Climate change case closes after 4 months

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, but closed one, leaving one open.

Open case

This case concerns accusations of wiki-hounding and disruptive editing, and was filed by Stevertigo, a Wikipedia editor since 2002. He alleges that several editors deem his editing to be "disruptive" or "in need of banning" because they "still hold the grudge that previous cases did not find in their favor regarding [Stevertigo]". He also alleges that he "largely won" an argument against two editors in relation to the Time article, and that those two editors began editing the Punishment article due to an undue interest in Stevertigo's editing rather than due to an interest in the article. The case is currently in the evidence and workshop phase. Drafting arbitrators Kirill Lokshin and SirFozzie have placed proposals on the workshop page which have attracted limited input, mostly from a couple of parties and arbitrators. At the time of writing, no uninvolved users from the Community have commented on the proposals.

Closed case

This case was opened after several requests for arbitration were filed on the same topic. Innovations were introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start. The case generated a number of concerns and criticisms, particularly in relation to its handling; a common concern was that arbitrators failed to sufficiently engage with participants, adversely affecting the ability of many participants to provide meaningful evidence in support of their (or in response to others) claims (see coverage by Signpost: last week, earlier).

The evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period; however, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing the case on the case pages. A month after the workshop pages were closed, a proposed decision was posted; this sparked a large amount of unstructured discussion, mostly comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrators, made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion continued to increase significantly. Arbitrators closed or archived discussions more frequently, particularly in the final weeks of the arbitration. The highly anticipated decision was enacted during the week; it attracted several responses.

What is the effect of the decision and what does it tell us?

Articles related to the climate change topic (CCT) are subject to specially tailored discretionary sanctions. Editors should avoid contributing towards a battlefield mentality.

These specially tailored discretionary sanctions may not be applied by Lar, Stephan Schulz, and other administrators who similarly fit the case’s description of an involved administrator.

A Quest For Knowledge, ATren, ChrisO, Cla68, FellGleaming, GregJackP, Hipocrite, JohnWBarber, Marknutley, Minor4th, Polargeo, Scjessey, Thegoodlocust, Verbal, William M. Connolley, and ZuluPapa5 are each indefinitely banned from the CCT.

Each user may appeal their restriction after 14 April 2011.
Scjessey may revert obvious vandalism and make routine cleanup-style edits to CCT (as part of Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol).

KimDabelsteinPetersen is indefinitely limited to one revert per page per 24 hour period within the CCT, and is indefinitely banned from editing biographies of living persons.

KimDabelsteinPetersen is banned from the CCT until 14 April 2011.

It is not the role of the Committee to decide the outcome of content disputes or to push for changes to any existing outcomes. The Committee’s decisions should be supplementing the standards established by the Community rather than moving towards changing or superseding them. That is, Wikipedia’s policies remain in effect; in situations where Community standards permit administrators or the Community to intervene, it remains appropriate to intervene in that way even if Committee measures like discretionary sanctions also apply.

Experienced administrators are encouraged to assist with the enforcement of sanctions that are imposed by the Community or the Committee. Experienced administrators and checkusers are encouraged to closely monitor new accounts that edit inappropriately in the CCT area.