Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/Jclemens

Jclemens: "Not a Wikipedian"
Jclemens from the questions section:


 *  "This election is somewhat of a referendum on what I said--if I am hopelessly pounded into the dust in the upcoming election, then I probably should have resigned already, but distinguishing the larger sentiment from the louder sentiment is sometimes quite difficult."

On this, we agree. The "Not a Wikipedian" statement was both asinine and illuminating. Count me as one that will be doing his best to be pounding the Jclemens candidacy into the dust... Strongest possible oppose. Carrite (talk) 17:06, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I may very well vote for him in spite of this. I hate to take Jclemens out for one stupid thing when he's done so much elsewhere.  But wanted to note that such a vote from me isn't in support of that statement.  Even if it's true, it was heat where light was needed.  And that should have been foreseeable. You (Jclemens) really need to realize that nothing good could have come from that statement--even if you believed it with all your heart (and I think you did/do).  That lack of judgement about when to keep your mouth closed is troubling.  I'd hope in hindsight, at the least, you'd realize that.  On top of that, I disagree with the statement itself, but that's less of an issue (I don't mind people saying things I disagree with, I mind them creating drama to no purpose). Hobit (talk) 18:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I rarely vote in these, but I will make sure to vote for JClemens in this one. The fact that he has endured so much abuse and venom over a simple comment and still wants to run indicates to me a lot of dedication.....or mental illness. I'm going with the former. Niteshift36 (talk) 19:13, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There is a third possibility: ratcheting things up. If they win then they could well start claiming some sort of mandate for a hard-line take on civility and Malleus. Even though they acknowledge his positives, they have chosen to accentuate the systemic bias against him and, indeed, people such as me also. It would have been so much easier if the statement had been recognised as absurd at the time and retracted in full. It shows a distinct lack of judgement that it was not. That they think it sensible to submit themselves for election so soon after they have massively divided the community and have taken a pounding even from people who do not generally form part of the pro-Malleus crowd just blows me away: we need pragmatic arbs, not dogmatic ones. I've been asked to re-read their statement on the affair and will do so but, really, no explanation after the event can get round the fact that there was a glaringly obvious missed opportunity during it. Like it or not, this candidate is going to succeed or fail here on the basis of their recent actions. - Sitush (talk) 14:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * To Hobit, and anyone else here who considers this to be all about the "not a Wikipedian" comment: I may not change your mind or anyone else's, but I just want it to be clear that for me, my strident opposition to Jclemens has never been a single-issue matter. My guide shows that for me, it's long list of grievances, of which "not a Wikipedian" is only the most well-known one. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 13:45, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Moral support but abstain. I think the principles Jclemens supports are sound. I also often agree with his take on a situation (sometimes also not, but we need a breadth of voices on arbcom). In particular, I think habitual I-know-someone-will-have-my-back-if-someone-tries-to-chastise-me incivility, used as an offensive weapon, has become just as toxic on Wikipedia as overofficious adminning - and is very different from someone's occasional frustrated or even vulgar outburst. Jclemens gets this, and I'd like to have a voice like that (as well as opposing voices) on arbcom. Within this context, I see what Jclemens was getting at with the "not a Wikipedian if you don't adhere to the 5 pillars" remark, and while it was suboptimally phrased I don't consider that on its own to be a big deal. But there are too many similar instances where his wording is ham-handed, even bullying, and deflects attention from what matters to how he is reacting to it. And that's why I can't actually vote for him. Martinp (talk) 13:01, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

As an aside: This is one very big community. While there has been disagreement on the appropriateness of Jclemens comment, it it no way has split a community as large as this one. We have to be careful it seems to me on all counts to not misjudge the community's, as a whole, interest in one statement.(olive (talk) 18:02, 26 November 2012 (UTC))


