Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-07-24/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Infoboxes case opens

The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.

Open cases

This case, brought by Ched, involves the issue of who should make the decision to include an infobox in an article and to determine its formatting (right margin, footer, both, etc) -- whether the preferences of the original author should be taken into consideration, if the decision should be made by various WikiProjects in order to promote uniformity between articles, or whether each article should be decided on a case-by-case basis after discussion. It also involves what is perceived by some to be an aggressive addition or reverting of infoboxes to articles without discussion by some editors, in areas where they do not normally edit. Areas that have seen disputes over infoboxes include opera, the Classical Music and Composers project, and Featured Articles. The evidence phase of the case closes 31 July, the workshop closes 7 August, and a proposed decision is scheduled to be posted 14 August 2013.

This case, brought by Mark Arsten, involves a dispute between Kiefer Wolfowitz and Ironholds, the original account of Wikimedia Foundation employee Oliver Keyes, that began on-wiki and escalated in off-wiki forums, ending with statements that could be interpreted as threats of violence. The evidence phase of the case closes 26 July, the workshop closes 2 August, and a proposed decision is scheduled to be posted 9 August 2013.

This case involving a US political group, brought by KillerChihuahua, is now unsuspended, after a moderated discussion failed to agree on the ground rules for such a discussion. Voting continues on the proposed decision.


Other requests and committee action

  • Amendment request: Argentine History: A request was made by MarshalN20 for an amendment to a topic ban for history-related sections of the Falkland Islands article.
  • Clarification request: Argentine History: A request was made by Cambalachero for a clarification of whether a topic ban on pages related to the history of Latin America applies to articles about recent politics or a brief mention of historical context in non-historical articles.
  • Clarification request: Scientology: A clarification request was brought by User:Sandstein in response to an ongoing discussion at WP:ANI#Abuse of admin powers and Violation of WP:INVOLVED by User:Sandstein. The request seeks to clarify the role of discretionary sanctions and outing after discretionary sanctions for the ‘’Scientology’’ case were applied to two editors who posted a link on Sandstein’s talk page to an old Arbcom case that contained an editor’s previous username. A proposal has been made to vacate the sanction against one of the editors, and to impose a sanction regarding harassment. A discretionary sanction prohibiting onwiki publication of alleged real names of the named editor would be imposed, and all users who contributed to the discussions at either ANI or the clarification request would be notified of the new discretionary sanction. The notifications would be appealable.
  • Clarification request: Syrian civil war articles: A request made by Greyshark09 was closed with a 30-day extension of the application of 1RR sanctions for WP:ARBPIA (Arab-Israeli conflict) that were applied ad hoc to the Syria topic area to prevent edit warring. Participants were advised on how to request separate sanctions for this topic.