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Himorogi in Japan are most commonly seen at construction sites, where they stand for a while before actual work begins. The zigzag-shaped paper streamer hanging from the boundary ropes are called shide (紙垂).

Information asymmetry

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Senkaku Marriage of "content" and "conduct"

This is a response to a question Newyorkbrad asked. It took time for me to craft it.

To add this at this time, do I need to ask permission from you and your co-author? If so, this is my request.

If permissible, where do I add this? --Tenmei (talk) 19:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

1 . Newyorkbrad asked a question:
I do not understand specifically what you are driving at with this proposal. Please explain in a bit more detail (but only a bit more, please). -- Newyorkbrad 00:44, 22 August 2011
2. This was my initial, short response.
These concepts are illustrated in the diffs of Qwyrxian and Bobthefish2 in one short thread Talk:Senkaku Islands/Archive 7#U.S. Control prior to 1972. --Tenmei 19:49, 24 August 2011
3. This is an untimely expanded analysis:
In this ArbCom case, "content" and "conduct" are sometimes married, not divorced. Synergies in the marriage of information asymmetry and delegitimisation is a significant factor which ArbCom may have overlooked.
According to Elen of the roads, "A useful thing that the parties can do is help Arbcom with ... what it is that [WP:RfArb/Senkaku] is all about....".
In part, the case is about tit-for-tat diffs. Stepping back, the ArbCom case is also about Information asymmetry (ja:情報の非対称性) and Moral hazard (zh:道德风险)
Information asymmetry. Without using the term explicitly, Magog acknowledges the information asymmetry, e.g.,
"... it's just so difficult to read that page history and figure out what's gotten some people upset and what hasn't." -- Magog the Ogre 06:43, 13 August 2011
The term "information asymmetry" implicates the study of decision-making where one party has more or better information than the other. In effect, Magog acknowledges an imbalance which might cause decision-making and its consequences to go awry.
The genesis of this ArbCom case is distilled in one thread. At Talk:Senkaku Islands/Archive 7#U.S. Control prior to 1972, STSC and Bobthefish2 attempt (a) to modify an intransitive verb and (b) to add "by the Americans". Both the verb usage and the three words have significant ramifications which are recognized immediately by John Smith's, Phoenix7777, Oda Mari and me. Qwyrxian doesn't "get it", and he marginalizes what he doesn't understand, e.g.,
Okay, you know what, it's not really that important to me (other editors may speak for themselves). I am still firmly convinced that the sentence with "by the Americans" is grammatically incorrect, and that, by definition, grammatically incorrect sentences cannot be "precise," but it really isn't important enough to fight about ...." -- Qwyrxian 09:44, 27 January 2011
In subsequent months, the significance of this diff is emphasized by Qwyrxian when he repeatedly points to arguing about three words as the proof that outside intervention by mediation or arbitration is needed. Characterising others as " pretty much entrenched and non-collaborative" is demonstrably a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Moral Hazard. Economists distinguish "moral hazard" involving hidden actions from "adverse selection" involving hidden information. Both are special sub-sets of information asymmetry; and both exacerbated in Wikipedia by the unexamined consequences of the hortatory WP:Assume Good Faith.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman explains moral hazard as "... any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly."
A. Bobthefish2 proposes contriving conditions which cause Senkaku articles to be locked, e.g.,
"Let's just get the two pages locked so that they will move on and go mess with better-monitored pages like 'Japan in World War II' and 'Nanjing Massacre'." -- Bobthefish2 08:45, 27 January 2011
B. The strategic thinking is underscored by repeating the proposal, e.g.,
"Anyhow, the lack of any constructive efforts on this page is evident. Perhaps locking this will allow some people to go off and contribute their time on something like Nanking_Massacre_denial." -- Bobthefish2 21:34, 27 January 2011
C. Locking an article stigmatizes everyone in the manner of Mercutio's "plague o' both your houses!" which overwhelms all else ... which is part of the objective the gambit was intended to achieve.
Qwyrxian was only partly correct in assessing the impact of Bobthefish2 and others, e.g.,
"Of course, the problem is that any comments I make like this are useless ... and really, even if you could be blocked (say, if this went to ArbCom), you have nothing to lose, since you're not really interesting in actually editing Wikipedia, anyway." -- Qwyrxian 00:20, 9 June 2011
Summary. In our collaborative editing context, "delegitimisation" refers to a process in which an editor or editors are strategically undermined. WP:Delegitimization as a tactic is about deflecting attention away from writing or content, focusing instead on the writer or writers. Information asymmetries exacerbated the short- and longer-term consequences.