 * Why I am opposing this candidate. My opposition to Jclemens' candidacy is due to the recent leak of information from arbcom-l, which concerned an email posted to the list by Jclemens in which he disclosed his intention to actively campaign against serving arbitrators, while he was himself serving as an arbitrator, concerning the recent decision on Malleus. It's absolutely unacceptable for serving arbitrators to campaign against their colleagues, publicly or otherwise, over decisions that they have taken. I can absolutely understand why some arbitrators might have considered it to be intimidatory, even if that was not Jclemens' intention. Arbitrators should not take part in political activities of this kind; they're supposed to stand aside from wikipolitics. It's especially inappropriate that Jclemens should think it acceptable to campaign against his fellow arbitrators because he disagrees with their judgement. There's such a thing as collective responsibility; if Arbcom reaches a particular decision, it's a decision of the whole committee, not just a faction. To put this in a real-world context, imagine if the US Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare had resulted in one of the dissenting judges announcing that his colleagues were incompetents and that he was going to actively campaign for them to lose their jobs. Nobody would think for one moment that that was acceptable. The fact that Jclemens apparently thought it was right to do so is, in my view, a sign of unfitness to serve as an arbitrator. In addition, his action in openly declaring hostilities against his colleagues is likely to lead or to have already led to a breakdown in the relationship between him and the other arbitrators, and as such I cannot see how he can be an effective arbitrator in future. Prioryman (talk) 00:05, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * On standards From recent (and not so recent) arbitration cases, requests, talk pages, noticeboards etc, its quite clear that the 'hostilities' as Prioryman above so vividly puts it, have been ongoing and divisive amongst the sitting arbites for quite awhile. What Elen's disgracefully leaked emails show is no more or less than Jclemens statement of intent regarding one of the pillars of wikipedia in which he has found his fellow arbites lacking. I not only expect sitting Arbcom members to hold their fellows up to the highest standards, I demand it. Without months of background detail that we are not privy to (as it took place behind closed doors) saying that we shouldnt elect someone because they cant be effective in the future is weak. We should be voting in people of stronger morals and judgement, not discarding them! We should be getting rid of those who do not take the pillars of wikipedia seriously and resort to underhand tactics. Do you want an arbcom made up of people who speak their mind outright to their opposition directly? Or an arbcom made up of people who work slyly behind the scenes, leaking emails and hiding behind lame whistleblowing justifications? As I require the highest standards from Arbcom, I may not agree with their opinions on every ruling, but I want someone who actually believes in the five pillars and will work to enforce them. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:37, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

My concern with Jclemens isn't with his views on policy. I suspect that his general views on Wikipedia governance and mine could probably get along fairly well. For the record I also believed that the motion to temporarily ban Malleus was a regrettable but necessary step. The problem that Jclemens has is that his approach to disputes makes him an ineffective and even counterproductive advocate for his positions. Broadly speaking – and with more than a little irony – this is the same problem that Malleus faces. Both Jclemens and Malleus have demonstrated a tendency to cast disputes and disagreements in 'you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us' terms; those editors they categorize as 'against us' are fair targets for marginalization and demonization.

It's worth remembering that very shortly after Jclemens' now-infamous "not a Wikipedian" comment on the motion to temporarily ban Malleus, that motion had actually been likely to pass: holding a 7-vote majority in favor with just 2 Arbs against. Within a day, three oppose votes (all explicitly disavowing Jclemens' comment) and an alternative motion appeared. Shortly after, the motion to ban fell below the threshold to pass, and never recovered. By turning the discussion from what Malleus had done to what he believed that Malleus was, Jclemens needlessly personalized the debate. The case stopped being about whether or not Malleus' conduct warranted the proposed sanction, and started being about whether or not you were on Team Jclemens or Team Malleus. Jclemens still doesn't seem to grasp how large a role his own comments had in reframing the way the motion was considered, and ultimately in the motion's failure. Like Malleus, he puts potential allies in the awkward position of having to say, "we mostly agree with him, but we'd rather not agree with him."

'''I'm torn by his recently-revealed misuse of the ArbCom mailing list. I can't tell whether it was deliberate dirty pool, or just execrably poor judgement.''' There is no question that Jclemens stood to personally benefit from discouraging other candidates running in this year's election. In the last two elections, he has only been seated on the ArbCom by the skin of his teeth&mdash;in the 2010 election he received the fewest supporting votes and was effectively tied for the worst percentage support of any successful candidate, while in 2011 he received the lowest support by a substantial margin and made it aboard only because an additional seat opened up after the nominations period had closed. Jclemens ought to have been aware that tipping the balance in even one potential candidate's mind against running might make the difference between an election win and loss of his seat. It is quite apparent from Jclemens' response that he never expected that his 'warnings' would ever see the light of day on-wiki, presuming that the secrecy and privilege of the ArbCom mailing list would provide even greater protection from disclosure, discussion, or mention than, say, a regular email or any other off-wiki mode of communication. In other words, he expected to get a free chance to knock out some potential competitors for his seat and distort the upcoming election, without having to face any open discussion or scrutiny of his own tactics.

