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@ Apokrif: I'm curious why you believe the categories you removed from this page are "redundant". Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 03:21, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Because Category:Wikipedia Arbitration Committee is a subcategory of them. Apokrif ( talk) 03:34, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, that doesn't apply to Category:Wikipedia dispute resolution. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:10, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Look at Category:Wikipedia_arbitration. Apokrif ( talk) 04:35, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:CATSPECIFIC is the guideline here ("Each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs"), with one of the exceptions being WP:EPON, which applies to eponymous categories like Category:Wikipedia Arbitration Committee.

EPON is written to apply only to articles, but it's unclear if that's intentional or an oversight. The reasoning behind it seems to apply to non-article pages, and I'd argue that those who are using categories to navigate project space ( a limited number) would benefit from this page being in both the eponymous category and Category:Wikipedia functionaries and Category:Wikipedia arbitration (more specific than the dispute resolution one). Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 12:29, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I have to admit I am begining to question if categories are really as useful as we act like they are and if users actually use them to find content they are looking for. The possibility that the whole byzantine category structure with all it's myriad rules has very little actual benefit to the reader, yet is the basis for so many discussions is something I think the community should consider. Beeblebrox ( talk) 19:50, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I do use categories to find articles related to something I'm working on, but I will admit to being an atypical user. I am puzzled at times about how categories are organized, and may blunder down several paths before I find what I am looking for. I am not sure how many casual readers will be as persistent as I am. Donald Albury 20:59, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I use categories to find related articles, too. They're helpful in filling in 'see also' sections and for connecting orphans to other articles when the Find link tool has no suggestions. I don't remember if or how I used them as a reader who wasn't an editor. BlackcurrantTea ( talk) 01:18, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

I know some people are very "into" categories, and I do find them useful in article space, but I don't find them particularly useful anywhere else, and in particular I'm not fond of people adding categories to other people's userspace. I find the templates at the bottoms of pages to be far more useful in the Wikipedia space, because they will take me straight to the relevant page. Risker ( talk) 01:27, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I made a few updates to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/History to reflect the success of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Proposed amendment (May 2023). I wanted to flag them somewhere since I am neither an Arb or a Clerk. They shouldn't be controversial, though wordsmithing is always possible. Eluchil404 ( talk) 20:54, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

They look good to me. Thanks. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:57, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi! This message is intended for Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Policy, which redirects here.

I'm floating the idea of whether we could have a cutoff date for age of evidence submitted for cases. I saw in the recent Scottywong and AlisonW cases, some very old evidence was accepted and considered, and while I have no comment on the decision of those cases, the age of some of the evidence felt unfair to me as a bystander. The current "Admins sharing an IP and potentially misusing an off-wiki connexion" case request seems on the verge of being declined, but some very old evidence is being presented there as well.

I think I'd like it if a sentence were added to WP:ARBPOL somewhere to the effect of Evidence older than seven years at the date of submission is not admissible. Seven years is already a long time in the context of a human lifespan, and extra long in internet time or Wikipedia time, which I think runs on cat years. People can change a lot in seven years, and if evidence older than seven years needs to be considered in order to establish a pattern of poor behaviour, I think it is fair to state that no such pattern can reasonably be established.

The exact number is just a starting point for this thought, and I don't remember the exact age of the evidence in the two cases that spurred this message. Maybe some of the older evidence was less than seven years old. I do think it would be beneficial to establish some sort of limitation on age of evidence, and the age can be tweaked / hammered out / bikeshedded if enough other editors think this is a good idea. Or maybe it's a terrible stupid idea, like many that cross my brain from time to time. How do people feel about this? Folly Mox ( talk) 17:11, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree, though only to a point. I think that if the evidence shows an ongoing pattern of behaviour, then it should probably be allowed, if only for context.

"ongoing" seeming to be the key word.

