Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Candidate statements/Questions/General

Did I miss something?
Do the instructions not say "a single question"? Please folks, it took over 200 hours to answer questions last year. Can questioners please follow these simple instructions? Risker (talk) 18:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand that candidates have to spend an extremely large amount of times answering questions. On the other hand, they are volunteering for a job which requires an enormous time expenditure. The community places a great deal of trust in the arbitrators, and deserves to be able to scrutinize them on all their views to the fullest. In addition, I see no placed where it was decided that the system that had been used for the past several elections would suddenly be changed. NW ( Talk ) 01:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * NW - I believe Risker is referring to the "ask a single question" instruction, and the fact that some users have posted six or seven questions regardless. I don't think she is suggesting the question format be changed. Manning (talk) 04:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Manning. You are correct. At the rate questions are being added now, there will be well over 200 of them before candidates even put their names forward and anyone has a chance to write candidate-specific ones. There is a lot more benefit to having maybe 20 or so standard questions at the top, and then candidate specific ones following. Risker (talk) 13:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Someone, perhaps an Arb or ArbCom clerk, should contact the editors who have posted more than one question and ask them to trim down to just a single question. Running for ArbCom is a crazy enough decision as it is given the time commitment, and if there are 150 "general" questions to answer I don't think anyone will bother to run. And if anyone actually does answer 150 questions who would ever read them? Some folks need to exercise a little more discretion here and pick the general question most important to them. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This is also being discussed on the main election talk page where we have an ultimate plan to both contact the editors involved and consolidate the questions prior to the nomination phase. Manning (talk) 00:05, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree with the above; users who have posted more than one question should be asked to remove all but one, in default of which an ArbCom clerk should do so. Stifle (talk) 19:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Stifle - just a point of order: The elections are run by the community, not by ArbCom. As a consequence, ArbCom clerks have no special authority. I'm here as a regular editor (not as a clerk) and all I could ever do is implement a consensus decision (but then so could anyone else). Manning (talk) 02:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This really needs to be worded better next year if it is going to remain. Some comments at WT:ACE2009 suggest people are clearly confused on what the "single question" comment means, such as believing it was talking about duplicate questions, and exactly the same thing happened last year probably for the same reasons. If it means a single question per user it should say just that, the current wording isn't clear. Camaron · Christopher · talk 09:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Where was there any consensus for this idea of a single question? I certainly do not recall ever having heard of this being discussed. This is the worst idea ever for an election. I'm sorry, AC candidates: if you are going to try to gain a position of this power, you need to be ready to be grilled about it. The arbitration committee has screwed over the community enough times that it deserves to be allowed to ask however many questions it wants of the candidates. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 13:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I have been notified about the restriction on only asking one question, sorry yes I did miss it on the instruction page (and probably encouraged others to break by being the first to do so). I notice the instruction was just copied over from last years election where it was very widely flouted - Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Candidate statements/Questions/General - has there been a discussion of whether this should be changed since last year? I am reluctant to remove 2 of the 3 questions I have asked as the answers will have an important influence in how I will vote and I would hope the answers would be informative to other voters.
 * If judged essential then the 2nd of my questions would be the one I would remove first as least likely to sway my vote (though I would hope it would be informative in seeing what candidates feel should be changed about Arbcom). If forced to only have one question here, then I would be pretty certain to ask the other question(s) to individual candidates who I feel stand a chance of being elected, which I understand would be fine as per the instructions. If the questions can be consolidated with others without losing the meaning then that's fine but I don't personally see any (at the moment) with which this could be done. Davewild (talk) 18:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Is this going to be an allowable solution if this rule is enforced? I.e., will I still be allowed to ask further questions to the individual candidates I'm considering supporting, even if the questions are not specific to the candidate? If so, I'd be able to make that work, but if I'm allowed exactly one general question and all others have to be individually tailored, I doubt I'll be able to support any candidates except anyone I know well enough that I can answer the questions for them. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * So long as we consolidate identical questions, and so long as editors make sure their questions haven't already been asked before posting them, I have no objection to removing the one-question rule. I think it was ignored last year for the same reason it was overlooked initially this year - we don't limit questions elsewhere (RFA, for example), and I don't know that we should here. I add that, if we do move to secret ballotting, then the questions and answers will play a larger role in the debate on the candidates and their merits - so more data is beneficial, I think. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 15:26, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There are still 36 questions, times the number of candidates. I think this is dysfunctional. Please note that users are free to ask individual questions of candidates. Tony   (talk)  10:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC) PS I note also that eight of the 16 questioners either took heed of the one-question rule or reduced the number of their questions after polite request. I deliberately constrained myself when I saw the rule and the blow-out.  Tony   (talk)  10:21, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm still waiting for a straight answer to either of my above questions. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I strongly urge that we not only enforce the single question rule, but enact additional means of pruning repetitive questions. Last year's questions were so extreme and absurd that 1) they were a burden on candidates, and 2) as a voter, I didn't bother to try to read through the insane amount of pointy, ridiculous questions.  We need some kind of screening to keep the questions to something useful to voters.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Considering these are candidates for what is probably the busiest job on the project, I think that 36 questions is nothing really - some RfAs have more than that, and the questions are even less relevant. One question per voter is daft if a person has more than one relevant question. I have thought of another question but don't dare to add it in case anyone unfairly and rudely labels it as ridiculous or absurd. I'll just have to ask every candidate individually. Frankly, this general questions page doesn't work if the rules are so tight.  Majorly  talk  14:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Majorly, I'm sure Sandy wasn't making a personal comment, but she sure is frustrated at last year's electoral process. Even if all 36 questions were well-crafted and useful, a reasonable assumption is 36 × the 28 candidates we had last year = 1008 responses. The voters would need days to consider them all. Last year, how many thousands of voters were there (= × 1008 = millions of assumed viewings of responses)? And are there not also candidate statements and responses to individual questions to read, too? Voters, of course, will rarely do more than skim through them, and may look properly at only a very few responses; even good candidates (who have important roles on WP) will balk at the size of the task. The diversion of time and effort away from content writing and valuable admin tasks beggars belief.
