User:Tryptofish/ACE2017

Go away! Don't read this!

You really should not care what I say here. I'm not a reliable source, and everything that follows is nothing more than original research. The entire voter guide system is flawed. Many of the guide writers have axes to grind, and some guides are just weird (in fact, most of them are). I do hope that you will vote in the election, and that you will think carefully about your vote. But voter guides should not be taken too seriously. And if you are here just for the lulz, you are going to be disappointed by how boring my opinions are.

I don't try to predict the outcome. (In 2016, my supports predicted the outcome with 100% accuracy, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen again.) Rather, I try to give you good faith advice about who would or would not serve best on the Committee, based on my long-time close observation of them, and my participation in cases. I don't do "neutral" or "abstain", so I'm going to offer an opinion on every candidate, for better or for worse. There are eight seats to be filled in this election. I usually don't try to support exactly eight candidates and oppose the rest (so called "strategic voting"), but I do try to align my level of support approximately with the level of need.

This year, I am supporting six candidates for the eight open seats. Just below my "cut" are a couple of candidates who are perfectly capable of doing the job well, but whom I see as about equal in their capabilities, and I want to do whatever I can to help the top six candidates succeed. Consequently, I oppose some candidates, not because I think that they would do a bad job, but because I think that the candidates I'm supporting are the best of the group. I don't qualify my supports or opposes as being "strong" or "weak", but you can get a feel for those nuances if you read my comments, which you definitely should.

I don't have any litmus tests, but I look for candidates whom I trust. I consider how well a candidate's views match up with where I think the community is at, and how I think the particular candidate will fit in as one member of a committee. That latter point includes how well the candidate communicates with the community and is inclined towards transparency, and how well I think they will be able to handle the tensions of the workload and the controversies. I think it's important to care about improving how the Committee works. This year, I have also paid particular attention to candidate views about paid editing. I also care about willingness to consider the evidence, to not act rashly, and – especially – to listen to community feedback and to change one's mind in response to feedback. It seems to me that over the past decade or so the Committee has gone from being too lenient to being too harsh.

Per this discussion, I want to offer candidates the opportunity to rebut anything that I say here. Please feel free to do so at User talk:Tryptofish/ACE2017, and if you do, I will make a notation in the table below, just to the right of my recommendation, so that anyone looking here will be directed to it.

Recommendations

Candidate	Comments	Recommendation
A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver	Lacks the experience and skills for the job, and is not qualified.	Oppose Disqualified
Alex Shih	This is a very mild oppose. Alex Shih became an administrator a relatively long time ago, and only recently came back after a prolonged absence. He strikes me as smart and thoughtful, and I would likely support after a bit more recent experience.	Oppose
BU Rob13	A smart and very active administrator and functionary. I wavered about whether to support, because he often comes across as sarcastic and because he seems to be trying to hat-collect over a brief tenure as a user. However, his interest in shaping the Committee's handling of paid editing pushed me over the line to support.	Support
Callanecc	This is a very strong and enthusiastic support. He is a sitting Arb seeking reelection to a second term. Over the past two years, he has done a good job of communicating with the community, and another Arb (Drmies) actually commented early on that Callanecc was doing more work behind the scenes than the other members.	Support
KrakatoaKatie	An administrator and checkuser who pays attention to details and who could probably do the job quite adequately, although she has had relatively limited content work. I'm opposing based on my interactions with her, as one of the closers of the GMO RfC and in a sockpuppet case, where she seems to me to often address other editors peevishly.	Oppose
Mailer diablo	A member of the Committee several years ago, coming back now to run again. Perfectly capable of doing the job, but strikes me as being a little superficial in explaining his reasoning, and that "I approved this message" routine got old a long time ago.	Oppose
Opabinia regalis	This is, absolutely, my strongest support this year. An excellent intellect, but not full of herself. She is running for a second term, and her work in her first term has been outstanding. She stands out as really listening to community feedback and explaining her thinking clearly and completely, and she does not rush to judgment.	Support
Premeditated Chaos	She is an administrator who could probably do a good job, and whom I might support after a little more recent experience. But she has been away from the community for a while, and I'm not convinced that she is ready. Although I generally try to avoid gotchas based on an isolated mistake, it gives me pause that she said, in one of her answers to candidate questions, that she thinks it's OK to ask another user if they are a particular real person when investigating paid editing. That, at least, requires a lot of qualifiers.	Oppose
RickinBaltimore	An active administrator who strikes me as thoughtful, articulate, and not given to overly harsh or hasty judgments. I think he's well worth giving a try.	Support
SarekOfVulcan	A mild oppose. He had a lot of conduct issues early in his editing career, but has since improved to where he is a respected administrator.	Oppose Withdrawn
Sir Joseph	A non-admin who has been in the middle of numerous dramas, and who strikes me as having the wrong temperament for the role.	Oppose
SMcCandlish	This is a very strong support for me. He is not an administrator, and I don't know whether he stands a chance of being elected, but he should be. In fact, he's a better candidate than several of the other candidates who have advanced permissions. He is thoughtful and clueful. Please look on his candidate questions page, at his answer to DGG's question 4, about paid editing and outing. That answer displays a deep understanding of the problem, as well as a respect for the community, that frankly blows every other candidate's answer to the same question out of the water. This is a very thoughtful and sensible editor, who would make a fine Arb.	Support
The Rambling Man	A long-time member of the community with solid content work and who previously held numerous advanced permissions. But he strikes me as being habitually rude to other editors, and he is just coming off an arbitration case where he was sanctioned, in which I feel that he showed a lack of self-awareness. I don't buy the argument that he will help reform the Committee. I'm happy to support candidates who might fix things that need fixing, but I believe that all he would do is to make it harder for the Committee to reach conclusions.	Oppose
Worm That Turned	Another strong support. He is a past Committee member coming back after a time off to run again. He has always been one of the smartest and most sensible members of the Committee, and he has a very good understanding of what the job entails.	Support

And finally...

Being on ArbCom is a difficult and largely thankless task, but if it is done right, it makes Wikipedia a better place for the rest of us. Thank you to everyone who is a candidate in this election! And I also want to thank Casliber, Drmies, GorillaWarfare, Keilana, Kelapstick, and Kirill Lokshin, the outgoing members of the Committee who are not seeking reelection this year.

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