Howdy. I'm Improv, and have been on since late 2002 (initially under the username Pgunn). I've been an administrator for awhile, and a mediator since Jan2005 and an administrator since Feb2005. I also have been a Usenet moderator for a number of newsgroups for over five years. I should state that if I become an arbitrator, I will retain my post on the mediation committee, and continue to mediate as well, as I see no conflict in doing both (although I will abstain on any case that made its way through my mediation unsuccessfully). I don't have a platform, and promise only to be fair as I see it and to put in the effort needed in a timely fashion to prevent delay. All I can say on policy is that I think banning has a place, but I don't think it's possible to say anything useful as to how it should be handled in general. I will also suggest improvements that I think will be productive. I plan to write and make public an opinion on every case I participate in explaining my reasoning, things I have signed on to, and areas where I dissent. --Improv 00:28, 11 October 2005
Note: Added last sentence on -- Improv 18:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Q: How old are you and what do you do? (If student, please state what subjects you are studying.)
A: I'm 27 years old, and I wear two hats at work -- I'm a neuropsychology researcher and a systems administrator at Carnegie Mellon University
Q: How many hours a month do you think you will need to be a good Arbitrator and are you really willing to put in the time?
A: I have no idea, and I'll put in what's needed.
Q: If chosen, you will need to arbitrate on disputes arising from the creation or revision of articles. Experience of creating and revising articles yourself, particularly where it has involved collaboration, is very valuable in understanding the mindset of disputants who come to arbitration. With reference to your own edits in the main article namespace, please demonstrate why you think you have the right experience to be a good arbitrator.
A:I've been a Wikipedian for a very long time, longer than probably anyone else running. I've edited on a lot of topics, created the notice board for Indian topics, etc.
Q: Please list out what other Wikipedia usernames you have edited under.
A:My first username was Pgunn, although I switched from that some time ago.
Arbcom is overworked and no fun. Please review these discussions: [1] [2] [3] Come up with a short list of suggestions for ways you would endorse for improving the arbitration process. Bonus points for actually managing to create new policy. Dragons flight 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel that the number of arbitrators should perhaps be given a bit of a bump, but the basic structure of arbitration should remain the same. Personally, I feel that the extremely open admin creation rules have led to serious dilution of what it means to be an admin, and I would hate to see that mistake repeated. Perhaps 20 arbitrators would keep things working smoothly. The only issue I see with this is that I'm not sure if there are enough prominent personalities on Wikipedia to step up for the post, and we may end up with some odd people elected because not enough good folk run. I think the overall structure is sound for the committee -- we need to make sure that there are not means for things to drag too long.
I feel that content disputes, when they get big enough, tend to trip over procedural lines which are themselves punishable, and that's a good way for things to work. For example, disregarding straw polls that make their way onto the village pump should be considered possibly punishable offenses, and that's not a content dispute per se. I am not comfortable with any of the remedies proposed.
I feel that it is inappropriate for me to comment on an election process that's going to judge me. If I am to successfully be elected, I will participate in such discussions afterwards.
How many hours per week do you serve on the Mediation committee? How thorough are you in reading all statements? If you realized that you had to spend 30 hours per week in order to give what was needed on the Arbcom, would you be willing to put in that many hours? – Quadell ( talk) 16:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Being an arbitrator requires a finely tuned bullshit detector. What in your life has prepared you to detect bullshit with ease? Phil Sandifer 21:21, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Many policies contradict and overlap with each other, and then WP:IAR makes things even more complicated while making them paradoxically more flexible. When two or more policies apply and conflict, what do you do? karmafist 18:38, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you hold any strong political or religious opinions (e.g. concerning George Bush, Islam, or on which end you should break a boiled egg)? If so, would you recuse yourself from cases centred on these?
How willing are you to contest the decisions of other arbitrators rather than just "go with the flow"?
Do you view all requests to re-address cases, particularly requests made by those most penalised, as being automatically without merit?
In the case against Yuber, it was decided by the arbitration committee that it is the duty of arbitrators to investigate, and rule on the behaviour of not only one party involved, but all of them. Do you support this decision? [if current arbitrator] Does your visible behaviour on recent cases reflect this decision?
