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_ Bureaucracy _ What exactly is it that Arbs do?
Posted by: radek
Can anyone explain this mystery to me?
I understand that there maybe a lot of *sekirt sht* that arbs have to deal with before they actually issue their words of wisdom on a particular case/amendment/appeal. Uhh... what is it? Or at least let's have an affirmation that there is a lot of sekrit sht that delays a timely response on these cases.
Seriously, the length of time before something is actually brought up and before it is... even commented upon is something like a month... and that's just the first comment. Then it takes another two weeks or so before another comment is made. And so it goes on and on and on... Why? Are they sifting through some super secret files? I know there's some present and former Arbs around here so could they please explain it to us lesser folks?
Some interesting associated phenomenon:
1. From what I understand the on-Wiki activity of people newly elected to ArbCom all of sudden drops. So maybe they are dealing with the sekrit sht.
2. Or maybe they just rest on their laurels.
3. Except that most of them usually campaign on the platform (in some way or another) of making ArbCom more timely and "transparent"? Can anyone point to an instance where the ArbCom - or at least an individual members choices - somehow became noticeably more transparent?
4. The fact that even the candidates that you have some hope for that are initially "rebels" - *cough* Iridescent *cough* - end up doing the exact same thing... taking for ever... so maybe it is a structural problem. or maybe they just rest on their laurels.
Regardless, they may be a good reason for why the ArbCom appears so slow and inefficient. But at the very least, let us know! My sense of it is that by definition ArbCom has to deal with pain-in-the-ass, hard to define, uncomfortable cases and these are exactly the kinds of situations which any normal person procrastinates as much as possible (like doing your taxes on April 15th). Add that up across all the multiple members and you get institutional laziness. But part of what we pay them for is to resolve these things in a timely fashion. I want my money back. Way I figure it by this time, ArbCom as a collective entity owns me a few hundred dollars worth of compensation for stress and psychological damage incurred due to my breathless and frustrated waiting for its decision.
At the very least - how about one of the former ArbCom members that frequent this forum gives us a "day in the life" rundown. The plebs want to know.
Posted by: melloden
loooooooooool.
Maybe I'm an arb ....... or not. I'm guessing the answer is wait to make the process look really bureaucratic and elite, secretly checkuser everyone, and block the annoying users before they can actually change arbcom's authority.
Any answer you get from an arb will just make things more secret ... it's not like they're going to go out and reveal the behind-the-scenes cabal-ing.
Posted by: radek
loooooooooool.
Maybe I'm an arb ....... or not. I'm guessing the answer is wait to make the process look really bureaucratic and elite, secretly checkuser everyone, and block the annoying users before they can actually change arbcom's authority.
Any answer you get from an arb will just make things more secret ... it's not like they're going to go out and reveal the behind-the-scenes cabal-ing.
In a way, I guess because my expectations are so low, I'm fine with the explanation that they're all caballing and caballizing. If they're busy checkusering everyone that'd at least be an excuse. But I've paid attention to some of these and I don't think that's what they're doing (it actually wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily). I also reject the explanation that the delays are done on purpose just in order to make the process seem more mystical - again, the fact that new arbs seem to fall into the same patterns bespeaks against it (unless the conspiracy runs deeper than I think and the new appointees are actually pre-chosen and the whole election thing is a scam - but now I'm sounding like one of those crazy Wikipedia Review people)
If the Wikipedia Signpost was in any way a useful news organ we'd at least get one of those hard-hitting 60-minute type interviews where the elusive ArbCom member is allowed to feed us a convincing and plausible sounding line of bullshit in response to difficult sounding questions. All scripted of course but the fact that they'd bother to put on this show would at least let us know that they care, at least a bit, about appearances.
Posted by: thekohser
I didn't want to have to do this, but I can't keep the secret any longer.
The reason why new (and veteran) Arbs take so long with everything is that they've hired me out to provide an online webinar series... "Troll Spotting 101". We get together for the first week, 90 minutes a day, just going through all of my dozens of sockpuppets to learn the patterns and purposes of each.
Then, the second week is more of the same, but we spend a day on Jon Awbrey, then a day on Tony Sidaway, then a day on David Gerard, etc. (I don't want to give away too much here. I'm being paid BIG bucks for these training sessions.)
