QUOTE(Newyorkbrad @ Wed 11th November 2009, 8:17pm)
If a non-administrator were ever elected as an arbitrator (which I don't especially favor but is not against policy), I think we'd have to confer adminship for the duration of his or her term. It would be very difficult for an arbitrator to review some cases without the ability to review deleted revisions, for example.
(If someone objected that we shouldn't make someone an admin who hadn't passed RfA, we could require the person to use the administrator buttons only for the purpose of his or her arbitration work, not for performing the usual roles of adminship.)
The Mediawiki software includes a "role" that has all the viewing privileges, but none of the change privileges, of an admin. Wikipedia does not avail themselves of this role, but it does exist.
It is my opinion that all arbitrators should have their rights reduced (or, as appropriate, increased) to this role for the duration of their tenure, to reduce the risk of being judge, jury, and executioner.
QUOTE(Malleus @ Wed 11th November 2009, 8:24pm)
It seems to me that a similar objection might be raised in the case of non-administrators commenting at AN/I though, where they may equally well not have all of the relevant information available to them. Isn't it about time this ever-increasing mish-mash of admin tools was debundled, so that you could grant only the right to view deleted revisions, for instance?
Yeah, i know it'll never happen, but just as a reference point, when you, Newyorkbrad, passed RfA, rights like abuse filters and flagged revisions didn't exist. Don't you think that it's slightly dishonest for administrators to claim a mandate for the use of tools that didn't even exist when they were "promoted", yet to deny access to them to others?
It is past time that Wikipedia deubndled admin tools. There are many admins who I would trust to use some, but not all, of the tools responsibly; debundling them would make it much easier to grant these people only the rights that they can be trusted to use responsibily.