Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Amendment

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by NuclearWarfare (talk | contribs) at 05:16, 10 January 2011 (→‎Motion: +). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Arbitration Committee proceedings

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

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Open cases
Case name Links Evidence due Prop. Dec. due
Venezuelan politics (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) 20 Apr 2024 04 May 2024
Mzajac (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) — Case suspended
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Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Conflict of interest management 13 Apr 2024

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Requests for amendment

Request to amend prior case: Eastern European mailing list

Initiated by Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk at 21:27, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Case affected
Eastern European mailing list arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Remedy 3, modified by motions from 6 May and 13 November.
List of users affected by or involved in this amendment
Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

N/A

Amendment 1

Statement by Piotrus

More than a year has passed since the original remedy was instituted, yet close to three months still remain on the topic ban. Since March I have edited uncontroversially, and in May I was allowed to make suggestions at WT:POLAND; neither have been subject to any criticism. In November the topic ban was narrowed to "articles about national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about these topics". I tried my best to avoid approaching the rather blurry boundaries of that new ban (I raised concerns about it in the past several times). I will admit that despite my best intentions I have drifted a few times close to that blurry boundary. In all but one instance I self-reverted quickly. Sadly, battleground mentality in EE topics still persists among some, and this led to two AE requests naming me as a party - please note that both ended with no action taken towards my person, and the filling parties in both cases were subject to AE bans and/or blocks (AE 1, AE 2, related AE 3). Finally, just a few days ago I was suddenly blocked by an AE admin, who in good faith misinterpreted the topic ban; I was unblocked a day later following the input from three Arbitrators (appeal and relevant discussion here).

What finally prompted me to file this request now was a single edit I did not make: I wanted to correct the placement of a reference template in the Adam Mickiewicz article ({{Catholic|wstitle=Adam Mickiewicz}} should be in the reference section, not at the very bottom of the article). But moments before I was about to hit the save button, I realized that the article seems to be in the midst of an edit war related to the subject nationality, and by making an edit there - even one totally uncontroversial and unrelated to the dispute - I could be accused of violating the topic ban. This is not the first time I halted myself like that; one of the self-reverts I mentioned was this edit to the article "Poland Anti-Religious Campaign (1945–1990), where I made an AutoEd/ce edit to a new article that popped up on the WikiProject Poland's new article report. This topic was never a subject to a dispute on Wikipedia (nor has it been since the article was created), but it does seem related to some dispute. And indeed, in the (dismissed) AE reports I mentioned, this edit of mine was part of the "evidence". Thus I am prevented from carrying out the copyedit of this article, moving it (the title needs to be decapitalized per MoS) and making other uncontroversial edits. After this last block-unblock incident, I am very wary of editing anything related to Eastern Europe at all (I was about to create a series of articles about Polish armoured trains, a plan I now put on hold, as I don't want my block log to witness more admins who could misinterprets my topic ban as including all military topics...). Even if I do my best to adhere to the topic ban, I can still be harassed by battleground-minded editors; worse, even neutral, good-faithed admins have shown they have trouble interpreting the topic ban, and the result is a lot of wikistress and time wasted on AE. I have to admit that I feel more stressed under this topic ban then in many preceding months, as I am always afraid I will make a good-faithed edit that will be seen as topic ban gaming, or that even if I won't, I will be dragged to AE again for more stressful battleground showdowns (and even if such reports seem to serve a useful function of identifying disruptive, battleground-minded editors, I do not enjoy being the lightning rod of their attention - which, considering that I am now the last editor with an EEML-related remedy still in force, is unlikely to diminish).

Lastly, I'd like to note that the EEML case was not about creating improper content, but about improper edit (revert) coordination and (vote) canvassing. That lesson, about impropriety of such actions, was learned by me and others long ago (I admited as much during the very case). I would like to resume creating content and building an encyclopedia (the 2010, due to the topic ban, was the first year I wrote no Featured Article, my Good Article and DYK writing were also cut down to roughly one fifths of the levels of the previous years; here you can see how the remedy affected my activity levels).

