 23:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs, don't you think we just need to change the name? It's too much of an issue for too many. We will have enough trouble trying to deal with those who look at this most transparent and strictly oversighted and narrowly defined proposal and then say we are handing out big tools with little oversight. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 01:22, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

It's more than a matter of "just change the name", it's the portion of this proposal based around that faux nostalgia for the "good 'ol days" when this mythical person solved all problems. Those days never existed and people were treated just as unfairly, watch yer Rambo and yer Unforgiven. I agree fully with Rd232's opening statement here, a "page facilitator" who could ask for privileged access to admin backup (by virtue of their appointment by the community) would be much more likely to get my support than the current proposal. Franamax (talk) 04:00, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

And if people think the current system works, let them take a look at the current problem in the Jerusalem article, which could hardly be more under ArbCom's thumb. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 01:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you describe the problem at talk:Jerusalem and what a sheriff could do there to fix it?   Will Beback  talk  02:05, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

There has been a reasoned discussion, and although I haven't counted votes I think a good consensus reached on the lead. But people are too scared of the ArbCom sanctions to use them, because they may well backfire on whoever tries to use them... even though those who would request them are not (currently at least) disruptive. A sheriff could go in there, count a consensus, and take it to the already established authority, without being afraid for his own account. He could have given courage to those threatened. Because of his appointment by the community as a focused agent, he could break through the disruption, even by editors who haven't broken CIV, as there is sufficient consensus. It's a matter of outside involvement with the voice of authority, and having an editor around who isn't afraid of arbitrary and uninformed admin action (as I am or I'd do something). In this case it's not a matter of tools, but of general authority. I went there from a noticeboard and responding to an RfC, and found that there was one editor who was disruptive (IDIDNTHEARTHAT) and a couple of others with minimal involvement, plus a possible sock, all POV pushing. Then there were a greater number of thoughtful editors who were able to reach a consensus. So although a Sheriff could not determine content, he could help the situation. He could also likely have lead the discussion to a more clearly defined picture of POV pushing and disruption which could have been more easily dealt with. Still, the matter might be dealt with now by anyone willing to brave ArbCom noticeboard. Why a Sheriff and not an admin? Well, why not? It's because the admins are too easily attacked, and don't want to be involved. Let's see you fix it. However, although this has been a good exercise for me, I put it here more as an example of where the system doesn't work, and where we might not have had to go if there had been Sheriffs, rather than a prime example of an article which needs a sheriff at this point... though I do think it could use one. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 02:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Much of what you're talking about seems like a job for mediation. has that been tried?

Socks, tendentious editors, and other explicit violations of policy can be handled by posting complaints at ANI, etc.   Will Beback  talk  03:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Yet that's not the opinion of the non-disruptive editors there. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 03:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your reply.

How would a sheriff act differently from a mediator working with admins?   Will Beback  talk  04:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

replying to multiple people, so this may be another 'wall of text' response. apologies in advance.

I understand wikipedia culture (better than most people, by virtue of training). What I have been trying to suggest repeatedly throughout this conversation is that Wikipedia culture needs to change, because wikipedia as a community has grown too large for the current form of social organization to work effectively. Wikipedia social organization is currently an internet variant of standard 'tribal' culture: individual-oriented, anti-authoritarian, using small-group discussion as a decision model and a harassment/exclusion paradigm for social control. This works very well for small, homogenous groups, and you see it all the time in things like business offices, fraternities, web forums... It works where groups are small enough so that there is a web of interpersonal relationships that binds the group together, encouraging individuals to be reasonable in discussion and temperate in applying social control. The wikipedia community would be too large for that web-of-relationships to exist even if there were real personal interactions between people, and given anonymity and physical separation (which both heightens individuality and loosens interpersonal bonds), you can not expect a tribal social structure to function in a healthy manner on project.

Don't get me wrong: I happen to like the loose, anti-authoritarian, highly individualistic model. it suits my personality. However, advocating for it in a group this size is ignorant. Simply and unadulteratedly ignorant.

Will: no, in fact admins are not like cops. Admins are closer to tribal elders in form and function: chosen by community approval, immune to punishment except in extreme cases, passing judgement and imposing sanctions based on idiosyncratic interpretations of passed-down texts. A tribal elder system is not a bad system, such as it is, but it is limited. As you can see from the tribal elder systems that still exist in the world today (sharia law being the most prominent) tribal elder systems that extend themselves over large populations become progressively more harsh and didactic, and again tend towards vigilanteism (because vigilanteism - defending the community code as an act of one's own initiative - is an essential step for someone who eventually wants to be an elder).

Tribal elders (sysops in our case) represent a blend of legal, executive, and judicial powers: they decide what is correct, determine an individual's compliance, and measure out punishment all in the same breath. Liberal societies never do that; they always separate powers across different groups of people for reasons of efficiency, scale, and legitimacy. The point of having a police function separate from the other functions is that a separated police function allows rules to be applied more systematically and evenly across the entire group. Wikipedia needs a 'cop' function because until we have a cop function, every question of punishment and control on project will turn into a matter of politics (and every matter of politics on wikipedia becomes a matter of congested drama). Cops can separate themselves from politics to a large extent simply by hiding behind the badge: they enforce the rules they are given to enforce in a limited, single-minded way, and leave questions of whether the rules are correct to other people to decide. Cops who step outside that narrow-minded application of rules get screwed, so intelligent cops don't.

Mediation is a good thing, but mediation (as I said above) requires good-faith participation from all the participants, which simply doesn't pertain in many cases. Mediation is a good tool, but every tool has it's proper use: Don't suggest we should drive a screw with a hammer just because a hammer is the only tool we have.

I don't really care about the name. Town Sheriff got picked both because it reflected the Wild West attitudes it was intended to control and because it fit with the 'Village Pump' motif that the the project has from its early days. But I don't see a point in sugar-coating the name to make the project look like something it isn't: This is intended to be a form of police, and we should put out efforts into convincing people of the necessity of that, not into trying to lull them into it.

Really, what this comes down to is that Wikipedia needs to grow up as a project and a community. People need to recognize (in a good Kantian sense) that they need a set of rules that will apply fairly and equally to everyone (including themselves), and a group of people whose job it is to enforce those rules fairly and equally. there's no other way to get the crapulence out of the project. If it's not the TS, it will eventually be something else, because if it's nothing else wikipedia is just going to get progressively suckier as the years slide on. --Ludwigs2 13:56, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of that. To follow up what you say about separation of powers. The traditional classification is legislative, executive & judicial. The first is already mostly separate. "Laws" on WP are made by the community, except for a few cases (BLP, copyvio) where they're imposed by WMF. Although the community does occasionally exercise executive & judicial powers (bans), they're mostly left to admins. So if talk of separation of powers in this context means anything it would seem to mean separation of judicial from executive, which I haven't noticed suggested here. Peter jackson (talk) 16:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

err... police powers are an executive power. The executive branch of a government deals with the application of laws as written: police don't judge criminals, and they don't decide what constitutes a criminal act, they simply take the laws as given and apply them, leaving legislatures to make new laws and judges to determine guilt. You may be confused if you're an american: Americans think of the executive branch as the President, and forget that it also encompasses that vast range of structures under which the laws generated by the legislature are put into practice. --Ludwigs2 18:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

In a "civilized" society police investigate crimes, arrest people (executive) & present the case to judges, who decide whether they're guilty (judicial). If so, police transfer them to prison officers for punishment (executive). On WP, administrators decide whether people are guilty (judicial) & block them (executive). Peter jackson (talk) 11:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

