User:MBisanz/Arbcom

Sitting as a party on the sidelines of the recent Arbitration Committee situations, and having prior experience examining the workings of judicial bodies, I am compelled to comment at length on the situation.

Timeline

 * Back in December 2007, a steward desysopped an en-wiki admin, at the request of a former arbitrator, who indicated he was acting on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. It was later determined that he was acting on the request of several members of the committee, and not the entire committee acting as a group.


 * In June of this year, an arbitrator blocked a user, who was then unblocked several hours later by another arbitrator, with the reason of The ArbCom is still discussing this matter with both users, he was then reblocked for 1 second by a third arbitrator, with the reason of Noting endorsement of unblock by FayssalF and of his unblock rationale on The undertow's log.. Several days later he was reblocked for 9 months by a former arbitrator with the reason of Per discussion on the arbcom mailing list.


 * Also in June of this year, a former arbitrator posted a request at Meta for a Steward to grant an editor Checkuser rights, on the basis that the en-wiki arbitration committee has decided to grant it. . later, an arbitration committee clerk removes the request from Meta, citing Remove (again) per Lar and FT2. This was the result of a misunderstanding.. still later a current arbitrator makes a null edit stating Confirming Daniel's edit summary - null edit. From the conversation at the page, there does not appear to have been any likelihood of the request being granted by the Stewards around at the time, although it also appears to have generated some degree of confusion as to what the Arbcom's intent was.


 * In late June of this year, an arbitrator posted a completed case, along with several pages of major announcements allegedly made by the arbitration committee. Several hours later, another arbitrator posted to AN stating that he considered the decision and announcements to have no authority or binding weight. Several hours subsequent, other arbitrators and Jimbo Wales indicated    they did not have a clear understanding of what had occurred.  The original arbitrator indicated that he believed he had been correct in posting the decision and several days later, yet another arbitrator posted a statement that the decision was not in effect and had been vacated with another arbitrator indicating the committee is "seized of the matter" and that this was a "collective failure" of the committee's.

Norms
In any society there are certain norms that develop. These societal norms are things that that individuals cannot violate, because the society, as a group, will prevent them from being violated, or better put, that the rule of law applies universally as defined by a society. Once these norms are developed, those who disagree with them, understand that regardless of their own desires, the force of the community prevents violations from occurring. For instance, many people disagree with speed limits on highways. However, few people risk grossly violating them, as they know the community has empowered the police to use force to stop violations. Repeated violations result in loss of one's license and eventually, jail.

The same theory of societal norms applies to Wikipedia, usually called consensus. For instance, early on it was decided that people could not post nonsense pages in the mainspace. Individuals who do so, have their page deleted and are warned not to do it again, if they continue, they are blocked, and so on. In processes like deletion discussions, if one disagrees with the consensus of the debate, they may seek review, however if a person went around recreating or undeleting pages that had been deleted per a discussion, they would quickly find themselves blocked and/or desysopped.

Taking this a step further, there are certain norms that apply to the Arbitration Committee. One of these norms is that even if an arbitrator disagrees with a decision, they will not attempt to undermine or countermand it publically. For instance, if a user is banned for a year from editing by a vote of 10-5, one of the five who dissented, has a duty not to unblock or aid the banned user in socking, least they violate the community norms. Another norm is that individual arbitrators may not act on their own, without the consent and approval of the committee. For instance, banning a user, on behalf of the arbitration committee, when the committee has never heard of the ban discussion. In light of the fact that the Arbitration Committee deals with critical and weighty matters, such as the Privacy policy and lengthy bans, another norm is that they get an action correct, at least with regard to the committee's own consensus.

Recent events
Given the recent events above, it appears that the societal norms of the Arbitration Committee have become fractured. Individuals, in good faith, are doing things that turn out to be incorrect. These actions are creating a general feeling of confusion, something that cannot exist with the weight of the matters decided by the Arbitration Committee.

How long must an administrator, wait after a decision is posted/closed before enforcing its provisions, to know that it will not be vacated as improper? How can Stewards trust an arbitrator, claiming to be acting on behalf of the committee, when on multiple occasions the committee has made no decision? It paralyzes the effective administration of the committee's decisions, when one cannot be sure of the validity of a particular decision.

Further, when arbitrators openly countermand decisions of the committee, it creates an unseemly appearance of division among the committee, so strong, that it is impeding the administration of affairs. I would strongly urge arbitrators who disagree with an official action taken by another arbitrator, to keep it on the arbcom-l list, taking it to Jimbo and failing, before airing the committee's dirty laundry in a public fashion.

In short, unless the community can rely on the arbitrators to follow the societal norms, it will cease to be an effective body.

Suggestion
In business, there is a saying along the lines of: Don't bring a problem, bring a problem and a solution. In that light, I suggest the following, as a partial solution: that Arbitration committee members be individually tasked with monitoring and tracking certain areas in which the committee operates, to ensure that process is properly followed, and so that outside parties may know who is authorized to speak on behalf of the committee in certain situations.

Much in the style of US Supreme Court Justices being assigned Circuits for which they handle emergency matters and meeting coordination, such a system would assign tasks such as Checkusership Requests, private appeals of blocks, RFARs, Request for Clarification, etc to individual arbitrators. These individuals would be responsible for ensuring that before an action is taken "on behalf of the committee" that the committee has genuinely intended that such action be taken. They would not "decide" matters and could be switched around semi-annually/annual to encourage task diversity, but would be responsible for championing that Arbcom as a group address their specific responsibility area.

By assigning individual responsibility, the potential for a well meaning member to see something, think "No one else has acted on this, I'll handle it", and do the wrong action, decreases. Below is a mockup of how I envision this suggestion being implemented.