Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Arbitration report



Catflap08 and Hijiri88
On 29 December, the case on Catflap08 and Hijiri88 was decided. In their 12-part findings of facts, the Committee found that and  have been in conflict since June 2014, beginning with the Kenji Miyazawa and Kokuchūkai articles, and spilling over to other articles in the Japanese culture topic area, as well as various noticeboards. A two-way interaction ban was placed between the two on 17 April 2015, a ban both Catflap08 and Hijiri88 violated. It was found that Catflap09 forum shopped and edit warred while Hijiri88 edit warred and "engaged in personal attacks and incivility ... and has issued a threat of on-wiki retaliation." Other named parties were also found to have to been uncivil, with being found to have edit warred and to have hounded Hijiri88. was also found to have edit warred.

With these results, the Committee implemented remedies, including two major sanctions for Catflap08, who is now "indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to Nichiren Buddhism and its adherents, broadly construed" and "prohibited from making any more than one revert on any one page in any 24-hour period". Hijiri88 was topic-banned from all pages relating to Nichiren Buddhism and placed on a one-revert rule, as well as being "indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to Japanese culture". An interaction ban has been placed on TH1980 and Hijiri88.

The Devil's Advocate banned
On 1 January, in the first decision made with the participation of the newest members of the Arbitration Committee, was indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. The Committee announced that "In remedy 8.5 of the GamerGate case, The Devil's Advocate was 'strongly warned that should future misconduct occur in any topic area, he may be banned from the English Wikipedia by motion of the Arbitration Committee.' Accordingly, for continuing harassment of other editors, The Devil's Advocate is banned indefinitely from the English Wikipedia. He may request reconsideration of the ban six months after this motion passes, and every six months thereafter." The reaction to this announcement has been polarizing, with the comments thread as of 19:39, 5 January 2016, being noticeably more active than other discussion sections on the talk page. A major issue cited in the announcement was the lack of transparency, as the nature of what was the cause for the ban was not specifically discussed. A similar issue was raised earlier on 30 December, when was desysopped and banned for taking part in off-wiki harassment.

The GamerGate case was decided on 29 January last year, and is approaching its one-year anniversary. An overall controversial topic on Wikipedia, the case resulted in the topic-banning of 11 (later 12) editors, with one editor indefinitely banned from the site. The decision was covered by Breitbart.com's Allum Bokhari, with an article titled "Wikipedia Can Now Ban You For What You Do On Other Websites". One can argue that the title is misleading as off-site harassment has been seen as an ongoing issue for Wikipedia, with an example being, who was also one of the editors topic-banned from all pages relating to GamerGate, being indefinitely banned back in September, "for continued serious breaches of policy, including off-wiki harassment".