QUOTE(HRIP7 @ Sun 17th July 2011, 4:27pm)
Does anyone share the impression that this seems designed to address anything but Cirt's editing?
In RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley, I proposed that ArbComm act to keep cases as narrow as possible. To broaden cases to "examine the behavior of all involved" necessarily broadens and confuses them, and it chills participation.
Rather, suppose editor RandyFromBoise has a complaint about AdministratorAnyBody. Randy files a case, having attempted dispute resolution without success. Administrator claims that Randy is the one misbehaving. However, Randy and Administrator are independent editors. "He made me do it" is recognized, when it's children involved, as a deficient excuse! Rather, if Administrator does claim misbehavior by Randy, Administrator can file an independent case, and it will be examined independently.
Cases could certainly refer to each other, and use each other as evidence, and even findings from one case can be incorporated into another, it is not that everything would need to be examined twice. But each case should stand on its own, and what would be relevant in the case against Administrator, say, would be the Administrator's behavior, not Randy's. If Randy was, say, uncivil, Randy could be admonished or sanctioned in RfAr/Randy, considering the circumstances. Likewise Administrator in RfAr/Administrator.
The amalgamation is done on the belief that there is a single issue, the conflict between Randy and Administrator, and that resolution with respect to one would be resolution with respect to the other. In real life, civil cases are amalgamated when they do involve the same decisions of fact and law, but not on the very loose connections as on Wikipedia; ArbComm seems to believe that by reducing the number of cases, they are reducing their case load. No. What they are doing is making cases so complex, with complex issues linked, that clear and sensible decisions become almost impossible for mortals to find.
They also need to drastically limit what evidence is presented, it should be vetted and filtered, there is vast scope for good clerking. They likewise don't understand this, so case pages grow all out of readable proportions, and provide no clear justification for decisions, hence real decisions are made ... on the mailing list!
(I argued that arbitrators should appoint their own clerks, long story. It's part of my concept of what functional wiki structure would look like, documented hierarchies of influence and trust.... Instead of the secret defacto ones.)
My proposal was treated as one more example of how Abd writes too much....
This post has been edited by Abd: