Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Candidate statements/172

In a famous 1957 essay "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality," Robert Merton called attention to the possibility that an organization's rules, procedures, and hierarchy of offices—structures originally conceived as a means—could become transformed into ends themselves. When this happens, a familiar process of displacement of goals sets in, leading to an over-concern with strict adherence to regulations, legalism, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness.

When I ran for arbitrator last year, I called attention to the possibility that the excessive preoccupation of the Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) with its own rules and discipline were leading to greater and greater displacement of Wikipeida's sole goal: writing an encyclopedia. Over the past year, the committee has grown yet more cumbersome, ineffective, inefficient, and inaccessible. I fear that I was right last year.

Despite the timid attempts to revamp the increasingly myopic body, the Arbcom still focuses too much on personality instead of the merit of the edits, and too much on process instead of product. This is what I want to change; as an arbitrator, I'd favor focusing on the accuracy and constructiveness of the edits in question—as opposed to the personalities—to the greatest extent possible within the framework of the established norms, rules and procedures of the committee.

To correct this, we need an Arbcom composed of active writers and editors, not just administrators or bureaucrats who enjoy close access to the foundation. Members of the Arbcom need to see the bigger picture and better distinguish between individuals mucking up Wikipedia with inane rubbish and individuals dedicated to writing a serious, quality encyclopedia. As an active editor since December 2002 (with intermittent breaks) and founder of the Forum for Encyclopedic Standards, I can see this big picture; and my contributions history clearly demonstrates a commitment to making this into a viable encyclopedia and to fighting for strict encyclopedic standards. 172 | Talk 05:02, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]