In the wake of controversy over a since-vacated private arbitration case against Orangemarlin (see related story), most of the other announcements made at the same time by FT2 were largely ignored. These announcements are likely to be revisited by the Committee, as FT2 and fellow arbitrator Thebainer temporarily blanked the announcements page. Prior to this blanking, Charles Matthews revisited these announcements, adding a few more proposals and suggesting a rough timetable for when each proposal will be implemented or discussed; it's unclear what the Committee plans to do with the individual proposals at this time.
The announcement suggested an Appeals Review Committee (ARC), a committee working under and alongside the Arbitration Committee on indefinite block, ban, and routine administrator abuse appeals. The ARC would "assist in the review of cases where Arbcom would open a case now", by reviewing evidence and reporting concerns to the Committee, and suggesting whether the Committee should open a case. The Arbitration Committee would make the final decision whether to open a full case.
The Arbitration Committee would retain the ability to take such cases directly as desired, or where significant privacy or neutrality concerns are evident. According to the timetable posted by Charles Matthews, this proposal would have been scheduled to be "worked up" and put into action soon. As with the other announcements made by the Committee, however, this proposal is subject to significant change as the Committee continues to discuss the merit of these proposals.
The announcement clarified the Committee's plans regarding the granting of the CheckUser right, which has historically been given rather conservatively, with Committee members and a few hand-picked users holding the right at any time. The Committee identified the possibility of appointing up to four or five new checkusers. While checkuser appointment would continue to be hand-picked by the Committee, the announcement suggested that after the Committee picked candidates for the position, community input would be solicited before users were given the right. This was labeled by Matthews as "current for discussion", with the appointments to be dealt with by the Committee in the "near future".
This would mark a sharp contrast to the current policy, where all users with the right are either members of the Arbitration Committee, or were appointed without community input. The appointment of checkusers has been controversial recently; last week, former arbitrator Raul654 requested the granting of checkuser access to bureaucrat Kingturtle; however, after discussion and criticism of the choice by some, the request was removed by Daniel as an apparent "misunderstanding".
Three of the proposals were listed by Matthews as "on hold", indicating that they would not be advanced immediately:
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