--Victim of signature fascism 16:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you support the creation of a Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct as I have just now suggested at User talk:Jimbo Wales#A sincere question? - Ted Wilkes 18:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. Someone created the article without my knowledge. As such, would you mind offering some input? Thank you. - Ted Wilkes 18:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I'll probably end up posing this question to all whose views I don't already know: What is, in your opinion, the proper use of WP:IAR? When, if ever, should the rule be invoked to justify administrative action? Xoloz 17:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
To be frank, I dislike the rule. When rules are unclear, there are circumstances where we need to use our judgement and go with what works. Others can challenge our handling of the situation as needed, and at that point discussion ensues. There are limits to how much interpretation is acceptable -- when people go far enough from the range of reasonable disagreement, especially when they have a pattern of doing so, then asking (or eventually forcing) them to stop may become necessary. In an ideal world where people communicate well and are receptive to criticism, things never go much beyond the discussion (and possibly polling) stage. It is very possible for people to disagree without ill will, and one hopes not to lose many people due to disagreements on principles. Admittedly, IAR is all about suggesting that judgement is involved in making decisions on Wikipedia, as I interpret it. However, it is easily interpreted to mean other things, and its self-referential attempts to be cute don't help things. -- Improv 17:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
(sig was PurplePlatypus 09:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC))
On second thought, this is actually a good question that may be helpful. I only glanced at it before. Looking at the proposal:
I just noticed that the edit times for the three parts of my reply are done almost exactly three hours apart. Bizarre! -- Improv 21:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you support Wikipedia:User Bill of Rights? ( SEWilco 05:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC))
Tito xd( ?!? - help us) 06:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Answers:
(Being asked of all candidates)
Do you believe that regardless of Jimbo Wales' own views on the matter, the community should be able to strip arbitrators of their position under certain circumstances, and if so, what circumstances?
As a corollory:Do you believe, regardless of Jimbo Wales' view on the matter, that a large number of signatories (e.g. 150 requesting censure against 50 supporting the arbitrator) to an RFC against an arbitrator is enough that the arbitrator should be judged as having been rejected by the community in light of their actions, and consequently for them to be forcibly stripped of their post?
wikipedia has a policy of NPOV. Excepting straw men, have you ever introduced a substantial opinion or fact that contradicts your own political or religious viewpoint into an article on a topic of which you have strong opinions, and if you have, how frequently do you do so compared to your other substatial edits to articles?
-- Victim of signature fascism | help remove biblecruft 02:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
As to the first question, I've been struggling with this issue as part of a larger set of musings on Wikipedia on my personal BLOG. It boils down to what we see as being prime guides for our actions, which has recently led to great controversy that you allude to throughout your questions.. The proper ranking of the following elements is the issue:
I understand that there is disagreement as to how we should structure these into how things are run, with different prominent members of the community weighing them differently. There are also concerns based on these values, like maintaining the integrity of the project against organised "invasion", whether that be from corporate marketingfolk, people who would use Wikipedia as the next GeoCities (presumably voting to allow that en masse), etc. There are some cases where the democratic institutions may become twisted by organised subversion (the two above are not the only ways this could happen) whereby democracy doesn't work so well. Fortunately for us, we have a tradition of disregarding votes by particularly new users, and also fortunately for us, Jimbo does not get deeply involved in many disputes, so we haven't run into this much yet, thankfully.
All that being said, I have come to some conclusions as to how to rank them (note that these are specific to the wiki, and do not bear much resemblance to my real-life politics):
You will notice that respect for autonomy and meritocracy don't figure into my ranking. Personally I don't give the first more than token concern because I don't think it really is important on an encyclopedia. Other people disagree on that. I also don't give meritocracy specific weight because I don't think that experienced or long-time users should be able to throw their weight around in that way. Other people disagree on that. Long-time editors are more emotionally invested in the project, and may be presumed to have better judgement of its ends and knowledge of its policies, but only the judgement and knowledge are what have weight, not the length of the contributions itself (beyond a certain point, perhaps 3 months of registered editing). I am divorcing myself of a certain kind of pragmatism that I know some other editors have -- I think it is more important to be fair than to get the best contributions in the long run that we can.
