QUOTE(everyking @ Wed 25th November 2009, 12:52am)
Clerks shouldn't have any power, and electing them would effectively empower them by giving them a community mandate. I don't think there's a problem with clerks. People can vote for whoever they want, and in any case NYB and Wizardman are two of the most reasonable arbitrators.
Why is it then that you would
unseat all of the current arbitrators? Who are the Thomas Jeffersons you imagine in the community? And how would any body elected by the "community" avoid the fundamental problems you perceive in ArbCom?
ArbCom is widely criticized, but in many ways, your criticisms are the opposite of conventional wisdom. Many users--especially those banned by the "community"--fault ArbCom for
not standing up to the community enough, for not making independent assessments where we ought to, and for giving too much weight to influential howls on case talk pages.
I've always found these critiques much more persuasive than your criticisms, Everyking. "Community consensus" is often a process where interested editors self-select to control debates for or against some common purpose. Many participate at ANI out of the goodness of their hearts, but much of it seems little more than political and interpersonal power struggles.
It seems to me that ArbCom can and should counterbalance this faux consensus, and it can only do so by occassionally defying the expressed wishes of the "community" (that is, the !votes of those who bother to show up). We should recognize that these self-selected voices poorly represent the large group of hobbyists who never set foot on drama. By using a more broadly-elected pool of representatives who apply policies broadly approved by many editors, we at least have the
potential for fair results. Even with its flaws, I think that ArbCom is a more even-handed decision maker than the crapshoot of ANI, for example.
You often praise the community, Everyking, but I've never heard your proposal for how the "community" could make decisions without the problems we often see on Wikipedia.
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