User:Rschen7754/ACE2014

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Previous guides: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Standard disclaimer: This represents my views and opinions, especially on Wikipedia philosophy. I encourage you to do your own research.

Background
A bit about myself: editor since 2005, admin since 2005. I am a contributor to the U.S. Roads project and have 7 FAs and 20 GAs. I have been following virtually all the 2012/2013/2014 ArbCom cases, and have been an official party to three cases (all before 2012). I have also commented on quite a few others. I have some user rights elsewhere, and am a Steward for the 2013-2014 term. I served as an arbitration clerk for almost a year, but was unable to continue due to an inability to remain active in all my roles on Wikimedia.

How this guide works
I didn't really write a guide in 2007, but have written a guide every year since 2008, so this is guide number 7. I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to write a guide this year, due to it getting a bit old, and due to my decreased availability on Wikimedia over the last several months.

But each year I see plenty of bad guides (which shall not be named) that encourage people to vote certain ways for poor reasons. I figure that while I've never served on the Committee or as an enwiki functionary (and am happy with that), I've been around long enough and have served in other roles to where I have enough knowledge of most of the prospective candidates, have followed most of ArbCom's (public) forays, and have knowledge of relevant Wikimedia-wide policies and norms from my work as a steward, to the point where my opinions might be helpful. So I figured that I'd give it a go this year.

Serving as a steward has given me a different perspective on what makes a good arbitrator. The roles are quite different: stewards are closer to being clerks than arbitrators, since they are bound by community consensus. But it has given me a good perspective on wiki-team dynamics, as well as a lot of the issues related to serving as a functionary on Wikimedia.

As such, I've eliminated the quantitative scoring entirely this year, and am asking an entirely new set of questions to reflect this shift in perspective, and also to decrease the amount of time it takes to write this guide.

Questions
The questions are at User:Rschen7754/Arbcom2014; since there's no rubric this year, there's no point scale posted here.

Experience
Again, no points, but here is the stuff that I look for when looking at experience.


 * Does the editor have a FA/GA?
 * Have they been a Wikipedia editor for a decent length of time and made a proportionate amount of edits during that time?
 * Are they an administrator? How long? Have they been sanctioned, desysopped, admonished?
 * Have they participated in a formal committee that will give you experience in ArbCom?
 * For example, ArbCom, Bureaucrat, CheckUser, oversighter, steward, AUSC, ArbCom clerk, ArbCom-appointed groups, MedCom, Ombudsman Commission, Language Committee, OTRS admin, WMF staff/contracting, OTRS, SPI clerk, CCI clerk, featured content process delegate, MILHIST coordinator, lawyer, BAG, CU/OS on other wiki, ArbCom on other wiki, global sysop
 * For former roles, how did the role end?


 * Was the statement well thought out (why are they running)? Was it reasonable and not a "let's go sack ArbCom" statement?
 * Any visible problems such as RFC or ArbCom, bad block log, sock issues?
 * Any obvious problems with demeanor (contribution check or from anything I can recall)?

Results
I will list editors in alphabetical order. Any initial comments are simply that; if you wow me with your answers to the questions, that can make a huge difference.

Recommendations are solely for suitability in a possible role as an arbitrator. Please don't take this personally!