Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-26/Arbitration report

This week saw the opening of the Muhammad images case to address which depictions of the prophet Muhammad, if any, were appropriate to display in the respective articles, as community discussion had not rendered a consensus on this. Evidence by multiple users has been submitted, and some workshop proposals have been tabled.

The case regarding TimidGuy's ban appeal proceeded into its second week. The case was opened by TimidGuy to appeal the site ban imposed off-wiki by Jimmy Wales. Part of the case is being conducted off-wiki due to privacy matters. It is one of the most active arbitration cases at present, with substantial activity in both the evidence and workshop pages.

Betacommand 3 proceeded to its ninth week. There has been no activity on the evidence pages this week, though several proposals were made at the workshop, including by drafting arbitrator SirFozzie.

Case requests
Two new cases were requested this week. The first related to actress Demi Moore and conflicting information in reliable sources and tweets by the actress regarding her birth-name. It was declined due to a lack of prior dispute resolution, with an RFC or mediation suggested as alternatives by the committee.

The other request this week concerned the perceived uncivil conduct by Malleus Fatuorum, and his blocking, unblocking and reblocking by administrators Thumperward, John, and Hawkeye7, respectively. The request aimed to address whether Malleus's conduct was uncivil and warranted blocking, and whether the subsequent unblock and re-block constituted a wheel-war. At the time of writing, more than 100 users had commented on the request, and the case trended towards acceptance by the committee.

The two open requests for clarification regarding the Eastern European mailing list case and the Abortion motion had no activity this week.

Jimmy appoints 2012 Arbitration Committee
Jimmy Wales ceremonially appointed the recently elected eight arbitrators to the committee this week. In his statement, Courcelles, Risker, Kirill Lokshin, Roger Davies, Hersfold, SilkTork, and AGK were appointed to two-year terms, and Jclemens to a one-year term, as determined by both a community RfC last month and a more recent decision by the election coordinators on the matter of the one-year term. Jimmy encouraged the committee to review its history, and strive to find the right balance between being too lenient or too strict in their judgments, to be neither too quick or too slow, and neither inconsistent nor arbitrary in its decisions.

He announced his intention to give up some of his traditional powers, and that to do this in an organised fashion he would form a council of editors to discuss various aspects of the history and state of the wiki, including its governance processes, to come up with ways to delegate these powers to the community. Details as to how such a council will be selected or how it will operate are yet to be announced.