User:Carcharoth/ArbCom Elections/ACE2010

Herewith some thoughts on the 2010 Arbitration Committee Elections. Initially, this will be a collection of links to the questions I've asked of candidates, which I've divided into two groups: (a) former and current arbitrators; (b) all the other candidates (with no previous arbitration track record). I've done this because I'm coming to end of a two-year term on the committee, and my perspective is that of someone who knows what the job has entailed for the past two years, as well as having worked on the Arbitration Committee at some point with all of those in group (a). Next to each candidate name are links to the question(s) I asked them, along with (at some point) my thoughts on their candidacy.

I was initially uncertain of the propriety of commenting in this way during the elections (or even posing questions) given that I will still be a sitting arbitrator up until the end of December. I would say that it is not advisable for those who will be staying on the committee into the following year to take part in election discussions, questioning and commentary, in the way I have, but I do think that those who terms are about to expire shouldn't feel so constrained. The only other former or soon-to-be-former arbitrator who has commented in such fashion is Wizardman, who wrote a guide giving his views on the candidates in this election.

Please direct any comments to the talk page (including the candidates, who are more than welcome to comment on what I've said).

Candidates who are current or former arbitrators

Casliber
FT2
John Vandenberg
Newyorkbrad
Shell Kinney
SirFozzie
Stephen Bain

Candidates who are not current or former arbitrators

Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry
David Fuchs
Elen of the Roads
Georgewilliamherbert
GiacomoReturned
Harej
Iridescent
Jclemens
Off2riorob
PhilKnight
Sandstein
Xeno

Withdrawn candidates

At the time these notes were written, three candidates had withdrawn and are listed here without further comment. I've also included Loosmark here as well. Some of these candidates withdrew or were banned after voting started, and remain on the ballot paper, where I will be entering an oppose against their names.

Balloonman
HJ Mitchell
Loosmark
N419BH

Notes and further thoughts

Will add links here to other posts I made during these elections, as well as thoughts on the questions to pose the twelve candidates with no prior experience of arbitration. This is intended as a deliberate contrast to the seven candidates who do have prior experience of arbitration, as I suspect that future ArbCom elections will see more and more former or current arbitrators standing for election, so such matters will increasingly become something that (in my opinion) the electorate should consider.

With the twelve candidates with no arbitration experience, I've decided to review the past two years and see which situations I found the most difficult to handle, and to then pose 12 general questions on that basis, with each candidate getting pot luck as to which question they get (all should have put aside time this weekend to answer questions, or at the least made a statement stating that they will be unavailable for the closing days of the election).

Conundrums faced as an arbitrator

On reviewing the past two years, I found the following to be good examples of problems faced by arbitrators. Not all of these happened all the time, but all happened at least once to me or other arbitrators.

Parties to cases post repeatedly to your talk page, and/or e-mail you and/or the mailing list - (Harej)
Real life intervenes while you are halfway through voting on a case and you don't know when you will be able to continue - (Georgewilliamherbert)
An e-mail arrives at the mailing list requiring an 'emergency' response and you are the only arbitrator around - (Elen of the Roads)
You fall out with a fellow arbitrator and have a big argument on the mailing list - (GiacomoReturned)
Parties to a case you are drafting prove to be incapable of submitting adequate evidence - (Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry)
Parties (or potential parties) to a case fail to make a statement and/or retire - (PhilKnight)
You disagree with an action taken by a clerk and tensions rise as a result - (David Fuchs)
Parties to a case make strident and repeated calls for your recusal - (Sandstein)
Poorly assembled ban appeals arrive at the mailing list and will require work to sort out - (Off2riorob)
Banned sockmaster consistently denies socking and refuses to take no for an answer - (unassigned)
You sense you are very tired/ill or not fully alert, but voting needs to be done - (unassigned)
Voting on a remedy to ban someone is deadlocked and you have the casting vote - (Jclemens)
Parties to a case are squabbling on the case pages and no clerks are around - (Xeno)
You are last to vote on a case and want to copyedit and/or rewrite parts of the proposed decision - (unassigned)
You are trying to do some work on articles and someone pesters you about arbitration matters - (Iridescent)
After several months of intense arbitration work, you begin to hallucinate that you are God - (asked Jesus)

OK. I made up the last one... (but the point is that taking breaks from the work is absolutely vital).

Question template:

Question: I've assembled a set of questions for the 12 candidates listed here. The questions are intended to see how you would respond to situations you will probably encounter if elected. I've picked one question for each candidate listed at the link above; the other questions can be seen here. Please feel free to answer only the selected question below, or all of them if you chose. Your question is what would you do in the following situation?: "". Carcharoth (talk) 05:54, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
A:

Voting

Cast an initial set of votes on Saturday afternoon (04/12/2010) that consisted of 12 supports, 5 opposes (including the three withdrawn candidates still on the ballot - the fourth withdrawn candidate didn't make it onto the ballot, it seems), and 5 neutrals/undecided. This should be followed by a further vote on Sunday evening (05/12/2010) to make any changes needed and to make a decision on the undecided votes.

My final vote on the Sunday evening (05/12/2010) resulted in me casting my support for 17 candidates and opposing 5 candidates - i.e. the five previous neutral votes were reviewed and I found no concerns sufficient to oppose (I'm a strong believer that those unsuitable to the role for reasons not immediately apparent to the electorate will not last the distance, and those suitable to the role will adapt and grow into the position - hence I often cast a support where others might cast an oppose). This means that of the 19 candidates listed in the first two sections above, I only opposed two of them (one of the 19 has since withdrawn). I would have preferred to be able to rate the candidates I supported according to how strong my support was, but that may be something to discuss for next year.