Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013

List of Issues to discuss

 * Issues with no guidance from 2012 close - closer will need to arrive at a decision one way or the other
 * Scheduling - Obviously last year's day of the week/date combinations wont work. Same dates or same days of the week?
 * 8th Seat - Term of the 8th seat created by vacancy. Last year filled it, but doesn't address whether an 8th seat should always be a 2 year term or should stick with a tranche going forward.
 * Gray areas
 * Schedule for the Election Commission selection/just holding the selection. Since we now know there is to be one, no reason it couldn't be done at the same time as the main RFC, however the previous close is silent.
 * New Proposals - Consensus needed to change from existing rules
 * Direction to Commission members about how active they should be in the day to day operation of the election.
 * Questions in general/Follow up questions
 * Operational changes - Probably don't need formal closes, may not even need discussion at the RFC (could just move to a coordination page)
 * Better way to format questions to the candidates - possibly appropriating the formatting of Worm That Turned.
 * System to make sure everything gets done on time - last year we coordinated poorly in getting the poll requiring the WMF stuff done.
 * Reduction in candidate subpages/not splitting questions over multiple pages
 * Refine guide template to use LUA

Meta Discussion

 * I thought it would be useful to discuss how things should be split up during the RFC, as well as jot down anything that needed to be addressed so it can be raised promptly at the start of the RFC. Feel free to tinker with my formatting above, or add additional topics. My thought was it would make sense to structure the discussion into sections as above, so that it was clear what was being proposed as a new idea or change. Thoughts?  Monty  845  04:55, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Voting procedure: proposing change "No vote" to "Abstain"
The three types of vote in last year's AC elections were "Support", "No vote", and "Oppose". I would like to propose a rewording: change "No vote" either to "Abstain", or else to "No opinion". I am concerned that some voters may be confused by the current headings and could accidentally misread "No vote" as meaning a " No " vote — i.e., some people might vote to abstain on a given candidate, when in fact they meant to oppose that candidate. The nature of this problem is that we can never know how many (or how few) people actually made this mistake; the best approach, IMO, is to make the voting procedure as unambiguous as possible, so as to minimize the likelihood of confusion and erroneous votes. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sound reasonable. NE Ent 09:27, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Abstain would be the least ambiguous. Jehochman Talk 12:01, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Proposed by Rich on the RFC page. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Advertising
I have advertised the RFC at WP:AN, WP:VPP, WP:VPM, WT:AC/N, WT:AC and WP:CENT. If I missed anywhere, please feel free to correct it. Monty 845  00:43, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

What to do about the Election Commission selection
Looking for thoughts on when the Election Commission selection process should take place this year. Anyone got an opinion? Monty 845  01:10, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I know that having Jimbo make the final selection slowed things down last year... --Rschen7754 01:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * When is the first time the Electoral Commission would need to be involved, when could the first decision they need to make be? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The earliest an issue could crop up would be the start of nominations, but most issues probably wouldn't need to be finally resolved until the secure poll needs to be put together during the fallow period. The commissioners last year envision a rather involved commission though, so under that approach, they should be ready from the start of nominations and not later. Monty  845  01:31, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What about beginning on Sunday 13 October with a one week nomination period, then two weeks for community comment, then two weeks for Jimbo? Is is probably something we should ask Jimbo, how much time does he want/think he'll need. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

