Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Update and ratification

The text below is the second provisional draft for an updated arbitration policy prepared by the Arbitration Committee.

All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have:

• General comments, or comments which quote passages from the text, may be made here.
• Comments on specific points in the text and changes to wording may be made directly on this page. Please comment on a passage by placing your comment in <ref></ref> tags after the passage. Please sign your name manually; ~~~~ does not work correctly inside the tags.

Policy

The text in this section constitutes the proposed formal arbitration policy.

The Arbitration Committee

Duties and responsibilities

The Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia has the following duties and responsibilities:

1. To act as a binding decision-maker for disputes concerning the conduct of Wikipedia editors;
2. To consider appeals from blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users;
3. To deal summarily with urgent or emergency matters—for example, blatant abuse of administrator or other privileges, and threatening or malicious conduct—that presents a danger to the project or its contributors;
4. To deal with issues that are unsuitable for public discussion because of privacy or similar concerns; and
5. To appoint those functionaries granted access to privileged information, including the holders of the CheckUser and Oversight privileges.

Selection and appointment

The members of the Committee are appointed by Jimbo Wales, in his role as project leader, following annual advisory elections, whose format is decided by the community.

Candidates must (i) meet the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to nonpublic data and (ii) disclose in their election statements all their prior and alternate accounts.

The Committee may call interim elections, in a comparable format to the regular annual elections, if it determines that arbitrator resignations or inactivity have created an immediate need for additional arbitrators.

Conduct

Arbitrators must act with integrity and good faith at all times to retain the trust of the community and maintain the high standards expected of them. They must preserve the confidentiality of (i) private correspondence sent to the Committee and (ii) the Committee's internal discussions and deliberations.

Arbitrators are required to respond fully and expediently to questions put by the Committee and the community about conduct which appears to conflict with their trusted roles.

Procedures and roles

The Committee may modify its internal procedures, form subcommittees, or designate individual arbitrators for particular tasks or roles. Where appropriate, the Committee will invite community comment on intended changes prior to implementing them.

The Committee will maintain a panel of clerks to assist with the smooth running of its functions. The clerks' responsibilities include implementing procedures and enforcing standards of conduct in arbitration proceedings.

Inactivity, resignation, and removal

Arbitrators are expected to participate fully in the Committee's activities and deliberations. Arbitrators who are, or who are likely to become, inactive for a period of time are expected to advise the Committee of the reason and likely duration of their inactivity. Arbitrators who are only intermittently active, or who are inactive for an extended period, may be asked by the Committee to remain inactive until the situation is resolved.

Arbitrators may resign at any time, with or without giving reasons, by communicating their desire to resign to the Committee in writing. Arbitrators resigning voluntarily are entitled to retake their seats at any time during and, for the duration of, the remaining period of their original term of appointment.

Arbitrators who engage in conduct grossly or repeatedly unbecoming to their position may, after being given a reasonable opportunity to provide an explanation for their actions, be removed from office by the Committee.

Arbitration proceedings

Jurisdiction

The Committee has jurisdiction over all user conduct disputes involving the English Wikipedia, including all disputes regarding the use of special privileges accorded to certain users.

The Committee has no jurisdiction over (i) official actions of the Wikimedia Foundation and (ii) Wikimedia projects other than the English Wikipedia.

Requesting arbitration

Requests for arbitration must be presented in the form prescribed by the Committee. The Committee accepts or declines to accept any matter at its sole discretion though it will take into account, but not be bound by, the views of the parties to the request and other interested users.

Recusal

Arbitrators must recuse in any case in which they have a conflict of interest. Typically, grounds for recusal include prior involvement in the substance of the dispute or non-trivial personal interaction with one of the parties. Actions in an arbitrator's official capacity, such as ruling on a prior case involving a party, are not adequate grounds for recusal.

An arbitrator may recuse from any case, or from aspects of any case, at any time prior to voting, with or without giving a reason.

Any user who believes that an arbitrator should recuse must first notify the arbitrator of the request for recusal and provide a rationale. Should the arbitrator fail to respond, or fail to recuse, the user may refer the request to the Committee for a ruling. Requests for recusal after a case has entered the voting stage will not be granted, except in extraordinary circumstances.

Forms of hearing

Standard hearings: By default, hearings of cases are public and follow the procedures outlined on the arbitration request pages.

Summary hearings: Where the facts of a situation are substantially undisputed and the Committee believes that it can issue a fair, well-informed, and useful remedy without opening a full-fledged case, it may act by motion to be proposed and voted upon on the requests for arbitration page. Adopting such a motion in lieu of opening a case requires a majority vote of all active, non-recused arbitrators.

Private hearings: In exceptional circumstances, typically where the case involves significant privacy, harrassment or legal matters, the Committee may, by majority vote of active, non-recused, arbitrators, require that the case be heard off-wiki in private. Parties to such cases will be notified that the case is to be heard in private and be given comparable opportunities to those in a standard hearing to respond to allegations about them before a determination is made.

Participation

Cases are decided by the full Committee rather than by panels or subcommittees. All active non-recused arbitrators may participate in each case. An arbitrator whose term expires while a case is pending may remain active on that case until its conclusion. Newly-appointed arbitrators may become active on any or all current or pending cases with effect from the date on which they take office.

Statements may be added to the case pages by arbitrators, parties, and interested editors; and are expected to comply with length restrictions imposed by the Committee. Editors are required to act reasonably and with decorum on arbitration case pages, and may face sanctions if they fail to do so.

Editors named as parties to an arbitration case and given due notice of the case are expected to participate in the proceeding. Any editor named as a party, or otherwise under scrutiny during the course of a case, will be notified of this by the Committee or its Clerks, and will be given a minimum of seven days to respond from the later of (i) the date the case opened or (ii) the date on which they are notified.

If a notified party fails to respond within a reasonable time of being notified, or explictly refuses to participate in the case, the Committee is authorised to rule on that party's conduct in the absence of that party's participation.

If a party to a case leaves Wikipedia during the proceedings, the Committee may, at its discretion: (i) dismiss the case either in its entirety or only insofar as that party is concerned; (ii) suspend the case until the party returns; or (iii) continue the case regardless.

If an administrator who is a party to a case resigns the sysop permission during the currency of a case, they are not entitled to reinstatement by simple request to a bureaucrat but are, unless otherwise directed by the Committee, required to submit a new request for adminship.

Evidence

In all proceedings, admissible evidence includes: (i) all Wikipedia edits and log entries (including deleted or otherwise hidden edits and log entries; (ii) where appropriate, edits and log entries from projects other than the English Wikipedia; and (iii) posts to official mailing lists. Evidence from official mediation is only admissible with the express prior written consent of the Mediation Committee.

Evidence from outside sources (including, but not limited to, other websites, forums, chat rooms, or personal correspondence) is only admissible in exceptional circumstances (for example, serious external harassment or conspiracy to violate Wikipedia policy). Furthermore, if the evidence from outside sources was not intended for wide publication it may only be posted on-wiki with the express prior consent of all the contributing correspondents and recipients.

Evidence may be submitted privately by email to the Committee's mailing list but the Committee will normally expect evidence to be posted publicly unless there are compelling reasons for private submission. The Committee will make every effort to circulate privately submitted evidence to all parties, except when doing so would result in undue risk of harassment of or retaliation against the editors providing that evidence.

Temporary injunctions

At any time between the opening of a case and its closure, the arbitrators may issue temporary injunctions, restricting the conduct of the parties for the duration of the case, by a net vote of four arbitrators in support, or an absolute majority of the arbitrators active in the case, whichever is lower.

Format and scope of decisions

Decisions will be made in the established format of: (i) "Principles" (general statements of policy); (ii) "Findings of Fact" (findings specific to the case); (iii) "Remedies" (binding rulings about the parties' future conduct) and (iv) "Enforcement provisions".

Decisions will be presented in clear standard English. Where the meaning of any provision is unclear to other arbitrators, the parties, or other interested editors, it will be clarified upon request.

The arbitration process is not a vehicle to create new policy. The Committee's decisions can interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognize and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy may be enforced. No decision will mandate the precise content of any article.

Previous Arbitration Committee decisions are useful and informative but are not binding on future Committee proceedings.

Voting on decisions

For standard hearings, proposed decisions will be posted and voted on on-wiki, listed under the case's Principles", "Findings of Fact", "Remedies" and "Enforcement" sections, with each substantive clause being voted on separately. Where several substantive items have been combined in a single clause, they may at the request of any arbitrator be split into separate clauses for voting. A clause is only adopted as part of the final decision when it has received a majority vote of active non-recused arbitrators.

