Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

Page semi-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by L235 (talk | contribs) at 03:26, 11 February 2017 (→‎Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This noticeboard is for announcements and statements made by the Arbitration Committee. Only members of the Arbitration Committee or the Committee's Clerks may post on this page, but all editors are encouraged to comment on the talk page.

Announcement archives:
  • 0 (2008-12 – 2009-01)
  • 1 (to 2009-02)
  • 2 (to 2009-05)
  • 3 (to 2009-06)
  • 4 (to 2009-07)
  • 5 (to 2009-12)
  • 6 (to 2010-12)
  • 7 (to 2011-12)
  • 8 (to 2012-12)
  • 9 (to 2013-12)
  • 10 (to 2015-12)
  • 11 (to 2018-04)
  • 12 (to 2020-08)
  • 13 (to 2023-03)
  • 14 (to present)

Arbitration motion regarding Race and intelligence

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was unbanned in April 2016 under the condition that he refrain from making any edit about, and from editing any page relating to the race and intelligence topic area, broadly construed. This restriction is now rescinded. The interaction bans to which Mathsci is a party remain in force.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:17, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 33#Arbitration motion regarding Race and intelligence

Return of checkuser and oversight permissions to Yunshui

Yunshui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), voluntarily retired in November 2015. Their checkuser and oversight permissions were removed without prejudice against requesting reinstatement in the future. They are reappointed as a checkuser and oversighter following a request to the committee for the return of both permissions.

Support
GorillaWarfare, Mkdw, Doug Weller, Kelapstick, Newyorkbrad, Opabinia regalis, Euryalus, Drmies, DGG, Casliber, DeltaQuad
Not voting
Ks0stm, Kirill Lokshin, Keilana, Callanecc

For the Arbitration Committee, Mkdw talk 16:09, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 33#Return of checkuser and oversight permissions to Yunshui

Response to the Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing

The Arbitration Committee has a number of concerns about the advisory statement about paid editing and private information released by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team. Although we understand that many within both the WMF and the community want to crack down on undisclosed paid editing in an effective way, several aspects of the statement require awareness and discussion.

Relationship to outing and harassment

The Arbitration Committee, as individuals and as a body, has a great deal of experience with how private information disclosures actually occur in a community setting. The Wikipedia harassment policy, which prohibits the disclosure of other editors' personal information without their consent, reflects over a decade of accumulated experience and institutional knowledge about this precise problem. That knowledge has been hard-won, and in many cases has come at the expense of dedicated and productive volunteers whose personal information was exposed by others. While many of the people who chose to reveal that information strongly believed they were justified in doing so, this does not mitigate the damage they did or the fact that volunteers were hurt as a result of their participation in the project.

The views outlined in this statement are significantly weaker than the protections the community has historically provided against online harassment and disclosure of editors' personal information. We are aware that the Wikimedia Foundation, like the Arbitration Committee and most Wikimedians, is also concerned about the harassment of community members, and we appreciate the Board's statement of a few weeks ago on this issue. We are concerned, however, about tensions between the current statement on paid editing and the Foundation's other work on harassment issues. For example, the Terms of Use FAQ includes "Harassment should also be avoided. For example, under the English Wikipedia policy on harassment, users must not publicly share personal information about other users." The current draft of the harassment training module being developed by the WMF reads in part, "Cases of deliberate PII [personally identifying information] release might include an attempt to 'out' another editor, perhaps to link their account to a purported employer." These materials collectively make clear that releasing personally identifying information about another user without the user's consent should be considered harassment. Except perhaps in extraordinary circumstances, this position has our support.

According to the statement, "if someone is editing for a company and fails to disclose it, an admin properly posting that person’s company where it is relevant to an investigation is helping bring the account into compliance with those requirements." The Arbitration Committee and community policy do not consider posting such information to be a specific responsibility of administrators, nor do we believe that the threat of posting such information should be used as a means to bring editors into compliance. In our opinion, the harassment training material quoted above is correct in defining such posts as inappropriate. Being doxxed and treated in ways the community has defined as harassment is not a reasonable consequence of noncompliance with a website's terms of use, particularly where no distinction is made between isolated, minor, or debatable violations as opposed to pervasive and severe ones.

