User:SandyGeorgia/ArbVotes2020

2020: What a long strange trip it's been.

I took an arb-writing guide hiatus for half of the decade during my Medicine project-induced absence from Wikipedia, but when sitting down to put together my thoughts this year, found that (like everything else about this year), what I thought I would write went upside down and out the door.

The 2019 Arbitration Committee started strong, dealing with some intractable issues (generally personalities) in the community, but then seemed to lose steam as the year went on. This left me wondering if they believed the meme that they had over-reacted to admins overstepping their bounds (they didn't—they did just what they were elected to do), and worried about what candidate platforms we would see for 2020. I expected this year's election to revolve around that concern, and yet the meme doesn't seem to have taken hold, and where candidates stand on the need for ArbCom to deal with admins who overstep the bounds non-admins must live within doesn't seem to be a factor upon which voting decisions can be based.

There are seven open slots this year, and twelve candidates. I sat down to read the questions for the candidates and discussions about the candidates, thinking I had six solid choices, and only had to make the 7th decision, and found that the questions and discussions completely changed my mind on several of them. So, as Nick says "do your own research". My guide format this year will be different than it has been in the past; since I'm not sure who my 6th or 7th vote will go to, and I'm not in a position to tell anyone else who to vote for. Generally, the slate this year gives us better choices than we've had in some years, where you really had to hold your nose on your final choices. That's perhaps because the 2019 ArbCom did do a good job of dealing with some problems and setting some long-needed behavioral boundaries.

I was a party to the Medicine arbcase, so many of my opinions were formed around that case, where I got to experience the fallout of an arb who initially wouldn't recuse when needed and then failed to read or understand the case at all, didn't seem to know who filed the case or what caused the case, and lodged accusations on the Workshop page completely unsupported by diffs, which were not removed by clerks. Nonetheless, reason prevailed in that case.

This year, I'll only offer my certain votes, and not try to sort the other candidates, as I probably won't decide myself until the last minute.

Barkeep49: Top Gun
You may have to be a true WIkipedian to understand the full gist of what I mean when I say, "There's just no weirdness there". Barkeep49 is as genuine as they come; he seems to have no agenda, is not power-hungry, demonstrates an innate respect for every editor, and has made himself helpful in multiple areas of Wikipedia, including not only content building, but helping mentor, groom and generally help other editors. I didn't always agree with his decisions or positions as he took on the difficult task of trying to put together an RFC to resolve long-standing and deep-seated problems in the Medicine project, but he was always respectful, always gave deep thought to every decision made, and always presented solid reasoning. He regretfully resorted to filing the Medicine arbcase when all possibilities had truly been exhausted, yet problematic behaviors persisted. Barkeep49 has the kind of reasoning, approach and writing style that will make the other arbs appreciative of having him on the team, and he will be fair to everyone. I wished he had been a bit harsher on abusive editors, but in hindsight, I could see that had he taken stronger actions earlier, we would have only had a more complex case to deal with. He will bring a deep well of understanding of how difficult entrenched disputes are on the real people involved, having lived through and personally observed every step of the angst that was felt by all parties involved, as he had a front-row seat to seeing how deeply editors were affected by the dysfunction that had taken over WP:MED. I can unreservedly and strongly support a vote for Barkeep49. He won't disappoint us.

Bradv and Maxim: Experience in the Trenches
Two of the three one-year-term arbs, Maxim and Bradv, are running for re-election this year, and they were both drafting arbs for the Medicine case. I was as harshly critical as the next person when the Medicine case closed, saying the arbs had not taken a strong enough position to end the ownership, personal attacks, edit warring, and coordinated editing that had taken over a once-productive WikiProject. But time has proven their remedies right, and the proof is in the pudding. They did just enough, and the problems have basically ended. WP:MED today is functioning as the collaborative group it once was, with a newsletter relaunched, a medical collaboration of the month re-launched, a return to an an internal (en.Wikipedia) focus on content, two (with a third on the way) new medical Featured articles (after a five-year drought), and relatively infrequent displays of the kinds of intransigence that had become commonplace at the Project talk page. Even more noticeable, WP:MED members are no longer regularly embarrassing the rest of the Project by being among the most frequent participants at WP:ANI for regularly beating up on other editors in the misguided notion that medical editors are "holding some thin blue line" on accuracy. Some grumbling has been heard about the amount of evidence presented in the Medicine case (and at least one arb clearly never read it), but it is understandable that some were not very happy about just how much evidence of deep dysfunction existed, and that most of the parties responsible for that dysfunction were sanctioned, albeit lightly. In summary, I think Maxim's and Bradv's experience with this very difficult case earns them a spot on 2020 ArbCom. In the end, they got it mostly right, and the lessons learned in the Medicine case should serve them well.

Guerillero: You Betcha
A bright spot during the dimness of an arbcase, Guerillero was quite frequently the only clerk (although not the assigned clerk) to show up to help out with answers (and many of us were clueless about ArbCom procedures). That alone wasn't enough to assure my vote for Guerillero, but his answers to the questions sealed my decision. Steady and dependable experience, and consumer friendly (at times when it was difficult to get any arb or clerk to respond to basic questions).

TonyBallioni: The Surprise (candidacy withdrawn)
Ballioni "came to prominence" during my long hiatus from Wikipedia editing, so other than seeing him around on other editor's talkpages, I didn't have a very good sense of him, but was pretty sure I was going to vote against him, just based on hearsay and other BS I had read. But his answers to the questions, as well as comments from some others, completely turned me around. Looks like a sensible sort after all! (A potential lesson in "don't believe everything you read".)

Those are my only strong recommendations: that's only five out of seven, and my decisions about the final two will probably change every day until I vote on the last day (as I always do).