The user in question originally opposed the ArbCom; a discussion followed. On http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:Arbitration_Committee , Amgine wrote in November 2005: "I'm going to assume, lacking opposition, that this proposed policy is in force then, and we should begin considering a slate of people who would be good nominations to serve." There were no further objections, and a public election followed; the user in question voted in this election in support of several candidates and posted no comments indicating that he opposed the existence of the Arbcom at that point. Therefore, should an ArbCom ruling require steward action, I would ask stewards to consider the ArbCom on the English Wikinews to be official policy as it was developed through an open consensus process. Should stewards, however, ask for a poll "ratifying" the ArbCom policy, I would also not object to such a poll being taken. Erik

Nathan Carter wrote: Basically the case was made early both in public and in private to Jimbo and Larry that "Jimmy says ..." or "Larry says ..." might not scale well as the sole method of conflict resolution as Wikipedia conquered the Alexi ratings. The Arbcom was established sometime thereafter .... possibly to help provide the appearance of legitimacy to a "community" evolving on an owner's server's and bandwidth. Notice that Fred Bauder also established an outlet for POV articles. Another useful way to allow individual expression and bleed off some of the more militant POV warriors. The use of Arbcom in the face of some users' refusal to acknowledge its sovereignty or applicability is fairly straightforward. Some useful conflict resolution now is better than zero conflict resolution or perfect legitimate sovereign resolution authority sometime in the next few hundred years. I assume Arbcom has proven efficacious at resolving some conflict or Mr. Bauder would probably not still be involved with it. I saw him in action at several legal articles and he does not strike me as one interested in wasting his time. If you wish to improve the perception of the legitimacy of the Arbcom more widely throughout the "community" it might be useful to consider ways to improve the selection of the arbitrator's. I may be out of date here. It is possible/likely that the stacked Board has moved beyond hand picking people it likes and trusts. OTOH The label and lynch mentality established early in the project may have simply been polished up a bit. Why design and implement a political machine if there is no intent to use it? How were the emerging committees intended to offload some of the stacked Board's workload and traceable responsibilities established? Were they handpicked by the stacked Board, Jimbo, or selected/elected/nominated by the communities of interest that they serve or represent? Another angle of attack might be to improve the appearance of the appeal process. A few years ago I saw Fred explain that Arbcom's authority was derived from Jimbo's status as site owner/God King and therefore he could not really effectively arbitrate policy disputes directly involving Jimbo as an adversarial party. As I understand it, at that time, appeals beyond the Arbcom were made to Jimbo as the God King. Borrowing some vernacular from "24", the ultimate governing ontological dinstinction is "Jimmy says ...". (Which "24" and I and possibly a few others rather vocally viewed as a potentially fatal flaw in the implementation of the universal ether, absolute correct frame of reference, or NPOV. Fortunately, there is a limit to how much damage Jimbo can personally do in other language Wikis. Inevitably multiple biases will infiltrate and errors begin to cancel as the WikiEmbassies and translaters improve the flow of information between wikis. ) We could lift and tailor the U.S. approach to adjudication appeal. When U.S. citizens are in dispute with the all powerful executive (el Presidente Jimbo) the case is generally appealed to a separate body (U.S. Supreme Court) with authority completely autonomous from the executive specified by the U.S. Constitution. Note that in reality this effects the executive very little in day to day administration. Presidents often do as they please despite the Court's rulings. After all they control the armed forces, the daily expenditures, and often a public mandate. Nevertheless it provides a pressure relief valve and a focus for vocal minorities attempting to drive change to more tolerable (to them, not necessarily the executive's minions) conditions. Note that this process would probably require modification of the existing charter of the Wikimedia Foundation's filed charter. This is not surprising since Jimbo explicitly stated on the Wikipedia mailing list that he intended to stack the Board and then proceeded to privately develop the initial Wikimedia Foundation charter to do just that. The whole issue thus resolves to the question of when Jimbo will get tired of the problems that unilateral godhead creates within these projects he founded and whether suitable modifications can be designed and implemented to rectify the deficiencies before some upstart organization lifts our materials and begins improving them under a more useful charter that encourages effective widespread participation. It will be interesting to see what recommendations the external professionals the stacked Board has been contemplating bringing in have and how they compare to some of the community's previously volunteered opinions and recommendations. Of course it is always possible that only yes people professionals will be hired as a next stage of window dressing. Effectively this can be done in face saving ways such as having the consultants or experts provide multiple options along with analysis from which the client then selects the "best" or preferred options which are then made public. Notice how quickly the hired legal expertise turned out to be private client confidential with the "clients" being the stacked Board members with fiduciary responsibilities rather than the wiki community members or foundation membership at large. This after qualified (Self alleged, I asked the volunteer for no verifiable credentials, ... assume good faith and all that.) volunteers from the community at large were pointedly and repeatedly ignored. Perhaps we need several teams of legal beagles to adequately represent all segments of the "community"? Might also be interesting .... does anyone know whether any of our attempted grant proposals to date have been declined due to specific or general concerns stated regarding potential conflicts of interest? I realize the details are probably secret/proprietary/private/something. I am more interested in the existence of the category .... monies not available locally due to apparent conflicts of interest. Could be viable funding should an upstart fork ever arise to compete ineptly with the status quo we elite few have created herein. Regards, lazyquasar