The story so far: arbitrator User:FT2 posted a bizarre Arbcomm decision in which a user was, apparently, tried and sentenced in secret. Unsurprisingly, outrage ensued. One other arb then repudiated the judgement, and said it was done “without the approval or prior knowledge of the Committee as a whole”. Unhelpfully, other arbs stayed fairly tight-lipped, so it was unclear who was telling the truth. Appeals to them to comment were ignored. You can read far far more about this than you would want to at Wikipedia:Administrators’ noticeboard/Orangemarlin and other matters. As you can see from that, a story is slowly being stitched together that maybe can be attempted to be believed: its all a matter of “miscommunication”. The DHMO-word is not being spoken, except in dark corners.
All this matters, in the wiki-world (and maybe outside, because a lot of people use it), because wiki won’t hold together without some ultimate authority. The idea of it being a benevolent anarchy is moonshine. Up till now, the arbcomm has been a slow and uncommunicative but generally correct UA. King Log more than King Stork, perhaps, but still there. The re-listing of the OM RFA looks like a mistake, but hopefully one they can recover from.