Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) wrote:
On 12/26/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/25/06, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
There will need to be a discussion about how to handle cases that are pending as of the time the new arbs take office.
I would imagine we'll handle it like last time: where arbitrators no longer in office have voted on a case, they count as extra arbitrators for those cases only, and majority is adjusted appropriately.
New arbitrators will be counted as recused for all currently open cases unless they declare themselves un-recused for an individual case; this saves them from having to read up on all open cases immediately.
That makes total sense, of course, and it would probably be contrary to the Wiki-way to formalize things any more than that, especially if it worked out okay last year.
Not just last year; this is as we decided to do it even when we had our very first non-bootstrap addition, when Mark and James (Raul654 and Jwrosenzweig) joined in July '04.
On the other hand, it appears that there will be at least ten cases in the evidence stage but not yet being voted on as of January 1st. I am concerned there will be an awful lot of "is this case ready to close, who's voting in this case, should we wait for more votes?" type of issues with so many new members and so many new cases.
Well, don't worry about that; it used to be my job to nag people about such things, and having written much of our operating procedures I'm as ever happy enough to state things definitively if any clarification is needed. It's rarely that much of a problem, though - the Clerks are absolutely marvellous (I remember when I did pretty much all the work they've now taken off our hands, only less well, less quickly, and much less happily :-)).
On top of that, with Fred Bauder having indicated that he plans to cut back on his writing and Dmcdevit less active for the next couple of weeks per his userpage, it looks like in at least some of the new cases the new members may have to get involved in doing the initial analysis and drafting.
Well, being thrown in at the deep end is good for 'em. ;-)
Seriously, I share your concerns about potential issues with workload being too much, though I hope (perhaps in vain) that the community will take a more pro-active approach themselves as to management of such situations so as to obviate the need for the Committee; that /was/ sort-of the idea, after all. Maybe this year I will be pleasantly surprised.
It's entirely up to the (new and old) arbitrators and probably is already being discussed on the ArbCom mailing list,
Yes, and yes. :-)
but a slightly more pro-active approach to planning now how all these cases are going to get written and decided might pay dividends in the form of hitting the ground running for the new year and avoiding having a backlog pile up.
Well, I personally have grave concerns at the concept of spreading the ground too thinly, and parcelling out cases a priori. I'm a strong believer in our current system (which is not much of a surprise, given how and by whom its form was shaped :-)), where Arbitrators are moved to write a case up, rather than handed it and told to get on with the case. This is why we don't sit en banc (and won't, until I'm/we're convinced that the benefits outweigh the disbenefits).
Yours sincerely, -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com