Arbitration Committee elections underway

The annual elections for the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee opened Monday 21 November and will last for two weeks until 23:59 UTC Sunday 4 December. ArbCom is the peak body for imposing binding solutions to the site's editor-conduct disputes, and is itself governed by the arbitration policy. Arbitration is generally the last avenue of dispute resolution, and over the years the administrators' noticeboard has tended to shoulder more of the work that might previously have ended up with the committee.

The election follows a self-nomination period from 6 to 15 November that yielded 11 candidates for the seven vacant positions, which will run two-year terms (1 January 2017 – 31 December 2018). Candidate statements range from a pithy three words to the maximum 400 words permitted. Q&As for each candidate have revealed one or two interesting snippets.

Of the six current arbitrators whose terms are about to finish, three are standing at this election for another term, and three are not contesting their seats:

• Doug Weller, DGG, and DeltaQuad (all standing again), and Courcelles, Guerillero, and Salvio giuliano (not standing again).

Eight editors not currently arbitrators are standing, of whom three have previously served on the committee, four have stood unsuccessfully in previous years, and two are new to the process:

• Newyorkbrad (previous terms 2008–14), Euryalus (previous term ended 2015), Salvidrim! (withdrew prior to voting in 2015), LFaraone (previous term 2013–15; unsuccessful in 2015), Calidum (unsuccessful in 2011 and 2014), Ks0stm (unsuccessful in 2012, 2013, and 2014), Writ Keeper (first time), and Mkdw (first time).

Updated with slight corrections to previous two paragraphs per comment. -Ed.

The terms of eight of the 15 arbitrators do not expire until the end of 2017, and they will not be involved in the election:

• GorillaWarfare, Casliber, Opabinia regalis, Keilana, Drmies, Callanecc, Kelapstick, Kirill Lokshin.

The Signpost spoke briefly with veteran arbitrator Casliber—now halfway through his third term since 2008—about the challenges and trends of work on the Committee. He says he's generally pleased that each year brings "a quorum of suitable candidates" for election. Arbitrators' workload has become more moderate (in the early days he remembers "getting up and facing 60 or 70 emails a day before breakfast"). However, some of the work has become more complex and ethically challenging as Wikipedia's credibility and authority as a source of information have grown; he says that view-pushing and paid editing—often hidden and sometimes on an industrial scale—have complicated aspects of arbitrators' forensic work and decision-making. Interestingly, Cas has observed a consistent pattern over the years in which new arbitrators soon become more sensitive to the need for a delicate balance between community openness and the protection of individuals' privacy. Like a number of current and previous arbitrators, he would be happy to see the Wikimedia Foundation play an enhanced role in dealing with some of the most difficult issues individual-related case that the Committee encounters—but he feels that this is unlikely to happen in the short term.

The election is being managed by Guy Macon, Mike V, and Mdann52. Candidates are competing through a formula that has been used for many years: the number of supports divided by the sum of supports and opposes for each candidate. There is a neutral option, although voters who wish to strategically give maximum advantage to their supports should avoid neutral votes. Through this formula, the minimum score (support per (support+oppose)) required for election is 0.5 (not itself a percentage, since it does not incorporate undervotes); if not enough candidates achieve this score, fewer than seven seats will be filled.

An official guide to candidates provides basic information about the candidates' positions. Private voting guides listed in the election template are by: Elonka, Biblioworm, SSTflyer, RegentsPark, Guerillero, Collect, Reyk, Carrite, QEDK, BU Rob13, and Tryptofish.

Immediately following the voting period, a small team of stewards whose main wikis are not the English Wikipedia will check the votes for duplicate, missing, and ineligible votes, and compile a tally of the results. At the time of publication, the link to the instructions for scrutineers that is provided on the election page is dead. The announcement of the successful candidates is usually posted on the election page within a week after the end of voting.

Brief notes

• The second annual Wikipedia Asian Month, an online edit-a-thon to connect Asian Wikipedia communities and to build articles relating to Asian countries, will conclude at the end of November. During last year's Wikipedia Asian Month, more than 7,000 articles were contributed in 43 languages.
• The Africa Destubathon, a contest to build out the 37,000 stub articles relating to Africa, concludes on November 27. An ongoing progress report, both for the general contest and for articles about women, is available on the initiative’s leaderboard.
• Wikimedia's Funds Dissemination Committee has issued its first round of recommendations for 11 chapter organizations for the 2016-17 fiscal year. The recommendations will guide the WMF in determining how much funding to allocate to which organization in its Annual Plan Grants. The recommendations vary from 50% to 100% of the amount requested, for the various chapters. The document includes comments on three structural changes: shared, grantee-defined metrics; the "Simple APG" process, introduced in 2015 and available for affiliates that are applying for less funding and that prefer a less onerous application; and the advent of two-year funding cycles, which it recommends for two of the chapters.
• For further brief notes, see the November 9 and November 22 editions of the "Community Digest" on the Wikimedia Foundation Blog.