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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

This noticeboard's primary purpose is to to attract the attention of the clerks to a particular matter by non-clerks. Non-clerks are welcome to comment on this page in the event that the clerks appear to have missed something.

The clerks may be contacted privately, in the event a matter could not be prudently addressed publicly (i.e., on this page), by composing an email to clerks-llists.wikimedia.org; only the clerk team and individual arbitrators have access to emails sent to that list.

A procedural reference for clerks (and arbitrators) is located here.

Pending actions

Clerks and informal helpers, please coordinate your actions through this section, so that we don't have multiple clerks working on the same cases at the same time. An IRC channel, #wikipedia-en-arbcom-clerks and a mailing list are also available, although the mailing list is low traffic and has a public archive.

To be opened

Cases may be opened 24 hours after the fourth net vote to accept has been made.

• Waterboarding with four votes to accept, should be opened around 10:00, January 13 (UTC). Daniel (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I can take this, unless anybody objects; it may eat into my limited Wiki-time, but I'll definitely be able to manage. Anthøny 14:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Opening in progress, albeit slowly (see #Some thoughts and proposals :-) Anthøny 15:20, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• David Howe currently at 3 votes to open. Anthøny 00:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I'll take that one if there are no objections. — Coren  13:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Motions and temporary injunctions

Motions and temporary injunctions are made by arbitrators on /Proposed decision, and have the same majority for passage as the case itself.

• The motion in R. fiend is an interesting one (link). As "Clerk of the case", I'll need a touch of guidance on how this will work, given it's FoF and remedies all in one. The motion part will be easy — it's just a stock-standard temporary injunction, and I'll move the case to the section of {{ArbComOpenTasks}} that the Matthew Hoffman case is currently in — but how to structure the final decision should R. fiend give up his adminship within the 72 hours is confusing me slightly :) Daniel (talk) 23:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• I have a sneaky suspicion there'll be seven votes on this motion when I wake up in the morning (Australian time). I'll deal with it then. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 13:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• R. fiend has offered to resign adminship but only if the case is dismissed so he does not have to deal with it. This creates a timing problem, in that Arbcom could drop the case and then R.fiend change his mind, hence the conditional motion. As the clerk, when the motion passes, notify R. fiend and then check his user rights periodically until you confirm he his access has been removed, then you can move the case to closed without further voting. Thatcher 16:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• Thatcher is right; that's exactly how the motion was intended, to resolve a sort of "chicken and egg problem" that had developed. (In technical parlance, the motion is a "self-executing motion with a condition precedent." Let's not use the technical parlance.) In terms of what the decision page should look like if the motion passes and R. fiend resigns, the best thing would be to just delete the subsections of the decision template (remedies, findings, etc.) and just copy the one currently italicized paragraph as the complete decision. (That's the reason I said the case was to be "closed," rather than "dismissed," as a dismissed case doesn't really close with any decision.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for clarifying, Newyorkbrad ("the best thing would be to just delete the subsections of the decision template (remedies, findings, etc.) and just copy the one currently italicized paragraph as the complete decision"). Daniel (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• Motion adopted. Will watch the meta rights log and take action as appropriate. Daniel (talk) 22:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks. Technically, this was probably a "motion" rather than a "temporary injunction" for purposes of the notifications and posting on the case page, but not a big deal. Newyorkbrad (talk) 06:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Bleh :) Daniel (talk) 11:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

To be closed

Cases may be closed after after the fourth net vote to close, but generally wait at least 24 hours after the first motion to close. In cases where the arbitrators have disagreed and not all the findings or remedies have passed, wait at least 24 hours after the final close vote is cast to give other arbitrators a chance to raise objections.

• Dbachmann with four votes to close, as of 07:11, 13 January (UTC). David's case :) Daniel (talk) 10:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Zeraeph-SandyGeorgia almost ready to close, and note the request to waive the 24-hour rule. Please consult with non-recused arbitrators regarding whether the case should be renamed before closing, but not if this would result in a material delay in closing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 06:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Zeraeph is Rlevse's case. If he's not on in the next few hours, I assume somebody else will make the closure. Anthøny 07:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• I can close in the next few hours, Definitely by 5pm or so east US time. I will ask about the rename. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Note that a non-recused arbitrator has agreed with the renaming, in her vote on the motion to close. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• There was also a consensus on the workshop page, for the albeit-little it is worth (it's the arbitrators' decision, after all). Daniel (talk) 12:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

But was Flo voicing an opinion or telling us to go ahead and rename? — Rlevse • Talk • 13:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Please go ahead and rename it once it closes. Kirill 13:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to put up more evidence in Z-SG. Is there still time? SlimVirgin 13:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. If you have concerns with any of the (remaining) parties, please feel free to pursue dispute resolution with them as you feel appropriate; but we are determined to conclude the core Zeraeph matter immediately. Kirill 14:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Zeraeph closed and renamed, leaving thread here for a bit for info purposes. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Please consult with non-recused arbitrators concerning possible courtesy-blanking of the case pages and/or placement of something other than the "banned" template on Zeraeph's userpage, under the circumstances of this case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Who decided to close this case so suddenly, and why? SlimVirgin 14:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Reassignment/breaks

Generally, the clerk who opens a case should follow the progress of the case and be available to answer questions from the parties. If for any reason you need someone to take over one or more of your current cases (too busy, wikibreak, etc.), post a request here.

