Arbitration is quite possibly the most thankless task on Wikipedia. I know, because I've been there. I was one of the arbitration committee's major critics in the early days, and successfully lobbied for changes in quite a number of decisions. I was then elected to the committee last December, and for six months was one of its most active members, before stepping down some months ago after becoming burned out, and subsequently spending several months doing little else but writing new articles.
In the months since I stepped down, things have grinded to a near-complete halt, so it is with some trepidation that I throw my hand into the ring once again. My votes as an arbitrator are on the record for interested parties, as is my general philosophy with arbitration matters - what is best for the encyclopedia? If elected, I will once again try to stand by those who, whatever their beliefs, want to write a neutral encyclopedia in good faith, and see that those who want to disrupt the project don't continue their behaviour unchecked. I will support alternatives to banning users where possible, and over time I've come to have a fairly good understanding of which measures actually solve issues and which are a waste of time. I would also like to hope I've been as neutral as possible in the past and can continue to be in the future - I have never hesitated to recuse myself from a case if there was a perception of a conflict of interest.
Above all else, I want to make sure that the arbitration process starts moving again. If re-elected, I will be back voting nearly every day, and making sure that new cases don't sit on the requests page for a month waiting for someone to formally accept them. I'm also prepared to give some time to the one thing I didn't do enough of as an arbitrator - writing out proposed decisions, which has become a major bottleneck in the process. Finally, if I'm re-elected to my open position, I will only serve a one-year term, and most probably not stand again. Ambi 04:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)