[Foundation-l] The foundations of the Wikimedia Foundation (was: Wikimedia Council)

Fri Jan 4 20:30:50 UTC 2008

On 1/4/08, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can easily see a way around it.
> >
> > The same method as has been sometimes suggested as a regulated
> > workflow on the monolingual arbcoms, and is defacto happening at
> > least on the english wikipedia arbcom, in a fairly granularized manner.
> >
> > Not have every arbcom member available for each case.
> >
> > It might work on the basis of having a dedicated French language
> > section of the arbcom, a Dutch language section of the arbcom,
> > a Portuguese language section of the arbcom and so forth, with
> > co-mingling between arbitrators from different language teams
> > being an exception rather than a rule.
> >
> > Or it might be that every arbcom case would work on a pick and
> > mix principle, with arbitrators specifically announcing they are
> > available for a case, either being able to understand the working
> > language, or bringing in an assistant to help them understand
> > the issues as they pertain to things said in the working language.
> >
> > The fact that this would entail bringing in a fairly large pool of
> > arbitrators, to me is a plus than a negative, as it would naturally
> > decrease the workload on any one arbitrator.
>
> If you're doing that, you might as well just give the cases to
> randomly chosen local arbcoms. It's an idea to consider, but I think a
> true meta-arbcom would be better.

I am not sure I quite agree. The local arbitrators on say the Portuguese
wikipedia might not have been chosen for their familiarity with minor
languages in the (former and current) Portuguese colonies, just as an
example, which a putative meta arbcom team with a working language
of Portuguese, might quite easily be.

I don't quite see how a pure english language meta-arbcom would be
truer.

--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]