Part I of the series can be viewed here.

Just two weeks ago marked the end of 2006, and the end of the biggest year Wikipedia has seen, in terms of growth, press coverage, and quality. During last year, the English Wikipedia grew from less than 900,000 ^[1] to over 1,500,000 ^[2] articles. It began with elections for the Arbitration Committee and stewardship, and ended with elections for the Arbitration Committee and stewardship. This week, the Wikipedia Signpost continues our look back at the year that was 2006 in Wikipedia.

Arbitration Committee Elections

Due to a scheduling quirk, 2006 saw two annual Arbitration Committee elections. The January elections saw 11 arbitrators elected in all (originally, 8 seats were up for reelection, but to avoid high turnover on the Committee, and with a high rate of community support, Jimbo Wales chose to add three extra seats). In all, 68 candidates applied for the elections; of these, 14 withdrew during the vote.

• 3-year terms (Tranche Beta): Charles Matthews, Filiocht, Jdforrester, Mindspillage, and Morven.
• 2-year terms (Tranche Alpha): Dmcdevit, Fred Bauder, and SimonP.
• 1-year terms (Tranche Gamma): Jayjg, Mackensen, and Sam Korn.

All but one incumbent arbitrator regained a seat on the Committee ( Kelly Martin withdrew from consideration early in the vote and resigned from the committee shortly thereafter, citing personal reasons.) ^[3]

In December, a second election was held. In this election, the five three-year seats in Tranche Gamma were available; with the resignation of Mindspillage, who took a seat on the Foundation Board of Trustees, and the absence of Filiocht, who had not participated in arbitration due to illness, two additional two-year seats were made available. Jimbo indicated that Mindspillage and Filiocht were free to claim extra seats should they come back before their terms were due to expire in December 2008. ^[4] 37 candidates ran for the seats, of which 6 withdrew during the elections. The results were as follows:

• 3-year terms (Tranche Gamma): Flcelloguy, Jpgordon, Kirill Lokshin, Paul August, and UninvitedCompany.
• 2-year terms (Tranche Beta): Blnguyen and FloNight.

Of the previous Tranche Gamma, one seat was vacant due to the resignation of Mackensen in February. ^[5] None of the four remaining incumbent arbitrators chose to run again. This was the first time in the Arbitration Committee's history that no incumbents attempted to defend their seats.

Steward elections

Oddly enough, two annual elections were also held for the global position of steward. Stewards' main jobs are to help out with the jobs of bureaucrats and CheckUsers on smaller wikis, where bureaucrats are unlikely to be active or existent, and CheckUser policies have not yet been agreed upon (only 27 individual projects, along with Wikimedia Commons and the Meta-Wiki, currently have CheckUsers). ^[6] While the Board of Trustees makes a final ruling on the suitability of a candidate, and can pick any candidates with at least 80% support and at least 30 support votes to become stewards, their decision in both 2006 elections was to promote all candidates who had received 80% or more.

In January 2006's elections, nine candidates were chosen: Ascánder, Ausir, Jean-Christophe Chazalette, Jon Harald Søby, Paginazero, Rdsmith4, Romihaitza, Suisui, and Walter. ^[7] Of the nine, two (Jean-Christophe Chazalette and Ascánder) have since resigned.

In December 2006's elections, eleven candidates were chosen: Bastique, Cspurrier, Darkoneko, Dbl2010, Drini, Effeietsanders, Guillom, M7, MaxSem, Pathoschild, Redux, and Shanel. ^[8]

CheckUser and Oversight

In 2006, two new user classifications became widely used: CheckUser and Oversight. CheckUser, which was actually introduced as a formal classification in 2005, is the ability to view and compare the IP addresses of contributors when it is presumed that these users might be involved in sockpuppeting or disruption. The requests for CheckUser page, created in January 2006, has become a key site to visit by users who suspect that sockpuppeting might be occurring. ^[9] Oversight, meanwhile, is the ability to hide page revisions containing libel, personal informations and in extreme cases, copyright violations; it was introduced in June after the insertion of inappropriate content, particularly on busy pages like the administrators' noticeboard, where deletions caused undue stress on the servers, due to the number of revisions involved. ^[10] There were 17 users with oversight privileges when it was introduced; there are currently 28 users with these privileges.

