Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-09/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee closed one case last week, and accepted five new cases.

Closed case

 * PalestineRemembered was a case involving the actions of PalestineRemembered and a block of this editor by Jayjg, referred from the Community sanction noticeboard. Upon reviewing the case, the arbitrators concluded that the original dispute had been resolved and that all editing restrictions arising from this incident had been lifted, and adopted a motion to dismiss the case without taking any action.

New cases
The five newly accepted cases are all in the evidence stage of consideration:


 * COFS, a case initiated by Durova based on a discussion at the community sanctions noticeboard. The case involves allegations of tendentious editing by various editors, sockpuppetry, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles.


 * Great Irish Famine, a case initiated by SirFozzie, involves allegations including misuse of sources and harassment relating to Great Irish Famine and other Ireland/Northern Ireland articles.


 * Attachment Therapy, initiated by Shotwell, alleges that other editors have engaged in POV pushing and tendentious editing on attachment therapy and related articles.


 * Pigsonthewing 2, initiated by Moreschi, concerns the conduct of Pigsonthewing, including a series of conflicts between this user and other editors involving the use of microformats on Wikipedia and other matters.


 * Vision Thing, initiated by Infinity0, concerns alleged edit-warring on anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, and related articles. The dispute has already been the subject of a prior arbitration case, Requests for arbitration/Infinity0, involving some of the same parties.

Evidence phase
In addition to the new cases listed above, these cases are in the evidence stage:


 * Armenia-Azerbaijan 2: A case alleging misconduct by various editors, some of whom were previously placed on revert parole in an earlier case, on articles relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the conflict between them.


 * Zacheus-jkb: A case involving the actions of -jkb- and Zacheus. -jkb- alleges that Zacheus has published personal data on him, and has made legal threats.  Zacheus denies the allegations, and Thatcher131 alleges on the talkpage that -jkb- has himself revealed personal information on Zacheus.

Under review
The "under review" category refers to situations where the arbitrators are examining a party's compliance with a prior ArbCom decision, without opening a full new case to address the matter.


 * Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A review of the Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram case. Ideogram and Sean William allege that Certified.Gangsta has engaged in tendentious editing since the main case.

Voting phase
In these cases, a proposed decision has been drafted and is being voted on by the arbitrators:


 * CharlotteWebb: A case arising from the revelation by Jayjg, who has checkuser access, that CharlotteWebb had edited from TOR proxies. This occurred during CharlotteWebb's request for adminship, which then failed to reach consensus. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin, the Arbitration Committee would note that CharlotteWebb remains a user in good standing and is welcome to resume editing, and would advise or remind Jayjg to seek to resolve this type of dispute privately before making public statements alleging misbehavior. Other arbitrators have not yet commented on these proposals.


 * Miskin: A case involving the actions of Miskin, who was blocked by Swatjester for one month (later reduced to one week) for an alleged violation of the three revert rule following an earlier history of blocks. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Mackensen, the committee would advise Miskin to seek consensus on an article's talkpage if his initial edits are reverted, and advise Swatjester to take the length of time since previous blocks into account in deciding for the length of a later block and to treat all editors violating the 3RR fairly.


 * Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations. The proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Fred Bauder would place Abu badali on probation for one year. Arbitrator voting on the remedy and some of the findings of fact underlying it is split.


 * NYScholar: A case involving the actions of a number of users, including NYScholar and User:Notmyrealname, in relation to the Lewis Libby article. The proposed decision authored by Fred Bauder would grant an "amnesty" for past edit-warring on this article, but providing that further misconduct may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator.


 * Piotrus: A case involving User:Piotrus and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. In the case, multiple parties have accused one another of edit-warring, incivility, unethical behavior, and biased editing. Arbitrators have proposed remedies ranging from granting amnesty for prior editing problems on these articles to placing "all articles relating to Eastern Europe, broadly defined, on general probation and parole" to banning M.K from these articles for one year. Voting on all the proposed remedies is divided.


 * Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards bias and attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Remedies including limiting editors on articles relating to the paranormal to one revert (other than of simple vandalism) per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba, have been proposed.

Motion to close
An arbitrator has proposed closing the committee's consideration and finalizing the decision in this case:


 * Hkelkar 2: This case involves the actions of, among others, Rama's Arrow, Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy, and Sbhushan. Rama's Arrow has alleged that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, which they deny. Rama's Arrow has since been voluntarily desysopped. Remedies supported by a majority of the Arbitration Committee would confirm Rama's Arrow's desysopping (but note that he is eligible to seek adminship again through RfA at any time), would urge the editors involved to enter into mediation regarding any unresolved conduct disputes, and would emphasize that administrators involved in a dispute should not exercise admin powers such as blocking against others involved in the dispute, but should ask an uninvolved admin to review the matter. Also supported by a majority are the principle that off-wiki e-mails should not be posted on Wikipedia without, at least, the consent of the sender, as well as a recently added proposal stating that "all parties are reminded in the strongest possible terms that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a forum for conspiracy, personal attacks, nor the continuation of ethnic disputes by other means."