 * If we can't make our minds up without such mega-bloat, we should pack it in. Let's get professional about this: the best arb candidates are already busy people in RL and on-wiki, and this is not meant to be a trial, but an efficient way for the community to select the best suited for the seats. Tony   (talk)  15:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree with Tony. As a voter, I can't read through that much volume; we need a more professional approach and pruning of questions for repetitious themes. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:26, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The voters don't have to read questions, and clearly many don't - some will vote based on the statement, their familiarity with the candidate and other factors. I don't post questions for everyone else's benefit, I do for my own. Not every question interests me, so I won't read every answer. Voters can choose whether they want to take everything the candidate says into account, or whether only certain points they make concern them. For example, "What do you find to be the most important characteristic of a successful arbitrator on Wikipedia?" doesn't interest me, and nor does "Do you accept or reject the view that the English Wikipedia benefits from having an Arbitration Committee?". Some of the others do, but there will probably be candidates I'll support/oppose without even looking at the questions, because I am very familiar with them and already know how they feel. I personally think that to read every single answer, despite question quality/usefulness would be unproductive and a timesink. Sandy, for example, has stated she didn't bother reading many of the questions she found irrelevant - I'm not sure why this is a surprise, or worth noting. I do the same, and on RfAs too. Someone finds the question a useful one, otherwise they wouldn't ask it. If you don't find questions useful, they should be ignored.  Majorly  talk  15:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm with Majorly. I ask the questions I ask because they are important to me. They are questions the answers to which will influence my willingness or lack thereof to support a candidate. I hope others will find the answers to my questions interesting, also, but I don't by any means expect all the voters to read them. I don't read the candidates' answers to all the questions; I read those that I find important.
 * This whole situation has been handled backward from the beginning. If you're going to suddenly enforce a rule that's never been enforced before and that loads of people, myself included, had no idea even existed, you need to bother having a discussion about it sometime well before the election takes place so the voters can plan for it.
 * There's so much talk here about improving the situation for the candidates, but as far as I'm concerned, that priority is completely backward. The election is not for the candidates; it's for the community. It's not right if members of the community are confused about how to get the answers they want from the candidates, indeed, I argue such an election is invalid. As yet, the lack of answers to the questions I've asked on this talk page leave me still unclear how I'll go about getting these answers, and if I can't get them, I'm just going to feel free to oppose the entire lot of the candidates this round, excepting any whom I trust well enough that answers are unnecessary. After how badly the committee screwed over some cases this year, I figure it's better to try to stop just about everyone from joining the committee than to take the risk of voting for candidates I'm going to want impeached later on. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 13:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Alternative idea
One of the reasons the candidate question section becomes absurd is that there is no logical grouping of them, and questions are repeated with only minor variations. For at least the general "all candidate" questions, I suggest that the questions be sorted by general topic rather than name of the person who wrote the question. Thus: sections on analysis of previous cases, checkuser/oversight and other privacy issues, problematic administrators, interpretation of behavioural policies, etc., rather than Question by User#1, User#2, and so on. I'd be fine with adding the name of the questioner in brackets at either the end or the beginning of the question, but nobody really cares who asks the question, it is the answer that is important. Not only will this assist the readers, it will also provide a more nuanced and detailed review of the position of a candidate on specific topics. Just a thought. Risker (talk) 16:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Risker, thanks—I did this early in the piece, but it needs updating:User:Tony1/Sandbox_for_ArbCom_general_questions. It would need support to be the arrangement for the election. I'll clean it up tomorrow. Tony   (talk)  16:53, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That could help. In most cases, I know the candidates that I endorse well enough that I don't even need to read these lengthy questions. But, if I have doubts or lack of knowledge about a particular candidate in a particular area, I'd like to be able to quickly locate responses to questions that relate to that area.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. It would be a good idea if people didn't "own" their question, so that clerks or whoever could ruthlessly merge/remove questions that have been asked, or are irrelevant. Perhaps some standard questions like at RfA should be arranged. We do tend to see the same questions year after year.  Majorly  talk  17:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It'd be simple enough to look at previous years and find common threads - but that's a project for after the holidays, when the election is long over, I think. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 19:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Under this setup, I assume it'd be fine for users to request clarifications of various sorts to get more fine-tuned answers as needed, whether as individual questions or on the candidate's talk page? This seems like a fairly workable idea as long as users are given a lots of leeway in the individual questions to get the information that is lacking in the general questions. If this ends up being a way to limit questions to a certain set, though, I vigorously oppose it. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 13:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I like this idea, and like Tony's example. My quibble would be that we would be changing a system after it has been set up (if it was intended to implement it during this election process), and so discussion on such a change would need to be advertised in order that people are fully aware and have a chance to comment.  SilkTork  *YES! 11:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of arbitration election questions process
Will be of interest to some here: BN. Carcharoth (talk) 03:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)