Now was that actually what he thought when he put hands to keyboard? The alternative is that he was venting&mdash;telling his fellow Arbs that he was pissed off and issuing a "You'll all be sorry!" rant after he helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. If it were purely that, the timing seems odd; his messages were sent two weeks after the Malleus motion closed, when even the hottest blood ought to have had a chance to cool. Even if it were only that, it shows a gross failure of the collegiality with which we expect functionaries to conduct themselves. I have trouble crediting Jclemens with a sufficient lack of awareness, though. Is it entirely plausible that, in the process of writing multiple messages 'warning' other potential candidates about how he intended to conduct his election campaign, he had no thought for the effect it might have on his own election? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Full support. Jclemens has always struck me as having the ability to judge situations fairly.  I feel that he holds the policies regarding civility to be extremely important to collegial editing.  I think it is also good to have someone on ArbCom who understands the importance of continuing with content creation, to tie him to the realities of everyday editing – as both having been a GA reviewer, and an editor who contributes his own fair share of GA's, I think that qualifies him as such.  In fact, in my experience, he has been able to remain calm and continue working on content despite incredibly persistent and discourteous opposition, which is another quality I would like to see in an arbitrator. BOZ (talk) 18:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support due to detractors - "You can't speak negatively or propose sanctions for Malleus, he is a valuable contributor even if he insults and disrespects other editors on occasion... Now, lets go attack Jclemens for his disrespect of Malleus!"  Toa   Nidhiki05  20:12, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not a personal attack to say someone is unfit to serve on the committee or to point out that person's faults, which is what people are doing here. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 03:18, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I never said it was a personal attack; it is a regular attack on a poor comment by an ArbCom member. And poor comments deserve to be inspected and noted. However, it is being 'noted' by a group of people who support a user who is known for making 'poor comments' of a much more insulting and demeaning nature on a regular basis and for a much longer period of time. I think that is a bit hypocritical to be attacking Jclemens because of one bad comment he made and be defending Malleus in spite of a much longer history of even more offensive comments. You can argue Jclemens comment is worse because it is coming from an acting ArbCom member, but I don't see the logic in the detractors here.  Toa   Nidhiki05  17:27, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Toa Nidhihiki05,
 * Unless you are deliberately wasting the community's time, you are irresponsibly suggesting that Jclemens's critics are supporters of Malleus.
 * JClemens's personal attack against Malleus was condemned by several ArbCom members (including some voting to ban Malleus).
 * Your suggestion that e.g. WMF employees' guides oppose Jclemens because their authors are "supporters of Malleus" ignores the obvious fact that Elonka and H J Mitchell (Ironholds) are consistent critics of Malleus.
 * Kiefer .Wolfowitz  09:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Other issues

 * Subheading introduced for clarity Kiefer  .Wolfowitz  14:20, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Neutral guides list plenty of diffs documenting JClemens's mistreatment of non-administrators and indeed disruption and attempted intimidation at SPI: See for example Ealdgyth and Heimstern. Of course, there were similar examples of JClemens's behavior in the 2011 guides, for example, mine, which was too generous towards him.  Kiefer  .Wolfowitz  01:16, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And by neutral you mean...? There's no question that the same cherry-picked episodes have been circulated by plenty of guide writers, but there are two sides to every story, and a truly neutral guide writer would cover the other side, wouldn't he or she? Like when I caught MathSci reverting a legitimate complaint against himself, and he later made a false statement about what he'd done. Every single alleged abuse has it's flip side, and I'd love to hear if any of the so-called neutral guide writers have ever seen fit to drag any of 'em up. Jclemens (talk) 02:05, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Jclemens,
 * Please consider the case of NewYorkBrad, who has been endorsed by everybody. NYB has had more conflicts with Malleus than you, for example, regarding RfAs, and has commented on Malleus at far greater length than you. Nonetheless, nobody is opposing NYB (imho). The guide-writers have not quoted ("cherry picked" in your words) cases that show NYB misbehaving.
 * NYB, incidentally, is a good counter-example to claims that I and other guide-writers are retaliating against Jclemens for doing his job as an arbitrator. In my case, I have at least twice asked Malleus to stop gratuitous criticisms about NYB (while wishing that NYB reassess Malleus).
 * I would understand Jclemens's writing that "I have never claimed to be perfect, and I shall renew my efforts to uphold the best standards of behavior on WP", perhaps noting a wish to emulate NYB or Geometry guy, etc. However, what I don't understand is Jclemens's denial of a history of hot-headedness. The community is tolerant and indeed supportive of arbitrators who, after having made a mistake,  then take responsibility and strive to do better.  Kiefer  .Wolfowitz  16:55, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

