On 4/1/07, Andries Krugers Dagneaux andrieskd@chello.nl wrote: When I asked Flonight whether topic-banning in the absence of
such diffs was fair, I was told that the arbcom does not want to be fair to editors. Charles Matthews endorsed her reasoning in this respect. If that is the reasoning of the arbcom then I have no intention to be fair to contributors in Wikipedia.
Obviously I know neither Flonight's reasoning nor Charles'. However, speaking as someone who used to be a member of that committee, I'll wager that there was significant more subtlety to their comments than what you've paraphrased there.
The Arbitration Committee's overriding aim is not fairness. Rather it is to do the best for the encyclopaedia. This doesn't mean that fairness is not considered. It just means that, when "justice" and the interests of the encylopaedia collide, the encyclopaedia comes first.