Voting underway in the elections, finally a final decision on Abortion, scant movement on requests

This year's elections to the Arbitration Committee have entered the voting phase. Eligible editors are invited to cast their vote before the end of Saturday December 10 (see "News and notes").

The Abortion case closed this week, after 15 weeks of contentious arbitration. The remedies included the provisions that all articles related to the topic "be semi-protected until November 28, 2014"; "not be moved absent a demonstrable community consensus"; and "are authorized to be placed on Standard discretionary sanctions". The announcement of these measures was greeted with raised eyebrows at the administrators' noticeboard, where it was pointed out that the number of articles and talkpages affected would be over 1500.

Among the other remedies were the predicted slate of topic-bans and reminders to behave for offending editors of varying degrees of culpability, and the following declaration: "Structured discussion is to take place on names of articles currently located at Opposition to the legalization of abortion and Support for the legalization of abortion, with a binding vote taken one month after the opening of the discussion." The Committee has traditionally avoided motions to establish binding discussions in light of its aversion to getting involved in content disputes, but has in the past taken similar measures with respect to Ireland article names, the Macedonia naming dispute, and the Palestine-Israel working group.

At the time of writing, requests for cases remain open regarding Removal and Deletion of Images and Related Issues and Palestine-Israel 3. Neither look likely to be granted, finding no support in the ranks of the assembled arbitrators at this time.

The Requests for clarification saw little activity this week, with the Arbcom-unblocked editors request entering its fifth week without arbitrator comment while arbitrator SirFozzie proposed that the Eastern European mailing list request be archived as stale.

The Request for amendment of Russavia-Biophys remains in its early phase, with arbitrators seeking clarification and further context from the assembled personages.

The Betacommand 3 case remained in Evidence & Workshop phase, although no evidence was submitted this week and nothing was workshopped.

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28 November 2011 (all comments)

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Not even a mention of 1.18... or was it released after the bot set off? --80.4.202.61 (talk) 07:17, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The MediaWiki 1.18 release has yet to be sanctioned by the Arbitration Committee. Skomorokh 07:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but I'm lost. The Arbitration Committee has nothing to do with MediaWiki (that I'm aware of, at least), and the Committee's role doesn't include sanctioning new releases (in either of the opposite meanings of the word "sanction"). I'd appreciate some clarification here. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure Skomorokh's point was that this is the Arbitration Report and hence there should be no surprise that it does not mention 1.18, which is covered in the Tech report. Presuming it was meant as a general question, yes, the announcement came too late for the Tech report. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 16:07, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That makes eminent sense. Thanks for the reply. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The page is still marked {{Signpost draft}}? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've boldly removed that, figuring that if the paper is published it's probably not a draft. :) Apologies if I'm wrong. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should have been subst'd, apologies. Skomorokh 15:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]