Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/History/January to June 2009

Executive summary
This summary of activity carried out by en-Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee is a preview of a fuller report that is still in preparation. It (mostly) covers the six-month period from January to June 2009 inclusive. Much of the work of the committee involves examining, drafting, discussing and voting on cases and case requests. Quoting from the half-year statistical summary: "Through the first half of 2009, the Arbitration Committee considered 111 requests, voted on 41 motions, publicly heard 19 cases, and drafted and voted on 928 case proposals." For further statistics, and details of some of the activity in December 2008 (not all of the December activity is included below), please see Statistics 2009 (with thanks to Paul August). In addition to activity on arbitration cases, there are other areas in which the Arbitration Committee has responsibilities. The following summary gives a wider picture of the overall activity by the Arbitration Committee, both on-wiki and off-wiki, including the changes and reforms developed over the past six months.


 * 55 requests for arbitration received
 * 35 requests declined
 * 4 requests handled by motion
 * 16 requests handled by cases
 * 19 arbitration cases completed
 * 4 cases already open at 1 January
 * 16 cases accepted
 * 1 case opened by motion
 * 19 cases closed
 * 2 cases open at 30 June
 * 47 clarification or amendment requests received
 * 13 declined
 * 23 clarified
 * 10 dealt with by motion
 * 1 withdrawn
 * Case statistics (of 19 completed)
 * 197 named parties
 * 1 motion
 * 5 injunctions
 * 216 principles
 * 242 findings
 * 186 remedies
 * 25 enforcement provisions
 * Remedies and sanctions, and related resignations
 * 3 functionaries resigned or were removed, and associated tools and access were removed (includes non-case removals)
 * 9 admins who resigned or were desysopped (including non-case desysoppings)
 * 9 users were site banned (the lengths of the bans varied)
 * 73 users were given topic bans or editing restrictions (approximate figure)
 * 3 users were required or suggested to undergo mentorship, or had their mentoring extended
 * A range of other users were given other remedies and restrictions (e.g. interaction with named others)
 * There were numerous other miscellaneous and case-specific remedies
 * Major initiatives
 * Arbitration noticeboard created and agenda published
 * Internal committee procedures were reviewed, developed and documented
 * Establishment of the Ban Appeals Subcommittee to consider ban appeals received from banned or long-term blocked users
 * Establishment of the Audit Subcommittee to investigate complaints concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges
 * Establishment of CheckUser and Oversight elections
 * Arbitration pages structure redeveloped and requests split into three pages
 * Draft of revised arbitration policy, and subsequent revisions, submitted for public review
 * Communication and announcements
 * 88 announcements at the arbitration noticeboard, with a further 10+ items announced elsewhere
 * 17 arbitration case closing announcements
 * 4 arbitration case injunctions announced
 * 10 clarifications or amendments to cases announced
 * 9 non-case sanctions or announcements
 * 16 changes to internal Arbitration Committee processes announced
 * 2 arbitrator resignation statements announced
 * 2 ban appeals subcommittee proposals
 * 2 ban appeal announcements
 * 6 audit subcommitee establishment and report announcements
 * 6 announcements and proposals related to Checkuser and Oversight elections
 * 4 rights removal proposals announced
 * 4 announcements of starting of community discussions
 * 2 post-case supervised discussions announced
 * 4 other announcements made
 * 7 pre-noticeboard announcements
 * 3+ announcements made elsewhere that were left off the noticeboard in error
 * Mailing list activity
 * 14,700 e-mails in total in the six-month period from January to June 2009
 * E-mails from arbitrators: 13,636
 * E-mails from others: 1,064
 * Manual logging started on 23 March 2009
 * 252 external queries or submissions logged over the 100 days from 23 March to 30 June 2009
 * Ban appeals subcommittee (BASC) activity
 * (provisional) 5 user block/ban appeals pre-BASC, i.e. pre-April (number subject to change)
 * 30 user block/ban appeals dealt with, 6 further appeals pending or dormant at 30 June
 * 6 appeals voted on en banc by the whole committee
 * 2 failed
 * 2 succeeded
 * 2 referred to community (both failed)
 * 5 accounts unblocked following their appeals, 1 account later rebanned by motion
 * 30 appeals denied, followed up with advice, or went dormant (no further response received)
 * Audit subcommittee (AUSC)
 * 9 reports issued from April to June 2009
 * Arbwiki activity
 * Best summed up with written description (see full report)
 * 99 sections in the "Discussion board" archives from this six-month period
 * Variety of pages created to document actions and processes
 * Variety of delegated tasks taken on by individual arbitrators
 * Best summed up with written description (see full report)
 * Personnel changes
 * Note that most sitting arbitrators now hold oversight and checkuser permissions, explaining the large numbers of new tool holders
 * Arbitration Committee: Net decrease of 2 (from 17 to 15 - with 2 departing)
 * Arbitration clerks: Net increase of 4 (from 18 to 22 - with 3 departing and 7 arriving, and one both arriving and departing)
 * Checkusers: Net increase of 5 (from 31 to 36 - with 8 departing and 13 arriving, and one both arriving and departing)
 * Oversighters: Net increase of 8 (from 30 to 38 - with 9 departing and 17 arriving).
 * Functionaries: Net increase of 5 (from 49 to 54 - with 3 departing and 8 arriving)
 * Subcommittee changes left for full report
 * New arbitration pages
 * As well as the restructuring of the arbitration pages, 8 new pages were created.
 * Six are mentioned in the 'major initiatives' section. The other two are:
 * Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/History
 * Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Statistics 2009 An initiative by Paul August.
 * Formal discussions, proposals and requests for comment (RfCs)
 * Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee (from 2008, but informed the new policy drafting)
 * Wikipedia:Review Board and talk page (started by an arbitrator, but not in his official capacity)
 * Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight appointments
 * Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration enforcement
 * Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Content dispute resolution
 * Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Policy/Draft
 * Other discussions and reports (list under construction)
 * The talk page of the noticeboard was where discussion took place concerning the noticeboard announcements.
 * Signpost reports: Election results and appointments (3 January 2009); 26 arbitration reports, from 3 January 2009 to 29 June 2009.

This section is intended to list the main proposals and various talk page discussions, plus links to other major reports and discussions elsewhere. This list is under construction, and help identifying additional substantial discussions by the wider community on arbitration matters would be appreciated. If there are other such discussions, reports or articles that may be of interest, and that took place, or were written during the period under review here, both on-wiki and off-wiki (such as userspace essays, blog postings, news reports, pod castings, and so on), please note them on the talk page for review.

This summary has been provided as part of a review of the committee's activities over the first six months of this year. A fuller report (with specific links for most of the above) will be issued within a few weeks, but please do ask if you have any specific questions about what has been reported above. Comments and feedback on any of the above, plus any further questions, should be placed on the talk page.

- For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth (talk) 04:07, 22 July 2009 (UTC)