The election consisted of three stages.

1. The nomination period, during which interested editors were invited to submit a candidate statement. An editor was eligible to stand as a candidate who i) had made 1,000 mainspace edits prior to the start of the nomination period and ii) was in good standing, that is, not subject to active blocks or site-bans.
2. The voting period, during which eligible voters may vote on the candidates, using the SecurePoll system. An editor is eligible to vote who (i) has a registered account and has had at least 150 mainspace edits by 1 November 2010; and (ii) is not a blocked user for at least part of the voting period. A tool is available to check the eligibility of user accounts.
3. The scrutineering period, during which the votes were be checked (e.g. for duplicate, missing, and ineligible votes) and a tally of results compiled.

Voters were invited to review, question and discuss the candidates throughout the nomination and voting periods.

Three groups of editors were involved in the organisation of the elections:

• Election coordinators— self-selected editors organising the on-wiki aspects of the election (listed here).
• Election administrators— Wikimedia Foundation-identified editors who oversaw the election, including the SecurePoll voting system. Happy-melon, MBisanz and Mr.Z-man agreed to serve as election administrators.
• Scrutineers— volunteers drawn from the ranks of stewards with a home wiki other than the English Wikipedia, tasked with verifying the integrity of the vote and tallying the outcome. Dferg, Laaknor, Mardetanha, and Millosh agreed to serve as scrutineers.

The WMF developer Roan Kattouw agreed to run the technical aspect of the election.

Following the voting period, the scrutineers examined the votes, and released a tally of the results. The tally ranks candidates by level of support, defined as the number of votes cast in support of the candidate divided by the total number of votes cast for the candidate ("neutral" votes are not counted). Jimbo Wales ceremonially appointed the candidates to the vacant seats on the Arbitration Committee on the basis of the tally.

Results certified by

I hereby certify this election and its results Mardetanha ^talk 00:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

--m:dferg 00:10, 09 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Laaknor (talk) 00:42, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

millosh (talk (meta:)) 09:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The election aimed to raise the number of arbitrators to 18. The terms of nine arbitrators (half of the Committee, by design) were due to expire at the end of 2010—those of Carcharoth, FayssalF, Hersfold, KnightLago, Newyorkbrad, Shell Kinney, SirFozzie, Vassyana, and Wizardman. In addition, Fritzpoll, Rlevse, and Steve Smith, whose terms would not have expired at the end of 2010, stepped down during that year and also needed to be replaced at this election. The number of arbitrators on the Committee (18) and the maximum length of the terms of incoming arbitrators (two years) were established following community discussion in 2009 at this Request for Comment. Thus, 12 arbitrators were elected from the pool of candidates.

Nominations for candidates opened at 00:01 UTC, Sunday 14 November and closed at 23:59 UTC, Tuesday 23 November. During this time, any editor in good standing who had made at least 1,000 mainspace edits before the opening of the nomination period and was at least 18 years old and of legal age in their jurisdiction was eligible to nominate themselves by following the instructions to create a candidate statement and a questions page on the Candidates' page. Once candidates had created their statements, they could proceed to answer the general and individual questions as they wished (see the Questions page for details and instructions). Candidates could continue to answer questions until the end of the voting period (23:59 UTC, Sunday 5 December).

Before the nomination period (i.e. before 00:01 UTC, Sunday 14 November), voters were invited to discuss and develop the general questions that will be asked of every candidate.

Once candidates had nominated themselves, voters were invited to review and discuss them. Voters were able to ask one specific question per candidate throughout the election; please see the instructions for individual questions for details.

To facilitate their discussions and judgements, voters were encouraged to familiarise themselves with the candidates. This could be done through reading the candidate statements, the answers to the questions put to each candidate (linked from their candidate statements), and the discussion of each candidate (a centralised collection of which was made available at the Discussion page). In addition, a summary guide to candidates was made available, and augmented by a set of personal guides by individual voters.

Voting ran for 10 days, from 00:01 UTC, Friday 26 November to 23:59 UTC, Sunday 5 December, and was conducted using the SecurePoll extension. Voters used radio buttons to indicate which candidates they would "Support" or "Oppose" (the default option of "Neutral" did not affect the outcome in any way). Because of the risk of server lag, voters were advised to cast their vote at the latest an hour before the close of voting to ensure their vote would be counted.