 | These guides represent the thoughts of their authors. All individually written voter guides are eligible for inclusion. |
Go away! Don't read this!
editYou really should not care what I say here. I'm not a reliable source, and everything that follows is nothing more than original research. The entire voter guide system is flawed. Many of the guide writers have axes to grind, and some guides are just weird (in fact, most of them are). I do hope that you will vote in the election, and that you will think carefully about your vote. But voter guides should not be taken too seriously. And if you are here just for the lulz, you are going to be disappointed by how boring my opinions are.
I don't try to predict the outcome. (In 2016, my supports predicted the outcome with 100% accuracy, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen again.) Rather, I try to give you good faith advice about who would or would not serve best on the Committee, based on my long-time close observation of them, and my participation in cases. I don't do "neutral" or "abstain", so I'm going to offer an opinion on every candidate, for better or for worse. There are six seats to be filled in this election. I usually don't try to support exactly six candidates and oppose the rest (so called "strategic voting"), but I do try to align my level of support approximately with the level of need.
This year, I am supporting four candidates for the six open seats. There are 13 candidates running, and a particularly high number of candidates who are really quite good. Consequently, it is a mathematical certainty that some highly qualified candidates will not make the cut. I've thought about this, and I've found that four candidates are the ones that I feel strongly ought to be elected, although there are several more whom I could easily support. I decided, therefore, to endorse and vote for only four, because I want to help those candidacies as much as I can. You should consider all of these supports to be strong supports. But it follows that several (not all) of my opposes end up being particularly mild, and should be understood that way. I don't label my supports or opposes as being "strong" or "weak", but you can get a feel for those nuances if you read my comments, which you definitely should.
I don't have any litmus tests, but I look for candidates whom I trust. I consider how well a candidate's views match up with where I think the community is at, and how I think the particular candidate will fit in as one member of a committee. That latter point includes how well the candidate communicates with the community and is inclined towards transparency, and how well I think they will be able to handle the tensions of the workload and the controversies. I think it's important to care about improving how the Committee works. I also care about willingness to consider the evidence, to not act rashly, and – especially – to listen to community feedback and to change one's mind in response to feedback.
Per this discussion, I want to offer candidates the opportunity to rebut anything that I say here. Please feel free to do so at User talk:Tryptofish/ACE2018, and if you do, I will make a notation in the table below, just to the right of my recommendation, so that anyone looking here will be directed to it.
Recommendations
edit| Candidate | Comments | Recommendation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AGK | As I indicated above, I'm supporting very few candidates and several of my opposes are very weak ones. And here, if I were to have supported just one more candidate, AGK would have been the one. He is a past Arb who has very good judgment in recognizing a problem as a problem. There is no question that he could do a good job. But he was on the Committee at a time when there were a lot of tensions between members, and I'd like to see a different membership configuration now. |  Oppose |
|
| Courcelles | My single strongest support among four strong supports. A past member who has always been the grown-up in the room. His judgment is entirely dependable and trustworthy. (And I'm baffled by some other voter guides' objections to his being married to another sensible editor, just because she is employed by the WMF.) |  Support |
|
| DGG | Currently an Arb, seeking a third term. I like the way that he thinks for himself instead of following the other members, and how he is careful not to sanction anyone undeservedly. But I think other candidates are better at articulating their reasoning. | Oppose |
|
| Drmies | A past Arb, seeking to return to the Committee. An outstanding administrator and someone I like personally, but when he was on the Committee before, he sometimes seemed defensive in response to criticism and was reluctant to change his mind when presented with new evidence. It's odd how someone so well suited to being an administrator can fare differently when placed in the particularly harsh spotlight of ArbCom. | Oppose |
|
| Fred Bauder | He was on the Committee at its very beginning, and has been inactive for a long time, coming back just recently to run in this election. And he sadly illustrates how standards have risen over the years. In the brief time he has been back, he has gotten into a mess of controversies. It's never a good sign when a candidate is also the subject of a case currently before the Committee. | Oppose |
|
| GorillaWarfare | A past member seeking to return. She has compelling views, based on her first-hand difficult experience, in dealing with gender discrimination and making the project more welcoming to women. That's important. But I feel like she gets a bit too self-righteous about it, and it gets in the way of her judgment. I frankly dislike her candidate statement. She makes it sound like the rest of the Committee don't have what it takes to be fair and welcoming in a gender-neutral way, and her don't vote for me if you aren't on board with what I want to do attitude just sounds arrogant. | Oppose |
|
| Isarra | Not a serious candidate. | Oppose |
|
| Joe Roe | A newish administrator, who might very well be good on the Committee. But I feel like he needs more experience in the more difficult areas of dispute resolution. | Oppose |
|
| Kelapstick | A past member, who did a particularly excellent job, leading me to support very strongly. Don't be misled by his aw shucks demeanor. He is very smart, fair, and did a good job of communicating with the community. | Support |
|
| Lourdes | Another newish administrator, who is personally very likable, but who has made some errors in judgment. | Oppose |
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| Mkdw | I support Mkdw's reelection with the highest of enthusiasm. His judgment is consistently on-point. He is one of the smartest people to have served on the Committee, and he should not be overlooked. | Support |
|
| Robert McClenon | I thought seriously about supporting him because of his long-time dedicated service at WP:DRN. He is a non-administrator, which typically means no chance of being elected, but I hope that this will change someday. In any case, there were reasons he has failed at RfA, and that's just enough to make me prefer other candidates. | Oppose |
|
| SilkTork | A past member of ArbCom, and an excellent one. He has had experience with times when the Committee was fractious, and he understands particularly well how to make things work smoothly. He is outgoing, a good communicator, and very fair. | Support |
And finally...
editBeing on ArbCom is a difficult and largely thankless task, but if it is done right, it makes Wikipedia a better place for the rest of us. Thank you to everyone who is a candidate in this election! And I also want to thank Alex Shih, DeltaQuad, Doug Weller, Euryalus, Ks0stm, and Newyorkbrad, the outgoing members of the Committee who are not seeking reelection this year.