The third week, we look at POV-pushing, looking at SlimVirgin, Jayjg, Cirt, etc.
In the fourth week, I have a bit of fun with the Arbs, where we all make a sockpuppet, and we see who can go the longest without being caught, then multiplying it by an "outlandishness" factor.
It is a wonder any of the Arbs get anything done, what with all these mandatory seminars that the Foundation has asked them to take with me.
Posted by: Kelly Martin
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the purpose of the ArbCom is to facilitate the authoring of an encyclopedia. Please recheck your assumptions and begin your analysis again.
Posted by: Eva Destruction
4. The fact that even the candidates that you have some hope for that are initially "rebels" - *cough* Iridescent *cough* - end up doing the exact same thing... taking for ever... so maybe it is a structural problem. or maybe they just rest on their laurels.
Check my history—I've barely been active anywhere (there or here) for the last couple of months, other than poking my head in every few days to see if there's anything urgent that can't wait. When real life and Wikipedia compete for time, real life always wins. My Arbcom activities have been limited to replying to a few emails. (The barrage of emails—not all of which are from Ottava—is overwhelming. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/644_new_messages.JPG isn't doctored.)
(For the record, note that I never said anything anywhere at any time about "making arbcom more timely and transparent". I believe it ought to have its remit drastically reduced, and the dispute-resolution and handling-problem-users sides split into independent bodies to reduce the Judge Dredd aspects of the way Wikipedia is run—and have got people talking about whether this is possible and desirable and how it might be done, which is the most one can hope for when one's outnumbered 16–2 on an issue—but that's a very different matter, although I do believe a more limited remit would solve the "timely" issue. Given the mix of kiddy-fiddlers, drama queens, libel-mongers and criminal psychopaths who inhabit the murkier edges of Wikipedia, there are excellent reasons to avoid having some discussions in the full view of Google's spiders; that's one issue on which the most devout Jimbo-cultists and the most die-hard Someys and GBGs agree.)
Posted by: Kelly Martin
CONTENT issues should be resolved by an open jury panel process. CONDUCT issues should be resolved entirely in private with the deciding body publishing only as much as is needed to implement the resolution.
The ArbCom is the standing disciplinary committee of a voluntary society (even though it does not recognize itself as such, that's what it is). There is no authority anywhere that even remotely suggests that such committees should conduct their business in open session, and a basic understanding of things like defamation law would lead any reasonable person to understand why conducting all such matters in private as much as is logically possible is the most reasonable approach. The reason the ArbCom does not do so is that it is dominated (within and without) by drama hounds.
So my advice to the ArbCom is: discontinue all case-related pages on the wiki. Post only summary orders describing who is being sanctioned and the nature of those sanctions. Do not try, in public, to explain the reason for those sanctions, for doing so merely amounts to defaming those parties involved to no purpose. The only reason you should ever give is "the best interests of the project"; anything else amounts to a judgment on character that you have neither the right nor the capacity to make. Do not allow comment, of any sort, on these announcements. To quote RONR: "Neither the society nor any of its members has the right to make pubic the charge of which an expelled member has been found guilty, or to reveal any other details connected with the case." (RONR, 10th ed, p.630, l. 32-35, and, yes, the typo is in the original)
One of Wikipedia's problems is that its membership is poorly defined, and in any case the membership cannot in general be trusted to observe the above stricture. Because of this, its disciplinary committee must necessarily keep most of the details of any disciplinary proceedings it conducts secret from the general membership in order to keep them from being spread to the public generally.
Wikipedia, however, enjoys its show trials far too much to give them up, and I rather expect that any attempt to reform ArbCom to behave in a mature and proper manner will fail utterly; even if by some chance a majority of its membership agreed to take appropriate measures, they would only be voted out at the next election because the electorate wants the drama and would almost certainly seek to punish those who take it from them.
Posted by: Eva Destruction
CONTENT issues should be resolved by an open jury panel process. CONDUCT issues should be resolved entirely in private with the deciding body publishing only as much as is needed to implement the resolution.
