User:Hersfold/Mandated External Review

Mandated external review (MER) is a form of [ discretionary sanction / sanction ] imposed by administrators acting on the authority of the Arbitration Committee. The Committee may authorize mandated external review for use in a particular topic area, which is referred to as the "area of conflict".

The mandated external review process is summarised as follows:

Authorization
Application of mandated external review to an editor is authorized for areas of conflict by the Arbitration Committee, usually following an arbitration case relating to the area in question. The wording of the mandated external review provision is either: In either case, unless otherwise explicitly stated, the contents of this page and other relevant sources constitute authoritative guidance to administrators on the use of mandated external review. Of particular importance is Arbitration Committee/Procedures.
 * 1) As specified in the case decision page or other announcement of the decision; or
 * 2) As in the standard wording, which is outlined on this page.

Application
At the discretion of any uninvolved administrator, editors may be placed on mandated external review within the specified area of conflict if, despite warnings and/or other administrative action (including discretionary sanctions as authorized), an editor demonstrates repeated unwillingness to engage in collegial discussion, demonstrates repeated unwillingness to abide by community consensus while editing, persists in tendentious editing, persists in disruptive edit warring, and/or persists in pushing a biased (non-neutral) point of view in their edits.

Restrictions
Editors who are subject to mandated external review in an area of conflict are restricted from editing articles within the area of conflict, as defined by the motion or remedy authorizing mandated external review. Except for minor, uncontroversial corrections to spelling, grammar, and/or style, editors subject to mandated external review must follow this procedure in order to edit articles within the area of conflict: Once the uninvolved editor confirms that the proposed edit(s) are supported by consensus and policy, the restricted editor may make the edit(s). The proposed edit(s) should be made by the restricted editor, and not the uninvolved editor or any other editor, in order to ensure that the restricted editor is properly credited for their contributions.
 * 1) The restricted editor must describe, in detail, the edit(s) they wish to make to the article on the article's talk page.
 * 2) Interested editors must discuss the proposed edit(s), making changes to the proposal as necessary to attain a consensus in favor of the proposed edits.
 * 3) An uninvolved editor must review the proposed edit(s) to ensure that a consensus has been reached, and the proposed edit(s) are reliably referenced and comply with the neutral point of view policy.

Violations of these restrictions may be reported to Arbitration Enforcement, and may result in blocks up to one year in duration or topic bans from the area of conflict, at the reviewing administrator's discretion.

Appeals
The application of mandated external review, or administrative action taken in response to violations of those restrictions, may be appealed to the imposing administrator, the appropriate noticeboard (currently Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement), or the Arbitration Committee. Administrators are cautioned not to reverse such sanctions without familiarizing themselves with the full facts of the matter and engaging in extensive discussion and consensus-building at the administrators’ noticeboard or another suitable on-wiki venue. The Committee will consider appropriate remedies including suspension or revocation of adminship in the event of violations.

Logging
All sanctions imposed under the provisions of a particular arbitration case are to be logged in the appropriate section of the case page.

For administrators
In determining whether to apply mandated external review to a given user, administrators should use their judgment and balance the need to assume good faith and avoid biting genuinely inexperienced editors, and the desire to allow responsible contributors maximum freedom to edit, with the need to reduce edit-warring and misuse of Wikipedia as a battleground, so as to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment even on our most contentious articles. In general, mandated external review will only be authorized for areas of conflict in which discretionary sanctions have also been authorized. Depending on the situation, it may be worthwhile to consider issuing other discretionary sanctions first in an attempt to remedy misconduct before mandated external review is applied; mandated external review should be considered as a step between short blocks and topic bans.

Uw-mer can be used to satisfy the "Warning" provision of the mandated external review process. A warning need not be issued by an administrator; see the template's documentation for further details.

For editors
Editors wishing to edit in these areas are advised to edit carefully, to adopt Wikipedia’s communal approaches (including appropriate conduct, dispute resolution, neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability) in their editing, and to amend behaviors that are deemed to be of concern by administrators. An editor unable or unwilling to do so may wish to restrict their editing to other topics, in order to avoid sanctions.

For sanctioned editors
When considering if an edit you wish to make would be considered to be (a) "minor, uncontroversial correction(s) to spelling, grammar, and/or style", err on the side of caution and follow the proposal procedure if it is possible that a reasonable editor would consider it to go beyond such minor changes. This also applies to reverting apparent vandalism within the area of conflict.

Affected areas
Mandated external review is authorized for use within the following topic areas, as defined in the remedies of the linked case:
 * Pages relating to Falun Gong and the persecution thereof (Falun Gong 2)