• AGK – I shall be operating under reduced activity until approximately 1 February. I should still be able to manage my cases, but I'd appreciate it if the other Clerks keep an eye on mine, and don't hesitate to act in lieu of me: I'd much appreciate it ;) Thanks much, all. [[User:AGK|<font color="#2A8B

• As some of you might already have noticed, I will be extremely busy for the next few weeks. Cbrown1023 talk 03:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Mentorship co-ordination

This section is used for discussion between trainee clerks (listed here) and appointed clerks, including the trainee's mentor, for issues which fall outside the above sections and require discussion.

Other work

All other issues.

Active/Inactive Arbitrators

General list

This list will be used to set the number of active Arbitrators and the case majority on cases as they open. As of January 9, 2008, there are 12 active Arbitrators, so the majority is 7 for *new* cases (that is, those accepted after the "as of" date).

Active:

1. Blnguyen
2. Deskana
3. FayssalF
4. FloNight
5. FT2
6. Jdforrester
7. Jpgordon
8. Kirill Lokshin
9. Matthew Brown (Morven)
10. Paul August
11. Sam Blacketer
12. UninvitedCompany

Away/inactive:

1. Charles Matthews
2. Newyorkbrad (travelling with limited Internet time and access until January 23, so moving to inactive/away until then for new matters; will remain as active as possible on cases where I'm already participating)
3. Thebainer (active on current cases, away on cases accepted post-January 9)

Arbitrator announcements

Arbitrators, please note if you wish to declare yourself active or away/inactive, either generally or for specific cases. The clerks will update the relevant cases as needed.

• Paul August - I'm back. Please leave me inactive on cases opened while I was away. Thanks. Paul August ☎ 14:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • No worries, welcome back. Anthøny 15:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
• Thebainer - I'll be away (without any internet access) for a fortnight from 19 Jan to 2 Feb. If I could please be listed as inactive on everything that opens during that fortnight; I may well become active on some of them when I get back. --bainer (talk) 13:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
• Newyorkbrad - I'll be travelling with limited Internet time and access until January 23. I've moved myself to inactive/away on new matters and on the two cases which are still in evidence. I will be as active as possible on the matters I'm already participating in (IRC, Dbachmann, and John Godhe 2). Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Notwithstanding the above, I've moved myself to active on R. fiend, because I've offered a motion. I also moved myself to the active listing on John Godhe 2, where I meant to remain active all along, but Daniel caught that I'd made a mistake. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

General discussion

Clarification from the Committee on Misplaced Pages:General sanctions and Misplaced Pages:Editing restrictions

In the past, various users have attempted to keep lists of editors under sanction, most of which have withered on the vine through lack of attention. The previous Committee expressed zero interest in maintaining or having maintained the list of users on probation at Misplaced Pages:Probation. Is it the Committee's intent that Misplaced Pages:General sanctions and Misplaced Pages:Editing restrictions shall be an official document, to be maintained by the Committee and its clerks? Or is this an unofficial volunteer effort of its editors, to be maintained on a volunteer basis. Thatcher 18:28, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Thatcher raises a valid question, although it should be noted that User:Kirill Lokshin started both pages. They serve a valid purpose because it is not efficient to scan the entire list of completed requests in order to discover if a particular article or editor is subject to restrictions. I believe the pages were started because the new ArbCom wanted to review all existing sanctions and restrictions. Once the lists exist, I think it makes sense to maintain them. Jehochman 18:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

They are not, at this point, "official" in the sense of being formally approved by the Committee as a whole; I basically started them as a personal project, since not having a canonical list has made extra work for me before. Having said that, I see no reason why they cannot be maintained in the future; certainly, having such lists available would make it much easier for people to request enforcement of the restrictions. Kirill 19:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, it would be much easier to find. I was planning to add to the pages but unfortunatly the prefixindex doesn't sort by date, making it much harder. :-(--Phoenix-wiki 19:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's important that we make a good effort to keep them updated whenever we close a case or motion; having this point of reference will be of great help for everyone involved— and for uninvolved admins as well. One thing missing IMO is an expiry on the General Sanctions. I'll take a minute and add that later this evening. — Coren  01:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Virtually all of the general sanctions are indefinite; I'd just put the expiration date for those that have one into the "Notes" field. Kirill 01:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem here is that the list is constantly changing. New editors are added to the Digwuren, MAcedonia and A-A cases all the time and the logs there make no mention of these pages, nor would anyone know unless someone makes a habit of checking. Every article on probation has the potential to result in multiple topic bans which may be short or long, and logged or not. If these lists are advisory lists maintained by interested editors, that is one thing. If they are to be part of the Arbitration process and a new responsibility for the clerks that could be quite a chore, particularly watching and tracking down enforcement actions at WP:AE and all the case logs. Thatcher 01:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I think these should be official, canonical lists. Given the time and effort that goes into creating and enforcing a sanction or restriction, the additional time of organizing the list is an order of magnitude less. However, I do not think it is necessary to log short term restrictions. We could place a note at the lists saying that only remedies 6 months or longer will be logged. Presumably short term remedies will be enforced by the involved admins. Longer remedies tend to be forgotten because of turnover. The lists provide institutional memory. At the moment we have a surplus of volunteers. Jehochman 01:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

