[WikiEN-l] Arbcom

[David Gerard]

On 16/10/2007, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

> Oh, and this is another problem: three-year terms are far too long. No one can reasonably be expected to last three whole years at the really pointy end of Wikipedia. Life doesn't work that way: people get bored, get a new job, new life, new woman, new kids, whatever. Things change. I seem to recall a rule of thumb on Meatball, which stated that the average maximum length of participation in online communities was 3 years. We expect our arbitrators do have been around for well over a year before we elect them. Using Meatball's rule, we're only going to get another year and a half out of them, at best. Not good.


I suspect it's about six to eighteen months, much like the typical
MMORPG. I keep seeing good people who disappear after that long. If we
ever get another good full-history dump of en:wp, we should be able to
analyse this nicely if we work out the precise right question.

Once someone *has* lasted a year or two, they have a much better
handle on their own  attention span.

I first ran for ArbCom mid-2004, after six months here (and came third
with two positions open). I ran again end of 2004 and got in, and
chose a 1 year term as I have a fair grasp of my own attention span
...


- d.