Back to your specific question, I would never ignore Jimbo's fiat. If he decides something, it goes. Arbitration evolved out of Jimbo not being keen on handling all the judging stuff itself, and so I think of it as a devolved power from Jimbo. As such, it's up to Jimbo who is an arbitrator. If he decides to delegate that to the masses, or to consider their votes to be advice, that's his business. I don't think it's my place (or anyone else's) to tell him that the community will have someone removed. Wikipedia is not a democracy except to the extent Jimbo says it is, and I am comfortable with that so far.
On NPOV, I generally don't tend to edit that often on topics where my personal opinion comes into it, and I feel, as per my Rules of Thumb, that people should not be able to tell your politics by your edits. There have been a few times where I probably have done things roughly like you describe. For example, on God, at one point there was a section on neurological findings on belief that was removed because it was extremely POV and dismissive towards religion. I reworded it to be less POV and restored it, and with some negotiations with Codex Sinacticus, got it sufficiently neutral that he was comfortable with it. Eventually I came back to review it (I like to review areas where I've had conflict to make sure I feel I've done the right thing), and decided that I should not have restored it after all because it was off-topic for the page, so I left another note on the talk page and removed it. In real life, I'm a strict materialist and an atheist, and de-POVing (and eventually re-removing) the anti-religion stuff from God probably suggests I'm not a POV-pusher. My long history of edits should substantiate this (remember to check my old account, bypassing the redirect, too). -- Improv 17:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I am asking these questions of all candidates:
1. Do you pledge to abide by the proposed recusal guidelines at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct#Recusal?
2. Are there any parts of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct that you do not agree with? If so, please describe in detail how you would improve them.
3. Will you please pledge to support expanding the number of seats on the Arbitration Committee? If not, how would you propose alleviating the present arbitration backlog?
4. Have you voted over at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Proposed modifications to rules? If not, why not? If so, please summarize your votes.
Thank you for your kind consideration of and answers to these questions. — James S. 06:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
James, somebody else already asked this question. If you could scoot up a few entries, you'll find my responses to much of the spirit and specifics of your questions. Pledges are also problematic -- it is better to ask about people's judgement, not to bind them with promises that may be based on incomplete information. I want to comment particularly on your third question though. I feel that expanding the seats on Arbcom will likely only be productive if arbitrators become in the habit of not individually taking every case. Otherwise, having more arbitrators will not help things at all. That said, I think that adopting that habit would be a good idea combined with an expanded Arbcom. If we have enough people who are suited to Arbcom, splitting the load would be a good thing, and a bigger arbcom (maybe 20 members) would work. We don't want it to become too big though -- an ever-expanding arbcom would swiftly become a mess. -- Improv 17:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
What's your opinion on desysopping as an ArbCom penalty? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Currently, as you say, there is no effective community-consensus way to remove admin privileges from someone. The ArbCom is the only way. Given that the ArbCom never bars those it desysops from reapplying for admin status, how abusive do you think an admin should have to be before being removed? What exactly would abuse be, anyway? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 00:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC).
Quadell got me to think of a possible concern with being both on Medcom and Arbcom at the same time. There are issues with concentration of roles into too few a people, both for reasons that it could begin to resemble a cabal and that on the off chance I should be hit by a car, it would reduce fault-tolerance of the project too much. I therefore intend to take no new cases for MedCom, either resigning or becoming inactive once any cases I am handling at the time wrap up, while serving on ArbCom should I be elected. -- Improv 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
User:Improv, who is also a candidate for the arbitration committee, has placed the following statement on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy):
I am inviting all candidates, including Improv, to expand on this theme on their questions pages. Do you agree that this is a cause for concern as we move into 2006? How do you see the role of the arbitration committee in interpreting the interpretation of Wikipedia policy in the light of this concern? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 20:39, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Your platform commits you to write an opinion on every case you are involved with. Given the increase in ArbCom workload, and the fact that even Supreme Court justices don't do this (instead more often than not endorsing other justice's opinions), don't you think this is too big a commitment? How much additional time do you think this will involve? --- Charles Stewart 21:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Howdy. I'm Improv, and have been on since late 2002 (initially under the username Pgunn). I've been an administrator for awhile, and a mediator since Jan2005 and an administrator since Feb2005. I also have been a Usenet moderator for a number of newsgroups for over five years. I should state that if I become an arbitrator, I will retain my post on the mediation committee, and continue to mediate as well, as I see no conflict in doing both (although I will abstain on any case that made its way through my mediation unsuccessfully). I don't have a platform, and promise only to be fair as I see it and to put in the effort needed in a timely fashion to prevent delay. All I can say on policy is that I think banning has a place, but I don't think it's possible to say anything useful as to how it should be handled in general. I will also suggest improvements that I think will be productive. I plan to write and make public an opinion on every case I participate in explaining my reasoning, things I have signed on to, and areas where I dissent. --Improv 00:28, 11 October 2005
Note: Added last sentence on -- Improv 18:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Q: How old are you and what do you do? (If student, please state what subjects you are studying.)
