Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/Richwales/Statement

Richwales

 * I'm Rich Wales — no relation to Jimbo as far as I know — and I'm offering my services for the next two years as a member of the Arbitration Committee.


 * I've been a Wikipedian since early 2005, and an administrator for a little over a year. My work over the last 12 months has included one Featured Article (which also made Today's Featured Article), two Good Articles, three Did You Know's, and a lot of gnoming.  In all, I've been responsible for one FA, six GAs, five DYKs, and one In The News — admittedly not a huge amount of content compared with many others around here, but it will hopefully demonstrate that I do know something about content creation.


 * Over the years, I've participated to a greater or lesser extent in about a dozen arbitration requests, RFCs, WQAs, and other dispute resolution efforts. I've initiated one RfC/U.  I've been informally involved in mediation efforts regarding three political / ethnic / religious conflicts, albeit with limited success.


 * I am a strong believer in Wikipedia's core policies — especially the NPOV and civility policies. Although ArbCom's job is not to make or change policy, it needs to fill a crucial role as an interpreter and enforcer of policy when hot-headed, tendentious editors refuse to work collaboratively, disrespect opposing views, and defy community consensus.


 * I've been making a concerted effort to keep abreast of recent arbitration cases. One improvement I would very much like to see would be a more comprehensive cataloguing / indexing of ArbCom cases (by the principles put forth and the policies implemented), kept up to date as new cases are heard and decided.


 * I have one alternate account (Rich Wales sans superpowers). Aside from a handful of IP edits before I registered for my account, all my editing has been as  or.


 * I am well over 18, and if elected, I agree to confirm my identity with the WMF. —  Rich wales 05:49, 11 November 2012 (UTC)