ArbCom 2018 election

Discussion about the yearly Arbitration Committee elections.
Renée Bagslint
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ArbCom 2018 election

Post by Renée Bagslint » Sun Sep 09, 2018 5:22 pm

A timely reminder from Gender Desk that now is the time to start getting ready for the 2018 round of elections. You need to have registered and clocked up 150 edits by 1st November. As the Desk points out, don't even think about trying to game the system ...

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The Devil's Advocate
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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Sun Nov 04, 2018 9:14 pm

It is now open for nominations. This time around, per the annual RfC on the elections, only six spots are available. Since there are seven Arbs concluding their terms, at least one of them doesn't have a chance at re-election. Of course, it is unlikely that will be an issue since we rarely see them all run for another term anyway. Per usual, there are not any candidates jumping into the breach just yet to go after a seat.

Of those Arbs whose terms are coming up, nearly half are currently listed as inactive. Euryalus, who quit halfway into his first venture into ArbCom, has been inactive for a month. Ks0stm hasn't been active since June with large gaps before that as well. DeltaQuad was listed as inactive in July, but has still been editing regularly, suggesting a lack of interest in activity rather than a genuine lack of activity. All of them seem unlikely to make another run. DGG, Doug Weller, Mkdw, and Newyorkbrad, are therefore the more likely candidates to run for re-election. Brad is not as active in editing, but he still shows up for his ArbCom duties regularly moreso than any of them. He seems likely to run again if the field isn't especially crowded.

However, it is worth noting that, typically, Arbs who have had two consecutive terms usually decline to run again. Only Newyorkbrad and Roger Davies have had three consecutive uninterrupted terms. In other words, Brad is the one most likely to run again. However, former Arbs are more likely to run again after a year or two. Arbs who departed in the last two years are therefore prime candidates to run this year.

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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:35 am

So, we have our first batch of fresh mea- . . . errr . . . contenders. Robert McClenon, who tried and failed last year to become an admin, and some random non-admin no one knows have both thrown their hats into the ring. More significantly is Fred Bauder, one of the original Arbs has come back a decade later to give it another shake. His responses to questions have been underwhelming. Having experience with ArbCom isn't gonna mean much if he doesn't do a better job of making his case. Something I noticed and someone else asked about, is Bauder's political editing. A number of questionable edits have been made by Bauder on political topics. On the article about Trump's business career he added a section about the "major elements of Trump's business" right after the intro and it essentially presents his career as being the result of fraud. It appears this is the reason for the question as the same person who asked it removed the section.

Bauder does not seem to be strictly pro-Democrat in his editing, however. In edits about Facebook he referred to the NDI and IRI together as "U.S. funded propaganda organizations" despite them being associated with the Democrats and Republicans respectively. The cited source did not refer to them as propaganda organizations. Also mentioned was the Atlantic Council, which Bauder stated had ties to NATO citing the same source and, again, the source did not mention such ties. However, he did later correct himself on the "propaganda" characterization. The NATO ties were still mentioned despite being unsourced. Most likely the purpose for mentioning NATO was to insinuate the group was untrustworthy. Although not a traditional partisan bias, there is still a bias in play as can be observed from looking at various edits he has made related to war. Evidence does point to him having a left-wing bias with his edits to the right-wing populism page and the Obamacare page.

Given edits made about Hillary Clinton I'm going to suggest that perhaps he is a more hardcore leftist and most likely a Bernie supporter. He seemed interested in emphasizing Sanders voters in New Hampshire wanting an "honest and trustworthy" candidate and restored the material after someone had removed it. Bauder also made a point of noting Clinton only narrowly won Iowa. Other clear attempts to denigrate Clinton involved this addition about her donors and their "influence" over her, noting how her low support among white men was a sign she would lose the general election, and various edits about voter demographics that could be construed as favorable to Sanders. Notably, he added a section on "miscellaneous controversies" talking about Clinton's past remarks on "super predators" in the 90's and a BlackLivesMatter activist confronting her over the language. This became the subject of an edit war as pro-Clinton editors went in to remove it. He responded by creating a section on her "African-American support" yet made it almost entirely about that one confrontation.

