Thank you for your response. It definitely does help hearing a bit more
how decisions are made.
-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Brown
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 3:10 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE
On Dec 28, 2007 9:49 AM, Majdan, Nik <nmajdan(a)aplmc.com> wrote:
I completely understand that ArbCom wasn't going
to make a content
decision (although, I still kinda question why not. If ArbCom is our
equivalent of the Supreme Court, they should have this jurisdiction.).
Well, we're not (although some parallels have been drawn). We're
essentially the replacement for Jimbo's former role as the final
arbiter of user conduct, especially when it comes to blocking/banning.
Speaking personally, I feel we are not equipped to make such
decisions, both in terms of manpower and in terms of expertise.
I don't even know what I expected ArbCom to do, it
just seems like a
lot
of wasted time for an impotent ruling.
While I obviously can't breach the confidentiality of our internal
deliberations nor speak for other arbitrators, if an arbcom decision
isn't as decisive as hoped, good odds are that either
a) We believe we do not have jurisdiction over the issue (either
unanimously or by majority), or
b) No decisive action had a majority (i.e. we disagreed too much to
come to a resolution), or
c) We had absolutely no idea what to do about the situation.
Arbcom is a committee, and committees by their very nature are not
very decisive bodies, since a majority of the committee has to agree
on any decision made. Furthermore, even though our rules say that a
bare majority is sufficient, in practise we have preferred rough
consensus over majority; very few rulings have been reached that are
strongly opposed by a substantial minority of the arbcom.
I hope this helps a little,
-Matt
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