 | These guides represent the thoughts of their authors. All individually written voter guides are eligible for inclusion. |
Note: One soi disant "guide" calls me "a party to the Tea Party case" which is misleading as I was added to that case for the sole purpose of proposing sanctions after the workshop and evidence phases were closed and I find the suggestion that I was in any way properly a "party" to that case to be a personal affront not worthy of any administrator, nor of any editor on Wikipedia. That editor says to stay away from this guide -- I would, in fact, tell folks equally to stay away from any guide which engages in such name-calling and/or guilt-by-association McCarthyist tactics. Collect (talk) 12:29, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Arbitration Committee elections for 2013 are now upon us.
I have proposed the following questions to be asked of all candidates:
1. An arbitrator stated during a case "I will merely say that now arbitration of the dispute has became necessary, it is exceedingly unlikely that we would be able to close the case without any sanctions. Problematic articles inevitably contain disruptive contributors, and disruptive contributors inevitably require sanctions." Do you feel that once a case is opened that impartial arbitrators will "inevitably" have to impose sanctions?
2. Do sanctions such as topic bans require some sort of finding about the editor being sanctioned based on at least a minimum amount of actual evidence about that person, or is the "cut the Gordian knot" approach of "Kill them all, the Lord will know his own" proper?
3. Do you feel that "ignoring evidence and workshop pages" can result in a proper decision by the committee" ("I think that for the large part, the evidence and workshop phases were ignored in this case" [1] is a direct quote from a current member about a case) Will you commit to weighing the evidence and workshop pages in making any decisions? (I have added the exact diff as one candidate appears to take a combative attitude towards the question suggesting that either the quote was incorrect or taken out of context - attacking the messenger is rarely a great idea :( )
4. Past Cases: The Arbitration Committee has historically held that prior decisions and findings were not binding in any future decisions or findings. While this may have been wise in the early years of Wikipedia, is any avoidance of stare decisis still a valid position? How should former cases/decisions be considered, if at all?
5. The "Five Pillars" essay has been mentioned in recent discussions. Ought it be used in committee findings, or is it of explanatory rather than of current direct importance to Wikipedia?
6. Biographical articles (not limited to BLPs) form a substantial part of conduct issues placed before the committee. Without getting the committee involved in individual content issues, and without directly formulating policy, how should the committee weigh such issues in future principles, findings and decisions?
7. "Factionalism" has been seen by some as a problem on Wikipedia (many different names for such factions have been given in the past). Do you believe that factionalism is a problem? Should committee decisions be affected by evidence of factionalism, in a case or around an article or articles? If the committee makes a finding that "factions" exist as part of a conduct issue, how should factionalism be treated in the remedies to the case?
The latter four questions were asked for the 2012 elections. I would ask anyone who agrees in whole or part with my views regarding candidates to either post their own ACE2013 page, or to link to this one from their own talk pages, so that the views may be widely disseminated.