Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2021/Candidates

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2021 Arbitration Committee Elections

Status as of 16:37 (UTC), Monday, 15 April 2024 (Purge)

  • Thank you for participating in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. The certified results have been posted.
  • You are invited to leave feedback on the election process.
Shortcut

The nomination statements of editors running in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections appear below.

Eligibility criteria
An editor is eligible to stand as a candidate who:
(i) has a registered account and has made at least 500 mainspace edits before 1 November 2021,
(ii) is not subject to active blocks or site-bans,
(iii) meets the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to non-public data, is willing to sign the Foundation's non-public information confidentiality agreement,[a] and
(iv) has disclosed any previous or alternate accounts in their election statements (legitimate accounts which have been declared to the Arbitration Committee before the close of nominations do not need to be publicly disclosed).
Caution: Candidates should be aware that they are likely to receive considerable internal and external scrutiny. External scrutiny may include attempts to investigate on- and off-wiki activities; previous candidates have had personal details revealed and unwanted contact made with employers and family. We are unable to prevent this and such risks will continue if you are successful.
Important: To avoid any potential conflicts of interest, current arbitrators may not serve as members of either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee while serving as arbitrators.
Statements must:
(i) be submitted after 00:00 UTC on 07 November 2021 and until 23:59 UTC on 16 November 2021;
(ii) not exceed a limit of 400 words[b] (although candidates are free to link to a longer statement if they wish);
(iii) confirm that the candidate will fully comply with the criteria for access to non-public data;
(iv) include a disclosure of all prior and alternate accounts or confirmation that all such accounts have been declared to the Arbitration Committee;
(v) be created using the inputbox below, by appending your username to the existing text, clicking the button, and following the instructions.
Applications are considered complete only when properly filled out and transcluded by the deadline. Deadlines will be strictly enforced regardless of technical problems that may occur. Candidates are advised to have their application ready early.
The nomination period is now over.

Footnotes

  1. ^ From the Wikimedia Foundation's Access to nonpublic personal data policy:

    Because we believe that safeguarding the privacy of the Wikimedia community is an important Wikimedia value, those who have access to nonpublic personal data need to:

    • Be at least 18 years old (except email response team members, who must be at least 16 years old);
    • Provide contact information; and
    • Sign a confidentiality agreement.
  2. ^ The mandatory disclosure of alternate accounts and declaration of intent to comply with the WMF identification policy are exempt from the 400-word limit, although candidates are encouraged to be concise.

Standing candidates[edit]

Click to shuffle candidates

Opabinia regalis[edit]

Well, as the deadline gets closer, I've decided to toss my hat in. Here's hoping it's one of many last-minute entries! I've served two terms before, 2016-17 and 2018-19 (ACE2015, ACE2017). I wasn't perfect but I like to think I wasn't terrible at it. I tend to take a practical, empirical-minded approach, and I usually fall on the "more lenient" side of the sanctions spectrum, especially for conflicts mostly taking place in our "back office" without directly affecting reader-facing content. On the other hand, given the events of the last two years, I've lost a little more of my already-low stockpile of patience for misinformation, POV-pushing, and disruptive behavior that affects mainspace.

After the end of my second term I planned to take a break to wrap up some real-life projects and then get back to article work, but as it happened I was inactive for most of 2020 because *waves hands at the state of the world in general in 2020*. Since I began editing again I've focused almost entirely on mainspace, mostly writing articles about coronavirus proteins. In real life I'm a scientist doing R&D work in biotech.

I was not planning to run this year. I fully intended to spend this election cycle sitting on my couch with a bowl of popcorn. But I convinced myself I'd step up if we got to the last day of the nomination period and there weren't enough women running. Between the various changes going on at the WMF and throughout the community - new CEO, new board, UCoC, whatever the "movement charter" is about - and the fact that pandemic life has in many ways had a disproportionate impact on women, I felt it was important that women's perspectives be well represented on arbcom.

Required stuff: I'm still there on the NDA board, but happy to sign an updated one if needed. I have three alt accounts: User:Opabinia externa (phone account), User:Opabinia robotus (old account intended for a bot I never got around to), and User:🐱 (a test of emoji usernames).

Banedon[edit]

I've been troubled by Arbcom for a while. This recent thread illustrates the issue [1] (also [2]). Since I've not been able to change the committee from the outside, the only alternative is to change it from within. If elected, I intend to make several major changes detailed below. If changes are not possible then I will still absolutely vote according to my ideals.

