QUOTE(A Horse With No Name @ Wed 11th November 2009, 6:21pm)
Risker also notes that “the manner in which arbitrators, supposedly selected for their good judgment and wise counsel, are treated with suspicion, condescension and distrust from the moment of their appointment, has been pointed out to me by several highly respected editors as the reason that they are not interested in participating.†This, of course, is a phony argument.
Horsey, is there a good reason that anyone should spend dozens of hours a week on a hobby as a nominal figurehead whose best efforts can be swept away by predictable "community" discord? Consider that an arbitrator's only compensation is insults from anyone and everyone--perhaps people like you, who rail against arbitrators because they don't each read every Bible-long ArbCom workshop page, and who think that users of an internet site should be given due process rights rivaling those given to criminal defendants--without the paid lawyers or judges, of course.
I know that the job of WikiArbitrator might seem attractive to you in the abstract, but first consider that there are starving kids in China, wrongfully convicted innocents in prison, and unwritten Great American Novels--not to mention more mundane things like job hunting, gardening, and netflix.
Why should a rational adult misspend time this way? I would like to know; it's not a purely academic question.
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