Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-06-20/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee closed only one case last week, but also decided to start a second mentorship experiment in response to Everyking's appeal of his previous case. Two new cases appear to have been accepted, although they and others have yet to be formally opened.

One case was closed last week involving Internodeuser, who had gotten involved in a dispute over the Port Arthur Massacre. The arbitrators found that Internodeuser had made threats of legal action as well as various personal attacks, and decided to ban him for a period of one year (as with a similar previous case, the ban runs until a year "after his most recent legal threat").

An attempt to close the long-running climate change dispute, currently the committee's oldest outstanding case, was opposed due to the lack of a remedy regarding JonGwynne. This user was added to the case, originally involving Cortonin and William M. Connolley, after it was already well underway (see archived story). As a result, the proposed decision did not address the additional issues adequately, and some additional proposals are now being considered in order to bring the case to a conclusion.

Two more of the outstanding requests for arbitration picked up a fourth vote to accept and now wait to be opened. One of these involves a conflict between Guy Montag and Yuber, with charges from both sides of combative editing and violations of the neutral point of view policy. The other matter is a complaint by Rhobite about personal attacks by JuliusThyssen.

Appeal leads to mentorship
Finally, the arbitrators found a way to grant, on a trial basis, Everyking's longstanding wish to again be able to edit articles related to Ashlee Simpson. After having been banned from those articles in April for a period of a year, Everyking appealed to have the ban lifted at the earliest date allowed, two months after the decision.

In response to the appeal, arbitrator Raul654 negotiated an agreement in which the ban would be suspended in exchange for Everyking agreeing to submit his editing to the supervision of a mentorship team. The terms of the mentorship are essentially identical to those of a similar arrangement made with Netoholic (see archived story), with the primary difference being their scope &mdash; Netoholic's mentorship focuses on templates and the Wikipedia namespace, while Everyking's is focused on content dealing with Ashlee Simpson. Everyking's mentors will be Silsor, Tony Sidaway, and Rhobite.