Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010

The eighth elections to the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee are scheduled for November–December 2010, with the new arbitrators due to take their seats on 1 January 2011. The election, by practice on Wikimedia projects, is organised by community volunteers independent of the Arbitration Committee. Please raise any issues or queries on the election talkpage.

Election process

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/December 2010 ArbCom election The election consists of three stages.

1. The nomination period, during which interested editors are invited to submit a candidate statement. An editor is eligible to stand as a candidate who i) has made 1,000 mainspace edits prior to the start of the nomination period and ii) is in good standing, that is, not subject to active blocks or site-bans.
2. The voting period, during which eligible voters may vote on the candidates, using the SecurePoll system. An editor is eligible to vote who (i) has a registered account with at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2010; and (ii) is not a blocked user for at least part of the voting period. A tool is available to check the eligibility of user accounts.
3. The scrutineering period, during which the votes will be checked (e.g. for duplicate, missing, and ineligible votes) and a tally of results compiled.

Voters are invited to review, question and discuss the candidates throughout the nomination and voting periods.

Disruption or other matters needing attention during the election may be passed to the volunteer coordinators (here). Any editors wishing to help the election run smoothly may also watchlist this page (click here to watchlist).

Personnel

Three groups of editors are involved in the organisation of the elections:

• Election coordinators—self-selected editors organising the on-wiki aspects of the election (volunteer here).
• Election administrators—Wikimedia Foundation-identified editors who oversee the election, including the SecurePoll voting system. Happy-melon, MBisanz and Mr.Z-man have agreed to serve as election administrators.
• Scrutineers—volunteers drawn from the ranks of stewards with a home wiki other than the English Wikipedia, tasked with verifying the integrity of the vote and tallying the outcome. Dferg, Laaknor, Mardetanha, and Millosh have agreed to serve as scrutineers.

The WMF developer Roan Kattouw has agreed to run the technical aspect of the election.

Results

Following the voting period, the scrutineers will examine the votes, and once they are satisfied with the integrity of the process, will release a tally of the results. The tally will rank candidates by level of support, defined as the number of votes cast in support of the candidate divided by the total number of votes cast for the candidate ("abstain" votes are not counted). Jimbo Wales will then ceremonially appoint candidates to the vacant seats on the Arbitration Committee on the basis of the tally.

Vacant seats

The election is expected to increase the number of arbitrators to 18. The terms of nine arbitrators (half of the Committee, by design) will expire at the end of 2010—those of Carcharoth, FayssalF, Hersfold, KnightLago, Newyorkbrad, Shell Kinney, SirFozzie, Vassyana, and Wizardman. In addition, Fritzpoll and Rlevse, whose terms would not have expired at the end of 2010, stepped down this year and will also need to be replaced at this election. The number of arbitrators on the Committee (18) and the maximum length of the terms of incoming arbitrators (two years) were established following community discussion in 2009 at this Request for Comment. Thus, the election of 11 new arbitrators is expected, provided no more sitting arbitrators whose terms will not expire at the end of this year resign or are removed before 31 December 2010.

Guides

For candidates

Nominations for candidates opened at 00:01 UTC, Sunday 14 November and are set to close at 23:59 UTC, Tuesday 23 November. During this time, any editor in good standing who has made at least 1,000 mainspace edits before the opening of the nomination period and is at least 18 years old and of legal age in their jurisdiction may nominate themselves by following the instructions to create a candidate statement and a questions page on the Candidates page. Once a candidate has made their statement, they may proceed to answer the general and individual questions as they wish (see the Questions page for details and instructions). Candidates may continue to answer questions until the end of the voting period (23:59 UTC, Sunday 5 December).

For voters

See the "election process" section above for voter eligibility requirements

Before the nomination period (i.e. before 00:01 UTC, Sunday 14 November), voters were invited to discuss and develop the general questions that will be asked of every candidate.

Once candidates have nominated themselves, voters are invited to review and discuss them. Voters may ask one specific question per candidate throughout the election; please see the instructions for individual questions for details.

To facilitate their discussions and judgements, voters are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the candidates. This can be done through reading the candidate statements, the answers to the questions put to each candidate (linked from their candidate statements), and the discussion of each candidate (a centralised collection of which will be made available at the Discussion page). In addition, a summary guide to candidates will be made available, and augmented by a set of personal guides by individual voters.

Voting will run for 10 days, from 00:01 UTC, Friday 26 November to 23:59 UTC, Sunday 5 December, and will be conducted using the SecurePoll extension. Because of the risk of server lag, voters are advised to cast their vote at the latest an hour before the close of voting to ensure their vote will be counted.