Four open cases, final decision in Muhammad images, Betacommand 3 near closure

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases and closed one, leaving four open.

After a week of voting, the Arbitration Committee closed this case, which stemmed from contentious editing at articles relating to Muhammad. The final decision includes a series of principles to guide editors in such content disputes. One principle points out to editors that "in controversial instances, reminding fellow editors that 'Wikipedia is not censored' will often be the beginning, not the end, of a well-informed analysis regarding inclusion or exclusion of content...a consensus for inclusion or exclusion should be sought based on the community's collective editorial judgment, well-informed by knowledge of the relevant subject matter and, where applicable, by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines."

After noting the relevant principles, the Committee made findings of fact regarding the locus of the dispute and the conduct of specific parties. By a divided vote of 6 to 4, arbitrators have asked the community to hold a discussion on the inclusion (or not) of Muhammad images, in order to establish a final and "definite consensus". Additionally, the Committee voted to ban one editor and admonish others who it found were "seriously disruptive". Lastly, standard discretionary sanctions will be applied to all pages relating to Muhammad, broadly interpreted.

Betacommand 3 was opened to address the multitude of sanctions in effect on this editor. A motion to close reached a net four votes today, which will bring this recently-deadlocked case to an end. This week, a remedy to ban Betacommand for "no less than one year" gained the support of a majority of arbitrators (with five arbitrators opposing). This follows on the Committee's agreement to "supersede" the community sanctions which came after weeks of debate over proposals to restrict Betacommand's editing abilities. No such proposal had received enough support to pass.

This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on WP:MOS and article naming pages. Since 29 January, 10 editors have given evidence. Several parties claimed that specific editors were to blame for the disruptive editing. The evidence phase closes 12 February, with a proposed decision due to be posted by the end of the month.

This case was initially opened due to the actions of several administrators in relation to a user who was blocked over perceived incivility. The evidence and workshop pages were closed after submission deadlines passed. A proposed decision was delayed for the second time, and is now scheduled for 13 February. The three drafting arbitrators have a long series of evidence submissions to analyze in coming to their proposed decision.

This case was brought to the Committee by an editor to appeal a site ban that was imposed by Jimbo Wales. The expected proposed decision, as mentioned in previous Signpost coverage, is yet to be posted. The tentative date for release had been in early January, but is now a future unspecified time.

• A Request for Amendment in the Race and intelligence case is under discussion.

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• The Betacommand case as it stands is a sorry advertisement for internal governance. If the ban passes (as looks likely) the result will be:
  • Arbcom is asked for clarification of a previous injunction. Instead of clarifying, Arbcom declares the community sanctions (which they were not asked about) void, and bans the user.

Who, subsequent to that, is likely to ask ArbCom for clarification?

Rich Farmbrough, 17:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I'd propose that Arbcom have a general tendency to interpret narrow requests as an invitation to make an attempt at solving the issue in question, in a spirit of "the community is asking us to take ownership of this". Whether the reluctance of the community to submit all matters appropriate to Arbcom intervention, the inadequacy of the petitions when we do, or overenthusiasm on the Committee's part is the proximate cause I couldn't say. Skomorokh 18:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, honestly, Rich, if you're afraid of what ArbCom might do you shouldn't ask them to weigh in. Community sanctions are often just mob rule anyway, it's better that an official body be allowed to review any and all of all, regardless of the wording of any request. When you go to create a case it warns you that the actions of all editors involved (instead of just ones named by the initial complaining parties) will be examined, so it should not be a surprise that they will look deeper into issues in other ways as well. Complaining about a clarification that gets additional attention seems to be rather misplaced. Either we have an ArbCom or we don't. Eventually I suspect Wikipedia will need multiple levels of such committees, with a Supreme ArbCom at the top to review lower decisions. Community sanctions have always struck me as too chaotic for any serious organization to use. Voting someone off the island might be great for reality television, but it's not what grown ups do in real life. DreamGuy (talk) 18:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]