User:Arcticocean/ACE2012

I do not intend to participate in this year's election to the same extent I have been involved in previous ballots, but as a sitting arbitrator I thought I would offer prospective candidates a summary of my experience on the committee. This advice is not intended to banally restate truisms, so it instead asks whether a candidate has thought about, or will be prepared to do, certain things. If you are a candidate or prospective candidate and you think you will not be able to do anything that this guide asks you to "be prepared" to do, then I submit that you may not be suited to working on the committee. Whether you take my advice is your decision, but I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

The role is demanding. Be prepared to invest your time
The mailing list typically receives one or several new items for action every day. Ban appeals are now hosted on a separate mailing list (to which you may choose not to subscribe), so we can filter our e-mail client to separate appeals traffic (which is less urgent), but those items we do receive on the main mailing list will require your attention. If you do not use e-mail very much, this will change rather quickly.

Arbitration requests of any type (clarifications, amendments, case requests, and so on) will accumulate quickly, so people who are not diligent in attending on-wiki process pages will quickly find themselves holding up the whole process. If you can't log in every couple of days, then you may be doing the community a disservice by promising them your service for the next two years.

The role subverts your wiki-friendships and can alienate you. Be prepared for your Wikipedia experience to change
Like it or not, people's perception of you will quickly change from "Anthony, that Scottish guy" to "ArbitratorBot 3.2". Even ex-arbitrators are always perceived as being a different type of contributor from people who have never served on the committee. This is not to say that people will place you on a pedestal (far from it – Wikipedians are remarkably grounded people), nor that they will show you undue deference (again, far from it – you'll quickly attain a hate club of your very own). Nevertheless, you are stepping into a role that is quite different from anything else on the project, and you must be prepared to accept the effect this will have on your interactions with other editors.

What you actually do on-wiki will also change, and you will spend a great deal of time doing what it is an arbitrator does. When we are short of checkusers, anybody with technical expertise will have to pitch in at SPI. When we are short of oversighters, it falls to the arbitrators to reduce the OTRS queue backlog. When we receive a lot of ban appeals (this tends to happen in January, when serial trolls and long-term banned users try their luck with the new, fresh-faced, and eager committee), these must be prioritised over that DYK about Marlboro Purples (Special Edition) or Tilly the flying kitten you really wanted to write. When cases are open, it may fall to you to answer disputant queries on the talk pages, consider and summarise the evidence, put questions to the community, or even draft the decision. Cases demand an extraordinary amount of time, over a long period (at minimum, several days, and more often several weeks).

If you are a heavy content writer, you probably won't have time for more than a couple of audited content submissions over your entire term. If you like to copy-edit, be prepared to string out your upcoming projects over several months when previously you might have improved several pages in a week. If you like to mediate, then you can say goodbye to the feeling of relief and success that comes from talking down a group of disputants into a resolution; arbitrators cannot be mediators. If you like to patrol the administrators' boards, then you must stop doing so (too many disputes that come to arbitration begin as AN/I threads, and you should minimise how often you have to recuse). Your entire Wikipedia experience will change, and you may miss the things you previous liked to do when you log in; will you be happy when that happens, or will you resent it enough to resign in September 2012, or after a year, or six months from the end of your term?

You will join a body of experienced contributors. Be prepared to be proven wrong, and to prove them wrong
Your colleagues were elected because they are esteemed, experienced, diligent, and sensible people (for the most part). Different arbitrators have different strengths and weaknesses, and both you and each of your colleagues will be wrong at some time. This disagreement is essential to the effectiveness of the committee (Aristotle once said that the wisdom of a mob is greater than the wisdom of even the most virtuous man), but you must embrace and manage this disagreement. You must be willing to disagree with your colleagues, and to argue for your position; and in turn you must be prepared to accept when your position is wrong. It is immaterial whether these changes in position happen during a mailing list discussion (where your ego, should you be afflicted with one, will take less damage) or on-site (where the entire community will notice your change in opinion), but stubbornness and irrationality have no place on the committee. If you find it hard to admit when you are wrong, or to argue your case in a short and polite message, then you will make a bad arbitrator.

