Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-04-26/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Two difficult cases

Two very difficult cases were heard in April, with one ongoing. Jytdog, a productive and controversial editor, was indefinitely banned on April 13. The Medicine case opened on April 7. Two frequent Signpost contributors are involved. No Signpost staffer is available to write this article who considers themselves to be unbiased about these cases. This writer has strong, and mixed, feelings on both cases, and will keep the descriptions short.

Jytdog

Jytdog was indefinitely banned on April 13 by a vote of 11 arbitrators to 1. He may appeal the ban in 12 months. The case was originally started two years ago and closed soon after when Jytdog resigned as an editor, stating that he would never return. After he expressed a desire to return as an editor in March, the case was reopened.

Much of the case revolved around Jytdog's efforts to fight paid or conflict-of-interest editing. A key aspect of the case involved his uninvited telephone contact with another editor. Strong evidence was presented that Jytdog repeatedly badgered other editors.

Medicine

A long term dispute at WikiProject Medicine that came to a head over drug pricing information in articles was taken to ArbCom and the case opened April 7.

On the evidence page RexxS states "the vast majority of parties to this case are respected, long-term editors who have made considerable contributions to the field of medicine on Wikipedia over many years. It should be taken as a given that every single party's foremost aim is to improve Wikipedia, although there exists a wide range of opinion on how that is best achieved."

The parties include Doc James, a long-time contributor to The Signpost and a member of the WMF Board of Trustees. Bluerasberry, another long-time contributor to The Signpost joins several other editors in favoring the inclusion of drug prices in medical article. Sandy Georgia and several other medical editors are concerned about multiple long-term trends affecting the Medicine Project.

At the evidence page, editors are roughly split, in the type of evidence they have presented, in whether it favors one side or the other in the dispute. In the Workshop phase, which ends May 5, many of the proposals appear to favor letting the editors solve the content dispute on their own. A proposed decision is expected by May 12.