  • Unlike Worm That Turned, I am idealistic. Justice comes first, and the just solution is the one Arbcom should most focus on finding.
  • Because justice comes first, Arbcom should be structured more like a legal process and less like a community dispute resolution process. This means:
    • Cases should only be filed by someone with Standing (law) (or someone authorized by a person with standing). The filing party needs to be ready to argue the case, and the case request should identify who is allegedly causing disruption. Cases filed by those without standing, e.g. "here's a dispute which I am not involved in, but needs arbitration" should be automatically declined, while cases seeking general protections on a topic, e.g. [3], should be handled by motion.
    • Because of the above, case names can be changed to Filing party(ies) vs. Defendant(s). This solves the anchoring issue with case names [4][5] where the case is named after one party, which has historically almost guaranteed sanctions against that party.
    • I will accept more cases, especially those filed by experienced editors who presumably know what they are doing, because of the right to petition. Aggrieved parties who feel they cannot get fair treatment elsewhere should feel comfortable coming to Arbcom for redress. However, people are innocent until proven guilty - once we get to the evidence stage, the filing party must present its evidence first. If the evidence turns out to be weak, the case can be dismissed without requiring the defendant to defend themselves.
    • In the same way, Arbcom is not a glorified way for the community to reach a consensus. If it comes to it, Arbcom should be ready to ignore public opinion (as given in the workshop phase) on what should be done. Lady Justice wears a blindfold for a reason.

I'm not a lawyer, but if necessary I will approach WP:LAW for help in crafting a fair process. Justice comes first.

I am willing to comply with the criteria for access to non-public data, and I have no alternate accounts.

Worm That Turned[edit]

Hi! I'm Dave, aka Worm That Turned and I am standing for election as an arbitrator. Should I be successful, this will be my fourth term on the committee, first seated for 2013/4 and then from 2017 to present. Why am I standing again? A number of reasons - I feel I work well in the committee and bring a unique perspective to the team - I am not afraid to tackle controversy and scandal head on and believe that I am as open and clear with my language as I am able to be. I am pragmatic and will focus on the best solution, not necessarily justice, so have upset some people along the way. Finally, I am aware that of those arbs not up for re-election, none were on the committee prior to 2019 and I felt that some institutional memory is important for context on some cases and issues.
Being on the committee can be stressful and I have certainly had my share of bumps in the road, considered quitting over issues I felt strongly about and so on, but actually today, I feel I have found the balance between my work on Wikipedia, and my real life commitments. I am aware that I am far less numerically active than I used to be, but my answer to that is that I spend a large portion of my Wikipedia time reading and responding to emails - I hope my fellow arbitrators would confirm that.
Please do ask questions, I'm aware that in throwing my hat in early, I'm likely to see more and I will do my best to answer them promptly. Declaration: I declare my "sock drawer" on my userpage - User:WormTT, User:Wormbot, User:Worm That Trains, User:Wyrm That Turned - and I fully comply with the criteria for access to non-public data. Anything else, just ask!

Izno[edit]

I am, with some trepidation, submitting a candidacy for the Arbitration Committee elections. I have been an editor here for nearly 15 years, an administrator for two of those, and an interface administrator for almost exactly a year. Like a few others, I did not intend to run this year and am personally doing so to help ensure a full-sized and effective committee going into the next term. Perhaps it is obvious from filing a candidacy, but I would be willing to serve on the committee even if other more-qualified candidates should run. I would bring my offline experience with systems design and engineering, so hopefully I'd be a collaborative committee member willing to consider creative solutions in the specific areas that ArbCom handles. As regards the future of ArbCom, I have been casually interested in devolving to the community some of the policy controls that ArbCom has put in place and which it has reserved to itself, so if there's time for a project, that might be one I would be interested in.

I will fully comply with the criteria for access to non-public data. My alternative accounts are IznoBot, IznoRepeat, and IznoPublic.

Enterprisey[edit]

Hi everyone. I joined about nine years ago and took up the mop in early 2019. My recent focuses have been technical contributions and the new editor experience. I’m running to apply my skills and experience to help out with arbitration. I would bring a strong track record of courtesy and a careful method of handling disputes to the committee.

I believe arbs should be humble, empathetic, approachable, trustworthy, calm, and self-aware. They must communicate well and change their minds when presented with new evidence.

