Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018/Candidates

2018 Arbitration Committee Elections

Status as of 13:53 (UTC), Saturday, 13 July 2024 ()

• Thank you for participating in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections. The results have been posted.
• You are invited to leave feedback on the election process.

Please don't list "disqualified candidates"

I believe we always used to have a section for candidates who changed their minds and jumped ship during the election proceedings. (Bishzilla back in 2008 comes to mind.) That's convenient, and does no harm. But conspicuously listing the "disqualified" (i.e. Fred Bauder) is something else. Please don't put him in the village stocks in that manner. Just remove him from the candidate list. Do keep in mind that he edits under his real name. Wikipedia is not a "shame" culture, at least I hope not. Bishonen | talk 02:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC).

Bishonen, I agree with this. We need to keep in mind that those other names on the computer screen are fellow human beings, and deserve to be treated as such. SQL^{Query me!} 03:34, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Bishonen, No objections from me. —CYBERPOWER (Message) 04:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

• As per Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018/Coordination#Fred Bauder, Fred does not actually appear to be disqualified at this point, so perhaps it's premature to even remove him from the list? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

  Boing! said Zebedee, the matter is resolved. Fred has been re-instated and will appear on the ballot. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:00, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Date confusion

I wasn't sure where to mention this, but the notice at the top of this page, as well as the MediaWiki message delivery on my talk page both refer to "Sunday 3 December 2018". 3 December falls on a Monday this year. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:17, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Voting was pushed back a day because of technical difficulties with SecurePoll, and it looks like the date was changed but not the day of the week: [1]. Pinging Cyberpower678—I'd fix it myself but I'm a candidate and so that would probably be a bad idea. GorillaWarfare (talk) 07:22, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, I've fixed it. SQL^{Query me!} 07:26, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! GorillaWarfare (talk) 07:28, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Vote for how many?

Pardon the newbie but no where did I find reference to how many we should be voting for. One? Two? The whole slate? This might be a handy bullet ... perhaps in the Status box at the top of the article? --JimScott (talk) 16:05, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• You must log a vote for each candidate, be that Support, Oppose, or Neutral. As to how many to vote "for" that's totally up to you; you can do anything from supporting all, to opposing all, to supporting one and going neutral on the rest, to, well any combination you can think of. The only rule is the system will force you to pick one of the three options for every candidate. Courcelles (talk) 16:09, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Entirely up to you: 1, 2, all, none, it's your choice. Personally I clicked "support" for the candidates I trust the most, "oppose" for the ones I thought were very ill-suited for the job, and "neutral" for the ones I didn't have a strong opinion on either way. 28bytes (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• ... so if you have strong opinions, don't vote neutral. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:23, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• There are six vacant seats to be filled in this election, which is good to have in mind, but, as others said, you can vote for or against any number of candidates. I personally did not find six candidates I could support.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Diversity

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Looking through the candidate statements, I'm wondering which have an interest in seeing improved representation of minority groups on the English Wikipedia. I have read through the candidate statements and there are two that mention women. However nobody mentions being LGBT+ or interested in LGBT+ subjects and neither do their user pages, which from this perspective is a disappointing drop in representation compared to past candidates in Arbcom elections.

Is anything happening to attract openly LGBT+ candidates to take part in Arbcom?

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:43, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

It could be that candidates just don’t want to advertise what is deeply personal information for thousands of strangers on the internet in their statements or for the entire internet on their userpage. I know several LGBT wikipedians who are open in real life but who simply don’t feel the need to let random strangers they have never met know their sexual preferences or gender identity. I think this is perfectly understandable, just as it is perfectly understandable that someone would want to let the world know about it. It comes down to what individuals feel comfortable with, nothing more. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:25, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Another possibility is that candidates might not feel that gender, sexuality, race, religion, politics... should make any difference whatsoever to the role of ArbCom. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:45, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Arbcom are seen by the community as policy leaders. It would be a very, very, sad state of affairs that some Arbcom members are LGBT+ but scared of identifying on Wikipedia as LGBT+ because Wikipedia or Arbcom is such a hostile or unsafe environment to be openly LGBT+. As for the idea that gender, sexuality, race, religion, politics make no difference to members of Arbcom and nobody should be worried if all Arbcom members turn out to be white, christian, heterosexual, politically conservative and male this year, that sounds like sticking one's head in the sand and insisting "there ain't no such animal as systemic bias!"

