Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-23/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee accepted two new cases this week, and closed one case.

Closed case

 * 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. As a result of the case, the Arbitration Committee noted that CharlotteWebb remains a user in good standing and is welcome to resume editing, and reminded Jayjg to seek to resolve this type of dispute privately before making public statements alleging misbehavior.

New cases

 * Catalonia: A case involving alleged edit warring, possible sockpuppetry and other misconduct, including alleged misuse of blocking tools, by various editors on Catalonia, Valencian Community and related articles.


 * Boris Stomakhin: A case involving a dispute between Biophys and Vlad fedorov, involving alleged BLP and 3RR violations, block evasion and edit warring.

Evidence phase

 * 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.


 * 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.


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


 * 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, conflicts of interest, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles.

Voting phase

 * 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, the conflict between them, and related matters. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies, supported by SimonP, extending to revert parole applied to various editors to probation, and imposing these remedies also on anyone who edits the articles aggressively.


 * 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. In the proposed decision, the Arbitration Committee would admonish both editors for their previous misconduct against each other but note that the problematic conduct seems to have stopped, and warn the parties not to resume practices such as posting identifying information about other editors or making personal attacks.


 * 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, an alternative, and some of the findings of fact underlying it is split. However, a remedy "counseling" Badali has the support of five arbitrators.

Motion to close

 * 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. If closed, an amnesty would be granted for prior editing problems on these articles, and the parties would be reminded of the need to edit courteously and co-operatively in the future.  However, two arbitrators have opposed the motion to close, citing possible article probation remedies.


 * 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. If closed, Dradin and Kazuba would be cautioned, but Fred Bauder has opposed closure, citing "many unresolved issues".


 * Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A review of the Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram case. Ideogram and Sean William allege that Certified.Gangsta engaged in tendentious editing since the main case was closed and violated a revert parole imposed in the decision in that case.  Since Certified.Gangsta has not edited since early June, a motion to suspend the case pending his return has the support of four arbitrators.


 * 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. If closed, the committee would advise Miskin to seek consensus on an article's talkpage if his initial edits are reverted, and caution Swatjester to take the length of time since previous blocks into account in deciding on the length of a later block and to treat all editors violating the 3RR fairly.