  • While there is a rich literature about the dynamics of online communities and how they can be enjoyable and productive, it’s rarely referenced in onwiki moderation discussions. I believe there's a lot we can learn from other communities, like the Rust programming language community.
  • There is a perception of the committee as some ivory-tower creature that doesn't have enough empathy for what people go through. That’s bad. Although you can't always please everyone, I do think maintaining community trust is of paramount importance.
  • We should be more creative with solutions to allow people to keep contributing and we must remain empathetic to people who've contributed vast sums of content. I have deep respect for people who put countless hours into research and writing. However, in no way can the fourth pillar be compromised. Users who consistently engage before they've ready to collaborate effectively are not long-term sustainable for the project. Intervention in those cases is not overreaching but essential. This goes double for admins. As the committee is the only venue for overseeing advanced permissions, the bar for accepting cases must not be too high.
  • We must take a more proactive stance on preventing harassment, and the committee is in a unique position to counter this problem. I support educating the community about common methods of manipulation (e.g. DARVO) and doing our best to get problematic behavior reported faster.

I don't imagine any problems with meeting the time commitment. Worst comes to worst, I can stop reading so many books :)

I'll also keep working on my other projects: I remain deeply concerned about the new editor experience, the state of recent-changes patrolling, and our medieval workflows.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to answering your questions and hopefully earning your vote.

My current/previous usernames are listed in my userspace and I will fully comply with the criteria for access to non-public data.


Beeblebrox[edit]

After much contemplation I have decided to run one more time for the committee. It's been an interesting two years, certainly in November 2019 none of us expected the profound changes that have happened around the world. I feel like the committee is also in a time of change, for the better, and would like to keep trying to move it in that direction with the incredible group of colleagues it has been my pleasure to serve with.

I've made some mistakes the past two years, and been rightly called out on them. I have always maintained that none of us is perfect, it's what we do in response to our mistakes being pointed that matters. I have done my best to listen and learn from those in the community who have objected to my words or actions.

I have a low tolerance for disruption of the project, but I also endeavor to remember, and to remind others, that we are dealing with real people here, whether we are patrolling their very first edit or deciding whether to ban them or not, we have to remember that.

As a long-term functionary and current arbitrator I am already signed off on all relevant documents required for arbitrators. I have some non-editing doppelgänger accounts that redirect to my user page, but I do not have any alternate accounts and never have.

Thryduulf[edit]

I wasn't intending to stand this year, but with (at the time of writing) fewer candidates I would be happy to vote for than there are seats available, I feel the need to step up to the plate to ensure that 2022 has a committee with enough members to be functional. I'm not as familiar with recent cases as I could be, which will increase the time it takes me to answer questions about them, but does mean I will be approaching without preconceived notions.

I have been a Wikipedian for very nearly 17 years, an admin for about 16½ and an Oversighter and Functionary since my previous term on Arbcom in 2015.

Most of my work on Wikipedia is in a supporting role to readers and article writers – mostly gnoming and working with redirects. My philosophy is that readers must always come first, content editors and maintainers (article writers, gnomes, etc) second and those that support the first two groups (template editors, bot operators, dispute resolution specialists, etc.) third. The goal of dispute resolution should always be that the needs of the encyclopaedia comes first, even if that is not the ideal outcome for any individual. The project is bigger than any one person and nobody is unreplaceable, me included. This means that even a hundred featured articles does not give a free pass for bad behaviour, especially if it impacts readers or new editors.

If elected to the committee I will do my best to make sure that things to do not get forgotten and that cases and other ongoing work is progressed with as little delay as possible – things dragging on for months benefits nobody. I aim to be vocal on talk and workshop pages, and commit to ensuring every ongoing request (on which I'm active and not recused) gets at least one arbitrator comment every week while it is open.

I feel everybody involved in dispute resolution should be treated fairly and with respect, but this comes with the greater responsibility to always treat others with fairness and respect. While I will endeavour to always uphold this standard myself I am human and not perfect, so please let me know (politely and with context) if you think I could do better.

Declaration: I have signed the confidentiality agreement. I have several other accounts, all listed at User:Thryduulf#Other accounts, but only user:Awkward42 is used for editing.


Guerillero[edit]

Hi all, I am Tom and I am an Admin, ArbCom Clerk, and CheckUser. In my real life, I am a stay-at-home dog dad and cartographer. I previously worked as a Geospatial Technologist on a large international development contract. This year I have written some content, done source reviews at FAC and FLC, and worked as an AE admin. I am currently trying to make 100 maps to illustrate 100 articles. Lets see how quickly I get there. I previously was on ArbCom from January 2015 to December 2016 and an Oversighter from 2013 until 2018.
If you look at my activity, you see that it was low from May through this month. That was due to crunch time at work followed by moving to a new country as a trailing spouse. I will have the time and attention to give to the committee if elected.
I would like to finish the update of the Discretionary Sanctions (DS) procedures if I am on the committee. One of the things I have learned working at AE is how difficult it is for AE admins, people being reported, and people doing the reporting. We need to rethink and retool the process to make it easier for more than ~20 admins to enforce our DS. We also need to think about the intersection of socking and AE. That came up this year and there wasn't a good response that I could give people.
The fine print

