User:Hersfold/Platform

• Improve communication between the Committee and the Community. Much of the problems associated with the Committee are based in the fact that nobody really knows what they're doing. The Signpost generally only covers the ongoing cases, and only briefly glosses over their other work, if anything at all. Increased transparency of the Committee's workings, and those of their dependent groups such as the Functionaries and Sub-committees, and increasing community input and involvement into these workings, should help allay concerns of cabalism and secrecy.
• Improve communication between the Committee and the Clerks. This may not be as noticeable to the general public, but it's still an issue that needs to be addressed, or the Committee will collapse in on itself. While I've been a clerk, there have been several situations where something was misunderstood or miscommunicated, and it's ended in the resignation of a clerk or arbitrator, or at the least a severe amount of distrust between several users. The clerks are vital to the operation of the Committee, and if we are unable to resolve disputes within our ranks, we are poorly qualified to handle them elsewhere.
• Get stuff done faster. This is a very common campaign point, so I won't elaborate on it much, but I will say that the work I've done with the clerks has given me some insight as to where hang-ups occur and how those hang-ups can be ironed out. I think some of the work I've done has already helped with this some, and with a seat on the Committee, I'll be able to do much more.
• Sterner sanctions. As Wikipedia ages, our community becomes more entrenched in its ways. With many this is not a problem, however there are a good many where it is, and they need to be dealt with and not treated as a constant in the community. I would be willing to apply stronger sanctions to those who have demonstrably been repeated problems in the community, or have otherwise proven disruptive, so that the community can continue to grow, expand, and welcome new users who are unused to the personalities we've learned to tolerate. This includes removal of adminship or other rights - while adminship should not be a big deal, when a new user hears "admin" they think someone with the ability to make them a non-person on the internet. A dickish admin, therefore, is a problem that must be addressed, which leads to my next point...
• Community de-adminship. I am very pleased that the recent admin recall RFC did have one useful outcome (although even that came close), and if elected, I would work with the Committee to help set up that proposal (Wikipedia:Community de-adminship for details and the in-progress drafting work of it) to help ensure that it, or a version of it, was fully instituted and became a success. The community has needed something like this for a long time, and with ArbCom backing, it's my hope that it'll actually come to pass.
• Balance my workload better. I would fully expect one of the questions posed to me to be about my activity levels, especially since I've just come back from an unannounced wikibreak of a few week's length. I am in my junior year of college, and so I do have a fair bit of academic work, as well as a job. Since this is a volunteer post that I don't get paid for, Wikipedia takes a lower priority to all of that. I am, however, working with my supervisors and myself to improve my time management skills and my workload for the coming semesters. It is my fervent hope that this will have been the last long and sudden break I'll have to take for a long while. Editing Wikipedia is something that I on the whole enjoy, and those who know me personally know it's something I'm passionate about. I do expect to have to take the occasional short break to get projects and the like done, but it is my goal to do so in a way that it will not impact my Arbitration duties if elected.