Motions to close or dismiss

If the Committee determines at any time that (i) issuing a formal decision in a case would serve no useful purpose; (ii) it is unable to reach a majority decision; or (iii) a case may best be resolved by a single motion rather than a full decision; it may adopt a motion by a majority vote of active non-recused arbitrators to dismiss or otherwise resolve the case.

When a normal proposed decision is in final form, an arbitrator will move to close the case. The motion requires the lower of (i) four net votes in support, or (ii) an absolute majority of arbitrators active in the case; to be adopted.

Continuing jurisdiction

Should the remedies enacted in a case fail to resolve the dispute, the Committee may enact additional remedies by summary motion on the request of any party to the case, or may open a review case to review developments since the original case was closed.

Appeals of decisions

Remedies and enforcement actions by the Arbitration Committee may be appealed to, and are subject to modification by, Jimbo Wales, except where the case involves review of one of Jimbo Wales's own actions.

A party or other editor affected by remedies in a given case may request reconsideration or amendment of the ruling in light of subsequent developments. The Committee may require a minimum time to have elapsed since the enactment of the ruling, or since any prior request for reconsideration by that user, before hearing such a request.

Ratification and amendment

This policy will undergo formal ratification through a community referendum, whose format will be decided by the community. The policy will enter into force once it receives majority support in such a referendum, with no less than one hundred editors voting in favor of adopting it. Until this policy is ratified, the existing Arbitration Policy will remain in effect.

Amendments to this policy will undergo an identical ratification process. Proposed amendments may be submitted for ratification only after being approved by a majority vote of the Committee, or having been requested by a petition signed by no less than one hundred editors in good standing.

Supplementary documents

The text in this section is to be inserted into documents other than the core arbitration policy. Some of these documents have not yet been written, and the text below should not be considered a final version.

Committee procedures

Procedure for case opening:

A request will be considered accepted if it meets all of the following criteria:

• The request must have four net votes to accept, or have an absolute majority of active, unrecused arbitrators voting to accept;
• The request must have received its first instance of four net votes to accept more than 24 hours ago; and
• The request must have been filed more than 48 hours ago (this waiting period may be waived by the Committee where there is a clear need to open the case immediately).

Once there are sufficient votes to accept, a waiting period of 24 hours will be observed before the case is formally opened, unless a majority of all active arbitrators have voted to accept the case or otherwise directed by the Committee.

When a request for arbitration is accepted, a Clerk will create standard "evidence", "workshop", and "proposed decision" pages. In the course of doing so, the Committee or the Clerk will designate the case with an appropriate casename. This name is used for the purposes of identification only and has no substantive significance.

Once a case has been opened, the Committee will designate one or more arbitrators to serve as the lead drafters for the case. These arbitrators will serve as a designated point of contact for all matters regarding that case.

Procedure for submission of evidence:

Evidence submissions will normally be restricted to 500 words and 50 diff links. Editors wishing to submit additional evidence should request the approval of the drafting arbitrator(s). Unapproved evidence in excess of the limit will be removed by the clerks.

Procedure for case drafting:

Drafting of case provisions on the workshop will normally be restricted to arbitrators. Editors wishing to draft provisions should request the approval of the drafting arbitrator(s). Unapproved drafts will be removed by the clerks.

Procedure for case voting:

For any given case, an arbitrator is considered either active or inactive. The presumption is that each arbitrator is active on each case unless he or she states otherwise. An inactive arbitrator may become active on a case by stating that he or she will be active on the case or by voting on any issue in the case. An active arbitrator may become inactive by so stating, in which case any votes already cast by that arbitrator on the proposed decision will be considered withdrawn.

Procedure for case closing:

A grace period of a minimum of twenty-four hours will be observed between the fourth net vote to close the case and the implementation of the remedies passed in the case, unless four or more arbitrators vote to close the case immediately, or an absolute majority of active, non-recused arbitrators vote to close the case.

Guide to arbitration

The Committee will normally require that editors show they have exhausted the previous steps in the dispute resolution process before proceeding to arbitration. The Committee will normally hear a case despite the absence of prior dispute resolution only where the case involves an unusually divisive dispute among administrators, where there has already been extensive discussion with wide community participation, or where there is a specific reason to believe that engaging the earlier steps of the dispute resolution process would not be productive.