Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
There can be an argument made that the arbcom membership is now evolving to the stage where they are by virtue of their membership becoming public persona, and as such afforded less protection of their privacy. I reject the argument, but it can be made. The best guarantee of accountability, in my view, _at this stage_, is to make sure we *elect* people who we know wouldn't act disgracefully within chambers.
I think this argument is right. When the arbs were a tight group of Jimbo's handpicked mates then clued discussion would be fine. There would be an expectation that what was said behind closed doors would stay there. If I got slandered in there, tough - I've no right to edit wikipedia anyway and as you say YMMV.
However, that's simply naive crap today.
It's the worst secret on the wiki that arbcom are a disparate bunch of folk - some of whom personally can't stand each other. If we had a decent Featured Article for every time I've heard one arb badmouth another on IRC.... And I've had stuff leaked to me on several occasions.
Given that reality, this list will leak - it will not remain confidential. We need to stop pretending there's another possibility. The "let's just trust each other" stuff isn't going to upscale. The damage is that it will leak unevenly and unpredictably. Some of us will get to know, some will not. Half a story will be told. No, I'm not being cynical or anti-arbcom here - this is just the reality. The problem is the same with the admins' irc channel as well.
Given that, its fine for a secret discussion of some troll or serial stalker. It's fine for arbcom to discuss users that no-one likes, or has relationships with - cos that probably will not leak, and if it does, it is unlikely to leak in a damaging way. However, it is not fine for established users to be discussed in a way that will leak, but will have no transparency.
Wikipedia needs to realised its size and its influence - it's big and becoming bigger - who knows how big it will get. Given that, whilst eschewing form filling and pseudo-state like playacting, we need to think in terms of what is sustainable. The Old-boys network approach to arbcom isn't.
Doc