User:SMcCandlish/Arbitration Committee Elections 2019

This is my take (so far) on the candidates for WP:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019. I'm likely to go into less detail than various other producers of "voting guides", because I have a life. Though I evidently have less of one than some, because my voter guide is medium-length.

Support

• Thryduulf: One of our most deliberative and sensible admins, with a lot of WP:AE experience, and weighing in (in a very reasonable, reasoning, and reasoned manner) on numerous WP:RFARB and WP:ARCA cases both from an administrative and an editorial point of view. I don't agree with every decision/conclusion Thryduulf reaches, much less with every content matter, but this is, all things considered, one of our top candidates. If anything, Thryduulf is almost too patient and too good-faith-assumptive. :-) Not every answer to the candidate questions by Thruduulf is going to make everyone happy, but they're all actually good answers. E.g., various people aren't going to like the answer to the question by Rschen7754, from a "wikipolitical" standpoint, but it is legally absolutely correct. Anyway, Thryduulf's strong cluefullness surmounts what for me in the negative of previously having been on ArbCom already (including during a time when I think ArbCom made some mistakes.)
• Kudpung: Gets stuff done. Few editors have been able to drive internal change at Wikipedia better than Kudpung, frankly. Once in a while this rubs some people the wrong way. I've been around this editor a long time, and deny the occasional accusations of incivility. The candidate is a straight shooter and does not suffer fools lightly, but a) we need that in an Arb, and b) "civility" doesn't mean "being sweet, and putting up with all kinds of bullshit with a smile on your face." We have WP:SPADE and WP:DUCK for a reason. I trust this statement: "If I am elected, I will show the side of my character that results in success at RfCs I initiate or largely facilitate: cool, calm, polite, and objective", since it does in fact describe Kudpung's approach to getting the work done, and to the extent the editor has been a little too easy to bait in the past, it's been brought up enough times that he's surely already moderating that tendency and would do so even more on ArbCom. People who trigger Kudpung's defensiveness of neutrality and other policies in "hot" topics simply seem to be unaware how level-headed and consensus-building he is in general. I especially respect his refusal to be dragged into playing kiss-ass and gimme-the-answer-I-wanna-hear games, over vague and pointed and drama-rehashing questions, at his candidate question page. See also: "I naturally believe that an arbitrator who has had a contentious involvement with a user should recuse themselves from the case if that user comes before the committee whether as plaintif or defendant." That's something someone in my oppose section should have learned.
• The Rambling Man: Serious content contributor and basically part of en.WP's institutional memory. Has also been on the receiving end of sanctions, and resigned both bureaucrat and admin bits under a cloud. That sounds like a massive red-flag, and it would be if the candidate had not learned from past mistakes. Frankly, I'm hard-pressed to think of any editor who has a better handle on the threats to the entire project's future stability. The fact that he's familiar with ArbCom coming and going is actually a plus in a sense, as is his status as currently a non-admin, and someone who has had old and not-so-old sanctions used against them punitively by hounders. Most Arbs and candidates have never experienced anything like that. ArbCom is at its worst when it consists entirely of admins, as their bias towards protecting other admins becomes overwhelming. TRM's stated intent to push for reforms within ArbCom and its procedures is the main selling point for me. Like Kudpung, TRM isn't always flowers and giggles; this is another editor who calls them as he sees them, and this is a trait we actually need in Arbs.
• DGG: A recent Arb, thus initially apt to get my "flush out ArbCom" down-vote, yet is among the most community-useful recent Arbs. Along with Thryduulf, one of the only former Arbs I would actively support returning to the role. Why? His goals for continuing ArbCom reform: "to judge by the merits rather than the technicalities ... increased openness in discussions and public votes on motions ... try very hard to work together ... working on the actual content of Wikipedia ... help[ing] those interested in the quality of the encyclopedia". I don't agree with every ArbCom vote DGG makes, but with many more of them than average.
• SoWhy: Time for some new blood. This is an active and content-focused editor. And one who didn't start out that way – it's impressive that SoWhy became more content-focused after becoming an admin, which is the exact opposite of what usually happens. It's a strong sign that SoWhy would not lose sight of what the community is all about while sitting as an Arb. The candidate's background in law and confidentiality is a plus (or at least should be; I can think of one lawyer who is WP:AE admin who exhibits such extreme proceduralism and technicality-weaseling that various other AE admins seem to think needs to stop being one, as do several current and former Arbs). I think SoWhy has a bit more faith in ArbCom's extant openness and fairness than is warranted, but has made it clear they support more of both going forward.
• Bradv: ArbCom clerk, so experienced in how the place works. Seems to have reasonable judgement. I like the vast majority of the candidate statement, and the question answers are also pretty good. The one that sold me was "Many older topics may no longer require DS, and these should be lifted. I think any topic area that has had no logged [discretionary sanctions] actions with the past year should be reviewed as a matter of course, and if the disruption has ended they can be restored to regular editing rules." Bradv's concern for the potential WP:CONLEVEL problems of a wikiproject trying to "buck" ArbCom and broader site-wide consensus also wins me over. However, I have the same issue with Bradv's WMF take as I do with Gadfium's, below. "I also believe that Arbcom needs to assert its role with respect to the Wikimedia Foundation." No; the en.WP community needs to assert its role. ArbCom has no such role, but a role within the community and sometimes at odds with it. Remember that ArbCom was not created by us, but imposed on us by Jimbo. ArbCom is a graft, not an organ. It is also not an external mediator. It literally does not exist between we the editorial community and WMF. Having ArbCom try to assert its local authority to WMF is like your pants trying to assert their independence to your landlord. And as with SoWhy, Bradv may be blue-skying a little bit about how well ArbCom presently works. Experience in the hotseat will cure that, I'm sure.
• Yes, this is fewer than the number of seats available. And that's okay.

