On 14 Oct 2007 at 19:44:42 +0100, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think most real courts have one judge per case.
It's only when you
reach the highest level that you get tried by the entire bench (or, at
least, a selection from it). One judge only works when you have clear
laws that have right and wrong answers, and you have a jury to
determine points of fact. We could introduce a jury system to
Wikipedia, but I don't think it would work - the population is too
small, and we have no way to make jury duty compulsory (if you pick 12
Wikipedians at random from those active and willing to serve, you
stand too great a chance of some of them being involved, or at least
knowing the parties).
Interestingly, I just watched the movie "12 Angry Men"... it's
interesting to note that, under the prevailing Wikipedia community
culture at the moment, the guy who, early on, was the one juror who
voted to acquit when the other 11 were saying "guilty", would
probably be labeled a "troll". After all, he was going against
community consensus, and couldn't even (at first) articulate a good
reason behind believing the defendant was innocent -- in fact, he
sounded like he didn't really believe the guy was innocent himself,
just that fairness required more of a debate than a quick 12-0 vote
to convict. Somebody who acted like that in any of the many
wikidrama debates that go on here would be labeled as disrupting
things to prove a point, and ignored and dismissed (and maybe labeled
a sockpuppet of a banned user and summarily removed)... then
everybody else could go on with their unanimous verdict to fry the
defendant, and the other juror would make it to the ballgame he had
tickets to that night.
--
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