Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012/Candidates/Pgallert/Questions

Moved comments from #Question from Giano
Firstly, let me say that I don’t think not being an admin should affect your chances of election at all – it probably will, but it shouldn’t. I have come here because your name was given to me as the sort of candidate that I might like. However, I am concerned about your commitment to the project.

Putting aside, for the moment, your low edit count. You say “''I practice a thing called weekend, and I am part of an entity called family. Saturdays and Sundays I am off, also off Wikipedia.” You also say “I am usually online for at least an hour a day.”'' Do you feel that with such limited time, you can function effectively as an Arb – I have heard it described as almost a full time job. I know myself that just reading and evaluating the evidence on a complicated case can take an hour, catching up on a couple of case after a weekend can take two hours – and then having caught up, you will have to deliberate etc. Even if you are a fast reader, how is this achievable? The Arbcom is slow enough, will you be a passenger? If not, how will you be able to function with such limited time available? You then say “The CheckUser and Oversight permissions I will accept, though.” What if we have an emergency at a weekend – it has happened. I believe that Checkuser and Oversight are a responsibility rather than an honour: You won’t be around, does this mean that you think for over 30% of the time your share of responsibility should be permanently the burden of others? Might these rights be better given to someone else with more time available?

If you can convince me that you fully understand the meaning of responsibility and commitment, I will be happy to vote for you and encourage others to do the same. I think I can count five or six interrogation marks there, so that’s enough for now. Giano (talk) 09:35, 29 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Answer: I have a full-time job, I have a family, and I will sacrifice neither of that for Wikipedia. I also think nobody else should. That said, the "one hour per day" was an at-least commitment. That's what I think I can contribute even if I am very busy, usually it will be more than that. I got an impression when browsing through past cases of the effort it takes to evaluate evidence, to discuss remedies, to formulate statements. I think I can do that, else I would not have offered my nomination. I cannot take another full-time job, though.
 * I will not be the ideal person to react to emergency situations on weekends. I wouldn't be able to do emergency blocks myself, there will be weekends when I'm not around at all, and I already indicated that the "incoming mail" task force would not be my favourite area. I can, however, assure you of my commitment to the project and my (for now at most partial) understanding of what it takes to be an Arb.
 * Sorry, you are not being terriby encouraging. Often there's emergency oversighting to be done, or even grabbing an admin to do a block for you if you can't block yourself. I think perhpaps you should ask yourself, if you really want and are able to take an Arb's job on - because it is a job and quite a big one and you would not be the first to find it too time consuming. Giano (talk) 13:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Emergency oversighting is not something that I expect to be very time consuming. But granted, you and others might have wished for more time commitment from my side. I just don't want to make promises that I cannot keep. --Pgallert (talk) 15:07, 29 November 2012 (UTC)