This statement suggests an almost unbounded exemption to the outing policy to allow people to post public information on any individual they believe is engaging in undisclosed paid editing. Furthermore, the statement does not define or limit what may be considered "public information". Combined with the addendum that this kind of investigation could be applied to address disruption outside of paid editing, such as sockpuppetry, this advice if broadly interpreted would practically nullify the existing anti-outing policy.

Ambiguity of the "paid editing" problem

We are also concerned that the statement does not clarify the existing definition of paid editing, which is vague and susceptible to multiple readings. We understand that the core concern about paid editing involves large-scale enterprises offering paid Wikipedia editing services as a business model, and if it applied exclusively in that context, the recent WMF statement would be much more understandable, although it would still raise issues worthy of discussion. But it is not at all clear that the statement, or the intent underlying it, are limited to that context. If read broadly, the current definition of "paid editing" may include editing for one's employer or an organization one is affiliated with, even if no money changes hands in return for the editing. Moreover, "editing one's employer's article" could mean anything ranging from correcting a typo on the employer's article, at one extreme, to creating or maintaining a blatantly promotional article as part of a PR department's job responsibilities, on the other. It is not clear where on this continuum, if anywhere, a user becomes a "paid editor" whose activities people feel violate the TOU and are subject to exposure. Further to this, the definition of "company" in the statement is unclear. It could refer to either a paid editing business specifically, or refer to any company which is the subject of a Wikipedia article.

There is a difference between a major paid editing ring that has created or is seeking to create hundreds of promotional articles about non-notable subjects as part of a major business enterprise, and other scenarios that could be called "paid editing" which should be discouraged, but not through draconian means. Consider, for example, a hypothetical college student who makes the ill-advised decision to write an article about a friend's company in return for $25. They would be violating the COI policy and the TOU, but are not a major threat to the wiki. We worry that the statement does not include any advice for proportional responses based on the severity or extent of undisclosed paid editing.

Possibility of misuse

The statement also does not take into account the possibility of intentional misuse or gaming to harass innocent editors. We have seen repeated malicious attempts (so-called false flags or "joe-jobs") to incriminate editors for paid editing, and this would make it trivial for harassers to out their targets under the guise of stopping a paid editor. Malicious outing is not a rare occurrence and numerous editors — including several current WMF staff — have been the victims of outing and the threat of it.

Role of the Foundation in developing community policy

Finally, we are concerned about a statement like this posted locally on the project with the perceived force of authority of Wikimedia Legal, even though it has been tagged as an essay and described as advisory, not as policy. We expect that some editors will interpret this as binding and lean on it as a justification to publish information on-wiki that previously was, and still is by policy, prohibited harassment. Any current policies that do not align with the views expressed in this statement will likely be challenged as contradicting Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team. This seems to be a substantial departure from the historic relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team and the communities of the projects for which it is responsible, when it comes to matters that are not under Wikimedia Legal's direct purview. The paid editing and harassment policies are up to the local community to decide, and we hope that they will consider the statement carefully when making any changes. In the future, we feel a more discussion-based format such as an RfC would be a better way to provide input on local policies without the risk of statements being interpreted as binding.

Moving forward

The Arbitration Committee appreciates that the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team sought our feedback on an early version of this document, and accepted a portion of that feedback. The committee hopes this feedback is equally welcome. Furthermore we extend an invitation to the Legal team, and to any other interested community member, to commence a request for comments on this matter if they believe any aspect of local policy needs modification, in accordance with the consensus-building method the English Wikipedia has used for many years to develop local policy.

Signed,

Statements from individual arbitrators may follow.

Statement by Newyorkbrad

I agree with many of the concerns that my fellow arbitrators have raised in their statement above, but am posting separately to frame specific issues requiring discussion and analysis.

Undisclosed paid editing is detrimental to Wikimedia projects. Our editing model relies primarily on volunteers, whose editing decisions are ordinarily not guided by personal financial considerations. Paid editors, on the other hand, may have a financial incentive to disregard basic Wikipedia policies, such as that only notable subjects should have articles, and that all articles must be written neutrally and non-promotionally. The problem is only compounded where the paid editing is undisclosed.