Userboxes

A source of controversy in early 2006 was a series of disputes over userboxes. Introduced to the English Wikipedia in late March, 2005, as a way of communicating to other users the languages that a user speaks, userboxes soon became a way to express one's likes and dislikes, talents, and even edit counts. Controversy erupted in late December 2005 when Kelly Martin began deleting userboxes that she deemed controversial or offensive, and those that contained fair use images; two requests for comment were filed in the case. ^[11]

More controversy occurred when a pro-pedophilia userbox ignited a wheel war. Jimbo Wales temporarily de-sysopped five of the administrators who had been most involved in escalating the situation. ^[12] An arbitration case was hastily brought in the matter, and just five days after the case was opened, it was closed with the following remedies:

• El C was resysopped immediately and reprimanded.
• BorgHunter was resysopped after two days, and reprimanded.
• Ashibaka was resysopped after two weeks.
• Karmafist and Carnildo did not have their sysop powers restored. Rather interestingly, Carnildo regained adminship in September, in a controversial decision by bureaucrats, ^[13] while Karmafist was eventually banned from the site.
• Dschor, who created another, inflammatory version of the pedophilia template, was banned for two months (in May, he was indefinitely blocked for "massive sockpuppetry" by Mackensen).
• SPUI, who created a joke version of the template, was banned for ten days, and placed on probation.
• Paroxysm, who created the original template "in good faith", according to the Committee, was banned for three days and prohibited from editing userboxes again. Paroxysm has not edited under that username since March, but has edited under other usernames.

The case was the fastest arbitration case to close with remedies enacted. Although an April arbitration case involving userboxes was filed, and resulted in the desysopping of Guanaco, most of the controversy over userboxes has since faded, as most have been moved from the template namespace into user subpages. Divisive or inflammatory userboxes are rarely seen anymore, and can be speedy deleted under criterion T1.

Other involuntary desysoppings

Through 2005, only five users had been permanently desysopped. 11 users were permanently desysopped in 2006; other than Karmafist and Carnildo, the others are:

• Everyking, de-adminned in September 2006 after offering to post a page revision containing personal information to a Wikipedia criticism site. Dmcdevit said for the Arbitration Committee:

"Recently it was brought to the attention of the Arbitration Committee that administrator Everyking has posted to an external site in the process of trying to determine the contents of inappropriate material, sensitive personal information, deleted from an article. Everyking looked up the deleted material using his administrator privileges, and offered to post the deleted content publicly...We view this as a serious misjudgment and a betrayal of the trust the community has given him in adminship. As such, Everyking has been immediately desysopped."

Everyking replied:

"This is shocking and I call for it to be overturned. I didn't actually post anything (being worried that SlimVirgin might get pissed) and even if I did I don't see how it could be a betrayal of anything."

When Dmcdevit mentioned his willingness to post personal information as a "liability", Everyking replied:

"Personal information? I didn't even know what the content was. I still don't know. I sure as hell would never post anybody's personal information."

• Freestylefrappe, de-adminned in February 2006 due to an arbitration ruling. ^[14] Under another identity, KI, he applied for adminship, but was rejected. He has since been banned.
• Guanaco, de-adminned for a second time in April 2006 after an arbitration ruling in a userbox-related case. He cannot re-apply for adminship. ^[15]
• NSLE/ Chacor, de-adminned in June 2006 after the Committee found evidence of sockpuppeting, a claim that NSLE denied. ^[16]
• Dbiv/ Fys, de-adminned in August 2006 after an arbitration ruling. ^[17]
• Marudubshinki, de-adminned in October 2006 after an arbitration ruling. ^[18]
• MONGO and Seabhcan, de-adminned in December 2006 after an arbitration ruling. ^[19]

In closing...

2006 was the biggest year Wikipedia has seen in terms of overall progress and growth. It's likely that 2007 will be even bigger, busier and more bustling. Thanks for editing Wikipedia, and thanks for reading the Signpost.

Links/references

A new software feature to guard against sophisticated "indirect" vandalism of the Main Page has been implemented. Dubbed "cascading protection", it automatically applies to local images and templates, which have been frequent targets for this type of vandalism.

As a very high-traffic page, the Main Page has long been an attractive target for vandals. Because it includes a constantly changing variety of elements, vulnerabilities have occasionally appeared when nobody thinks to protect a new element, or even an element of an element. The feature, which "cascades" the regular protection feature down to such elements, was developed primarily by Andrew Garrett ( User:Werdna). Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber enabled it in the MediaWiki software and applied cascading protection to the Main Page at 09:55 (UTC) on 14 January.

