User:Alex Shih/ArbNotes/Committee

The governance of the English Wikipedia follows the model of separation of powers to a relative extent. The community, through venues like Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), are capable of serving the role of legislature to create policies and guidelines. The role of the bureaucrats can somewhat be connected to the executive branch, as they are able to assign administrators user rights. In reality however, these "bureaucrats" does not have the liberty to act against community consensus, meaning that their political role is practically reduced to rubber stamp.

This brings us to the Arbitration Committee, where they technically serves as the judiciary branch, in which their main function is supposedly to provide their service as the final option for resolution of disputes; despite of the name, the committee does not conduct any arbitration in the traditional sense. The committee also does not make policy, which is consistent with the traditional role of judiciary system. While some may argue that interpetation and application of policy is not necessary within the scope of the commitee, the nature of how commitee operates through remedies and motions is consistent with this very role.

The Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia, with the members being elected through annual elections, is tasked with the role of appointing CheckUsers and Oversighters to serve on the functionaries team where they are tasked to deal with private and sensitive information/data not suitable for public discussion. As the final decisions to appoint functionaries are decided privately (as opposed to the appointment of administrators), there is arguably insufficient oversight. While the community has a chance to scrutinise the candidates for these functionary positions, they are unable to view the discussion where the final deliberation is made amongst committee members. In a sense, this is inconsistent with the role of judiciary, as the committee effectively possess the power of the executive branch. In a sense, they are more closer to the executive branch than the members of the bureaucrats, as the committee are the only body capable of passing a motion to remove an administrator, even though these members do not actually have the technical ability to do so (interestingly, occasionally editors with the bureaucrat permission can and do serve on the committee, which has been disputed as illogical in the past). Bureaucrats are required to follow these remedies and remove administrators when they are being asked to do so in the conclusion of a case. Alex Shih (talk) 18:24, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Accountability

The English Wikipedia community needs to realise that as a community, they are the one with true power to initiate positive change. If editors and administrators can consistently work collaboratively with each other, that could potentially work as a better oversight over the committee when they are no longer focused on representing the best interest of the project. The m:Ombudsman commission is quite possibly the only body that are capable of conducting direct inquiries. The rarity of their appearances make them rather irrelevant, and the scope of their responsibilities are limited to simply recommending a course of action. In a situation where there is egregious misconduct from an arbitrator, they can only be removed from their position by two-thirds of majority of committee members through internal deliberations. In practice, this is unlikely to ever take place.