I don't necessarily share your view that there are 'more than 7 very good candidates'. The number is still too low and IMO there are some who really should not be (re)elected - for various reasons - but the seats will have to be filled from those contenders . Your work and fairness on the Committee will be sorely missed but it is fully understandable that you have had enough of it. Nevertheless, as one of the most highly experienced and respected Wikipedians, you still have a lot to do and as you have correctly identified , SMcCandlish's - views demonstrate deep understanding. Maybe others do too but they don't talk about it enough. I don't believe the community is ready to elect a non admin to the Committee, so barring surprises, McCandlish will need to get that mop before his ideas would gain significant traction and have plenty of impact. I hope he will, and I hope you would support him. Thank you so much for your two terms on Arbcom, and for your on-going concerns for AfC and NPP (It's been an honour to work with you on those issues and to have had your support). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:01, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- I appreciate the support from both of you (though Kudpung's voter guide over-dwells – twice! – on an old issue of drama which has largely been dead, despite later efforts of a now-reblocked gadfly to make it central to ACE2020). It may well be that the community is not ready to accept a non-admin on ArbCom, but I came very close in 2017 (with more supports than 50% of those who passed, and missing 1-year election by less than 3%; I failed because of our double-voting system and its no vote). If it were not for that same old-news issue about which people want to perpetually re-manufacture drama, I think my chances would have been quite good this year. Even if I am not the ideal first non-admin in ArbCom, someone out there may be next year.
It may help to have a former Arb like DGG write an essay or something explaining why, from an Arb's perspective, a non-admin on the Committee would not be a problem. Much of the "vote no because candidate is not an admin" stuff is based on assumptions that a non-admin could not do the job, that most cases involve lots of revdel'ed evidence, that such evidence would not be posted for discussion on arbcom-en, and so on. If these assumptions were true, and a non-admin just could not do the job, then adminship would be already be a written requirement for candidacy. (That said, there's also the "can't be trusted since hasn't passed RfA yet" variant. That's a failure to understand that the roles and the mental/experiential toolsets for them are different, that 1–2-year trust assessments differ from adminship-for-life ones, and that one way of assessing trust doesn't mean there is no other way. All of those could also be addressed in such an essay.)
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:42, 25 November 2020