[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee term lengths

Thu Dec 23 16:51:54 UTC 2004

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 at 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