Everyone who volunteered was appointed to something, and two who didn't volunteer I appointed anyway. (Obviously, they can decline if they must.) I selected primarily based on your own stated preferences, although in a couple of cases, I moved people who said "prefer this, but would do either" to the other side, mostly just to balance out the numbers. Mediators -- people who are volunteering to get involved in mediating user disputes, but without any actual power to vote for or recommend a ban or any other punitive action Angela LDan Geoff DanteAlighieri VancouverGuy sannse Ed Poor Jussi-Ville Heiskanen Stevertigo I envision this group being fairly fluid, with new volunteers appearing, and existing volunteers retiring, as personal preferences dictate. Arbitration -- people who are volunteering to get involved in arbitrating user disputes, with the results of the arbitration being formally binding in the sense that it is at least possible for the arbitration committee to vote to ban someone or take some lesser action to enforce their decision C - Gutza C - MyRedDice C - NoHat C - Epopt B - Fred Bauder B - Delirium B - Maveric149 B - Camembert A - Jdforrester A - Kat/UninvitedCompany A - Cunctator* A - Erik Moeller* These last two are marked with a '*' to indicate that I'm drafting them, if they don't refuse. The letters indicate groups up for re-election in the future. I'm thinking that these posts are to be held for 3 year terms, with group A up for re-election next December, group B, the following year, group C, the following year. (People were partitioned in this way randomly, with the exception of Cunc and Erik, who I placed in the shortest group because they didn't even volunteer in the first place!) Terms begin January 1, which means we have the rest of this month to argue about what the hell all this means. :-) --------- Both committees should meet via email -- we should set up public mailing lists, I think -- to work on procedures and policies. We'll have to write this up cognizant of the difficulty of obtaining a quorum at times, etc. In any event, I'm holding as a 'reserved power' the right to pardon anyone who is banned by the arbitration committee, in the unlikely event that the process seems to be going astray. Also, just to be really clear on this, I'm also holding as a reserved power to "disband parliament" if problems appear to be made worse overall by this change. We can always go back to our current 'benevolent dictator' model, if it works out better. (But it's really exhausting for me to try to figure out that someone needs to be banned.) In the future, if this is working well, and if elections are producing good results, then I'm certainly willing to make stronger promises about not just overturning the whole thing. I'm just very cautious about the whole concept right now, and think we should try it and learn from it before we imagine that it's "the way things are". --Jimbo