Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017/Candidates/KrakatoaKatie/Questions

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Question from Banedon






Question from SilkTork



 * Ha! No, it wasn't a question about WP:ARBPOL, it was looking for your personal thoughts on the committee and its status and implications and relationship with the rest of the community. If you want to leave your answer as summarising ARBPOL that's fine (others have done similar), and if you want to respond a little deeper with some of your own reflections on ArbCom's power relationship with the community, or any other aspect of the question that takes your fancy, that's also fine. I just wanted to respond to your question and clarify that I wasn't simply asking if you had read ARBPOL. ;-)SilkTork (talk) 09:16, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. You know, I have mixed thoughts on the power relationship. I think (and this is off the top of my head, and I'm not going to even edit what I'm about to type) that the perceived power of Arbcom is more than its actual power. I can see how people can believe the opposite, but if there was indeed this huge authority that ruled from on high about everything, we'd have a ton of pronouncements every week about Wikidata and paid editing and GMOs and the rest. I feel I'll be on the reluctant side to accept cases (with the possible exception of admin conduct cases) that haven't been thoroughly discussed by the community because I believe the power is with the community and that they should use it. I know that in practice that can be difficult, like herding cats. (Or hyenas. Do hyenas herd?) (And no, I'm not calling everybody or anyone in particular a hyena.) We waste so much time with badly formed or vague RFCs, and we spend weeks sometimes !voting on silly sanctions at ANI, that we don't realize that all this structure (waves hands around) was formed by the community in the first place. OTOH, there are times that two or more editors get into it with each other and just. can't. get. along, and if those community processes can't solve it, then it's the Committee's job to step in and handle it. And I think I also said a little bit about the Committee's functions in my answer to Biblioworm. So that's what I have to say about that. :-) Katietalk 15:58, 23 November 2017 (UTC)