One case comes to a close; initiator of a new case blocked as sockpuppet

The Arbitration Committee opened one new case, and closed one case. Two cases are currently open.

Open cases

The case was opened to examine allegations of incivility, unnecessary aggression, battleground behavior, disruptive editing, as well as inappropriate and unnecessary use of the blocking tool. A few days after the case was opened, arbitrator Risker blocked the filer of the case, Chester Markel (talk · contribs), as a sockpuppet of a banned user. Arbitrators noted that this development will not invalidate the case, the case will continue as scheduled, and that the Community might want to make suggestions on how to mitigate its potential influence on the end result of the case. During the week, 9 editors and the now-banned sockpuppet filer submitted 43 kilobytes in on-wiki evidence.

See earlier Signpost coverage for background about this case. Additional comments were submitted on the workshop proposals that were submitted last week.

Closed cases

This case was opened after allegations of harassment, outing, sockpuppetry, and disruptive editing. The case was to address the behavioral concerns surrounding Racepacket (talk · contribs), the subject of this case, and to review the behavior of all editors involved in the GA processes concerning netball articles. 13 editors, including one recused arbitrator, and a now-banned sockpuppet, submitted evidence on-wiki. Several proposals were submitted in the workshop, including a proposed decision by drafter PhilKnight, all of which received comments from arbitrators, parties, and others. Drafter PhilKnight amended the proposals before submitting them in proposed decision for arbitrators to vote on. Additional proposals were also submitted, several of which were drafted by arbitrator Risker. 12 arbitrators voted on the decision, before the case came to a close yesterday.

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

Involved administrators may have, or may be seen as having, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about; in such cases, a user should not be acting as an admin. Generally, involvement is construed very broadly by the Community, to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute.

Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) is prohibited from taking any further admin actions with regards to, or at the behest of LauraHale (talk · contribs).

Hawkeye7 is admonished for blocking editors with whom he has had recent editorial disputes.

Racepacket (talk · contribs) is banned from editing Wikipedia until 19 June 2012.

LauraHale and Racepacket are prohibited from interacting with one another in any forum related directly or indirectly to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. This includes mailing lists, IRC channels that use the word "wikipedia" or "wikimedia" in their name, or any WMF-hosted project. They are also directed not to seek sanctions on each other either publicly or privately through any means, except through arbitration enforcement processes. Administrators who receive any such requests for sanctions are requested to inform the Committee.

A user's conduct outside Wikipedia (such as sending private e-mails or commenting in other forums) is generally not subject to Wikipedia policies or sanctions. However, a user who engages in off-wiki conduct which is damaging to the project and its participants may be subject to sanction (e.g; a user whose off-wiki activities directly threaten to damage another user's employment). Any user conduct or comments that another editor could reasonably perceive as harassing (as defined in Wikipedia:Harassment) should be avoided. On occasion, an action or comment by an user may cause an editor to feel harassed, with justification, even if the action or comment was not intended as harassing. In such situations, particularly where the incident is an isolated one, the editor's concern should be sufficiently resolved if the user has discontinued the objected-to behavior (or apologised).

Posting another user's personal information is harassment (outing), unless that user has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia. Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, or other contact information, whether any such information is accurate or not. Posting such information about another editor is an invasion of privacy and is always unacceptable.

Wikipedia:Good article (GA) assessment is a process by which nominated articles are reviewed and assessed against community-established criteria to ensure that a certain level of quality has been attained. These criteria include NPOV, the quality of article prose and organization, and the appropriate use of reliable sources as references (including the absence of close paraphrasing). Users are encouraged to ensure that the article meets criteria prior to nomination, respond to concerns identified by the reviewer(s), and are required to assume good faith on the part of all participants in the process. Users are discouraged from reviewing articles in which they have had editorial involvement. While the involvement of WikiProjects in the GA process is encouraged, there is no obligation for articles to adhere to WikiProject criteria to achieve GA status.