P.S. past Arbcom members have been openly LGBT+ or openly supportive of LGBT+ projects such as the LGBT+ User Group. None of those past Arbcom members was badly affected by being open, they are still alive. However by being open, it helps those involved in cases that do openly identify as LGBT+, to feel that any related issues that they might experience as a user in a predominantly heteronormative environment would be reviewed by an Arbcom that openly included an appropriate diversity of life experience. --Fæ (talk) 17:27, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

We're talking about people who will be responsible for the arbitration of conduct disputes and the ideal qualities for the job are having an even temperament, being able to reason through conduct issues, to separate out the problematic conduct issues from the non-problematic ones, things like that. Arbs are explicitly not supposed to be deciding content issues. Consequently, I'm not sure why it is important to know their sexual identity or their interests in particular content areas? --regentspark (comment) 17:45, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Before you start to think I'm an LGBT+ lobbyist, let's ask our very experienced past Arb and current candidate @GorillaWarfare:. GW, you state "I think that making Wikipedia a welcoming and safe place for non-men to contribute will help the project immeasurably, and be beneficial to all editors regardless of gender." Why was this important to include in your statement? Also, by "regardless of Gender", do you happen to include all genders such as genderqueer people, or think that the same safe place objective should apply to all us LGBT+ contributors? --Fæ (talk) 17:51, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

It's not about fear. There are many openly LGBT people who for one reason or another decide that they do not wish to advertise their sexuality in every single part of their life. There has even been a fair amount of push back within segments of the LGBT community, particularly its younger members, against the coming out narrative as something that reinforces heteronormativity by implicitly stating that being a cis heterosexual person is the norm (see this take on it in the Washington Post recently.)

I am very confident that there are openly LGBT people running in this year's ArbCom election. Some may have discussed it elsewhere on-wiki, but I can't be sure. What I take issue with is that we are creating a cultural norm on this project where people are pressured to disclose personal information about themselves for political reasons in an election, because of the idea that we aren't being diverse enough if they don't tell people their sexuality. It devalues their choice not to reveal information about themselves on a website where they very well may not know anyone, and doesn't help create a culture that is safe for LGBT+ people at all. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:01, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I totally agree with Tony here, and I think pressure to publicly come out can itself be discriminatory. We've all seen "How dare you assume I'm straight?" t-shirts, right? I'd also add that there any many people for whom sexuality just isn't a big issue in their lives, and why should it be? We should absolutely not assume anything about an arb candidate's sexuality just because they don't advertise it on their user page. On my user page I say nothing about my sexuality, race, culture, beliefs about religion or politics, simply because they're not relevant to what I do here and they in no way identify define me (and, actually, they're nobody else's damn business ;-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:25, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