*
 * Jclemens, Mathsci is not running for ArbCom. Therefore, what abuses he may have committed have no bearing here or on any voter guide. If he has committed abuses that merit sanctions, of course he may be brought to AN or even the committee for the consideration of sanctions. That is not what this election is about; it is about the suitability of the candidates for the committee, including you. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Why is Jclemens using his election campaign to renew his WP:BATTLEGROUND attacks on me? His short statement above is evasive and entirely misrepresents what actually happened. In a prior act of misjudgement, Jclemens had wiki-befriended the DeviantArt group who were later sanctioned in the R&I review (Captain Occam, Ferahgo the Assassin & co). Their shenanigans were pointed out by me and, prior to that, by Shell Kinney. Jclcmens seems to have assumed that, if a group of editors had been acting deceptively, as they had, the person pointing that out must have committed even worse acts of deception. That was flawed logic. As checkuser Jclemens knew that the SPI request by had been made by a sockpuppet of the community banned wikihounder Echigo mole. The SPI request had already been reverted by Future Perfect at Sunrise, not by me as Jclemens implies. That Jello carotids was a sock was obvious per WP:DUCK. My alternative legitimate account, used for gathering diffs for the R&I review, was clearly labelled M·a·t·h·s·c·i to stop Echigo mole searching for it. Jclemens claims the dots were an attempt to deceive.

Echigo mole's wikihounding was one of the five topics chosen by Roger Davies for consideration during the R&I review, so evidence of Echigo mole's previous mischief-making had been comprehensively documented during the review. Jclemens did not take care to keep track of the emails I had sent to arbcom about this alternative account and later apologised for that error. That error and his subsequent apology have now conveniently been forgotten. Having restored the trolling SPI report, Jclemens needlessly escalated dramah in ways that appear to have been designed to intimidate me, misusing his authority and wikipedia processes. That involved fully protecting two pages of the alternative account and making an emergency report to arbcom seemingly with a view to a seekrit hearing. These emergency requests were unsurprisingly ignored by other arbitrators and the frozen evidence-gathering pages deleted by MastCell, overriding Jclemens' shenanigans.

Jclemens ignored the warnings from other administrators and has continued to label me in other venues as having operated "abusive alternative accounts". He is still doing so. His conduct in this particular case has been dishonest, bullying and evasive. His way of labelling me as a liar (as he has done above) is characteristic Clemensism. He made several errors, was corrected, and then after that advised and warned by administrators (in this case by NuclearWarfare, MastCell and Future Perfect at Sunrise). He writes now as if those warnings never happened and that his actions were justified. Future Perfect at Sunrise removed the report by the blatant sock troll and Jclcmens decided to follow the wrong path by restoring it. As a checkuser he should have checked the account. It is a pity that Jclemens decided to mention this now as an illustration of how well he has acted as an administrator/checkuser/arbitrator. I was not intending to comment. As far as I am concerned his "performance" back then showed serious deficiencies in all three roles. A motion was later passed by arbcom about enabling socks of the wikihounder Echigo mole. Mathsci (talk) 07:18, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And after all that unnecessary rehash of your perspective, Mathsci, have you ever once admitted that your statement I quoted in my first diff above--that the revert was to another SPI, not one opened on you--was a material falsehood? You state above how I should have known this, or would have known that... but the fact remains, you spill all this ink, and never admit the problem that started this whole mess: Mathsci reverting an SPI complaint about Mathsci.  If you can't manage to even do that, why should anyone bother with the rest of your selected retelling? The reason I picked you as an example, Mathsci, is because diffs don't lie. Jclemens (talk) 07:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I should specify "the reason I picked you out of all the incidents that people are claiming to unilaterally show my poor judgment". If the supposedly neutral guide writers hadn't been picking on me, I would haven't brought it up again, and to that extent, I'm sorry that it was necessary to do so to refute the neutrality of such testimony. Jclemens (talk) 07:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Jclemens for commenting. Jclemens cannot dismiss other administrators' comments by portraying himself as a victim. The diff he's referring to as a "material falsehood" was clarified later. There were two parallel SPI reports. One the trolling one, enabled by Jclemens; the other a report on Jello carotids, where Jclemens chose not to comment. There was a long discussion on his own talk page subsequently. I'm off back to France after my final checkup in London, so cannot respond until much later. But please could Jclemens cut the snark. He should go and check the edits: I reverted a trolling response from a banned user per WP:BAN. FPaS reverted the SPI report, blocked the sock troll and after that Jclemens restored the edit.  Could Jclemens please reread the  warnings/trouting again from administrators at the close of the SPI report? He cannot dismiss NuclearWarfare, MastCell and Future Perfect at Sunrise. They were not electioneering as Jclemens is doing now. Mathsci (talk) 21:02, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd love to see the diff you reference where the material falsehood was "clarified later", because as far as I've seen, this is the closest you've ever come to admitting that the root cause of the whole affair was that you reverted an accurate report (yes, by a sock) at SPI of your own clandestine additional account use. If you think that WP:BAN allows editors to remove true and substantiable complaints about their own conduct, then you and I have very different views of the purpose of the insta-revert clause and its applicability to concealing one's own actions. Jclemens (talk) 17:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