Cascading protection operates as follows: If a page is protected using the feature, any pages included in it will also be protected for as long as they remain included in it. This protection should take effect instantly and automatically even if templates are included dynamically by a mechanism such as that used by the Main Page. Administrators can enable cascading protection by means of a checkbox on the usual protection form.

Vibber pointed out that cascading protection does not apply to images hosted on the Wikimedia Commons. This means that the image will need to be protected manually by an administrator on the Commons project. In the first few months of that project, complaints were voiced about its responsiveness to such requests, but now the matter is handled fairly routinely.

ProtectionBot

The feature was developed while a separate effort was underway to run a bot that would achieve similar results. ProtectionBot, a bot run by Dragons flight, was the subject of a much-debated request for adminship, in order to obtain the administrator-only function of protecting and unprotecting pages. This followed a request for approval of bot status, which was generally supported, but it was suggested that the issue of a bot with administrator abilities needed to be brought before a wider audience.

Once the cascading protection feature had been added to MediaWiki, Dragons flight withdrew the request on 11 January. Although he said the bot "has certain functionality that exceeds that provided by Werdna's patch, I feel the technical situation has changed too greatly for this RFA to continue to be valid." Dragons flight expressed appreciation to Garrett and the other developers who helped address the problem, while also expressing frustration with the process. Reflecting on the energy devoted to getting the bot approved, he commented, "A good idea, that can be shown to work, should not require this much effort."

At the time the request was withdrawn, there was actually a decent possibility that it would have succeeded. Counts of supporting and opposing comments at the time of withdrawal showed 185 in favor and 41 opposing, with 13 neutral or abstaining comments. Weighing supporters against opponents would put 82% in favor, slightly above the 80% threshold that has commonly been treated by bureaucrats as justifying administrator status without controversy.

A substantial portion of the opposition expressed concern that the source code for the bot was not public. Dragons flight did share the code with a number of other Wikipedians, but declined to release it generally, stating that it could easily be modified to create a vandalbot. Others remained uncertain about giving a bot abilities normally reserved for administrators.

Garrett, who came up with the solution, was actually one of those opposing the request for adminship. In his opinion, "this kind of thing needs to be implemented as part of MediaWiki", along with some of the other functions filled by bots. Others pointed out that the small number of developers makes it difficult to hope that such features would be implemented unless something forces the issue.

WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.

Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Williams works as a visual journalist for the US-based The Tampa Tribune, a daily newspaper in Tampa, Florida. He also has worked as an illustrator and designer at newspapers in Dubuque, Iowa, and Dayton, Ohio.

( ← Prev)	Signpost archives	( Next →)

Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser passes $1,000,000

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser will conclude this week. At the end of the drive, over US$1,000,000 had been raised, not including a matching funds donation yet to be received.

Personal attack noticeboard rejected

After complaints over its effectiveness, and worries that it was being used inappropriately in disputes, the personal attack intervention noticeboard was shut down last week, after a deletion request.

Mailing lists moved

The mailing lists for Wikipedia and other projects have changed to new addresses after the Wikimedia Foundation migrated them to a new server. All new addresses will use @lists.wikipedia.org, so that for example the English Wikipedia mailing list is now wikien-l at lists.wikipedia.org. Old addresses will still work, but the transition will include mail headers and may require recipients to adjust any filters or other settings they use to read list messages. Also note that links to old mailing list messages may point to different ones now: this is because of how the archive rebuilding process works.

Briefly

• The Malayalam Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Yiddish Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
• The Samoan Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Zazaki Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Tamil Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Dutch Wikisource has reached 1,000 texts.
• The Hindi Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
• The Chuvash Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Turkish Wikipedia has reached 60,000 registered users.
• The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Ido Wiktionary has reached 100,000 entries.
• The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia has reached 8,000 articles.
• The Tongan Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Esperanto Wikipedia was edited 800,000 times.
• The Alemanic Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
• The Turkish Wiktionary has reached 100,000 entries.
• The Marathi Wikipedia was edited for the 47,000th time.
• The Korean Wikipedia has reached 31,000 articles.
• The English Wikipedia has reached 7 million total pages.
• The Portuguese Wikisource has reached 7000 texts.

Sydney Morning Herald vandalizes Wikipedia

A blogger for the Sydney Morning Herald, in an article critical about Wikipedia, vandalized the article Newspaper, touting its own blog as the "world's best column" [1]. The edit was reverted nearly nine hours later by Barnabypage. The page also mentions a vandalous edit to Aspirin, which was not reverted for 28 minutes [2].

