Arbitration Committee proceedings

Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
Persistent WP:IDONTLIKEIT behavior in WP:NCROY discussions		10 May 2024	0/1/0

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Venezuelan politics	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	20 Apr 2024	04 May 2024

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Recently closed cases (Past cases)

Case name	Closed
Conflict of interest management	13 Apr 2024
Mzajac	7 May 2024

Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Transcendental Meditation movement\|Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Transcendental Meditation movement]]	none	none	26 August 2011
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: WP:DIGWUREN\|Request for clarification: WP:DIGWUREN]]	none	none	24 August 2011
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Ireland article names\|Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Ireland article names]]	none	none	19 August 2011

Arbitrator motions

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Requests for clarification

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification/Header

Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Transcendental Meditation movement

Initiated by Doc James (talk · contribs · email) at 19:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Due to concern regarding real life identify users in question not provided.

Statement by Doc James

In the TM case we passed a number of previsions including one pertaining to WP:COI [1] It states that editor which "have only an indirect relationship" may continue to edit. What about editors who are members of the public relations department of the Transcendental Meditation movement? Are they too allowed to continue editing or should their editing ability be restricted? Would stipulate the specifics off Wiki due concerns of releasing peoples identify if this is indeed a concern.

Statement by Tony Sidaway

Risker writes: "those who have a personal belief system that is in direct conflict with the philosophies of Transcendental Meditation (or for that matter, any other belief system) must also bear in mind their own potential conflict of interest and edit neutrally or not at all."

Belief systems and religions have the distinguishing quality of belief. Anybody who doesn't belong to the in-group (Socialists, Objectivists, Zoroastrians, Christians, TMers, Quakers, Raelians, Atheists, or whatever) is in direct conflict with the belief system. However normally we tend think of those outsiders as having a better chance of writing objectively about the belief system than the believers. I think this is probably a good idea. --TS 01:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

The principle you reference says that "an editor who is a member of a particular organisation or holds a particular set of religious or other beliefs is not prohibited from editing articles about that organisation or those beliefs but should take care that his or her editing on that topic adheres to the neutrality policy and other key policies" - so it really depends on the edits themselves. If you think an editor who may have a conflict of interests is not observing relevant site policy/guidelines with their editing, then you should engage the discretionary sanctions provided for in the remedies by seeking enforcement at WP:AE. –xeno^talk 20:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What Xeno said. Jclemens (talk) 00:41, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree with Xeno, although I would add that the first step might be to discuss your concern directly with the editor in question himself or herself. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with Xeno and Newyorkbrad. Keep in mind the converse is also true; those who have a personal belief system that is in direct conflict with the philosophies of Transcendental Meditation (or for that matter, any other belief system) must also bear in mind their own potential conflict of interest and edit neutrally or not at all. Risker (talk) 01:33, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I too concur with Xeno and Newyorkbrad. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:08, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There has never been an outright prohibition against conflicts of interest on Wikipedia (for many reasons, not the least of which is the inability to properly define "conflict of interest" in the first place). What COI entails, however, is a higher risk that one's editing unwittingly strays into being tendentious or otherwise problematic. This is why editors in a plausible conflict are counseled to propose edits to talk pages to raise consensus: it's insurance. Ultimately, however, it's the quality of the edits that count. If the pope edited the articles on Christianity while remaining rigorously neutral, then few people would find cause to argue. — Coren ^(talk) 13:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with those who have spoken before me SirFozzie (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for clarification: WP:DIGWUREN

Initiated by _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} at 21:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC) List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:[reply]

Piotrus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Statement by Piotrus

Several weeks ago, I've asked this question at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests. I've done so twice, but despite some (limited) discussion by editors, no arbitrator, to my knowledge, has joined the discussion. As such, I am repeating my question here, as an official request for clarification.