One of the most critical functions of the EC is acting as liaison with WMF developer staff to set up the SecurePoll. Voter lists can be run well in advance, with only the addition of the names of the candidates at the end of the nominating period. However, developer time needs to be allocated to do this, and so a bugzilla needs to be filed as soon as possible. I strongly urge getting the EC up and running as early as possible, because my personal experience earlier this year with the WMF board/FDC elections was that there are very few WMF developers with sufficient understanding of the SecurePoll extension to successfully set one up, and those same developers are in high demand for other WMF-wide matters. The engineering department needs sufficient notice to be able to assign appropriately qualified staff - and that means weeks in advance, not days. Risker (talk) 16:46, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I've created for the purposes of reducing the level of chaos compared to last year. :D Happy‑melon 17:58, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think that interwiki link goes where you think it does. Monty  845  18:01, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Since when has Wikimedia had a wikipedia in Buginese?!? :P Happy‑melon 22:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * While it is undoubtedly ceremonial only, what is the point in having Jimbo make the appointments? In this day and age, it seems a needless flourish.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Disagree there is no point; there are two points. It is the currently-vestigial reminder that adminships, elections, and so on and so forth, were once No Big Deal.  (Why does the UK still have a Queen?  As a reminder that once, royalty was a Very Big Deal... and as a distraction for the masses, who are unable to distinguish between the razzle-dazzle, and the real power-wielders, in this day and age, as you so bluntly put it.)  Every so often, there is a royalist party in the UK, which crops up from time to time.  Every so often, the metaphorically analogical process may happen with Jimbo.  HTH.   Long Live Wikipedia.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Monty845's statement regarding the role of the Commission
Regarding Monty845's statement in this section. Whilst I see where Monty is coming from and I agree in principle, I think that there are some positives in a hands on approach, such as organisation and readability. Some of the more mundane (clerking type) jobs need to be done and should be done with the backing (or at least support and supervision of the Commission). I really don't want to get this more bureaucratic than it already is, but maybe if we allowed the Commission to appoint other editors on it's own authority to do the more mundane jobs, somewhat like ArbCom does with the clerks. Maybe ArbCom clerks can do this, although (not speaking for the others) there is already a decent workload there. If it came down to a yes or no (ie hands off or hands on) I would go towards hands off for the reasons Monty outlined, however I think this is an area where we can provide the Commission with some more help. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:22, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No. ArbCom should not have a function in elections to ArbCom. I didn't really see any problem with the handling of the pages last year, but if we need an independent body of election clerks they should be community selected. NE Ent 09:41, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Much of what the coordinators (not sure we really used that term much last year, but its what they were called in the past) do in running the election is mundane, uncontroversial and requires no extra authority, creating pages, updating templates, checking to make sure candidates nominate themselves in the technically correct way, answering basic questions from interested editors, and basically paying attention to the day to day stuff. There are occasionally more sensitive tasks that the coordinators traditionally carried out, like policing comments on candidate pages, and verifying candidate eligibility, but at least historically, being uninvolved has sufficed for those tasks too. Then there are the questions that need to be decided, but that are controversial, and beyond the authority of any old uninvolved editor to just decide. Obviously the commission is tasks with that last category, but I'm not sure why the commission would need to even deputize someone to deal with the earlier categories. Monty  845  14:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * By your own logic, if the coordinator job could be accomplished without any special superpowers, then it should not be something anybody on ArbCom spends time doing. And I agree strongly with NE.Ent -- basic separation of powers, aka checks and balances, says that you never never let the politicians (whether they are running for office this time around or not) be the ones who count the votes, design the ballot layout, answer basic questions from interested voters.  If it is day-to-day stuff, then create a clerking position, with an oath that the clerk be neutral, and with a community-controlled recall process which can depose the clerk if they are not neutral (which event should also overturn the election that clerk oversaw).  HTH.  74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:00, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Schedule comments
The top of the page says in CAPITAL BOLD letters discussions should be here, not on the main page. So I'm moving these comments per wp:sofixit NE Ent 09:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Per consensus below, the comments have been restored to original location. NE Ent 11:28, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Process
I'm surprised to see a list of "Users who endorse this statement" but not a list of "Users who oppose this statement". Is this an unintentional omission? Without this, there is no basis to judge support, considering there are tens of thousands of active Editors and only small group that participate in these debates. How many votes endorsing a statement are required to enact it? Without knowing how many people oppose it, it's not clear what the threshold is. Liz Read!</b> <b style="color:#006400;">Talk!</b> 18:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The way the format is intended to work, is that if there is opposition to a position, an editor will make a statement regarding why, and editors can endorse that statement, essentially as an oppose. In past years, editors have also boldly added oppose sections directly, ignoring the intended format, and they stuck. If a statement gets much support at all, and goes unopposed, it may pass if the closer things there is adequate support, there is no hard number. It is a legacy from previous years where consensus needed to be established for every rule, and so opposing wasn't really helpful if you weren't opposing in favor of something else. That is still true for things like the schedule, we need to have a schedule, and so opposing the only proposal doesn't really get you anywhere. With the changes from the recent RFC, we could start switching to (the now more common) support/oppose sections, but I didn't want to rock the boat any more then the RFC already did, so I just went with the old formatting when I drafted it, and no one has stepped in to change it. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  20:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with youu Liz - to me the Rfc way always looked like a bunch of people with loudspeakers all talking past each other. Sometimes we add oppose/not endorse bits and I encourage folks to do so as it gives a more accurate picture of how some things are interpreted. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:20, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate you taking the time to give me a response, Monty . I still don't think it makes a lot of sense not to have some threshold of votes. After all, if there 20 Editors who support a proposition but 50 opposing it, it sounds like it would still pass.  Liz  <sup style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b style="color:#006400;">Read!</b> <b style="color:#006400;">Talk!</b> 18:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Is it too late to suggest we not have separate pages for proposals and comments on proposals?