Oppose

• Casliber: This recent and recurrent Arb is one of our "career politicians" and has been on ArbCom too many times, for too long. However, my main issue with Casliber is too much of a historical battleground mentality about certain content matters (especially a MOS:LIFE dispute that dragged on for several years). When something related to this came up at WP:ARCA, I had to ask Casliber to recuse and really make a case for him to do so. While he eventually did, I shouldn't've had to ask. When you've been part of a wikiproject-related, years-long, very emotional, and very WP:FACTIONal dispute on the opposite side of someone now before you at an ArbCom request, you're not in a position to be among those hearing the case, and you already know that.
• Newyorkbrad: The most-ArbCom-sitting editor in the site's history, which triggers my "get rid of career wikipoliticians" down-vote. Was historically among the most formative Arbs, but not everything Nyb helped form about ArbCom has been good for the WP community, and I'm skeptical that Nyb's ability to shape ArbCom constructively could continue anyway (the horse is already well out of the barn now). I don't really see enough reason to keep re-re-re-electing this candidate. Habit and familiarity aren't real reasons. As we should all have figured out by now from real life, leaving "better than some of the alternatives" people in positions of authority rarely works out for the better, and just leads to institutionalization of bureaucracy and other power imbalances. Given that ArbCom versus the WP community is a much less constrained and bounded and power-grab-preventing relationship that that between, say, the US Congress and the American citizenry, this concern arguably matters more on WP than it does off-site. Nyb hasn't triggered any "screwed the pooch" flags for me, but it's just time to let some others take the reins.
• Maxim: Insufficient involvement in the project over the last few years.
• RichWales: Insufficient involvement in the project over the last few years.
• Barkeep49: Too little experience. It takes years of near-constant involvement to absorb WP culture and policy fully.
• Xeno: Insufficient involvement in the project over the last few years. Does have community trust as a bureaucrat, but that's not enough. (They have little to do, and 'crats going AWOL for long stretches is not a big deal. Arbs doing it is a very big deal. It's the main reason I'm not running again myself – I'm not certain I'm going to have time for it for 1+ years.) Xeno's own former turn on ArbCom was long enough ago that it's neither a politicking red-flag nor a selling point, and I do believe Xeno's statement that their low participation as an Arb was due to serious and unusual life circumstances. But I'm just not seeing a real reason to vote for this candidate.
• Isarra: Clearly doesn't actually want the "job" Has a strong level of community trust, as a global interface-editor an a former OTRS admin, but her joke self-nomination is inappropriate even as some kind of satire of WP bureaucracy (cf. WP:SPIDERMAN, WP:POINT).
• KrakatoaKatie: A sitting Arb, thus apt to get my "flush out the incumbents" down-vote to begin with. More substantively, is too deeply involved in gender-related matters, and these are clearly going to be increasing not decreasing in frequency as ArbCom cases, so either we'd have an Arb who had to recuse all the time, or (much worse) one who needed to do so but would not. Is trusted as a checkuser and oversighter, but her desire to stick around just "to see the harassment RFC through to its conclusion" isn't an Arb rationale, it's a content-based activism/PoV rationale. And there's no sound logic in decrying that a 4-male-to-4-female Arb ratio would be lost, and observing that this is because of too new female editors self-nominating, yet then making that ratio be her campaigning point. Having an exact M:F ratio is not as important as having good Arbs, and being a good Arb is the reason to become one [again], not just sticking around for numeric reasons. I have not been impressed with KK's input at WP:RFARB and WP:ARCA to date. Having the "right" chromosomes isn't enough. We need really good Arbs.
• Beeblebrox: A former Arb, which for me is a bit of a minus but not that much, having been some while ago. More importantly, Beeblebrox is clearly too ambivalent about even wanting the "job". Also, insufficiently focused on content for my tastes, but that's a side matter compared to the likelihood of the candidate finding the stress of ArbCom duties to "burn ... bad" again.
