Thryduulf

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Both last year and again this year several people, including sitting arbitrators, have encouraged me to stand for the Committee. Having given it great thought I've decided that I will throw my hat into the ring.

I feel my qualifications for the role are my being a long-standing Wikipedian (I'll clock up 10 years of editing on Boxing Day) and administrator (9½ years on 2 December), and having experienced a wide variety of Wikipedia in that time. I've been following the public activities of ArbCom with varying degrees of closeness for several years, contributing to various cases, and especially clarification requests, as an outside observer (and as a party to the Iasson case in 2005). I also maintain WP:ARBLOCI.

While I'm not the worlds biggest or best content creator (I have no GAs or FAs to my name) I have dedicated most of my wiki time to enabling those that are to do so, and even more importantly to ensuring the reader can find and access the content they are looking for (the latter through being probably the most prolific user ever at RfD). I feel this fits well with being an arbitrator, the goal of which is to resolve disputes and allow those who can to create neutral, sourced encyclopaedic content free from disruption and harassment.

I feel that the committee got the Infoboxes case very wrong by taking sides in the dispute and requiring WP:OWNership of articles, and I aim to use this reminder to always think through the consequences to avoid something similar. I will recuse from all the future discussions of that case though.

I feel that it is an arbitrator's duty to clarify any decision made when asked to do so in good faith, and that every public request to the committee should be publicly acknowledged by at least one arbitrator, normally within 48 hours. I can't promise to do this on my own, but I will do my best to play my part. I also note that many of the proposals for reducing the workload of the arbitration committee fail because there is a lack of understanding of what arbitrators do behind the scenes, while much is rightly private I aim to publicly record how much time I spend on various tasks (but be warned I am not good at blogging!).

Mandatory information: If elected I will identify to the Foundation and comply with their requirements. In addition to this account I also control user:Awkward42, User:Chris McKenna and user:Chris McKenna (WMUK) – the first as a test user, the second to prevent impersonation, and the latter from when I was employed by Wikimedia UK (May–August 2014) to help deliver Wikimania 2014. I do not control User:Chris Mckenna.

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