On 10/5/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I would prefer to keep the ArbCom at its current size (or close to it) and establish lower courts to filter off the relatively easy stuff and to organize the cases into a form so that when they do appeal the ArbCom doesn't have to waste as much time marshalling the case. A few Arbitration Assistants would not be remiss, either. Kelly

One of the things which would greatly improve functioning and retention of arbitrators is effective advocates who would select and present evidence which illustrated the contentions of the parties. As it is now the arbitrators themselves are forced to view the ridiculous amounts of irrelevant crap which the parties advance as "evidence" and try to figure out on their own what is going on. Fred On Oct 5, 2005, at 11:25 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:

On 10/5/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott(a)gmail.com> wrote: Who would be insane enough to take the position, yet reliable enough to be useful at it? The assistants would be "forced to view the ridiculous amounts of irrelevant crap" and then, after wading through the morass of garbage, nearing enlightenment and ultimate understanding of the conflict, give it over to others to make the decisions. I don't know anyone willing to do that. It works in the judicial system because of the hierarchy of reward and responsibilities; pay your dues, and you can work your way up to a better job, more prestige, and more pay. But on Wikipedia, everything is egalitarian; there are few paths "up", and going "up" doesn't earn you much. If you change that, so everything isn't as flat as it can be as still run smoothly, you'll ruin the Wiki. -- Michael Turley User:Unfocused

The Peter principle would be hard at work here. Any decent advocate would seem to destined to be an arbitrator, but in fact the skills are different. Advocacy is presentation of a point of view, arbitration is deciding between points of view. Lack of application to digging though mountains of evidence does not vitiate understanding of appropriate choice of alternatives. Fred On Oct 5, 2005, at 4:10 PM, Michael Turley wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Michael Turley wrote: Yeah, this is why I think the lower-court judges would be the best way to do this. They still get to make a decision, but it could be reviewed and reversed later by ArbCom. The judge would more or less act as the advocate, since there could be more of them, and they would have fewer cases to handle individually, so they would have more time to do what ArbCom hates doing and gets burnt out on easily. - - Ryan

On 10/5/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: I worry about consistency in such cases. Jimbo shouldn't have to act as the sole resolver of "circuit conflict". Kelly

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tony Sidaway wrote: Can you explain why you thinkEr, what? We must be misunderstanding each other, because as I am conceiving of this system, it would be impossible for ArbCom to have to do more work. At the absolute worst, it would be the same amount of work. it would be more work for them? - - Ryan

On 10/5/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: In an egalitarian society, why would anyone bother to arbitrate if they're going to be subject to review by some other arbitrators? It's not like we have any justification for hierarchy among arbitrators, since no one here has more than five years' experience, and most have none or almost none. It's not like we're reviewing your resume for relevant experience and doing background checks, either. I prefer a panel of thirty to sixty or so potential arbitrators, from which a round-robin semi-random set of eleven or so vote whether each case has merit or not. Maybe a few of them would be "core arbitrators", two or three of whom are assigned each case. Allowing for recusals, burnouts, dropouts mid case, wikibreaks and vacations, eleven is just an arbitrary number that should give a broad base for any decisions, and should almost always result in a panel of seven or more to make the final decision. -- Michael Turley User:Unfocused

--- Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: I guess I misunderstood Kelly's statement. A tiered-court idea is exactly whats called for - as opposed to just beefing up the size. SV __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

On 10/6/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: I don't guarantee that the ArbCom would elect to refuse to consider new evidence on appeal. However, just having the case marshalled for review through the process of the preceding magisterial process will immensely help the ArbCom in its determinations. The other appeal to a tiered system is that it will scale far better than most of the other proposals I've seen. Any system which has ArbCom as a court of original jurisdiction is going to have scaling problems in the long term, IMO. Kelly

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ray Saintonge wrote: I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand what you are trying to say. Michael Snow wrote: I was thinking of calling them "arbitrators" and everyone on what is now ArbCom becomes a "senior arbitrator". But the language isn't all that important to me. If we can get the idea pushed through, they can call it whatever they want as far as I am concerned. :-) Right now, I'm not too opposed to the idea of letting this be any administrator-in-good-standing (say, one with no RFA actions pending against him) who volunteers for the job. Like Michael Turley said, this wouldn't be a job that most people find appealing. It would be thankless and difficult, and a magistrate wouldn't even have the satisfaction of getting to make a final decision at the end. Ryan