That said, there is (and has been) a lot and varied Dispute resolution going on Wikipedia, so I think others might also have insight on this as well. - jc37 18:15, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

• I don't think there can be a hard-and-fast rule. Older evidence is less meaningful in and of itself, and in particular people are unlikely to be directly sanctioned for older misconduct, but old evidence can nonetheless help establish a pattern or lay down vital context. It's not that uncommon for ArbCom cases to involve long-running issues that go back a long, long time (even more than seven years), and in that case arbs will want the details of that history. For example, in the recent World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case, ArbCom cited evidence in its decisions that went back to 2007 - although largely to establish history and context, the fact that there was a 2009 case involving several of the same people in this one (and that there had been regular problems since then) certainly played a role on how hard ArbCom came down on them. They even used the FoF noting that there is no limits to the age of evidence, which implies that they felt it was important to include evidence establishing those parts of the history. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

  I entirely agree with Aquillion.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:04, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

  As do I. Thryduulf ( talk) 22:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

• Old sins cast long shadows. SN54129 18:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
• I'd suggest that it not be a matter of the policy, but rather, it can be (and already is) something that the drafting arbs can specify on a case-by-case basis. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:16, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
• I think there's a flaw in the statement that

  very old evidence was accepted and considered

  . The committee generally lets anyone submit any (on-wiki) evidence they want. This arguably makes the committee's job harder, in that we quite often get duplicated or irelevant submissions, but I think it's the right approach. We do not have formal evidence rules and do not formally "accept" submisssions, they are submissions, that's it. I have, as a filing party, submitted old evidence alongside new evidence precisely to make the case that there was apattern of disruptive behavior. I'd agree that if someone submits evidence that someone did something one or two times over seven years ago that is not part of an ongoing pattern, the committee should and almost certainly would simply ignore it in the final decision. Irelevant evidence of any age gets submitted regularly at nearly every single case. However, ArbCom is not a court of law, and I don't believe a statue of limitations would accomplish much besdies wiki-lawyering. Beeblebrox ( talk) 23:20, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

My thinking has been a procedure should be adopted around old evidence similar to how we handle private evidence. So evidence older than X years (I'd go 10) can be considered but only if the committee explicitly gives permission. Barkeep49 ( talk) 00:00, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

• Somewhat speaking with my ex-arbitrator hat on, I didn't assign much weight to evidence of misdeeds from long ago compared to more recent evidence. To me, it wasn't that something old was entirely irrelevant, but more so that it was more useful in terms of providing context. I'm not in favour of a black-and-white "older than X years is inadmissible" rule, between such evidence being potentially useful, and that I don't think such evidence forms any significant portion of less-than-useful evidence in general. Maxim ( talk) 00:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
• Whether or not there's a "pattern of behaviour" is regularly (and rightly) a deciding factor in user conduct cases. It's always struck me as inherently self-contradictory that arbs also often tell people off for mentioning things that happened more than a few of years ago. –  Joe ( talk) 09:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I started a bunch of work in Module:Sanctions/sandbox and Module:Sanctions/data/sandbox with the aim of unifying arbitration and community designated contentious topics. The rationale being that the community has authorized the contentious topics procedure for a handful of pages. The hope is to reduce complexity and increase standardization for the contentious topics procedure. More work is needed but I wanted to comment in case anyone wants to help out, or if this is a dead end that isn't worth it. There is severe template fragmentation and a huge lack of standardization for community and arbitration contentious topics, and that is what I want to help fix. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 13:49, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to do it too. In User:L235/Community contentious topics you'll find a very early draft of an RfC to rename community DS as community contentious topics, etc. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 13:54, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@ L235 I like your RfC format. I forked the WP:CTOP page into User:Awesome Aasim/Contentious topics proposal with the aim of broadening to include community designated contentious topics. They would use the exact same templates and the exact same procedure, the only difference being one has appeals to ANB and reports to ANI while the other has appeals to ARCA and reports to AE. I even suggest a "Contentious topics log" which all contentious topics restrictions, community or arbitration, are logged. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 18:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for working on this wonky stuff. One small thought: if we go down this route, couldn't community-imposed CT disuptes still go to AE? There's a provision at CTOP for it. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 18:39, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the page could also mention how community contentious topics are converted. I know community stuff is appealable to ANB, arbitration stuff is appealable to ARCA. The Arbitration Committee, could, of course, by motion convert a community contentious topic to an arbitration contentious topic.

