>There have never been anywhere near that many people voting for Arbcom elections; in fact, that's more people than >voted in the last Board of Trustees elections for the elected seats, and hugely more than get a "vote" for the >chapter/affiliate-selected Board seats.

 

I wonder if the apparent decline in votes also has to do with the move to making the ballots secret—there are more than a few entries on the various [[WP:100]] multiples that came from the old way of open ballots, which was often an invitation for those unsatisfied with drama to provoke even more of it in the ensuing discussion threads, or by the very act of running.

 

>The fact of the matter is that not that many people actually care about Arbcom, and never really cared.

 

+1 (and I would use a higher number, but there’s only one me). Thank you for stating one of the biggest unstated truths of Wikipedia in just so many words.

 

>The people who care are usually those who have interacted with the dispute resolution system on multiple occasions.

 

And then stating the reason for that truth. I have always believed that the amount of drama on-wiki is overstated; most of the people who complain about it are the sort of people Risker describes above—people who have been party to ArbCom cases, have provided evidence, have supported either those bringing the cases or having cases brought against them, have been or are in some way formally involved in the dispute resolution process. Some people never go back there, or find the experience so dispiriting, even in the case of a favorable outcome, that they take a long break or leave the project altogether afterwards, because of the way being involved in an ArbCom case or some other long-running dispute just takes over your wikilife for the duration. But it seems more of those people stay and continue to focus most of their energies on the various formal and informal dispute resolution procedures, regardless of their involvement.

 

Now, of course, having a core of otherwise disinterested “watchers” on the dispute resolution processes is not a bad thing by itself. The question might be whether we have too many, or whether some of those people should remember what they came to Wikipedia to do and go back to editing and creating article content for a while.

 

I have also noticed it’s these people, primarily, who seem most pessimistic about the state of the project either in person, or on-wiki. Well of course they would feel that way if they have changes to ArbCom cases on their RSS feeds. One is reminded of the joke about the drunk looking for his lost keys under the streetlight.

 

Your comment suggests an inquiry which might make an interesting paper or presentation for someone at some conference or event: See how many of the people listed (like myself) on Highly Active Users make how many edits to dispute-resolution sections of the site in project namespace like AN/I, Arbcom or (prior to its recent deprecation) RFC/U. And how much the heaviest contributors to those pages (other than active or former Arbs or clerks, who have a reason to do so) make to article namespace. I bet there’s not going to be much overlap, that the Venn diagram will be kissing socially at best.

 

In fact, it would be interesting to see pages like HAU or whatever broken down by edits to namespace. Or have a page that recognizes the heaviest/most active contributors to article namespace.

 

>The majority of active administrators participate, for example; but the number of active admins has also nosedived, so >we may be seeing the effects of that reflected in the interest in voting, and even in the number and quality of >candidates.  Back in the earlier days, there were often 30-40 candidates. 

 

I participate in ArbCom elections primarily because I am not just an active admin, but a functionary as well, and feel a sense of duty and community responsibility (Plus there is a higher chance, when one has one of the more advanced tools, that decisions on how to use or not use them may possibly involve ArbCom cases past, present or future, so it’s a good idea to at least keep an eye on things and say your say about who has that job). But it’s not something I’ve ever been passionate enough about to the equivalent of, say, putting a bumper sticker on my car.

 

Daniel Case