The topic ban will end in late March; I believe that I am as ready to resume constructive and uncontroversial editing in that area now as I will be in by then. In the past year, during discussions of subsequent amendments, the Committee members often spoke of the gradual return to the editing area. I hope that now, close to 13 months out of 15 in my remedies, we can finally put this behind us (I also selfishly hope that this request can be processed faster than the last one, which took two months).

New members of the committee may be interested in reading my statement from the 21 September from the amendment request that led to the motion narrowing the topic ban.

Statement by Mkativerata

In my view, the current wording ought to be amended for the reasons I, and other uninvolved admins, gave at the most recent AE.[1] I have no opinion on whether the restriction ought to be lifted, other than to re-iterate my comment that if it is not possible to communicate Arbcom's intent in a clearly-worded editing restriction, it may very well be better to have no restriction at all. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Malik Shabazz

I support Piotrus' request that his topic ban be lifted. As recent events have shown, the current situation—in which the topic ban only applies to areas of conflict—is subject to different interpretations among administrators acting in good faith. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 21:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Timotheus Canens

What Mkativerata said. Apparently, what arbcom seems to mean by "articles about national, ethnic, or cultural disputes" seems to be "article about, or subject to, present-day national, ethnic, or cultural disputes". As far as I know (perhaps, not being a native speaker, I have missed some special features of the English language?), that's not what that phrase usually means in normal English (even the Wikipedia dialect of it). I incorporate by reference my comments in the AE thread Mkativerata linked to. T. Canens (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other editor (2)

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

  • We will allow a few days in case any other users wish to comment on this request, before considering whether to take any action. Comments may focus on whether the topic-ban should be lifted altogether, as Piotrus requests, and/or on whether its current wording ought to be clarified. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:18, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request to amend prior case: User:Koavf

Initiated by —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ (per User:Shell Kinney) at 03:18, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Case affected
User:Koavf/Community sanction
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Koavf is limited to editing with a single account.
  2. Koavf is prohibited from editing pages relating to Morocco and Western Sahara, broadly construed. This includes talk pages, and other related discussions.
  3. Koavf is subject to an editing restriction (probation). Should he make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be disruptive, he may be banned from any affected page or set of pages. The ban will take effect once a notice has been posted on their talk page by the administrator and logged below.
List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

None outstanding, but all users who commented at AN have been notified.

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request
Note: these will be added after I have submitted this proposal, so that I can post a static diff of this page to the users' talks.

Statement by Koavf

This has a long history and you can go down the rabbit hole following this from ArbCom to AN to user talk pages and back to ArbCom (e.g.), but basically put: I have three editing restrictions noted above and I would like them lifted. My lengthier proposal and rationale from before are copied and pasted:

I am under a community sanction editing restriction with three clauses. I am:

  1. Limited to editing with a single account.
  2. Prohibited from editing pages relating to Morocco and Western Sahara, broadly construed. This includes talk pages, and other related discussions.
  3. Subject to an editing restriction (probation). Should he make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be disruptive, he may be banned from any affected page or set of pages. The ban will take effect once a notice has been posted on their talk page by the administrator and logged below.

While I have had further blocks (including two in the past two years), these criteria have only been invoked once and subsequently overturned through a good-faith appeal. Five prior cases involved 1RR/3RR violations, including ones that were related to Western Sahara only in the broadest possible sense (e.g List of states with limited recognition.) It is possible that I have made some other small edits to articles related to this issue (I have made many edits since then), but I have not made any substantial edits to these topics, nor has any user complained that I have (including blocking admins.)