Ethical Corporation Magazine examines Corporate social responsibility

Mallen Baker of Ethical Corporation Magazine, a British publication, looked at Wikipedia's article on corporate social responsibility. The author notes that POV battles have made the article "a battleground of ideologues".

Reporter examines an AFD on his own article

CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman profiled an AFD on an article about Terdiman. Terdiman notes that compared to other CNET reporters, he might not have been notable, though the article was kept. Terdiman did, however, incorrectly refer to the AFD as an "administrators' delete-or-not thread".

Administrators

Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Kinu ( nom), Feydey ( nom), Visviva ( nom), Jersyko ( nom), and BigDT ( nom).

Featured content

Twenty-two articles were promoted to featured status last week, following the previous week's zero: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Oriel College, Scottish Parliament Building, Paulins Kill, Hurricane Juan, Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Hippocrates, Germany, Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector, Sasha (DJ), B movie, South Australian legislative election, 2006, Pilot (House), Turkey, Battle of Edson's Ridge, DNA, Diplodocus, Proteasome, Effects of Hurricane Isabel in Delaware, Immune system, and Regulamentul Organic. DNA was repromoted to FA status after losing it nearly three years ago.

Two articles were de-featured last week: Names of God in Judaism, and Sydney Riot of 1879.

Five lists were promoted to featured status last week: Chicago Bears seasons, Harry Potter films cast members, New Brunswick general elections (post-Confederation), Basil cultivars, and Nintendo 64 games.

Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Architecture and Vancouver.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Invasion, Fauna of Puerto Rico, Half-Life 2, Richard III, Alcibiades, Shoshone National Forest, and Kitsune.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Treasury of Athens, Riffle shuffle, Dragonfly, Root canal, Phenotypes, Victoria Crater, and Pennant coralfish.

Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status last week:

• 
  Willet
• 
  Sandstorm
• 
  Whaling in the Faroe Islands

• 
  The first ever photograph of a person, taken by Louis Daguerre
• 
  English Walnut
• 
  Joseph Kittinger's record-breaking skydive

• 
  Short-beaked Echidna
• 
  Liquid lakes on Titan
• 
  Metallic Ringtail

• 
  Polar map of Jupiter
• 
  Meat eater ant

• 
  Thomas Edison

The ImageMap extension by Tim Starling has been enabled on Wikimedia sites. It is now possible for images to be easily used to link to pages, including with different areas linking to different pages. Users should remember to keep in mind the needs of browsers not capable of handling graphics well, such as screen readers and perhaps some handheld devices.

In response to the rise of indirect vandalism on the Main Page (see this Signpost article for further details), a new protection mode was added: cascading protection. If a page is protected this way, any pages included in it will also be protected for as long as they remain included in it. This protection should take effect instantly and automatically even if templates are included dynamically by a mechanism such as that used by the Main Page. Administrators can enable cascading protection by means of a checkbox on the usual protection form. ( Andrew Garrett, various revisions from r18958 to r19103)

The {{PLURAL}} magic word now treats -1 as singular. ( Leon Weber, r19031)

Tooltips and accesskey shortcuts no longer require JavaScript to use. Consequently, the way in which sysops should edit tooltips and accesskeys has changed. While it is possible to continue using the ta array in MediaWiki:monobook.js or MediaWiki:common.js, it is preferable to delete that and migrate any changes to the new individual messages such as MediaWiki:Tooltip-userpage. ( Simetrical, bugs 5051 and 5376, r19036)

A minimum protection level for all pages in a given namespace can now be set in the site configuration. By default, the only namespace thus protected is the MediaWiki namespace, which, as before, is only editable by sysops. ( Ilmari Karonen, r19110)

A bug that prevented non-sysops from viewing the source of system messages left at their default values, such as (at the time of this writing) MediaWiki:About on the English Wikipedia, was fixed. The bug was presumably a side effect of the recent removal of such default messages from the database. ( Ilmari Karonen, r19111)

The contents of <math> tags, when rendered as plain HTML text rather than as an image, will now always be rendered left-to-right, even on right-to-left wikis. ( Simetrical, bug 8002, r19143)

The page-specific CSS class now works consistently in Monobook and non-Monobook skins. ( Mormegil, bug 8643, r19299)

