Arbitration Committee
An Arbitration Committee (sometimes abbreviated as "ArbCom") is a small group of trusted users who serve as the last step of dispute resolution on individual Wikimedia Foundation projects. Originally set up on the English Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales to take over his role in resolving complex disputes between users, Arbitration Committees are now used on approximately ten Wikipedia versions and the English Wikinews.
A global arbitration committee on Meta is proposed for conflicts on wikis with no arbitration committee.
Composition
Committees typically have five to fifteen members, who are known as Arbitrators. Terms vary in length, with some as long as three years. While Jimmy Wales still selects Arbitrators based on the results of community-wide polls on the English Wikipedia, all other projects' committees are elected independently of him.
Projects with Arbitration Committees
- Wikipedia versions
- Bulgarian
- Czech
- German - arbcomde-l
lists
wikimediaorg - English - arbcom-llistswikimediaorg
- Finnish
- French
- Dutch - arbcom-nllistswikimediaorg
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Wikinews
Projects with inactive or trial Arbitration Committees
- Wikipedia versions
- An ArbCom was proposed in 2006, never reached consensus.
- Swedish (inactive)
- Slovenian (deleted, with a redirect to Wikipedija:Mediacija). The page exists only as a framework for eventual setting up. The mediation wasn't needed so far, so the rules for the election process haven't been established yet.
- Ukrainian (now resigned due to inactivity. New ArbCom was not elected)