User:Mz7/ACE2023

For this election, there are 10 candidates running for 8 vacant seats. All of them may be filled for either a two-year term or a one-year term, depending on the candidate's level of support, as well as where they finish with respect to other candidates.

General thoughts

What does the Arbitration Committee do?

The Arbitration Committee ("ArbCom") has five distinct responsibilities that are defined in Wikipedia policy at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Scope and responsibilities. They are:

1. To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve.

   This one is perhaps the most visible activity to the broader community, but it is important to remember that it is just one of the many responsibilities that we have assigned the Arbitration Committee. Members of the community can request that the Arbitration Committee intervene in certain disputes at subpages of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests. You can see an archive of past proceedings at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index.

   In the early days of Wikipedia, the Arbitration Committee frequently intervened in user conduct disputes, but as Wikipedia has matured, arbitration cases have become rarer. In 2006, for example, ArbCom accepted 116 cases, whereas so far in 2023, it has heard only 6 cases (including one that is ongoing as of when I am writing this). Today, the Arbitration Committee will generally only agree to intervene in the most intractable disputes (often concerning controversial topic areas) or in disputes concerning administrator conduct (see #3 below).

2. To hear appeals from blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users.

   In theory, the Arbitration Committee has broad discretion under policy to hear appeals from any "blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted" user, but in practice, the Committee itself has stated that it will, for the time being, take appeals (i) from editors who are subject to an {{OversightBlock}} or a {{Checkuserblock}}; (ii) from editors who are blocked for reasons that are unsuitable for public discussion; and (iii) from editors blocked or banned by Arbitration and Arbitration Enforcement decisions. See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Handling of ban appeals. ArbCom will generally decline to consider appeals that don't fall under these categories because we have other processes that more transparently handle such appeals, such as the {{unblock}} template and WP:UTRS.

   I suspect that much of the day-to-day, behind-the-scenes work of the Arbitration Committee is responding to these kinds of appeals. ArbCom receives and disposes of most appeals via email, so the broader community often has no visibility into this work, except occasionally when the Committee announces a successful appeal on its noticeboard. Occasionally, ArbCom will solicit community feedback on specific appeals (see here for a recent example), but this is relatively rare. Maxim, who served on the Committee 2020–2022 (and is running again this year) has stated that, out of the appeals that ArbCom receives, the overwhelming majority (95%+) are checkuser blocks. While the workload isn't particularly high (no more than 20-ish in a given month), it is quite dreary and perhaps requires a slightly different skillset compared to what one could assume based on the Committee's on-wiki actions. Maxim also recommends because of this that it is useful to have an experienced and technically confident checkuser (and then maybe a second one) on the Committee.

3. To handle requests (other than self-requests) for removal of administrative tools.

   If a Wikipedia administrator is being problematic, a key responsibility of the Arbitration Committee is reviewing whether that administrator should continue to be an administrator. With a few limited exceptions, the Arbitration Committee is the only entity on the English Wikipedia that is capable of removing the adminship of Wikipedia administrators (in wiki-jargon, this is called "desysopping"). This does not mean that all disputes involving administrator conduct must be brought immediately before the Arbitration Committee—see arbitrator L235's remarks here (in the context of this declined arbitration request)—but it does explain why many arbitrators have stated they have a lower bar for accepting arbitration requests concerning administrator conduct (in other kinds of cases, arbitrators typically set a high bar for accepting arbitration requests, typically requiring that all other avenues of dispute resolution have been exhausted first).

4. To resolve matters unsuitable for public discussion for privacy, legal, or similar reasons.

   This is the portion of the Arbitration Committee's work that is almost entirely invisible to the broader community on-wiki, yet as time has gone on, it has become increasingly important. Arbitrators in the past have described ArbCom's work as an "iceberg"—David Fuchs, who was an arbitrator 2011–2014 and again 2020–2021, has written that as the community overall has gotten better at handling disputes before they reach arbitration [...] these "unseen tasks" account for more of the Committee's business.

   In a thread I started in 2016 commenting on the declining on-wiki caseload, arbitrator Opabinia regalis (who served 2016–2019 and again 2022–2023) wrote that Another consequence of the dropping-case-volume trend is that the relative importance of the behind-the-scenes parts of the job increases, even if the quantity doesn't change that much. Obviously, it's harder for the community to judge who will be (or was) effective in the behind-the-scenes roles, and arguably harder to recruit arb candidates to do a job they haven't been able to see. When I asked whether she thought ArbCom generally does a good job handling the behind-the-scenes work, she wrote: I think we're reasonably good at handling the "routine" behind-the-scenes stuff, though many of the issues brought to us are unfortunately not really things we can help much with. As a rough guess, around a quarter to a third of arbcom-l threads that originate from people who are not arbs, functionaries, or trolls are about harassment/outing issues, often involving things happening on other sites. (We also get a lot of appeals of CU blocks, and lost souls who ought to have sent their issue to OTRS.) That being said, the more unusual the circumstance, the more ineffective we'll probably be - we're really muddling through on some of that harassment stuff.

