This is the first of a series of blog posts to discuss Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. If you're not already familiar with what that is, it's sort of Wikipedia's supreme court. Wikipedians call it ArbCom. It's not a fun place--it's where you go to solve problems that haven't gotten fixed anywhere else.A little background: in Wikipedia's earliest years Jimbo Wales was the only person who could ban anyone from the site. He was the final stop in dispute resolution. By 2003 that was getting too cumbersome for one person to do alone, so new solutions got brainstormed. ArbCom went into operation in April 2004. It's a panel of 15 people who are sort-of-elected by the community, but ultimately selected by Jimbo (the process is complex). Jimbo reserves the right to dissolve ArbCom, but it's largely a theoretical right and has never been implemented. Sometimes arbitrators resign before their term ends. So when a vacancy occurs Jimbo appoints a replacement. Usually he chooses from the pool of also-ran candidates from the last election, but not always. The most (in)famous instance of that was the short-lived tenure of Essjay.
A growing number of experienced editors within Wikipedia have expressed concerns about ArbCom lately. Complaints per se are nothing new--nearly everyone who gets sanctioned thinks their own case was handled badly--and because of this discussions about arbitration problems generally get bogged down in the intricacies of this or that particular case.
It is my opinion that the Arbitration Committee was never a very scalable concept, and that its responsibilities have expanded past the point of diminishing returns. In order to present this in an impartial manner I'll focus on trends, and present tangible numbers. Wikipedia's arbitration committee has never had a performance review before. Considering the important role they serve in what has become the world's seventh most popular website, it's time that they do.
First, a review of Wikipedia's growth:
Apr 2004: 250,000 articles
Mar 2005: 500,000 articles
Mar 2006: 1,000,000 articles
Sep 2007: 2,000,000 articles
May 2008: 2,391,955 articles (as of this writing)
Following is my research on the arbitration committee's caseload. The research method is simple: I counted the number of open cases on the last day of each month since ArbCom began. Each example is linked to the source where I gathered the data. Requested cases and recently closed cases are not included toward these figures. Cases in formal review do count. Please report any errors so that I can correct them promptly.
My finding is a significant and sustained dropoff in recent monthly cases, reaching its nadir during the three most recent months (March-May 2008) when the Arbitration Committee has heard the least number of cases ever, including its first three months of existence from 2004 when the Committee had no preexisting cases in its docket.
2004
Apr: 4 cases
May: 6 cases
Jun: 6 cases
Jul: 9 cases
Aug: 12 cases
Sep: 12 cases
Oct: 14 cases
Nov: 13 cases
Dec: 13 cases
2005
Jan: 6 cases
Feb: 7 cases
Mar: 12 cases
Apr: 4 cases
May: 12 cases
Jun: 12 cases
Jul: 15 cases
Aug: 13 cases
Sep: 15 cases
Oct: 18 cases
Nov: 16 cases
Dec: 20 cases
2006
Jan: 26 cases
Feb: 14 cases
Mar: 12 cases
Apr: 12 cases
May: 11 cases
Jun: 14 cases
Jul: 19 cases
Aug: 18 cases
Sep: 12 cases
Oct: 11 cases
Nov: 11 cases
Dec: 13 cases
2007
Jan: 11 cases
Feb: 12 cases
Mar: 7 cases
Apr: 12 cases
May: 12 cases
Jun: 13 cases
Jul: 12 cases
Aug: 12 cases
Sep: 12 cases
Oct: 7 cases
Nov: 7 cases
Dec: 4 cases
2008
Jan: 7 cases
Feb: 6 cases
Mar: 5 cases
Apr: 4 cases
29 May: 4 cases
Several interpretations are possible based upon the data presented thus far. The introduction of community banning in mid-2005 and the 2007 expansion of community sanctions to include lesser remedies such as topic banning and revert parole is one factor worthy of consideration. In my opinion that does not fully explain the dynamic observed. Blog format is better suited to short presentations than long ones, and more relevant data will follow in future posts.
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Image credits:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/Wikipedia_Article_Creation.png
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