This is not intended to be a straight forward voter guide; please decide on who to vote for based on your own thoughts and what you think of the facts.
These are my notes and thoughts on the candidates and process. I'm an ex-arbcom clerk, I served beginning in January 2020 to September 2021, where I resigned. I have more knowledge of how the inside of the committee works than most. I'm good at remembering things and searching through page histories to find information, and I'm effective at presenting said information. Along with my actions in last year's election and the effect they had, I thought it'd be a good idea to have what I have to say compiled in one place- for those who care. Any comments/questions/whatever, feel free to add to the talk. My thoughts on the committee in 2020/2021 are important to my overall notes, so please don't glaze over them if you're reading this.
What is wanted for candidates:
1. Someone with "institutional knowledge"- they've been around for a while and can remember the old cases and issues.
2. Someone who is good at investigating behind-the-scenes issues, and pursuing those matters. For previous members {{Arbcomblocks}} they've done in the past are cited, but these are intended more as notes rather than saying the Arb had direct involvement with the investigation progress. See User talk:Moneytrees/Archive 22#ACE2021 guide for some Arbs explaining how that process works.
3. Someone who takes unblocks seriously and will look into behavioral issues, not just the socking side.
4. Someone who is in touch with the community, and is actively editing article space. Functionaries who spend all their time on mailing lists and doing behind the scenes work run the risk of being out of touch with the wider editing community. If your last 500 non-minor edits to article space go back a few years, then you're going to have to have some very strong expertise in another area to back up your candidacy.
5. Someone who puts thought into their actions and isn't impulsive in their decision making. If a candidate strikes me as either thinking very little about what they do before they do it or too quick to act off an initial reaction, they will be opposed.
6. Someone who can work with the other Arbs. That doesn't mean agree with them all the time, just at least be able to interact with them in non-hostile ways.
7. Someone who is not afraid to do the right thing. This is subjective to me, can can be taken with a grain of salt.
~28 users unblocked by the committee (trying not to count unblocked alt accounts), some announced by motion and others not (and some appeals may have been carried over from the 2019 committee); one user unblocked by the committee was community banned in March 2021 for racist disruptive editing.
These are not all the important things the 2020 committee did; declined case requests, ARCAs, and some other motions have not been listed. The first half of the year had several heavy cases and difficult on-wiki scenarios, along with COVID causing chaos in real life. On top of this, it was in the wake of the Fram case and 2019, which was one of the most difficult years for the committee ever. Despite this, the all-star 2020 committee was consistent with keeping up on issues and were not afraid to make difficult choices (although there was some hesitation in some of them). I think that they were a very good Arbcom, and that even some of the more controversial choices they made have been vindicated.
11 users {{Arbcomblock}}'d, not counting alt accounts/socks (only one of these were done with a motion, for these cases less attention on the block is good)
~17 users unblocked by the committee (trying not to count unblocked alt/sock accounts), some announced by motion and others not (and some appeals may have been carried over from the 2020 committee), one user was noted to have been "unblocked" despite the account they were using not actually being blocked. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Appeals has stats on the matter. I believe that this committee has had serious issues with unblocks:
In February, a user was "unblocked" even though their account hadn't been blocked- see User talk:Princess of Ara/Archive 1#Successful appeal, where an arb notes the editor behind this account has had an appeal accepted by the Arbitration Committee. This account had not been blocked so I cannot note it in the block log. According to the user's userpage, they had accidentally socked with the past account Kemmiiii, which is what the unblock was for. Following an ANI discussion in June, the user was topic banned from "Erica Nlewedim, broadly construed", and faced allegations of UPE, with others calling for them to be indef blocked.
In March, a user was unblocked with a topic ban from directly editing an article that had led to their block (Link). The account was a single purpose one dedicated to promoting the viewpoint that a tv show had plagiarized their work. The account continued to edit disruptively around the article and was community banned in July. An arb who voted to unban commented in the discussion, noting "I voted to unblock because SethRuebens had credibly resolved the sockpuppetry part of block [...] and committed to avoid further sockpuppetry. In retrospect, I should have voted to deny the appeal, but I think it was a closer case than we can see in retrospect. [...] When ArbCom unblocks a user, especially with restrictions, we aren't trying to confer "immunity" of some kind on the user [...] That clearly isn't the message that we sent here, especially if admins are saying they would've blocked had we not earlier unblocked, and I'm sorry about that. I take full responsibility for all the trouble this has caused [...]" which indicates to me that some arbcom members are unaware of the weight the unblocks they do carry and more importantly, that they don't seem to be looking at the behavioral side of blocks, just the CU/socking angle. Given other cases, this seems to be a recurring problem.
In March, a user was unblocked with a one account restriction (Link). The user had previously been blocked for competency issues, and then CU blocked; it wasn't clear if the behavioral issues were considered when unblocked. Resulting discussion at the committee's noticeboard can be seen here. In June, a request to topic ban the editor was posted to the Administrators' noticeboard and can be seen at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive334#Proposal for topic ban: J-Man11. There was consensus for a topic ban, but the discussion was archived away before that could happen.
In June, there was the unanimously declined Kiko4564 unban request. The user admitted to doxing and harassing others in the appeal ("[...] I have used a number of sock puppets for the purposes of harassing people and vandalising articles [...] I have no further intention to [...] dox people (as I have done previously)), but it was posted anyways. After some opposes and distress expressed from editors who had previously dealt with the user, an arb apologized, saying that evidence of cop impersonation and harassment over IRC had not been seen on behind-the-scenes mailing lists, adding, "The best information we had is that we had an appeal from a sockmaster who seems to have quieted down in the past two years". The blocking administrator responded, noting (among other good points) "I would point out that the most recent block log entry, for which I'm responsible, clearly states Abuse of administrators and WMF staff continues on IRC and there are repeated instances of talk page and e-mail access having to be removed from Kiko4564 because of misuse. There is only so much information one can put in a block log entry, but to claim The best information we had is that we had an appeal from a sockmaster who seems to have quieted down in the past two years gives no confidence at all that any arbitrator actually read through the block log in any great detail, they certainly didn't read the appeal itself - Kiko4564 openly admits to doxing and legal threats [...]. The arb responded, saying "[...] We should have dug deeper into the more troublesome claims made in the appeal. While I suppose a WP:AN thread is one way of shedding light on the matter, in hindsight, it was not the ideal approach in this case.
These are not all the important things the 2021 committee did; declined case requests, ARCAs, and some other motions have not been listed. The first half of the year had a few heavy cases and several difficult off-wiki scenarios that I think the committee handled mostly well. I do think this committee is weaker than last years, but still good overall. There are issues with unblocks being too lenient, and one thing I'm looking for in those running for the committee this year is a commitment to being serious with unblocks. That said I think the committee's behind the scenes investigations have been generally good from what I know of, and this is one of the stronger committees when it comes to issuing arbcomblocks- they've really gotten those down.