There are multiple candidates who have either been elected to the committee previously, or who have previously stood unsuccessfully. What did all of their previous statements say concerning LGBT+ issues ? Nick (talk) 18:06, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Who wants to take Fae as advocate ? The answer is left to the 2019 election. Pldx1 (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• In relation to diversity of field the candidates, what I do find sort of disappointing is that so few new candidates are running. By my count, out of 13 candidates, 9 are current or former ArbCom members. It would be nice to see more new candidates... Nsk92 (talk) 20:13, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
  • It might be a natural consequence of our community maturing. Axiomatically, each year more editors will be ex-arbitrators than the prior year. Also, before the really nasty stuff was off-loaded to the WMF, the job used to be horrid – even distressing – and made one question whether it was worth quitting early, let alone running again. We should be reflective about why more ex-arbs offer to sit again on the committee. AGK ■ 21:52, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Fæ, thanks for bringing this up. Although I don't mention it in my candidate statement, I am openly queer and I mentioned it in response to a question on the questions page.* The full context of my comment actually addresses a point you brought up about whether LGBTQ+ representation is important on the Committee: The Committee has historically not been very diverse, and I think it's worse off for it. And to be clear, I am referring to all kinds of diversity: diversity of gender, race, sexuality, nationality, opinions, etc. I realize that as another white American knowledge worker I have a lot in common with many people on Wikipedia and on the ArbCom, but I do bring my perspective and experience as a woman and a queer person.

You're correct that I don't mention it on my userpage—I think at one point way back when I did, but I found the giant collection of infoboxes that I used to have unwieldy and I trimmed them some time ago to only a few that are particularly relevant to my editing. You'll notice I also don't mention anything about being a woman or my race (though most people can guess the former from my name and both from the photograph), my religion (or lack thereof), or my nationality on my userpage either. If you do feel it's meaningful to display them there, just say the word and I'll happily add them**—the omission is not because I do not wish people to know these things.

As for my statement about gender, I mention it largely because gender-based harassment and bias in articles on the project has been a longstanding issue on this project, and an issue that I've actively experienced and been involved with. That isn't to say that people don't suffer mistreatment or bias in their articles because of their sexuality or because they're not cisgender—they certainly do, and I've been involved with trying to address that issue as well, albeit to a lesser extent. I was an active participant in the Chelsea Manning debacle back in 2013, and I find myself somewhat regularly reverting people who try to deadname or misgender trans people on their articles (and blocking, occasionally: see AN, and the ensuing Twitter firestorm by a collection of TERFs... a bit hard to link, but this was the start of it: [2]. If it's easier, my replies can all be found at [3] if you scroll down a bit starting at Oct 15).

Also, by "regardless of Gender", do you happen to include all genders such as genderqueer people, or think that the same safe place objective should apply to all us LGBT+ contributors? Yes, absolutely.

For what it's worth, I never felt that the Committee was hostile, unsafe, or even unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ folks while I was on it. I would also push back a little on None of those past Arbcom members was badly affected by being open, they are still alive. I suspect it was exaggeration, but as you well know, there are a lot of ways people can be badly affected by being open about their personal information (be it their name, gender, sexuality, or what have you) without being killed.

Sorry for the wall of text and somewhat scattershot reply (I don't usually need footnotes in my talk page comments...)—I'm catching up to this conversation a bit late.

* To be clear, I'm not chastising you for missing it, reading all the questions pages in their entirety would be quite an endeavor.
** Well, maybe not the race thing. I don't think I'd feel particularly comfortable with the potential interpretations of a "This user is white" userbox.
GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:44, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Late edit, but I do want to add that I very much support TonyBallioni's statements about disclosure. I am out to my family, friends, and colleagues, but I am lucky enough to have a supportive family and live in a liberal area where most people are accepting of my sexuality. Not everyone is so lucky, and there are places where being LGBTQ+ is a crime. While I understand the value in having openly LGBTQ+ people on the Committee, it should not be assumed that all Committee members are straight and cis unless they've volunteered that information. GorillaWarfare (talk) 08:54, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks GW. Of course I knew you were LGBT+ and interested in the subject, and probably are not the only candidate who is either. It just seemed weird to me that in this 2018 election not one candidate mentioned wider diversity than women in their statements, or chose to be openly LGBT+ when this had been a distinct feature in past elections.