   That was in 2016, and naturally, a lot has happened since then. In particular, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has become increasingly involved in responding to these kinds of private-evidence-related issues, and they have established a whole process for determining when to act—see foundation:Policy:Office actions. Notably, one particular WMF office action placed the WMF and the English Wikipedia community in conflict with each other in 2019, and one consequence of that was a lengthy "Anti-harassment RfC" in 2020, in which the Arbitration Committee presented the community with a number of questions about how ArbCom should respond to harassment. I have also heard that the Arbitration Committee and a point of contact from the WMF now have a regularly scheduled call with each other.

5. To approve and remove access to (i) CheckUser and Oversight tools and (ii) mailing lists maintained by the Arbitration Committee.

   This is probably the portion of the Arbitration Committee's work that is the most procedural and the least controversial. While ArbCom has the final decision over whether to grant CheckUser and Oversight permissions, it will typically solicit feedback on candidates from the community before proceeding with an appointment. See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight/2023 CUOS appointments for the most recent feedback solicitation.

Specific thoughts

The candidates are listed here in alphabetical order.

This page in a nutshell

Support

1. Aoidh
2. Cabayi
3. Firefly
4. HJ Mitchell
5. Maxim
6. ToBeFree
7. Wugapodes
8. Z1720

Neutral

1. Sdrqaz

Oppose

1. Robert McClenon

Candidates

Name	Comments	Vote
Aoidh (talk · contribs)	Aoidh has been an administrator for 8 months (since March 2023). I am not too familiar with this candidate, and my first impression is that 8 months of administrative experience is definitely on the shorter side for an Arbitration Committee candidate. I remember I once encountered them because they are the author of the template warning message Template:Uw-ewsoft, which is a softer version of Template:Uw-ew targeted towards new editors. Overall, Aoidh strikes me as a level-headed individual who would bring some fresh eyes to the Arbitration Committee.	Support
Cabayi (talk · contribs)	Cabayi is a current member of the Arbitration Committee, elected in 2021. They have been an administrator since March 2020. My impression of Cabayi's tenure thus far is that it has been relatively quiet. They tend to vote with the majority of the rest of the committee on most matters, tending to pitch in only after other members have made their positions clear. They certainly have relevant experience—before they were an arbitrator, they were a clerk at WP:SPI, and I remember seeing them all the time in that role. Once they joined ArbCom and became a checkuser as a result, I had expected them to become more active at SPI in a checkuser role, but it doesn't seem like they are too interested in that—looking through their project space contributions this year, it seems that outside of being an arbitrator, they have focused primarily on responding to requests at Wikipedia:Changing username/Simple instead. Overall, I see Cabayi as a relatively inoffensive incumbent member of the Arbitration Committee. If the field of candidates were larger and stronger, I could see Cabayi falling below the line, but in this election, I see no reason not to support.	Support
Firefly (talk · contribs)	Firefly has been an administrator since March 2022, and he has also been a checkuser since October 2022. He is also a clerk for the Arbitration Committee, which is a role that gives him strong familiarity with the Committee's procedures and intricacies. As a checkuser, Firefly has been relatively active this year at SPI (see his project space contributions in the last year). Because one of the main behind-the-scenes responsibilities of the Arbitration Committee is responding to block appeals primarily from checkuser-blocked accounts, I feel that the Committee would benefit from Firefly's experience.	Support
HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs)	I have a good impression of HJ Mitchell, although I am not the most familiar with his editing as others may be. HJ Mitchell has been editing Wikipedia for a long time—he has been an administrator for more than 13 years, having passed RfA in May 2011. I remember encountering them back when I was first starting to edit more than a decade ago. Given the length of his editing and administrative tenure on this project, he brings a depth of experience and institutional knowledge that I feel would be beneficial to the Arbitration Committee.	Support
Maxim (talk · contribs)	Maxim previously served on the Arbitration Committee for three years, from 2020 to 2022. He has been an administrator for more than 16 years, and a bureaucrat for more than 12 years. During his previous time on the Arbitration Committee, Maxim was instrumental at organizing and efficiently processing the Committee's work behind the scenes, especially with respect to block and ban appeals (one of the core responsibilities of the Arbitration Committee, see above), and in responding to evidence of sockpuppetry. Current arbitrators Barkeep49 and L235 have endorsed their candidacy citing Maxim's "behind-the-scenes" efficiency, and as a checkuser, I can also state that Maxim has always been a pleasure to work with. Overall, Maxim has distinguished himself as a dedicated volunteer who is skilled at some of the behind-the-scenes areas of the Arbitration Committee's work that the community is not always privy to. I support him enthusiastically.	Support
Robert McClenon (talk · contribs)	Robert McClenon has neither been an administrator nor an arbitrator. This is Robert McClenon’s third time running for the Arbitration Committee; he unsuccessfully ran last year in 2022, as well as in 2018. Before that, he ran unsuccessfully for RfA in 2017. I am opposing Robert McClenon primarily because I believe it is important for arbitrators to have some amount of administrative experience. As I wrote above, much of what the Arbitration Committee does revolves around administrative, “behind-the-scenes” work on Wikipedia, and I feel that candidates that have experience being an administrator are better suited to this task. I would encourage Robert McClenon to request adminship again before running for the Arbitration Committee. Much of Robert McClenon's project space work has been focused on the dispute resolution noticeboard (DRN), where he is that page's top editor by far (out of the last 50,000 edits to DRN, he accounts for 58.6%). Robert begins his candidate statement by mentioning this work. Unfortunately, his experience at DRN would be mostly irrelevant to the work he would be doing on the Arbitration Committee. For starters, DRN is for resolving content disputes only, which is the opposite of the arbitration process, which exists to resolve user conduct disputes (see e.g. this arbitration principle, stating It is not the purpose of the Arbitration Committee to settle good-faith content disputes). Moreover, I feel that DRN is broadly ineffective at resolving disputes—it attempts to enforce a sort of moderated and structured discussion and encourage compromise, but most attempts to resolve disputes there either go unresolved or get moved to more effective venues. I have never heard of any experienced editor starting a thread there or encouraging others to start a thread there—it perhaps functions best only as a place where new editors can get help starting an RfC. It reminds me of the Mediation Committee, which was created alongside the Arbitration Committee in 2003 but was permanently dissolved in 2018 because it suffered from much of the same problems of irrelevancy that DRN faces.	Oppose
Sdrqaz (talk · contribs)	This is Sdrqaz's second attempt at running for the Arbitration Committee; they ran unsuccessfully last year, just barely falling short of the cutoff. Sdrqaz has been an administrator for over a year and a half (since March 2022). My personal interactions with them have been positive. In the last year, I feel that some of Sdrqaz's most visible activity has been expressing some controversial opinions at WP:RFA, and I feel that this is worth mentioning here because they explicitly call this out in their candidate statement (I have consistently shown this through my votes at requests for adminship). I am thinking of two examples in particular: (1) in January 2023, they cast an oppose vote at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MB at a time when the vote was 65–2: see [1] (eventually, that RfA closed unsuccessfully), and (2) in October 2023, they were the sole editor in the oppose section at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ganesha811 (which closed successfully). In both of these cases, Sdrqaz called out legitimate concerns where they felt policy was not being followed, but interestingly, even in the MB RfA that was eventually unsuccessful, not a lot of community members agreed with the amount of weight Sdrqaz was placing on those policy imperfections, choosing either to support or to oppose on different reasons. In their candidate statement, Sdrqaz says that they can offer an "independent voice that will stand up for the right thing, even if it is unpopular", and they cite their RfA votes as one example, as well as their "willingness to decline requests when they are out of policy, even when they come from highly-experienced users"—for the latter, they link to an edit summary search for the keyword "declin", which returns many results of them declining various admin requests. I feel like these examples don't portray the candidate in the way that they intend them to—the impression I am getting is that, as an arbitrator, their focus will be on "were the rules followed?" rather than "what is the best thing for the project?" Overall, I think that Sdrqaz is a great editor and administrator, has a deep knowledge of Wikipedia's policies, and has a good grasp of how they should be applied, but for the reasons above, I feel that the other candidates in this election are just slightly better. For the time being, I am expecting to vote "Neutral" on Sdrqaz.	Neutral
ToBeFree (talk · contribs)	ToBeFree has been an administrator for just over four years (since November 2019). He has served as a clerk for the Arbitration Committee, so he is familiar with much of the on-wiki procedures and intricacies of the arbitration process. It is usually beneficial to have at least a few members of the Arbitration Committee with that kind of experience. Outside of being an arbitration clerk, I feel that ToBeFree consistently expresses sound judgment whenever I have seen him participate in community discussions. Scrolling through his user talk page archives, I am also finding a highly personable Wikipedia administrator that seems like a good addition to the Arbitration Committee.	Support
Wugapodes (talk · contribs)	Wugapodes is a current member of the Arbitration Committee, elected in 2021. He has been an administrator for just under four years (since January 2020). I have a good impression of his tenure on the Committee—it is not uncommon to find Wugapodes thinking outside the box, proposing alternative solutions and being among the first to comment on certain issues. When voting on ArbCom decisions, he likes to explain his thinking at length and respond to feedback in a constructive way. I am supporting for these reasons.	Support
Z1720 (talk · contribs)	Z1720 has been an administrator for a little over a year (since August 2022). I will admit that I do not know a lot about Z1720. They do work in administrative areas that don't often overlap with mine, such as curating the content on the Main Page: handling WP:ERRORS and promoting WP:DYK submissions. (It's been a while since I've submitted a DYK... maybe this is my wakeup call to do more content work in the next year.) I feel like this area of administrative work which is more content and reader-focused rather than conduct and editor-focused tends to be underrepresented on the Arbitration Committee. Z1720 seems to be an easy-to-work-with collaborator who would bring fresh eyes to the team. I am inclined to support.	Support