Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates

Protest candidate SPAs

While the idea of a protest vote candidacy is interesting, and I certainly think should be allowed, I would I think object to the creation of the SPA User:Protest vote for this purpose, as it's obscuring who you are actually voting for, and prevents any other protest candidates of another stripe from emerging. Though this is not the intention, this reminds me of the Independence Party of New York, which registers voters in my state for their political party, mostly by convincing them that they are registering for no political party.--Pharos (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Not much of a protest, if it was successful, it would simply make ArbCom one member smaller, which is going to happen sooner or later, going by history.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:54, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

The PD in the GMO case was scheduled to be posted two weeks ago, and it has yet to appear. So my theory is that it (ie, bringing the Committee to a halt) has already happened, and we just don't know about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:07, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

If you want to vote "none of the above", by far the best way to do it is to vote "oppose" to every candidate. Since candidates with more opposes than supports are automatically rejected (don't make me go looking for where that rule's written down, but I assure you it is), that actually has an impact. All that voting for an "if elected, I will not serve" candidate achieves is making the committee one member smaller, which—given the soul-destroying unpleasantness of what being an arb actually involves—invariably happens fairly quickly anyway when people realise exactly what "500 emails a day, all of which have to be read and a sizeable fraction of which will be personal abuse" means in practice. ‑ iridescent 17:16, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Is it really 500 emails per day? That's awful! There has got to be a better way. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know the current figure, but as of five years ago it was between 300-800 per day (see screenshot), plus the expectation that one had at least a passing familiarity with every significant topic on the drama boards, every significant noticeboard, and the talkpage of every high-profile user. Worm That Turned, who was on the committee much more recently than me, estimates 40 hours a week to do it thoroughly or around one hour per day to deal with just the essentials, which tallies with my experience. Remember, what you see on-wiki is just part of it; you also have all the privacy-sensitive stuff which has to take place off-wiki, all the assorted appeals and queries, as well as a non-stop stream of people asking you questions as an individual, all of which needs to be read and replied to. To get an approximation of the feeling, read WP:ANI top-to-bottom, under the condition that you need to read every topic closely enough to be able to answer questions off-the-cuff about it and that if you demonstrate a lack of knowledge about any of it, or dismiss any part of it as unimportant or irrelevant, you'll have a screaming mob ranting at you. Then, imagine doing that every day (even if you read something yesterday, you need to re-read it today to ensure nothing's changed, as if you're not up to speed someone will turn up screaming at you for "not taking the matter seriously" and "lack of accountability"). And on top of that, assume that every damn weirdo on the internet will assume that you're now fair game, and bombard you with a mix of spam and vague threats should you be insufficiently vocal in support of their particular hobby-horse. There's not a word here that I'd disagree with; if anything, WTT doesn't convey the unpleasantness of it enough. ‑ iridescent 17:45, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

For those wishing to understand the reasoning behind my candidacy, please read Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2015#Against_all. Simply voting oppose against every candidate, doesn't serve as a public protest as it does not show up in the election results. I've done it under an SPA, per Everyking's comments on the RfC. The actual user behind the account is irrelevant, as they wont actually be doing anything. My regular account is listed at the bottom of my statement for transparency purposes as required. Protest vote (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, but your percentage is going to be diminished by people (like me, actually), who wouldn't mind registering a protest but don't see the point of having ArbCom starting the year one member down, and would feel very silly if their vote was the margin for ProtestVote to edge out someone they thought might do a good job.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:32, 8 November 2015 (UTC)