On 10/6/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm also in agreement that the notion of letting any admin volunteer to act as an adjudicator on any dispute is a bad idea. First, you have the issue that adminship is currently "no big deal". If we give admins the right to make unilateral binding decisions (even if subject to appeal) with the full authority of the ArbCom, then suddenly adminship is no longer "no big deal". We'd really need to reconfirm all our current admins to this new standard, and I bet a lot of them would fail to meet it. Second, allowing people to pick and choose what issues they will offer justice on is an open invitation to bias. If a candidate jurist has a POV on a particular issue, he will want to judge it in order to impose his POV. I oppose any system in which assignment to cases is on a voluntary basis; all of our jurists should take the cases as they come, with the option (and obligation) to recuse in case of conflict. As to the problem of getting people to want to serve as magistrates (which is, frankly, a really nasty job, almost as bad as that of arbitrator, and with less prestige and power): the one selling point is that it stands to reason that magistrates will naturally be the most probable candidates to become future arbitrators, and are likely to be called on to serve as temporary arbitrators to fill vacancies and so forth. Combine that with the fact that there are some crazy people who enjoy being jurists, and I think we can scare up enough qualified people to at least blunt the storm somewhat. And, on top of that, I will personally buy a round of drinks for anyone who serves as a magistrate, at every Wikimania I attend. :) Kelly

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Michael Turley wrote: All right, then. How would you suggest we choose them? - - Ryan

On 10/6/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: I can see something like the current Mediation Committee request process working: a sort of unstructured request, with general agreement from the community and no veto by the arbcom, to form a pool of people to draw from. I do think as some others have that not every suitable admin would be a suitable arbitrator/magistrate/clerk -- though quite a few would. It's a few additional skills and a more specific sort of personality required. -Kat [[User:Mindspillage]] -- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams

Whatever the name or the composition and size caps, there seems to be general agreement that the dispute resolution process needs to be expanded --most likely into a tiered system. This basic agreement needs to be validated by confirmations not just on this list, but by a site-wide vote using the vote machine. While that gets in the works, I think its appropriate to formalize all the various proposals for how this expansion could or should work --such as Ryan's seniority-tiered idea or my notion of separating committees deal with reviewing policy from those dealing with conflicts of personality. SV PS: I'd suggest even formalizing a process whereby the community (with a permissive wave of JW's scepter) can proceed with any use of the voting machine it feels is appropriate. --- Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-November/017170.html __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

On 10/6/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Oh please don't let's repeat the recent VFU idiocy again, refusing to look at what's in front of our faces because of some sterile rules. Wikipedia isn't a court system of a legislature. Arbcom *should* look at facts, and make a judgement that fits the circumstances, not some abstract law.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 By the way, if anyone here hasn't seen it yet, I've still got a sandboxed policy proposal to reform the arbitration policy (as per the discussion in this old thread) up at [[User:Ryan_Delaney/sandbox]]. Comments welcome, either here or on the talk page of my sandbox. :-) Ryan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fred Bauder wrote: But certainly 5 isn't a big leap from 4. - -- Phroziac | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xC2AF5417 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/anya2 | / \ (Computer clock currently thinks it should be set to UTC.)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fred Bauder wrote: Want a guineau pig for a test of that? Sounds great to me, and I'm interested in running for arbcom. I think. I'm not really sure of anything. - -- Phroziac | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xC2AF5417 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/anya2 | / \ (Computer clock currently thinks it should be set to UTC.)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fred Bauder wrote: Where and how do you run? - -- Phroziac | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xC2AF5417 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/anya2 | / \ (Computer clock currently thinks it should be set to UTC.)

On Oct 5, 2005, at 12:45 PM, Carbonite wrote: I can think of two names on that list that would cause major controversy, including one who routinely accuses the arbcom of cronyism and corruption. -Snowspinner

The problem with this is that Jimbo, genius that he is, does not actively edit and has very limited information to base his choices on. Fred On Oct 5, 2005, at 12:58 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

On 10/5/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Perhaps but if that looked like happening I suspect more would run. -- geni

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Phroziac wrote: Agreed. If we can't trust admins, who *can* we trust? - -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \