charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote: Remember, we don't meet at all in real life, and yet are sometimes "in session" on the list 24 hours a day (100 mails in a day is not uncommon).
I have every sympathy with arbcom - however, I think the paranoia at the moment is incredibly damaging. Arbcom works because we trust you - we have to - I do. But if that goes, for legitimate or illegitimate, reasons wikipedia is screwed.
If the arbcom mailing list is essentially simply an essential conversation, like IRC or real life, then that's fine. We elected you and trust you to have that conversation - and in private *where necessary*. (Although actually, there's a bit in RfArbss for arbiter discussion that's underused!)
But in that case, it should not have a longlife archive. Conversations don't generally get archived and then made available to non-parties in the future. When you've got that type of information on file, you've moved from a necessary conversation to a dossier - which essentially contains a permanent record of people you've discussed.
doc