Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:00:15 -0500 From: charlottethewebb@gmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom
On 10/16/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
This is the main reason I've never seriously considered running myself. I've been with the project since 2001, and I've taken on many large-scale long-term editing projects, but there's always been the option of simply stopping what I'm doing when it becomes too tedious and doing something else instead. If I've made a definite commitment like running for ArbCom, on the other hand, I'd feel terrible if I dropped out partway through. And three years is rather a long time to feel terrible for.
For better or worse you would not be expected to participate in every case, or even the majority of them. For what little it's worth if you do run, you'll have my undivided support.
—C.W.
Oh, and this is another problem: three-year terms are far too long. No one can reasonably be expected to last three whole years at the really pointy end of Wikipedia. Life doesn't work that way: people get bored, get a new job, new life, new woman, new kids, whatever. Things change. I seem to recall a rule of thumb on Meatball, which stated that the average maximum length of participation in online communities was 3 years. We expect our arbitrators do have been around for well over a year before we elect them. Using Meatball's rule, we're only going to get another year and a half out of them, at best. Not good.
Moreschi
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