When can we present this to the community? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 23:07, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Just don't. The only thing doing that will achieve is poisoning the well for more acceptable forms of this basic concept. Propose my Mediator version first, and if it turns out that additional really cop-like powers are necessary, see if the community is willing to add them later (probably not, but who knows). Rd232 ^talk 01:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

"Mediation is a good thing, but mediation (as I said above) requires good-faith participation from all the participants, which simply doesn't pertain in many cases." - yes, true, but one of the things a mediator could do is neutrally evaluate participants' behaviour and take appropriate action, including requesting sanction if necessary, with greater credibility than participants themselves. Crucially, compared to the cop model, this ensures a two-step process, so that you don't have one person dispensing summary justice in a way which, in this page-focussed context, really is untenable in terms of WP:OWN. [I'm sure some will remark that admins often dispense summary justice, but at least you have WP:INVOLVED as a protection.) Another thing a mediator can do is push dispute resolution processes forward, in terms of launching them, helping them along, and also using additional dispute resolution when early attempts get bogged down (without being accused of forum shopping, since their neutrality is accepted). Rd232 ^talk 01:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Geez, don't give up before we try... and maybe you're right, especially with the cop name, but I'd rather see it go down than not have the necessary powers. All we need is a trial run. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 02:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Rd232: Ok, it's clear that you are opposed to this idea. Thanks for your input, and you will have the opportunity to express yourself more fully when we present this to the community. Don't get me wrong, I understand your opposition, but I have very good reason to say that you are flat-out wrong in your assessment of both Wikipedia and this sheriff idea. That doesn't worry me: there will inevitably be a degree of opposition to this because it represents a shift in the structure of the community, and there will always be people who live by the "better the devil you know than the angel you don't" principle, who will oppose change simply because it is change. It will be part of my task to present a sufficiently compelling argument that the change I'm suggesting is useful, good, and even necessary in the long run. Hopefully I can convince you with it, but I am aware that I will not be able to convince everyone.

I will also highlight the fairly obvious point that creating sheriffs will in no way supplant or exclude the mediation and DR processes that Wikipedia already has. If you think mediation is a better approach, then you will always be free to suggest that mediation be tried first any time a discussion about installing a sheriff is begun. Frankly, I can't see how you wouldn't already be aware of that, so I'm not sure why you are taking this approach to your opposition. Is there something I'm missing, and if so can you clarify?

BC: I'd like to take a day or two to read through the proposal closely for tweaks and copyedits. Maybe we can post this at the pump on tuesday or wednesday? In the meantime, I'll open another section below to talk about presentation format, since I would like to put the best foot forward here. we can discuss what needs to be clearest when we talk to people about it. --Ludwigs2 18:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, to answer your question, I support a close enough variation of this approach that I don't think it's adequate to simply say "I oppose it". I oppose key features of your version of it yes. But my variation of it is still a big culture shift from the current use of mediation (eg WP:MEDCAB), so if you're suggesting that as an alternative to my version of your idea than you're missing the point. Rd232 ^talk 03:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, if you have a variation on this theme that you think would work better, I'm happy to hear the details. However, the 'two-step' system you outlined above (on face value, at any rate), doesn't work. for example, when I was mediating at the Race and Intelligence debacle, I actually tried to do some of what you suggest. I had one long-term, well-established editor involved in the mediation who (with support from a few friends) spent absolutely huge amounts of time and effort trying to disrupt the mediation and discredit me personally. I could not ask for assistance from a sysop with his problematic behavior without being roundly accused and attacked on a variety of specious charges. So long as he could tangle up my requests for assistance in vituperative battles at ANI he was immune to sanction and essentially free to do as he liked. The way I managed to control him was by asserting a degree of authority (one I didn't have, mind you) and then cowing him into compliance by rigorously and heavy-handedly enforcing discussion rules by fiat (which he hated, and still hates me for to this day, but which coerced him into doing productive work on the article). Your system leaves an unempowered agent who needs to request assistance with problem editors, which relies on personal credibility and/or personal connections with sysops, which invites character assassination in the first case and accusations of 'back-door' politics in the second.

In other words, it's basically the same system we have now.

Now, I suppose you could patch that up by giving your 'mediators' more power to demand assistance from sysops, cutting out that vulnerability to character assassination. but if you do that you might as well give the mediators the power directly, because what sysop wants to be turned in to a mere puppet of some 'mediator'? But if you give power to the 'mediator' directly then you have to start worrying whether that power will be abused, so you have to start thinking about limits and oversight on 'mediator' power. And suddenly, voila! You've got a town sheriff. How do you think I developed this idea in the first place?

So, if I'm missing something key in the above that would salvage your idea, please point it out to me. maybe we should start a new thread on it. but keep in mind that any system which boils down to a minor, ineffective tweak on the current system isn't worth doing. --Ludwigs2 17:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Your key paragraph there is the penultimate one, and the case it makes is non-existent. Mediators having powers undermines their ability to mediate, turning them from friendly chairperson types into cops. Cops dispensing summary judgement in matters of great subjectivity is very bad; it's not like judging 3RR or dispensing traffic tickets. Compare my efforts elsewhere to get agreement that individual admins shouldn't block for civility violations, but instead propose blocks at ANI and get community agreement that the behaviour merits sanction. Same problems apply here: the issues you seem to want a town sheriff to address are not ones that an individual should be dispensing sanction for, because they're too subjective. The role of the mediator here would be to have a precious neutrality in order to encourage/support/launch dispute resolution, primarily content dispute resolution (hopefully) but also ANI threads, arbitration enforcement requests and RFC/U, with much greater credibility than an active participant in the dispute. Running to individual friendly admins to Get Done What Needs Doing would be an excellent way to swiftly lose that credibility. Rd232 ^talk 18:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course, this is precisely where you're wrong. There's very little a sheriff would do that's subjective. Discussions about content are subjective, but behavior is not: it's simple, direct, and objective. The problems sysops have when trying to evaluate behavior is that y'all get hung up on subjective considerations. for instance, let's say editors A, B, and C (in different situations) each call someone a sh%t for brains, and you get called on to deal with the incivility in each case. Well, editor A is an IP with a history of being rude to people - you block him for a week. Editor B is an established editor but known (to you) to be a civil POV-pusher - he gets a stern warning and a block threat hanging over his head if he does it again, or maybe a page ban. Editor C is an established editor you decide is in 'good standing' - he gets a pat on the head because he's obviously having a bad day. For a sheriff, if an editor calls another editor a sh%t for brains it gets redacted, and if the redaction gets reverted the editor gets a 1-day block. it doesn't matter who the editor is, how long he's been editing, what the subjective appraisal of the editor might be; everyone gets the same sanction for the same overt behavior, period end of sentence, no arguing with it.