On 18 May started a discussion at WP:AN to community ban Echigo mole. That ban discussion was concluded with the confirmation of a community ban at 19:37 on 27 May. Before that Jello caroids had already made edits in project space that showed back knowledge and editing style which confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that he was yet another troll sock of Echigo mole. I gave a complete list of the complete set of confirmed named socks and ipsocks on 20 May, when I noticed the thread. Echigo mole had intervened twice on 23 May using the usual ip range. Further ipsocks of Echigo mole were reverted in that discussion by me and reverted and blocked by MastCell and Future Perfect at Sunrise. Echigo mole created the account Jello carotids as a sleeping sock in October 2010, with 10 namespace edits to autoconfirm the account. Their first edits on 26 May 2012 were related to the community ban discussion on Echigo mole. They trolled on an arbitrators' talk page and then opened the SPI report on me at 13:27. I made a checkuser request on their account at 18:11 and they commented at 18:34. I reverted the edits at 18:36 on that SPI report. Just before that he made his last trolling edit at 18:35. He was blocked at 19:02 by Future Perfect at Sunrise. On 28 May Reaper Enternal confirmed him as a sock per WP:DUCK. 2 hours later Deskana, in response to the two checkuser requests for and, wrote that the circumstantial evidence was enough without CU to confirm Echigo mole as sockmaster. So I made two reversions of Jello carotids trolling in 2 separate SPI reports. Behind all this was a mailicious wikihounding troll, using two sockpuppets and at least two blocked ipsocks. Jclemens reaction was to enable the blatant Echigo mole sock, presumably aware of the parallel community ban discussions on WP:AN, and escalate matters into high dramah. No other administrator or checkuser agreed with him. He received advice and warnings from several experienced administrators. From MastCell: ". But if you disregard the administrative consensus here without the clear consensus of the Committee, then I will pursue it as I find your handling of this case extremely concerning;" From NuclearWarfare;. The request was closed as inappropriate by an experienced checkuser DeltaQuad. And from Future Perfect at Sunrise. There were two emails sent to arbcom that disclosed the existence and reason for creating this legitimate and fully declared alternative account. In all of this, Jclemens acted out of all proportion. Multiple administrators fortunately acted with cool heads: Reaper Eternal, Deskana, MastCell, Future Perfect at Sunrise, NuclearWarfare, DeltaQuad. Jclemens did not. Some of Jclemens most questionable edits can be seen here:


