On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 12:12 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
This issue was raised on the pages for the 2008 election of the Arbitrators Committee, and while I haven't been involved in that discussion I think its important to get a wide array of eyeballs on this particular question: Should the term of election for the Arbitration Committee be reduced to two years, from three, with annual elections?
(Snip)
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I had thoughts about this. The issue is less the actual length of term. It's more, that those appointed (as it stands) can be pretty much nothing ''except'' arbitrators. Every wiki hour switches to disputes, bad acting, flames, decisions, and that eventually wears people out. It's not the duration per se, 3 years is fine. its that it's 3 years doing nothing but arbcom work.
There are two remedies for that.
Firstly, the tasks the committee does, need to be delegated or passed to more people. Today's re-affirmation of the June announcement about enlarging the Checkuser team, is a step on the way. Other things might follow.
Secondly, users who become arbitrators should be encouraged to sit on the next 3 months cases, then take a months break from the front line, do some editing or wiki-gnoming, mentor or coach someone, work on a favorite project, or get away from it a while, before coming back to 3 more months cases (not "by the calendar, but as they feel right). Keeping people on a treadmill 24/7 till its too much, is a bad idea.
Those 2 measures would probably solve much of it.
FT2