Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-06-27/Arbitration report
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The Report On Lengthy Litigation
- By Michael Snow, 27 June 2005
The Arbitration Committee closed its oldest case last week while also formally opening several cases the arbitrators had previously voted to accept. Other activity remained slow, as no new cases were accepted, although the possibility of reopening the case involving Instantnood was being considered.
On Sunday, the arbitrators issued a ruling in their longest-running case, the climate change dispute involving William M. Connolley, Cortonin, and JonGwynne. Both Cortonin and JonGwynne were prohibited from editing articles related to climate change for six months, although they may ask for this restriction to be lifted after three months. In addition, since JonGwynne displayed "continued incivility and edit warring" after being the subject of a previous arbitration case, he was banned from Wikipedia entirely for a period of three months.
Although all of the parties had showed a tendency to engage in revert wars, the decision drew a distinction between the two original parties to the case, Connolley and Cortonin. As part of their ruling, the arbitrators found that Cortonin was unable to grasp the metaphorical nature of concepts like the greenhouse effect, and that this interfered with his ability to appropriately edit the articles involved.
Meanwhile, the arbitrators acknowledged that Connolley, a climate modeller for the British Antarctic Survey, "is widely viewed in Wikipedia as being highly knowledgeable in the field". However, Connolley was left subject to the provisions of an earlier temporary injunction, which prohibited reverting the disputed articles more than once in 24 hours. This restriction was to apply for six months, but Connolley may apply to have it lifted after one month.
The request to reopen the Instantnood case came from SchmuckyTheCat, arguing that the earlier closure had been improper and alleging that Instantnood had resumed making edits to enforce disputed naming conventions related to China and Taiwan. Instantnood's advocate, Wally, objected that Instantnood was being subjected to personal attacks and should not be penalized for the Arbitration Committee's procedural error. At last report, however, three arbitrators had voted to accept the case with no votes to reject.
Also this week: Upgrade — Donations — Quiz show — Article blocks — Contest — Features, admins — KDE — Spoken RSS — T.R.O.L.L.