The ArbCom is the standing disciplinary committee of a voluntary society (even though it does not recognize itself as such, that's what it is). There is no authority anywhere that even remotely suggests that such committees should conduct their business in open session, and a basic understanding of things like defamation law would lead any reasonable person to understand why conducting all such matters in private as much as is logically possible is the most reasonable approach. The reason the ArbCom does not do so is that it is dominated (within and without) by drama hounds.
So my advice to the ArbCom is: discontinue all case-related pages on the wiki. Post only summary orders describing who is being sanctioned and the nature of those sanctions. Do not try, in public, to explain the reason for those sanctions, for doing so merely amounts to defaming those parties involved to no purpose. The only reason you should ever give is "the best interests of the project"; anything else amounts to a judgment on character that you have neither the right nor the capacity to make. Do not allow comment, of any sort, on these announcements. To quote RONR: "Neither the society nor any of its members has the right to make pubic the charge of which an expelled member has been found guilty, or to reveal any other details connected with the case." (RONR, 10th ed, p.630, l. 32-35, and, yes, the typo is in the original)
One of Wikipedia's problems is that its membership is poorly defined, and in any case the membership cannot in general be trusted to observe the above stricture. Because of this, its disciplinary committee must necessarily keep most of the details of any disciplinary proceedings it conducts secret from the general membership in order to keep them from being spread to the public generally.
Wikipedia, however, enjoys its show trials far too much to give them up, and I rather doubt that an attempt to reform ArbCom to behave in a mature and proper manner will fail utterly; even if by some chance a majority of its membership agreed to take appropriate measures, they would only be voted out at the next election because the electorate wants the drama and would almost certainly seek to punish those who take it from them.
Agree with all that. I'd go further, and have conduct and content decisions made by separate bodies. However, that's not how it's currently set up and you can only work with the tools you have.
Posted by: Kelly Martin
As to "tool you have available", you're an admin, I believe; you can delete all the inappropriate pages related to Arbitration (which is to say, just about all of them). About the only one that should remain, honestly, is the "requested enforcement" page and even that one needs substantial editing. Is it because you believe that you'd be defrocked for such tomfoolery, even when it's actually required by Wikipedia policy?
Posted by: gomi
With due respect, it is clear by now what the primary purpose of Wikipedia ArbCom is: to enforce and maintain the status quo, to eliminate those who try to improve or mature Wikipedia, and generally to bolster the cadre of editors and admins who tightly control it.
This requires slow, tedious work. This is mostly to ensure that by the time they decide anything, everyone will have forgotten what the real issues were (as opposed to the smokescreen thrown up in the case itself).
Punishments meted out are mostly symbolic: whenever it is opportune to show a symbolic punishment to a member of the cadre, it is short-term and circumscribed. Every now and then a death sentence is handed down on some more-or-less randomly selected defendant, pour encourager les autres.
ArbCom is an important Wikipedia institution, in that it prevents anything from improving, acting as a flywheel on such ambitions as improving BLPs, treating experts better, refining "consensus" and generally dismantling the warlord society so dear to senior Wikipedia admins. Don't worry, they'll never change, just continue to sink into irrelevance.
Posted by: Sarcasticidealist
More seriously, I think most of what you advance is valid. There is a great deal that goes on behind the scenes and that commands a lot of the time that arbitrators are willing/able to devote to arbitration (and for me, I found that time to be less than I had previously been willing to devote to writing articles, because I found the latter enjoyable and the former largely soul-crushing). Your procrastination hypothesis is also a good one - I certainly tend to procrastinate more on soul-crushing things than on less soul-crushing things.
Beyond that, individuals on ArbCom are seldom responsible for specific things (case drafting being the one exception I can think of). This means that things fall through the cracks easily and often - arbs generally reply (internally, usually) to e-mails that grab their interest and on which they feel they have something to contribute, and leave the others for other arbs to handle. Of course, sometimes no other arb handles it.
With cases specifically, sometimes what appeared to be inactivity was actually a period of consensus (in the real, not Wikipedia, sense of the word) seeking to make the actual voting run more smoothly.
These factors frequently combine to produce delays that either appear or are unacceptable (the latter was true in your amendment request, but the former is common too).
Though I don't buy into Kelly and Gomi's pseudo-conspiratorial view of ArbCom (they might consider looking into Occam's Razor, or at least reading Cock-Up's signature), I have come to the conclusion that it can't work. I don't feel like devoting the time to writing that essay now, but I will if I ever go back to Wikipedia.
