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Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006

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acejan2006

In January 2006, the second annual election for the Arbitration Committee was held to advise Jimmy Wales as to how to appoint to the Committee.

Eight of the twelve seats were up for change, as the terms of Fred Bauder and David Gerard expired on 31 December 2005, as did the temporary placements of James F., Fennec, Jayjg, and Mindspillage. Finally, Sannse and Kelly Martin resigned from the Committee (on 4 November 2005 and 12 January 2006, respectively).

When the Arbitration Committee were first appointed, Jimbo intended that Arbitrators serve staggered three-year terms to provide continuity. In any such election, Arbitrators are entitled to run for re-appointment. The remaining appointed seats will be up for election when their terms expire.

The result of the poll was 19-3-25-5 (plus some votes like 'don't care' and 'abstain'). Therefore we will be using my second proposal.

"Hybrid approach: Jimbo can put forward candidates for community approval, 50% majority is enough. And also the community can put forward candidates for Jimbo's approval, with the same 50% majority being enough. Any dually approved candidates above the number of seats on the ArbCom go into a pool of reserves. Jimbo states a general intention to always appoint candidates approved by the community as a matter of convention, while reserving the right to refuse to seat any particularly problematic candidates."

The community can and should begin a community approval process immediately, patterned as closely as is reasonable after the RfA process. The point of the process should be to generate a pool of acceptable candidates from whom I can make appointments.

Notice that the way this is designed, all candidates must go through the approval process, so my role in putting forward candidates is essentially just a way for me to communicate pre-approval to the community. I don't plan to do that in this term unless it appears that we are overlooking someone particularly noteworthy.

--Jimbo Wales

• The election ran from 9 January 2006, 00:01 until 22 January 2006, 23:59 UTC. All nominations had to be declared before the election started. The new ArbCom terms should start on 1 February 2006.
• During that time, any user that registered an account on the English Wikipedia on or before 30 September 2005 and had 150 edits before the start of the election (January 9) was allowed to cast a vote for or against each individual candidate. An ambiguous or neutral vote was considered an abstention.
• A voting subpage was created for each candidate and are listed here; each candidate has her or his own subpage where votes for or against the candidate were placed.
• To prevent "disendorsements", voters were requested to not add extensive comments to their votes; such comments may have been moved to the talk page by an uninvolved party. They were, of course, free to ask questions of the candidates.
• All candidates with more 'support' votes than 'oppose' votes were eligible for the ArbCom. If there are more approvals than seats available, Jimbo will either expand the size of the committee or choose among the community approved candidates. He has stated a general intention to appoint candidates mostly in the order of the percentage of approval in the community.

These points have been discussed on the talk page.

Candidate statements for the December 2005 January 2006 elections can be found here.

• A provisional ruleset for this year's procedure was under discussion here. Two suggested rulesets that arose from those discussions are still available for comment here
• A set of proposed modifications to rules made by jguk.
• A proposed overhaul of elections and the dispute resolution system generally, made by Michael Snow.
• Quadell's Proposal - It can all be very simple, if we want.
• Wikipedia:Dispute resolution reform (WP:DRR) - for general and organized overview of proposed changes to DR system and process.
• It's-is-not-a-genitive's proposals, or suggestions how to democratically elect Arbcom without having an unlimited number of arbiters.

An unofficial count of the votes used by Jimbo to make his decision is available at User:Mathbot/ArbCom Election January 2006 and http://toolserver.org/~interiot/cgi-bin/arbcom.

Jimbo announced that eleven seats (three additional to the eight originally planned) would be added to the Arbitration Committee, bringing the total up to fifteen seats.

Eight of the twelve seats were up for change, as the terms of Fred Bauder and David Gerard expired on 31 December 2005, as did the temporary placements of James F., Fennec, Jayjg, and Mindspillage. Sannse and Kelly Martin resigned from the Committee (on 4 November 2005 and 12 January 2006, respectively). Jimbo Wales announced that eleven seats (three additional to the eight originally planned) would be added to the Arbitration Committee, bringing the total up to fifteen seats.

Mindspillage was elected to fill her position and Filiocht, Charles Matthews, and Morven were elected to Beta tranche (serving until 2008) to fill positions left vacant by Fred Bauder, User:Fennec, and Jayjg. James F. was appointed as a new seat to the Arbitration Committee by Jimbo after gaining community support.

SimonP and Dmcdevit were appointed to Alpha tranche (serving until 2007) to fill positions left vacant by James F. and Sannse. Fred Bauder was appointed as a new seat to the Arbitration Committee by Jimbo after gaining community support.

Sam Korn and Mackensen were appointed to Gamma tranche (serving until 2006) to fill positions left vacant by Jayjg and Kelly Martin. Jayjg was appointed as a new seat to the Arbitration Committee by Jimbo after gaining community support.

• A poll just completed to gauge community input and feedback about the selection process.
• A proposal at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct.