User:Tryptofish/ACE2017

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Go away! Don't read this!
You really should not care what I say here. I'm not a reliable source, and everything that follows is nothing more than original research. The entire voter guide system is flawed. Many of the guide writers have axes to grind, and some guides are just weird (in fact, most of them are). I do hope that you will vote in the election, and that you will think carefully about your vote. But voter guides should not be taken too seriously. And if you are here just for the lulz, you are going to be disappointed by how boring my opinions are.

I don't try to predict the outcome. (In 2016, my supports predicted the outcome with 100% accuracy, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen again.) Rather, I try to give you good faith advice about who would or would not serve best on the Committee, based on my long-time close observation of them, and my participation in cases. I don't do "neutral" or "abstain", so I'm going to offer an opinion on every candidate, for better or for worse. There are eight seats to be filled in this election. I usually don't try to support exactly eight candidates and oppose the rest (so called "strategic voting"), but I do try to align my level of support approximately with the level of need.

This year, I am supporting six candidates for the eight open seats. Just below my "cut" are a couple of candidates who are perfectly capable of doing the job well, but whom I see as about equal in their capabilities, and I want to do whatever I can to help the top six candidates succeed. Consequently, I oppose some candidates, not because I think that they would do a bad job, but because I think that the candidates I'm supporting are the best of the group. I don't qualify my supports or opposes as being "strong" or "weak", but you can get a feel for those nuances if you read my comments, which you definitely should.

I don't have any litmus tests, but I look for candidates whom I trust. I consider how well a candidate's views match up with where I think the community is at, and how I think the particular candidate will fit in as one member of a committee. That latter point includes how well the candidate communicates with the community and is inclined towards transparency, and how well I think they will be able to handle the tensions of the workload and the controversies. I think it's important to care about improving how the Committee works. This year, I have also paid particular attention to candidate views about paid editing. I also care about willingness to consider the evidence, to not act rashly, and – especially – to listen to community feedback and to change one's mind in response to feedback. It seems to me that over the past decade or so the Committee has gone from being too lenient to being too harsh.

Per this discussion, I want to offer candidates the opportunity to rebut anything that I say here. Please feel free to do so at User talk:Tryptofish/ACE2017, and if you do, I will make a notation in the table below, just to the right of my recommendation, so that anyone looking here will be directed to it.

And finally...
Being on ArbCom is a difficult and largely thankless task, but if it is done right, it makes Wikipedia a better place for the rest of us. Thank you to everyone who is a candidate in this election! And I also want to thank, , , , , and , the outgoing members of the Committee who are not seeking reelection this year.