 * Since Jclemens insists, I have summarised above some of the disruption from May 2012 created by Echigo mole, prior to Jclemens' intervention and attempts to use arbcom-l to start a private arbcom hearing on me, apparently for reverting one edit of Echigo mole. Jclemens knows that reverts and enabling of Echigo mole edits have been discussed in detail amongst arbitrators. The issue led to an arbcom motion that passed. Jclemens continued to plough his own lonely furrow during that vote. Mathsci (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh well. I was hoping that just once you'd actually be introspective enough to admit your own fault, since anyone else can see from the two diffs I posted above that you 1) removed material from an SPI on yourself, and 2) denied having done so. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 22:50, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * In the collapsed review above, the penultimate diff shows that on 26 May 2012 Jclemens permanently protected the user page of a legitimate fully declared alternative account User:Aixoisie. He wrote in the edit summary Protected User:Aixoisie: Freeze for ArbCom investigation of potentially inappropriate use of alternate accounts; this protection will be lifted by an ArbCom member when appropriate (‎[edit=sysop] (indefinite) ‎[move=sysop] (indefinite)). Since that "ArbCom investigation" did not take place, could Jclemens please now unprotect that page? Thanks in advance, Mathsci (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The answer to 2), as mentioned in the collapsed review, is that I was probably referring to this revert. Because of the community ban discussion on WP:AN (18-27 May), Echigo mole and his socks/ipsocks were hyperactive and alll over the place there were multiple reversions of his trolling, some of them by me. Mathsci (talk) 23:46, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've unprotected the account page per request--Sorry for the delay, it would have been done sooner had it been posted to my talk page. And re: reverting multiple things and misspeaking, that's exactly what I thought had happened, but until now, I don't ever recall hearing that common-sense explanation from you. Thanks for that, after all this time. Jclemens (talk) 02:21, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I had no idea until two days ago that Jclemens had even fully protected that page. It served no administrative purpose and was a very odd thing for Jclemens to have done. Mathsci (talk) 05:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It was protected to preserve evidence of your inappropriate retention of case data in a manner designed to evade scrutiny and prior directives from ArbCom to delete similar data: storing diffs is not a legitimate use of alternate accounts per WP:SOCK. Jclemens (talk) 05:56, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The mailing list brouhaha seems to be a key issue -- I have a couple or three more years exprerience in seeing use of mailing lists  (try three decades) and so I can assure folks that such usage (I have only seen the one leaded email) is not alien in this world, and suspect some of those making the most noise that it was "evil" are the same ones who opposed Jclemens in the past and who opposed his "Wikipedian" remarks as well. In fact, with the leaked post text only as my guide, there is no sign that I see of being "beyond the pale" at all. What I do see is what many Americans would see as normal posting to a well-defined group indicating that he intended to defend his positions, however controversial that are to some. I, personally, find a variety of strong opinions to be of greater value to the committee than a group of malleable arbitrators susceptible to "groupthink" results. I further suggest that having a group of members all of whom agree on everything would be extraordinarily easily gameable as a group for decisions. Collect (talk) 15:39, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Collect,
 * Former arbitrator Iridescent predicted the outcome of the Civility-Enforcement decision based only on his knowledge of the arbitrators, before evidence was collected.
 * It is a problem that arbitrators' decisions can be predicted 100%, even before they've viewed evidence or deliberated. After this election, Jclemens will have been replaced by Worm That Turned, and we can look forward to ArbCom decisions that the community regards as fairly deliberated as reflecting policy rather than members' politics. Kiefer  .Wolfowitz  19:06, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Just a brief comment: I stopped by here inclined to vote "support," but without knowledge of recent events. I wish the candidate statement explained what was at stake, instead of making reference to things that are "needless to say" or obvious. One of my general concerns around ArbCom etc. is the assumption that people know what is going on, when I believe most Wikipedians are actually too busy working on articles to follow the intricacies of ArbCom goings-on. I'm not sure how I'll vote, but I would be much happier with a candidate statement that reflected an understanding that many voters are coming in without a lot of background information. -Pete (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * IMO Jclemens has disqualified himself with his lack  of restraint over the Malleus case. There should be no place on the committee for people allowed to decide on civility/PA when they can't exercise it themselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Jclemens made himself persona non grata as far as I am concerned when he appeared to offer me a "retrial" at arbcom, as an alternative to an apology from him, over an untruth he had posted about me. I still find this completely baffling, as he had neither the authority to offer the one, nor any reason not to proffer the other, and hope that there is a sane explanation, however he has consistently refused to explain, so I must take it at face value.  I have posed the question on the questions page, but doubt I will get a coherent answer. Rich Farmbrough, 20:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC).

Questions
Questions for Jclemens

Kiefer .Wolfowitz  10:18, 5 December 2012 (UTC)