User:Ealdgyth/2020 Arb Election votes

It's that time of year again...

Note that I'm looking for folks who have their eye on the main point of this whole enterprise - writing an encyclopedia. With that in mind, I want content contributions, or at least the concept that they support content contributors. If you're an admin or not really doesn't matter to me at all. In fact, NOT being an admin should be a requirement for at least one of the seats, quite honestly. I'm also looking for folks who don't get so wrapped up in enforcing civility or rules that they forget that first goal above, the writing of the encyclopedia. I don't want to have my work interrupted by idiots who don't know the first thing about subject matter but who seem to think that their opinion on some tangental matter should trump the folks in the trenches writing the content and dealing with the vandals.

To that end - I wish folks had at least 45-50% of their contributions to article space, unless they show a LOT of clue in supporting content creation. Stupid ruleslawyering or spending ages at ANI will not get you much support here. Well, that's a great goal, but no way can I just judge candidates on that ... because very few candidates meet that standard. And a few of the ones that do, are not otherwise qualified, at least in my eyes.

In line with the last few years, I'm much less likely to approve of folks who are hardline on civility, for example. Also note that I do not consider myself suited for ArbCom, I do not deal well with high stress situations nor do I have the tact required. Whether I think someone is suited for ArbCom has nothing to do with whether I think they are good contributors to the project in other means.

As a side note, feel free to drop me a note on my talk page if you wish to discuss any of these.

And this is number 12 of these things I've done. Good gods, I'm turning into an institution. Over a decade. Yikes.

This year has really slammed me ... not necessarily in a bad way but it's run me ragged like never before. I'm busy as crap in RL and just don't have the time this year for the detailed statistical analysis of the candidates. So this year you're just going to get the comments, since to be honest, most of the candidates are at least not joke candidates.

Past votes

Handy!

To integrate

The Candidates

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020/Candidates

Support

SMcCandlish - per my reasonings in User:Ealdgyth/2017 Arb Election votes
Barkeep49 - I've been very impressed with his editing/mediating, especially at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine.
Primefac - this one is a very slight support. But it's a support. At least he didn't promise a chicken in every pot...

Oppose

Scottywong - to be honest, Scotty doesn't have the temperament to be an arb. He's entirely too quick to fly off the handle and he's too prone to make snap judgements without putting thought into them. His baiting of Eric that got SW pulled up at ANI (see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive312#Further attempts to bait Eric Corbett) pretty conclusively prove my point.
Bradv - Too "rules lawyerish" for my taste. An example is here, where Bradv insists on putting an article into mainspace just because the proper process hasn't been followed. And the icing on the cake of that discussion is it shat on one of our better contributors in the process, who has now left the cleanup that they were thanklessly doing. (@S Marshall: - thank you for your unappreciated at the time work on that - we should have treated you better.) Oh, and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog/Proposed decision just clenches it...Quite frankly, this is why women need to be on the arbcom - the fact that so many male members of the committee can't see how ... scary ... it is as a woman to get an unsolicited phone call from someone they are in a dispute with shows me that there is some serious issues with the editor-gap.
Maxim - underwhelmed is an understatement about the level of engagement with the community and the encyclopedia. We deserve better. And Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kudpung/Proposed decision is just the icing on the cake.
Hawkeye7 - I don't have a problem with Hawkeye as an editor, and think he does fine work, but his chip on his shoulder about his desysop shows that he doesn't have the temperament for ArbCom.

Neutral

CaptainEek - oh, look. It's the pledge to be more transparent. And to cut down drama. And to streamline procedures. Gosh, I think I read these every year... and I'm not seeing a lot of dispute work that makes me move off of neutral.
BDD - I'm ... underwhelmed with the statement and the answers to the questions. And I can't see that they've been that active in dispute resolution or anything else that would give me the feeling that they'd be an asset on the committee. I'm not wanting seat-warmers here, we want folks who actively engage.
Guerillero - I'd like to see a bit longer re-engagement with the community before jumping to ArbCom. Maybe next year.
L235 - cynical me has heard the "arbcom clerk will help fix arbcom" spiel before. Show me where you've been involved in solving disputes first.

Undecided

Withdrawn

TonyBallioni - this one is going against the "crowd" but I'm not impressed with a bunch of things Tony's done and frankly I think he'd be a disaster on the committee. I know he'll probably get elected, and I hope it doesn't turn into a BuRob or AlexShih situation, but I'm getting that vibe. I think Tony let his friendship/CU-relationship with Bbb23 color his viewpoint on the decision and Tony was in the wrong - Bbb23's behavior was concerning and had been unchecked too long.

Soapbox

Don't read here if you don't want unvarnished opinions.

I think Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Proposed decision was insane. To be utterly frank - I think comparing this decision to the Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog/Proposed decision or Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kudpung/Proposed decision I can not escape the impression that BrownHairedGirl was held to a higher standard of civility than male admins are held to.
As further evidence - see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog#Statement by Ealdgyth and the reply at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog#Statement by Alex Shih where the comments from women editors (and arbs!) are dismissed as "Bringing gender into this case for the pure purpose of illustrating the point about women's vulnerability when gender was completely uninvolved in this very case is unnecessarily divisive and puts undue weight on a certain class" or "How inappropriate, the gender comparisons really needs to stop. Harassment comes from all genders and affects all genders in the context of Wikipedia, and you know that very well."
Don't get me started on
WP:NONAZIS
and the insanity that is the unthinking support of it. The fact that the people supporting it can't see how their support of it is one of the things that actual Nazis did just ... amazes me. (For those unable to figure it out - one thing the Nazis did was loudly proclaim that some things were "what everyone supports" and that those things should be considered unarguable and thus folks who didn't support those "unarguable" positions shouldn't be considered part of the "healthy community". It's one step further from that to considering those "unhealthy" persons as unpersons and then well... those unpersons don't need to live, do they? Yes, that is a very simplified discussion but it's ultimately HOW the Nazis got to the place where they could murder 6 million Jews and 3+ million Slavs, not to mention the actual war casualties.)