Wugapodes[edit]

Hello, I'm Wugapodes, and I am willing to serve on ArbCom. I view Wikipedia as a community of practice organized around the development of a free, open, online encyclopedia. What does that mean for me as an editor and what would that mean for me as an arbitrator? I evaluate options on the basis of three main criteria: what courses of action will (1) lead to the best reader experience by (2) supporting a diverse community of content creators and maintainers while (3) fostering an environment that welcomes new editors who can sustain our maintenance burden. Ultimately I view ArbCom as a body in service of concrete goals, not abstract ideologies, and while the construction and maintenance of an encyclopedia is our unifying goal, we must take seriously the social and emotional aspects of building an encyclopedia in a system of collaborative anarchy.

I divide my time between EnWiki and other projects which I believe gives me a perspective valuable to the committee. My recent work has been closing large discussions, extension development, and meta work. I am an EnWiki administrator of nearly two years, a MediaWiki developer on the ChessBrowser extension, and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation regional grants committee for the US and Canada. In my spare time I enjoy reading through old page histories in order to understand the early culture that developed Wikipedia, and contribute to other, non-WMF wiki communities.

Through these experiences with the wider free knowledge ecosystem, I can provide a unique perspective to the committee. Our wikipedia is part of an ecosystem comprising a multi-lingual commons of free creative works. No wiki is an island, and understanding how our wikipedia fits into this wider system can lead to better decisions. For example, other wikis have faced problems of scale which impact civility and collaboration; how have they addressed it and what can we learn from them? Locally blocked or banned editors may contribute to other projects and demonstrate that they have improved; how can understanding the culture of other wikis help us evaluate whether cross-wiki contributions demonstrate cause to unblock? Wikipedia's encyclopedic content is frequently improved by incorporating content written by other communities, and I believe the committee would benefit from incorporating lessons learned by other communities who faced problems similar to our own.

I will comply with the non-public data policy; see my list of other accounts.


Donald Albury[edit]

I have been around Wikipedia for a few years now, but have always shied away from a run at ARBCOM. My primary joy is adding content to the project. I also get satisfaction from fixing problems that I run across, but I don't generally search for things to fix. I long ago realized that I cannot save Wikipedia single-handedly, so I have concentrated on things that I like to do. Fixing things sometimes requires the the use of admin tools, but I am more or less average among active admins in the use of those tools. I may not always agree with the details of policies and guidelines, but I recognize the benefits to the project of adhering to such policies and guidelines. This is a collaborative effort, and the assumption of good faith (until proven otherwise), cooperation, and civility are vital to the improvement of the encyclopedia. I generally shy away from confrontation, and I try to not let my ego affect my judgment, but I will stand up for my principles when I think it vital to do so. I was on the OTRS team for a while, many years ago, and worked with the Education program for a while about a decade ago. Serving on ARBCOM would be a different level of experience for me. I feel ready to commit to serving the community on the committee for a year or two, if enough Wikipedians are willing to support me.
As a one-time member of the OTRS team, I have previously conformed to the access to nonpublic personal data policy, at least as it existed at the time, and agree to do so again. I have an alternate account, User:Alt.Donald Albury, as posted on my user page, and a non-editing doppleganger of my original account name, User:Dalbury, redirected to my current account name. Many years ago (about 15, I think) I created another account, which I intended to use in editing articles about contentious subjects which I did not feel comfortable editing from my regular account, and behind which I hoped to be anonymous. I sent an email about the account to a then member of ARBCOM, but as I never received a reply, I don't know if the email was received. In any case, I stopped using that account after a very few edits, and I can no longer remember what I called it, and have no access to it.

Cabayi[edit]

Hi! I'm here as a somewhat reluctant candidate for election as an arbitrator. I have 13 years experience on wiki, 31 months as an SPI clerk, 20 months as an admin & as a WP:VRT agent, 15 months as a global renamer, a good grasp of policy and a thick skin.

My strongest opinion on Arbcom, and my takeaway lesson from WP:FRAMBAN in 2019, is the need for a strong, active and vibrant Arbcom to ensure the community remains in control of its own affairs and to keep the Foundation's tanks off our lawn. I bring no personal agenda to reform Arbcom - that should be a matter for the community rather than the Arbcom itself. My most defining trait would be a low tolerance for behaviour which wastes volunteer time & detracts from the work of building an encyclopedia.

Declaration: All my previous accounts are declared on my user page. I've signed the confidentiality agreement.



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