Again, like I told will, it's easy enough to make up abstract scare stories by sticking to these over-generalized misconceptions. why don't you give me a particular case of behavior, I'll tell you how a sheriff would respond to it and what effect it will have, and you tell me why that's a bad thing (assuming you can think of a reason). Go on, try to stump me with something concrete. --Ludwigs2 23:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

"There's very little a sheriff would do that's subjective." .... really? Editor B is an established editor but known (to you) to be a civil POV-pusher ... and Editor C is an established editor you decide is in 'good standing' ... huh. Contradiction much? I don't think you understand your own proposal. Admins already treat editors with different edit histories differently, but evaluating that is clearly subjective. It's less so when there's an appropriate community discussion, which is why we must distinguish between relatively objective issues like 3RR violation which is swiftly blockable (though even here interpretation plays a role) and stuff like civility and especially "civil POV pushing" and other stuff which requires RFC/U, ban discussions etc. See also the recent "advocacy noticeboard" concept which ran into many of the same issues. Rd232 ^talk 00:45, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

How about talk:Jerusalem?   Will Beback  talk  00:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a big talk page, and a dispute I'm not familiar with. give me something concrete, not some vague wave at a huge mass of text. --Ludwigs2 00:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Sheriffs will have to deal with big, complex disputes. What are the first steps a sheriff might take in a dispute with which they are not familiar?   Will Beback  talk  00:33, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, let's work out the details first. BTW, Will Beback, the Shakespeare authorship question is a much better example of an article that needed a Sheriff than Jerusalem at the current time. It shouldn't have been allowed to drag on for years. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

The SAQ issue is now at the ArbCom, which seems to be handling it expeditiously. Can you give more details about that case? Was mediation tried? At what point in the past would a sheriff have been bad enough to warrant a sheriff? Note that both SAQ and Jerusalem are issues where significant disputes have long-preceded Wikipedia's existence. If WP can find solutions to these disputes then it might be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. ;)   Will Beback  talk  22:29, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the "cops" analogy: Inmost jurisdictions, police officers do not try to settle disputes. They simply identify if a crime seems to have been committed, then either arrest or cite the apparent violator before turning the matter over to a higher authority. Detectives get a little more involved by investigating crimes where the perpetrator is not initially known, but once they've identified the "perp" they still hand him or her over to others for punishment (or exoneration). I don't think that's the intended role of so-called "sheriffs", as I don't see any plan for sheriffs to identify perpetrators and then have a higher authority decide on the punishment. For that, and other reasons, a different name and metaphor should be chosen.   Will Beback  talk 

What is the SAQ issue? can you provide a couple of links? I don't really know what you're referring to.

With respect to 'cops', we're not talking capital crimes here. anything on the level of a murder investigation would get passed off to sysops. sheriffs just deal with garden-variety things: the equivalent of domestic disputes, drunk drivers, liquor store robberies, bar fights. In most of those cases, cops don't have much concern over who started it or what it's about; they enter into the situation with one goal, which is to reestablish the normal pattern of civil interaction that ought to pertain. sometimes that means writing a ticket; sometimes reining people in until they calm down or making them walk it off; sometimes it means getting people to talk something out rather than solve it with their fists; sometimes it means throwing them in jail overnight. Cops don't resolve disputes, no; they simply put a stop to bad behavior long enough for the dispute to have a chance of resolving itself. which is exactly what I'm suggesting here. --Ludwigs2 00:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Shakespeare authorship question/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare authorship question.

Cops don't decide if a driver is guilty of drunk driving. They determine that there is the appearance of a violation of a policy/law, then turn over the case to a higher authority, for adjudication. A cop does not retain authority over the perpetrator after the violation has been identified and the perpetrator cited or jailed.

Admins can protect pages and block users temporarily, but only the community or the ArbCom can issue site bans.   Will Beback  talk  00:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I hate split conversations like this, so I'm answering all three points here.

Rd: you read what I wrote completely backwards. Sheriffs would not be making subjective evaluations of that sort (I gave that ABC thing as examples of what sysops conventionally do): Sheriffs make their actions based on the obvious, objective behavior of editors on the page. please reread my post more carefully and respond again.

Will: point 1 - you say "Sheriffs will have to deal with big, complex disputes...": where are you getting that? Sheriffs do not have to concern themselves with the dispute and its complexities at all. sheriffs deal with concrete behavior. Sheriffs really don't need to keep track of the arguments being made (except in the limited sense that they might recognize that an argument is getting made multiple times and try to condense the discussion, or that they might recognize IDHT behavior and the like).

Will: point 2 - you say "cops don't decide...". I don't get your point. Wikipedia cops are obviously going to be different than cops in the real world (for too many reasons to discuss), and an endless nitpicking of the analogy is not helping us get anywhere. what are you trying to say about the proposal?

I'll point out again that I am happy to discuss the proposal, but there is a limit to how long it's useful to keep making corrections to the same repeated misconceptions. As an old mentor of mine taught me about teaching difficult concepts: It's useful to try explaining things in different forms, because you never know whether someone will click with this explanation or that one; but some people will not click with the idea no matter what you say, and at some point you just have to move on to the next thing and hope they pick it up later. We are getting close to the 'moving on' point here. It may be that neither of you will be able to grasp the concept as intended until you see it in action (a boat you'll be in with probably 2/3 of the people who look at it). There's nothing wrong with that, and if that seems likely to you on sober self-reflection then we should stop beating this horse and get on to the next stage. --Ludwigs2 02:41, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Point 1 - OK, sheriffs don't deal with disputes, they deal with behaviors. How would a sheriff handle the problematic behaviors at talk: Jerusalem?

Point 2 - The problem is that this isn't just an analogy, it's the name of the job. If Wikipedia sheriffs aren't like real world sheriffs then let's call them something different to avoid misleading comparisons.   Will Beback  talk  02:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, I missed that you were talking about sysops in your ABC examples. It doesn't make any difference; my remarks were essentially addressed at your claim that sheriffs would somehow be able to avoid having to make subjective judgements about behaviour (" Sheriffs make their actions based on the obvious, objective behavior of editors on the page..." as you restate it), which as I've argued above is nonsensical. Trivial things like 3RR violation are reasonably objective; all else behavioural requires subjective judgement - especially in the behavioural range in question (extreme behaviour is be dealt with by admin action at present, so that's not the issue). Rd232 ^talk 04:32, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. however, I disagree. there will be a few borderline areas, but even those should be fairly clear as borderline cases go - the system is designed to remove subjectivity. If I were to boil down the sheriff's though process something fierce, it would look like the following:

1. does this edit (or parts thereof) deal strictly with content or improvement of the article? If yes, the sheriff does nothing to that edit or those parts.
2. if no, could this edit (or parts thereof) reasonably be assumed to irritate, inflame, annoy, or aggravate other editors, or otherwise lead to increasing hostility on the page? If yes, kibosh it.

So, edits which are on topic and/or productive are protected; edits which might be questionable are probably safe as long as they are not 'trigger' items; 'trigger' items are reined in or squelched. It's the logic I used when discussing BRD above: bold edits are fine, first reverts are fine, second reverts (re-reverts) are questionable and should receive warnings, third reverts (by anyone) are trigger items that need to be kiboshed. What makes this work is the necessity that anyone who wants to complain about the sheriff's actions has to demonstrate that their behavior is not what the sheriff thought it was. so, that third-revert person has to explain why he didn't read the edit history and realize it was the third revert, or why he thought it was essential to revert for a third time rather than discuss the issue in talk (arguments which will be, as you can imagine, extremely hard to make effectively). likewise, if the sheriff redacts a part of a post in which editor A accuses editor B of being a jerk, editor A will need to explain why calling editor B a jerk was important to the content discussion in progress. Occasionally, the sheriff will misjudge: redact something that really is important to the content discussion, day-block someone for something that doesn't merit it. In those cases the editor will make the argument, sysops (and hopefully the sheriff) will agree, the act will be undone and the sheriff admonished, and no real harm to the discussion will have occurred. If the sheriff is admonished a few times for similar kinds of error, he's off the page and likely desheriffed. No real subjective calls are needed, because the only real 'subjective' moment is over whether a comment is useful for the content discussion, and sheriffs will be very wary of overstepping their bounds on that point (due to the inevitability of getting called on it by the editor in question and the possibility of being desheriffed completely). checks and balances; see what I mean?--Ludwigs2 05:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, that explains your position better, but those ambitions are really quite limited. Editwarring is already handled via the 3RR board and the odd bit of name-calling isn't the thing that really causes discussions to fail or go nowhere. Redaction of unnecessary/offtopic stuff is something I'd envisage the Mediator/PageAssistant doing as well. The split difference is basically "day-block"s, which gives sheriffs too much power (goes in the block log, for one thing, which never goes away) and requires subjective judgement on when it's appropriate. A better alternative I think is short term page bans, which the user is expected to respect (and can be blocked if they don't). There's still subjective judgement there, but because there are no long-term consequences and users can still contribute elsewhere, it's less contentious. And contentious is bad, because it means more time spent arguing about the discussion process, instead of discussing the content. Rd232 ^talk 05:41, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I never said that my ambitions here were high. however, now you're misunderstanding in the other direction:

