[WikiEN-l] How many Arbitrators should we have?

Thu Oct 6 16:38:51 UTC 2005

On 10/6/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a lot of current administrators that I've either voted to
> support, or simply refused to vote oppose in their RfA that I would
> never consider supporting in the position of an arbitrator.  If I'd
> thought that one future day they'd get handed the authority to
> arbitrate in any way stronger than they now can (by blocking, page
> locking, etc) it would certainly have been less "no big deal" and a
> lot more "let's screen these people very carefully".
>
> Keeping adminship "no big deal" has to include keeping the authorities
> granted to them in the same general class.

I'm also in agreement that the notion of letting any admin volunteer
to act as an adjudicator on any dispute is a bad idea.

First, you have the issue that adminship is currently "no big deal". 
If we give admins the right to make unilateral binding decisions (even
if subject to appeal) with the full authority of the ArbCom, then
suddenly adminship is no longer "no big deal".  We'd really need to
reconfirm all our current admins to this new standard, and I bet a lot
of them would fail to meet it.

Second, allowing people to pick and choose what issues they will offer
justice on is an open invitation to bias.  If a candidate jurist has a
POV on a particular issue, he will want to judge it in order to impose
his POV.  I oppose any system in which assignment to cases is on a
voluntary basis; all of our jurists should take the cases as they
come, with the option (and obligation) to recuse in case of conflict.

As to the problem of getting people to want to serve as magistrates
(which is, frankly, a really nasty job, almost as bad as that of
arbitrator, and with less prestige and power): the one selling point
is that it stands to reason that magistrates will naturally be the
most probable candidates to become future arbitrators, and are likely
to be called on to serve as temporary arbitrators to fill vacancies
and so forth.  Combine that with the fact that there are some crazy
people who enjoy being jurists, and I think we can scare up enough
qualified people to at least blunt the storm somewhat.

And, on top of that, I will personally buy a round of drinks for
anyone who serves as a magistrate, at every Wikimania I attend. :)

Kelly