Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2021/Candidates/Wugapodes/Statement

Wugapodes
Hello, I'm Wugapodes, and I am willing to serve on ArbCom. I view Wikipedia as a community of practice organized around the development of a free, open, online encyclopedia. What does that mean for me as an editor and what would that mean for me as an arbitrator? I evaluate options on the basis of three main criteria: what courses of action will (1) lead to the best reader experience by (2) supporting a diverse community of content creators and maintainers while (3) fostering an environment that welcomes new editors who can sustain our maintenance burden. Ultimately I view ArbCom as a body in service of concrete goals, not abstract ideologies, and while the construction and maintenance of an encyclopedia is our unifying goal, we must take seriously the social and emotional aspects of building an encyclopedia in a system of collaborative anarchy.

I divide my time between EnWiki and other projects which I believe gives me a perspective valuable to the committee. My recent work has been closing large discussions, extension development, and meta work. I am an EnWiki administrator of nearly two years, a MediaWiki developer on the ChessBrowser extension, and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation regional grants committee for the US and Canada. In my spare time I enjoy reading through old page histories in order to understand the early culture that developed Wikipedia, and contribute to other, non-WMF wiki communities.

Through these experiences with the wider free knowledge ecosystem, I can provide a unique perspective to the committee. Our wikipedia is part of an ecosystem comprising a multi-lingual commons of free creative works. No wiki is an island, and understanding how our wikipedia fits into this wider system can lead to better decisions. For example, other wikis have faced problems of scale which impact civility and collaboration; how have they addressed it and what can we learn from them? Locally blocked or banned editors may contribute to other projects and demonstrate that they have improved; how can understanding the culture of other wikis help us evaluate whether cross-wiki contributions demonstrate cause to unblock? Wikipedia's encyclopedic content is frequently improved by incorporating content written by other communities, and I believe the committee would benefit from incorporating lessons learned by other communities who faced problems similar to our own.

I will comply with the non-public data policy; see my list of other accounts.