• I'm not talking about edit-warring - I'm talking about interventions that occur long before the 3rr point is reached and are applied much more sensibly and with much less possibility for gaming.
• Sheriff blocks (as has been discussed extensively previously) are procedural blocks, not administrative - they do not count for any future conditions, and should either be expunged from the block log when done or clearly marked as non-escalating.
• There's still very little subjective judgement, and there's little possibility for contentious discussion about the process because the burden in on the editor to prove that the sheriff stepped outside the bounds of his mandate. Either the sheriff did or the sheriff didn't - what's to discuss?

I'll add that you deeply underestimate the power of moderating behavior on the effectiveness of discussion, but suspect that statement won't have any impact on you. Frankly, you're not saying anything here that I haven't already dealt with elsewhere, so unless you have something that isn't already covered thoroughly on the project page or in this talk page, I'd like to move on so that I can start the process of going over these same worries with the community. There's no sense haggling it out here when I'm just going to have to haggle it out again over there. --Ludwigs2 17:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I can agree that diminishing returns have set in here in this thread, so I'll leave you to it. Rd232 ^talk 17:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

point 1: copy a post or a short passage from that page here: put it in the left half of an {{inbrief}} (or similar) template, and I will use the right half to show you what a sheriff would do with it.

point 2: it uses that kind of name to signify that it is a policing concept, not that it mirrors a particular kind of real world police behavior. but as I said, I'm not too concerned about the name so long as it's not a complete misdirect. 'Moderator' is bland, but would work fine for the purposes. --Ludwigs2 04:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Point 1: Problematic talk pages don't come with annotations to specify what needs to be fixed. I have no idea what the problems are there. Ask Becritical - here's involved there.

Point 2: "Moderator" is fine with me. Bland isn't a problem, is it?   Will Beback  talk  05:13, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Bland's fine with me. I like cutesy as well, however, so... <shrug>  :-)

with respect to point 1, just grab a part at random that you happen to think is problematic (for whatever reason). there's no point my picking a section, because I'll just pick one that favors the proposal. In fact, I was initially going to grab a couple of sections from the arbcom statements for demonstration purposes, but I decided that was shooting fish in a barrel (people are pointed at arbcom), and didn't want to get busted for constructing a positive strawman. --Ludwigs2 05:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

You asked us to try to stump you. Problem pages don't have single problems that are easy to solve - they have complex problems that are hard to diagnose and treat. And the statements at ArbCom may not even be an accurate portrayal of the real problems.   Will Beback  talk  05:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Machu Picchu, Will! You clearly do not understand this project at all, you refuse to give concrete examples so that I can demonstrate it to you, you keep going back to points that I have explained do not apply and raising concerns that I have dismissed at length elsewhere - what's up with that? Again, sheriffs do not need to deal with the complexities of content disputes because they focus on concrete behavior. If you want to give me an example of concrete behavior to work with, I will show you what sheriffs do. if you don't want to give me such an example, then you'll either have to bang your head against the copious abstract explanations I've given so far or wait until a test case is set up and see it in action with the rest of the community. Either way stop waffling. Do you want to give me a concrete example to work with or not? --Ludwigs2 16:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Machu Picchu? No idea what that means. Jerusalem is a contentious topic. User:Becritical has suggested it as an example for the kind of topic where a sheriff could help. OK, so that one has you stumped. Let's pick another. Looking at your recent contributions I see you've posted to Talk:Intelligent design‎, which is another well-known dispute. What specific actions would a good sheriff take on that page to improve the discussions?   Will Beback  talk  18:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

No, if you read what I said, I haven't given any examples of pages I think currently need a Sheriff. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

lol - I've been trying to clean up my mildly crusty language - 'Machu Picchu' seemed like a good expletive substitute (though with my luck, some Mayan priest is going to reincarnate as a wikipedia editor just to complain about my defaming their holy-of holies).

but to the point. You are now being explicitly tendentious, which is frankly offensive coming from a sysop. You people are supposed to be above such things. I asked you for a concrete example to work with, you failed to provide one, and instead you decided to pull some cheesy crud about "has you stumped" as though you'd actually made some point rather than evaded a direct request. There is no sense discussing the matter with you further, because it is evident you have no interest in giving the idea a fair shake, and I simply cannot take you seriously any longer without feeling like a rube.

So, conversation over, have a nice day, see you over at the Pump where the greater public exposure might cow you from committing this kind of crapulence.

However, I'll tell you what: If I've misunderstood you, and you really do want me to show you how a sheriff would work on the ID page, set me up as sheriff there - with full sheriff powers - and I'll show you (and at the same time I'll show you that even someone involved in the conflict can be a sheriff without too much problem, because of the constraints of the system). Not that I expect you to make this happen - you've shown no inclination whatsoever to put your money where your mouth is - but I'm up to the challenge if you are. --Ludwigs2 18:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Please avoid the personal remarks and assumptions of bad faith.

There's no way I could set you up as sheriff on any page. The question is simply this: given a real dispute, what specific actions would a sheriff take to reduce the unhelpful behaviors? Since you don't like the suggestions I offered can you propose one of your own? Not to actually do, but to say what a sheriff would do. If we can't say what a sheriff would do in specific situations then it'll be harder to sell this to the community using broad generalizations. Not impossible, but harder.   Will Beback  talk  19:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

As I have said several times now, if you give me a specific block of talk page text, then I will happily show you what a sheriff would do with it. However, there is no sense discussing it in the abstract, since we have done that extensively already and it has not crystalized for you. You have a choice:

• Provide a block of talk-page text for us to work with, and I'll show you how it's done.
• Do not provide a block of text, and we'll all wait quietly until (when-and-if) the community decides to set up a test case.

