[WikiEN-l] How many Arbitrators should we have?

[Michael Turley]

On 10/5/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Michael Turley wrote:
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> >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.
>
> 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.

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