A: I'm 27 years old, and I wear two hats at work -- I'm a neuropsychology researcher and a systems administrator at Carnegie Mellon University
Q: How many hours a month do you think you will need to be a good Arbitrator and are you really willing to put in the time?
A: I have no idea, and I'll put in what's needed.
Q: If chosen, you will need to arbitrate on disputes arising from the creation or revision of articles. Experience of creating and revising articles yourself, particularly where it has involved collaboration, is very valuable in understanding the mindset of disputants who come to arbitration. With reference to your own edits in the main article namespace, please demonstrate why you think you have the right experience to be a good arbitrator.
A:I've been a Wikipedian for a very long time, longer than probably anyone else running. I've edited on a lot of topics, created the notice board for Indian topics, etc.
Q: Please list out what other Wikipedia usernames you have edited under.
A:My first username was Pgunn, although I switched from that some time ago.
Arbcom is overworked and no fun. Please review these discussions: [1] [2] [3] Come up with a short list of suggestions for ways you would endorse for improving the arbitration process. Bonus points for actually managing to create new policy. Dragons flight 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel that the number of arbitrators should perhaps be given a bit of a bump, but the basic structure of arbitration should remain the same. Personally, I feel that the extremely open admin creation rules have led to serious dilution of what it means to be an admin, and I would hate to see that mistake repeated. Perhaps 20 arbitrators would keep things working smoothly. The only issue I see with this is that I'm not sure if there are enough prominent personalities on Wikipedia to step up for the post, and we may end up with some odd people elected because not enough good folk run. I think the overall structure is sound for the committee -- we need to make sure that there are not means for things to drag too long.
I feel that content disputes, when they get big enough, tend to trip over procedural lines which are themselves punishable, and that's a good way for things to work. For example, disregarding straw polls that make their way onto the village pump should be considered possibly punishable offenses, and that's not a content dispute per se. I am not comfortable with any of the remedies proposed.
I feel that it is inappropriate for me to comment on an election process that's going to judge me. If I am to successfully be elected, I will participate in such discussions afterwards.
How many hours per week do you serve on the Mediation committee? How thorough are you in reading all statements? If you realized that you had to spend 30 hours per week in order to give what was needed on the Arbcom, would you be willing to put in that many hours? – Quadell ( talk) 16:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Being an arbitrator requires a finely tuned bullshit detector. What in your life has prepared you to detect bullshit with ease? Phil Sandifer 21:21, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Many policies contradict and overlap with each other, and then WP:IAR makes things even more complicated while making them paradoxically more flexible. When two or more policies apply and conflict, what do you do? karmafist 18:38, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you hold any strong political or religious opinions (e.g. concerning George Bush, Islam, or on which end you should break a boiled egg)? If so, would you recuse yourself from cases centred on these?
How willing are you to contest the decisions of other arbitrators rather than just "go with the flow"?
Do you view all requests to re-address cases, particularly requests made by those most penalised, as being automatically without merit?
In the case against Yuber, it was decided by the arbitration committee that it is the duty of arbitrators to investigate, and rule on the behaviour of not only one party involved, but all of them. Do you support this decision? [if current arbitrator] Does your visible behaviour on recent cases reflect this decision?
