Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-12-04/Arbitration report

The Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute case has opened. The second draft of the discretionary sanctions proposal is now open for review.

Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute
The Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute case was brought by TomStar81 on behalf of the coordinators of the Military History Project. The case involves a long-standing pattern of edits and reverts in articles associated with the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, and difficulty over a consensus to use "Turkish" to refer to soldiers from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

Discretionary sanctions review
The Arbitration Committee has [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard&diff=581980252&oldid=581879445 announced] that the [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions/2013_review latest update] of the draft for new discretionary sanctions procedures has been posted and is open for comment. The update would replace the current version of the procedures. Discretionary sanctions evolved from "article probation", which authorized administrators to issue topic-bans within problematic topics.

Among other provisions, the proposed procedure would remove the provision that "Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to the decision authorizing sanctions; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines." It adds three appeal options, including a provision that "To obtain a clear and substantial consensus to annul the sanction of either (a) uninvolved participating administrators at the AE noticeboard, or (b) uninvolved editors at the administrators' noticeboard."

Currently 27 topic areas are under discretionary sanctions and 713 pages are under article probation.

Other requests and committee action

 * Clarification request: Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): An amendment request was initiated by Fram; the named party was encouraged to appeal the topic ban to the Committee.
 * Clarification request: Argentine History: A clarification request was made by MarshalN20 regarding his Latin American history topic ban. An editor who had previously requested an interaction ban with the filer asked if he was allowed to comment and was subsequently blocked for one month in a separate action at arbitration enforcement.
 * Clarification request: Kiefer.Wolfowitz banned: An amendment request was initiated by John Cline regarding a voter guide posted by a banned user. The voter guide was removed, as was talk page access.
 * Clarification request: Amendment request: Macedonia 2: A clarification request was initiated by Red Slash regarding [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment&diff=prev&oldid=582918268#Amendment_request:_Macedonia_2 naming discussions]. The committee agreed that no amendment was necessary for naming discussions to take place.