Regarding WP:DIGWUREN (Wikipedia:General_sanctions), would it be:

) applicable to an editor who in a discussion, for example, at a general policy page (and not necessarily on an EE content article), makes bad faith / incivil remarks / PA regarding EE editors in general (for example, discussing the bias of "Slavic editors", identifying votes of editors as "X comes from a Slavic country" and makes similar arguments, the gist of which is arguing that EE editors are not neutral/biased
) applicable to an editor who in a discussion, for example, at a general policy page (and not necessarily on an EE content article), makes bad faith / incivil / PA remarks regarding another editor or editors by mentioning an EE-related ARBCOM case with expired sanctions to back the claim that "this editor is biased, as the XYZ case proves", "this editor has been found to be disruptive, to edit war, has supported editors who were found disruptive", and so on. In other words, is there any recourse when an editor is trying to damage another editor's reputation by citing/linking old ARBCOM findings, poising the well by reminding others "what bad, bad deed that evil person did X years ago"? To give more generic examples, related behaviors would include noting in a discussion that "should I remind you of the findings/sanctions of an arbcom case against you [implied: that editor has been sanctioned in the past, so his arguments should be suspect]", or more directly, "editor X was banned from this topic area [implied: so his arguments should be suspect]", or in a vote that "editor X was found to use a sock-puppet 3 years ago [implied: so his vote should count less]". Just to be clear, I understand that editors have the right to ask about another editor's history in discussions that center on that editors (such as during Requests for Adminship and other positions). My question relates to other, content-related discussions, where such comments are similar to a regular personal attack (but instead saying "editor X is a troll", what is said is "editor X has been sanctioned in the past"). Either comment is irrelevant to the discussion in question (sanctions in questions have expired), but the second one is more insidious, as by invoking administrative/arbcom findings/sanctions it creates the illusion of having the "Wikipedia rules" behind it.

If WP:DIGWUREN is not applicable, I'd appreciate comments what, if any, policies are, and where such behavior can be reported (or are editors just supposed to take such poisoned comments for years and decades)?

I will note that this request for clarification does not pertain to any current incident. Rather, it is based on numerous incidents I've seen in the past year or so, incidents which I believe keep the EE battleground still simmering, but which at this point I am not sure what is the correct avenue, if any, to deal with. Should a WP:DIGWUREN AE request be made in such cases, or...? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Replies. Yes, Biophys, I am very fond of forgiving and forgetting, and yes, you are right that continued harassment leads to editor loss (some thoughts of mine on this). I have to say I am surprised that the comments from Arbitrators seem to indicate that they see nothing wrong with such combative attitude which is the primary reason why the old battlegrounds are still smoldering. I am also confused as those comments seem to be quite different from the comments that the admins make on AE (see for example current case here). Where the arbitrators seem to be very lenient, the AE admins seem to be rather strict. What am I missing? Are the interaction bans the only way that harassing and sniping, hounding can be stopped around here? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 17:10, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Biophys

Piotrus, do you mean that everyone must just forgive and forget, and this is it? Yes, that would help to make this place much better, but this is also a dramatic attitude change. It is not uncommon that administrator X wants to block user A for doing something because user A did the same a couple years ago. It is also frequently claimed that user A (who currently is in good standing) should not switch to a different account because no one should be dissociated with his edit history, and therefore nothing can be forgotten. This situation forces some people to resign. I am not talking about things like the gradually increasing blocks for violating the same topic ban. But, yes, forgetting others would be a great idea, but this should start from administrators. Biophys (talk) 12:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that no one should use expressions like "EEML people" (e.g. here and here), which assumes a collective responsibility. Some participants of the mailing list did not receive any sanctions in relation to the list. One should only talk about individual editors sanctioned in EEML case if their sanctions did not expire. Biophys (talk) 04:53, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other user

I think that if an editor has a complaint about this that they should take it to ANI rather than AE. There is nothing in Digwuren or other AE cases to guide the administrators here. TFD (talk) 04:48, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

No, there is no sanction for using a user's own appropriate history in discussions of current behavioral problems. Wikipedia editors should be mature enough to know that 1) everyone makes mistakes, 2) good people move beyond them, and editors who edit without repeating problems in the distant past should be given appropriately more consideration than someone who's just come off of a block for the same action, and 3) one's reputation on-wiki is what it is. In general, I do not favor suppressing, via technical means or by prior restraints on on-wiki speech for mentioning, legitimate history. There is a way to overcome a sanction, and it is pretty straightforward: abide by it, and don't ever get involved in the same problems again. In that way, anyone who cares to bring up the past sanction just makes themselves look like a fool for doing so when the issue clearly does not apply to present reality. Jclemens (talk) 00:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I think the answer is 'no'. If editors start arguing about Eastern European topics on an article talk page and the arguments spill over onto other pages, for example user talk or the admin noticeboard, and uninvolved admins apply arbitration enforcement blocks for those editors who were uncivil, regardless of where they were uncivil, that would be ok. However, I think the question here is significantly different, and under those circumstances it wouldn't be covered by arbitration enforcement. PhilKnight (talk) 01:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with both JClemens and Phil. SirFozzie (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Without endorsing the behaviour you're describing, I pretty much agree with above. It's simply not written into the (aging) case as described in your examples. This doesn't mean there aren't other dispute resolution paths or venues available. –xeno^talk 23:31, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for clarification: WP:Requests for arbitration/Ireland article names

Initiated by Fmph (talk) at 19:53, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Fmph (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Statement by Fmph

Can I direct ArbCom's attention to the first motion in this case. It states that "... no page moves shall be initiated for a period of 2 years" and that ruling is in force until September 18, 2011. Can ArbCom please clarify what they expect to happen on the 18th September?

There have been continued 'suggestions' over the last 23 months that the articles should be moved. So the issue has not gone away. I have made a suggestion (in response to a question as to whether the prohibition should be extended) as to what should happen. If ArbCom think its not a bad idea, perhaps they would like to endorse it, or something like it?

I will notify the project that I have opened this clarification.

I note that PhilKnight has suggested closing this. Can I ask that if you do, that ArbCom should make a formal statement of its views before closing if at all possible. Even if that is only of the "Get on with it yourselves" variety. Thanks Fmph (talk) 15:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by snowded

This was a deeply divisive and long running dispute and the closure last time was managed by some of the protagonists with consequent accusations of manipulation etc. I think there is a very strong case this time round for a strong mediation team of neutrals to structure the discussion. Possibly with a nominee of each side I'm sure we have some sleeper accounts in place ready for the debate and we had enough socks etc last time to be the subject of a whole dissertation. Best to manage it from the start than to be pulled in later --Snowded ^TALK 09:56, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

I think starting a thread on WT:IECOLL was a good move. I've watchlisted the page and will continue to monitor the discussion. Hopefully the discussion will result in a way forward. PhilKnight (talk) 00:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Looking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration#Agreeing a structure for discussion the parties seem to be on their way to resolving this. Obviously, if things don't work out, we could look again, but for now, I guess we can probably close this clarification. PhilKnight (talk) 14:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Awaiting further statements and comments. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:12, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also watching the IECOLL discussion. I cannot say I know much about the current situation so getting more input would be helpful. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It does look as though the current discussion is productive and that our involvement is not needed at this time. Mind you, I expect the committee would take a very dim view if editors take the expiration of the remedy as a permission for the level of hostility that led to it being imposed in the first place. Those who feel most strongly about the matter would do well to let the rest of the community handle the discussion. — Coren ^(talk) 13:33, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Recused due to my previous work in the related areas as an administrato.. but hope that they keep forward momentum going. SirFozzie (talk) 23:04, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My sentiments mirror Coren's. Or, to paraphrase something said by many a parent, "don't make us come deal with this again, because I can almost guarantee you [the parties] won't like the results" Jclemens (talk) 19:05, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure most of the relevant pages are move-protected, but just in case: the one thing you should not do is set about boldly moving pages as soon as the prohibition expires. Have the proper discussions, seek outside assistance to structure them if necessary, and hopefully achieve an end result that people are willing to accept. –xeno^talk 23:39, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]