Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-06/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Admin interim desysopped, CU/OS appointments, and more

Open case

Climate change (Week 13)

This case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. Innovations have been introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start. However, the handling of the case has been criticized by some participants; for example, although the evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages (see earlier Signpost coverage).

The proposed decision, drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse, sparked a large amount of unstructured discussion, much of it comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrator Carcharoth, have made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion has continued to increase significantly. Arbitrators made further modifications to the proposed decision this week; drafter Rlevse said that arbitrators are trying to complete the proposed decision before the date of this report.

Motions

Date delinking: A motion was passed to permit Lightmouse to use his Lightbot account for a single automation task authorized by the Bot Approvals Group.
Eastern European mailing list: A motion was passed to amend the restriction that was imposed on Martintg at the conclusion of the case. Martintg is now banned from topics concerning national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe (previously, this topic ban concerned all Eastern Europe topics).
Tothwolf: Motions were passed in relation to this case. The enforceable civility restriction that was imposed earlier on JBsupreme (see earlier Signpost coverage) has been extended in duration – it will now expire in March 2011. An enforceable civility restriction was also imposed on Miami33139 ,which will expire at the same time. An additional restriction was imposed on Miami33139, JBsupreme, and Tothwolf which bans each user from interacting with one another.

Other

During the week, the Committee announced that Marskell was emergency desysopped "as he is no longer in control of his account per Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Level I procedures". The announcement noted that the desysop will remain until Marskell demonstrates to the Committee that he has "regained control of his account". As with other announcements by the Committee, a link to discuss the announcement was provided which sparked almost immediate discussion. However, within half an hour, arbitrator Coren tried to close the discussion (which was later collapsed by Xeno) with the comment:

I will request that people refrain from speculating on this matter, nor should any other action being done about the account without Committee approval. The factors that went into our decision to block involve personal information and are not suitable for discussion on-wiki. That being said, this is simply a temporary measure until the matter is cleared up.

Several users were not satisfied with this and attempted to seek clarification about the desysop but arbitrator Carcharoth then collapsed these comments as well, and modified the mentions of 'emergency desysop' to 'interim desysop' (temporary). A comment by arbitrator Newyorkbrad was left at the bottom of the discussion, which stated:

There are aspects of this situation that may not be suited for discussion on-wiki. (I say this without criticism of those who have commented, given that the posted announcement created a discussion section; someone should probably have posted here preemptively.) We will appreciate everyone's understanding and consideration in this matter.

CheckUser/Oversight appointments

The Committee endorsed all candidates that were being actively considered in August for appointment to CheckUser and Oversight positions (see earlier Signpost coverage). Earlier in the week, the following permissions were granted to the following users:

CheckUser permissions

Frank – successful candidate
MuZemike – successful candidate
Tiptoety – successful candidate
Tnxman307 – successful candidate
Hersfold – was re-appointed to a CheckUser position (a "[r]outine return of the tools, following a Wiki-break")

Oversight permissions

Beeblebrox – successful candidate
LessHeard vanU – successful candidate
Phantomsteve – successful candidate

Note: for the reasons reported earlier, MBisanz and Bastique will not be granted Oversight permissions until November 2010 and December 2010, respectively. However, The Signpost notes that these candidates were also successful.

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Congratulations to all successful candidates. Ncmvocalist (talk) 19:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I generally support the actions of the Arbitration Committee, but it seems more and more that their actions are taken in secret, rather than in the open where the collaborative nature of a wiki can examine them. Now, we are told of an action, and that the action is not suitable for discussion, but not even told why it's not suitable. Is it for privacy reasons? For matters of national security? We don't know, and so we have no way of judging whether the ArbCom is acting responsibly. Powers ^T 12:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content

The story seems to have glossed over a relevant portion of Coren's statement: "The factors that went into our decision to take these actions involve personal information..." –xeno^talk 13:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think LtPowers was referring to the bleeding obvious, but rather, the deeper issue that goes beyond this single matter (see also his response at 14:22). Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was responding to his statement that we haven't been told why it is not suitable. We have. –xeno^talk 20:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you will reconsider the helpfulness of your response if you read until the end of the editor's statement and look at the subsequent statements; you will find that the sentences were (in fact) not isolated from one another. And in case this was a separate response concerning the report generally, I wanted to quote the full statement which included the bleeding obvious, but an involved editor did not want this highlighted explicitly. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

e.c. in answer to LtPowers: There are very good reasons that ArbCom's job should not be conducted solely under the glare of the public spotlight. Just one of those reasons concerns the privacy of those who are involved in cases and other ArbCom processes. Tony (talk) 13:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But the public spotlight is the only way we have to evaluate the ArbCom's execution of their duties. It seems there's an inherent tension there that has no good resolution. Powers ^T 14:22, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The alternative is exposing an editor to real-life harassment without his permission. Have you chummers already forgotten how User:H exited?! —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 22:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot forget that which I was never aware. While I certainly respect the need for privacy, it seems as if the number of times ArbCom invokes it has been increasing, including those actions they don't even mention on-wiki at all. I think it's a legitimate question to ask whether ArbCom is limiting this privilege to the smallest number of cases practical, but it's a question only ArbCom can answer, and that makes it hard to know whether to trust the answer or not. Powers ^T 23:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's true; at present, we don't have anyone else who can look at the content of those discussions (except Jimbo). Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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