Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009

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VOTING IS NOW OPEN

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The Elections to the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee began on 10 November 2009, with self-nominations through the submission of a candidate statement. Nominations were accepted from 10 to 24 November 2009. Voting opened on 1 December 2009 and will run for 14 days using the SecurePoll extension for a secret ballot with the traditional options of support/abstain/oppose. The scrutineers are Mardetanha, Effeietsanders‎, Laaknor, Thogo, Millosh and Erwin; the administrators are Mr.Z-man, Happy-melon, and Tznkai. The results will be announced ceremonially by Jimbo Wales shortly afterwards. The successful candidates will take their seats on 1 January 2010.

Vacant seats

The number of sitting arbitrators as of 2 January 2009 was 17, down from 18 due to the resignation of one arbitrator (Deskana) soon after appointment. The terms of four arbitrators (Coren, FloNight, Kirill Lokshin and Stephen Bain) are due to expire on 31 December 2009; three arbitrators (Casliber, FT2 and Sam Blacketer) have stepped down before finishing terms that would have extended into 2010.

The number of candidates to be appointed and the length of their terms was subject to community discussion at this Request for Comment. Consensus was reached that there will be 18 seats on the Committee, with incoming arbitrators elected to two-year terms. Assuming that no more sitting arbitrators resign or are removed before 31 December 2009, this election is expected to elect eight new members to the Committee.

Process

General discussion about this year's election process may be found here.

The process being used this year is at least in part based around the following six points, derived from past elections.

1. The election opened formally at 00:00 UTC on 10 November 2009, when candidates were able to submit their candidate statements through to 23:59 UTC on 24 November 2009.
2. General questions (submitted once on a single page, and answered by every candidate) were accepted 27 October – 10 November 2009, after which a condensed version was transcluded to each candidate's "/Questions for the candidate" subpage.
3. Individual questions can be asked of each candidate 10 November 2009 – 1 December 2009 on his or her "/Questions for the candidate" subpage, reachable through the candidate statement. Please do not repeat questions that have already been asked of all the candidates.
4. Voting started at 00:00 UTC on 1 December 2009 and will close at 23:59 UTC on 14 December 2009. Within this period, you may vote for or against as few or as many candidates as you wish. To verify that your vote has been accepted, see the list of votes cast and the manual voter log.
5. Voters must have a registered account in good standing with at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 (check your account).

In a break from the process used in previous ArbCom elections, secret ballots will be implemented this year using SecurePoll, based on consensus at this Request for Comment and positive feedback on the use of the system in the October 2009 Audit Subcommittee election. If you have questions about or problems with the voting process, please ask.

Results

Results will not be available until after voting has closed, and votes have been verified and tallied.

See also

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008: The previous election.
• Template:ACE 2009 guides: The opinions of individual editors on this Election's candidacies. These "guides" should be treated as purely subjective; editors are expected to form their own opinions before voting!
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/General Summary provides an at-a-glance overview of this year's Election.