[WikiEN-l] Arbcom

[Avi]

On 10/16/07, wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org
<wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com>
> To: "'English Wikipedia'" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:30:49 +0100
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Arbcom
> Thoughts...
>
> Some of the things holding this problem in place seem to center around:
>
>
> 1) "Firefighting" mentality

Agreed wholeheartedly, which is similar to what I had mentioned
earlier in the thread, in that is there any way to minimize the
procedural bureaucracy that seems to weigh these cases down.

Another possibility would be a time window on formal evidence
submission (everyone has 10 days to submit). If someone party to a
case does something egregious after this point, a  link to a diff
should be sufficient.

Lastly, having a larger pool; requiring a smaller quorum; or both
would also help prevent burnout in this regard by allowing for more
downtime between crises.

> 2) High expectations by the community

Yes, but as court of final appeal, this expectation is warranted and
justified. It may help if there was more education for the community
to understand just how difficult and time consuming this process is,
and, as mentioned before, everyone should keep in mind that if it were
_their_ wiki-account on the block, wouldn't they want the benefit of
the most detailed and deliberate analysis?


> 3) Lack of communal coherence

I agree, this is one of Arbcom's chief advantages, and why the
expectations are so high, the need for trust so great, and the
election process the most difficult. This is also why allowing admins
to become mini-arbcom's is not a good idea, in my opinion.

> 4) Mixed sense amongst administrators what exactly the community has
> delegated them to do.

This is a serious issue, and I agree with you that clarification would
be helped. Arbcom, in its past desysoppings, has not, and should not,
be bound by precedent as every case is individual and unique. However,
that does mean that there are times when the administrators become
paralyzed by indecision. If there was a clearer mandate for admins
(regardless as to whether it would be more or less restrictive than
now), that would somewhat mitigate the problem.

Now we have the situation where some admins will take anything with
the possibility of an appearance of impropriety to WP:ANI or WP:AN,
which although it has the best chance of preventing wheel-wars, edit
wars, and divisiveness, also makes the process glacially slow and
prone to stalemate. Other admins will only be seen on WP:ANI when
there is enough outcry as to their unilateral applications of deletes
and blocks.

Something in the middle would be the most efficient, I believe.

> </thoughts>
>
> FT2.
>

--Avi
-- 
en:User:Avraham
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pub 1024D/785EA229 3/6/2007 Avi (Wikipedia-related) <aviwiki at gmail.com>
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