On 10/6/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
There are a lot of current administrators that I've either voted to support, or simply refused to vote oppose in their RfA that I would never consider supporting in the position of an arbitrator. If I'd thought that one future day they'd get handed the authority to arbitrate in any way stronger than they now can (by blocking, page locking, etc) it would certainly have been less "no big deal" and a lot more "let's screen these people very carefully".
Keeping adminship "no big deal" has to include keeping the authorities granted to them in the same general class.
I'm also in agreement that the notion of letting any admin volunteer to act as an adjudicator on any dispute is a bad idea.
First, you have the issue that adminship is currently "no big deal". If we give admins the right to make unilateral binding decisions (even if subject to appeal) with the full authority of the ArbCom, then suddenly adminship is no longer "no big deal". We'd really need to reconfirm all our current admins to this new standard, and I bet a lot of them would fail to meet it.
Second, allowing people to pick and choose what issues they will offer justice on is an open invitation to bias. If a candidate jurist has a POV on a particular issue, he will want to judge it in order to impose his POV. I oppose any system in which assignment to cases is on a voluntary basis; all of our jurists should take the cases as they come, with the option (and obligation) to recuse in case of conflict.
As to the problem of getting people to want to serve as magistrates (which is, frankly, a really nasty job, almost as bad as that of arbitrator, and with less prestige and power): the one selling point is that it stands to reason that magistrates will naturally be the most probable candidates to become future arbitrators, and are likely to be called on to serve as temporary arbitrators to fill vacancies and so forth. Combine that with the fact that there are some crazy people who enjoy being jurists, and I think we can scare up enough qualified people to at least blunt the storm somewhat.
And, on top of that, I will personally buy a round of drinks for anyone who serves as a magistrate, at every Wikimania I attend. :)
Kelly