I do not think Mr. Bauder or his arbitration committee ever systematically examined what advocates did. Why did so many editors thank us for the help we gave them in resolving their cases? The arbitration committee never “liked” the Members Advocates association because it was not “official” i.e. blessed by Jimbo Wales. We never sought such blessing nor wanted it. We were a freely organized association that had fundamental democratic principles, something that threatened a lot of people at Wikipedia and Wikimedia.

The reason the advocates association was closed down, in my opinion, was because we refused to be part of the “gang”. We, as a group, wanted to be independent of all the Wikipedian hierarchy, that was something that threatened a lot of people. The reality is that Wikipedia is mostly controlled by people who have agendas and not just individuals who are interested in contributing information. The rhetoric of “all the world’s knowledge for free” is just that, rhetoric. No encyclopedia can be all embracing, any conversion of knowledge to information will be incomplete, it is always a rendering of opinions about what is important and what is not.

It is easy for Mr. Bauder to suggest advocates did not help their “clients” at the end point of the dispute resolution process. He only saw the hard cases, the ones that could not get resolved. He is also imposing a lawyers model on dispute resolution, one that I feel is erroneous. Our whole focus at the Members’ Advocates association was to foster dialogue, conciliation, and advocacy not to try and create a legal system within Wikipedia which is what I feel most, of not all of the arbitrators within Wikipedia have been trying to do. Why? Because it is their little part of history, their link to the famous “God-King” Jimbo Wales, the ascendence of the great wiki encyclopedia that will one day be looked upon as the greatest encyclopedia project ever undertaken by the human race (this is where you get teary eyed and start coughing). Really if you look through Wikipedia projects today you see a lot of misinformation and opinions in Wikipedia entries that have not been challenged through the dispute resolution process. The “superstructure” of Wikipedian volunteerism has become too overbearing, too confusing and in some cases just stupid because of many volunteers who are not contributing knowledge to Wikipedia but are involved in “creating” a non-existent community. There is no Wikipedia community, it is just a public relations ploy by the corporate types (yes even the non-profit world has corporatism) that have taken over the organization as a means to obtain money and fame. Today Wikipedia is more about fund raising, public relations and repeating the party platform that about an open source collaboration between people. I would say it has become an open source collaboration against people of all kinds for them benefit of certain groups. This is a reason a lot of women and elderly people refuse to participate.

For example when I know from original research something is not right I am not allowed to say that!!!
published resources seem to always be the most uptodate reference. Why not original sources? Also it varies between articles if popular press or academic journals are the preferred source.

It seems that in the English and French and Finnish wikipedia – those who write stuff with references not in those languages have their work dismissed – a stupid policy that academia and newspapers don’t follow so why should wikipedia?

Lastly something I have found particularly problematic is that we have to say what we are aiming at and what our bias is. Now I am aiming at adding casual facts that I come across that are missing or are wrong. And when researching or I know about something familiar to me that I can add the info in. Yet the cultural assumption is taht I have an agenda, without one I cannot fit the angle they want and so do not register.

We try to not multiply rules, in fact, there really is only rule: Build an information resource. From that all else follows.