Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-01/Arbitration report

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.

Arbitrator resigns
Yesterday, after Rlevse blanked his user page and put up a "retired" tag, with an edit summary that said "you guys want it you got it", his name was removed from the list of current members of the Arbitration Committee.

Rlevse retired while copyright and plagiarism concerns were being examined at an administrators' noticeboard discussion. On behalf of Rlevse, arbitrator SirFozzie confirmed that Rlevse has scrambled his passwords in addition to turning in his CheckUser, Oversight and ArbCom permissions. It is expected that his vacant position will be filled by one of the successful candidates of this year's ArbCom elections.

The copyright and plagiarism concerns were about DYK articles by other editors, and after 3 days had come to extend to Sunday's featured article, Grace Sherwood (on a historical witch-hunt, in accordance with the Halloween theme), which had been co-authored and nominated for FA by Rlevse. Not long after the article had appeared on the main page, the first concern about possible plagiarism from a USA Today article was voiced by an anonymous editor. After 3 minutes, the concern was dismissed by Rlevse, and another 7 minutes later, the IP was blocked for "block evasion" by a checkuser. However, further investigation found that an edit by Rlevse in September had (according to a summary by Hans Adler) No less than 8 consecutive sentences plagiarised (and in most cases obviously copied) from a passage consisting of 9 consecutive sentences in a single source, in the same order. Only a minimal amount of added information. The only source given for this passage is a website where the text did not originate. (The third concern does not seem to apply to subsequent article versions, as Rlevse had corrected the reference 27 minutes later in the following edit. And in one of his last comments, 7 minutes before his retirement, he defended himself against the plagiarism concerns by stating that the "passage is marked with a ref".)
 * "Today's featured article" pulled from main page

Raul654, the Featured Article Director, was alerted of these concerns at 11:15 (UTC), and at 12:28 (UTC), replaced the article, after it had spent more than twelve hours on the main page.

A concern was also raised that Rlevse was making unseemly responses (examples:  ).

Rlevse was contacted for this story, but declined to comment.

Several other questions and allegations were raised in relation to plagiarism and copyright violations. It was asked whether Wikipedia should avoid using the present form of the DYK process, and instead, adopt different incentives. Arbitrator Risker alleged that Wikipedia’s FAC process is at fault. Other editors stated that editors were responsible for what they write, and that the process isn’t to blame for the issues. Some users discussed the differences between plagiarism, copyright violations and close paraphrasing. At the time of writing, the discussion continues at the noticeboard.
 * Other questions and allegations

See also last year's Signpost dispatch on plagiarism.

RfC on ArbCom election voting procedure
Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure is a request for comment: what procedure should the Community use this year to elect the 2011 Arbitration Committee? The Signpost reminds its readers that the RfC is likely to close in two days.