JavaScript authors should be aware that recently, a minor change to the document structure was made for consistency, related specifically to handheld rendering: a div with class of pBody was wrapped around the unordered list in p-cactions, to bring it in line with the other lists there. This will cause issues for some inflexibly-written JavaScript that depends on the precise document structure. JavaScript authors are advised to write their scripts so that they will continue to function even if wrappers are added or node order changes. For instance, the <ul> element containing the content actions can be obtained with document.getElementById("p-cactions").getElementsByTagName("ul")[0];, which will almost certainly work despite any structural change. ( Simetrical, r18949)

Also, a new utility function was added for the benefit of JavaScript authors. addPortletLink() will conveniently add a link to any of the "portlets" in Monobook, including the content actions, personal tools, navigation sidebar, and toolbox. The syntax of the function can be found in wikibits.js. ( Ilmari Karonen, r19185)

A number of interface changes were made:

• The "undo" link on diffs now shows a diff demonstrating what changes will be made to the current page rather than simply showing an edit form. This is equivalent to clicking the "Show changes" button. Also, the message explaining what happened was clarified. ( Andrew Garrett, r18907– 8)
• All interface messages now show the correct tooltip prefix for the user's browser, provided JavaScript is enabled. For instance, the tooltip for "Save page" will now read "[shift-alt-s]" for users of Firefox 2.0, not "alt-s". ( Simetrical, r19036)
• When viewing the difference between two revisions, users can choose via a user preference not to have the full text of the latter revision output below the differences. This should noticeably improve the time it takes to display diffs of large pages. Adding &diffonly=0 or &diffonly=1 to the end of a diff URL will display or hide the revision text regardless of user preferences, respectively. ( Ilmari Karonen, bug 3446, r19141)
• On user pages, the "user contributions" link will show up red if the user has no edits. ( Leon Weber, r19219, 20, 22))
• When printing, the user's browser font size preference will be used, rather than the text being forced to 11 points. ( Simetrical, r19221)
• A link back to the list of deleted revisions for a page is now provided on the undelete revision preview page. ( Rob Church, bug 7842, r19258)
• The block form now contains links to the unblock page and the block list. ( Rob Church, bugs 8619 and 8628, r19259 and r19287)
• Users with appropriate permissions will now see a deletion link for each entry on Special:Brokenredirects. ( Rob Church, bug 8522, r19262)

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

• Breton (thanks to Fulup)
• Finnish (thanks to Niklas Laxström and Ilmari Karonen)
• French (thanks to Rémi Kaupp)
• German (thanks to Raymond and Leon Weber)
• Hebrew (thanks to Rotem Liss)
• Indonesian (thanks to Ivan Lanin)
• Lithuanian (thanks to Edgaras)
• Portuguese (thanks to 555)
• Serbian (thanks to Sasa Stefanovic)
• Spanish (thanks to Titoxd)
• Swedish (thanks to Lejonel)

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, and closed one case.

Closed case

• Brahma Kumaris: A case involving the actions of avyakt7 and 195.82.106.244 (195) on the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University article. Avyakt alleges that 195 has defamed Brahma Kumaris in the article but 195 claims that avyakt has misinterpreted the reliable sources policy. As a result of the case, 195 was banned for one year and placed on probation. In addition, the article was placed on article probation.

Evidence phase

• Piotrus-Ghirla: A case involving the actions of Piotrus and Ghirla on various Russia- and Poland-related articles. Piotrus alleges that Ghirla has added unsourced POV material to these articles, and generally been incivil, while Ghirla claims that Piotrus has engaged in various forms of harassment, and calls for his desysopping. However, the parties have now entered into informal mediation, with proposals including mutual civility parole (and in which Ghirla has dropped his call for desysopping), and as a result of this, a motion has been proposed temporarily deferring the case until the outcome of the mediation is known.

• Starwood: A case involving links to Starwood Festival-related articles from various pages. Paul Pigman, who brought the case, alleges that Rosencomet "persistently and systematically" added these links, perhaps to an extent that violates WP:SPAM, and that Hanuman Das, Ekajati and 999 have harassed users attempting to remove the links. Mattisse confirms that she has been harassed by Hanuman Das, Ekajati and 999, but that she has no issue of harassment with Rosencomet himself. Hanuman Das has asked that his name be removed from the request, as "I decline to participate", citing that he has not edited the links since he agreed not to on the 5th of December. Although Arbitration is not a consensual process, he also seems to have exercised the right to vanish. 999 and Ekajati deny the allegations, and allege that Mattisse has used multiple sockpuppets to request the links and then call for their removal. In addition, various users allege that Rosencomet has a WP:COI, as the executive director of the for-profit ACE LLC, which promotes the festival.