BTW @ Firefangledfeathers and @ L235 and other editors reading this you are welcome to edit what I am working on in user space to help clean up. The goal is to keep the procedure the same regardless on whether it is a community or arbitration contentious topic. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:05, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I kind of like this idea, because the arbitration committee is supposed to merely be an extension of the community. I think, as noted above, there are probably some bureaucratic details to work out, but that sounds do-able.

Maybe the way forward could be just to split that part of WP:AE (and WP:ARCA) to a separate (non-subpage of WP:AC) page - Probably to a sub-page of WP:AN, and merge all the other AN sanction review/enforcement discussions there too. - jc37 23:45, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds like a good idea. A contentious topics noticeboard. This would help a lot with organization. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 01:11, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Moving CT enforcement out of the arbitration enforcement noticeboard would be a significant change and disruption and would require ArbCom's approval. Plus, if it happened, non-CT ArbCom sanctions would continue being enforced at the AE noticeboard, causing more confusion. It would be in my view a net negative. However, the Committee has already approved the merger of community CT enforcement into the AE noticeboard — see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Noticeboard scope 2, which allows AE to hear requests or appeals pursuant to community-imposed remedies which match the contentious topics procedure, if those requests or appeals are assigned to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard by the community. Therefore, all the community needs to do if it wants to unify the processes is to say it allows community CT requests and appeals to be heard at AE. The reason it was designed this way is that during the DS2021 phase 1 consultation, we heard that the AE noticeboard is one of the best-functioning parts of the then-DS system (see the closing statement: There was a consensus that the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard is effective, on the whole, in addressing issues.). I was intending to raise this question at the draft RfC linked above. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:30, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not too concerned about venue, as long as it's a focused, and well-seen, page. I think we're seeing too many pages being split from WP:AN (for example) which seem to be becoming newly created walled-gardens. I'd like to avoid creating more than we already have : ) - jc37 07:29, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@ Jc37 Maybe the solution would be to keep community related behavior discussions on WP:ANB and its subpages. I think AE should be the venue for arbitration CTs, and AN should be the venue for community CTs, barring stuff like WP:ANEW and WP:AIV which are used for imminent and serious conduct violations. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 22:16, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

We could maybe create a new noticeboard called Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Contentious topics for the authorization, enforcement, and removal of contentious topics. This isn't splitting from ANB, as all the AN subpages are part of the ANB. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 22:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds reasonable. And AE is a part of Arbitration; AE is ArbCom's "creature" entirely. Community CT are out-of-scope for it, by definition.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Dividing attention matters. I'm not sure what advantage there is to the community to creating a new "sub board". WP:AN is not so active that it can't handle all of the activity for community authorized general sanctions - though a recent RfC is already going to move authorization to a village pump. Beyond that I like that the community has the option of deciding to use AE or not. If it uses AE it does give up some control but for the benefit of focus and efficiency. But control matters and the community deciding it doesn't want to give that up also makes sense and either way the community has options. Barkeep49 ( talk) 00:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

For now I guess we can just keep appeals and whatnot the way it is, and rewrite the page with both community and arbitration procedures. You are welcome to join in the rewrite in the draft I started, or start your own draft, etc. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 21:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@ Awesome Aasim: AE is functionally the CT noticeboard and has had that role for close to 15 years. It just has another name due to historic reasons. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 15:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/77525

This is a rather unexpected result. Basically, I did a query for all pages in the Wikipedia: namespace whose titles were like "Arbitration/Requests/Case/whatever" and had no slash after that. Similar to this PrefixIndex, but only including Arbitration/Requests/Case/Dogs and not Arbitration/Requests/Case/Dogs/Evidence and Arbitration/Requests/Case/Dogs/Proposed decision etc.

There's... 181 of them? That seems a little low. Is this true? Has the Arbitration Committee only ever handled 181 cases on individual pages? I know that things used to be set up differently (i.e. each case didn't get its own page back in 2005 or whatever) but surely there's been more than just 181. jp× g 02:31, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Until c. 2009, case titles were of the form "Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/CASENAME", e.g. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Obama articles. I expect including those would get you up to a reasonable number. Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 02:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

That. The committee used to handle hundreds of public cases a year, but nowadays it's maybe half a dozen a year. (Increases in the complexity of each case and in our non-public caseload go a long way to making up for it, I assure you ) KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:46, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like the first revision of the case requests page was Special:Permalink/288985788, and the oldest case page accordingly was Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Mattisse, and previous ones were subpages of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/... still, less than two hundred cases since 2009 -- wew! jp× g 02:54, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

The biggest difference in cases between the early days of arbcom and now is that back then cases came to the committee very significantly earlier - the vast majority of them would be handled by community processes these days. Taking a random example from 2005, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ultramarine, would be dealt with entirely at AN/I today. This is a good thing in terms of committee workload, but it does meant that the cases which do end up at arbcom's door are only the ones that the community have failed to (or cannot) handle so there is all the complexity, etc. of that failure to add on to the original dispute.

It's also worth a note that the yearly lists of cases at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases each have a count of the number of cases that year. In 2005 the committee handled 102 cases, in 2015 it was 19, in 2022 it was 7. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:12, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I've had the AE log watchlisted for quite some time and I'm active at AE. It strikes me that AE seems to deal primarily with Israel-Palestine, Eastern Europe, and Armenia-Azerbaijan; but it's unusual to see a case involving India/Pakistan/Afghanistan or American Politics, and BLP and GENSEX come to AE only fairly infrequently, yet the logs for these topics are long and active. Is there a reason that some topics are handled more by admins "in the wild" where others tend to come to AE? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:36, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@ HJ Mitchell I'd guess that has to do with the nature of disputes in the former areas, which can become more complicated when it comes debates over source reliability and non-English sources. Of course, those subjects are also often outside of most admins "knowledge base", if that makes sense. I'd feel more confident in taking individual action against an editor saying something obviously trolling and bigoted in GENSEX compared to an editor adding ahistorical information about the history of a Balkans country. Ultimately, close scrutiny of POV-pushers and whitewashers tends to reveal their edits to be pretty awful, which I learned when dropping the hammer in IRANPOL earlier this year. Lots of editors coast on disputes looking complicated on the surface-- when they really aren't. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 21:00, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I think for some topic areas it's less that they are handled "in the wild", but it's more that there are admins who handle issues in those areas and are willing to take requests on their talk page, e.g. people often bring ARBIPA issues to RegentsPark or Bishonen's talk page directly rather than AE. For AP2 also there's more admins who actively watch pages there, and also often issues are with violating 1RR or some such which are usually brought to the admin who imposed the page restriction rather than AE. When possible people would rather talk to an admin directly rather than have the hassle and drama of an AE request. Galobtter ( talk) 04:16, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Might I suggest that the default wording for new case requests be changed from "involved parties" to "proposed involved parties" or similar? That would reduce the confusion that prompts a statement like this from L235. Ed  ^{[talk]  [OMT]} 03:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable idea, though perhaps the exact words could be debated. @ ArbCom Clerks: What do you think, both on substance and on the specific wording? Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:13, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks – both seem fine to me. I tried to think of better wording but failed so far. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 06:51, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Works for me! firefly ( t · c ) 09:09, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest "proposed named parties". That carries less of an implied stigma, and there are frequently editors who have been involved, but who are not named as parties because their involvement did not rise to that level. (I even think I remember "named parties" being used as the language in the past.) -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:02, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps simply "Proposed parties"? KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:42, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I like "Proposed parties" - simple and clear. Thryduulf ( talk) 02:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I like it as well. Regards, Newyorkbrad ( talk) 03:16, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Definitely better than my proposal. Ed  ^{[talk]  [OMT]} 03:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the change since everyone seems to be in agreement. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 03:33, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I propose that we have a party. Hiccup. Cheers! -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:18, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

WikiConference North America is just around the corner, and I'm told Toronto is a good place to have a party. Alas I'm on the wrong continent to be participating. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:58, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

