Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-07-04/Arbitration report

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The Report On Lengthy Litigation

By Michael Snow, 4 July 2005

After a period of relatively slow activity, the Arbitration Committee increased its efforts to conclude existing matters last week by closing cases. Two requests for arbitration were accepted, one of which involved reopening a case involving Instantnood that had been closed prematurely.

Case without sanctions

On Thursday, the committee closed a case involving Jguk, SouthernComfort and others and their involvement in the dispute over the use of BCE/CE vs. BC/AD notation for historical dates (see archived story). As noted in the decision, the current policy is similar to the handling of British and American spellings, where the appropriate choice may depend on the article. In the general case, either style is an acceptable option so long as the article itself is consistent, but "revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable".

After considering a number of possible findings, the arbitrators ultimately decided not to impose any bans or editing restrictions. The ruling only stated that "Jguk, Southerncomfort, and other involved users are warned strongly to abide by our policies", indicating that they should not simply change the dating system of an article outright, although establishing consistency within an article is allowed.

Closure of the case lifts an injunction previously imposed on Jguk that prohibited him from modifying common era dating entirely. Shortly before the ruling was issued, Jguk returned to regular editing, after he had left Wikipedia when the temporary injunction passed (although he began pursuing the debate on the mailing list instead during his editing hiatus).

Two users banned from subject matter areas

Two other matters were also closed Thursday, the cases against Skyring and Njyoder. Both editors were placed on personal attack paroles for a year, allowing them to be blocked for up to 24 hours per violation. Skyring also received a one-month ban from editing Wikipedia entirely.

Skyring's case arose from a complex dispute over Government of Australia, and resulted in him being banned from making edits on that subject for a year. It later expanded into an incident of apparent "wiki-stalking", in which he made provocative edits to a number of articles that had recently been edited by one of his opponents, Jtdirl. Jtdirl and Adam Carr were admonished for some of their actions in the dispute, but no sanctions were imposed on them.

The case against Njyoder focused on two things: his conduct on Bishonen's request for adminship, and his editing of articles related to gender and sexuality. The arbitrators found that he had removed large chunks of material from articles over the objections of other editors, resulting in an extended dispute. The ruling noted that Njyoder's discussion style was "marked by repetitive plowing of the same ground over and over". As a result, he was banned from editing articles on the subject for a year, in addition to his personal attack parole.

One more case was closed on Sunday, concerning a group of accounts believed to be used by the same person, as part of a push to preserve disputed articles about "Islamofascism" and "Islamic fascism", which have now been consolidated into the broader Neofascism and religion article. The arbitrators identified User:Enviroknot as the primary account and decreed that this person should use only that account. In addition, finding that Enviroknot had made multiple personal attacks, they imposed a one-year ban from all editing.

New cases

In addition to the reopening of the Instantnood case (see previous stories), the arbitrators agreed to consider a case against JarlaxleArtemis, who had already been the subject of a previous arbitration ruling. The complaint, made by Psychonaut and joined by several others, alleged that JarlaxleArtemis had relapsed into "neglect and abuse of Wikipedia policy in spite of repeated warnings", a charge JarlaxleArtemis denied.

Mentor resigns

Kim Bruning, one of the users assigned as a mentor to Netoholic as a result of an earlier arbitration case, resigned from his position on Tuesday. Explaining his reasons, Bruning suggested that Netoholic refused to talk with his mentors and was using them to game the system. For his part, Netoholic said that he was happy to continue working with his other mentors, Raul654 and Grunt, but that Bruning's way of handling the mentorship put him on the defensive and made him less willing to communicate freely. Netoholic stated that in his view the situation was improving, "with the exception of a couple users who really like to push my buttons".

Also this week: Watchlists — Adminship — Mailing list — Press coverage — Cricket — Games — T.R.O.L.L. — News and notes