Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2011

This was the ninth annual election for the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, scheduled for November and December 2011. This election, by practice on Wikimedia projects, was organised by community volunteers, independent of the Arbitration Committee.

Timeline

 * 1) Nomination period (from Saturday 00:01, 12 November until Monday 23:59, 21 November) → during which interested editors were invited to submit a candidate statement. An editor was eligible to stand as a candidate who
 * (i) had a registered account and had made at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2011,
 * (ii) was in good standing and was not subject to active blocks or site-bans,
 * (iii) met the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to non-public data and was willing to identify with the Foundation if elected, and
 * (iv) had disclosed any alternate accounts in their election statements (legitimate accounts which had been declared to the Arbitration Committee prior to the close of nominations did not need to be publicly disclosed).
 * 1) Voting period (from Sunday 00:01, 27 November until Saturday 23:59, 10 December) → eligible voters could vote on the candidates, using the SecurePoll system. An editor was eligible to vote who
 * (i) had a registered account and had made at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2011 and
 * (ii) was not blocked from the English Wikipedia at the time of their vote.
 * 1) Scrutineering period (immediately following the voting period) → scrutineers, consisting of stewards whose main wikis are not the English Wikipedia, checked the votes (e.g. for duplicate, missing, and ineligible votes), and compiled a tally of the results. The instructions for scrutineers are outlined here.

Personnel
Three groups of editors were involved in the organisation of the elections:
 * Election coordinators— self-selected editors organising the on-wiki aspects of the election (listed here).
 * Election administrators— Wikimedia Foundation-identified editors who oversaw the election, including the SecurePoll voting system. Happy-melon, Tznkai and Skomorokh served as the election administrators.
 * Scrutineers— volunteers drawn from the ranks of stewards with a home wiki other than the English Wikipedia, tasked with verifying the integrity of the vote and tallying the outcome. The stewards helping out in this process were Bencmq (originally from the Chinese Wikipedia), Trijnstel (originally from the Dutch Wikipedia), and Vituzzu (originally from the Italian Wikipedia).

Wikimedia sysadmin Tim Starling assisted with the setting up and troubleshooting of the SecurePoll interface.

Results
Following the voting period, the scrutineers examined the votes, and released a tally of the results. The tally ranked candidates by level of support, defined as the number of votes cast in support of the candidate divided by the total number of votes cast for the candidate ("no vote" preferences are not counted). A total of 729 eligible editors cast votes this election.

The scrutineers have certified the results, and Jimbo Wales ceremonially appointed the candidates to the vacant seats on the Arbitration Committee on the basis of the tally.


 * Results certified by
 * I'm grateful to MuZemike for his help but also to the admins for their suggestions and advices. --Vituzzu (talk) 21:20, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * --Trijnstel (talk) 21:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * -- Ben.MQ (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Vacant seats
For 2012, 7 current arbitrators remain on the Committee. The Committee will be reduced to 15 members, leaving 8 vacant seats. Seven of the vacant seats will have a two-year term; the eighth seat will have a one-year term. Support percentages will be calculated using the metric (Support / (Support + Oppose)); "No vote" preferences will have no effect whatsoever. Vacant seats will be filled in order of the candidate's support percentages. The minimum support percentage for successful candidates is 50%; if fewer than eight candidates reach this threshold, the remaining seats will be left vacant.

For candidates
Nominations for candidates opened at 00:01 UTC, 12 November and closed at 23:59 UTC, 21 November. During this time, any editor in good standing who met the criteria stated in the "Timeline" section above could nominate themselves by following the instructions to create a candidate statement and a questions page on the Candidates page. Once a candidate had made their statement, they could proceed to answer the general and individual questions as they wished (see the Questions page for details and instructions). Candidates could continue to answer questions until the end of the voting period (23:59 UTC, 10 December).

For voters
Before the nomination period (i.e. before 00:01 UTC, 12 November), voters were invited to discuss and develop the general questions that were asked of every candidate.

Once candidates nominated themselves, voters were invited to review and discuss them. Voters could ask questions throughout the election; please see the instructions for individual questions for details.

To facilitate their discussions and judgements, voters were encouraged to familiarise themselves with the candidates. This could be done through reading the candidate statements, the answers to the questions put to each candidate (linked from their candidate statements), and the discussion of each candidate (a centralised collection of which will be made available at the Discussion page). In addition, a summary guide to candidates was made available, and augmented by a set of personal guides by individual voters.

Voting ran for 14 days, from 00:01 UTC, 27 November to 23:59 UTC, 10 December. The process was conducted using the SecurePoll extension which ensures that individual voter's decisions are not publicly viewable (although technical information about voters, such as their IP address and user-agents, is visible to the WMF-identified election administrators and scrutineers).

Voters were invited to choose one of three options for each candidate: "Support", "Oppose" or "No vote"; and the number of "Support", "Oppose" or "No vote" preferences a voter can express was otherwise limited only by the number of candidates. Selecting "No vote" for a candidate had no impact whatsoever on their chances of election. After voters entered their choices for all of the candidates and submitted their votes, they could revisit and change their decisions, but attempting to do so required expressing preferences for all candidates from scratch. Because of the risk of server lag, voters were advised to cast their vote at the latest an hour before the close of voting to ensure their vote would be counted.