Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-05-17/Arbitration report



Wikicology
The Wikicology case closed on May 13, ending in a site-ban for. In addition to reiterating standard principles that have appeared in many past cases, the final decision included two specific principles:


 * Collegiality and self-representation:


 * Limitations of arbitration:

The findings of fact were that Wikicology:
 * used sockpuppets in the early days of his participation;
 * engaged in autobiographical editing;
 * gave the impression of self-promotion;
 * introduced numerous errors to articles, introduced copyright-violating text, and uploaded copyright-violating images;
 * received feedback on his editing, and has held volunteer positions in other WMF-affiliated projects, and was not a novice editor; and
 * was harassed in the course of the case (one account was blocked during the case for this behavior).

The remedies were:
 * a topic ban from biomedical content;
 * a topic ban from images;
 * a site ban—as usual, Wikicology may request reconsideration of the ban 12 months hence, and every six months thereafter;
 * encouragement for the community to make use of the material presented in the case evidence and analysis of evidence sections to organize a systematic clean-up for Wikicology's past problematic contributions; and
 * an undertaking by the Committee, on a best-effort basis, to inform representatives of WMF-affiliated projects with which Wikicology has been involved of the outcome of the case.

The case pages have been blanked as a courtesy.

Gamaliel and others
The evidence phase of the "Gamaliel and others" case closed on May 6, shortly after arbitrator posted evidence from Gamaliel, who has not edited Wikipedia in the past month, submitting his evidence by email instead.

The case then entered the workshop phase, which generated more than 50,000 words of discussion. Much of this related to how BLP policy should be applied to Signpost pages, which are hosted in project space. Editors—including arbitrators—offered widely divergent opinions on whether the Signpost's publication of an April Fools' piece lampooning Donald Trump and Jimmy Wales, complete with some dummy pages to populate a Trump-themed sidebar in the article (one of which was deleted by community consensus), constituted a BLP violation.

The workshop phase closed on May 14; the proposed decision is due to be posted on May 23.

Other arbitration news
On May 4, the Committee passed a motion on oversight block appeals:

On May 11, this was followed by a Doncram amendment motion: