Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-01-28/Arbitration report

NB: I apologise for not having written a report last Monday - I was having a particularly hectic week.

The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this fortnight (one of which was later dismissed), and closed two additional cases, leaving six currently open.

Closed cases

 * Kingofmann: A case involving a dispute involving Kingofmann on the (now redirected) David Howe (claimant to King of Mann) article. The case was dismissed after the editor left Wikipedia and the article was deleted.


 * Palestine-Israel articles: Yet another case relating to alleged disruption on Israel- and Palestine-related articles. As a result of the case, remedies were passed allowing discretionary sanctions to be imposed, setting up a working group to address the issues, reminding editors that "Wikipedia cannot solve the dispute between the Israeli and Palestinian people", and counselling to them to consider editing articles relating to the history and cultural heritage of the two sides.


 * R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. As a result of the case, R. fiend was found to have resigned adminship under controversial circumstances (meaning that he must undergo a full RfA to regain the tools), and a note was to be made in Ed Poor's block log that the committee had found the block to be unjustified.

New case

 * Episodes and characters 2: A case involving alleged continuing disruption of articles concerning television series episodes and characters, following on from a prior case.

Evidence phase

 * Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.

Voting phase

 * Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. A finding of fact has been proposed stating that "In their content contributions, all parties concerned have edited industriously and earnestly, with the intention of improving the encyclopaedia".


 * Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked. Remedies banning Bluemarine for one year and placing the article on article probation have the support of seven arbitrators.


 * IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Voting on remedies relating to Giano is split (although an editing restriction remedy is at 3-1), but a remedy subjecting Tony Sidaway to an editing restriction for one year has the support of three arbitrators, and a proposal stating that the committee will determine "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels" separately to the case. A motion to dismiss the case is also pending, but is opposed by several arbitrators.


 * Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user If closed he would be "provisionally" desysopped for six months, and Matthew Hoffman's block log annotated to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified.