The Arbitration Committee opened four new cases this week, and closed five cases, leaving seven currently open.

Closed cases

• Dbachmann: A case involving alleged misconduct on the part of administrator Dbachmann and editing by other users on several race-related articles. As a result of the case, Dbachmann was "reminded" not to use administrator tools in editing disputes, and the articles Afrocentrism and Race of ancient Egyptians were placed on article probation.

• Zeraeph: A case involving alleged misconduct by Zeraeph. As a result of the case, Zeraeph was banned for one year.

• John Gohde 2: A case involving alleged misconduct by John Gohde, which he denied. As a result of the case, Gohde was banned for one year.

• Jim62sch: A case involving alleged off-wiki harrasment by Jim62sch, possibly involving reporting of potential on-wiki violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As a result of the case, Jim62sch was instructed to "refrain from making any comments to another user that could reasonably be construed as harassing, threatening, or bullying".

• John Buscema: A case involving editing of the John Buscema article by editors including Tenebrae and Skyelarke. As a result of the case, both editors were banned from editing that article for three months.

New cases

• Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.

• Palestine-Israel articles: Yet another case relating to alleged disruption on Israel- and Palestine-related articles.

• Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked.

• R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. The case has been suspended, since R. fiend has expressed his intention to resign adminship.

Evidence phase

• Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject.

Voting phase

• IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Various findings of fact have been proposed relating to the editors in dispute, but no remedies have yet been proposed by arbitrators.

Suspended by motion

• Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user. Various remedies were proposed including either desysopping or admonishing the vanished user and annotating Matthew Hoffman's block log to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified. A motion has been passed suspending the case for 30 days (until approximately 20 January , 2008) to allow for community input at a request for comment.