To his credit, Bauder did say he "might have to" recuse from topics related to Trump, but it seems he should really recuse from American politics issues in general. Since he made "civility" a big part of his statement on his intentions in running, one wonders how he'll manage if one of the biggest sources of incivility on Wikipedia right now ends up completely cut off from him. The more important issue is whether he should be allowed back on ArbCom at all when he has recently shown such blatant disregard for one of the site's core policies.

sashi
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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by sashi » Tue Nov 06, 2018 2:04 pm

The Devil's Advocate wrote: Also mentioned was the Atlantic Council, which Bauder stated had ties to NATO citing the same source and, again, the source did not mention such ties. However, he [Bauder] did later correct himself on the "propaganda" characterization. The NATO ties were still mentioned despite being unsourced. Most likely the purpose for mentioning NATO was to insinuate the group was untrustworthy.
Yes, perhaps it would be best to link to the sponsor list (somehow without violating SYNTH for a "sky is blue, except at night or when it's raining" claim). NATO is down below the national defense departments and various military suppliers, banks, and other holding companies. Oddly, the Wikipedia entry only focuses on its biggest donors and links to two BLPs. I wonder how many $33 donations they get. I didn't see many gifts from Qatar, Doha, or Al-Thani.

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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Wed Nov 07, 2018 12:03 am

WJBscribe, the administrator who brought up his past editing on political topics, actually gave Bauder a discretionary sanctions notice and listed several other objectionable edits. Bauder created the page on protests against Trump and it was badly slanted. Apparently, some edits Bauder made to Trump's page after the election about his mental health, which he repeated on the talk page, were so objectionable they were deleted as BLP violations. This is not someone who should be an administrator, let alone a member of ArbCom. I suppose he might be a perfect candidate if you're part of the HTD crowd.

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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Tue Nov 13, 2018 2:12 am

Already discussed to death elsewhere, but worth mentioning here about the brouhaha over Bauder. He edit-warred over questions by some users, including one grilling him over his political bias, and one of those users was admin Boing Said Zebedee, who blocked Bauder. Then Bauder did the dumbest thing possible by wheel-warring over his own block. Bauder then got desysopped by a bureaucrat and the whole thing has been taken to ArbCom. Of course, there is a lot of curious behavior here. I may be mistaken, but I believe Bauder is only the second ArbCom candidate to be the subject of ArbCom proceedings during the election period. Gorman was the previous case. Whether they launch a full case or a motion, ArbCom is going to do something about this situation. Some are suggesting a full case to examine the actions of all parties concerned, including old Zebedee for making an involved block.

On other fronts, many former and current Arbs have put themselves forward. Doug Weller and Courcelles both voted for my ban from Wikipedia and Drmies was also involved, though more in that he states he investigated my COI report and concluded I was wrong. Cirt/Sagecandor's block also came up with Kelapstick given he was on the Committee when it dropped the ball in that case last year. He essentially defended ArbCom's inaction by suggesting a report from a blocked editor isn't reliable despite there being ample evidence provided. I thought Drmies might make another run, but I am a bit surprised by AGK running since he was not very active. SilkTork is sort of out-of-the-blue. Unless there is another final day rush, it looks as if the next Committee members will be a bunch of retreads.

sashi
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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by sashi » Wed Nov 14, 2018 12:17 am

Well, I'm sure y'all'll be relieved to know that GW has announced her run on November 14th in already darkened continental Europe. (Wasn't the 13th the cutoff date? oh... GMT... ^^) No sooner had she done so than her name in blue did verily pop up hovering in the reading this subforum box over at WPO (governance).

