Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Mark Pellegrini wrote:
Erik wasn't half right when he said Plautus is not reformable. He's driving away good users (Evercat and Finlay McWalter, just to name two), and wasting enormous amounts of contributor time. If Wikipedia is to become popular on the scale that many of us would like to see, the system needs to be reformed. Just what does it take to get banned from this place?
I think the underlying problem here is that Jimbo has stepped back a bit from his role as "benevolent dictator," referring this kind of decision to the arbitration committee. The problem is that the arbitration committee can't move quickly enough to deal with problem users like this one.
One solution might be to designate a few trusted individuals as volunteer "judges" -- people to whom Jimbo in his capacity as dictator grants the authority to take action instantly, if they feel conditions warrant. The decisions of judges, of course, would be subject to review by the arbitration committee, and a judge who repeatedly abuses his authority would have it revoked.
As a matter of policy, I think "judges" should not be allowed to simultaneously sit on the arbitration committee, so that we have some separation of powers.
Well, if this is done, I'm not sure why we'd really need the arbitration committee. Just to rubber-stamp judge decisions?
I'd feel a little more comfortable with a more streamlined arbitration committee, which would basically be your judge idea but with multiple people voting, and a lag-time of a few days (I don't think having someone unbanned for, say, 3-4 days is the end of the world---it's the 2-3 weeks that's the problem). But there's understandably tension between "the arbitration committee should publicize at length the rationale for its decisions" and "the arbitration committee should work quickly". There's only so many in-depth decisions that a group of volunteers are going to write per week.
I hope the new edit-war policy will actually get rid of some of the immediate problem, because anyone will be able to temp-ban people who violate it.
-Mark