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< Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008 | Candidate statements

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by John Vandenberg (talk | contribs) at 20:32, 18 November 2008 (my statement). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Jayvdb

“ I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary. ”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Editors note, Fear and Loathing in America by Douglas Brinkley. ISBN 0747553459, p.xvi.
See Wikiquote for another apt alternative of this quote.)

Hi. My name is John Vandenberg. I have "outed" myself on my userpage. Nothing too exciting, however I feel it is very important that arbitrators are real people. It is not necessary that their real name is known, but it is important that their formal education and experience is known, in order that the community can make informed decisions about who to vote for, and so that people coming to the committee for arbitration can get a feel for the people making the decisions.

I served as a Arbitration Clerk for much of the first half of 2008, and this experience and the termination of it was an eye opener. I am aware of the responsibility, workload and difficulty involved, and still wish to put my name down - more fool me.

My commitments:

  1. I will not edit policy pages or influence policy. This is the responsibility of the community, and arbitrators should not write the policies that they will use in decisions.
  2. I will oppose any remedy that that is not substantially grounded on existing policy that was written by the community, or on resolutions passed by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  3. I will be highly active and available, and will step down and turn in my "access" if I am no longer carrying my share of the load.

I will bring to the committee the following:

  1. Broad technical skills to automate tasks that the committee regularly performs, and improve processes where possible.
  2. Broad experience and exposure to the culture and leaders of most of the WMF projects
  3. Broad language skills - I can only write in English, however I enjoy working with foreign languages and people who don't have a good grasp of English.

Whilst on the committee, my mission for reform within the committee and arbitration process will be to:

  1. Encourage participatory democracy.
    The arbitration committee has taken on too much authority, overburdening themselves, putting themselves up for the great fall, and causing many people in the community to quake in their boots when committee member waltzes in. It is now up to the committee to stop, turn around, devolve responsibility, and encourage and assist the community to set up better wiki management for the non-arbitration tasks that are in their workload simply because they are the only current elected group that is endorsed by WMF to make decisions. With less "other stuff" to do, the committee can spend more time focusing on arbitrating, and stop trying to define right and wrong.
  2. Fire the slackers and the lurkers and people whose term is up.
    Each year, more people are added to "ex-arb" list, who can keep their bits and place in the power structure. I'll be honest: I dont know what effect this has on the ability of the sitting arbs to do their job properly, however I do know that it is good to shed dead skin every once in a while. After obtaining a good feel for the inner workings, and in consultation with the sitting arbs, I will write a report for the community summarising traffic levels on the arbcom list, grouped in various ways, including breaking it down by arbcom list member. The community will be encouraged to define what they want to know, and to discuss the results openly. Obviously the report will be limited to what is fit for public display. I envisage this type of report to the community will become a quarterly bulletin.
  3. Require that arbitration cases have a clear scope before they open.
    Arbcom cases go haywire when they are not well defined. This is primarily a community problem, but it is also the responsibility of the committee. The community often throws meaningless comments supporting or opposing an RFAR that hasnt opened. This initial period should be for the people involved to define their grievance, and for the community and arbcom to agree on a scope. Where no scope can be established, there is no case, and it should be rejected until the community can put together something that can be arbitrated.