Comment by lukan

Comment by lukan 9 hours ago

3 replies

Oh in general for sure, but my first (attempted?) edit for Wikipedia was 20 years ago so I am not a completely newb.

And this is kind of like a court decision.

But in a real court, I can see the verdict and the laws that were broken. All in complicated, but readable english. Which makes it clear (usually). But in wikipedia to understand a indefinite ban, I have to understand global wiki community dynamics first? I am a bit reminded of Kafka - The Trial.

krisoft 7 hours ago

> But in a real court, I can see the verdict and the laws that were broken. All in complicated, but readable english.

Thats not really true either. There is a lot to unpack to understand court cases. Just the hearsay rule and its exception would fill a book. Jurisdiction, double jeopardy, means rea, “reasonable man”, Brady disclosure, fruit of poisonous tree, presumption of regularity, habeas corpus, SLAP, reasonable doubt, writ of mandamus, motion to dismiss, motion to supress, motion for change of venue, motion in limine, amicus curiae, consideration. Just to unpack the latin terms makes your head spin, and then you will be caught out by some term with some seamingly easy to understand common meaning used in surprising ways.

One can almost say it is a whole profession to understand what is going on in court. We could call them lawyers or something if we want to be fancy about it. And then turns out even those specialist further specialise in narrower areas.

  • simonw 4 hours ago

    Right: and at least in the court system a whole lot of people are being paid a whole lot of money to help move that progress along.

    Almost all of Wikipedia's community administration is done by volunteers working for free!

    • croemer 2 hours ago

      Unavoidably, some of the administration is probably done by undisclosed paid editors who administer to gain goodwill as a defense against allegations of paid editing.