Finally, a candidate is standing who is not a current or former Arbitrator, and not totally unsuitable. Lourdes.
Here's why she doesn't deserve your vote....
1. She is probably nuts
https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... f=19&t=4502. She claims to "realize the imperative to strengthen the editor base internationally and to be more inclusive" and yet she specifically named Drmies, Iridescent, Ritchie and Cullen as Administrators she admires. Old white elitist dudes, to whom stupidity, hostility (passive and overt), misrepresentation, wikipolitics and incompetence, are no strangers in their style of Adminship. The exact sort of Administrators ArbCom would be desysopping, if Wikipedia worked and the desire for inclusiveness was real, rather than just convenient PR. So she really is either nuts, or too stupid for this role.
She probably will be elected, because she is a woman, and many voters won't see beyond that. They need more women on the committee, if only for the optics, and who cares what they'll do when they get there, even if they turn out to be gender traitors (or continue to be, as was the case with Opabina Regalis).
But crucially, what will be highly attractive to the toxic sludge that makes up a critical mass of the voter base (barely a few hundred editors are needed to turn victory into defeat), is that she seems to be a woman who is easily led (look at her idols!) or even easily intimidated away from acting on those instincts and insight that might have otherwise indicated she would be a friend to voters looking for more inclusiveness. She did nothing in the face of the naked threats she received if she even dared to block MjolnirPants for example, even though they came from her fellow Administrators.
Well, not nothing, she launched a proposal that attempted to get community ratification for the idea it isn't acceptable to repeatedly tell fellow editors to fuck off, and there is no contextual reason for not making that a hard rule, to be overlooked only if there is a clear and obvious benefit to Wikipedia (IAR).
This is of course already a sensible reading of the civility policy, given the inclusion of repeated and targeted as qualifiers, and it got healthy support because of it. Not enough though, because the toxics prefer the de facto situation - fuck policy, it's fine if the person is a Face and/or if the Wikipedia insiders think it was justifiable.
As such, they opposed in their droves, both for those shamefully corrupt reasons, and all the other usual stuff which is, ironically, a violation of civil (do not ignore the positions of others), or indeed the basic tenets of Wikipedia (do not waste other people's time by talking utter shite, especially if you are only doing so to prevent a consensus emerging). Many of those were, of course, Administrators, but you will note Lourdes' idols were all too politically smart to make their views known. Except Ritchie, but he really is a dumbass.
The act of merely posting that proposal at all, probably really does illustrate her epic stupidity, and perhaps a massive naive streak. The policy is already being widely undermined through the daily actions of people like Drmies, the corrupt Administrators who hold the real power in Wikipedia. And so it is hardly surprising that the answer was, let's just keep pretending this is normal.
If this candidacy is her way of rectifying that failure of the community to honestly uphold its own policies, the policies which outsiders, specifically woman and minorities, might naively assume are followed and thus persuade them to join, then all power to her. That is the theoretical way things are meant to work.
If she thinks she will achieve anything of the sort with Drmies by her side, on the very same committee, she is perhaps not merely naive or stupid, but a Useful Idiot for those who absolutely do not want the theoretical way Wikipedia is supposed to work, to ever be the way it actually works.
She will definitely not achieve her aims on a committee which already features Opabina Regalis. As she has done many times before, in many different ways, she responded to that proposal by throwing up everything and anything she could think of to distract people away from the fact that she didn't actually come up with an argument as to why repeatedly telling other editors to fuck off in a targeted fashion, is not sanctionable.
It showed Opabina is a gender traitor and then some. Her opening lines displayed open contempt for Lourdes, and it went downhill from there. There were aspects of her comments that come incredibly close to what people who commit domestic violence actually say to excuse their behaviour. Still, she was funny, in her own off beat way, and that certainly seems to distract a few people from the underlying messages. Drmies uses humour the same way. No wonder he wants to get in her knickers so badly (there's been even more adulation of her in his answers, if you can believe it). His poor wife.
Is Lourdes the women to take that roadblock on? No. You need a Gorilla Warfare or a Keilana for that task, and in sufficient numbers to outvote her. Those two are not standing now, and are not standing ever again most likely. You can blame Drmies and Opabina and the hoardes of toxics who rally to their King and Queen. Drmies needs to watch his back, since I'm thinking he is about to get in the middle of a fight between Opabina and Bishonen for that particular title, although there may be an uneasy peace since the former is working the inside, the latter the outside.
It's been so effective, if you ask GW and Keilana why they lost faith in using their ArbCom seats as a vehicle for change, they will claim pressures of real life. Yeah right. Every woman who is really saying, hell no, I do not want to work with you, bitch, to Opabina in her kitten based recruitment drive, has in reality said, oh no, I couldn't possibly find the time. Lies.
Those two found out to their cost what happens when you defy Bishonen with your rulings, and they've both seen what Drmies is capable of doing to Sandstein, for merely attempting to uphold their authority. Seeing Opabina on the 2017 ballot had to be the last straw for them, claiming as she did to have been analytical and flexible in her first term. Chuck in Black Kite and BBb23 with all their power plays, and ArbCom is no place for any woman who isn't a gender traitor, even battle scarred and highly motivated ones. They would eat Lourdes alive, if she ever found her voice.
This is how it works. This is how you suppress a minority. This is now you exert control. You continue to let the men do what they do, let them cast themselves as allies even, and you find strong women to act as gender traitors, co-opting what were already pretty pathetic attempts to effect radical change (2 out of 15 seats was unlikely to achieve anything), and as I fear in Lourdes' case, and perhaps the other women elected in 2017, even some of the men, you also find some useful idiots, easily controlled and ignored.
Drmies knows how it works. You can regularly find him citing feminist and progressive theory on Wikipedia, as if he is a friend and ally to women and minorities. Safe in the knowledge nobody can or would dare to point out these are just words, he doesn't actually do a single thing to act on them. If it ever appears he has, look deeper, there is always a different, far more evil, agenda.
Drmies falsely accused someone of racism, stalked and finally blocked them, all because he posed a threat to his racist buddy Malik. He did that. If he's now suddenly all into transparency, go ask him if he has a better explanation for his actions in that affair. You will either be blocked before you get an answer, or he will hide behind the fact the Wikipedia community saw nothing wrong with what he did, and still retains its trust in him, because Admin.
He is probably laughing as he says it, because he knows how ridiculous it is to claim the Wikipedia community has a good sense for who is trustworthy and progressive. He is a prominent part of the community, for fuck's sake, even if he does now claim to be a minor actor. Just another one of his self-serving lies. Minor actors don't stand for ArbCom, much less get elected.
Over to you, Wikipediocracy and Gender Desk. Oh right, this isn't your things is it. Ah well.
