Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-11/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed one case, leaving six currently open.

Closed case

 * 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. As a result of the case, the committee stated that it will determine "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels" separately from the case, all parties were "strongly cautioned to pursue disputes in a civil manner designed to contribute to resolution and to cause minimal disruption", and Giano II was placed on an editing restriction for one year.

New case

 * Franco-Mongol alliance: A case involving alleged misconduct over a dispute on Franco-Mongol alliance and related articles.

Evidence phase

 * Episodes and characters 2: A case involving alleged continuing disruption of articles concerning television series episodes and characters, following on from a prior case. An injunction has been enacted halting certain editing activities on these articles until the case is resolved.

Voting phase

 * Ehud Lesar: A case involving a dispute involving Ehud Lesar, with alleged sockpuppetry on his part and alleged harassment by Fedayee, Eupator and others. Sam Blacketer has proposed a remedy finding that there is insufficient evidence of sockpuppetry and overturning the block.


 * 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. Remedies placing the article on article probation and imposing a "general restriction" have the support of five arbitrators.


 * 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 remedy has been proposed counselling editors to consider contributing outside of disputed articles.

Motion to close

 * 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.  However, Newyorkbrad has opposed the motion to close.