But at the same time, another longstanding and fundamental Wikipedia value is that editors may control how much of their personal identifying information, if any, they wish to share. Disclosing another editor's identifying information without his or her consent, or unnecessarily publicizing such information, is a serious violation of English Wikipedia policy and community expectations. Years of experience confirm that "outing" or "doxing" of editors, or the threat of doing so, drives editors away from contributing, thus damaging both the encyclopedia, and the community that creates and maintains the encyclopedia. To the extent that any exceptions to the anti-"outing" policy can ever be warranted, they would be very rare, and reserved for extraordinary circumstances in which there is no other way to deal with a severe and persistent pattern of grave misconduct.

There is an obvious and long-recognized tension between our policies allowing anonymous editing and those disallowing undisclosed paid editing (and disfavoring undisclosed COI editing more generally). However, policy and community norms ordinarily disallow disclosing other editors' personal information on-wiki as an appropriate means of dealing with user misconduct, whether the misconduct consists of suspected paid editing or anything else.

The WMF legal statement correctly observes that warning or, if necessary, blocking users and modifying or deleting articles is the first step in dealing with inappropriate or promotional articles. However, it goes on to state that "some degree of transparency in investigations" of undisclosed paid editing is warranted. It is not clear how broadly the statement proposes to step away from the anti-"outing"/"doxxing"/disclosure policies that have served English Wikipedia well for the past 15 years, in the interest of combatting paid editing.

Subject to the WMF Office's role in providing guidance regarding legal issues and some basic expectations of user behavior, it is the English Wikipedia community's role to set policy and guidelines for our project—and I believe the WMF recognizes this fact. If the community were to consider modifying policy and practice in this arena, it would have to address at least the following issues:

  • The need to distinguish between isolated, minor, or debatable paid editing violations as opposed to severe and pervasive ones. For example, there is a vast difference between a large-scale organization seeking to sell promotional editing services in a for-profit business model, as opposed to a hypothetical college student who might make the ill-advised decision to write articles about local businesses for $25 each to raise tuition or spending money. In doing so, the student would be violating the COI policy and the TOU, but would not be a major threat to the wiki requiring enforcement by draconian means.
  • The existing ambiguities within the definition of a "paid editor". If read broadly, the current definition of "paid editing" may include editing for one's employer or an organization one is affiliated with, even if no money changes hands in return for the editing. Moreover, "editing one's employer's article" could mean anything ranging from correcting a typo on the employer's article, at one extreme, to creating or maintaining a blatantly promotional article as part of a PR department's job responsibilities, on the other. It is not clear where on this continuum, if anywhere, a user becomes a "paid editor" whose activities people feel violate the TOU and are subject to exposure. It also is not clear to what extent it is reasonable to expect businesses and organizations to pretend to be indifferent to the content of their articles on Wikipedia, which often will be the number-one ranking search-engine hit for their business or organization, particularly where there are legitimate problems with the contents of the articles.
  • What types of information would properly be disclosed in paid editing cases. For example, is the authorized disclosure to be limited only to corporate affiliation as specifically referenced in the WMF statement, as opposed to other personal information? At one point the statement refers to "other information connecting [an] editor to editing an article subject for pay," a very broad phrasing. For example, would it be permitted to link to a posting on an obscure bulletin board that includes an editor's address, phone number, or the like?
  • Who, if anyone, would be permitted to decide when circumstances call for such a disclosure. Would it be any editor who takes it upon himself or herself to conduct an "investigation"? (The statement refers in passing to disclosures made by "admins," but English Wikipedia has not defined publicizing information about other editors as either a right or responsibility of adminship.)
  • What level, quantity, or quality of evidence would be required before making an on-wiki disclosure or allegation.
  • Should the suspected editor be contacted privately before an on-wiki disclosure or allegation is made? If so, how do we avoid having that communication itself be perceived as a threat of outing?
  • How do we avoid gaming, or the misuse of a limited authorization of disclosure as a vehicle for bad-faith harassment? (There have already been a series of malicious "joe-job" paid-editing postings placed on other sites in the name of existing Wikipedia editors who do not engage in paid editing and had nothing to do with the postings, which must not become a predicate for posting the already-harassed editor's identifying information on Wikipedia.)
  • In summary, how—if at all—could the model contemplated by the WMF statement, under which on-wiki disclosure would be permissible in paid editing investigations, be implemented in a limited, controlled way without practically nullifying the anti-outing policy altogether?