I cannot see a third option that does not merely recycle the fruitless abstract discussion we already have, and the fruitless abstract discussion has been recycled so many times already that attempting to recycle it yet again can only be viewed as tendentious. This is not rocket science, Will. Make your choice from A or B, or convince me there's an option C that isn't just the same old thing recycled. --Ludwigs2 19:41, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

No one said being a sheriff would be easy. ;) It means wading through over-long talk page disputes. Why would anyone even want the job? Anyway, I see two issues at talk:Jerusalem: an unresolved RfC ("Poll"), and a proposal for a new lead that hasn't received much support ("Proposed new lead", et seq). Is that specific enough?   Will Beback  talk  20:56, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

How about how a Sheriff would function on this page? Redact some of the things Ludwigs said, and advise you both to disengage and stop disrupting the talk page with a quarrel brought here from other parts, fought out indirectly through posts designed not to trigger any of Wikipedia's mechanisms. And tell Beback that it is disruptive to goad by ignoring what other people have said. In this case the main advice of a Sheriff would be for both of you to disengage and proceed with more fruitful discussions with other editors. The Sheriff might even institute a ban on direct responses to each other. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 21:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Huh? Ludwigs2 asked for scenarios. It was you who suggested talk:Jerusalem as an example. When Ludwig asked for more specificity I highlighted two issues that I see outstanding on that page. (If those aren't good ones maybe you could point out better ones.) That seems like a proper response. Is this the kind of discussion that a sheriff would shut down?   Will Beback  talk  21:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

convenience break (1)

Ludwigs2, this block of text here please. I'll be interested to see how you plan to deal with yourself where you indicate an intention to edit war and get people blocked. And whatever other actions you would take there. Franamax (talk) 21:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

@ franamax. I was waiting for someone to try to turn it back on me that way (i'm actually incredibly surprised that Will didn't jump right on it when I gave him the opening above - it seemed the natural progression from the course of discussion). but regardless, rather than pointing with a link, copy over a reasonable-sized block of text (using the {{inbrief}} template I mentioned to WIll above), and I'll show you how it would be sheriffed. Don't make it too short or we'll miss the nuances; don't make it too long or parts of it may be obviated by sheriff actions in the early part of the discussion.

@ Will. actually, there's not any wading through old talk page disputes: sheriffs are very much in-the-now. Basically what happened before doesn't matter; what matters is that people behave appropriately starting at this moment and into the future. If the sheriff wants to familiarize him/herself with old discussions, fine (that might be useful), but it's not really necessary since the sheriff is not evaluating content and not evaluating editors. the sheriff is just evaluating behavior.

coordinate with franamax - either pull some text from F's link or pull some text from the unresolved RfC or the proposed new lead threads on your link. doesn't matter to me; either is good for demo purposes. I'll take a look at whichever thread you choose, just to get a sense for context. --Ludwigs2 23:32, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I give up. I've presented three examples and none of them are good enough. Why don't you find an sample dispute, one in which none of th current editors here have been involved, to show what specific actions a sheriff could do to help resolve a complex talk page dispute.   Will Beback  talk  23:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, if you are reacting this way to people who feel there are valid points in your proposal, just imagine what is going to happen when you present it to the wider community and get the "no fucking way" people. Some of us are here trying to find evidence for why we might support this and your basic answer seems to be "because I'm right". I've given you an example to work through, you are the "sheriff" and you have watched that thread from its inception. How would you manage it as you saw it unfold? If it makes it easier, I completely disavow any interest on how you would deal with yourself, and I would just like to know how you would handle it in general. But if that is a problem, yes please, pick something of your own choosing as a demo. Franamax (talk) 00:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

dudes, what part of post something here and I'll demonstrate are you having problems with? This is simple english that an average 10 year old would understand without difficulty, and yet the two of you seem confused by it.

If you post something here, I'll demonstrate; if you don't, then I'll wait until the proposal goes to the greater community. I don't care which happens, and I'm not inclined to argue about the issue further. Frankly if you can't figure out what a simple statement like 'post something here and I'll demonstrate' means, there's not much point in discussing more complex concepts, is there? --Ludwigs2 00:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm only 9 years old. Do you want me to copy over the entire thread here so you can mark it up? That will make a bit of a mess, but if that's what you want, sure thing. Make a sub-page? I'm asking you how a "sheriff" would handle that particular thread. You could just list what your specific interventions would be by referring to the timestamps, but if you want a piece of copied text to work with, sure, where do you want it? Recall that I am interested in how you would handle that thread from its outset through to its end, so I'm not able to hive off any particular portion. Franamax (talk) 00:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

As I said previously, I need a section of the thread that's long enough to be meaningful but not too long. remember that the outcome of the thread will be different because of the sheriff's action, so posting the entire thread is pointless. A subpage would be fine if you think that's better; however, this is just a demo so you can get a feel for the concept; you'd actually have to see it live to get the full picture, because it would change according to the reactions of the editors on the page. --Ludwigs2 01:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

What would be your first intervention in that thread, working by timestamp? What would your intervention be? From there, what are the hypothetical "actions and consequences"? I simply can't give you one isolated post to consider - if the basis of your proposal is that each single and individual post should be considered wholly without context, I think you should make that clear. Franamax (talk) 01:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

alright, first two interventions from the link you gave, to show a pattern you can extrapolate from:

• Ludwigs2 04:58, 26 January: sheriff would request a redaction or rephrasing on all or part of "I am trying to work with you all here, but I can do the work without you if it comes to that. are you guys willing to work with me, or not?" not really uncivil, but beginning to show a bit of heat, and not at all necessary to the content discussion.
• Guettarda 05:35, 26 January: sheriff would redact or request a redaction on "Apart from that, you could try to avoid twisting people's comments to mean something quite different to what they have said. In a word, you could try to listen instead of making a whole host of demands. I responded to several of your points, but rather than address what I said, you just go on and on about how I did not respond to your point about coatracking. Stop being so rude, stop demanding people cater to your every whim. And do take a moment to familiarise yourself with basic concepts like main articles and daughter articles. Then maybe we can have a constructive conversation here." leaving aside the fact that G's assertion wasn't even remotely true (which is not something a sheriff would worry about unless it became a much more serious problem), it is obviously unrelated to content improvement, intentionally personal, clearly lacking good faith, and quite heated.

Note that the redaction in the first point may very well have generated a milder response by guettarda in the second point, and the redaction in the second point would have meant that the first (heated) paragraph of my subsequent response to guettarda would never have been written. these two redactions by themselves might have set a new tone for the discussion that follows.

it goes without saying that neither I nor Guettarda could reasonably argue that either of these statements are necessary for the ongoing content discussion: he or I might try to make a case for it at AN, but I suspect the result of such an attempt would be painful ridicule at the hands of sysops. and needless to say, if we try to revert the sheriff and reassert the argumentative text, we'd earn a 1-day ban (or a 1-day block if we were persistent about it). I think it's safe to say that under a sheriff's watch the thread would never have devolved to the nasty-spirited sniping it eventually devolved to. It may not have resulted in any new consensus, mind you, but it would get to the 'no consensus' stage without any of the excess emotional baggage. --Ludwigs2 02:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Well put. That's how I would envision it too, and you do a good job of noting how the intervention would change the future dynamic. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 04:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the sysops who put so much time and effort into badgering me over this seem to have no response whatsoever now that I've given them the example they so desperately demanded. What do you think, BC, was my example so brilliant that they have all been stunned into silent agreement? As if... 5:1 odds on 10 wiki-bucks that when we post this at the Pump at least one of them will renew these same objections as though this thread had never happened. I'd have given you 50:1 if this were a private message, but a public post increases the embarrassment risk, so 5:1 seems more prudent. I am not made of wiki-bucks, you know...

At any rate, I've been slacking on the 'presentation style' discussion because of the verbosity of this thread (prior to my providing an example, that is), so I'll attend to that later today. --Ludwigs2 16:05, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Heh, that's about it. [Bit of redacted stuff here, sry] Well, we just need a trial or two. If we can get that, we'll be in business. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 17:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm grateful for the example. My real life work load is jammed but I have tried to check in and follow how this developing proposal is meant to work. And I've read the so called "block of text" example through a number of times. The hypothetical solution hasn't alleviated my doubts. Maybe this is why--I don't think that any incivility there led to the stand-off. It was just noise. And no sooner did one point a finger about incivility and the other side is claiming they're an civility victim too. The stand-off was over how the article should look. Not everybody is going to agree, no matter how civil they are to each other. So when it goes on and on, then it's of course a problem of one side not letting it go and the other not willing to budge. It is exactly that. So it's content, not etiquette faux pas, causing the impasse.

