Inaugural Audit Subcommittee elections underway

This week saw the opening of the inaugural elections for at-large seats on the Audit Subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee.

The Audit Subcommittee (AUSC), which is responsible for investigating complaints concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia, was established in April of this year as part of the Arbitration Committee's overall effort to delegate certain tasks to subsidiary groups. The initial appointments to the subcommittee included three arbitrators (FloNight, John Vandenberg, and Roger Davies) as well as three non-arbitrators (Mackensen, Thatcher, and Tznkai). The arbitrator seats have subsequently been rotated among the members of the Committee, but the other three—intended to be merely interim appointments pending an election—have continued to be held by the initial appointees, as preparations for the election were repeatedly delayed by the emergence of higher-priority matters.

In early October, the Arbitration Committee finally announced that an election would be held in late October and early November, and solicited applications for Committee review. A slate of six candidates was approved for the three open seats:

• Dominic
• Frank
• Jredmond
• KillerChihuahua
• MBisanz
• Tznkai

The candidates include a former arbitrator (Dominic), a current member of the Audit Subcommittee (Tznkai), an Arbitration Committee clerk (MBisanz), and three other administrators.

Following extensive discussion, the elections themselves are being held via secret voting, using the "SecurePoll" extension. Four stewards (Erwin, Thogo, Mike.lifeguard, and Mardetanha) have been recruited to serve as scrutineers for the poll.

Voting in the election began on 30 October, and is scheduled to continue until 23:59 8 November (UTC). Any registered editor with 150 main space edits prior to 1 October 2009 has franchise; the "SecurePoll" extension automatically accepts votes from editors meeting this criterion. Votes may be entered on the voting page.

The Arbitration Committee is expected to announce the results by 13 November, at which point the successful candidates will assume office.

In this issue

2 November 2009 (all comments)

Article contest

Conference report

Election report

Audit Subcommittee

Dispatches

News and notes

Discussion report

WikiProject report

Features and admins

Arbitration report

Technology report

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• Are there any other subcommittees of the ArbCom yet? If not, are there plans of creating more? Jon Harald Søby (talk) 09:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• There is the ban appeals subcommittee (BASC), which is an arbitrator-only working group that has no community element (as the AUSC does). These are the only subcommittees, and I don't think there are plans for more. AGK 10:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I think we should form a group to study the process of creating new ArbCom subcommittees. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 23:09, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• I think the Committee may be waiting until the new members are seated before going forward with more governance reform, including more sub-committees. Cla68 (talk) 23:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• While the original question was merely asking for information, and that's fine, I think that asking "What other subcommittees can we create?" is the wrong approach. We should ask, "What tasks could be expedited by delegation to a subcommittee?". "None" is a perfectly valid answer.HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 18:28, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]