Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Candidates/Casliber/Statement

Casliber

Hi, my name is Cas Liber and I have decided after some thought to run for the arbitration committee. I ran successfully for the committee in the 2008 elections, and my introduction remains pretty much the same. I enjoyed the nine months I spent on the committee until my resignation, and the ensuing discussion, where although the balance was in favour of me staying, enough people whose opinions I valued were unimpressed enough for me to figure on going as the right thing to do. Furthermore I had strong feelings on socking and felt like a hypocrite. Anyway, it was one of those blunders I had wearing "friend-hat" and not "arb-hat" on.

So why am I here? Two reasons. I always felt the adminship process was not truly broken, and we were doing okay (and in fact I'd like to believe that I was one of the folks on the committee in early 2009 who helped the committee be more proactive in reviewing and taking action over admin conduct at that time), but some recent Requests for Adminship in the last month or two I felt the atmosphere had deteriorated to the point that there is a real malaise there. Since 2009, I have often commented at RfA that the committee is a safety valve, however folks have been loth to refer for admin issues. I think it is time maybe we look at broadening the AUSC to cover admin conduct, or some other process, anyway time for action/tweak the makeup of things.

The second issue was the resignation of Rlevse and subsequent discussions, where I did feel a sense of fraying of the threads of community further. I have always felt that arbs do better as active and involved members of the wikipedia community, and I was really worried about some of the us/them comments as folks' tempers frayed, by all sorts of experienced editors. As an active contributor to the Featured Article, Good Article and DYK process, I feel I am a good person to tie everyone together and get everyone moving in the same direction. I reckon we have alot more similarities in common than differences.

I just realised David Fuchs beat me to it, but the encyclopedia thing's important, and I think being elbow-deep in the processes that make or improve content gives an experience and viewpoint it is hard to duplicate.

PS: No other accounts, maybe the odd IP edit.