Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-01/Arbitration report

Argentine History
This case, brought by Lecen, involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877). An editor is accused of systematically skewing the articles, as well as Spanish language sources, in order to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentinian "nationalists" or "revisionists".

The arbitration committee, not being expert in Argentine history or fluent in the Spanish language, asks for any "uninvolved editors with subject-matter expertise" to participate in the evidence and workshop phases of the case, to help determine "whether the allegations of use of highly disreputable and unreliable sources, quotation of Spanish-language sources incompletely or out of context, and the like appear to have merit."

The evidence stage is scheduled to close 12 April 2013, and a proposed decision is scheduled for 26 April 2013, though these dates may be extended by the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hahc21&diff=prev&oldid=548484749 recent floods in Buenos Aires], which have adversely affected an editor involved in the case.

Sexology
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute about transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.

Tea Party movement
This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. Evidence for the case was due by March 20, 2013, and a proposed decision scheduled for April 3, 2013.

Other requests and committee action

 * Request for clarification: Transcendental meditation movement A request for clarification was made by Keithbob regarding the transcendental meditation movement, which is under discretionary sanctions.  Clarification is requested of whether sanctions apply to all articles in the topic area or only articles that have a tag, and a related question of whether a tag is necessary on the talk page of an article where no problem has arisen. Also under discussion is who may impose sanctions and who may place tags.


 * Amendment request: Rich Farmbrough: An amendment request was made by Rich Farmbrough to amend a motion in an arbitration case involving automated edits. While the request was still in progress, the requester was blocked for one year after an arbitration enforcement request, which also involved automated edits. After Farmbrough was blocked, an error was discovered in the links he had posted as evidence; he had posted the same link three times.  The corrected links have now been posted.  Farmbrough’s block limits him to his user pages and does not allow him to comment further on arbitration pages, but some discussion was carried to Farmbrough’s talk page, as well as the talk page of the blocking administrator.


 * Request for amendment: GoodDay: An amendment request was made by GoodDay to lift an editing restriction related to diacritics.


 * The arbitration committee had previously issued a call for applications for three vacancies for non-arbitrator members to the subcommittee, to be submitted before April 1, 2013. However, during a discussion on the noticeboard talk page, a statement from the foundation's legal team indicated that "...we require an RFA or RFA-identical process for access to deleted revisions." The committee has now clarified that applicants for the vacancies must be administrators.


 * Procedural issues at WP:Arbitration Enforcement:  A request for clarification has been brought by Gatoclass regarding whether an administrator can "act in a request" involving 1RR restrictions, whether an administrator can act when an editor has not received a formal warning, whether an administrator can adjudicate in an appeal if they adjudicated in the decision that lead to the appeal, and whether an administrator can issue a warning before consensus on a request has been reached.


 * Monty Hall problem: An amendment request has been made to the committee by Martin Hogbin for amendment of the remedies, including removal of discretionary sanctions.


 * Clarification request: Climate change: A clarification request of the climate change case was filed by NewsAndEventsGuy, who requests clarification of who can post arbitration enforcement notices to talk pages and add to the notifications, blocks, bans, and sanctions log.


 * Clarification request: Discretionary sanctions appeals procedure: A request to clarify the appeal process for discretionary sanctions warnings was filed by Sandstein