Threaded conversations are imperfect, but useful and an order of magnitude better than this alternative. Having to switch back and forth between project page and talk page is annoying. I know NE Ent (and maybe others, haven't checked) are moving comments to this page because that's what the rule says, but could we perhaps change the silly rule instead? --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I just copied the rule from last year. I personally have no objection to dropping it. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  14:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Moving the comments is annoying, too -- I'm all for abolishing silly rules. NE Ent 15:59, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hearing no objections -- and noting additional threads had cropped up on main page -- I've restored the comments I moved and removed the rule from the top of the page. NE Ent 11:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I object to keeping silly rules! Did I win?  Oh yay!  Thanks for improving wikipedia. &mdash; 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:04, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment on proposal by User:Od Mishehu
Od Mishehu proposes (here) that if an arbitrator is elected for a one-year term, and then in the ensuing year an arbitrator resigns with more than a year left in his/her term, the one-year arbitrator then steps into the two-year seat and serves the additional year. (Or at least that is what I understand the proposal to be, if that is wrong please correct me.) I understand the reasoning behind this idea, but I think that still means that the "classes" are likely to get out of balance. (Which, while I seem to be obsessed with this "balance", is not really the case. I don't think the Earth would spin off into deep space, or even that Wikipedia would spin off into deep space - any more than it already has  :) - if the classes became imbalanced. I just think it would be better to keep them in balance.) And there is another reason why one-year terms, when there is a vacancy, are not such a bad idea.  While I don't have the statistics in front me, I am fairly certain that most of the people who have received one-year terms have had support percentages in the 50's - which makes sense considering that the one-year terms go to the "winners" with the lowest support percentages. In past RfC's there have been a number of editors (and in one year, almost a majority) who favored a "floor" or 60 percent or higher.  (I have always favored 50 percent, or actually, more supports than opposes, but who's counting.)  So in years when there are one-year terms available, the "winners" who scrape by with just over 50 percent might get a one-year term instead of two years, giving the community a "quicker" opportunity to look at that arbitrator (one year instead of two) and decide whether he/she should spend any more time on the committee. So call me crazy, but I think the current system (with Monty's one tweak of letting one seat shift back and forth between "classes" in case of a resignation) is pretty good and should be retained. Neutron (talk) 22:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The proposal would not result in a tranche imbalance, by the time the 1 year arbiters start serving, there would be 8 seats with 2 year terms, and if vacated, the 1 year term arbiter just fills that existing 2 year term, leaving a 1 year term vacant, which was originally part of the tranche due for the subsequent election anyway. The proposal would reduce the likelyhood of the 8th seat swapping tranches, which doesn't seem like a big deal either way. That said, I think its a feature that the candidates elected with the lowest support will be up for re-election sooner, and would not want to see their terms automatically extended to 2 years if there are vacancies in the tranche. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  22:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I don't have time to map it all out right now, but it seems to me that while you are correct for the first resignation of an arbitrator who is in the first year of a two-year term (since that seat was going to "switch classes" anyway), I do not think you are correct for the second (or later) such resignation.  The arb with the one-year term who is "promoted" into the two year seat does not leave any vacancy to be filled, since his/her one-year term was going to end at the end of that year anyway.  (This all assumes we do not suddenly start having mid-year elections to fill vacancies.)  As I say, this is a general impression, I have not actually sat down with pen and paper to figure it out.  I also am wondering whether you and I are understanding Od Mishehu's proposal exactly the same way, and if so, which one of us (if either) is correct.  But I agree with your last sentence, which also supports not making this change.  Neutron (talk) 23:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Lets say we have 10 seats to fill this election, A-J. A-H will be filled with Candidates 1-8 (Number also represents place in election) and have 2 year terms. I and J, with 1 year terms, will be filled by candidates 9 and 10. 8 Resigns, 9 gets bumped to seat H, term expiring at the end of 2015. Seat I would have been up for election in 2014 anyway, and still will be. Lets say an Arbiter from the other tranche then resigns, nothing happens, because their seat only has a year left anyway, and so no one gets bumped to a longer term. 7 Then resigns, 10 moves to the newly vacated seat G term ending in 2015, and seat J is up for election in 2014, either way. There will be at least 7 seats up for election in 2014 regardless. If 5 and 6 then resign, one seat will swap tranches in 2014, for 8 terms with 2 years, and another seat will be open for a 1 year term. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  23:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But Who's on First?, that's what I want to know. Seriously though, I will have to look at this tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.  Neutron (talk) 00:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Monty, I just tried to work out your scenario on paper, but I need some clarification. You mention five resignations:  Arb # 8; the un-numbered Arb from the "other tranche", let's call that Seat K; then Arbs # 7, 5 and 6.  Do you mean they are all resigning in the same year?  (Which we are calling 2014.)  And to make it less complicated, are they all resigning before the "cutoff date" (meaning the date on which the number of seats to be filled in the election is determined) for the 2014 elections?  Neutron (talk) 21:55, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