As I stated in my request for rollback re-institution, I am a reliable editor who has not recently engaged in edit-warring and is constructive in his edits. I have used my roll-back ability (as well as Huggle and Twinkle) to fight vandalism, I have made several thousands constructive edits, I have had articles promoted to FA status through my own work and collaboration with others, and if you speak with users who have known me over the last five years, you will find that I have been an increasingly thoughtful and trusted member of the community. I have helped new users and made several proper posts to AN/I and AN/V to help the community avoid edit-warring and vandalism. I feel like I have reached a level of maturity such that this edit restriction is not necessary in practice or theory; in the three years that it has been in place, I have become a much more sober-headed and constructive editor who is trustworthy. I do have a long block history, but note that there are other editors who have longer ones but have been recognized as reliable and helpful editors who no longer have editing restrictions--including editors who began as vandals.

In regards to the three specific restrictions:

  1. I have never edited with another account and I have posted all of my anonymous IP edits on my userpage. The only checkuser investigation on me was closed as inappropriate.
  2. I have respected this content restriction and have avoided Western Sahara-related topics with the exception of reverting vandalism and the most tertiary topics (e.g. List of United Nations member states, where I have not edited on the topic of Western Sahara in years.)
  3. This restriction could still be placed on me at any time as appropriate, but--as noted above--it has only been invoked once and then rescinded.

I look forward to these restrictions being lifted in part so that I can be recognized as a trusted editor and in part so I can begin to edit Western Sahara-related articles again (the quality of which has generally languished for several years, as I was the only active editor on this topic.) Both my ability to edit and the quality of the encyclopedia will be enhanced by the lifting of these restrictions.

Statement by other editor

Statement by Fetchcomms

As I stated at the AN thread, I don't see any major issue with lifting the restrictions. Not sure what else I have to say; I was never involved in the original sanctions. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@NW, I'm not a clerk but I think I updated the template. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@Shell, I don't think it was consensus not to remove the sanctions as much as lack of participation either way. It might just because not many people are familiar with this case and Koavf's current activity. I interpret lack of input as "I don't care" over "status quo, leave them in place". /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Statement by Jayron32

Again, my opinion has not changed just like Fetchcoms. At the same AN thread above, I noted that I saw no problem with lifting restrictions 1 & 2. Restriction 3 needs to remain in place for some time while he his allowed to edit in the problematic area. While Koavf has remained in good standing when editing outside of the Western Sahara/Morocco area, we have no evidence one way or another how things will go once he starts to edit in that area. I think that keeping restriction 3 in place, for say at least another 6 months or so, will allow us to see if things go well. If they do, then we can recind that restriction as well. So my opinion is that ArbCom should look at recinding restrictions 1 & 2, and leave 3 in place for six months as a sort of "trial period" for editing the Western Sahara related articles. --Jayron32 03:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Further discussion

I've notified Sandstein of the discussion, as he closed the ANI thread. PhilKnight (talk) 14:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but I don't think I have much useful input to offer. I only closed the stale ANI discussion after there was no positive consensus to lift the restrictions (which meant that they remained in force by default) but not much community interest in maintaining them either. I suppose that gives ArbCom wide latitude to determine whether maintaining the sanctions is in the interests of the project. About that I have no opinion.  Sandstein  23:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

I...tried to updated Template:ArbComOpenTasks, but I couldn't figure out how to do so. Could another clerk take a gander at it? NW (Talk) 16:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrator views and discussion

