Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-11-18/Arbitration report

In this week's Arbitration Report: one long-running case is finally put to rest, a Subcommittee is disbanded, and candidate-nominations are closed for the Arbitration Committee Elections, with voting for up to nine new arbitrators to begin 23 November.

E-cigs case
On 17 November, over three months after the case was accepted by the committee, the E-cigs case has been closed. In the committee's findings, despite application of general sanctions to the Electronic cigarettes topic, disruption still continued. Thus, the first remedy in the case is that general sanctions are rescinded, to be replaced with discretionary sanctions going forward. Furthermore, some discretionary sanction extensions were added, with one extension specifying that uninvolved administrators may topic-ban or block (up to indefinitely) single-purpose accounts in the topic area. The other extension encourages uninvolved administrators to monitor articles that are covered under the sanction. A warning for covered topic bans and restrictions from alternative medicine. Also, a warning for covered participation in multiple edit wars, leading to a 72-hour one-revert Restriction in the topic area.

End of the BASC
The committee made an 8–4 decision to disband the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. Formerly, this subcommittee (BASC) handled appeals via email, from users who had been community-banned (or blocks of long to indefinite duration). However, BASC was only intended for use in certain "last resort" circumstances, for users who had already appealed their block (via unblock on their talk page), and usually also via the UTRS interface. That was the primary function; BASC was not utilized for appeals of short blocks, topic bans (and other sorts of non-site-wide restrictions), nor ArbCom rulings.

The decision to disband BASC was actually arrived at during a discussion of how to reform BASC, which ended in a split 6-6 decision. The intent of the reform-proposal was to reduce the workload BASC was responsible for (one arbitrator estimated that BASC had received nearly 100 appeals in 2015 so far), by limiting the types of appeals that BASC would consider. Specifically, the reform proposal was for BASC to henceforth only hear appeals from editors who were subjects to an OversightBlock, a Checkuserblock, or other bans/blocks involving material "unsuitable for public discussion" (for instance privacy issues, harassment, and legal issues). Other appeals, not specifically needing such discretion, would henceforth be handled via UTRS, AN/I, or unblock reviews, should the proposed BASC reform succeed. In the end, rather than keep the separate BASC mailing list for handling this more limited set of appeals to BASC, it was decided to have the full ArbCom consider such appeals (along with their existing work hearing appeals to AE blocks and ArbCom remedies), and disband BASC outright. As of 16 November, all pages having to do with BASC have been marked historical, and the mailing list has been shut down.

Arbitration Committee Elections 2015
Finally, self-nominations for this year's Arbitration Committee elections were closed as of 17 November (at 23:59 UTC). There are currently nine open seats, due to the unexpected retirement of one sitting arbitrator. Wikipedia has 21 candidates standing for election at this time; one candidate withdrew during the nominations-phase, then two more withdrew 20 and 21 November. Eligible voters (requires 150+ mainspace edits and must not be blocked at the time) are invited to review the statements of candidacy by the hopefuls, and discuss the election. Several voter-guides by individual Wikipedians have been categorized, and in some cases advertised. Candidates are taking 'official' questions throughout the election-period; voting begins 23 November (at 00:00 UTC), and ends 6 December (at 23:59 UTC). Best of luck to all the candidates running this year. During 2016, those elected will join six sitting arbitrators who are not up for re-election this cycle:, , , , , and.


 * Editor's note: In the interest of disclosure, one of the 21 candidates in the election is a co-editor-in-chief of the Signpost. They are temporarily inactive with regard to their election-related editorial duties at the Signpost and will remain so for at least the remaining duration of the election. As of 16 November, has taken the reins as sole editor-in-chief.