None of us want a Wikipedia overrun by paid promotional editing. But I also hope that few of us want a Wikipedia in which editors' identifying information may be posted on-wiki—if at all—without the utmost of serious consideration and cause.

Statement by Mkdw

I made an individual statement on 21 January 2017 at Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Break 2 that I wrote to be supplementary to the collective open letter. Here is a copy below:

I think it's fair to say that a many of editors are concerned about undisclosed paid editing and the effect it is having on the English Wikipedia. We have all worked hard to make the English Wikipedia what it is today and to see it being undermined without the means or tools to counter it has been frustrating. To me, the central problem and barrier has been that 'undisclosed paid editing' includes an unreasonably wide range of cases with two types on either end:

  1. Large scale operations involving sock puppetry, dozens if not hundreds of articles, and an elaborate attempt to willfully circumvent our policies and guidelines
  2. Single article incidents that possibly involve WP:COI and maybe compensation (vaguely defined)

The second example could be a substitute teacher fixing a typo on an article about the school district in which they work. WMF Legal verified, elsewhere, that such an occasion would constitute undisclosed paid editing (an interpretation I am not sure is represented in the ToU and accompanying FAQ). In this example, the teacher is paid to be a teacher — not for their edits to Wikipedia — but because there is potentially a monetary benefit linked to their edits, according to WMF Legal, this is undisclosed paid editing.

I have absolutely no interest in going after editors even remotely in the same ballpark as the second example — let alone out their personal information (publicly available or not). More importantly, I have deep reservations about the practice of publicly posting any personal information about another editor. A person's digital footprint may include information that is publicly accessible and alone insignificant, but when amalgamated from various sources into one location and then posted to a place with the visibility of Wikipedia, has the potential for real harm. The further notion that this practice could occur during an investigation is equally as disturbing. What happens when an investigation concludes, well after the personal information has been revealed, that there was no wrong-doing or that the information was revealed under false pretexts. It is without question that such a situation could have lasting consequences for the individual whose information was revealed. We cannot expect every editor on the English Wikipedia understand the inherent risk they would putting themselves in by editing.

Something has to be done, but it is not what the WMF Legal is guiding the community towards. I am immensely proud of the work and policies the community has introduced over the years to protect the privacy of individuals in our community. The community decided a long time ago that the WMF's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy protected only the Foundation and more was needed to protect editors from hostile threats. The community has stuck by that decision. Personally, I am not wanting to see these protections disappear and the WMF depart from the longstanding practice to allow local projects to self-govern.

The community has a difficult road ahead; it must decide the fate of how undisclosed paid editing is handled on the English Wikipedia. Whatever that decision, it should align with the community's own core values and principles. Whether this translates to a policy: one that allows functionaries to evaluate privately submitted information (by the community) about undisclosed paid editing and grants functionaries the ability to block for ToU violations; or some other policy that empowers administrators (that I hope still preserves the protections offered by the community to all editors). Mkdw talk 04:10, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Euryalus

My views are reflected in the statement by Newyorkbrad.