A nanny censoring the discussion will simply add to the disruption. Instead of editors learning how to either deal with each other or deal with the problem through dispute resolution, now this new nanny will blow the personal dynamics into a 3-way dispute. Above there's some of blaming of sysops and arbs for their handling of problems--and that's despite their largely peer reviewed milieu. But somehow the blame games, Monday morning quarterbacking and tribalism will cure themselves when the solution is for one person to nanny talk page comments? Heavy handed moderation in forums is stultifying. And all of us as editors already have some discretion in redacting talk page comments--I've done it lots of times. And I've asked editors to redact (with mixed success). It doesn't require any official "office", the task itself demands judgment, and title or no title, some will agree, others won't. So I'm not sold, sorry. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:20, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes well that's fine, but the real question is, would you be willing to let it be tried? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 04:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

"Tried" is fine. "Imposed" someplace is not. I was only half jesting before that this be the test case. New guideline proposals are perhaps the best place to start. You'd have less pushback for the experiment (it's a proposal), and both the finished product and the process by which it was derived may be more dispassionately judged by the community at large. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:42, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

ProfM: I don't expect you or anyone else to fully understand the system until you see it in action. I'd hoped for a little more good faith and/or intuitive grasp than I've actually run across (not surprising, since most of the people who have contributed here so far dislike me for one valid reason or another), but it's a subtle concept and it takes some getting used to. The thing you have to know about me for this to make sense is that I am perhaps the strongest and most knowledgable advocate for the consensus process on the project. I have faith, if you will, that the consensus process - done honestly and fairly - can resolve a large majority of the problems on wikipedia. The problem is that most editors (and most sysops) have only a dim and ignorant conception of what the consensus process is (no offense to anyone), and so most debates on wikipedia have as much in common with consensus discussions as Mubarak's purportedly democratic regime had in common with actual democracy.

This proposal is designed to enforce and reinforce the consensus process, nothing more. It doesn't mean that the discussion will actually reach a result, it doesn't mean that the discussion will reach the right result (whatever that might mean to you); it doesn't mean that editors will be any more honorable or knowledgable than they are now. It just means that the discussion will be required to be a consensus discussion in its true and proper sense, and not the steaming piles of garbage that often pass for consensus discussions on project. that's all.

You are entitled to think that that's a stupid idea if you like, but I will remind you that consensus in one of the five pillars of the project, and this sheriff thing is a first step in taking the idea of consensus seriously. Of course, if you don't believe that we should take the idea of consensus seriously, then maybe it's time we scratched it off as one of the pillars and moved to a more autocratic form of social organization. That would be better than the (unabashedly stupid) system we have on the project now. So, you tell me what you want to do:

• Do you want to throw in the towel on consensus completely and try something else?
• Do you want to argue that the system we have is actually a good consensus system?
• Do you want to take some steps to give consensus discussions a fighting chance?

First point - fine with me, I can work in an autocratic system at need. second point - meh, you don't have a ghost of a chance of winning that debate with me. third point - welcome to sheriffville (unless you have a better idea). This proposal will work as advertised if you give it half a chance. --Ludwigs2 07:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Well....see, this is where the rubber meets the road. I don't think this proposal has demonstrated that nannyminding talk page civility enables consensus any better than the system in place now. The "nip it immediately before it turns poisonous" prescription is as likely to shut off substantive dialog before it's fully articulated as it is to facilitate it.

I am not convinced that consensus isn't emerging. I don't know that consensus has been defined well enough to recognize when it makes itself evident.

I do think the system in place we have now is a good consensus system--content wise. It can be strongly criticized in places as overly strident, trivial, myopic, clumsy .... all the things we cringe at. But hell yes this ugly messy system has somehow meandered its way to producing to a bigger, better quality resource. I'm not blind.

The system here is chewing to pieces its volunteers. The content is improving by leaps and bounds through this model, while those feeding it feel increasingly dehumanized. And that's where we are. I haven't seen here a convincing case that this would be cured by vigilantly babysitting the interpersonal stuff. This can't be fixed by babysitting. That's old school. This is a new thing. Like industrialism, yes inhuman machinery produce more reliable widgets, and yes it displaces people, and alienates workers....so now what? Regressing to the policing of dialog? I don't get it. I'm telling you, if that's the only proposal, forget about it...that's about as realistic as policing physics.

So to summarize, I think "consensus" happens, but volunteers suffer the worse for it, not content. Content is on this astounding trajectory to improvement. Professor marginalia (talk) 09:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs: "the consensus process - done honestly and fairly - can resolve a large majority of the problems on wikipedia". Do you mean that it can resolve the large majority of those problems where the participants are honest and fair? If so, I agree. Or do you mean that the consensus process can in fact be made to operate honestly and fairly in the large majority of cases because in the large mjority of cases the participants can be persuaded to be honest and fair? Or do you mean that in the large majority of cases the process can somehow be made to work honestly and fairly regardless of whether the participants are honest and fair? Peter jackson (talk) 09:53, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Professor, like you I'm pretty sceptical about the effectiveness of this proposal but am willing to see it tried. But I disagree with you about the effectiveness of the present system. You might like to look at the official sources cited on my user page for the case against the system. Peter jackson (talk) 09:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

"bigger, better quality resource"? Well, bigger, obviously, but better? Just think about this. The amount of editing being done on WP hasn't grown since 2007. But the number of articles has continued to grow. I haven't checked, but let's suppose Moore's Law applies, & the size doubles every 18 months. By simple logistics that means the amount of work going into maintaining a fixed amount of material is halved every 18 months. But most articles get out of date: those that are purely historical still have to take account of recent research. So even if the quality was perfect in 2007 it must steadily deteriorate. All this applies regardless of the effectiveness of this proposal &/or the existing system. I don't know how it could be dealt with. Peter jackson (talk) 10:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

@ ProfM: This proposal (to date) has had one single two-line demonstration and a number of theoretical explanations that have been muddled by people who don't care to understand the concept (because they are mostly interested in giving me a hard time). That might be sufficient for someone who is open-minded and thoughtful (or for someone who is thoroughly sick of the current system), but that's not going to convince anyone who is taking a cynical or skeptical perspective. You yourself are not open-minded (your pissy use of the 'nanny' motif and your misrepresentation of the system as censorship shows that you're not), and it's obviously going to take more than what's been given here to convince someone like you of the value of the system. I accept that - I expected a lot of knee-jerk resistance to this idea - and all I can do is keep pushing through the resistance until I either convince you with reason or convince you with a demonstration, or fail on a fair test with both. but I'm going to insist on a fair test; I'm not going away because people who don't understand the idea pooh-pooh it.

