Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007

The 2007 elections to the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee commenced on 3 December 2007 and ended on 16 December 2007. These were the fifth such elections, and the newly elected members joined Tranche Alpha. Voting ran for two weeks (exactly fourteen days), and the results were determined and announced by Jimbo Wales on Wednesday December 26 2007 in a Wikipedia Signpost exclusive. Nominations were accepted from 1 November 2007 – 30 November 2007. Users submitted candidate statements at /Candidate statements. See also the /Summary table, which lists general information about the candidates.

Process

 * Nominations for the Arbitration Committee elections 2007 opened at 00:00 (UTC) on 1 November 2007. In order to run, candidates were required to be at least 18 years of age and of legal age in their place of residence, and also to have at least 1000 edits on en-wikipedia. Candidates could self-nominate.
 * Candidates had to submit a candidate statement using the provided template. The statement had to be transcluded to the top of the user's voting subpage and had to be 400 words or fewer; however, a link to a longer statement in the candidate's userspace might have been given.
 * Individual candidate pages were linked from Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Candidate statements and voting pages onto Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Vote.
 * Nominations closed at 23:59 (UTC) on 30 November 2007.
 * Voting began 00:00 3 December UTC at the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Vote/Username pages. There was only a space for support or oppose comments. It was requested that reasoning be kept brief, although longer comments could be linked to on the talk page. Users could also expand on their comments in their own userspace.
 * Users needed a registered account with at least 150 mainspace edits before 1 November 2007 to vote, could only vote once per candidate, and could not vote for themselves. Votes from ineligible voters could be indented by anyone, but those doing so were encouraged not to bite, and to explain why the vote was indented.
 * Voting ended on 23:59 16 December UTC. Any votes cast after this time were reverted and removed.
 * To withdraw a candidacy, candidates placed archive templates on the voting page and moved the section on the /Vote page to the #Withdrawn candidates section of the page.

Tranche Alpha
The five Arbitrators who currently compose Tranche Alpha are SimonP, Raul654, Mackensen, Neutrality, and Fred Bauder. Raul654 was a candidate for reelection while Neutrality, Fred Bauder, Mackensen, and SimonP did not run.

The result of the election saw Newyorkbrad, FT2, FayssalF, Sam Blacketer, and Deskana named to Tranche Alpha. Flcelloguy was removed from Tranche Gamma due to inactivity; sitting arbitrator FloNight was moved from Tranche Beta to Gamma (effectively extending her original two-year term by one year); Thebainer, who placed sixth in the election, was named to the vacated seat in Tranche Beta. Flcelloguy is eligible to reclaim a seat in Tranche Gamma for the balance of his unexpired term, should he return to active editing, and would fill an "expansion seat".