In resposne to some concerns about this change on the clerks list I noted: Ultimately ArbCom is going to decide who is and isn't a party to a case. This means your name can be on that list and you're not a party (even if you're the filer) and your name could not be on that list and you become a party. So I'm wondering if the key isn't changing involved/potential etc but party. But I don't have a good alternative at this moment. Barkeep49 ( talk) 14:27, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually I think "proposed parties" conveys this - it's a list of people whose involvement in the dispute the filer(s) believe is sufficiently key that arbitrators should consider adding them as parties should a case be opened. This doesn't imply that these are the only people who will be considered, or that everybody considered will be added as a party. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

An Arb threw out Interim Parties on the mailing list and I admit that's the phrase I like best so far. Barkeep49 ( talk) 19:08, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Personally I don't really like "interim parties" if anyone is allowed to add someone else to the list. It would be more suitable if only arbitrators and arbitration clerks were empowered to update the list. isaacl ( talk) 21:41, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

It sounds a little "off" to me, too. Proposed parties are not parties until ArbCom decides that they are, so they don't have an interim status in the mean time. If you Arbs do go with "interim parties", then that should only be used in the listing at the case request page. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:17, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

+2 to the two comments above. "Proposed" clearly communications that the filer (or someone else as the request proceeds) is proposing to add a person as an involved party. Ed  ^{[talk]  [OMT]} 22:22, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm also not a fan of "interim", for largely the same reasons as Tryptofish - at the case request stage there are no parties, interim or otherwise, only editors who one or more commenters propose should become parties if a case is opened. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

• "Preliminary" could maybe be the answer? Having filed a few cases myself, who is and is not appropriate to list as a party is not always obvious. I think we could also make it clear somehow in the initial filing stage that this is not a make-or-break part of filing the request and the committee will ultimately determine who is and is not a party to the case. In the case I recently filed, I listed the admin who's conduct was being examined, and the first person to bring the issue up in each of the forums where it came up. A decent number of other users has expressed opinions as well, but it felt like overkill to just add them all. So maybe some kind of "less is more" guidance would be useful as well? Beeblebrox ( talk) 02:40, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  Are arbitrators are discussing other options due to a concern regarding "proposed"? I agree with the previous commenters that it seems appropriate: it's a list of people being proposed as parties to the arbitration case. isaacl ( talk) 03:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  ^ I agree. "Proposed" ain't broke, so there's no need to fix it. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested § Non-EC ARBPIA article creations. - 🔥 𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 13:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Questions:

• Is what this user said in removing a ban notice, true?
• If it is true, why?
• Why is that better than not letting the community easily know?
• Is this choice written down somewhere?

Thanks. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 13:18, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Answer cometh "No" to questions 1, 3, 5. It's a combination of editors who insist that we tag every page with every available negative notice possible (i.e. our form of damnatio memoriae), and Arbcom who prefer, all things being equal, to keep as much of their activity, philosophy and machinery private (note, for example, under WP:ARBPOL 1.5, how the section somewhat counter-intuitively titled ' Transparency and confidentiality' effectively states that their will be as much of the latter and as little of the former as possible. See also: Humphrey Appleby. — Serial 14:11, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I suppose the relevant follow-up question is was this Template:Banned user edit an Arbcom action or something implemented by an arb in their personal capacity? Ed  ^{[talk]  [OMT]} 15:41, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

That was discussed on list at the time according to my memory of an archive surf I took. Izno ( talk) 16:28, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

In a previous thread this year, I made a comment that linked to two discussion threads where Opabinia regalis discussed the change. In the first one she used "we" which presumably referred to the arbitrators and an off-wiki conversation (just as in the current thread, in the thread from earlirl this year, Izno said there was a discussion). isaacl ( talk) 17:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