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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:03 am

sashi wrote:
Wed Nov 14, 2018 12:17 am
Well, I'm sure y'all'll be relieved to know that GW has announced her run on November 14th in already darkened continental Europe. (Wasn't the 13th the cutoff date? oh... GMT... ^^) No sooner had she done so than her name in blue did verily pop up hovering in the reading this subforum box over at WPO (governance).
I honestly pegged both her and Drmies as potentially running again. That puts us at eight candidates who served on ArbCom in the past two years, including three incumbents, as well as a few Arbs from even further back. Only two non-Arb admins are running. Given the tendency to want to rotate, I suspect at least one and most likely two of the incumbents will fail to pass. Based on votes in previous elections, I suspect Weller will make it with DGG and Mkdw falling out of favor. Hard to imagine there won't be any interest in putting a new face on the Committee that will overcome any issues the two non-Arbs might have. Some have said Lourdes is female, though I don't see any clear acknowledgment of such in the obvious places. Provided it is true, I would gives Lourdes a good shot at making it up there if anyone actually mentions it in some place regular voters will see it.

One thing I will say is that, unless he withdraws, I anticipate Bauder will be at the very bottom of the vote provided someone else doesn't somehow manage to top his epic self-destructive spiral, which would be a seriously impressive feat. Even the pie girl (running again, yay!) will beat him. As far as GW's prospects, not sure she is going to do so well. Not that I believe she won't be able to get on ArbCom. The past year has she been caught up in several dramafests. Her response to the question regarding recusals is a glaring sign that she has learned exactly nothing from her experiences and still thinks herself in the right. Part of that may be due to a lot of positive reinforcement from the community rooted both in systemic ideological bias and a certain amount of chauvinistic brown-nosing. A big chunk is, in my opinion, because she lacks a lot of self-criticism. Life dealt her a strong hand from the start, despite constantly whining about the privilege of others, and she doesn't seem to have been denied much. Whether this election will do anything to put that in check is TBD.

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Pudeo
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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by Pudeo » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:08 pm

The Devil's Advocate wrote:
Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:03 am
Some have said Lourdes is female, though I don't see any clear acknowledgment of such in the obvious places. Provided it is true, I would gives Lourdes a good shot at making it up there if anyone actually mentions it in some place regular voters will see it.
I like Lourdes for making the incivility RfC in face of all the incivility AN/I complains being closed as long as the users hold the House POV by the usual admins. But I don't know much about her background in Wikipedia.

As for the gender issue, it's interesting. The GenderGap narrative was that women are being harassed and discriminated in Wikipedia, and because of that, the percentage of females using their own time volunteering in the encyclopedia is low. But in fact there also are plenty of people who want to be nice to women because they are women, as usual in some online communities. Some sort of e-chivalry, I guess. This could be seen in some RfAs. An embarassing example of this can be found in the Finnish Wikipedia, as someone who had pretended to be a woman became an admin and one day just started trolling by posting pedobears and what not, then claiming to be a transgender kindergarden teacher who's interested in pedophilia. Catfishing very likely made him to be more well-received by users. Had to be desysopped. As for the English Wikipedia, just read this RfA.

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Re: ArbCom 2018 election

Post by The Devil's Advocate » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:41 pm

Pudeo wrote:
Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:08 pm
I like Lourdes for making the incivility RfC in face of all the incivility AN/I complains being closed as long as the users hold the House POV by the usual admins. But I don't know much about her background in Wikipedia.

As for the gender issue, it's interesting. The GenderGap narrative was that women are being harassed and discriminated in Wikipedia, and because of that, the percentage of females using their own time volunteering in the encyclopedia is low. But in fact there also are plenty of people who want to be nice to women because they are women, as usual in some online communities. Some sort of e-chivalry, I guess. This could be seen in some RfAs. An embarassing example of this can be found in the Finnish Wikipedia, as someone who had pretended to be a woman became an admin and one day just started trolling by posting pedobears and what not, then claiming to be a transgender kindergarden teacher who's interested in pedophilia. Catfishing very likely made him to be more well-received by users. Had to be desysopped. As for the English Wikipedia, just read this RfA.
A more recent example would be Megalibrarygirl's RfA. Only a few opposed, but there was a whole crowd of people getting in line to jump down their throats for it. She hasn't done any general admin business and has used it instead for maintenance tasks with her own content. If she ever started branching out into regular administrative tasks then I expect she would be able to easily obtain a seat on ArbCom. Whether being a lady will be a big enough boon to Lourdes remains to be seen. At the moment, one guide has endorsed Lourdes and two others opposed.

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