Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019/Candidates/Richwales/Statement

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

I've been a Wikipedian since early 2005, and an administrator since 2011. My work here has included two Featured Articles and nine Good Articles.

I've participated in numerous SPIs (as a clerk); I initiated one RFC/U (a now-defunct process for discussing the actions of an individual editor); and I've been informally involved in several mediation efforts (albeit with limited success).

I am currently a member of the Oversight team. In the past, I have been a member of the Audit Subcommittee (2013–2014) and the Ombudsman Commission (2017–2018), and I have been an SPI clerk since 2013 (though on voluntary hiatus for the past year).

I am a strong believer in Wikipedia's core policies — especially the NPOV and NPA policies. I believe in civility, though my time spent here has helped me to understand that disruptive activity can be a real problem even if editors remain superficially polite, and I am really not as concerned about "nasty words" as I am about battleground conduct, POV-pushing, and undisclosed paid editing.

Aside from a handful of IP edits before I registered for my account, all my editing has been either as or under my alternate account.

I am well over 18, and I have previously confirmed my identity with the WMF and signed the WMF confidentiality agreement. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 01:21, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Addendum: I will be retiring from my real-life job at the end of this year, so I can realistically expect to have more time to devote to Wikipedia in 2020. I mention this in case it might make a difference to some of those who have expressed reservations about my candidacy on account of my low activity of late. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 07:52, 14 November 2019 (UTC)