• Robert Prechter: A case regarding the behaviour of Rgfolsom and Smallbones on the Socionomics and Robert Prechter pages. Rgfolsom alleges that Smallbones has violated WP:NPOV, WP:CIVIL and WP:DR (by abusing the mediation process), and that he has added "smears, demonstrable falsehoods, and a calculated overemphasis on quotes of critics". In response, Smallbones alleges that Rgfolsom has violated WP:V and WP:NPOV by removing claims critical of Prechter, and adding claims complimentary to him, and WP:COI because he is one of Prechter's employees.

Voting phase

• Husnock: A case involving the actions of Husnock and Morwen, involving a comment made by Husnock, "I would be careful telling a deployed member of the military they shouldn't edit on Wikipedia for whatever reason.", following disputes on various Star Trek-related AfDs, which Morwen considered to be "intimidating", and Husnock alleges that she stated that she was "in fear of her life", and that he has been investigated by real-world bodies regarding it. Fred Bauder has proposed motions describing Husnock's comments as "regrettable", and others desysopping him as well as cautioning him on various matters, and encouraging Morwen to "be more sensitive to the feelings of others". Most of these proposals have the support of three arbitrators, but FloNight has opposed the remedy relating to Morwen.

• Sathya Sai Baba 2: Thatcher131 alleges that Andries has repeatedly added a link to an unreliable source to the Robert Priddy article, in violation of a remedy in a prior case on the subject, and that SSS108 has edit warred and exhibited signs of article ownership on the page. Both users deny the allegations. UninvitedCompany has proposed remedies banning Andries from editing the article, or starting any dispute resolution procedures regarding it and requiring Etanik to edit under one username only. Fred Bauder has supported the proposals, but Charles Matthews has opposed the editing restrictions.

• Midnight Syndicate: A case brought by Durova involving an edit war on the Midnight Syndicate article. Dionyseus and Skinny McGee allege that GuardianZ has engaged in sockpuppetry and general disruption on the article. He denies the allegations and argues that Dionyseus and Skinny McGee have engaged in similar behaviour. A temporary injunction has been granted placing Dionyseus, Skinny McGee, and GuardianZ on revert parole. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies, supported by jpgordon and Dmcdevit, banning GuardianZ and Skinny McGee from the article indefinitely, and Dionyseus for a period of three months, and forbidding any employees of Midnight Syndicate, Nox Arcana or Monolith Graphics from editing the article.

• Yoshiaki Omura: Various users, principally Crum375, allege that Richardmalter and alleged sockpuppets have added biased, unsourced material to Bi-Digital O-Ring Test, an alternative medicine technique created by Yoshiaki Omura which was criticised by a New Zealand disciplinary tribunal as lacking scientific basis. However, Richardmalter denies that his pro-Omura edits were either biased or unsourced and claims that the mediation process has supported his position. Fred Bauder has proposed motions to the effect that "Richardmalter...[has] edited Yoshiaki Omura in an aggressive biased manner", and banning him from the article indefinitely. These motions have attracted the support of four arbitrators.

• Derek Smart: A case involving a dispute over the inclusion of critical material in the Derek Smart article. Various editors on both sides of the dispute claim that the other has violated policy in promoting their case, and some suggest that various accounts ( Supreme Cmdr and WarHawkSP inter alia) are in fact used by Smart himself, citing as evidence perceived similarities in their writing styles. These editors deny the allegations. Remedies have been proposed prohibiting single-purpose accounts (of which Mael-Num, WarHawk, WarHawkSP, and Supreme_Cmdr are named as examples) from reverting the article, and banning Supreme Cmdr for two weeks, as well as an alternative remedy banning him for one year. These remedies have the support of three to six arbitrators.

• Naming Conventions: A case regarding a dispute over whether articles without alternative meanings should be disambiguated for the sake of clarity - for example, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date (Buffy episode). While about 80% of involved editors said in a straw poll that it should not be disambiguated, both sides allege that editors on the other have behaved disruptively. Fred Bauder has proposed a principle stating that appeals to the Arbitration Committee as a method to determine consensus in a policy dispute is not generally viable, due to the press of work as well as other considerations, and a remedy stating that no penalties are to be imposed in respect of past actions in violation of consensus, but has proposed an enforcement motion stating that editors who violate the consensus decision in the matter may be briefly blocked. UninvitedCompany has also proposed a remedy banning Izzy Dot for two weeks. These motions have the support of five to seven arbitrators.