So let's be clear: Most encyclopedias have autocratic systems. Something like Britannica has a hierarchy of editors under a hierarchy of managers: they pay people to be clear, informed, and neutral, hire experts where needed, and the result is a clean, sophisticated, unbiased encyclopedia. 95% of the people who edit wikipedia would get fired their first week at Britannica. You probably wouldn't, I probably wouldn't (though I'd probably get a talking to by the boss for being a grumpy curmudgeon), but most newbies and a lot of well-established editors (including probably half the sysops I've run across) would get canned straight-out either for pushing their own agendas about content or for behavioral violations like insulting others or disrupting the workplace. The kind of discussion that Will and I had above, for instance, would have gotten Will sacked in any normal business. There are many editors here who push for a more autocratic system, and that wouldn't be bad (well, except that the editors who push for such things tend to be people I wouldn't actually trust with power). However, on wikipedia that autocratic model is explicitly rejected. whoever wrote the Five pillars (Jimbo or some other early editor) wanted this to be an encyclopedia that anyone could edit, and wanted this to be a consensus system, and had a certain amount of faith that people could get together and make a consensus system work.

Now what you wrote above shows me clearly that you do not understand what a real consensus system is. Just for the obvious points:

• You say things like "I am not convinced that consensus isn't emerging." That confuses 'consensus' (a singular agreement reached at a particular moment in time) with the 'consensus process' (an ongoing system of discussion aimed at generating moments of consensus). This is a common confusion on wikipedia and an ugly, ugly problem: I've seen too many cases where some small group of editors dictate that a 'consensus has emerged' on an article and then systematically destroy the consensus process so that no further changes can be considered.
• You say the system here is "chewing to pieces its volunteers" and it is "those feeding it feel increasingly dehumanized." But consensus discussions are inclusive, not exclusive - they never chew participants to pieces and are always inherently humanizing. Where you see volunteers chewed up and spit out, it's because some other editors have decided to abandon the consensus process entirely and destroy that volunteer through authoritative machinations, character assassination, or sheer emotional/personal/rhetorical assaults. That's not consensus, that's demagoguery, which is about as antithetical to true consensus as you can get without being forced to abandon the term.
• You say, sarcastically: "Regressing to the policing of dialog?" But in fact no one has ever tried policing dialog on wikipedia the way I'm suggesting here, and so this isn't a regression. It's a progression to a proper form of civil society.

You are skewering yourself on your own internal contradictions here: on one hand you want to retain some connection to the ideal of consensus discussion because you see it as a kind of liberty, but on the other hand you are unwilling to accept the kinds of restrictions that keep liberties from becoming a collective dysfunction, and so you find yourself advocating for a system that you yourself acknowledge is dissatisfying and dysfunctional, for no good reason. Here I am, offering you a system that will clearly keep editors from being chewed up and dehumanized, yet you are rejecting it out of hand because... because... why exactly are you rejecting it again? ah, because it's not 'realistic'.

Beg to differ.

@ Peter: 'Consensus' is term that comes from modern liberal ideology, and the ideal incorporates a lot of liberalism's 'checks and balances' mentality. People are assumed to come into any discussions with their own idiosyncratic agendas, understandings, and interests, and the discussion becomes the arena in which those individual differences play out. The issue is how those differences play out. In unstructured discussions, a lot of interpersonal politics comes into play - groups band together, personal rivalries and animosities color actions, ingrained attitudes are treated as analytical truths, Machiavelli rears his ugly head, and etc. People evaluate things based as much on prejudice and ignorance as on anything tangibly related to the topic, and power politics becomes the normal mode of operation ('power politics' meaning that discussions are settled by one group gathering enough power - through any of a number of savory and unsavory practices - to impose its viewpoint as truth and suppress all objections). What I mean by a 'honest and fair consensus discussion' is a discussion in which the unsavory aspects of power politics are precluded, so that the only way people can effectively build power is by building agreement through reasoned argument. Power politics will never go away (it has been with us for all of recorded history), but the idea that drives a true consensus system is that power politics can be put to good use by restricting it so that consensus-building is the only effective form of power available. Do that, and people will take to consensus-building like flies to honey.

Of course, in its idealistic form the consensus concept generally assumes that people are willing to self-regulate if you explain the precepts of consensus to them (i.e., that they will consciously abandon unsavory forms of power politics and restrict themselves to consensus-building). That's self-admittedly naive, and the problem then becomes how to guard the consensus process against unsavory forms of power politics that will inevitably arise. That's the idea behind sheriff system. --Ludwigs2 16:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Ludwig - is your response to me just now demonstrably different in terms of "tone" or "ad hominem" than what's found in the block of text here? Let's say a Sheriff forced it be cleaned up. It wouldn't accomplish anything except possibly piss you off-but no worries, I can cope. We simply disagree. You know that happens, right? Even in consensus building? Professor marginalia (talk) 18:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding, my use of the terms "nannying" and "regressing" were not sarcastic. Your own analogy was that of a "home-room teacher" charged with "keeping the unruly kids in line." Sheriffs don't police incivility. Those who mind children do. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I know that happens. But I generally expect that where two editors get stuck in a discussion, third parties can can enter with new opinions and compromises that might clear the situation up. However, note the following:

• if the discussion between the two stuck editors is calm, succinct, and civil, third parties can easily evaluate the merits of both sides of the argument and give informed opinions, which advances the consensus discussion
• If the discussion between the two stuck editors is filled with heat, nastiness, and wikipolitics, then no one can evaluate the arguments properly (not without a lot of effort digging through crap), and reasonable editors will just go away, leaving the consensus discussion to die.

The second is what invariably happens on a contentious page like ID or Global Warming, where reasonable editors avoid it like the plague and the page is left to battles between clans of pigheaded advocates. Now on the plus side, we have a lot of pigheaded advocates for science on wikipedia, so articles like ID don't turn into utterly crappy soapbox pieces written by pigheaded advocates for the other side of the issue. But pigheaded advocates for science are still pigheaded advocates, the articles they write (while better) are nowhere near unbiased, and the hostility they generate by being a clan of pigheaded advocates spreads out through the entire project in many unpleasant ways.

Now since you (and other) keep edging around this point, let me be clear about the social problem that I am presenting you with here:

• I am generally considered to be an ass (I think we can all agree to that)
• I am right (that's demonstrable so I don't really need agreement, though it would be nice - which, I know, was a complete ass of thing to say)

I am generally considered to be an ass because I challenge people who don't like to be challenged to be reasonable on things they do not want to be reasonable about, often by co-opting the same skanky tactics that they use to advocate for their unreasonable positions (which I can do because - for the most part - I understand their skanky tactics better than they do). I do that because that's the way wikipedia currently works, and I would be a far less effective editor on the venues I tend to frequent if I behaved in any other way. You'll notice that I never start out on any page acting like an ass, and on pages where I can have civil discussions without adopting the 'ass' role, I'm never an ass. but it's a tool in my toolbox that I use when I need to. I fully expect that if I end up working on a page with a sheriff that things I say might get redacted (or worse), and I'm perfectly OK with that (god bless Kant and the categorical imperative) because on a page with a sheriff I would never actually need to be an ass, because no one else would be being one either. And that's the key to this whole idea - stop the escalation of 'assitude' at the root.

