Peter Mackay wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Garion1000
On 1/24/06, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to be the first to congratulate the new Arbitrators.
Or offer sympathy. :)
But yes, congratulations.
Garion (just browsed through some arb cases)
Congratulations to the appointees. May you be blessed with wisdom, justice and the good will of the community.
The notes of commiseration and sympathy ring far too true, and I wonder if there is anything that can be done to reduce the stress level on our senior magistrates.
I note that High Court judges have assistants and staffs to help them perform their work, and I wonder if something of the same sort could be implemented here. Perhaps long-serving admins could be appointed to serve as assistants for the ArbCom members, doing research and presenting summaries, dealing with correspondence, maintaining and archiving pages and so on - the sort of administrative work that requires knowledge and experience, but does not intrude on the duties of the members. Or perhaps a senior admin could be appointed to each case as an administrative assistant on a rotational basis.
I say this, knowing that I have been guilty of adding to the stress and workload of the Arbcom in the past, and for those sins I am heartily sorry.
Peter (Skyring)
I think this is a swell idea. Not only would I be glad to volunteer for this, but it would greatly speed up the process of arbitration, IMO. Currently the main problems causing the slowness at the arbcom are (IMO) the lack of staff to look into the evidence and add "eyeballs" (as per Linus' law) to the cases, and the lack of a lower-level form of binding dispute resolution (currently being hashed out at [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcement]]). It would be great to have clerks for the arbcom, since many hands make light work. Without actually judging the cases themselves, the clerks could help compile evidence, propose things at the workshop, help format new cases properly, and deal with enquiries from the Wikipedia public. Oh, and before I forget, congratulations to the new (and old) arbcom members, especially Filiocht and Mackensen (who says keeping your head down and doing a swell job editing can't win you a popularity contest?) and JamesF (you really deserved this).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])