[WikiEN-l] Re: AC with a small quorum and IRC meetings

[Michael Snow]

Tim Starling wrote:

> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a 
> review of such decisions by the full committee.

How would it be determined which three? Based on the IRC suggestion, it 
seems likely that it would be the first three to come along.

Letting the arbitrators divide into three-member panels has been 
suggested before, and has some merit to it. In my proposal to reorganize 
the Arbitration Committee, I didn't address restructuring the 
arbitration process itself because this kind of proposal doesn't need 
the election context to happen. This could be implemented now if we want 
it, or it could be implemented sometime after the election. Shrinking 
the size of the committee, on the other hand, is best accomplished as 
part of the election cycle.

> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email. 
> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be 
> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and 
> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more 
> than three of them.

How much deliberation actually occurs via email to begin with? I know 
there are several arbitrators who are not big fans of conducting 
deliberations in private. Also, human nature being what it is, I'm not 
sure how much we can do to move the deliberation process to any 
particular forum if it doesn't happen organically. The Arbitration 
Committee was given a message board when first set up, which went 
nowhere. Nothing is preventing arbitrators from deliberating on IRC now 
if they want to, but some of them are not present in that forum.

--Michael Snow