Right now I'm still undecided as to whether a committee would bring anything extra to the decision making process, and could even make it worse than it is now.
I actually believe that Jitspoe's decisions have all been spot on, who (not involved directly or indirectly with another persons ban for example) could put up a valid argument showing where Jitspoe has made a large error in judgement? The answer is very few i'm sure.
I'm also sure that because we have an open forum here, whatever decisions Jitspoe makes can be (and are) critically assessed by others in this community. A committee may help to allow these discussions to take place before the fact, rather than after it as it is now (and thus it is hard to retract a punishment or decision in this case).
From my understanding, the committee would exist primarily to determine appropriate punishments for inappropriate behavior.
Another way of achieving this is to simply make a thread to discuss possible punishements a selected number of possible breaches of acceptable behaviour before the fact, that way everyone in the community gets a say (and those with nothing appropriate to add can be simply ignored). But then again, i assume the committee would be there to handle those scenarios we can't think of thus negating my last paragraph
The forum would probably be the best place for discussion since it's easy to create polls for voting on things. It's also nice to have an easily accessible record of discussions for committee members. I could set up a private sub-forum that only committee members can access.
If a committee is to be created, I think this would be a good idea. In order to produce a committee able to accurately cover the communities best interests, this would be the best method as i'm not sure how easy it would be to get all 10 (or so) members online at the same time to discuss issues in real time. An irc channel perhaps? I know that one will be created anyway no matter what is discussed here simply due to the amount of time we spend on it. So some decisions need to be made about what can be decided on irc, and I think that should be very little again simply because it will be very hard for all members to be online at once, and irc logs cannot, and I don't think should be trusted to base committee decisions on.
Sooo finally, 10 members seems about right. In order to make an efficient decision making process there should be no more than 15, although I think that may be 5 too many. The committee should cover those exceptional circumstances that have no specific punishment already, and have the ability to put forward to Jitspoe reasonable changes to currently existing punishments, which Jitspoe may or may not implement at his discretion.
Snap decisions should be handled by Jitspoe of course, the nature of a snap decision demands that Jitspoe takes some course of action as the full committee will not be available to do so itself when a snap decision is required. However, the punishment of a snap decision can be reviewed by the committee and the punishment amended if necessary.
The comittee should not interfere with punishments already dealt, they should only be concerned with the future (apart from snap decisions made by Jitspoe), and this fact should be clearly noted.
How to pick the committee is a hard one, because some people will not be satisfied with the selection that is for sure. I think a nomination, followed by a vote would probably the best way to go. With Jitspoe able to reject any nominees deemed unsuitable (in the case of voting for vastly inappropriate friends). People should nominate on:
Experience.
Attitute.
Maturity.
(I like to say it) Love for the games well-being.
Activeness in the game.
My thoughts :p
