Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2011

2011 Arbitration Committee Elections

Status

• Thank you for participating in the 2011 Arbitration Committee Election. The results have been verified and published.
• Please offer your feedback on the Election process.

This is the ninth annual election for the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, scheduled for November and December 2011. This election, by practice on Wikimedia projects, will be organised by volunteers of the English Wikipedia community independent of the Arbitration Committee.

Timeline

1. Nomination period (from Saturday 00:01, 12 November until Monday 23:59, 21 November) → during which interested editors are invited to submit a candidate statement. An editor is eligible to stand as a candidate who

   (i) has a registered account and has had at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2011,

   (ii) is in good standing and is not subject to active blocks or site-bans,

   (iii) meets the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to non-public data and must identify with the Foundation if elected, and

   (iv) has disclosed any alternate accounts in their election statements (legitimate accounts which have been declared to the Arbitration Committee prior to the close of nominations need not be publicly disclosed).

2. Voting period (from Sunday 00:01, 27 November until Saturday 23:59, 10 December) → eligible voters may vote on the candidates, using the SecurePoll system. An editor is eligible to vote who

   (i) has a registered account and has had at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2011 and

   (ii) is not blocked at the time of their vote.

3. Scrutineering period (immediately following the voting period) → scrutineers, consisting of stewards whose main wikis are not the English Wikipedia, will check the votes (e.g. for duplicate, missing, and ineligible votes), and compile a tally of the results. The stewards helping out in this process will be User:Bencmq (originally from the Chinese Wikipedia), User:Trijnstel (originally from the Dutch Wikipedia), and User:Vituzzu (originally from the Italian Wikipedia).
   MediaWiki sysadmin Tim Starling will assist with the setting up and troubleshooting of the SecurePoll interface.

Vacant seats

For 2012, 8 current arbitrators will remain on the Committee. The Committee will be reduced to 15 members, leaving 7 vacant seats. Each vacant seat will have a 2 year term. Support percentages will be calculated using: (Support / (Support + Oppose)). Vacant seats will be filled in order of the candidate's support percentages. As the minimum support percentage is 50%, if there are not sufficient candidates with support percentages above 50%, the seats will remain vacant.

Guides

For candidates

Nominations for candidates will open at 00:01 UTC, 12 November and are set to close at 23:59 UTC, 21 November. During this time, any editor in good standing who meets the criteria stated in the "Timeline" section above 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, 10 December).

For voters

See the "Timeline" section above for voter eligibility requirements

Before the nomination period (i.e. before 00:01 UTC, 12 November), voters are 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 questions 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 14 days, from 00:01 UTC, 27 November to 23:59 UTC, 10 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.