steve v wrote:
Personally, I dislike the fact that Jimbo made those arbitrary appointments of relatively conservative members. But he justified them at the time that the Arbcom was shrinking, a "thankless job" and needed some membership -- who am I to argue with the founder's wisdom? I could say that in a wiki world, he could have called for a special election and had newly elected temporary members in a week. But again, who am I to argue?
As I understand it, that was considered, but many people thought it was counterproductive to have an election for a 6-month term, since we're going to have regularly-scheduled elections at the end of January anyway. This was especially true given how acrimonious the last election was---there was worry that few good candidates would want to go through a mud-slinging election only to have to do it again 6 months later.
-Mark