[WikiEN-l] Improving ArbCom's lot medium-term

Mon Jul 11 21:08:51 UTC 2005

--- Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 1. ArbCom to have 24 members (ie enough to cope with absences, resignations,
> etc)

Having more people will likely make it harder to reach consensus on any one
case and increase the number of votes needed to enact anything. Thus this could
cause more harm than good. Adding one or two extra seats per yearly election
along with finding ways to minimize the effect I just mentioned would likely be
a more practical course of action. There are also a limited number of people
who have both the trust of the community and want to serve. During the last
election, for example, I think it would have been a disaster to add more than a
few seats since that would have resulted in some fairly controversial people
getting elected. 

> 2. 7 Arbitrators to hear each case - the arbitrators to hear each case being
> decided on a taxi rank system (amongst those making themselves available in
> any given week or fortnight)

This could be workable for a slowly-growing ArbCom but would limit the
potential pool of people who could move a case along. The way things work now
works well so long as we have enough active members around. 

> 3. The first Arbitrator in the queue will be responsible for writing up the
> initial findings of fact and proposed decisions (this is both to share the
> workload, plus to ensure that one arbitrator does not gain undue influence by
> writing them all - this is not a criticism of Fred, who tends to be the first
> arbitrator at present to write these - more an acknowledgment that it would
> be better to get a variety of opinions - clearly if the other arbitrators
> disagree with the findings and proposed decision, it will be rejected anyway,
> as is the case now).

This would not be workable due to the fact that some people really are better
at proposing items while others rarely if ever do so either for time-constraint
issues or a lack of ability. Checking the logic of already-proposed items and
voting is always much easier than proposing items in the first place. 

-- mav

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