Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2023/Candidates/Firefly/Statement

Firefly

Hello! I'm Firefly, and I'm volunteering to serve as an Arbitrator. If elected, I would bring two main things to the Committee: my experience as a Checkuser combatting complex abuse; and a pragmatic, problem-solving attitude to business.

Who I am

I have been editing on-and-off since 2005, but became consistently active in early 2021. I passed RfA in March 2022, and was appointed as a Checkuser in October 2022. I have been an ArbCom clerk since August 2021, and therefore have familiarity with the on-wiki administrative aspects of ArbCom. I have written a handful of Good Articles on various subjects - these are linked from my user page if you are curious.

What I believe

Volunteer time is Wikipedia's most precious resource - and one that we risk running out of. It is for that reason that I spend the majority of my time here dealing with abuse - from long-term abusers to UPE operations who wish to unfairly skew our coverage of certain topics toward the point of view of whoever pays them. The Committee does a lot of solid anti-abuse work, and I believe both my technical experience as a Checkuser and my wider knowledge of how abusers operate would be useful.

I am a pragmatist - I believe that every problem has a solution, and that calm, rational discussion is the best way to reach them. It is important for final-decision-making bodies such as ArbCom to act with compassion and fairness, taking into account that we are all human; but also decisively, in order to prevent conduct issues from becoming corrosive to trust in an area, thereby depleting that volunteer-time resource.

What I would look to improve

By and large ArbCom carries out its often thankless task effectively. Any process can be improved however, and if elected I would advocate for the following:

• Tweaks to the block appeals process: perhaps involving the delegation of Checkuser block appeals to the wider group of Checkusers; and more transparency on rationales for granting appeals, within the boundaries of the Privacy Policy.
• Improvements to the workflow tools used by the Committee - I understand these are cumbersome and can lead to increased administrative burden.

Disclosures

I am over the age of 18 and have already signed the ANPDP. I have had two previous usernames (old username of current account, old separate account), and operate two bots (FireflyBot, and FireflyBot II) - all of which are also listed on my user page.

• Firefly (talk · contribs · count · logs · target logs · block log · lu · rfas · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · checkuser · socks · rights · blocks · protects · deletions · moves)