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I took an arb-writing guide hiatus for half of the decade during my Medicine project-induced absence from Wikipedia, but when sitting down to put together my thoughts this year, found that (like everything else about this year), what I thought I would write went upside down and out the door.
The 2019 Arbitration Committee started strong, dealing with some intractable issues (generally personalities) in the community, but then seemed to lose steam as the year went on. This left me wondering if they believed the meme that they had over-reacted to admins overstepping their bounds (they didn't—they did just what they were elected to do), and worried about what candidate platforms we would see for 2020. I expected this year's election to revolve around that concern, and yet the meme doesn't seem to have taken hold, and where candidates stand on the need for ArbCom to deal with admins who overstep the bounds non-admins must live within doesn't seem to be a factor upon which voting decisions can be based.
There are seven open slots this year, and twelve candidates. I sat down to read the questions for the candidates and discussions about the candidates, thinking I had six solid choices, and only had to make the 7th decision, and found that the questions and discussions completely changed my mind on several of them. So, as Nick says "do your own research". My guide format this year will be different than it has been in the past; since I'm not sure who my 6th or 7th vote will go to, and I'm not in a position to tell anyone else who to vote for. Generally, the slate this year gives us better choices than we've had in some years, where you really had to hold your nose on your final choices. That's perhaps because the 2019 ArbCom did do a good job of dealing with some problems and setting some long-needed behavioral boundaries.
I was a party to the Medicine arbcase, so many of my opinions were formed around that case, where I got to experience the fallout of an arb who initially wouldn't recuse when needed and then failed to read or understand the case at all, didn't seem to know who filed the case or what caused the case, and lodged accusations on the Workshop page completely unsupported by diffs, which were not removed by clerks. Nonetheless, reason prevailed in that case.
This year, I'll only offer my certain votes, and not try to sort the other candidates, as I probably won't decide myself until the last minute.