As for the user page, I use meta:template:Wikimedia LGBT+ user group on my Commons user page, but as I have been both attacked and told off (by administrators) more than once for mentioning I am gay on-wiki during discussions, I no longer feel that any Wikimedia project is a safe space to routinely self-identify as gay. Years ago I felt differently, but experience has taught me that our projects are full of homophobes* at all levels and it's wearing to spend all your time defending your existence, or constantly be challenged to explain why it is important; just like the rest of society. I understand why an Arbcom member may similarly find it wearing and not want to always be open, but the Arbcom election is a time to be honest about the problem that exists here, now, and that our community needs to do more than making claims about values if we are serious about welcoming all minority groups.

With regard to someone living in a country where it is a crime to be open, unless they are scrupulously anonymous, they should not be open on wiki, it's not worth the risk. It's probably controversial to say this as a supporter of the global WM-LGBT+ user group, but I would advise against being a candidate for Arbcom for someone in those circumstances due to the significant risk of off-wiki outing.

BTW, unlike yourself, if there is any organization or body of people where nobody can be identified publicly as queer, then I do assume that they are forcing being heteronormative on everyone and it's fair to presume that everyone within it promotes heteronormativity, because that's the reality of what is happening.

* By "homophobe" this is shorthand for "appear to behave in an irrational way just like homophobes when it comes to handling LGBT+ subjects and people", because, you know, on this project we can never presume someone is a racist, a homophobe or a misogynist and call them out as such on those exact disruptive behaviours because that would be a failure to assume good faith. Pretty much how I imagine it would be like to be queer and having a job within the Republican party, in the 1980s. This is a key reason that victims of such behaviour are still treated so badly on our projects if they try to complain about it and fail to use exactly the right sort of literal politically correct "good faith" wording. --Fæ (talk) 09:43, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah okay—I must have misunderstood your statement about no candidates mentioning being LGBTQ+ in their statements to mean you thought there were no LGBTQ+ candidates. However, when you say "not one candidate...chose to be openly LGBT+" I have to disagree—I've been as open about being queer as I have about being white, non-religious, American, and many other things—I just did not include it in my candidate statement or userpage.

I no longer feel that any Wikimedia project is a safe space to routinely self-identify as gay. I understand why an Arbcom member may similarly find it wearing and not want to always be open, but the Arbcom election is a time to be honest about the problem that exists here, now, and that our community needs to do more than making claims about values if we are serious about welcoming all minority groups. Again, I think you are the one saying I don't want to be open. I've never made a secret of being queer; I am proud of it and that will not change. But one's sexual preferences are far less visible on Wikipedia than one's gender; there is an option to set whether you'd prefer he/her/them pronouns (and it's publicly available) but there is no preference for sexuality (which is probably appropriate, given there's no real UX change that would come of it). However, I've just updated my userpage to reflect that I am a woman, queer, and non-religious. If there are other aspects of my identity you'd like me to share there I most likely will—I am fairly open about who I am.

With regard to someone living in a country where it is a crime to be open, unless they are scrupulously anonymous, they should not be open on wiki, it's not worth the risk. It's probably controversial to say this as a supporter of the global WM-LGBT+ user group, but I would advise against being a candidate for Arbcom for someone in those circumstances due to the significant risk of off-wiki outing. I think that should be up to the candidate to decide.

BTW, unlike yourself, if there is any organization or body of people where nobody can be identified publicly as queer, then I do assume that they are forcing being heteronormative on everyone and it's fair to presume that everyone within it promotes heteronormativity, because that's the reality of what is happening. I understand that statistically it is likely that the majority of the ArbCom is heterosexual. I just wanted to point out that it is flawed to assume all of them are. GorillaWarfare (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

WRT I think you are the one saying I don't want to be open, no, my creating this thread was never directed at any individual. I'm saying that all the candidates this year have chosen to say nothing about LGBT+ issues or topics. Unlike some past year election campaigns there are no obvious LGBT+ positive candidates to support, were voters only to read the candidate statements, which in reality is as much as one might expect a diligent voter to do. Why Arbcom candidates have shifted from thinking this was important in past years, to not worth a mention now, is unclear to me. Neither am I assuming that Arbcom is heterosexual, but an Arbcom where nobody can be identified as non-heterosexual is going to be seen as heteronormative, just like it works in reality with any organization or body.

