Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/archive4

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[edit] I hope not too many newbies stumble onto this page

There are a lot of people I really respect a lot (from what I have seen of them in my short time here) posting on this page and they all seem to be fighting over all *sorts* of stuff. It's like one of those brawls in old Westerns where everybody just throws punches at random till the whole saloon is wrecked.... What on earth is going on here? Can't this process be allowed to work its way through a few cases before it gets nitpicked to death? Maybe that's out of line, sorry if it is. I may not agree with everyone here on everything, but IMHO volunteering to clerk in this madhouse is one step short of sainthood, or insanity, I'm not sure which... C'mon guys. You don't have to all sing Kumbaya but geez, I'm just sayin'... Think of the newbies. ++Lar: t/c 02:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Definitely insanity, but not quite as insane as putting your name up to be an arbitrator. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 02:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I've moved three rather large discussions to subpages, while retaining the opening edit in each case. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:38, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Admittedly, I'm not involved in the brawl, nor am I particularly inclined to hop in, but I don't see any problem with all this discussion. It doesn't seem particularly unhealthy, and it makes for a good read. I understand the argument for letting the clerking try to prove its usefulness, but also, like bills that start out as temporary measures, once the status quo is moved one way, it's not all that difficult to argue to keep things the way they are at the time because the unknown is then how the old system works with present data. --Improv 12:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Any chance of a sunset clause, then? Or an agreement in principle to an RfC on the matter in three months? If nothing else it would give three months of peace, Pat Morita style. - brenneman^(t)(c) 14:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

RfCs are a matter for the community, surely there's no need for prior agreement to one. Given that procudurally, this really is entirely internal to the arbcom, a sunset clause does appear to me to achieve anything. Why not simply ask them (or anyone else, come to that) at that time, "do you think the process is working well?". Assuming anyone still cares at that point.

My diagnosis as to why people are getting a bit heated about this is that it's almost entirely related to the timing, the personalities involved, and some needlessly antagonistic defences (as well as criticisms) of the measure. Coming right after the arbcom "election", I see a tendency to juxtapose the two, and see appointments to clerkships as somehow of a piece with Jimmy Wales's "additional appointments" to the arbcom itself. I think that for that very reason, the timing could have been better, but it doesn't make it a bad measure in itself (and on the face of it it looks pretty sensible to me). Alai 15:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Yep, the situation is that currently a lot of people do clerking on the side (see list of applicants). The clerking problem is a longstanding thorn in the side of arbcom (my first award on Wikipedia, ever, was a vote of thanks from arbcom for clerking in some long forgotten case). With an organised clerking system then there is a reasonable chance that relatively neglected cases get covered, not just the high profile ones. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, the ArbCom sure knows how to avoid controversy :P Kaldari 04:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refactoring, deleting, and archiving discussions

I've noticed that attempts to discuss the appointment of the clerks keep being archived, deleted, summarized, or moved to subpages. People have tried to raise it here, on Kelly's old RfC, and on her election page. It's clearly something that needs to be talked about and trying to censor the discussion is likely to make things even more fraught, so it would be appreciated if the refactoring could stop, and a central place for the discussion allowed to evolve. I've added a "see also" section above to the subpages Tony has created, though I think they should probably just be moved back to be part of this discussion. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I've restored the discussions because I don't think we should have discussion on 100 different pages with nonconsectuvie names. On the other hand, since there has been such a large amount of discussion, archiving it was quite necessary, or this page would be at least 200 kb long by now. In addition, a lot of the commentary being posted here (such as Xed's BJAODN-worthy abuse of power complaint) are simply a waste of space and make it hard to find legitimate comments and questions. Raul654 20:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Raul. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't use pointless subpages for ongoing discussions but we also have to archive old discussions and/or ones that become immediately stale since they're nothing but flamebait to begin with. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 21:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The reason I mentioned archiving is that I saw a comment somewhere in relation to discussion of the head clerk position, though perhaps on another page, that it had been archived early. I don't know whether it had, and in and of itself it's not an issue, but combined with deletion of comments from the RfC, the protection of the election talk page, and then moving specific threads to subpages, it starts to add up, and will only lead to more discontent. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I return to this page to find it in its former mess, where I left it with the head edit of each large, long, discussion followed by a link to a subpage. I can now no longer follow discussion at all. Please, why was the jumble restored? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Because farming the discussion out to half a dozen different pages is a Very Bad Idea. Archiving it to a single page when it gets long (as I have already done once) is the preferred way of dealing with pages like this. If it's too long (which I am starting to think it is) then dump the contents into another archive (except, obviously, the candidate application section) Raul654 04:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll do that with some of the older stuff. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clerks

Following a list submitted to the committee by Kelly Martin, I've listed the group approved by the arbcom. I should note that this should not be taken as discouragement to the other candidates (there are others we approved of as well). However, we intentionally wanted to keep the first group small, until the clerk's office becomes functional. Raul654 17:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggest that the application list be annotated to show applications accepted (or perhaps sorted into two lists by accepted and pending). I think there's merit in preserving what people said when they applied so I would not favour deletion outright of accepts. Also suggest that the lists be in chrono, someone applied and put their name at the top messing up the chrono order. If no one does it or objects strongly, I'll do it myself shortly, but wanted to raise it here first as I ain't nobody special. ++Lar: t/c 18:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that when you choose a specific group out of a large pool even saying that it shouldn't be taken as discourgement doesn't help since your obviously going to discourge people who didn't get picked (the last kid picked for sports situation) though I think that the arbitrators made a good choice when approving the initial list. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 19:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

So are you saying that by not showing on that list who got picked and who didn't, that somehow addresses that point of not wantind to discourage the unchosen? I totally agree with your point but am otherwise not sure what it has to do with my suggestion that the list be sorted into two lists ("clerks" and "candidates" would be my suggestion. At some point "former clerks" might be a third list) and that chrono order be restored by moving the one list entry which was inserted out of order) ++Lar: t/c 19:33, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I support your idea of sorting, though maybe candidate statements should get their own page and it would have to be an ongoing thing so at any time if someone had an interest in becoming a clerk they could put their name in there and to be considered. I'd suggest waiting for Kelly's input on this though since she is the head clerk and all. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 20:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I should have waited (I was refactoring while you were typing the above comment, I think), but I didn't, I went ahead and did it. If Kelly doesn't like it, she can revert without too much trouble and I won't be upset one bit. I also put the one candidate not in chrono back in chrono order... I tried to avoid any notion that the candidates not on the accepted list are "rejected" because they're explicitly NOT rejected (as Raul said, there are even some already approved but not on the list for process reasons), they just aren't part of the initial set. Hope it helped. ++Lar: t/c 20:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't speak for her but I assume she'll have no problem with it. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 20:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)