On a related note, there are discussion threads from earlier this year regarding if there should be notices for non-arbitration committee site bans, found at the Wikipedia talk:Banning policy, starting with Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#Avoiding pointless ban-tag wars. (The matter is still pending.) isaacl ( talk) 17:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I am strongly of the opinion, in my capacity as an individual arbitrator and not on behalf of the Committee, that the banned user notice is unhelpful. I don't buy the transparency concerns; in addition to the Category:Wikipedia users banned by the Arbitration Committee category, the Committee's decisions are quite well documented as a general matter (block logs, case pages, ACN archives). Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:34, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't get that, especially why is it your opinion "strong" on it? As you note, it's not a secret ban. But somehow it must be hidden away, so it's not readily apparent??? Alanscottwalker ( talk) 18:40, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, why does the committee not put its rationale for this confusing state of affairs somewhere apparent (surely you should be transparent on the rationale), and protect the user page at the highest level? Alanscottwalker ( talk) 18:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Previous discussion: [1]. The notice template has a switchable parameter that can toggle it between displaying and non-displaying; either way, the user page automatically gets put into Category:Wikipedia users banned by the Arbitration Committee. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:13, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

And the category is hidden, so someone looking at the page can't see it? It's a confusing mix of yes, we will tell you, but you have to know the secret way we do. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 19:19, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with you, but there's a user preferences setting that allows one to see hidden categories. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:20, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

It sounds an awful lot like a larger discussion on this should occur. The decision to make a banned user template or category be shown or hidden is not within Arbcom's remit (as far as I'm aware). Ed  ^{[talk]  [OMT]} 21:55, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree on the need for discussion at the community level about community bans. (ArbCom decides how ArbCom bans are dealt with.) There's been a lot of community discussion at WT:BAN, which went around in circles for a long time. I have some ideas for moving the discussion forward. I'm going to be away from Wikipedia for a while in the near future, but when I get back and will have the time to put into it, I'm going to pursue it. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, first first I want to know precisely what the committee rationale is (if they have a committee rationale). In this latest case, we have an admin twice over, who apparently was slipping through all kinds of detection, and you go to their various pages and they have different notices giving more and less info, and before yesterday, no notice at all, on the sockmaster who was already banned. And as I note again, it is not a secret ban. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 22:45, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm interested in that, too. A big part of what I want to do is to find out as much as possible about current practices. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

And if they want it this way, the documentation needs a comment for the rest of us, when we go to see the edit coding of the user page, some kind of, < 'the rendering of this template is on the down low, by order of' > -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 23:03, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

The committee rationale was as I described in the previous discussion that both isaacl and Tryptofish linked above. Did you read it? (I am not going to go re-dig, but from memory when I looked it was at least an informal but large minority of members, almost unanimous in that email discussion.) As an individual, I obviously hold a different opinion from L235 on the merit of the tag in the general. Neither I nor L235 were present for the original discussion by the committee (we generally operate on a principle of stare decisis where there isn't an obvious need to change our practices, for varying quantities of obvious).

I do happen to agree that where its use is for an ArbCom ban, it is under ArbCom authority to use the tag as ArbCom decides. I can't decide if that implies anything about someone tagging such users with {{ banned}} without implication as to the source of the ban. Izno ( talk) 23:50, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Has the entire committee agreed on a rationale and stated in prose somewhere, and where is that? It's tough to have stare decisis without without having the written decision. -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:05, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

but from memory when I looked it was at least an informal but large minority of members, almost unanimous in that email discussion, the output of which was the discussion on Template talk:Banned user (multiple times). That does not sound like the answer you like, but it is the answer to the question. Izno ( talk) 00:36, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there some reason you are can't straight out say:

"No. The full committee has never adopted a rationale for this practice." and

"No, the committee has never published and adopted in writing the reason for this decision." -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