This seems as obvious to me as if everyone in an authoritative organization is male, and consequently women were not content with being ruled over by an all male organization because most women would worry that it will have a natural systemic bias for men and against women. Those dismissing these concerns have a standard playbook, which includes "prove bias before we change anything", "no, you are wrong, just because I am a man does not mean I don't respect women. I have a daughter!"... etc. Now simply swap "women" for "LGBT+" and the same doublethink applies. --Fæ (talk) 10:26, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't believing the thread was directed at me. I was merely commenting on the fact that you said nobody mentions being LGBT+ or interested in LGBT+ subjects and neither do their user pages, which from this perspective is a disappointing drop in representation compared to past candidates in Arbcom elections. but then later said you knew I was a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

I do, however, think you're right that at a glance over the candidacy statements there is no obvious LGBTQ+ representation—if I stand for the ArbCom a fourth time I will hopefully remember to mention it (or maybe you can remind me if I don't ). And I do think it's reasonable to assume the average voter reads the candidacy statements, maybe the voter guides, and the minority of them maybe read responses to a few questions at best—I'd be shocked if more than a few voters read all candidates' question pages from start to end.

As for your second paragraph, I do understand the importance of LGBTQ+ input, as I've said above. I will not betray the privacy of any of my colleagues, but in my experience there have been LGBTQ+ voices represented on the Committee. GorillaWarfare (talk) 10:40, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry GW, this is not a contradiction, but invisible non-hetero people, are not the way to address the perception of, or bias of, heteronormativity. Frankly speaking, nobody gives a fig if someone wants to stay locked away in a closet, I am not forcing them to come out. The fact is simply that invisible people are not counted, because being invisible does not represent anyone, or do anything to demonstrate our cultural diversity. Thanks for your commitment to being more visible if you run again. --Fæ (talk) 10:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Fæ. I omitted mention of these some things in my 2018 candidate statement because I assumed, and maybe wrongly so, that people would be more familiar with who I am after serving one term. I did mention my commitments to some of these issues in my 2016 statement. I would like to see greater diversity, inclusion, and accessibility on Wikipedia. In August 2017, I started putting together WP:DIVERSITY but I did not have the time to really get it off the ground. If there are more people interested, it would be something worth restarting (regardless of ArbCom). Mkdw ^talk 20:44, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm also interested in diversity from a geographical perspective. How many Arbs are from or reside in the United States? The "social norm" there is very different from that around the rest of the English-speaking Wiki-verse, and it's particularly prevelant when it comes to dealing with social interaction where certain individuals from some geographical regions react very differently to others from across the world to particular inputs. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

(+1) ∯WBG^converse 05:07, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I think this is important, during my time on the committee I think the breakdown was reasonably geographically diverse (while still +50% US-based). While I believe geographic diversity is important, a disproportionate number of Wikiepdians come form the US, so getting the US make up below 50% would be no small undertaking. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 13:52, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

From anecdotal and fairly unscientific personal experience theres around 7-8 arbs from the US, 2-3 Europeans, 2-3 Australians/Canadians and the rest from elsewhere. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Why focus on one minority group? LGBT is not the only minority group.. What about African-American?Ron John (talk) 18:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

When I saw who was standing for election and read the candidate statements, I didn't for one moment consider the status of their ethnicity, gender, sexuality or nationality, because it doesn't seem relevant to me. I was under the impression that the function of Arbcom is to address intractable problems with specific users, so I would say that it is how candidates would approach such situations that is the salient consideration. Although people's identity and life history are likely to have some influence upon how they do this, we can surely assess the candidates' qualities without having to know the specific factors (including identity) that inform such qualities. If candidates wish to make statements about their identities, that is their decision, but I don't consider that such information in isolation should have much bearing on anyone's decision to vote for them. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:47, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

