QUOTE(melloden @ Fri 6th January 2012, 10:18am)
QUOTE(that one guy @ Fri 6th January 2012, 2:44pm)
With all the drama over at the MF/Civility case and some interesting happenings over at the TG case, this one sort of got left behind though now it's at voting.
we have this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...acommand_bannedWhere the hell did that come from?
They want to get rid of him. And now they have a means to do so.
This is a very unusual situation. I think it's fair to say that ArbCom typically issues decisions in one of two ways. One: They know how they as a committee will resolve a case when they accept it, and, after allowing the parties to present evidence, they use that evidence to support their pre-determined conclusions. Or two: After accepting a case, they discuss it privately in order to coalesce around a solution before proceeding to public formal voting, thus maintaining an outward appearance of unanimity or near-unanimity.
But this time, despite the lengthy period of about two months between the acceptance of the case and the presentation of the proposed decision, the committee is very publically fractured over how to proceed. Some arbitrators are set on banning Betacommand; others are dead-set against doing so. Some, for whatever reason, want to convert the "community sanctions" to ArbCom sanctions; others think that's laughable.
The only "remedy" which looks like it will pass essentially bans Betacommand from editing except for running bots.
My question is this: Is this messy proposed decision an indication of what the upcoming ArbCom term will look like? On the one hand, Betacommand is a divisive figure for the unwashed ANI-drama-mongering masses, so perhaps the same is true for ArbCom and the fractiousness will be limited to this case. On the other hand, two of the new arbitrators -- SilkTork and to a lesser extent Courcelles -- seem interested in shaking things up a bit, resisting the urge to swiftly ban Betacommand and instead initiating different proposals. SilkTork has even challenged ArbCom's authority a little bit (see
here and
here). Perhaps SilkTork this year will behave in a way not unlike the manner in which people envisioned Iridescent behaving last year.