User talk:ScWizard/Rule of law

I buy most of this, but not The power to enforce the rules must be separated from the power to investigate rule violations. This is almost never true in the real world. Police forces everywhere do both of these. There are three separations of powers that seem to be required to prevent despotism or other forms of societal collapse, and the third is the power to make or amend the rules. All three have to be separated from each other, not just one from the next one in the list. In the US, this is the difference between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Most countries that aren't hellholes have some level of this separation, though it may be incomplete (the British equivalent of the legislative branch, Parliament, is deeply entwined with the executive equivalent, the ministries, because the PM remains a member of Parliament. But their exec. branch is complicated by the Crown, as well, which still has considerable influence to exert. A lot of countries have "two headed" leadership fulfilling different functions (Ireland has a PM and a President, and the USSR had a Premier and President; one is always closer tied to the legislative branch). Anyway, the gist is that you can't have anyone be controlling all three sectors, and even two usually flops if there aren't compensating balances, as the UK and derived parliamentary systems have).

WP had the "lawmaking" part done pretty well; consensus here is essentially a modified form of direct democracy, other than there's still a "royal family" that can issue dictats: Jimbo and WP:OFFICE. Some of the latter's pronouncements we cannot do anything about, like certain legal requirements imposed on us from the outside word; think of them as edicts from the gods, as it were. Jimbo was historically more like a good Caesar. I'm pleased that he's been backing away from direct control, since he's not infallible, and the community can't evolve if we keep getting pulled back toward the first stage of the organizational lifecycle.

WP's problem is that our "judicial" branch is not separate from the executive branch. ArbCom are all active admins, and admins enforce their will, which is not that of the community (the legislature/parliament), via WP:AE and discretionary sanctions. ArbCom's AE admin pool are "judge jury and execution" because of the power delegated to them with WP:AC/DS. This has been a total disaster and has undermined many long-term editors faith the future of the project if it's not reformed. The worst problem of it is that ArbCom has decided it can tell the legislature what to do in matters of internal governance (see, e.g., WP:ARBATC) So we now have a total failure of the balance of powers, with ArbCom controlling both the admin pool and restricting the policy-making body. It's a modern-day Kritarchy. A consequence of this is, of course, the collapse of the original idea that "adminiship is no big deal", and the development of a clear caste system in which admins are "more equal than others".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:55, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]