Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Candidate statements/Swatjester

Swatjester

 * My name is Dan Rosenthal, user User:Swatjester, and I would be an excellent choice for an Arbitrator. I have been an English Wikipedia editor since December 28, 2005 as an anon, and January 4, 2006 as a registered editor. In my time here, I've been promoted to administrator, accepted onto the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Committee (a.k.a. wmfcc/ComCom), OTRS, and from May 2007 through Sept. 2007, I served as a legal intern for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Arbitrators have to deal with sensitive matters and are given not only a public, but a private trust. I believe my time dealing with privileged material, such as OTRS legal complaints, and communications committee matters, shows that I can be trusted to have the information security required as an Arbitrator.

I'm also a law student, at American University in Washington D.C. I believe that this provides an interesting perspective of looking at things. Law school teaches one to think like a lawyer. It teaches one to draft solutions to often complex problems, to find broader principles from specific rulings, and to present arguments effectively and to the point.

I do NOT wish to bring the legal profession to Arbitration Committee cases. Law suits are slower than ArbCom cases. A recent case I've been following, a standard defamation case, was filed in July, and the "Evidence" (discovery) phase is not scheduled to end until January. In addition to expediency, Arbitration is simply not court. Though there is a panel of decision makers, similar to appellate courts in the United States, the Arbitration Committee is not usually bound by precedent, there is not an adversarial system of lawyers arguing, there are no complicated rules of civil procedure and evidence. It's a system unique to Wikipedia, and it deserves to be treated that way. I believe that I can make the Arbitration process faster, and in some cases more fair (for instance, recent cases have taken far longer than necessary due to lack of presence of some arbitrators, and some have been accepted, only to be later dismissed. While this is sometimes appropriate, other times it is not).

As a final word, I'm also familiar with the Arbitration process, and the stresses it entails. I've been a party in a couple of Arbitration cases, both as the requesting party, and as a requested against party. Arbitration creates a lot of stress on its participants, some would say in a manner similar to litigation, and I believe that it is important to have Arbitrators who understand what the parties are going through, and the causes that led them to that stage, rather than an aloof, distant decision maker.

&rArr;  SWAT Jester    Son of the Defender  20:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


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