No, there isn't. On the other hand, I don't like repeating myself, either from yester-year or today. I have told you the extent of the prior discussion. Do with that knowledge as you will. Izno ( talk) 01:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Last question, is there a formal place to ask the committee to deliberate in full, and write up and publish a decision with rationale on this? -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 01:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to use WP:ARCA as the forum for that based on the header saying it may be used to discuss a case or procedure. I think the current discussion may be sufficient to have started arbcom members thinking about it, but it is of course informal. Izno ( talk) 01:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I will wait to see how this discussion develops, but the confusing situation of this unique template should be addressed in full by the ctte, and if ACRA's needed, we know where to go. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 01:25, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with ARCA but also my personal desire to deliberate and publish a decision is pretty small for this. At most you're likely to get a summarized opinion based on our ARCA procedures allowing for a rough consensus to close a discussion. Barkeep49 ( talk) 01:26, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Regarding "I do happen to agree that where its use is for an ArbCom ban, it is under ArbCom authority to use the tag as ArbCom decides": Nah, ArbCom has no magical authority at all over community-created templates. If ArbCom wants a special ArbCom ban template that does something seekrit, they can create one and put it under "Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/...," but that will have no implications of any kind for the community choosing to annotate bans, including ArbCom ones, in a visible manner, using a template in "Template:" namespace, even if ArbCom would rather that they not. The idea that ArbCom gets to tell the community when it can template something that pertains to the results of an ArbCom decision is not any different from ArbCom deciding it has the power to censor Signpost coverage of ArbCom decisions and their results.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Setting up a strawman regarding censoring the Signpost of ArbCom discussion in that esteemed publication, a question clearly outside our scope is... a choice. I accordingly see no reason to discuss it.

On scope, we have exclusive authority over our actions and the associated paperwork, within the bounds of policy as amended by the community and attendant procedures as amended by the committee (and a whole heck of a lot of clerk procedures). Marking a banned user as banned by ArbCom feels pretty like that's inside the limits of our scope to manage users banned by the committee; whether to display a banner for such a person an attendant responsibility. I think it's probably fine/fair to say that the committee should not do so as part of that template. I think the implication of making that decision on the basis that the template of interest is a community template is that the community can't decide to do so as part of the template either (else you risk misrepresenting the status of a banned user, and by whom). This is why I said I can't decide if that implies anything about someone tagging such users with {{ banned}} without implication as to the source of the ban. and left open the potential that ad hoc users can use the banner to identify banned users but not to identify them as being banned by ArbCom.

Either way, this argument showing up on this page again this year (!) sure feels like ongoing culture war especially given preexisting discussion. I am as happy having the banner as not, but what I also don't buy is that a banner is necessary for transparency for the case of ArbCom bans, which is perhaps what L235 meant to say above (of course I cannot speak for him). The category does exist already and isn't going anywhere today so anyone actually interested in transparency has the option of following category changes for a list of who's banned by ArbCom and who is not, or by looking at the category itself, or by following WP:ACN or WP:AN where we tell people when we ban someone, or by following the proposed decision for each case closely.

To some degree I'm discussing with two left shoes here, since I am on the record as to the general value of having banners for banned users. But, to me, it isn't a thing worth changing here Just To Change It, so I haven't stirred the ArbCom status quo pot. Izno ( talk) 01:39, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

An analogy is not a straw man. The idea that ArbCom can extend a "long arm" outside the sub-namespace it controls and dictate to the community what content is present in other pages in other namespaces (or even within the same namespace but outside "Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/...), such as a community-controlled template reporting on ban case outcomes, is directly analogous to ArbCom also deciding it can also control content at Wikipedia:Signpost. Or for that matter in a Wikipedia mainspace article about an ArbCom case that somehow rose to actual real-world notability. (I'm not sure there is one, but a very close analogue is Essjay controversy, which did in fact involve ArbCom so is probably a good example anyway.) ArbCom has no authority over community content decisions, including internal ones (policy pages, template code, etc.), other than inside its own "Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/..." sandbox. Whether ArbCom has current actual plans to try to do such things is immaterial; we must not provide a lever to make that possible later ("Well, ArbCom has already given itself the authority to dictate template content, and the community didn't contradict it, so ..."). Whether the community might ultimately agree with ArbCom's reasons for wanting to suppress ban information in a notice template is a completely severable matter, and could happen, but needs to happen on the basis that the community has listened to ArbCom's reasons and come through our consensus process to agree with them, not the false basis that ArbCom said so and the community has to obey. The point I'm making here is an important principle.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

In no way is this section part of a "culture war" (whatever you mean by that) It's completely dictated by a recent editing interaction listed here at the top, of someone speaking for Arbcom. (And I get now, that other editor was wrong, and that Arbcom has not decided on the edit in issue.)

