User talk:Jimbo Wales

ArbCom Appointments

With this edit, I am making the following appointments to the Arbitration Committee:

3 year terms:

Tranche Beta

- Casliber, Risker, Roger Davies, Cool Hand Luke, Rlevse

Tranche Beta (expansion seat)

- Jayvdb

2 year terms:

Tranche Gamma

- Vassyana, Carcharoth

Tranche Gamma (expansion seat)

- Wizardman

1 year term:

Tranche Alpha (expansion seat)

- Coren

Some notes:

1. Some in the community suggested that I should look at both percentage of support and at net "pro" votes. Or that I should look at net "pro" votes instead of percentage of support. As it turns out, when making 3 expansion appointments, there is a lucky coincidence: - Top six on both metrics are all appointed to 3 year terms - Next three on both metrics are all appointed to 2 year terms - Number ten on both metrics is appointed to a 1 year term

So, in this case, it would not matter which metric I favored.

2. As a "sanity check" on the appointments process, and in response to public and private concerns raised about inappropriate block voting, I also considered the votes of *just* admins. In the end this had no impact. There were two interesting small variations: - Jayvdb got much higher admin support, reflecting I think the results of an offsite campaign (I checked into the concerns of the campaigners and found them to be without merit) - CoolHandLuke got much lower admin support, reflecting I think the nature of his campaign - "In the last year, ArbCom has frequently failed us."

These variations are interesting, nothing more, and certainly not sufficient for me to posit a major rift between the broader community and the admins. Most of the vote counts were very similar for admins versus non-admins.

3. All 10 appointees have agreed to identify to the Foundation. This is not a requirement of the Foundation, and I chose not to make it a requirement for my appointments, either. It was merely a request. Nonetheless, all 10 eagerly agreed to it. There is no need for them to do so *before* taking office, and I'm sure it'll happen quickly enough.

4. Deskana is resigning his seat. I am not filling that seat right now, but I intend to do so in an interim election at some point in 2009, yet to be determined. There have been some mentions of other possible retirements, and so I will wait to see if anyone else is looking to retire early next year, and then we'll see about an election in March or June or so. With the 3 expansion seats, it is not as if we will be short-staffed.

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My exploration of the voting results tells me that this was an election for change. The only 2 current Arbs who were running were soundly defeated. This was a key factor in my decision to expand the committee - appointing 7 of 15 seats would not even be a majority, and 8 of 15 (by filling Deskana's seat) would barely be.

As it stands, we have 10 of 18 seats filled with new members, and with 1 retirement, in fact we have 10 of 17 arbs new. The community has asked for change, and I support this fully.

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The mandate for the new arbs, as I see it, and a small change.

1. Many people are of the opinion that the 2008 ArbCom moved much too slowly, and got too little done. I intend that with more members, the committee will explore ways to get more things done and more quickly. Various proposals have been put forward in the past, and all have merits. I encourage the new committee to act quickly and decisively to reorganize and reexamine working methods to get faster resolution to conflicts - justice delayed is justice denied.

2. Many people are of the opinion that the 2008 ArbCom was too opaque, hearing too many matters in private. I encourage the creation of new rules clearly limiting the scope of private decisionmaking.

Rather than completely outlawing it, because I do think there can be situations where a privately-handled matter is important for the dignity of all participants, I will simply strongly discourage private votes of any kind. There should be no "secret trials" or anything resembling them, and there can be no valid ArbCom action unless the person being sanctioned has had the opportunity for a public defense.

There are problems with this: drama on the wiki will increase in some ways. But the bigger drama of conspiracy theories and decisions made in error due to insufficient eyeballs on the case will be avoided.

3. We want arbs to be both responsive to community concerns, and also immune from populist campaigns that push rash decisionmaking. These are competing concerns which must be kept in balance. I request the new ArbCom to reflect on and discuss the creation of a method for the community recall of unpopular ArbCom members. This discussion should take place in June of 2009, once the new Arbs have some experience of the job and thus a deeper understanding of the pressures involved. I would like to see a procedure in place by the time of the next election.

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The small change: while not completely outlawing all private decision making, I will simply state that I will be strongly inclined to overturn on appeal any decision of the ArbCom that did not include a public discussion and vote.

I leave it to the new ArbCom to make their own decisions regarding the use of public workshops versus the private ArbCom wiki versus the mailing list - all are valid tools. I simply strongly encourage a renewed focus on the desire of the community for strong transparency in ArbCom operations.

--Jimbo