Introduction and expectations (max. 600 words for both questions)
Tell us who you are, why you are applying, and your relevant experience.
Hi. I am Barkeep49 and I running for re-election to the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) because:
I believe in free knowledge
I want the U4C to help communities but not control them
I want to continue the work the U4C began this year.
To be successful the U4C must respect the principle of subsidiarity. Success means helping communities through training and sharing successes. As a U4C member, I have prioritized trying to help communities gain the skills and tools they need rather than needing the U4C and in declining cases where local communities could resolve a problem themselves.
Besides my year on the U4C, I have served on the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines Committee (2021), the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines Revision Committees (2022), and on the U4C Building Committee (2023) and was elected to two terms on the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee.
If re-elected I will...
do the work. I have been someone who has done lots of work for the committees I've joined and the U4C has been no exception.
remain easy to reach and quick to reply. Communicating is especially important for a new committee with lots of potential power and so I have tried to be a regular participant in U4C conversations during cases and on other U4C pages.
listen carefully. It's vital to learn from others, understand perspectives, and consider others' thinking.
learn and respect other projects. This year on the U4C I have learned so much about how other projects organize themselves, some lessons of which I would love to bring back to English Wikipedia.
collaborate with my U4C colleagues. I try to bring my own thoughts and perspectives to all of our work. However, I also try to find solutions that we can all support. I also try to be supportive of the work my colleagues have done, showing appreciation and offering formal support where needed.
work hard to improve. If something isn't working, we should improve it. I am willing to try new things, and equally willing to admit when something new hasn't worked. Fundamentally, I believe it is important for us to try to do better because we can be better.
Please describe what do you hope to do if elected.
My focus if elected for a 2 year term will be continuing to:
Build U4C systems and processes. The U4C is a young committee and lots of work remains to be done. One specific project I hope to do (and might even begin working during the election) is build a glossary for common phrases used by the U4C. I have also done some basic scripting, for example making a script to help with posting U4C announcements.
Carefully consider the cases presented to us. This is definitely the most time consuming part of the U4C work as I attempt to not only read what is presented, but to carefully examine the diffs, and to learn about the policies and procedures on the projects that apply to the case request.
Fulfilling the U4C responsibility to be a coordinating committee, not a global Arbitration Committee. This includes focusing on the preventive and reporting responsibilities of the committee. As an example, I helped take the lead in arranging time to meet with the team building the Incident Reporting System and offered lots of suggestions on the current version of that tool. Lots of work remains with that tool I plan to continue offering help and suggestions.