Some additional general comments:

  • The WMF statement is a surprising intervention into what has previously been a community-driven approach to policy development. WP:Harass reflects the community's current consensus on outing; it is clearly imperfect but it's what we as a community have been able to agree on after years of discussion. The WMF traditionally permits individual Wikipedias to develop their own policies within the bounds of common sense and the ToU; it's startling to see this overturned via an implied supervote by the Legal team. Granted the statement is marked as an "essay," but it carries vastly weight than the opinion of any individual editor and has changed the tenor of the policy debate. It would be useful for the WMF to further clarify its role in community policy development, and whether it sees that role as having changed.
  • Bluntly, the WMF statement assumes an unrealistic level of good faith in outing attempts. Many functionaries have first-hand experience with good-faith reports of undisclosed paid editing or COI; most also have regular experience with bad-faith outing attempts both on-wiki and by email. Many bad-faith outing attempts are characterised by a disingenuous appeal to policy, and a defence that the author has been driven to out someone by their desperate love of the sanctity of Wikipedia. The WMF statement has good intent, but it opens an entirely new avenue for bad-faith outing claims and magnifies the frequency and risk of editor harassment by trolls. In passing it also appears contradictory to the tighter language in the draft anti-harassment policy being developed on meta.
  • The WMF statement lightly passes over the reality that an outing, even if only done once, can have substantial real life impact. As NYB points out, the statement offers no differentiation between organized paid editing rings and the guy who writes something for his small business buddy. It also implies that mistaken identity and "joe jobs" are rare and largely harmless. As the functionaries and Arbcom can attest, these implications are incorrect.

For all that, the statement is what it is, and it's time to move forward on how (or if) to reconcile it with existing policy. A suggested approach:

  1. Obtain clarity on the questions raised by NYB above;
  2. Note that enacting the WMF statement would require:
    a) WP:HARASS to permit "outing" to the extent necessary to conduct a good-faith paid editing investigation, and/or
    b) WP:BLOCKEVIDENCE to permit individual admins to block editors on the basis of private evidence provided directly to them and not able to be published for peer review, or identification of an alternative acceptable mechanism for addressing these issues (for example via amendment to WP:Arbpol); and/or
    c) a willingness from the WMF to invest resources in the pursuit of undisclosed paid editing, beyond those presently available to the volunteer community;
  3. Note that any of the above would require a successful RfC, and that unless/until this occurs the current community policies continue to apply; and
  4. Separately, consider also whether notability guidelines need amending to set a higher bar for businesses and corporate captains, in order to prevent the current spamming of company screeds and bios by undisclosed paid editing crews. At present, any article that can summon up three or four press release reprints in a trade journal will have a fair chance of surviving AfD. A tougher standard (say, at least 3 full-length articles in mainstream media or similar) would of itself have a major impact on the low-grade UPE we currently see.

As a personal view I do not support an amendment to WP:Harass to legitimize on-wiki outing per the WMF statement, but do believe Arbcom could take a somewhat greater role in receiving and responding to UPE allegations. As above, the WMF could usefully support this role via the allocation of dedicated resources.

And lastly, as a conclusion shamelessly lifted from NYB's statement above: "None of us want a Wikipedia overrun by paid promotional editing. But I also hope that few of us want a Wikipedia in which editors' identifying information may be posted on-wiki—if at all—without the utmost of serious consideration and cause." This is surely a universal view, and should guide future discussion of this issue. -- Euryalus (talk) 23:18, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DGG

My views are approximately reflected in the statements by Newyorkbrad and Euryalus. More specifically:

I regard paid editing as a threat to an NPOV encyclopedia through the inevitable bias, and as a danger because of the consequent demoralization of the volunteer community. We should ban it altogether if it were feasible to do so, but any such ban would drive it completely underground , removing any possibility of control. The best we can do is force disclosure, which is only effective if we have a workable way of reliably way of identifying Undeclared paid editors (UPE). I regard the WMF statement as a first crude step to developing this capacity. It is a very crude step, that fails to take into account the often-repeated views of the editing community, ignores the comments that arb com has several times made to them on the basis of preliminary versions, and shows a very incomplete understanding of the actual environment on Wikipedia. This comes as no surprise--experience with many issues has clearly shown we must manage our own problems and expect help from the Foundation in only the most drastic circumstances.

Our best course is to regard it as a general statement that is not self-executing, but needs to be taken into account in developing our own guidelines, We are as I see it entitled to have stricter guidelines than the Foundation on both NPOV and privacy--they set only the minimum standards. To emphasise what I consider some key questions raised by NYB and Eurylaus --

(1)we must differentiate between the occasional editor who edits in violation of COI--whom we just need to inform, the individual who sets out to make a business from it without realizing the implications--whom we need to closely monitor to verify compliance, and the determined group of violators who are deliberately trying to subvert our standards on a large scale--whom we need to eliminate. The possibility of harmful outing applies in my view only to the first group, and to some extent the second, but not someone editing in deliberate contempt of our rules.

