After a year (?) or so on the arbitration committee, and not being particularly interested in staying on it, there's one main obstacle I've seen: A lack of people with sufficient free time and interest to wade through the often complicated disputes. It's not, in my opinion, problems in getting together a quorum, or even problems in discussing contentious disputes that are the primary stumbling block. It's just the lack of getting *anything* rolling at all.
Often parties to disputes will dump literally hundreds of links to edit histories, and engage in lengthy multi-page accusations and counter-accusations. Someone has to sort through that and try to make sense of it. It's not a particularly interesting job, of course.
Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual voting is comparatively unproblematic. There have been occasions when voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving nagging messages on peoples' talk pages. The biggest and hardest to overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first place. How to solve that I don't really know.
-Mark
Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual voting is comparatively unproblematic. There have been occasions when voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving nagging messages on peoples' talk pages. The biggest and hardest to overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first place. How to solve that I don't really know.
It shouldn't be awfully hard. At the moment, we have less than half the arbitrators prepared to do this - Fred, James, Mav, Jw and Raul. I don't think I've missed anyone. The simple answer is that we need another seven who are equally prepared to put in the time and get this done.
-- ambi
On 11/11/04 4:41 PM, "Rebecca" misfitgirl@gmail.com wrote:
Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual voting is comparatively unproblematic. There have been occasions when voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving nagging messages on peoples' talk pages. The biggest and hardest to overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first place. How to solve that I don't really know.
It shouldn't be awfully hard. At the moment, we have less than half the arbitrators prepared to do this - Fred, James, Mav, Jw and Raul. I don't think I've missed anyone. The simple answer is that we need another seven who are equally prepared to put in the time and get this done.
My problem isn't the wading through the evidence. I actually enjoy that. It's coming up with the list of "Findings of fact" and "principle" in the proper form...I can handle a conversational analysis much more easily. I think what I need to do is make a list of the findings of fact and principle we've used previously. Maybe I'll do that right now.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
My problem isn't the wading through the evidence. I actually enjoy that. It's coming up with the list of "Findings of fact" and "principle" in the proper form...I can handle a conversational analysis much more easily.
Thus my proposal of using IRC to help formulate those items. Note: IRC would just be used as a means to quickly chat with each other so we can bounce ideas around. We would *not* vote on IRC or post anything official there. Just talk and try to work things out. Everything official would still be posted on the wiki (as well as longer format discussion when needed).
I think what I need to do is make a list of the findings of fact and
principle
we've used previously. Maybe I'll do that right now.
Yes - that would be very helpful (and something I've thought about doing myself).
-- mav
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It seems to me that one of the big obstacles to participating in the AC would be the three-year commitment. Assuming I were qualified and interested in being on the AC, I would still hesitate because of the length of the term. It's hard enough for me to know what my life will be like next month, let alone three years from now. And I avoid making a commitment if I can't reasonably foresee fulfilling it.
If nothing else, perhaps magistrates could have a shorter term of office?
It also seems like there may be room for other types of official assistants for AC members. Someone to prepare briefs, for example.
Just kind of brainstorming here...
-Rich Holton
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Good brainstorming,
To go on, speaking of briefs, we could require that participants in arbitration be represented by members advocates who would be required to prepare and highlight relevant evidence so we don't have to do it by hand.
Fred
From: Rich Holton rich_holton@yahoo.com Reply-To: rich_holton@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 18:23:29 -0800 (PST) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] the AC needs people with free time and interest
It seems to me that one of the big obstacles to participating in the AC would be the three-year commitment. Assuming I were qualified and interested in being on the AC, I would still hesitate because of the length of the term. It's hard enough for me to know what my life will be like next month, let alone three years from now. And I avoid making a commitment if I can't reasonably foresee fulfilling it.
If nothing else, perhaps magistrates could have a shorter term of office?
It also seems like there may be room for other types of official assistants for AC members. Someone to prepare briefs, for example.
Just kind of brainstorming here...
-Rich Holton
Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium Sent: Friday, 12 November 2004 4:45 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] [WikiEN-l] the AC needs people with free time and interest
After a year (?) or so on the arbitration committee, and not being particularly interested in staying on it, there's one main obstacle I've
seen: A lack of people with sufficient free time and interest to wade through the often complicated disputes. It's not, in my opinion, problems in getting together a quorum, or even problems in discussing contentious disputes that are the primary stumbling block. It's just the lack of getting *anything* rolling at all.
Often parties to disputes will dump literally hundreds of links to edit histories, and engage in lengthy multi-page accusations and counter-accusations. Someone has to sort through that and try to make sense of it. It's not a particularly interesting job, of course.
Once someone does sort through it, and proposes something, the actual voting is comparatively unproblematic. There have been occasions when voting has been too slow, but that can be dealt with by e.g. leaving nagging messages on peoples' talk pages. The biggest and hardest to overcome delays are those where voting has simply never started, because
nobody had the time or inclination to wade through the pile of evidence and accusations to distill a set of options to vote on in the first place. How to solve that I don't really know.
-Mark
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Delirium wrote:
Often parties to disputes will dump literally hundreds of links to edit histories, and engage in lengthy multi-page accusations and counter-accusations. Someone has to sort through that and try to make sense of it. It's not a particularly interesting job, of course.
IMHO much of this stems from an inability to impose a standard of relevance on evidence. If you are discussing someone's specific wrongdoing, it is usually completely irrelevant for an accuser to bring up an event that was settled last year. So too is the accused's behaviour toward a third person who is not part of the case. That third person may have a higher tolerance level for silliness.
Ec