Skyring wrote:

The notes of commiseration and sympathy ring far too true, and I wonder if there is anything that can be done to reduce the stress level on our senior magistrates.

It's a burnout-inducing job, for sure. I fully expect some mid-term draftees to be needed.

I note that High Court judges have assistants and staffs to help them perform their work, and I wonder if something of the same sort could be implemented here. Perhaps long-serving admins could be appointed to serve as assistants for the ArbCom members, doing research and presenting summaries, dealing with correspondence, maintaining and archiving pages and so on - the sort of administrative work that requires knowledge and experience, but does not intrude on the duties of the members. Or perhaps a senior admin could be appointed to each case as an administrative assistant on a rotational basis.

Kelly is putting together some stuff for this (e.g. checklists for opening and closing cases, neither of which we actually had for 2005 *ahem*). We're also getting a few people to act as clerks making sense of the incomprehensible spews which so often end up on RFAr; Snowspinner has done a nice job of this for us in a couple of recent cases, Ryan Delaney has expressed interest in the job and I'd love to draft Tony Sidaway for it as well. The mechanical jobs of opening and closing cases is suitable as well. Obviously this would only be in cases they're not involved in themselves. Raul654 is putting together a page on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Clerk%27s_offic...

See also that page's talk page.

Clerks aren't particularly privileged except the AC trusts them to sensibly assess stuff for them. They get write access (but not read) to the AC list so as to save listadmin time approving their posts.

- d.