• Calidum: Nice to see a non-admin candidate, who clearly has the good of the project and its editors in mind, is not bureaucracy-minded (quite the opposite), and learns from mistakes. However, Calidum has had too long and too recent a history of behavioral and misuse-of-tools problems.
• Gadfium: Strong content contributor, long-time "term of service", but I can't get past this: "Overall, the Fram incident deepened my commitment to Wikipedia, and as a supporter of English Wikipedia having some autonomy in governance, I want the new Arbcom to be strong." This logic just doesn't track. The community needs to be strong in the face of WMF overstepping its authority ham-fistedly, but this has nothing to do with ArbCom itself being strong, which is simply strength it will use against its own community members. The ArbCom of en.WP has jack when it comes to power to exert against WMF itself. This kind of basic logic failure is a disqualifier to me, per WP:CIR. And becoming more deeply committed to the project because of an incident of mega-WP:DRAMA about one particular admin really doesn't make much sense, either.
• Llywrch: This speaks for itself: "I see the Arbitration Committee as the place where disagreements come to an end. Matters are decided, people have their privileges revoked." We already have enough Judge Dredd "I am the law!" admins, we sure as hell don't need a whole ArbCom full of them. I also can't take seriously a candidate – for the arbitration body of an encyclopedia – who writes as poorly as this one does. Especially given that WP:MOS and WP:AT and related pages have been put under WP:AC/DS, it's simply not feasible to have an Arb who clearly doesn't give a damn about English-writing norms, even in a formal context like running for election. In the mid-2010s, we had a lot of problems with admins of this sort (with mindsets like "I hate style disputes, it's all meaningless trivia, so just punish everyone on both sides so they all shut up"), and this will not do in an Arbitrator. While individual disputes of that sort are often trivial, the entire class of them are not, as they pertain to the core mission, the writing of an encyclopedia for a world audience; they involve very strong and deep-seated (often since elementary school) conflicting viewpoints, the compromises between which often take years and great effort; and their resolution has a marked impact on many things like public perception of WP's quality, how well we manage internecine disputes about frequently recurrent disagreements, and how well our WP:CONLEVEL policy is followed.
• Worm That Turned: A sitting Arb, thus apt to get my "flush out the incumbents" down-vote. Even says "I would like to see a good shake up of the committee this year, with 11 seats to fill we have a very good chance of that happening", yet wants to be re-elected. While WTT's reasoning has often been among the more sound of that expressed by recent/current Arbs, and this particular Arb has better engagement with the editorial base than average and wants to see communication improve, he also says he's got little time for WP itself, just the ArbCom mailing list. That's a serious recipe for disconnection from the ground truth of any particular case or request, and for generally connection to the community and its needs and expectations, which can change rapidly. And, well, WP just really doesn't need an Arb to be something analogous to a former employee who occasionally takes emergency calls as a consultant.
• Hawkeye7: Desysopped and failed two later RfAs (and made no mention of this in their candidate statement – going that silly avoidance route is pretty much an auto-FAIL). Thinks ArbCom is above control by the community and can even overturn the community's WP:POLICY decisions: "However, it is worth noting that WP:CONSENSUS does not apply to ArbCom, so if the committee feels that the consensus is meaningfully wrong, it can override it." See also the rest of the confused answer to the first question asked, by Lingzhi2. And see also: "there's always been severe criticism of my content creation efforts, both from other editors and from WMF." While the volume of content contributions is remarkable, and even the number of GA/FA badges is far above average (and I care a lot about content contributions), it's not enough to surmount the self-conceded fact that the editor doesn't really have community trust, and self-evident fact this candidate doesn't understand policy at this level (though does seem to have a good handle on it in the content sphere).