Posted by: Ottava
My Arbcom activities have been limited to replying to a few emails. (The barrage of emails—not all of which are from Ottava—is overwhelming. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/644_new_messages.JPG isn't doctored.)
I've only sent one email to ArbCom since the beginning of the year.
By the way, Judge Dredd is a rather kick ass comic. It is also one of the few major, worldwide comics that is "British".
Posted by: Eva Destruction
My Arbcom activities have been limited to replying to a few emails. (The barrage of emails—not all of which are from Ottava—is overwhelming. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/644_new_messages.JPG isn't doctored.)
I've only sent one email to ArbCom since the beginning of the year.
By the way, Judge Dredd is a rather kick ass comic. It is also one of the few major, worldwide comics that is "British".
You've sent me eight emails in the last week alone. (A lot of major comics are British, most obviously Malleus's beloved V for Vendetta, and the driving force behind the revival of DC Comics was the Alan Moore–Neil Gaiman team, both of whom are English almost to the point of parody.)
Posted by: gomi
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that ArbCom achieves their utter worthlessness out of conspiratorial direct action. I think they are innately worthless. It requires no conspiracy whatsoever, unless it is "a conspiracy of dunces".
That it takes great volumes of dialog and many man-hours of useless "action" to achieve nothing is another hallmark of the <cough> "intelligent design" of the committee.
Posted by: radek
4. The fact that even the candidates that you have some hope for that are initially "rebels" - *cough* Iridescent *cough* - end up doing the exact same thing... taking for ever... so maybe it is a structural problem. or maybe they just rest on their laurels.
Check my history—I've barely been active anywhere (there or here) for the last couple of months, other than poking my head in every few days to see if there's anything urgent that can't wait. When real life and Wikipedia compete for time, real life always wins. My Arbcom activities have been limited to replying to a few emails. (The barrage of emails—not all of which are from Ottava—is overwhelming. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/644_new_messages.JPG isn't doctored.)
(For the record, note that I never said anything anywhere at any time about "making arbcom more timely and transparent". I believe it ought to have its remit drastically reduced, and the dispute-resolution and handling-problem-users sides split into independent bodies to reduce the Judge Dredd aspects of the way Wikipedia is run—and have got people talking about whether this is possible and desirable and how it might be done, which is the most one can hope for when one's outnumbered 16–2 on an issue—but that's a very different matter, although I do believe a more limited remit would solve the "timely" issue. Given the mix of kiddy-fiddlers, drama queens, libel-mongers and criminal psychopaths who inhabit the murkier edges of Wikipedia, there are excellent reasons to avoid having some discussions in the full view of Google's spiders; that's one issue on which the most devout Jimbo-cultists and the most die-hard Someys and GBGs agree.)
I was imprecise. I didn't mean to imply that you in particular ran on a "making arbcom more timely and transparent" platform - that was just the previous point, that many of the candidates do run on such a platform. I meant that I had (and still have) high hopes for you.
Actually, something like the image of that mailbox is what I was asking for.
Posted by: RMHED
Why don't we go back to mocking Arbcom? It's more happy funsy-timey.
Why bother, they make a mockery of themselves and need no help from us.
Posted by: melloden
Why don't we go back to mocking Arbcom? It's more happy funsy-timey.
ArbCom = comical. Discussion of British comics is therefore related to this thread. Also, ArbCom is pretty self-explanatory: everything they do is like a government subcommittee, which means they don't actually do anything useful.
Posted by: gomi
[Mod note: Comix stuff http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=32863 to the Politics forum. It seemed apropos.]
Posted by: radek
Thanks to Sarcasticidealist and Eva, as well as all other arbs, quasi arbs, maybe arbs and definitely not arbs, present and former who offered up the info.
'was wondering - a lot of this sounds like simple coordination problems - why not choose one particular member as "coordinator/whip" and have it on rotating basis?
Posted by: Milton Roe
'was wondering - a lot of this sounds like simple coordination problems - why not choose one particular member as "coordinator/whip" and have it on rotating basis?
I want to see Gomi's bobble-Jesus with a whip. Sort of the temple-cleansing version.
