Sj stated for the record:
To address one of Angela's points, these posts
should not be ones for
which one aggressively campaigns for reelection, perhaps not even
posts for which one stands for reelection. If they are now being
fought over, rather than so undesirable that Jimbo has to twist a few
arms to fill seats, then perhaps we should address that issue, rather
than opting to hold elections as infrequently as possible.
I for one am very willing to address that issue, but the mechanism seems
alarmingly straight-forward:
1: There are people who believe Wikipedia is not working as well as it
should.
2: Those people believe that other people are the problem.
3: Those people also believe that the ArbComm has the power to remove
the people who are the problem.
Therefore, those people want to be on the ArbComm so that they can
remove from Wikipedia the people who they believe are the problem.
As a corollary, some people believe that the wrong people are being
punished (eg, themselves) and want to be on the ArbComm to protect those
people from punishment.
Therefore, unless we find a way to make one of these premises untrue,
ArbComm membership is desirable, and to be aggressively campaigned for.
Note that I believe #1 and #2 myself. #3 is untrue only in that the
ArbComm acts purely as a judiciary, not an executive -- we judge those
whom others bring before us, we don't bring charges ourselves. One
could assume that an arbiter with an agenda might have friends who could
be counted on to bring charges against the people the aggressive arbiter
didn't like, so that separation of powers is not a particularly strong
bulwark against abuse.
--
Sean Barrett | Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this
sean(a)epoptic.com | country are decent, hard-working Americans. It's
| the other lousy 2% that get all the publicity.
| But then, we elected them. --Lily Tomlin