Sometimes I have the sense that the current mold of arbitration committee has been decided upon as an ideal, stable, long-term solution for devolving authority to make tough decisions about problem users. Unlike wiki itself, the AC arrangement is not scalable, save perhaps through making mediation (which can readily absorb new community members) better and more active.
If this has not been decided, and even the AC members are actively thinking about ways to improve on the current system in scalable wiki ways, then the length of the terms doesn't matter so much. If the AC members are setting out to design a system that will become the only recourse for serious conflict resolution, and if being an arbiter will give them more of a say in how this system is structured than the average community member will have, then it would be a tad worrisome.
On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:04:13 -0800, Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
It seems like a long time not just because Wikipedia is young, but because realistically, it is a very long-term commitment relatively to the contributing lifespan of quite a few Wikipedians. Turnover and attrition will happen among arbitrators as well.
I think that a good half of all admins (including many who would never volunteer or campaign for such a post) would make fine arbiters. Just as adminship is no big deal, and involves taking on extra work for the community, it might be useful if Arbitration posts were "not such a big deal," and presented as posts that need filling for the community to run well.
To address one of Angela's points, these posts should not be ones for which one aggressively campaigns for reelection, perhaps not even posts for which one stands for reelection. If they are now being fought over, rather than so undesirable that Jimbo has to twist a few arms to fill seats, then perhaps we should address that issue, rather than opting to hold elections as infrequently as possible.
On a tangent : the community *does* need more ways to acknowledge the contributions of devoted community members. This should not be confused with the need for an effective AC.