User:Carcharoth/ArbCom Elections/ACE2010

Herewith some thoughts on the 2010 Arbitration Committee Elections. Initially, this will be a collection of links to the questions I've asked of candidates, which I've divided into two groups: (a) former and current arbitrators; (b) all the other candidates (with no previous arbitration track record). I've done this because I'm coming to end of a two-year term on the committee, and my perspective is that of someone who knows what the job has entailed for the past two years, as well as having worked on the Arbitration Committee at some point with all of those in group (a). Next to each candidate name are links to the question(s) I asked them, along with (at some point) my thoughts on their candidacy.

I was initially uncertain of the propriety of commenting in this way during the elections (or even posing questions) given that I will still be a sitting arbitrator up until the end of December. I would say that it is not advisable for those who will be staying on the committee into the following year to take part in election discussions, questioning and commentary, in the way I have, but I do think that those who terms are about to expire shouldn't feel so constrained. The only other former or soon-to-be-former arbitrator who has commented in such fashion is Wizardman, who wrote a guide giving his views on the candidates in this election.

Please direct any comments to the talk page (including the candidates, who are more than welcome to comment on what I've said).

Candidates who are current or former arbitrators

• Casliber
• FT2
• John Vandenberg
• Newyorkbrad
• Shell Kinney
• SirFozzie
• Stephen Bain

Candidates who are not current or former arbitrators

• Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry
• David Fuchs
• Elen of the Roads
• Georgewilliamherbert
• GiacomoReturned
• Harej
• Iridescent
• Jclemens
• Off2riorob
• PhilKnight
• Sandstein
• Xeno

Withdrawn candidates

At the time these notes were written, three candidates had withdrawn and are listed here without further comment. I've also included Loosmark here as well. Some of these candidates withdrew or were banned after voting started, and remain on the ballot paper, where I will be entering an oppose against their names.

• Balloonman
• HJ Mitchell
• Loosmark
• N419BH

Notes and further thoughts

Will add links here to other posts I made during these elections, as well as thoughts on the questions to pose the twelve candidates with no prior experience of arbitration. This is intended as a deliberate contrast to the seven candidates who do have prior experience of arbitration, as I suspect that future ArbCom elections will see more and more former or current arbitrators standing for election, so such matters will increasingly become something that (in my opinion) the electorate should consider.

With the twelve candidates with no arbitration experience, I've decided to review the past two years and see which situations I found the most difficult to handle, and to then pose 12 general questions on that basis, with each candidate getting pot luck as to which question they get (all should have put aside time this weekend to answer questions, or at the least made a statement stating that they will be unavailable for the closing days of the election).

Conundrums faced as an arbitrator

On reviewing the past two years, I found the following to be good examples of problems faced by arbitrators. Not all of these happened all the time, but all happened at least once to me or other arbitrators.

1. Parties to cases post repeatedly to your talk page, and/or e-mail you and/or the mailing list
2. Real life intervenes while you are halfway through voting on a case and you don't know when you will be able to continue
3. An e-mail arrives at the mailing list requiring an 'emergency' response and you are the only arbitrator around
4. You fall out with a fellow arbitrator and have a big argument on the mailing list
5. Parties to a case you are drafting prove to be incapable of submitting adequate evidence
6. Parties (or potential parties) to a case fail to make a statement and/or retire
7. You disagree with an action taken by a clerk and tensions rise as a result
8. Parties to a case make strident and repeated calls for your recusal
9. Poorly assembled ban appeals arrive at the mailing list and will require work to sort out
10. Banned sockmaster consistently denies socking and refuses to take no for an answer
11. You sense you are very tired/ill or not fully alert, but voting needs to be done
12. Voting on a remedy to ban someone is deadlocked and you have the casting vote
13. Parties to a case are squabbling on the case pages and no clerks are around
14. You are last to vote on a case and want to copyedit and/or rewrite parts of the proposed decision
15. You are trying to do some work on articles and someone pesters you about arbitration matters
16. After several months of intense arbitration work, you begin to hallucinate that you are God

OK. I made up the last one... (but the point is that taking breaks from the work is absolutely vital).