Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-28/Arbitration report

Voting opens in ACE2011
This year's elections to the Arbitration Committee have entered the voting phase. Eligible editors are invited to cast their vote before the end of Saturday December 10 (see "News and notes").

Abortion case ends
The Abortion case closed this week, after 15 weeks of contentious arbitration. The remedies included the provisions that all articles related to the topic "be semi-protected until November 28, 2014"; "not be moved absent a demonstrable community consensus"; and "are authorized to be placed on Standard discretionary sanctions". The announcement of these measures was greeted with raised eyebrows at the administrators' noticeboard, where it was pointed out that the number of articles and talkpages affected would be over 1500.

Among the other remedies were the predicted slate of topic-bans and reminders to behave for offending editors of varying degrees of culpability, and the following declaration: "Structured discussion is to take place on names of articles currently located at Opposition to the legalization of abortion and Support for the legalization of abortion, with a binding vote taken one month after the opening of the discussion." The Committee has traditionally avoided motions to establish binding discussions in light of its aversion to getting involved in content disputes, but has in the past taken similar measures with respect to Ireland article names, the Macedonia naming dispute, and the Palestine-Israel working group.

Requests and open cases
At the time of writing, requests for cases remain open regarding Removal and Deletion of Images and Related Issues and Palestine-Israel 3. Neither look likely to be granted, finding no support in the ranks of the assembled arbitrators at this time.

The Requests for clarification saw little activity this week, with the Arbcom-unblocked editors request entering its fifth week without arbitrator comment while arbitrator proposed that the Eastern European mailing list request be archived as stale.

The Request for amendment of Russavia-Biophys remains in its early phase, with arbitrators seeking clarification and further context from the assembled personages.

The Betacommand 3 case remained in Evidence & Workshop phase, although no evidence was submitted this week and nothing was workshopped.