If/when the page becomes more official, we can probably get people imposing sanctions to add editors themselves. Kirill 01:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I would have expected that only direct remedies would be found on those pages but not, say, editors who fall under a general sanction at a later time. This would be a listing of what the AC stated more than a list of who or what it affected to date. At any rate, I agree this would be a fair amount of work— any MBA's in the room to do a cost/benefit analysis for us?  :-) — Coren  01:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

As a possible counter to the trend of attention-withering we often see in these types of projects, perhaps we might look at inserting an instruction to log sanctions performed post-case closure in the relevant instruction pages? Anthøny 14:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Good idea Anthony. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Some thoughts and proposals

The current system the Clerks use in opening a case (that is, picking the information out from the section on WP:RFARB and placing it on the Case subpage is pretty neat; well, as neat as such a cumbersome and format-laden process can reasonably be. However, I'm just fresh from opening the Waterboarding case, probably my largest so far, and I've noticed that it takes easily an extra 20 minutes to separate the "uninvolved editors" statements from the Parties. It is also a definite grey area, regarding what is (and I quote from WP:AC/C/P) way too much stuff, and what is just right.

Therefore, I'd like to make a few relatively minor changes, but nonetheless ones that I'd like to get more opinions on: I'm pretty sure my glasses are rose-tinted by my rather impatient personality :) firstly, introduce to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Request template two new sections: a "statement by parties" heading, and an "uninvolved editors' statements" heading. This may mean shifting the header levelling of the actual statements up one, but it will result in a very considerable speeding up of the process of copying statements over; or, more notably, cut out the need to compare each statement to the list of parties, place it in the correct page, look for excess material, cut that out, neaten things up, et cetera.

Excess content leads me onto my second proposal. This is not my main idea, and I don't value it as highly as the former, but it is a nice idea, and I'd be interested in thoughts on it. Would the use of expandable tables (which FT2 has very nicely utilised in the Arbitrators' opinion area of the Rollback consensus RfArb currently under consideration) to cordon off what is way too much material be a suitable alternative method to cutting out the excess and placing it in the talk page? That would avoid unsuitable fragmentation of a Party's statement, yet simultaneously keep it on the main page itself.

I hope my proposals don't make me seem to brisk or upfront, and likewise don't make it look as if I don't value, or am impatient with, the Clerking system: on the contrary, I enjoy it very much, and look forward to contributing with it in the future. However, it would allow throughput to be improved, and possibly prevent (dare I say it?) Clerk burnout. Just some ideas, and I'd be glad of thoughts on the matter. Anthøny 15:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The former sounds like a good idea — implement it right away IMO, though I don't know about collapsing statements. It makes them look somehow "unimportant" if they're collapsed, and I haven't noticed any excessivly long statements recently.--Phoenix-wiki 15:28, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I love the idea of splitting party and uninvolved statements into two parts but I'm not fond of the collapsible sections. — Rlevse • Talk • 15:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how big a gain this would end up being: we'd still have to compare every name to the list of involved parties if only to guard against the inevitable errors. What to do with someone listed as involved that comments in the wrong section is fairly trivial (move to involved) but what of those who are not but commented in "involved"? — Coren  15:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Move them to uninvolved, I suppose; it's a very clean break: if you're listed as a party, you post to the Party section, and otherwise, to the other section. Regarding potential advantages, as I've said above, a huge gain :) errors such as wrong listing will have a high chance of being spotted whilst in the accept/decline stage, and if they manage to slip through that net, they'll certainly be caught after the case is in the evidence stage and beyond. I'd like to move to implement the different sections (as I said above, the collapsible tables is a bonus more than anything), but perhaps the thoughts of some of the official clerks and/or the arbitrators that tend to pop by here would be useful. Anthøny 16:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

For me, the simplest way to achieve the desired outcome is to copy all the statements to both the main and talk page, then do a selective blanking from each page. There's fewer steps that way then trying to copy one at a time. Regarding changing the main RFAR filing template to include separate sections for involved and uninvolved parties, this would have to be run past Arbcom as it is their party to begin with. For myself, I think we should avoid institutionalizing the idea that statements from uninvolved parties are not only accepted but encouraged. Most of the time they add very little, and the growing number of such statements is a trend I that does not need to be encouraged. Thatcher 13:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)