Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-17/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee closed four cases this week, and opened one case, leaving only two cases currently open.

Closed cases

 * Franco-Mongol alliance: A case involving alleged misconduct over a dispute on Franco-Mongol alliance and related articles. As a result of the case, PHG was prohibited from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year.


 * Mantanmoreland: A case involving alleged sockpuppetry by Mantanmoreland, which he denies. In a decision, the committee found that a "definitive conclusion" cannot be reached (although they found that "the weight of the credible evidence taken as a whole is suggestive of or consistent with a relationship between the two accounts"), placed some articles on article probation, placed restrictions on current and future editors to the articles, and imposed a topic ban and direction only to edit from one account on Mantanmoreland.  After the case was closed, Mantanmoreland was indefinitely blocked per this discussion, although this was later overturned, and a request for clarification was opened on the permissibility of the block.


 * Ehud Lesar: A case involving a dispute involving Ehud Lesar, with alleged sockpuppetry on his part and alleged harassment by Fedayee, Eupator and others. As a result of the case, the committee found that there was insufficient evidence of sockpuppetry and overturned the block.


 * 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 had been enacted halting certain editing activities on these articles until the case is resolved.  As a result of the case, TTN was prohibited from requesting merges, redirections or deletions of these articles, and all parties were instructed to "cease engaging in editorial conflict and to work collaboratively to develop a generally accepted and applicable approach to the articles in question".

New case

 * Betacommand 2: A case involving the actions of Betacommand and others in relation to BetacommandBot, a controversial bot which tags some non fair use compliant images. Betacommand's actions had previously been discussed on a subpage of WP:AN.

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 remedy has been proposed, with the support of five arbitrators, counselling editors to consider contributing outside of disputed articles.  Other remedies admonishing NE2 "to act with more awareness of the general needs of his co-editors and non-specialists", and encouraging him and other editors of the roads wikiproject in their work have the support of four arbitrators.