Originally written in 2021, this has been updated for the 2023 election.
As I finish up my third year on the committee, and a new election gears up, it feels like an appropriate time to reflect on my experience on ArbCom and to share it with people who are considering, or who are being asked to consider, running for ArbCom. If you're thinking of running because it feels like it would be cool to be up on all the dramah, I would tell you to slow your roll because the times of excitement are far outweighed by all the hard work and having to make the least bad choices in a situation. If you're thinking of not running because it feels like unending thankless misery, I would tell you that it's not agony and there is a reason some good people do it term after term.
That reason is you get to have interesting conversations with thoughtful dedicated people, most notably your fellow arbs, and the work can be rewarding in ways big and small. Contrary to the stereotype, among the general Wikipedia population (i.e. not the people we're hearing appeals from) I have found that I am thanked for what I do far more often than I am criticized. That said I have definitely lost people I considered wiki friends because of being an arb and I have definitely grown tired of having "but you're an arb" thrown at me by people who are in (often routine) disagreements with me that have nothing to do with ArbCom. I knew both of these would likely happen but it has still sucked when it happened. The good news is, circling back to how I started this paragraph, I have also gotten to make some new wiki friends as well with my fellow arbs.
The life of an arb edit
The biggest piece of what you will to learn to manage for yourself, in my experience, is being out of control of what you do on Wikipedia. As a volunteer project editors have a huge deal of autonomy in what they do and what wikibattles they engage in. As an arb you are mostly reacting and nearly all the wikibattles come to you. It all starts with a steady stream of emails. A majority of the email threads are people asking to be unblocked. The appeals will run the gamut from obviously bad faith trolling to people who were and are NOTHERE to people who are genuinely trying to find a way back to the project. Just like with normal unblocking it's not the most glamorous work. Most of the remaining emails are people who don't know better reaching out because they found ArbCom's email or people who do know kicking problems to you.
Most of the time there are also between 2 and 5 bowls of $!%# the committee is handling at any given moment. These will generally spur a fair amount of discussion and it will be tricky to find the right course for the committee to take or even to know when consensus has been reached.
For an hour a day it is possible to stay abreast of this though it will likely mean you're not going deep on anything. Actually doing something can take longer than that. For instance I once spent 2 or 3 hours writing the draft of a two paragraph email on behalf of the committee. It will be a bit uneven - we might not receive any appeals for several days and then a bunch all at once - but an hour a day will basically let you stay informed.
The time commitment when there is a case or some other public onwiki business is above and beyond this. With cases there will be a bunch of reading required. Personally I look at every diff and often have to read entire conversations in order to make sense of the diffs or to get context for something, but some Arbs might only expend this effort when they're drafters. Behavior cases, which includes cases about administrator misconduct, on the whole require less reading than cases that are more about nationalism or the like. Nationalism cases tend to be blurry between content and behavior and because they tend to involve more parties than a behavior case tend to have a lot more to read and often will require some degree of background reading to just be able to separate what is the content from conduct. For IRANPOL I spent over 18 hours reading everything (which was about twice as long as I had budgeted to spend) and that's not counting any time I spent interacting with the parties as a drafting arb or time spent on the workshop (which I do even when not a drafter though others do only when they are a drafter). Fortunately we now average less than a case a month and the timeline gives you adequate time to plan for the time you'll spend.
The case timeline also gives you a deadline. Part of the life of an arb is figuring out how you can keep track of everything going on. The most visible place the challenge of this plays out is when we get a formal ARCA. If something is complicated enough that it will require more than 1 visit/comment for an arb to the page it is easy to be put on the backburner in favor of the newest thing that has caught your attention.
But the biggest reality of being an arb remains that you're mostly reacting. Typically as a Wikipedian you get a lot of autonomy over how you spend your time. Even as an admin this remains true. For instance as an admin I work AfD but I decide how much I work and can even decide not to close a particular discussion for whatever reasons I choose. I retain that freedom. As an arb you basically give this up. Instead you are basically forced to react to what comes before you and there are norms, or even written procedures, which limit your ability to initiate a discussion while still acting as an arb.
The good times are when the committee identifies a problem, often with ArbCom procedures, and is able to garner consensus to make an improvement. Even here to the extent that the committee can set its own agenda, expect things to move very slowly. An example has been DS reform where in year 1 there was a ton of work behind the scenes and then it stalled, only for new arbs to come and attempt to reignite it and yet it still took most of the year for them to post the work that had largely been done in year 1. From the outside it feels ridiculous. From the inside it's probably still ridiculous but you also get an understanding of how it can happen anyway.