--Victim of signature fascism 16:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you support the creation of a Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct as I have just now suggested at User talk:Jimbo Wales#A sincere question? - Ted Wilkes 18:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. Someone created the article without my knowledge. As such, would you mind offering some input? Thank you. - Ted Wilkes 18:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I'll probably end up posing this question to all whose views I don't already know: What is, in your opinion, the proper use of WP:IAR? When, if ever, should the rule be invoked to justify administrative action? Xoloz 17:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
To be frank, I dislike the rule. When rules are unclear, there are circumstances where we need to use our judgement and go with what works. Others can challenge our handling of the situation as needed, and at that point discussion ensues. There are limits to how much interpretation is acceptable -- when people go far enough from the range of reasonable disagreement, especially when they have a pattern of doing so, then asking (or eventually forcing) them to stop may become necessary. In an ideal world where people communicate well and are receptive to criticism, things never go much beyond the discussion (and possibly polling) stage. It is very possible for people to disagree without ill will, and one hopes not to lose many people due to disagreements on principles. Admittedly, IAR is all about suggesting that judgement is involved in making decisions on Wikipedia, as I interpret it. However, it is easily interpreted to mean other things, and its self-referential attempts to be cute don't help things. -- Improv 17:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
(sig was PurplePlatypus 09:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC))
On second thought, this is actually a good question that may be helpful. I only glanced at it before. Looking at the proposal:
I just noticed that the edit times for the three parts of my reply are done almost exactly three hours apart. Bizarre! -- Improv 21:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you support Wikipedia:User Bill of Rights? ( SEWilco 05:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC))
Tito xd( ?!? - help us) 06:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Answers:
(Being asked of all candidates)
Do you believe that regardless of Jimbo Wales' own views on the matter, the community should be able to strip arbitrators of their position under certain circumstances, and if so, what circumstances?
As a corollory:Do you believe, regardless of Jimbo Wales' view on the matter, that a large number of signatories (e.g. 150 requesting censure against 50 supporting the arbitrator) to an RFC against an arbitrator is enough that the arbitrator should be judged as having been rejected by the community in light of their actions, and consequently for them to be forcibly stripped of their post?
wikipedia has a policy of NPOV. Excepting straw men, have you ever introduced a substantial opinion or fact that contradicts your own political or religious viewpoint into an article on a topic of which you have strong opinions, and if you have, how frequently do you do so compared to your other substatial edits to articles?
-- Victim of signature fascism | help remove biblecruft 02:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
As to the first question, I've been struggling with this issue as part of a larger set of musings on Wikipedia on my personal BLOG. It boils down to what we see as being prime guides for our actions, which has recently led to great controversy that you allude to throughout your questions.. The proper ranking of the following elements is the issue:
I understand that there is disagreement as to how we should structure these into how things are run, with different prominent members of the community weighing them differently. There are also concerns based on these values, like maintaining the integrity of the project against organised "invasion", whether that be from corporate marketingfolk, people who would use Wikipedia as the next GeoCities (presumably voting to allow that en masse), etc. There are some cases where the democratic institutions may become twisted by organised subversion (the two above are not the only ways this could happen) whereby democracy doesn't work so well. Fortunately for us, we have a tradition of disregarding votes by particularly new users, and also fortunately for us, Jimbo does not get deeply involved in many disputes, so we haven't run into this much yet, thankfully.
All that being said, I have come to some conclusions as to how to rank them (note that these are specific to the wiki, and do not bear much resemblance to my real-life politics):
You will notice that respect for autonomy and meritocracy don't figure into my ranking. Personally I don't give the first more than token concern because I don't think it really is important on an encyclopedia. Other people disagree on that. I also don't give meritocracy specific weight because I don't think that experienced or long-time users should be able to throw their weight around in that way. Other people disagree on that. Long-time editors are more emotionally invested in the project, and may be presumed to have better judgement of its ends and knowledge of its policies, but only the judgement and knowledge are what have weight, not the length of the contributions itself (beyond a certain point, perhaps 3 months of registered editing). I am divorcing myself of a certain kind of pragmatism that I know some other editors have -- I think it is more important to be fair than to get the best contributions in the long run that we can.