(2)we need to recognize that we cannot rely on the good judgement of editors in general, or even admins in general. There's a wide range of capabilities, and considerable opportunity for error. Perhaps the best role of arb com is its traditional one, of monitoring admin habaviour.

(3)we need to recognize the possibility for error. Just as we do not always correctly identify sockpuppets, we have so far not been completely successful in identify UPE. For sockpuppets at least we have the occasionally useful tool of checkuser to supplement behavioral evidence. For UPE, we need to develop something to supplement the often deceptive statements of the editor involved, and the difficult of differentiating UPE from a more benign COI. At present, most rings have been detected when they make an error, or incompletely hide their activities, or we receive a usable complaint from their victims. I think we need the possibility of in some cases saying: we will consider you an UPE unless you can show us otherwise. This can include even verifying identity--some cases have been confirmed when they do volunteer their identity and what they say can be proven false.

(4)I am not completely convinced that we have ever actually done harm to an innocent or merely unaware editor by attempts to detect UPE, even when it breaches privacy. Joe jobs and the like have been in other contexts, usually ideological, sometimes interpersonal. The difficulty is to be sure that the person we are investigating is likely to be a major UPE.

(5)We need to supplement action with respect to editors by action with respect to articles. Certainly we do need to tighten the notability requirements for companies and their executives; we also need to dot his for non-profit organizations--some of the the most disruptive paid editing has come from that sector. I'll have a specific proposal ready soon. Additional steps in this direction are:

a. a rule permitting the speedy deletion of articles mainly written by UPEs, such as we have for blocked sockpupetts.
b. We need a variety of ways of detecting some of the tricks used to avoid scrutiny, possibly using edit filters. I think people are already working on this.
c. increasing the requirement for submitting articles. I think we need to suggest a modified version of WP:ACTRIAL, requiring new editors to use Draft space. I'm not proposing anything specific here, because draft space is a bit of a mess at the moment. If necessary, we can even propose ACTRIAL again, hoping that the WMF will see the need of accepting some compromise on "anybody can edit" to avoid even worse compromises of principal. DGG ( talk ) 05:38, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 34#Response to the Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing

Arbitration motion regarding JustBerry

JustBerry (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was unblocked by the Ban Appeals Subcommittee in July 2013 with a one-account restriction. Following a successful appeal to the Arbitration Committee, the one-account restriction for JustBerry is rescinded. They are reminded that any alternate accounts and/or bots must adhere to WP:SOCK#LEGIT and WP:BOTPOL.

Support
Doug Weller, Drmies, Euryalus, GorillaWarfare, Ks0stm, Mkdw, Newyorkbrad, Opabinia regalis
Not voting
Casliber, DGG, DeltaQuad, Keilana, Kirill Lokshin, Callanecc, Kelapstick

For the Arbitration Committee, Mkdw talk 19:04, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding JustBerry

Arbitration motion regarding Ed Poor 2

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

In remedy 1.1 of the 2006 Ed Poor 2 case, Ed Poor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was placed on probation. Under the terms of the probation, he was banned from two topics in 2008 and 2009. The probation and topic bans under its terms are now rescinded.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:37, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Ed Poor 2

Arbitration motion regarding GamerGate

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

The topic-ban placed on NorthBySouthBaranof in the GamerGate case is terminated. Discretionary sanctions remain authorized to address any user misconduct in the relevant topic-area.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:07, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding GamerGate

Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

In remedy 4.2 of the 2012 Article titles and capitalisation case, standard discretionary sanctions were authorized for all pages related to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy, broadly construed. By way of clarification, the scope of this remedy refers to discussions about the policies and guidelines mentioned, and does not extend to individual move requests, move reviews, article talk pages, or other venues at which individual article names may be discussed. Disruption in those areas should be handled by normal administrative means.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization