User:Worm That Turned/ACE2015

Who am I and should you listen to me?

Hi, I'm Dave or Worm That Turned. I was an arbitrator between 2013 and 2014 and think I did an all right job. Last year, I looked at the candidates and managed to predict the outcome fairly accurately.

In my opinion, the most important thing a person need to be a good Arbitrator is the ability to form their own opinion and articulate that opinion. The abilities to be able to change their mind and patiently read evidence are also nice to have. Now, most people think they can do this and probably can - so what I really worry about in my guide and in my voting is how the candidate will cope with being on Arbcom. It's not a nice place to be.

My guide is based on my own opinion - the impression I've been given of the candidates when interacting with them or not. There are 8 seats available this year, so I will not be supporting more than 8 candidates, though I will only oppose those who I do not believe are suitable for Arbcom. I will explain my reasoning, you can take it into account if you like.

Thoughts for candidates

Don't run. Having had some distance from Arbcom for a year, I'm finally getting over how unpleasant a place it was. The volume of emails (~3Gb over 2 years including moderation emails), the impossibility of getting anything done (herding cats), the petty bickering, the wasted time... it's just not worth it. I feel I achieved what I wanted to while on Arbcom, but I do wonder if it was worth the cost. I'm still bumbling along and haven't had the re-surge of energy for this place.

If you're still serious and want to have a chat about what it's like on Arbcom and my thoughts, feel free to email me.

Thoughts on Arbcom

Arbcom plays an essential role on Wikipedia, but there's little it does that could not be done by someone else. I'm hoping that its different roles will be spun off into the community over the coming years and will support any efforts to do so. As I see it, the roles that Arbcom do are as follows

• Arbcom is the final area for dispute resolution. There are sometimes disputes which the community is not able to make a decision on. Arbcom is also not qualified to make a decision, but a decision needs to be made. The community is getting better and better at this, so cases are less frequent.
• Arbcom is the only place which is currently able to actively remove the sysop flag. The committee should be therefore prepared to do so. I would like to see the community take on this role and will continue to push for that reform.
• Arbcom is responsible for the functionaries. This includes the Audit Subcommittee, where functionaries' activities can be reviewed. This also includes the appointment of new functionaries. I would like to see this responsibility be moved to the functionaries as a group, perhaps by empowering the Audit Subcommittee.
• Arbcom is the final option for Ban Appeals. It is important that there is a group who can look at bans (or long term blocks) and make decisions on them. The Administrator's noticeboards are frequented by people who are not able to make objective decisions, sometime private information is involved. That said, there is no reason this needs to be an Arbcom role, and I would like to see it spun off to the community.
• Arbcom is responsible for anything else the community is not able to handle. This is generally privacy-related information. Once the above are tackled - the "everything else" group should be reconsidered. I'd rather it was split between the WMF and the functionaries.

Arbcom shouldn't exist as it does. Hopefully we'll get to a position where it doesn't over the next few years.

Today, it appears that a significant portion of candidates run because they have an agenda to fulfil. The sooner we get rid of the committee the better and if we don't do it within the next couple of years, we risk bringing the entire project into disrepute.

How to vote

I'm not one for tactical voting, but I do think that voters should understand what their vote means going in. There are (currently!) 9 seats open this year. That's practically 2/3 of the committee. However, there's a caveat - each person elected needs to have over 50% support. So, if there is a person who you believe should not be on Arbcom - vote oppose. Arbcom has built in redundancy, it does not need 15 members - it can manage quite easily with 12, or even less. An individual on Arbcom can do a lot of damage, bringing the entire project into disrepute.

Personally, I will not be supporting more than 9 candidates, and will drop people I am not 100% confident on down to neutral.

To re-iterate:

Candidates

Table has been blanked, but is available in the page history.