ArbCom election—candidates’ opinions analysed
It’s election season again: voting will soon open for the 13th annual election of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. In a repeat of last year’s election, there are nine vacant seats on the 15-member committee, eight of which will carry two-year terms and one a one-year term. Following two withdrawals, there are 22 candidates, up on last year’s 18; five of them have already served on the Committee for at least one term: LFaraone, GorillaWarfare, Kirill Lokshin, Thryduulf, and Casliber. Many eyes will be on the number of voters, which last year shrank precipitously by more than a third, from 923 to 593.
This year has marked one of the most fractious in the history of the Committee, in which judgment voting patterns have at times shown mild evidence of the formation of blocks of arbitrators, depending on the theme. There were several drama-infused cases, including the Gamergate case, which attracted unfavourable outside press coverage; gender-related cases appear to be a point of divergent viewpoints among the arbitrators. The current election will influence whether the Committee can regain cohesion and weather external shocks, including emotionally charged cases and critical coverage by external news outlets.
Excerpts from candidate statements:
Am I suitable to work here as an arbitrator? I have no idea.
Well, this is about the last thing I ever thought I’d do here.
Fuck it, I'll be the first to throw my hat in.
I don't want ArbCom to be regarded as a death panel.
So I was an editor, if not a very hardworking or ambitious one.
We must clean our house, lest those who could advise and assist us dismiss Wikipedia as a nest of boobies.
ArbCom has encrusted itself in mock-judicial trappings.
My opinion of the current committee’s Infamous, Thoughtless, Careless and Reckless handling of Gamergate received some attention.
ArbCom requires more innocent merriment, and I’ll do my level best to supply it.
I consider myself pretty up on cultural differences, having spent extensive time working in ... Canada, US, Australia, and Mongolia.
As well as reading the candidate statements and question pages, community members have written 15 voter guides, almost as numerous as the candidature. Against this, however, the Signpost is providing a different angle by presenting the results of an emailed survey to candidates on both their personal qualities and their views on ArbCom-related issues. This is the methodology we have used twice this year in our coverage of WMF Board and FDC elections. With so many candidates, it is a way to provide voters with comparative data gathered on a large scale in isolation, eliminating the "herd" effect in which candidates' responses are influenced by those of their colleagues. This is at the expense of reducing candidates' views to numbers, so we invited short statements to give respondents the opportunity to state more nuanced views—taken up by only a minority. The survey and the writing of this story was designed and supervised by the Signpost's Editorial Board; editor-in-chief Gamaliel was excluded from the process because he is standing in the election.