100%. Natureium (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. - Donald Albury 19:10, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

+1 to that. –Ammarpad (talk) 13:04, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

"People's identity and life history are likely to have some influence upon how they do this", wrong, very wrong. The colour of our skin, being LGBT+, our first language, or our cultural heritage, has profound influence on our understanding of society and the actions of others. Wikipedia will remain heteronormative, male dominated and white Americanocentric, so long as its leading groups ignore their systemic bias, and sit back and allow the question of poor diversity to be derided and marginalized every time it is mentioned. Arbcom is improved if its diversity or lack of diversity is measured and allowed to be challenged, rather than kept a secret behind closed doors.

P.S. @PaleCloudedWhite: it seems contradictory to state so firmly that "ethnicity, gender, sexuality or nationality... doesn't seem relevant to me" but at the same time feel that nationality, political bias and being native English so important that you publish these identities on your user page for other Wikipedians to read. --Fæ (talk) 12:06, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Maybe PaleCloudedWhite is trying to cater to people like you instead of letting their contributions on wikipedia stand on their own. Natureium (talk) 15:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

"People like you", are you indirectly saying "gays"?

Unlike PaleCloudedWhite, my user page User:Fæ has zero userboxes or personal identification. The reason was the excessive homophobic personal attacks against me a few years ago, both on-wiki and off. Wikipedia at that time felt so unsafe that I removed all of them. Perhaps that's the type of "people like you" that you mean, targets of personal attacks because of who they are? --Fæ (talk) 16:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

That's quite a leap. I mean people like you being people that care about a person's real life (private) demographics rather than the kind of work they do and the experience they've shown. Natureium (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

You appear to not have taken on board what I have written above. Nothing in my words dismisses a candidates experience, quite the reverse. Looks to me that you are spoiling for a fight against anyone questioning heteronormative systemic bias, but not sure why, and with a lack of any evidence that Arbcom has taken a single step to ensure it does not suffer from systemic bias from poor diversity of members, or the poor diversity of the candidate pool, or the biased nature of our system of voting based on popularity, which naturally reflects the intrinsic bias and demographics of our community.

Oh, and if demographics were my top concern, I really would have some userboxes on my page, rather than just my contributions; right? --Fæ (talk) 16:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I am curious what sort of diversity you're seeking Fæ, currently there are 2/14 (formerly 2/15) that self identify as LGBT on their userpage, when I was on the committee it was 4/15 and 4/14. That is fairly decent representation (10-25%), but what specifically are you looking for? 50% representation? Equivalent to the Worldwide (or Wikipedia-wide) average? And it's pretty unclear what you're suggestion that voting based on popularity being biased is. Do you think that LGBT candidates should have their support votes count as two votes? Getting a diverse candidate pool and committee is great, and should be encouraged, but it sounds like you want to cook the books so that your preferred demographic sits on the committee, and as you can see from above, Wikipedians would like to see diversity across a broad spectrum, including race, geographic location, gender, and LGBT status. You cannot say that lack of diversity on the committee is the fault of the committee, as they do not manage the elections, it's up to the community to produce a pool of candidates to stand for what can only be described as a shitty job. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 19:12, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Fae: I stated that ethnicity, gender, sexuality and nationality do not seem relevant to me when I am assessing candidates for their abilities on Arbcom. Candidates are free to publish whatever information they like about themselves, as I am on my userpage, but I think it is wrong to request or expect specific personal information so that editors may feel happier with how particular groups are represented.
Also I find it curious that you state that my statement, "people's identity and life history are likely to have some influence upon how they do this [perform on Arbcom]", is "wrong, very wrong", when from your subsequent comment, it seems that you disagree only by degree. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:34, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Kelapstick: Well, as I'm not a complete fantasist, I am not looking for any of the nonsense you appear to want to paint me with. Please avoid doing that, it's aggressively unhelpful. Keep in mind I'm no flyby commentator, I've been here a lot longer than this account, and as it happens have more contributions on this project than you do.