Posted by: Eva Destruction
Thanks to Sarcasticidealist and Eva, as well as all other arbs, quasi arbs, maybe arbs and definitely not arbs, present and former who offered up the info.
'was wondering - a lot of this sounds like simple coordination problems - why not choose one particular member as "coordinator/whip" and have it on rotating basis?
My opinion; because it gives too much petty-tyrant authority to whoever that person may be, and because it puts too much responsibility on one person—even if they have no particular extra power, they'll certainly be seen as "the one to blame" by everyone. The current system of a bunch of people who don't get on particularly well being forced to agree may be a fudge, but it keeps the machinery from gumming up completely. (If I were coordinator, for instance, the whole thing would degenerate into outright guerilla warfare.) In practice, Brad in particular does a lot of de facto coordination, but can be (and is) ignored by anyone who doesn't happen to see things his way. My personal plan (as I may have mentioned occasionally) would be twin Arbcoms with different remits, which would both stop the logjamming of getting 18 people to agree, and reduce the "top of the pyramid" perception. Ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: Peter Damian
Thanks to Sarcasticidealist and Eva, as well as all other arbs, quasi arbs, maybe arbs and definitely not arbs, present and former who offered up the info.
'was wondering - a lot of this sounds like simple coordination problems - why not choose one particular member as "coordinator/whip" and have it on rotating basis?
My opinion; because it gives too much petty-tyrant authority to whoever that person may be, and because it puts too much responsibility on one person—even if they have no particular extra power, they'll certainly be seen as "the one to blame" by everyone. The current system of a bunch of people who don't get on particularly well being forced to agree may be a fudge, but it keeps the machinery from gumming up completely. (If I were coordinator, for instance, the whole thing would degenerate into outright guerilla warfare.) In practice, Brad in particular does a lot of de facto coordination, but can be (and is) ignored by anyone who doesn't happen to see things his way. My personal plan (as I may have mentioned occasionally) would be twin Arbcoms with different remits, which would both stop the logjamming of getting 18 people to agree, and reduce the "top of the pyramid" perception. Ain't gonna happen.
Why don't you just resign and let Sandstein take your place (I think he was next in the voting order so your candidacy effectively prevented him from getting a place in the sunshite).
He would soon sort the Wiki out and many interesting things would happen.
Posted by: EricBarbour
Still daydreaming that WP is "repairable"? Heh.
Posted by: Eva Destruction
Still daydreaming that WP is "repairable"? Heh.
"Salvageable" is probably more accurate. I believe Wikipedia as it currently exists is unviable and unmanageable; however, I do believe there is a lot of decent material there which warrants saving, and that the goal should be to preserve the worthwhile core for the transition to whatever replaces it. My (long and tedious) ramblings on the matter are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iridescent/Archive_12#Wikipedia_II, if anyone really cares.
Posted by: Kelly Martin
I'm up against this situation in the small with respect to my http://ab9rf.com/repeaters, which contains a great deal of "bad data". I would like to set up a process for reviewing each entry for accuracy, but the amount of data that needs to be reviewed is daunting and I haven't set up any process yet as a result. Wikipedia has the same problem, except instead of 24,397 entries there are over two million.
Posted by: Peter Damian
My (long and tedious) ramblings on the matter are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iridescent/Archive_12#Wikipedia_II, if anyone really cares.
I started a thread on that here http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=32888&view=findpost&p=267518
Posted by: Lar
Why don't you just resign and let Sandstein take your place (I think he was next in the voting order so your candidacy effectively prevented him from getting a place in the sunshite).
He would soon sort the Wiki out and many interesting things would happen.
True. If you're of the "Hasten the day" persuasion, that is.
Posted by: Peter Damian
Why don't you just resign and let Sandstein take your place (I think he was next in the voting order so your candidacy effectively prevented him from getting a place in the sunshite).
He would soon sort the Wiki out and many interesting things would happen.
True. If you're of the "Hasten the day" persuasion, that is.
Sandstein fascinates me.
Posted by: Zoloft
He would soon sort the Wiki out and many interesting things would happen.
He's positively sedimentary.
Posted by: Eva Destruction
The process of winnowing Wikipedia's database to find those rare gems is nearly as much work as writing them anew, especially when you consider that such an effort must necessarily involve fact-checking each such article for accuracy (something which not even Wikipedia's vaunted FA process does reliably). I think you deeply underestimate the number of editor-hours that would be required to perform this task with respect to Wikipedia's content.