Please be aware that I regard my colleagues as "esteemed contributors" because of the experience they have as contributors, not as arbitrators. Sitting on the committee is a necessary evil. Do not regard it as a position of glory or a feat in itself, even if you are elected with a huge majority or elected several times: you remain an ordinary contributor, albeit with a temporary right to vote in the making of binding, final arbitration decisions.

The stakes are quite high. Be prepared to give serious thought every time you hit "save this page"
Every edit you make in your capacity as an arbitrator, and in particular on case requests, will be scrutinised by tens or hundreds of interested members of the community. More than one arbitrator has gotten into serious trouble (some rightly so, and some wrongly) for clumsily stating their view. Also, your comments will be more effective if they waste no words. If it takes you several edits to get one comment right, you will look silly; learn to obsessively preview and refine any comment you make while voting.

More importantly, you need to think about every single comment you make, because arbitrating is not like toying with the punctuation in an article. Reversals of position when arbitrating are awkward and difficult, so try to make the right call first time. This will necessitate the aforementioned obsession with previewing, but this time with attention to the content of your edit, rather than its phraseology.

I wasn't sure where to mention the next point, but this section seems appropriate: we deal with a lot of sensitive, scary, and icky stuff. People who are being stalked must e-mail us for assistance. We see police reports about harassment. The committee alone deals with user accounts operated by child molesters and paedophiles. Several arbitrators have been harassed, sometimes seriously, in real life. You will decide, in camera, about a lot of unpleasant things. You must be of good moral character, and know how the real world works. You must recognise that what happens on Wikipedia can directly affect the real life of real people in the real world. If you treat Wikipedia like an MMORPG, you have no place on the committee.

ArbCom exists to solve intractable disputes. Be prepared to make difficult decisions
Wikipedia has an ArbCom because the community, very occasionally, cannot solve a certain, intractable dispute (or would waste a disproportionate amount of time in trying to do so). Axiomatically, the arbitration process only deals with very difficult disputes. Rarely will you be asked to make an easy decision, and many of your decisions will be unpopular. You may be as diligent, patient, fair, and rational as you can, but your decisions will still annoy somebody in the community, and all of their friends. You must accept this as intrinsic to your job. Being able to defend your position will mitigate much of the community's anger at your apparently draconian vote, but some people are beyond reason.

Do not expect to leave the committee more popular than you were when you joined it. It might help to promise yourself, if you are elected, that you will not run for another term. (If you don't promise yourself this, you may not want to run again after a few months anyway.) Also relevant here may be whether you are prepared to be the community's punching bag after every arbitration decision. Every arbitrator takes a turn at doing so—though I was once told by a colleague (and I ardently believe so to this day) that it's important to duck out after a few rounds, lest you become totally depressed with your performance. When you draft a decision, you will be criticised. When you vote on a decision, you will be criticised. Be prepared to take this in your stride.

Elections are arduous. Be prepared to overdose on caffeine in November
You probably already know this, so I will be brief: being a candidate in the committee elections consumes great time and energy, on your part and the community's. You are doing us a great service by submitting a candidacy, but you must be prepared to answer dozens of questions and read hundreds of pages in doing so. If, like most of us, you have other real-life commitments, you'll probably have to spend several nights typing until the small hours of the morning. This might all seem to be for nothing, come December, if you are unsuccessful in your candidacy. Can you deal with this deflation of your ego? What will you do if your candidacy is unsuccessful? If you cannot honestly answer these questions (to yourself, because nobody will ask you them), and if you do not honestly believe in Wikipedia, its mission, and its community then do not submit your candidacy.


 * Are you fair-minded, relaxed, rational, articulate, or experienced? Or are you short-tempered, defensive, petty, or unreceptive to change?
 * Do you have time to read tens of e-mails and pages of evidence in any week you are asked to do so? Or do you prefer to work at a slow pace and when you are in the mood to contribute?
 * Can you accept criticism?
 * Do you get what Wikipedia is about?
 * Is Wikipedia a game for you, or do you understand Wikipedia's mission and what role in that mission is given to the community (and its Arbitration Committee)?
 * Will you be a good arbitrator, or will you be an unthinking drone, a liability, or a fool?

You must give serious thought to these questions, and you must not run if you cannot assert with complete confidence that Wikipedia would do well to give you a vote on its ArbCom. Good luck, and thank you.