Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-06/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases, leaving one open.

Climate change (Week 13)
This case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. [ Innovations] have been introduced for this case, including special [ rules of conduct] that were put in place at the start. However, the handling of the case has been criticized by some participants; for example, although the evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages (see earlier Signpost coverage).

The proposed decision, drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse, sparked a large quantity of unstructured discussion, much of it comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrator Carcharoth, have made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion has continued to increase significantly. Arbitrators made further modifications to the proposed decision this week; drafter Rlevse said that arbitrators are trying to complete the proposed decision before the date of this report. However, Rlevse will not be voting on the decision as he has marked himself as inactive for the case.

Motions

 * Date delinking: A motion was passed to permit Lightmouse to use his Lightbot account for a single automation task authorized by the Bot Approvals Group.
 * Eastern European mailing list: A motion was passed to amend the restriction that was imposed on Martintg at the conclusion of the case. Martintg is now banned from topics concerning national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe (previously, this topic ban concerned all Eastern Europe topics).
 * Tothwolf: Motions were passed in relation to this case. The enforceable civility restriction that was imposed earlier on JBsupreme (see earlier Signpost coverage) has been extended in duration – it will now expire in March 2011. An enforceable civility restriction was also imposed on Miami33139, which will expire at the same time. An additional restriction was imposed on Miami33139, JBsupreme, and Tothwolf which bans each user from interacting with one another.

Interim desysopping
During the week, the Committee announced that Marskell was emergency desysopped "as he is no longer in control of his account per the emergency procedures". The announcement noted that the desysop will remain until Marskell demonstrates to the Committee that he has "regained control of his account". As with other announcements by the Committee, a link to discuss the announcement was provided which sparked almost immediate discussion. However, within half an hour, arbitrator Coren tried to close the discussion with the comment: "I will request that people refrain from speculating on this matter, nor should any other action being done about the account without Committee approval...this is simply a temporary measure until the matter is cleared up." Several users were not satisfied with this and attempted to seek clarification about the desysop but arbitrator Carcharoth then collapsed these comments as well, and modified the mentions of 'emergency procedures' to 'interim desysop procedures'. A comment by arbitrator Newyorkbrad was left at the bottom of the discussion, which stated: "There are aspects of this situation that may not be suited for discussion on-wiki. (I say this without criticism of those who have commented, given that the posted announcement created a discussion section; someone should probably have posted here preemptively.) We will appreciate everyone's understanding and consideration in this matter."

CheckUser/Oversight appointments
The Committee endorsed all candidates that were being actively considered in August for appointment to CheckUser and Oversight positions (see earlier Signpost coverage). Earlier in the week, the following permissions were granted to the following users:


 * CheckUser permissions
 * Frank – successful candidate
 * MuZemike – successful candidate
 * Tiptoety – successful candidate
 * Tnxman307 – successful candidate
 * Hersfold – was re-appointed to a CheckUser position (a "[r]outine return of the tools, following a Wiki-break")


 * Oversight permissions
 * Beeblebrox – successful candidate
 * LessHeard vanU – successful candidate
 * Phantomsteve – successful candidate

Note: for the reasons reported earlier, MBisanz and Bastique will not be granted Oversight permissions until November 2010 and December 2010, respectively. However, The Signpost notes that these candidates were also successful.