User:Sawyer777/Mapping CTOPs

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Header 1
At the bottom of Contentious topics is a section that I've often perused when bored: the list of all contentious topics defined by the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee. Of particular interest to me are the geographically-defined topics, and how they map onto the real world.

Contentious topics on Wikipedia have a quite finicky and annoying-to-follow history, and each one is a little bit different.

working list of geographically-defined CTOPs
All discretionary sanctions on these topics have been superseded by the 2022 decision to change discretionary sanctions to the current contentious topics procedure; they were functionally the same thing, and so I am counting it for my purposes.


 * Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts, explicitly including the Armenian genocide: under discretionary sanctions since 2011. The first ArbCom case was in 2007, with subsequent cases also in 2007 and in 2023, with extended confirmed restriction being placed by the community in 2023. Armenia-Azerbaijan is notable to me because it's an extraordinarily radioactive conflict both in real life and on Wikipedia, and yet it concerns an area of the world usually ignored by Anglophone media and Wikipedians. Indeed, as someone who works on articles that fall under this CTOP, and have previously had the misfortune of having conflict-related talk pages on my watchlist, I can speak to how miserable this obscure corner of Wikipedia is.


 * The Arab-Israeli conflict: under discretionary sanctions since 2008, the only surprising thing about this one is that it wasn't brought to ArbCom earlier. The original ArbCom case was in 2008, and we're already up to four of them.


 * Post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people: under discretionary sanctions since the original case in 2014, when it was defined as post-1932. A subsequent case in 2015 redefined the scope as post-1992 American politics.


 * Eastern Europe and the Balkans: under discretionary sanctions since 2008, this is a very nebulous and broad CTOP. I had to do some digging through arbitration enforcement logs to see exactly what counts as Eastern Europe for my map - it spans all the way from Czechia to Georgia. The original case was in 2007, with a subsequent related case in 2008 and the mailing list case in 2009. In years since, we've seen more specific cases like Antisemitism in Poland and WWII and the history of the Jews in Poland.


 * Horn of Africa: under discretionary sanctions since 2020, when ArbCom opted to resolve a case request by motion.


 * India-Pakistan-Afghanistan: discretionary sanctions since 2012. The original case was in 2007, which has been modified repeatedly since.


 * Iranian politics post-1978 - case 2021


 * Kurds & Kurdistan - case 2021; 2023 ECR


 * Sri Lanka - motion 2024


 * The Troubles - discretionary sanctions since 2011

honorary mentions
the following are listed at WP:GS, and are similar in scope to the above CTOPs.
 * Antisemitism in Poland (2020) - has special sanctions designated by ArbCom, but also falls under the Eastern Europe CTOP.
 * South Asian social groups (2012) - discretionary sanctions
 * Syrian Civil War & ISIL (2013) - discretionary sanctions which mimic those applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict area.
 * Russo-Ukrainian War (2022) - extended-confirmed-restriction
 * Uyghurs & Uyghur genocide (2021) - discretionary sanctions