Neutral

Given that I have fewer clear support candidates than available seats, I'll be provisionally voting for these two by default, but looking more closely at whether I should. I may also reconsider a couple of my less certain oppose candidates. (Otherwise the ACE voting system, as many of us have noticed, is skewed for voting against all candidates except those you strongly favor. You effectively get to vote twice, and you can still do so even with this many vacancies to fill, if you damned sure want to improve the chances of a few you adore and reduce the chances of those you detest. It's a stupid system, and if I run for ArbCom again, one of my own goals will be reformation of the voting system to be much saner.)

• Enterprisey: It wouldn't necessarily be bad to have a code-focused Arb, amidst lots of content-writers and unfortunately too many admins with a penchant for police roleplaying and forgetfulness that this is an encyclopedia-writing project. The self-nom statement is kinda substance-free, but I find most of the answers to the questions reasonable. However, the candidate actually missed the self-nomination deadline, by two minutes, so one might raise a little bit of a WP:CIR concern – especially given how scheduling-focused ArbCom itself is. It's quite possible this candidacy will get struck by bureaucrats or stewards as invalid.
• David Fuchs: An active and content-focused editor. Previous turns on ArbCom were long enough ago that they don't trigger my "vote against career wiki-politicians" urge. David's focus on WP:GAN and WP:FAC cuts both ways. While GAN is unquestionably useful for the project, FAC is much less so. It has turned more and more into a WP:FACTION-controlled good ol' boys' club, a WP:OWNership defense league, and the locus of some of the worst incivility, gang-hounding, and outright anti-WP:CONSENSUS behavior I've encountered on WP, ever. I've checked, and cannot find David Fuchs involved in any of that (though I don't see that he did anything to settle down those repeated shitfests, either, rather than exhibiting a tendency to vocally blame both sides). Because of how FAC has been operating for the last few years, I have doubts about one of its longer-term regulars being neutral when any of the other regulars show up at RFARB or ARCA (and they certainly do). Maybe this is guilt by association, but this election isn't a noticeboard, its a test of subjective trust level, so there ya have it. Mine is lower than it might be for this candidate, specifically because of the close association with a particular drama factory that should have been gracefully shut down several years ago (or utterly overhauled). And I don't want an Arb whose go-to "solution" is "both sides are being bad, so punish everyone". ArbCom already has a terrible reputation for this sort of throwing out of the baby with the bathwater and (too often) blaming of the victim.

Moot: retracted candidacies

• Laser brain: Would have supported, for reasons similar to those that have me vote for Thryduulf, though L_b doesn't share Thryduulf's excessive level of patience. >;-) And L_b also shares David Fuchs's deep involvement in WT:FAC, though like Fuchs without being one of the causers of the shitstorms there.
• Lord Roem: Was still considering when the candidate withdrew. Was leaning support. ArbCom clerk, so experienced in how the place works. Seems to have reasonable judgement. Some long editing gaps, but not too recent. This was spot-on: "The Committee works best when it is proactively responding to community feedback .... The issues ... often have broad impact on the project. ... Arbitrators should never seem siloed off ... but engaged on a regular basis. Communication is a must."
• GeneralPoxter: Withdrawn before I could formulate an opinion, but I looked anyway. An obvious oppose as clueless and activistic, with way too little tenure as an editor. Also appears to be a minor.
• Fish and karate: I would have opposed. Clearly didn't actually want the "job", and probably doesn't have the time for it.