  • In the absence of any commentary to the contrary, a week after this has been filed, I am hard pressed to think of a reason to deny this request, and would likely support lifting it. Risker (talk) 02:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not entirely clear where ArbCom were involved in the past here. If this is indeed within our remit to modify, I would have no problems with something like Jayron suggested above. Carcharoth (talk) 00:08, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • ArbCom competence For what it's worth, I posted here because I was told to post here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:45, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since appeal to the community resulted in a consensus not to remove the sanctions just a few months ago, there's no obvious reason for us to disagree with that decision. If you'd like the sanctions lifted, you need to convince the community that you've resolved the issues. Shell babelfish 00:03, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hardly There wasn't a "consensus not to remove the sanctions", there was simply no consensus to remove the sanctions. In point of fact, everyone who participated was willing to remove them (or stagger their removal), so the !votes were in favor of lifting it; there just weren't enough. And then I was told to come here--if you have a better place for me to take this, I'd happily do it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now that NYBrad has pointed out where the sanctions initially came from, I also find I like Jayron32's suggestion for removing most of the sanctions and giving this a trial. Shell babelfish 20:39, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • No issues with removing these sanctions; in fact, the complete lack of support in continuing the sanctions at the last community discussion makes me wonder why this was not addressed at that time. Sanctions that no longer enjoy the support of the community should be lifted, and there is no expectation of a supermajority of support for lifting two year old sanctions. Risker (talk) 06:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I read the history here, this was initially an indefinite block (not necessarily a ban), which was lifted subject to restrictions imposed by this Committee in 2007 (see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Koavf). Thus, I don't see any issue with our authority to lift or modify the restrictions if we think such action is warranted. With regard to whether we should do so, my current inclination is to propose a motion either lifting the restrictions, or alternatively, suspending them a period of three or six months, with the intention of then lifting them altogether at that time if there are no significant problems. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'll offer a motion on this shortly after January 1st, when the new arbitrators are installed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:31, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Please see motion below. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Following Sandstein's and NYB's comments, it seems ArbCom can undo the restrictions, and if this is the case, I agree with Jayron's suggestion. PhilKnight (talk) 14:54, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Motion

The restrictions placed upon Koavf (talk · contribs) in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Koavf and in User:Koavf/Community sanction are terminated, effective immediately. Koavf is reminded to edit in the future in full accordance with all Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

As there are 18 arbitrators, a majority is 10.

Support:
  1. There seems to be a consensus that these restrictions have served their purpose. I do see some division of opinion as to whether we should lift the sanctions outright at this time, or suspend them for a few months to make sure no problems develop before lifting them permanently. On consideration, my own view is that ample time has passed for an outright lifting to be reasonable. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:36, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Risker (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 23:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Personally would have preferred to have a probationary period, but my fellow arbs are right, Koavf should know that further issues will mean that sanctions are re-applied fairly quickly. SirFozzie (talk) 00:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Would have preferred to retain the 3rd restriction, however I agree with SirFozzie - if there are problems, the sanctions can be re-applied. PhilKnight (talk) 01:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Mailer Diablo 17:18, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. No opposition to lifting restrictions. Koavf shoud be aware that sanctions will be reapplied tout suite if he fouls up.Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:51, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  9. The restrictions have served their purpose. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 04:17, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Per SirFozzie. Jclemens (talk) 05:35, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose:
Abstain:
  1. –xenotalk 14:26, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Motion adopted. Clerk to post and notify. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:21, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks I'm glad this is finally behind me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Did I miss something? User:Koavf/Community sanction, what Koavf wished to be lifted, didn't seem to be addressed at all. NW (Talk) 05:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Jeepers. We (meaning mostly I) seem to have overlooked that there were both an ArbCom sanction and a subsequent community sanction in effect here. My intent was to lift all sanctions (we have authority to modify community sanctions, especially when community discussion is inconclusive), effective immediately, and I'd be glad to do this as a copyedit to the motion, but I will need to see if any other arbitrators object. This thread has been noted on the Arbcom-l list, so other arbs should be commenting. My apologies to Koavf for the delay. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In my vote, when I mentioned the 3rd restriction, that was in reference to the community sanctions. Or in other words, I obviously didn't read the motion very carefully. Anyway, I agree with making an adjustment so it covers the community sanctions. PhilKnight (talk) 15:45, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Copy edit is fine by me. Risker (talk) 16:07, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of other arbitrators have also opined that a copyedit is fine, on the mailing list. Accordingly, I've made the change in the motion above. Let's consider the motion adopted as edited unless an arbitrator objects before the end of the day. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Enacting. NW (Talk) 05:15, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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