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

[sannse]

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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand to 
> meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements 
> leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within 
> minutes of a request.

I think this would really help.  I think I'd like to see it as an option 
rather than the only possibility though.  The benefit to the users in 
question would be a quick decision; the problem would be that it would 
be likely to be a less in depth investigation.  It would perhaps be a 
gamble to some extent, but one that I think many users would take to 
speed up the process.

I think there might be ways of adding to this, perhaps with a provision 
for an "appeal" - which might involve more arbitrators and be more in 
the style of arbitration available now.   Although there would also have 
to be precautions to ensure this doesn't mean that every decision simply 
goes back to the long form.

One thing about this proposal is that a large committee would be helpful 
in this case, allowing a pool of arbitrators to be available at various 
times.

I'm intending to stand for a position on the arbitration committee this 
time round - so would be very interested to read more on this proposal 
when it's written.

--sannse