Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-05-24/Arbitration report

New case
German war effort: Case opened on 22:45, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Has an attempt to prevent historical revisionism become a content battleground? , one of the involved parties, is the author of the op-ed "World War II Myth-making and Wikipedia" in last month's issue of Signpost.

At 00:26, 25 April 2018 's vote to accept became the fifth vote of nine, constituting a majority of Arbitrators accepting the case. These words of, quoted often in recent arbitration reports, are clear and informative: "allegations of subtle POV-pushing in hot-button topic areas is one of those that benefits most from a careful inquiry taking place at a measured pace in a structured environment". Comments from Arbs suggests the matter will be considered as behavior-centric, keeping content at arm's length; and will widen to editing on WWII topics in general, not just Clean Wehrmacht.

By May 11, the arbitrators' votes stood at 9/1/0, indicating consensus to open a case.

In response to multiple requests for status update on the unusually long period of time to open a case, with by one commenter the Requests for arbitration department a "ghost town", arbitrator   on May 14 "there's a slow-moving discussion on scope happening on the mailing list; I've advanced a point of view and a proposal to outsource the content component of the case and then just look at any underlying conduct issues, but I'm in a small minority as evidenced by my lonely "decline" vote in saying the same thing on the case request page. There are suggestions from several arbs to simply get on with it via a regular case, which also seems like good advice given the passage of time."

Upon opening the case, clerk commented: "The Arbitration Committee has not decided on a specific scope – instead, the Committee has decided to take a broad view of the dispute" (emphasis added).

Since 19 May, arbs have commented on the evidence talkpage.

New requests

 * Questionable BLP reverts by blocked editors  Withdrawn by filing party 4 May 2018 diff

Formerly titled "BLP reverts by blocked editors", the central question of the request is whether WP:BLP trumps WP:SOCKING, i.e. can "good reverts by socks" (as stated by Opabinia) be left as-is? Or should they be reverted per policy? The request was voted down by Arbcom 0/6/0, then withdrawn. A workaround was enunciated by and endorsed by the committee: "revert it [the sock] and then re-revert to take responsibility for it myself".

Brought by an editor who started contributing on 18 March 2018 and received a tban on caste-related articles under the South Asian social groups discretionary sanctions. Declined by clerk.
 * I am not being allowed to contribute from genuine sources  Declined as obviously premature 1 May 2018 diff