Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Proposed modifications to rules

I would favor all of these four proposals as they currently stand&mdash;a little hesitant on #1, but I guess it's fair. Everyking 08:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)


 * anyone who wants to be on the comittee but doesn't want to be an admins is free to resighn thier adminship after the election.Geni 10:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Um, these proposals are utterly ridiculous. I also find it fishy that none of the actual members of the committee were notified about this page. &rarr;Raul654 22:53, August 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * So much for assume good faith and willing to discuss the issues rather than rejecting them out of hand. This page is widely publicised throughout WP - feel free to publicise it further, jguk 03:55, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * What's there to discuss? They're all awful ideas cooked up by people who have NO IDEA how the arbcom operates. Please find me a single arbitrator or former arbitrator who thinks any of these are good ideas.
 * Proposal #1 is the only one I find even theoretically acceptable, and only because it would have absolutely no effect and is totally unnecessary. Why is it unncessary? Because what are the chances that someone who is not an admin would be elected to the arbcom? 0.
 * As to the rest of them - Proposal 2, which claims that First Past the Post voting is less suspectible to manipulation, is a flat out lie. Sorry, it's as simple as that. To a greater extent than most other methods, first-past-the-post encourages the tactical voting technique known as "compromising" - Plurality electoral system. Furthermore, unless a developer impliments it, then it's a non-starter (good luck getting that to happen - the developer have far better things to do with their time than to impliment a worse system than what we have already).
 * Proposal 3 treds on Jimbo's authority, and it's just a bad idea anyway. We have too many election or votes in general (in addition to VFD and RFA, we have the annual board elections, the AMA elections, the bi-annual steward elections, and the annual arbcom election). Furthermore, the arbcom ones have historically been very bitter. So, your solution is to have even more? Oh, wonderful idea.
 * And, I think, by far the worst of the ideas proposed here is number 4. In one fell swoop, not only do you introduce a massive amount of bureacracy into an already bureacratic process, and of course you haven't actually specified how the 9 of 24 arbitrators are chosen, but you also seriously upset how the arbcom operates. And furthermore, since this (radically) alters how the arbcom works, it requires ammending the arbitration policy (which means that this is not the propoer forum anyhow). &rarr;Raul654 05:43, August 15, 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments. It seems that you'd be willing to accept 1. I share your views that there is only a negligible or theoretical possibility that the community would accept as an arbitrator someone who they would not be willing to accept as an admin. Tidying up the field and getting rid of no-hope candidates can only help - if this is the only proposal that passes, it should still see an improvement over last year's race.
 * It would be easy enough to implement - the current system of voting would only need to be modified to ignore "votes" where someone has placed more X's than they're entitled to - a task that could easily be done by hand if needs be.
 * Proposal 3 would eliminate the uncertainty we had this year, which surely should be gotten rid of. Of course, an alternative proposal that would also ensure certainty would be to state explicitly when Jimbo might announce replacements for casual vacancies. However, I thought the idea was that Jimbo would over time take a lesser role in these sorts of things - am I wrong in this?
 * Proposal 4 involves zero bureaucracy and states clearly how the 9 arbitrators would be selected - ie on a taxi rank system. It wouldn't require anything other than consequential changes to ArbCom policy - it would give a greater pool of Arbitrators and guarantee a panel of 9 in each matter. I don't see changes in the style of how the ArbCom operates are necessarily bad - the votes of the last election are still readily available, with the organisers noting explicitly that all but one of the elected did not enjoy the support of the majority of the community and asking them to take note of that - the ArbCom is not meant to be a special clique. I for one have concerns that Fred appears to be writing every single proposed decision - I have no problem with him writing some, but writing every single one seems (at least to this outsider) seems to give him undue influence, jguk 06:34, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed move to a vote
The discussion on the project page has been useful. In the light of it I propose having a vote on the proposal that candidates for ArbCom must be admins. No-one's really contradicted the proposition that there is only a negligible probability that the community would be willing to have someone as an Arbitrator who it wouldn't be willing to have as an admin. Some have questioned whether we need to bar non-admins from standing; however, personally I feel that the fringe candidates damaged rather than improved the last election, and that omitting them may help this time round.

The other proposal that I think should be voted on is whether we have an election in June to fill mid-year vacancies. This would be set against the alternative of putting into words the current de facto position - namely that Jimbo, in discussions with the existing Arbitrators, may, at their discretion, fill casual vacancies, with the term of Arbitrators appointed in this way lapsing at the end of the year. This will, at the very least, ensure that we have a clear guideline going forward.

I propose running these two votes from 14 September to the end of the month, with 80% being required to change from the current de facto position, but would welcome comments before launching into a vote. The other proposals do not look at though they would pass if a vote were held on them, so I do not suggest holding votes on these at this stage. That said, I note that there is some support for an enlarged ArbCom - but I think it best we leave a vote on those sort of proposals to another day, jguk 18:32, 7 September 2005 (UTC)