General questions and proposed changes
A set of general questions for the candidates is being developed at Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Questions/General. Some changes to these general questions have been proposed at Questions/General#Proposed updated/simplified question set for discussion and also at Questions/General#A question suggested by Tryptofish, but there has not been any feedback on these proposed changes yet. People interested are encouraged to comment there. Thanks. 64.40.54.75 (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Block/ban issue for candidates
"Requirements: 500 edits, editor in good standing, not under block or ban, meets the Foundation's access to non-public data, willing to identify, and has disclosed alternate accounts (or disclosed legitimate accounts to Arbcom). A candidate isn't disqualified for being blocked after the nomination was made, except for sockpuppetry."
 * It's a bit complicated ... so you're ineligible if blocked or banned on any WMF site or just en.WP? And presumably that means before nomination. But it's OK to be banned after nomination, or blocked for anything but sockpuppetry. I'm struggling to think this through; and again, we're talking en.WP, yes? Tony   (talk)  01:44, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Closed early?
Surprised to see this page shut down when the guidelines say it will be open until Saturday 23:59, 9 November 2013. Liz <sup style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b style="color:#006400;">Read!</b> <b style="color:#006400;">Talk!</b> 21:49, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe someone wanted to go to bed early. Or go out. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, this RFC (the main election RFC) was closed on the day it was supposed to be, November 1. The other election-related RFC, which was about the candidates for the Election Commission, was supposed to remain open until the date and time mentioned by Liz - and it did, actually it was closed by Jimbo about six hours after that.  Neutron (talk) 01:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)