One nice thing about being an arb is that a lot of doors are open to me that wouldn't be otherwise. For instance, even when it has nothing to do with ArbCom business my emails tend to get responses. And I've had the chance to work with people at the foundation which has been both personally enjoyable, I like the people we work closely with, helpful to the encyclopedia, I know we've made a difference in some ways the foundation handles some things on wiki, and helpful to us as a committee, because sometimes they have experience or expertise to offer us on a problem we're facing.
Questions to ask yourself when considering a run edit
- What have previous arbs told me? The conversations I had with sitting and previous arbs about the job were the single biggest factor in my deciding to run the first time. So seek some out and get their thoughts (and feel free to reach out privately to me if you'd like to talk 1:1).
- How much time will I have for it? Some number of processes require a large percentage of the committee to participate in order to function
- How do I derive satisfaction from editing? and is that way compatible with being an arb? For instance if you're extrinsically motivated you're not going to find being an arb very satisfying because there's just not a lot of that compared to a lot of other work onwiki.
- How do I respond to things that are difficult and hard and even at their best more rewarding than fun? This is another way of asking the satisifcation question. An arb who doesn't pull their own weight makes life hard for the others both because it's more work for the other arbs and because often times the arbs willing to do the work need consent from all arbs go get stuff done. So if someone's burned out and not even attempting to participate it makes life a lot harder for the remaining arbs.
- How many better people than me are there for ArbCom? If you see a lot of candidates you think would be good arbs it becomes easier to decide not to run than if it's slim pickings.
- Do I have the coping mechanisms for when ArbCom gets stressful?
- How will it feel for me to not be able to talk about what I'm working on with others? There's some stuff that I would love to talk about with other Wikipedians but I can't. And there's some stuff that I end up not talking about simply because I don't remember what information I know is public and what is confidential and so I say nothing rather than leak something confidential by accident. With my friends and family there is more I can talk about - it's not a problem for them to know my thinking during an open case for instance in the way it would be for a Wikipedian - but there still ends up being some stuff that I can't discuss because of the need to respect confidentiality.
- What will my niche be on the committee? An example of a niche I fill (along with some others) is I have ended up drafting a lot of our motions, mostly by finding something similar in the past and modifying it to meet our current needs. It's quite possible to not know what niche you'll fill but having some sense of how you can be a good teammate coming in is probably helpful.
Useful attributes for 2023 edit
Here is a (non-exclusive) list of experiences/attributes I think the committee would benefit from next year. This is no reflection on any of the Arbs whose terms are ending; it's entirely possible if they run again that they could fill some of these needs.
- Candidates who have "owned" or coordinated a wiki process before. I think I underestimated just how useful the work I had done with New Page Patrol was when I got on the committee, in that I had some experience with doing a task I loved (NPP or ArbCom) even on days when my energy or excitement for that task ran a little lower and maybe needed to be re-charged a bit.
- Candidates who are genuinely excited about serving on ArbCom Enthusiasm is a useful quality for the committee and people are doing it only out of some kind of obligation (which has been a larger % the last two years) need that counter balance
- Candidates who enjoy appeals and/or enjoy project management For the time I've been on the committee there has been a primary arb who has handled all the coordinating work around appeals and other open business. This is essential stuff. It seems unlikely any of the arbs with a year left will fill that niche so hopefully someone elected, or re-elected, will.
- Candidates who will help the committee better reflect the enwiki editor base. Take your pick of pretty much any demographic category and ArbCom is out of sync with enwiki editors on the whole. We make our best decisions when a wide range of perspectives are considered and having those perspectives better reflect the enwiki editor base would be a good thing. If we could better represent the English speaking world (i.e. our readers) that would be even better.
- Candidates who will help the committee better reflect the enwiki editor base. Truly. If this is the only attribute on this list that happens with this year's candidates it will help the committee make the best decisions possible as long as they're willing to do the work.
- Candidates with deep institutional memory, particularly around ArbCom. The past comes up with a fair degree of frequency. There has been issues which have come up from 5 or even 10+ years ago. Having people who don't have to try and crawl through archives which may be hard to search or incomplete in order to figure out that past has a lot of value.
- Candidates who are new to ArbCom. Experience is useful but fresh perspectives are also important. ArbCom shouldn't just be the same ~25 people rotating on and off the committee.