"Wikicology" ends in site ban; evidence and workshop phases concluded for "Gamaliel and others"

Wikicology

The Wikicology case closed on May 13, ending in a site-ban for Wikicology. In addition to reiterating standard principles that have appeared in many past cases, the final decision included two specific principles:

• Collegiality and self-representation:

8) While Wikipedia editors are under no obligation to reveal personal information about themselves, and therefore are also under no obligation to actively take steps to correct others' mistaken impressions, it is uncollegial behavior to deliberately take advantage of mistaken impressions for the purpose of personal benefit.

• Limitations of arbitration:

9) The jurisdiction of the Arbitration Committee is limited to the English Wikipedia. The Committee is unable and unwilling to conduct investigations of editors' outside activities in order to shed light on editors' on-wiki self-representations. The Committee is also unable to direct the decisions made by other projects, programs, and affiliates within the Wikimedia Foundation umbrella. However, best efforts may be made to ensure that these groups are aware of Committee decisions that potentially impact them.

The findings of fact were that Wikicology:

• used sockpuppets in the early days of his participation;
• engaged in autobiographical editing;
• gave the impression of self-promotion;
• introduced numerous errors to articles, introduced copyright-violating text, and uploaded copyright-violating images;
• received feedback on his editing, and has held volunteer positions in other WMF-affiliated projects, and was not a novice editor; and
• was harassed in the course of the case (one account was blocked during the case for this behavior).

The remedies were:

• a topic ban from biomedical content;
• a topic ban from images;
• a site ban—as usual, Wikicology may request reconsideration of the ban 12 months hence, and every six months thereafter;
• encouragement for the community to make use of the material presented in the case evidence and analysis of evidence sections to organize a systematic clean-up for Wikicology's past problematic contributions; and
• an undertaking by the Committee, on a best-effort basis, to inform representatives of WMF-affiliated projects with which Wikicology has been involved of the outcome of the case.

The case pages have been blanked as a courtesy.

Gamaliel and others

The evidence phase of the "Gamaliel and others" case closed on May 6, shortly after arbitrator Opabinia regalis posted evidence from Gamaliel, who has not edited Wikipedia in the past month, submitting his evidence by email instead.

The case then entered the workshop phase, which generated more than 50,000 words of discussion. Much of this related to how BLP policy should be applied to Signpost pages, which are hosted in project space. Editors—including arbitrators—offered widely divergent opinions on whether the Signpost's publication of an April Fools' piece lampooning Donald Trump and Jimmy Wales, complete with some dummy pages to populate a Trump-themed sidebar in the article (one of which was deleted by community consensus), constituted a BLP violation.

The workshop phase closed on May 14; the proposed decision is due to be posted on May 23.

Other arbitration news

On May 4, the Committee passed a motion on oversight block appeals:

Appeals of blocks that have been marked by an oversighter as oversight blocks should be sent to the oversight team via email (Oversight-llists.wikimedia.org) to be decided by the English Wikipedia oversighters, or to the Arbitration Committee. Blocks may still be marked by the blocking oversighter as appealable only to the Arbitration Committee, per the 2010 statement, in which case appeals must only be directed to the Arbitration Committee.

On May 11, this was followed by a Doncram amendment motion:

The Doncram arbitration case is amended as follows:

• Remedy 2.1—General editor probation is rescinded.
• Remedy 2.3—Article creation restriction is rescinded
• The topic ban imposed by Seraphimblade is rescinded. For clarity, this means that Doncram is permitted to edit existing articles but not create new articles that are related to the National Register of Historic Places, broadly construed.
• The following remedy is added to the case: Doncram is indefinitely restricted from creating new pages, except for redirects, in article space which are related to the National Register of Historic Places, broadly construed.