Graphic representation of evidence

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see Signpost, 26 Sept 2011
  • Cool criticism and praise picture. What's the story behind it? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:36, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, a very good idea. The visual restatement caused me to re-examine the case in a fresh way. --Tenmei (talk) 15:20, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

B. There are complaints about style, but what about the substance of my writing? My prose was sufficiently clear that Jorgenev distilled one part of it in the graphic analysis of File:Criticismandpraise senkaku islands arb com case.png in this week's Signpost

  1. Please notice the green arrow from me to Lvhis. What does this mean?
  2. Please consider that after months of arguments based on opinions only, Lvhis re-positioned inline citations to the lead paragraph from other parts of the article. Why did this happen?
  3. This small green arrow draws attention to a step back from the kind of opinion-based arguments which debate normalizes. This green arrow is emblematic of my serial attempts to highlight WP:V as common ground for moving forward.
  4. Perhaps most important, Lvhis' edit here suggests that my deprecated talk page investments were at last beginning to bear dividends.

In evidence, I posit that "Some patterns can be discerned across several threads; and this kind of problem stands apart from searching for 'bad apples'" ....


Discouragement

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Stepping back, I adopt Nihonjoe's assessment as axiomatic:

Tenmei is obviously willing to work with us and we're willing to work with him on this issue. Tenmei has complied with every little nit-picky thing you've come up with, and yet you still keep throwing out more that he must do. There's a limit to how many hoops you should make someone jump through when they are going above and beyond to show they are willing to improve. -- 日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:15, 7 April 2011

After jumping through so many hoops, what else was I expected to do?

Stepping back, I also adopt DGG's words as if they were my own:

"I joined Wikipedia do improve its quality. i recognized it would be a slow process. It does not surprise me that it is not faster, and I thus have no reason to get angry because I had misjudged he difficulty ... We have serious content problems, but they to a considerable extent are inseparable from the inherent problems of any project like ours that operates without editorial control: the need for truly competent referencing, for understandable writing, for balance in coverage between and among articles, for avoiding promotionalism of people's individual viewpoints, and, more especially, the need to update every article in Wikipedia in a regular and reliable manner .... What I think is truly harmful is anything that discourages .... -- DGG 04:42, 9 March 2010

The discouragement of this case is plain enough, but not much else. --Tenmei (talk) 02:43, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


Epistemic community
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Bob Reinalda (1998), p. 184, p. 184, at Google Books citing Peter Haas (1992),

"An epistemic community is a network of people from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.
"They have
(1) a shared set of normative and principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social action of community members;
(2) shared causal beliefs, which are derived from their analysis of practices leading or contributing to a central set of problems in their domain and which then serve as the basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between posible policy actions and desired outcomes;
(3) shared notions of validity — that is, intersubjective, internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain of their expertise; and
(4) a common policy enterprise -- that is, a set of common practices associated with a set of problems to which their professional competence is directed, presumably out of the conviction that human welfare will be enhanced as a consequence.
References
  • Haas, P.M. (1992). "Introduction. Epistemic communities and international policy coordination," International Organization 46,1:1-35.
  • Reinalda, Bob and Bertjan Verbeek. (1998). Autonomous Policy Making by International Organizations. London: Routledge. 10-ISBN 0415164869/13-ISBN 9780415164863; 13-ISBN 9780203450857;10-ISBN 020345085X; OCLC 39013643

Negotiation

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Harvard Program on Negotiation