Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Candidate statements/Jayvdb

Jayvdb
I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.

Hi. My name is John Vandenberg. I have provided a detailed history about myself on my userpage. I believe that arbitrators should be very open and honest about their formal education and experience in order that the community can make informed decisions about who to vote for, and so that people coming to the committee for arbitration can get a feel for the people that will be making the decisions.

I served as an Arbitration Clerk for much of the first half of 2008. I resigned due to a messy affair, which has since been settled amicably. This experience, and the termination of it, was an eye opener. I am aware of the responsibility, workload and difficulty involved.

My commitments:
 * 1) I will not edit policy pages or influence policy.  This is the responsibility of the community, and arbitrators should not write the policies that they will use in decisions.
 * 2) I will oppose any remedy that is not substantially grounded in existing policy that was written by the community, or on resolutions passed by the Wikimedia Foundation.
 * 3) I will be highly active and available, or I will step down and turn in my "access".

I will bring to the committee:
 * 1) Broad technical skills to automate tasks that the committee regularly performs, and improve processes where possible.
 * 2) Broad experience and exposure to the culture, policies and leaders of most of the WMF projects.  There are very few arbs, ex-arbs, or other candidates who have measurable experience outside of English Wikipedia.
 * 3) Broad language skills - I can only write in English, however I enjoy working with foreign languages and people who don't have a good grasp of English
 * 4) Limited patience for long & drawn out cases.  Quick and measured solutions that result in the least amount of pain and disruption are good.  Perfect is the enemy of good.
 * 5) Limited wiki-friendships with the elite in the power structure here on Wikipedia.  It will be rare that I need to be recused.

Whilst on the committee, my mission for reform within the committee and arbitration process will be to:
 * 1) Encourage participatory democracy.
 * 2) Fire the slackers and the lurkers and people whose term is up.
 * 3) Require that arbitration cases have a clear scope before they open.
 * See here for more detailed explanations of these three points.


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