I don't. Of those 2 million articles, between 50-75% are substubs which could be summarily deleted. Of the remainder, a goodly chunk (I won't even try to estimate) is on material so specialized that it doesn't really belong on a general-purpose reference work—TV episodes, disused rail stations etc, which would be split off to a "legacy Wikipedia". Britannica has around 4000 long articles and 65,000 short ones; a Wikipedia II, with a broader base, could realistically expect to support 5-10 times that, giving it a plateau of 250k-500k before it degenerated into unmaintainable sludge.
Posted by: Milton Roe
He would soon sort the Wiki out and many interesting things would happen.
He's positively sedimentary.
As opposed to Ottava, who on WR plays Blessed Brother Igneous.
Posted by: EricBarbour
Yeah, it's always fun to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ikK4tRw5V0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive564#Questions_for_Sandstein animals.
Posted by: Apathetic
Thanks to Sarcasticidealist and Eva, as well as all other arbs, quasi arbs, maybe arbs and definitely not arbs, present and former who offered up the info.
'was wondering - a lot of this sounds like simple coordination problems - why not choose one particular member as "coordinator/whip" and have it on rotating basis?
We have one... (though it doesn't usually rotate often)
The Arbitration Committee does not have a chair, but may designate one arbitrator to coordinate timely performance of tasks. The current coordinating arbitrator is Roger Davies, with Kirill Lokshin as his deputy.
Roger does a good job of keeping things organized and ensuring stuff doesn't fall through the cracks.
We are exploring various other options to expedite processes, such as having informal teams to focus on one of the five or six "core functions" with a coordinating arbitrator for each team.
Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy
Yah, Sandstein's a fuck.
Once those guys have their Hells Pee-dians colors, all they do mostly is lurch out of metaphorical bars, punch someone or spew over them ... and then fall off their metaphoric motorcycles a few miles down the road unable to maintain any balance to the power and momentum the club has given them.
Rlevse was a perfect example. It was a joy to watch him land on his fat face.
Funnily enough, if one does a Google on him today, the link (for me) was to a thread in this very same fine forum on the ethics of, http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=21528.
How the mighty fall ...
In my opinion, had such a situation arisen in an accountable, professional environment, e.g. academia, there is no way on earth that he and his cabal would be allowed to get away with what they are doing.
Posted by: Peter Damian
I had an email from a member of Arbcom about that but all empty promises as usual. '[redacted]' - a liar and a fool. [redacted] - another fool. Do not believe these people. Useful idiots or liars. Who can tell.
I redacted these remarks and apologise to the Arb members concerned. I simply don't know who is telling the truth. But the fact remains. The Arbcom sometimes pronounces from on high. At other times it mingles with the public on talk pages. Other times, it selects members to send emails to those sad people caught in the grasp of Wikipedia. All very Kafkaesque - that is exactly how the Castle communicates with its victims, and remember Kafka was writing a parable about bureaucracies, and was himself a public servant for some time.
The fact remains that if you take everything they say, it contains internal contradictions. Not all of it, indeed quite a lot of it, cannot be true. So someone is lying.
One of them (not either of the ones alluded to above) admitted to me recently that he might have been lying, but then it was a long time ago so he had forgotten the lie. That's fine then.
John Vandenberg has some interesting observations about lying (see below), even admits to practising it. We don't know whether the lies he talks about were Arbcom related or work-related or to someone else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2010/Candidates/FT2/Questions&diff=prev&oldid=399285173
The other thing Arbcom members do is suggest there is something really important going to happen, usually in the next few weeks, or months. In the experience of people here, does that 'thing' ever happen? We should be told.
The 'thing' is occasionally something so dastardly and toxic that it cannot be revealed, ever. So Arbcom must be sitting on a pile of these toxic secrets, then. Perhaps, instead of the Liars Committee, I should call it the Blackmail committee?
Posted by: Ottava
John Vandenberg has some interesting observations about lying (see below), even admits to practising it. We don't know whether the lies he talks about were Arbcom related or work-related or to someone else.
We have another thread in this forum on the topic.