I recognize that it's difficult to give credit to an idea that comes from someone you disrespect, but there's not a darned thing I can do about that at this point: either you find your way through that emotional tangle or you don't. Just be aware that I can make the distinction even if you can't.

to your P.s. - bull. you're trying to turn a loose analogy into a federal crime. get back to the substance of the proposal, please. --Ludwigs2 19:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have been fair to both you and your proposal here. While you've responded by attacking me and my motives personally, and now make excuses for it. Do I really need to point out this isn't strengthening your position at all? Professor marginalia (talk) 20:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm actually trying to give you an object example (per your own suggestion about using this talk page). Had a sheriff been present here, both of us would have had a few statements redacted (I'll point out which, if you like), and we would never have gotten around to this last point you made, where you are focused entirely on discussing my behavior. We'd either be talking about the proposal, or not talking at all. see how it works? --Ludwigs2 20:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes please. Point out the statements of mine you'd have redacted. Professor marginalia (talk) 20:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Just yours? ok, that will make things simpler. I'll refer to my posts as I need to (and otherwise you can imagine the redactions that would have been asked of me):

• on this post, A sheriff might request a rewording on the first line, would probably redact the "it wouldn't accomplish anything except piss you off" bit, and would probably have issued a warning to both of us about importing arguments from other pages. In fact, a good sheriff would probably have nixed this entire line of discussion (here, or much earlier) with a recommendation to find an example that didn't involve either of the participants - too difficult to have an analytical discussion where it's clear that the example chosen has a risk of being personalized by one side.
• this edit you would probably not have made, because the sheriff would have redacted my 'sarcastic' comment earlier, specifically to prevent the defensive reaction that prompted you to post this. If you beat the sheriff to the punch, however, the sheriff would have asked me to redact my 'sarcastic' comment, and asked you to redact this as unneeded and challenging. this has nothing useful to do with content, and is likely to prompt the kind of pointed comment I made at the end of my subsequent post.
• this edit, again, would either not have been made at all (because of redactions made to my intermediary edit) or would have gotten a request for redaction. It has nothing to do with content, and simply represents you defending yourself against a perceived attack from me, and then turning it back on me as a different kind of personal commentary, one that I would be very likely to perceive as an attack from you. absolutely useless to the content discussion, and unarguably inflammatory.

Do you see what I'm talking about? Even you - who have always struck me as being basically calm and reasonable - can find yourself going (in the course of three posts, no less) from basically reasonable content discussion to pure inflammatory personal commentary without even realizing it. Further, it would be so natural and easy for me to respond to your post with another swipe at you, and you with another swipe at me - we might even do it without realizing we're doing it - until five posts down the line we are saying really nasty things to each other (unless one of us has the good sense to leave the page). Any one of the places I pointed out, a sheriff could step in and squelch the escalation, pushing us away from the personal and back towards content discussion. Not only that, but the sheriff can make the correction early, before we get our egos involved too dramatically, and that will make it easier for both of us to shift gears back to content.

As I said, a stitch in time, saves nine (or what would it be here: an early redaction stops some ugly reactions?) --Ludwigs2 21:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, here's my say then. Taking each in turn.

• I haven't imported anything. Let me translate the scenario: someone insults me; no big deal to me-I tune it out; the sheriff rides in to redact it; it does nothing for me but it might make the editor who started it even angrier. Get it? My point was as straightforward as that. And as far as I'm concerned, you and I have no bad "history" between us. What is that about?
• Again, perfectly straightforward. You used the analogy, I used it. Believe me, I am calm and I think I'm being perfectly reasonable. But you think walking on eggshells to this degree is what we need here, really? I had strong doubts this proposal would really smooth the waters around here, but I had no idea you'd envisioned such an extreme level of talk page tiptoeing. Ludwig--this will never fly here.
• But the thing is, there is no escalation. You blew up on me. I stood up to you. It's Done. Now if I am going to have to go looking for a sheriff every time somebody vents at me, then they all escalate. People with their petty eruptions will buck even more at being hushed all' the time.

This sheriff is sounding more and more like Big Brother, Ludwig. I know I won't contribute here if that's the shape of things to come. I'm not a child and I don't act like one. And I won't be reduced to one just so I can volunteer here. I don't think most adults would either. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

So if I understand what you're saying, you don't disagree with anything that I said, you just don't like it. fair enough. but please note, from my perspective I didn't blow up on you - I was merely responding reasonably (with directness) to what I viewed as your miscomprehension of the proposal. Please point out anything you think constitutes 'blowing up', if you can find anything. Remember, this was an example I was giving to you - this was not a heated discussion on my part, but a planned exercise in how rapidly a simple conversation can deteriorate. there you are thinking you're being reasonable, here I am intentionally being reasonable, and oops! how did we get where we got?

You're also forgetting that this isn't intended for every-day editing, but just for problem pages. It's a remedial system for places where editors have shown they need a remedial system in place.

But as it is... I don't (again) think you're really going to grok this until you see it in action, so we might as well table this discussion until the community can set up a test case. --Ludwigs2 00:14, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I disagree with most of what you said. And fine, if you say so, you didn't "blow up" on me. You pretended to "blow up" on me. Either way, my point stands. If an editor erupts I can tune it out or I can call him or her on it. Just like I've done a hundred times. It almost never escalates. So exaggerating how disruptive my comments here have been to somehow imply they serve as examples of the first steps on the slippery-slope to all-out war at ANI or arbcom - uh, no. That's not a compelling argument.

Anyway, you say we'll understand it by witnessing it in action, rather than by trying to further explain it. And I appreciate you making the effort to "stage" a pretend conflict here to demonstrate, and maybe didn't help me "get it" because your provocations weren't getting a real rise out of me. But I don't think you'd have to stage a phony fight to try this out someplace. In other words, let editors feel what it's like with a Sheriff black-lining what they say and judge for themselves whether they're more or less inclined to focus on the content rather than their fellow editors. I don't think it matters if there are real personal animosities or battle lines to contend with. Professor marginalia (talk) 01:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... you disagree that your comments in my bullet points two and three were entirely personal and unnecessary to the content discussion? You disagree that using an example that involves one of the discussion participants might lead to personalization? You disagree that your defense that you 'weren't being sarcastic' was a response to my claim that you were being sarcastic? I'd love to here your justifications for that, because those seem like fairly indisputable observations. And again, please point to some place where I even pretended to blow up at you. All of that 'blowing up at' stuff is in your perception, not in anything I did or said. You're imagining it.

Really, PM, what happened here is that I challenged you, you misunderstood my statements and tried to counter them, and the conversation got progressively more personal. It's all very, very human.

But as I pointed out earlier, while it would be nice if you recognized it from this, that would take a degree of self-reflection and introspection that can't be depended on. This proposal will only get a fair test when it's done for real, in a live context, where people have a 'before' and 'after' that they can see directly. I mean, don't get me wrong: anyone who gives it fair consideration can see what I'm talking about just from these two examples, but convincing people with a skeptical attitude is harder. so maybe we should move on to that, yah? --Ludwigs2 05:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Is this another "experiment" on me? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But if you think these Sheriffs will be as preternaturally adept at mind reading or psychoanalysis as you are or are pretending to be, Ludwig, this isn't plan-it's a delusion. I'm saying exactly what I mean, and instead of simply "hearing" it you'd look to bureaucratizing these kinds of second-guessing, Tin-Starred head games? Ok. I can let it go. Obviously nothing else I have to say will accomplish much here. Go for it, Ludwig. This proposal will sink or float on its own merits. I'm content to let it sort itself out--while I bystand. No hard feelings. But this is the kind of "impasse" that illustrates to you this is a good plan and to me that it isn't. The proof is in the pudding, so at least on that I can agree with you. Professor marginalia (talk) 06:18, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

wow.

ok, let's do that. but just for your own consideration (you don't need to talk about it here or anywhere, and I really don't want to perpetuate the issue because I can see the extent to which we are miscommunicating), I'd ask you to come back to this thread in three or four days and reread this exchange. I think with a more distanced perspective you might better see the point I'm making. --Ludwigs2 07:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)