Tim Starling wrote:
The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a review of such decisions by the full committee.
How would it be determined which three? Based on the IRC suggestion, it seems likely that it would be the first three to come along.
Letting the arbitrators divide into three-member panels has been suggested before, and has some merit to it. In my proposal to reorganize the Arbitration Committee, I didn't address restructuring the arbitration process itself because this kind of proposal doesn't need the election context to happen. This could be implemented now if we want it, or it could be implemented sometime after the election. Shrinking the size of the committee, on the other hand, is best accomplished as part of the election cycle.
The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email. Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more than three of them.
How much deliberation actually occurs via email to begin with? I know there are several arbitrators who are not big fans of conducting deliberations in private. Also, human nature being what it is, I'm not sure how much we can do to move the deliberation process to any particular forum if it doesn't happen organically. The Arbitration Committee was given a message board when first set up, which went nowhere. Nothing is preventing arbitrators from deliberating on IRC now if they want to, but some of them are not present in that forum.
--Michael Snow
--- Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
How would it be determined which three? Based on the IRC suggestion, it seems likely that it would be the first three to come along.
Yep. And to prevent bottlenecks it would be on a item by item basis - as it is now. The big difference being where deliberations (if any) take place and the minimum number of votes needed to reach any given decision (minimum 2 out of a quorum of 3 instead of a majority of all active members). If more than three arbitrators vote for any particular item, then simple majority still rules - the numbers would be set at whatever they are at the time the case is closed. Example:
---- Start example ----
==Findings of fact== #User X has engaged in abusive behavior in this set of talk pages: #*[[talk;foo]] Example diffs: [diff1], [diff2], [diff3] #*[[talk:bar]] Example diffs: [diff4], [diff5], [diff6]
;Arbitrator votes for :# [[Sig of AC member 1]] (comment) :# [[Sig of AC member 2]] (comment)
;Arbitrator votes against :# [[Sig of AC member 3]] (comment)
;Arbitrator abstentions
==Remedies== #User X is banned from editing the below set of articles and their talk pages for 3 months: :#[[foo]] :#[[bar]]
;Arbitrator votes for :# [[Sig of AC member 1]] (comment) :# [[Sig of AC member 2]] (comment) :# [[Sig of AC member 3]] (comment)
;Arbitrator votes against :# [[Sig of AC member 4]] (comment) :# [[Sig of AC member 5]] (comment)
;Arbitrator abstentions :# [[Sig of AC member 6]] (comment)
----- End example -----
The above votes and their counts would be set as official at the time the case is closed. Thus the finding of fact above would pass due to the fact that 2 of the 3 arbitrators voting voted for it and the remedy would pass since 3 of the 5 voting for or against the remedy voted for it. Note that to be valid either way a quorum of at least three ArbCom members must vote for or against (any combo) an item (meaning that abstentions do not affect the minimum quorum count of 3).
Letting the arbitrators divide into three-member panels has been suggested before, and has some merit to it. In my proposal to reorganize the Arbitration Committee, I didn't address restructuring the arbitration process itself because this kind of proposal doesn't need the election context to happen. This could be implemented now if we want it, or it could be implemented sometime after the election. Shrinking the size of the committee, on the other hand, is best accomplished as part of the election cycle.
My plan allows for a small number of arbitrators to decide items in a case, Thus the only relevance to the total size of the arbitration committee would be case load (more members would mean more cases could be heard and decided faster) and the size of the review board (the whole committee).
Such a review board would be held whenever any ArbCom member called for a review during a specified period after the case was closed and was seconded by at least one other member. A review would simply explore the question if the case needed to be reopened in some way. It *would not* decide any remedy, finding or fact, or principle but may decide to only reopen part of the case (a particular remedy, for example). Simple majority of those arbitrators who voted during a specified period would decide that issue. That should be a sufficient check.
Note that I specifically did not mention appeals - the ArbCom is already the end of the road in the dispute resolution process so there are no appeals (except in principle to Jimbo - in practice I'm sure that will exceedingly rare). I'm ambivalent as to whether or not it would be best to delay enforcement of a decision while a review is taking place.
How much deliberation actually occurs via email to begin with?
At first a lot. But bouncing ideas off of each other that way was a very frustrating process, IMO. So very little of that goes on now. What now seems to happen most often is that different ArbCom members propose decisions out of the blue and the others vote on them.
This is hardly an optimal situation since it puts the onus of thinking through things almost entirely on the person writing the proposed decision (finding of fact, principle, or remedy).
Thus I would like to encourage members to work out proposed items on IRC.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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