Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-05/Arbitration report



The voting stage of the 2011 Arbitration Committee Elections is scheduled the finish on Saturday, 10 December at 23:59 UTC, with the announcement of the winners tentatively taking place approximately a week after the close of voting. It is recommended that votes be cast at least one hour before the close of the polls, to ensure that they are processed by the server before the cutoff time.

Betacommand 3 proceeds slowly
No new evidence was presented in the case this week, but there was some activity in the workshop, mostly by arbitrators SirFozzie and Risker commenting on proposals. In response to a question asked in the talk page of the Proposed decision section, drafting arbitrators SirFozzie and Elen of the Roads both stated that the proposed decisions would be posted soon.

Two requests declined
ARBPIA 3, a request for a third case on the topic of Palestine and Israel, was unanimously declined this week. Arbitrator Roger Davies wrote "the normal processes should be given a chance to work here before ArbCom intervention. If, after that, the parties feel that a motion would be helpful, I suggest a fresh, more focused, request for amendment, preferably with some well considered draft language".

A request for arbitration surrounding user behavior on the scientific realism article was declined, with arbitrators suggesting an RFC as an alternative solution.

There are no requests outstanding.

BASC statistics update
The Ban Appeals Subcommittee have announced the release of statistics covering their activity in the April – October 2011 period. Of the 56 appeals by banned editors, 11 were successful, and a further 7 dealt with by the community.

Abortion case amended
The Abortion case, whose conclusion drew scrutiny from administrators questioning a remedy which appeared to call for mandatory semi-protection of over a thousand pages, was amended by motion to instead authorise administrators to semi-protect pages in the topic area at their discretion, provided that these actions are logged.