Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks

The Clerks of the Arbitration Committee are editors selected by the Arbitration Committee to assist the committee with procedural aspects of its work. The position of Clerk was created in January 2006 by agreement of the Committee.

Tasks

For a procedural guide, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/Procedures

The Clerks assist the Arbitration Committee by opening and closing cases that have the required number of votes, publishing the final decisions, and keeping the requests for arbitration page organized. Additional Clerk tasks include giving procedural advice to case participants and keeping the arbitration case, talk, Evidence, and Workshop pages in good order and in the prescribed format.

To help carry out their tasks, the Clerks are granted write-only access to the Arbitration Committee mailing list, and permission to edit proposed and final decision pages for purposes such as making clerical changes and drafting implementation notes. They are not granted any other privileges, such as posting proposals to the Proposed decision page or voting on cases. Former Clerks do not retain these privileges.

Participation and recusal

Like all editors, Clerks may participate in arbitration cases by making proposals or commenting on the talk, Evidence talk, Workshop and Workshop talk, and Proposed decision talk pages. Comments made by Clerks on the merits of cases are submitted in their individual capacity, not as Clerks, and have no priority over comments by any other editors.

Clerks should not add evidence to the Evidence page of a case unless they recuse themselves from the case. Clerks also should not perform clerk duties in cases in which they have been involved in the dispute being arbitrated, or if they have had significant prior negative interactions with any of the parties. Clerks can request feedback from other Clerks and request reassignment of cases where necessary on the Clerks' noticeboard or on the Clerks' IRC channel.

Organization

Clerks are appointed by the Arbitration Committee, and their activities are coordinated through the Clerks' noticeboard. There is no Head Clerk. Further organizational details are administered as needed through consensus, subject to any directions from the Committee.

Becoming a Clerk

Clerks are appointed by the Arbitration committee, generally after a period of training and mentorship. If you are interested in becoming a clerk, contact any current clerk about a mentorship. (Mentor-trainee relationships are not intended to be exclusive, but establish a first point of contact.) Applicants will be evaluated based on temperament and overall Wikipedia experience, with some priority given to editors who have been informally active on Arbitration case pages. After you have had some experience handling complicated cases, and if you are willing to make a small but steady commitment of your time, the Clerks will submit your name to the Arbitration Committee for consideration of an appointment.

Helping out

The active Clerks encourage informal help from interested editors. Those interested should monitor the relevant pages, including the Clerks' Noticeboard, and make their availability known to the Clerks. All of the currently active official Clerks got their start at performing Clerk tasks in this way.

However, because the official Clerks are the appointed representatives of the Arbitration Committee, and act on behalf of the Committee in some circumstances, there are some things that should be done only by the full-time Clerks, or by trainees. These include:

• Opening and closing cases;
• Removing threaded comments from the main requests for arbitration page (but helpers may move comments into the section of the person making the comments);
• Removing or shortening excessively long presentations on the main page or on the evidence page;
• Removing rejected cases from the main page within the 10-day period for consideration (a clerk or Arbitrator may remove a case that has been listed for less than 10 days if there is a clear majority to reject and no chance of acceptance; helpers should only remove rejected cases after ten days);
• Editing the /Proposed decision subpages, except for correction of obvious typographical or numbering errors;
• Making policy-like statements (such as announcing the procedure for handling the changeover of ArbCom members [1] [2]).

In general, helpers should also avoid dealing with "touchy" participants (you'll know it when you see it).

Informal helpers are otherwise encouraged to participate by performing any other needed tasks, including maintaining the main page, fixing formatting errors and broken links, and other maintenance tasks. For questions and coordination, use the noticeboard.

Current Clerks

Active

• Cbrown1023
• David.Mestel
• Penwhale
• Thatcher

Trainees (Mentors)

• Rlevse (Cbrown1023)
• AGK

Inactive

• Cowman109
• Drini
• Johnleemk
• MacGyverMagic
• Phil Sandifer
• Picaroon
• Ryan Delaney
• Srikeit
• Tznkai

(Previous applications - for historical interest only)