I think you're right in the sense that certainly the rules are important, but rules are only as good as the willingness of people to respect them and the willingness of those in power to enforce them. My guess is that people here don't have the time so they came up with a software solution to substitute the lack of ability to manage this. I think the admins themselves have recognized this is as software to some degree and intend to revisit it. If you are going to automate the system, there should also be a way to take it past automation and this system doesn't work that way. If you email the admins, you're lucky to get a response, so there's no jury for the jury, so to speak. If there is to be a jury system, there should also be a jury of appeal and maybe a second set of eyes. But even then, I honestly think that kind of appeals jury should be chosen by the admins from a pool of people seen to be more concerned with civility and good discourse than being biased for or against specific candidates. Having everyone able to become a juror doesn't work if the system is set up to favor the supporters of specific candidates. So, perhaps it is more of a rules and software problem, but the change in rules would definitely necessitate a change in the software. The immunity given to people recently was merely a band-aid on a broken system. The software of the site itself needs to be adjusted to reflect a jury system not so polluted by bias. Fine, have everyone be a regular juror if necessary (though I would never do that myself—my group's admins are chosen from people who I believe will make the best choice for the cohesion of the group), but then have an appeals component of the application that allows for less biased heads to weigh in.
= new reply since forum marked as read