Back to your specific question, I would never ignore Jimbo's fiat. If he decides something, it goes. Arbitration evolved out of Jimbo not being keen on handling all the judging stuff itself, and so I think of it as a devolved power from Jimbo. As such, it's up to Jimbo who is an arbitrator. If he decides to delegate that to the masses, or to consider their votes to be advice, that's his business. I don't think it's my place (or anyone else's) to tell him that the community will have someone removed. Wikipedia is not a democracy except to the extent Jimbo says it is, and I am comfortable with that so far.
On NPOV, I generally don't tend to edit that often on topics where my personal opinion comes into it, and I feel, as per my Rules of Thumb, that people should not be able to tell your politics by your edits. There have been a few times where I probably have done things roughly like you describe. For example, on God, at one point there was a section on neurological findings on belief that was removed because it was extremely POV and dismissive towards religion. I reworded it to be less POV and restored it, and with some negotiations with Codex Sinacticus, got it sufficiently neutral that he was comfortable with it. Eventually I came back to review it (I like to review areas where I've had conflict to make sure I feel I've done the right thing), and decided that I should not have restored it after all because it was off-topic for the page, so I left another note on the talk page and removed it. In real life, I'm a strict materialist and an atheist, and de-POVing (and eventually re-removing) the anti-religion stuff from God probably suggests I'm not a POV-pusher. My long history of edits should substantiate this (remember to check my old account, bypassing the redirect, too). -- Improv 17:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I am asking these questions of all candidates:
1. Do you pledge to abide by the proposed recusal guidelines at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct#Recusal?
2. Are there any parts of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct that you do not agree with? If so, please describe in detail how you would improve them.
3. Will you please pledge to support expanding the number of seats on the Arbitration Committee? If not, how would you propose alleviating the present arbitration backlog?
4. Have you voted over at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Proposed modifications to rules? If not, why not? If so, please summarize your votes.
Thank you for your kind consideration of and answers to these questions. — James S. 06:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
James, somebody else already asked this question. If you could scoot up a few entries, you'll find my responses to much of the spirit and specifics of your questions. Pledges are also problematic -- it is better to ask about people's judgement, not to bind them with promises that may be based on incomplete information. I want to comment particularly on your third question though. I feel that expanding the seats on Arbcom will likely only be productive if arbitrators become in the habit of not individually taking every case. Otherwise, having more arbitrators will not help things at all. That said, I think that adopting that habit would be a good idea combined with an expanded Arbcom. If we have enough people who are suited to Arbcom, splitting the load would be a good thing, and a bigger arbcom (maybe 20 members) would work. We don't want it to become too big though -- an ever-expanding arbcom would swiftly become a mess. -- Improv 17:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
What's your opinion on desysopping as an ArbCom penalty? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Currently, as you say, there is no effective community-consensus way to remove admin privileges from someone. The ArbCom is the only way. Given that the ArbCom never bars those it desysops from reapplying for admin status, how abusive do you think an admin should have to be before being removed? What exactly would abuse be, anyway? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 00:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC).
Quadell got me to think of a possible concern with being both on Medcom and Arbcom at the same time. There are issues with concentration of roles into too few a people, both for reasons that it could begin to resemble a cabal and that on the off chance I should be hit by a car, it would reduce fault-tolerance of the project too much. I therefore intend to take no new cases for MedCom, either resigning or becoming inactive once any cases I am handling at the time wrap up, while serving on ArbCom should I be elected. -- Improv 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
User:Improv, who is also a candidate for the arbitration committee, has placed the following statement on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy):
I am inviting all candidates, including Improv, to expand on this theme on their questions pages. Do you agree that this is a cause for concern as we move into 2006? How do you see the role of the arbitration committee in interpreting the interpretation of Wikipedia policy in the light of this concern? -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 20:39, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Your platform commits you to write an opinion on every case you are involved with. Given the increase in ArbCom workload, and the fact that even Supreme Court justices don't do this (instead more often than not endorsing other justice's opinions), don't you think this is too big a commitment? How much additional time do you think this will involve? --- Charles Stewart 21:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)