[WikiEN-l] Arbcom

[fredbaud at waterwiki.info]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan at tobias.name]
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 01:45 PM
To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom

On 14 Oct 2007 at 19:44:42 +0100, "Thomas Dalton" 
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think most real courts have one judge per case. It's only when you
> reach the highest level that you get tried by the entire bench (or, at
> least, a selection from it). One judge only works when you have clear
> laws that have right and wrong answers, and you have a jury to
> determine points of fact. We could introduce a jury system to
> Wikipedia, but I don't think it would work - the population is too
> small, and we have no way to make jury duty compulsory (if you pick 12
> Wikipedians at random from those active and willing to serve, you
> stand too great a chance of some of them being involved, or at least
> knowing the parties).

Interestingly, I just watched the movie "12 Angry Men"... it's 
interesting to note that, under the prevailing Wikipedia community 
culture at the moment, the guy who, early on, was the one juror who 
voted to acquit when the other 11 were saying "guilty", would 
probably be labeled a "troll".  After all, he was going against 
community consensus, and couldn't even (at first) articulate a good 
reason behind believing the defendant was innocent -- in fact, he 
sounded like he didn't really believe the guy was innocent himself, 
just that fairness required more of a debate than a quick 12-0 vote 
to convict.  Somebody who acted like that in any of the many 
wikidrama debates that go on here would be labeled as disrupting 
things to prove a point, and ignored and dismissed (and maybe labeled 
a sockpuppet of a banned user and summarily removed)... then 
everybody else could go on with their unanimous verdict to fry the 
defendant, and the other juror would make it to the ballgame he had 
tickets to that night.

-- 
== Dan ==

_______________________________________________

We have that movie from time to time. Usually I play the reluctant juror. But I always played that role in real life too. Wikipedia is generally for more tolerant of such dissent than analogous outside venues.

Fred