On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I agree with you completely, Phil. ArbCom, as it
presently is, is a
disaster. And is a major obstacle to achieving a healthy, collaborative and
fair creative community. My questions are: Who has the power to change that?
How would the process that could evaluate ArbCom, and bring about change,
get started? I would be interested in helping.
ArbCom has far less influence than people give it credit for. What you
are looking for is leadership, and that has to come from the community
(or a body elected for that purpose by the community), not a dispute
resolution body (which is what ArbCom is, or at least what it started
out as). What is needed is a body other than ArbCom to provide
leadership. That is what Wikipedia is lacking. There have been
attempts (by both ArbCom and the community) to institute such a body,
but the "community" tends to resist radical change, which is of course
part of the problem (though it is also a safety feature against too
radical changes).
The upcoming ArbCom elections might be a good time to air some of
these matters, but only if done in a well-thought out manner, by
someone with the time and motivation to see through a process that may
take months or years to come to a conclusion.
Carcharoth