User blog:Obi the LEGO Fan/The Arbitration Committee

Note: For those of you wondering, this has nothing to do with the original LMBW Committee. That project has pretty much failed, due to lack of initiative and cooperation.

The Arbitration Committee is a new idea, which was suggested to me by a user. I took the idea to the admin team, and we decided to give it a go. The Arbitration Committee (hereinafter ArbCom) is based on Wikipedia's group of the same name.

The basic idea is for the ArbCom to be a group that mediates disputes. Disputes between users without rights, mods, patrollers, and admins could be brought to the ArbCom to decide. The idea is to have a body that can make these decisions fairly quickly, but more importantly, in a transparent way which the community can view. Some examples of what they may deal with:


 * chat bans that are perceived to be unfair may be appealed to the ArbCom,
 * a dispute in which a user thinks he/she has been abused or attacked by another user and that said user should receive a warning or ban,
 * a situation in which certain users are repeatedly causing disruption (whether or not they are breaking the rules),
 * a dispute between a user and a moderator or admin who the user believes has misused his/her rights.

As of now, it is not entirely certain how far the duties and authority of the ArbCom will extend. During the beginning of its existence, it will doubtless be setting precedent and deciding what kind of cases it will or won't decide. The community will also be welcome to give feedback on what it thinks should be within the purview of the ArbCom.

The goal of the ArbCom is to have an efficient way to solve disputes, while having some community involvement, transparency, and not having to wait numerous days or weeks for some admins to even reply. It is also a sort of "check" to make sure that even the admins are held responsible should they misuse their rights.

The ArbCom itself will consist of 1 administrator, 1 chat moderator, and 3 users without rights. The users chosen for the ArbCom are Obi the LEGO Fan, RePeat, Harold89, Codyn329, and LEGOSuperDKong. We have not yet decided if elections will be held in the future for these seats; for the time being they will be filled by appointment.

A forum will be set up, in which the ArbCom will examine and decide cases. The ArbCom has the right to accept or decline to take any case. Decisions must be reached by a majority vote, of 4/5 or 80%. The ArbCom can also be reached at.

If you have any questions, comments, or other feedback, feel free to ask in the comment section. I hope that the ArbCom will become a helpful and constructive part of the conflict-resolving process on our wiki, and I look forward to working together with my fellow arbitrators.

Please check out the links below if you would like more information about the ArbCom.

Links

 * LMBW ArbCom
 * Arbitration Policy

Principles to keep in mind

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