Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019/Candidates/Gadfium/Statement

Gadfium

I started editing in March 2004 and became an administrator in December. In 2005, as editing Wikipedia was more interesting than working, I took early retirement. I subsequently completed a BSc degree to improve my knowledge, so I could contribute better to Wikipedia. I attended Wikimania 2012. I’ve never been blocked, and I now have 130,000 edits.

I’ve rarely been involved in WikiPolitics, and until recently I had little to do with the Arbitration Committee. I started to pay more attention when Fram was blocked, and resigned my adminship as a way of expressing my concern at the overriding of Wikpedia’s right to manage its own affairs. Unlike many who resigned, I continued to create content and improve the encyclopedia, because my concern was with the management rather than the goal. Once Arbcom was given permission to decide the case itself, I regained my adminship.

I followed the Arbcom Fram case with great interest. In particular, I was impressed by the arbitrators who engaged with the community. Overall, the Fram incident deepened my commitment to Wikipedia, and as a supporter of English Wikipedia having some autonomy in governance, I want the new Arbcom to be strong. I’m standing because I can help, or at least give the voters a greater choice of candidates.

I’m going in at the deep end, but I can learn to swim. My approach will be more liberal than the overall Arbcom approach so far: I intend to vote for cautions rather than sanctions for editors who appear to be trying to do the "right thing", even if they overstepped the mark. Editors who fail to heed such cautions and appear in subsequent cases will get less liberal treatment. I believe Arbitrators should be highly responsive to community concerns on the talk pages of cases.

I am male, cisgender, straight and Pākehā (the Māori term for Europeans in NZ), so I am privileged but aware that others have had a more difficult life. I’ve travelled widely, and lived in several countries, however I’ve spent most of my life in New Zealand. I have no strong bias on many of the intractable debates in world politics, and if a case comes up where I cannot easily set aside any preconceptions, I will recuse.

I have read and will fully comply with the Wikimedia Foundation’s criteria for access to non-public data, and I will identify myself to the Foundation if elected.

I have registered User:Gadbot for future use, but currently have no plans for a bot. I created User:Gadflum to prevent impersonation of my account and that has been blocked.

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