User talk:Carcharoth/ArbCom Elections/ACE2011

On resignation

I suppose I understand where you're coming from there, but I have an earnest question to ask:

What would you have seen as the correct way to do things? I'm sure you remember the context, and there are no reasons to bring details up now, but the committee was poised to simply sweep the matter under a rug despite the clear existing finding that sanctionable misbehaviour had taken place (a situation, I'm sure you can agree, someone can have a legitimate principled concern over). I had to balance the necessity of not undermining the committee with the equally important (to me) imperative that the matter be treated fairly; yet I could not reasonably use information about the internal discussion of the matter without breaching the (then implicit, now explicit) demands of confidentiality of the privileged deliberations that took place.

As far as I could see, the only alternative I had was to handle the matter from without the committee; yet I could not say so and give time for the internal discussion to realign itself with what I felt were the minimally ethical basis upon which they could proceed since it would have been seen as manipulation through threats – and not without basis: who could possibly not take "do as I say or I'll resign and make it public" as a threat? The only course of action left to me was to remove the basis for conflict of interest (by stepping out of the committee) and make certain that the members knew why I had left and what I was planning to do (to avoid the possibility of my actions being taken as a knife in the back or hypocritical); yet to keep the reason for my departure private to avoid disclosing privileged internal deliberation (no matter how distasteful or inappropriate I believed them to be).

The problem, then, is that the condition that led to me leaving the committee changed shortly afterwards. The basis for my withdrawal having been made moot, and given that at the time arbitrators who had left before their term ended were welcome to rejoin [at least, I thought that was explicitly stated somewhere but my diff hunt proved fruitless – I may have imagined that but I know I was convinced this was the case at the time and given that I was welcomed back, there never was any need to question it], I did.

There is a good argument to be made that my departure was premature (I can be rash when matters of principles are involved), and I fully take responsibility for that. Personally, I still think that all alternatives were bad; either leave rashly over a matter that (obviously) was not entirely settled, appear to attempt to manipulate deliberations with a threat to leave, or leave in protest after the matter is closed be seen as hypocritical or retributive. — Coren ^(talk) 17:40, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably something like stating your objections for the record both off-wiki and on-wiki, as far as you were able, and then waiting for things to reach some sort of conclusion, and only then resigning (completely) if you still felt strongly enough about it. But it's not that important. My opposition to your candidacy is based mainly on the 'cases stalling' bit. If I feel up to it after I've got over this cold I've got, and after I've finished looking at the other candidates, I may ask a question related to that. But it will probably take at least this weekend before I feel better. Carcharoth (talk) 05:48, 2 December 2011 (UTC)