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Arbitrator election — stewards release the results

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By The ed17, Jan eissfeldt, and Tony1

ArbCom results "a healthy balance between continuity and turnover"

The upswing in both candidate and voter numbers in 2012
The support–no-vote–oppose votes from 2008 to this year, showing reasonable stability since 2010. In 2012, supports were down slightly and no-votes were up slightly.

Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit.

Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities. Three of the 21 candidates gained the support of more than half of the 824 voters: Newyorkbrad, with 70.1%, NuclearWarfare, with 55.1%, and Worm That Turned, with 54.1%. Unlike last year's results, only two sitting arbitrators were returned. Four will be first-time arbitrators, two are sitting arbitrators, and two will be returning members who served in the past. Three of the four first-timers have participated at ArbCom as clerks, so seven of the eight members have already exercised official ArbCom-related roles.

Arbitrator Newyorkbrad commented, "I think it's fair to say that no one was selected who was a complete stranger to the arbitration pages and process. ... On the other hand, several of the new arbitrators have not exactly been supporters of everything the Committee's done in the past couple of years. I also think there will be a healthy balance between continuity and turnover within the Committee from year to year, which is generally for the best." Retiring arbitrator Casliber said, "Having worked with (and seen) lots of folks who ran, I can say there is a diversity of opinion which probably trumps whether the person has been a clerk or [arbitrator] previously".

The eight candidates elected are drawn from many areas around the English Wikipedia:

This election saw 824 editors cast votes (with a further 34 ballots found to be invalid), a figure consistent with what Electoral Commission member Lord Roem told us last week: "While we had a one-day delay in getting the poll up, we've seen consistently higher turnout than last year; 800 votes by the end is a realistic goal." Surprisingly, the number is higher than those for the previous two years, despite the decline in the size of the active community; but it is lower than in 2008 and 2009, when more than a thousand people voted.

Among interesting patterns, a graph by SmokeyJoe shows that the voting for three candidates—Elen of the Roads, Beeblebrox, and Jclemens—was relatively polarised, with a significant dip in their "no vote" (red line). Hahc21 produced a table that displays a rough numerical summary of voter-guide support against the actual election results. This shows a remarkably close match, whether or not by coincidence, in which only one of the eight slots turned out to be different: only Guerrillero was among the top eight candidates in terms of voter-guide support numbers but did not gain a term; and only Coren was not among those eight, but did gain a term.

In brief

Meir Sheetrit, member of the Knesset, played an important role in the debate leading up to the decision.
  • Israel modernizes the status of government-copyrighted images: In a move that the Israeli chapter has pushed for since 2010, the Israeli cabinet has decided to allow limited free use of all images uploaded to government websites for which the state holds the copyright. Commercial clauses will be decided by each government agency, and the share-alike license will not be changeable, nor will derivative works be permitted. The Israeli press and Wikimedia Israel, reporting about the reform reacted positively to the move (English wrap up), which was facilitated by Meir Sheetrit, a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
  • Annual fundraiser on track: The WMF said in an informal update that it is on track to reach its goal in the first phase of the annual fundraiser. While in-depth key numbers will be published in due course, preliminary statistics to date can be found on the WMF wiki. A second phase of the campaign will be held in other geographic areas later in 2013.
  • Wikisym 2013 CfP: Wikisym, the annual research conference on wiki-related topics, has published a call for papers for its upcoming conference in early August 2013.
  • Affiliations Committee call for participation: The WMF's Affiliations Committee, tasked with implementing new participation models like user groups and thematic entities alongside chapters, has published a call for participation. The application deadline for interested volunteers is January 12, 2013.



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  • Surturz, I thought about that; but at the same time NYB had the lowest oppose vote and the highest support vote of any candidate; the three candidates mentioned had spikes in both supports and opposes (less so Beeblebrox, but the three patterns were still distinct for him); this made all the difference to their outcomes, since the low no-vote was balanced by a high oppose vote, unlike NYB's result. Nevertheless, congrats to all "low no-vote" candidates, who nevertheless did garner more support than those in the vicinity (see graph, where the line formatting, incidentally, does show the bumps on an x-axis ordered in terms of descending S/(S+O), which is linear). Tony (talk) 11:40, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the graph of votes, it would be interesting to compare applicant's success with their order in the list of applicants' names. Personally, I suffered from "voter's burnout syndrome" by the time I got to candidate 4, and was somewhat disappointed to learn I was supposed to vote for seven people or something like that. There was way too much required reading for the voters, in my opinion. As I recall, I didn't finish voting, but just clicked the vote button out a feeling of "enough is enough"! Jane (talk) 09:09, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I remember, the Israeli chapter has been trying to change this law since its founding in 2007 or somewhere near that time. Might be wrong, but 2010 definitely seems very late. EDIT: I noticed that the 2010 figure comes from Itzik's announcement, although it seems to be referring to the time when a parliamentarian was officially approached and/or accepted our position, not when the first steps were taken to make this happen. —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just a nit: I'm a system administrator, not a web developer.  :-) — Coren (talk) 14:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think it's surprising that the turnout was higher. There was much arb-dramah in November. Rich Farmbrough, 23:15, 20 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
  • Quibble about the sentence "Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios ...". All candidates gained positive support-to-oppose ratios because the number of support votes and oppose votes were both positive, and a ratio of two positive numbers must be positive. Perhaps this is meant to say 13 candidates had suppor-to-oppose ratios above 1 (ie. more support votes than oppose votes), while the other 8 had ratios below 1 (ie. more oppose votes than support votes)? Mathematically, S / O > 1 is identical to S / (S + O) > 50 %, so it could also be meant to say that 13 candidates received more than 50 % support (amongst voters who took a position on the candidate). EdChem (talk) 00:09, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just wanted to drop a note saying I semi'd the page for a bit because of vandalism.

    Also, not a huge fan of myself, Tim, and Salvio being reduced to just our various roles as clerks/AUSC members respectively. But a minor point I suppose. NW (Talk) 08:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]


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