I have already explained what Arbcom would be improved by doing, setting visible diversity as an objective for the committee. Doing something to improve the diversity of backgrounds and experience of the committee is not that tricky, promoting the idea of becoming a candidate in channels where minority voices are present is an easy win, along with encouraging candidates to add relevant parts of the background that better informs voters that they have more than a default white, male, hetero, Americanocentric viewpoint. Reporting the trend of diversity is also useful in giving the community an impression of whether Arbcom can claim to have a wide variety of viewpoints represented within it.

An obvious and real example; if you are party to an Arbcom sexology related case and the only members that vote or express an opinion appear to be cis, when you are a genderqueer person, you might legitimately wonder how many of the voting members understand what it feels like to be in a heteronormative binary environment where being misgendered is commonplace. Vague claims that some members are known to be non-white or LGBT+ behind closed doors does not cut the mustard. In fact this discussion thread shows exactly why even questioning diversity and this projects' default heteronormativity is something that fellow long term established contributors will deride and judge you on with comments like "people like you". The truth is that Wikipedia remains a hostile place for anyone openly a woman or LGBT+, and Arbcom ought to be part of making that better, and be seen to be making it better, not just waiting for the WMF to step in and throw money at forced social improvement.

BTW, if Arbcom is that "shitty", it's up to Arbcom to work on making it less so. It's not an excuse to pretend that systemic bias is just a theory, or does not apply to the special "shitty" case of Arbcom. --Fæ (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Fæ, posturing about the number of edits you've got is not going to help anyone and is fairly meaningless. We're (the community) all hard working editors here, we've (the community) all dedicated our (the community) free time to the encyclopedia. You know as well as I do that diversity is a difficult topic to get right in any group, and Wikipedia is suffering greatly with it's lack thereof. It's biggest lack is famously the gender gap - half our worldwide population are women, and that's not close to the case on Wikipedia. Similarly with geographical and age diversity. We could do with more representation of minorities of race, sexuality, gender, age and many more I'm sure.

Arbcom is drawn from that non-diverse community - candidates are self selected, and elected by the community. WeI believe the committee should not be co-opting people to meet diversity requirements, that kind of positive discrimination would disenfranchise large parts of the community. What's more, I do think that Arbcom is more diverse than the community in general, though not by much. We've The committee has had members from different geographical locations, genderqueer members, different races, religions, sides of the political spectrum, young, old, men, women. Some are open about their personal status, some are not. WeThe committee don't match the natural worldwide diversity by a long shot, but I do believe we're ahead of the community.

As for what Arbcom can do, the committee has no control over it's own diversity - the sort of things you're asking for, "making the committee less shitty" is something we I and others do actively work on (and I can confirm this term is far less shitty than my last). Making a "goal" for the committee is unlikely to pass muster, as we don't the committee doesn't have control over the elections nor the candidate pool - and rightly so. Any "goals" for the committee such as the ones your suggesting should come from community consensus, not from the committee itself. As a community, we struggle to attract new editors, we struggle to attract new admins, we struggle to attract any arbitrators (we've reduced the number of seats available this year from 8 to 6, and one of the reasons was to deal with this drop)

I agree it's disappointing that we're (the community) not getting as much representation on the committee as we'd (the community) like, and would welcome ideas for discussion throughout the year, RfCs on how to attract more candidates from any and every group, and if you have any ideas which might be able to help in the elections, then in the ACE RfC. Otherwise, the best thing to do on such a small committee is find people you'd be happy with and encourage them to run next year. That's what I do. Worm^TT(talk) 10:00, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Let me summarize what I read here:

1. Arbcom does not want its diversity measured
2. Arbcom thinks that it is Fæ's problem to force diversity into the Committee, because Fæ asked about it
3. Arbcom has no goals for diversity and will not set any, unless "the community" has a formal consensus that sets some
4. Arbcom believes it is more diverse than the Wikipedia community, though this has never been measured
5. Arbcom claims to welcome ideas for discussion, while at the same time can be seen to quickly reject the most basic proposals in this thread

Thanks for that. I'm obviously wasting my time thinking that anything might improve, or that Arbcom might actually ever have the gumption to take a lead on visible improvement of representation. I'll pass that message on for the LGBT+ community. --Fæ (talk) 10:32, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I am not Arbcom, any more than you are the LGBT community - please replace "Arbcom" with "A member of Arbcom" for more accuracy. I'm one person, representing one view. I do not want to put any onus on any person to divulge any information that they do not feel comfortable divulging, and given the size of the committee, I do not believe that any method for measuring diversity will be able to keep to that basic rule. I believe that in our community, people work on stuff they feel passionate about and you clearly feel passionate about diversity on the committee, so you should lead it, I have said I'd be happy to participate. Arbcom having goals on something that it cannot affect is pointless. If you want to discuss how the committee can be used for positive change, and in turn how I can help that change, you know where my talk page is. Worm^TT(talk) 10:54, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Read your words above please. You very clearly wrote "we're", "we", "we've", in anyone's book you were either representing Arbcom, or choosing to give that impression. A technique that I never use for the LGBT+ community or the WM-LGBT+ user group.

This is a common problem for Arbcom members, I have several emails from sitting members who play both cards at once like some sort of game of dodgeball, by apparently giving views of the committee, whilst at the same time not taking any responsibility for accuracy and remaining unaccountable by saying it is a "personal email". I recommend you either speak for Arbcom or do not, rather than washing your hands of your words afterwards.

With my background with Arbcom and my past correspondence with yourself, I am not picking up on the last line of your message. I do not want you sending me private emails threatening me with blocks, again. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:07, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I've been unclear. I do not speak for Arbcom. No one speaks for Arbcom, unless we specifically say "For the committee" - because getting the committee to agree on anything is practically impossible. I've clarified my above statement, I hope that helps. That said, given your disingenuous final statement, implying I have used private emails to coerce you in community discussions - when in fact I pointed out non-publicly that you had broken a restriction and if you did so again I would block you - I think we're done. Worm^TT(talk) 11:31, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

You are being misleading, "I do not want you sending me private emails threatening me with blocks, again" were my entirely factual words, no implication, just you making false inferences. Stick to the words written please.

With regard to use of the royal "we", representing Arbcom, you did it again with "unless we specifically say". Either link to where Arbcom published this, or correct it as being in conflict with "I do not speak for Arbcom".

I think this thread is done. Arbcom has no interest in taking a single step to improve diversity, clearly the Committee is determined to remain ignorant to any potential issues of systemic bias unless it is forced into changing or even publicly reporting on its own governance. Though I have been invited to take further action, being derided and repeatedly slurred in this discussion by accusing me of bizarre assertions that I never made, is clearly hostile and remains the norm for closing down minority views.

Should Arbcom ever want to talk about this seriously and engage with minority community representatives, they will have to take a long hard look at how to establish a safe space for doing so. There are few LGBT+ contributors that will make themselves a target by asking tricky questions in the way I have done here, I would not recommend it to anyone, it's not worth it.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:42, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems that Fae is the representative of a minority of exactly one person, but pretends that many more people agree with the Fae's moto : "out them all". Nothing new, indeed. Pldx1 (talk) 14:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Exactly the type of derogatory personal attack that typifies the current hostile environment. Comments like this ensure that LGBT+ contributors are wise to remain invisible, and never dare openly question heteronormative majority bias. Congratulations on your determination to resist improvement. --Fæ (talk) 14:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The atmosphere you have created in this discussion has nothing to do with your status as a minority and everything to do with the hostile way you act toward others. Natureium (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.