Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Candidates/David Gerard/Statement

David Gerard
I have been in and around Wikipedia and Wikimedia since 2004. I was on the Arbitration Committee in 2005, and I know the awful things the arbcom has to deal with. I have represented Wikipedia and Wikimedia (WMF, WMUK and the movement in general) as a volunteer press contact since 2005. I know this place, I know what it's for and I've represented it to the world for the past nine years.

I worry about the reputation of English Wikipedia in the wider world, with the strange and disturbing decisions of the Arbitration Committee in the past few years, and particularly in the last year.

We see the reputation of the English Wikipedia dragged through the mud by bad Arbitration Committee decisions. We are the number six website in the world, with huge social power and responsibility. Remember that these people's actions do in fact speak for the encyclopedia, and for you.

The Arbitration Committee's intemperate decisions, inability to acknowledge gross errors, abuse of powers (including oversight) to suppress criticism of their decisions, attempts to provoke the Wikimedia Foundation to confrontation and regulatory capture by trolls has led to palpable fear in its checkusers and oversighters, dismay and disgust from Foundation and chapter staff, and unwillingness of everyday editors to deal with them in any manner.

I aim to start on remedying this, to welcome reviews of past terrible decisions and to try to restore the reputation of English Wikipedia and of the Committee itself. No-one running for re-election should get your vote.

I hope you will look at those rerunning, contemplate their decisions over the past year and vote accordingly.

Alternate account: User:Querulous, an example account I created in 2005.