On 10/15/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/10/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
The downside of this is that taken to an extreme, it effectively *requires* that participants get an experienced advocate to help with the process and motions, which introduces the role that Attorneys play in real life. And we're a volunteer organization, so we can't make someone stand up and argue for someone else's defense.
The other downside is that this was tried - the Association of Members' Advocates, because people who ended up in arbitration tended to be those who rubbed others up the wrong way and did a really bad job of representing themselves in the first place. The ArbCom welcomed the idea as potentially helpful ... then *all* the AMA did was wikilawyer and try procedural tricks, rather than actually help translate their clients' positions and thoughts into something that appeared reasonable and comprehensible. They were literally worse than useless. I remember having frequently thought "could you please shut up and stop dragging your client down." Eegh.
There were a variety of problems with the AMA. 1) Many of the advocates were the self-righteous sort who enjoy wikilawyering 2) Many others were people who while not clueless were close to it 3) Many of the people who go in front of the ArbCom don't have a better argument to make that can be reasonably translated. This third problem seemed to be the most common and serious problem. If translating their clients positions are going to definitely get their clients banned, or if their clients positions are impossible to translate into any coherent thoughts, the AMA members didn't have many options other than to wikilawyer.
This is related to the fact that the vast majority of people who get hard sanctions from the ArbCom do in fact deserve the hard sanctions, in at least the minimal sense that the project will be better off with the editors sanctioned.
Sounds like they (the AMA members) didn't quite grasp the concept of "plea bargain" ...