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During anArbitration Committee election, Wikipedia elects new arbitrators for either a two-year or one-year term. Those elected join the remaining members of the previous year's committee, replacing members whose terms have expired, who resigned from the committee, or were otherwise removed.
The Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) serves as Wikipedia's final avenue for addressing disputes related to editor conduct, distinct from content disputes, which are outside itsscope. Its primary objective is to conclusively resolve such conflicts. Although ArbCom possesses the authority to take independent action, it generally operates within the framework offormal cases initiated by the community. These cases are accepted by ArbCom only when the community has shown an inability to resolve the core dispute. For instance, in 2018, ArbCom accepted seven case requests and offered additional clarifications or subsequent rulings in a few previous instances.
To deal with disputes, the Arbitration Committee can impose editing restrictions, also known assanctions, on specific editors or all editors making changes related to a given topic. Types of remedies have included preventing new users from editing in a topic area, or limiting the number of reverts editors can make on articles in the topic area. Sanctions placed by ArbCom are binding and administrators aredeputized to enforce them.
The Arbitration Committee has the responsibility on behalf of the English Wikipedia community to review the use ofadministrative privileges. It can issue restrictions on a given administrator's privileges or remove them entirely. (Administrative privileges can otherwise only be removed due toinactivity or, on rare occasions, by theWikimedia Foundation.)
Arbitrators are trusted to receive confidential information required by English Wikipedia procedures, such as evidence that would connect Wikipedia editors with their offline identities or which cannot be made public for legal reasons (seeWikipedia:Access to nonpublic information). ArbCom is also the final step in the appeals process forbanned users who have lost the ability to appeal through other means. While holding administrator privileges is not necessary to run for the Arbitration Committee, historically almost every person who has been elected to ArbCom has been an admin.
Arbitrators are given access to theCheckUser andoversight tools upon request to assist in their work. ArbCom is also responsible for selecting new CheckUsers and oversighters, which it does after a period for community comment on the candidates, and also has authority to remove these permissions for inactivity or misuse.
Each September, aRequest for Comments discussion is held to allow the community to propose changes to the election rules, including how many people may be elected. For example, see therequest for comments on the 2025 election.
An Electoral Commission is selected to deal with any unforeseen issues that arise during the electoral process. For 2025, nominations for the commission can be made from 02 October – 08 October 2025, and voting on the electoral commission will run until 15 October.
For 2025, nominations and elections for the Arbitration Committee occur according to the following schedule:
An editor meeting the following criteria is eligible to be a candidate:
All editors are invited to discuss the candidates and ask them questions. See theguide for voters for more details.
Voting is done using theSecurePoll Extension. This records your vote using a secret ballot process. While some technical information, such asIP address anduser agents, is recorded, no one, including the scrutineers, can associate your username with your votes.
An editor meeting the following criteria is eligible to vote:
You will be given 3 options for each candidate: Support, Oppose, and Neutral. Candidates will be ranked based on S/(S+O), where S is the number of support votes they received, and O is the number of Oppose votes they received. Voting neutral is effectively an abstention from voting with respect to that candidate. In 2025, the top 8 candidates on that list will receive two-year terms, provided that they received at least 60% of the non-neutral vote, and one-year terms if they got at least 50% but less than 60%. Seats will remain vacant if there is an insufficient number of candidates with at least as many supports as opposes (to date, this has not occurred in any previous election).
If you wish to change your vote after you have already cast it, you can vote again and your previous vote will be discarded. There is no limit on the number of times you may change your vote.
A number of voter guides are typically produced by independent editors which you may find helpful in evaluating the candidates. See theguide for voters for more details.
Following voting thescrutineering process begins.Stewards whose home wikis are not English Wikipedia ensure the voting process was sound, and the integrity of the result. This process includes using theCheckUser tool to view voter IP addresses. This process requires checking every user who voted and takes a couple of weeks. Results are posted to theelections page.
 | Candidates: Personal voter guides Theseguides represent the thoughts of their authors. All individually written voter guides are eligible for inclusion. |