Wikipedia:Arbitration Role of Jimmy Wales in the English Wikipedia

There is great admiration for Mr Wales's co-creation of one of the world's most significant information resources, and for the basic design features he has insisted on; however, most of his work in those respects is done. While Mr Wales can be proud of his achievement and will almost certainly continue to play a role in the English Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation for as long as he wishes, the time has come to recast his relationship with the project. His leading role was helpful when the project was young and innocent, but the English Wikipedia has matured: it is now too large and powerful not to have a modern system of governance.

It is hoped that Mr Wales will continue to be recognised as "the special Wikipedian" and to give his expertise to the project and its public relations. However, there is clearly a mood for constitutional change. Modernising the relationship between Mr Wales and the English Wikipedia's "Supreme Court"—the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom)—will be an historic and critical step. It will bring the project closer to the governance systems of the other Wikipedias, such as the German and the French, which have a relationship with Mr Wales only insofar as his membership of the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation.

This RFC is a carefully conceived, minimalist proposal, in which we seek to determine whether there is community consensus to: We encourage discussion of the issues raised, beneath the RFC on the talk page.
 * establish ArbCom elections as a direct expression of the community's will rather than as merely "advisory" to Mr Wales as now;
 * establish the elections as bringing the number of arbitrators to a total of 17 at the start of each year (no default size has previously been set), with a normal term of two years for new arbitrators;
 * rely for appeals solely on ArbCom's well-established procedure for that purpose, which renders unnecessary Mr Wales's theoretical power to modify ArbCom's remedies and enforcement actions, and his role as court of appeal for ArbCom decisions.

The two critical changes in policy wording
The changes involve two sections of the draft updated ArbCom policy that ArbCom released on June 26 for community feedback: (1) Selection and appointment and (2) Appeals of decisions. The struck-through text is removed; the normal text is added.