Now, if as you say, this issue one way or another keeps coming back to Arbcom like a bad penny. Perhaps Arbcom has minted a bad penny. And by that I mean it has not been clear in making a non ad-hoc decision and articulating its rationale in public, nor the extent of what power it is claiming. So everytime it comes up you can just point to that -- end of.

But really no, people should not have to know the secret codes to find public facts, nor watch the literally "hidden" places, nor follow a multitude of boards to find simple facts about the running and vulnerability of the project. Going to a user's page is unsurprisingly and customarily how Wikipedians find out about users, and always has been. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 13:10, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

That whole "culture war" snipe was a pretty silly thought-terminating cliché and appeal to emotion. That kind of "fight dirty to keep refusing to understand the point" when the community brings this up over and over again is not going to help resolve this. And "Going to a user's page is ... how Wikipedians find out about users, and always has been" is central to that point and why it's not going away (even if my own hackles are more stiffly raised by the "ArbCom can now make content decisions across all pages and namespaces" idea at the heart of what is going on here).  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:44, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Whether an Arb "buys" the transparency concerns is not even close to the point. When a politician or corporation or NGO says "I don't buy your transparency concerns", that is reason for even greater transparency concern than there ever was before, and there's no reason it would be magically different when it comes to ArbCom. "ArbCom decides how ArbCom bans are dealt with" being used to mean "ArbCom dictates what the community can do/say/show about an ArbCom ban" is completely and utterly wrong.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:55, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Re SMcCandlish's quote above: ArbCom has no authority over community content decisions, including internal ones (policy pages, template code, etc.), other than inside its own "Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/..." sandbox, exactly! Paul August ☎ 13:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Greetings, all. This is probably a question not expected from someone who's been as long as I have been around here, but really, I cannot find a list of the topics that are considered contentious. Where is it? - The Gnome ( talk) 16:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Template:Contentious topics/table is comprehensive. Sounds like a good idea for us to make that more prominent? Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 16:14, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I've just made three more redirects to help find that table - Wikipedia:List of contentious topics, WP:CTLIST and WP:CTTOPICS (I know that's tautological but it matches the previous WP:DSTOPICS that also now points there). Thryduulf ( talk) 19:02, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how to analyze how these templates operate or how to search arbcom history on a topic like this, but a template which I noticed at Talk:Buffy_Sainte-Marie says that Arbcom contentious topic procedures apply to ALL biographies on living and recently deceased persons. Is that true? That's a lot of articles, maybe over 1,000,000 articles. Sincerely, North8000 ( talk) 01:58, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I couldn't find the list but then just read the previous post. Looks like they are? North8000 ( talk) 02:00, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

That is correct; see WP:NEWBLPBAN. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:25, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Eligible users are invited to submit a nomination statement for the Arbitration Committee elections at the elections page. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 00:27, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

There are ~2 days left to enter nominations. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:16, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

I came to this page seeking to know the arbcom Quorum. It's not there. Please help. Kelly222 ( talk) 19:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

We currently do not have a minimum Quorum requirement. Barkeep49 ( talk) 19:41, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Reference: Template:Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice

This template must be used as a editnotice on pages that have active contentious topic restrictions.

Reference: Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#Awareness_of_contentious_topics

"When an editor first begins making edits within any contentious topic, anyone may alert the editor of the contentious topic designation using the "Contentious topics/alert/first" template."

This would ideally include detail on correct enforcement procedures, in order to avoid obsolete use of alerts:

"For topics with restrictions, the correct page restriction editnotice must be applied for alerts to become enforceable."

Likewise the second paragraph doesn't reference that without an edit notice, no restrictions can be imposed. There shouldn't really be a need to alert users to a restriction that is un-enforceable either. It's clearly not a restriction if no restrictions can be imposed, as per encforcement.

Re: Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Clerks#Providing_ECR_edit_warnings_for_non-XC_users CommunityNotesContributor ( talk) 15:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I start from a bias of "when we keep adding to the CT page we end up with a CT page that is unworkable" and so I'm weakly opposed to making this change. Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I understand, any change must be undesirable. I come from a bias of "If the restriction isn't enforceable, I'll just ignore it", but I'm trying to do the "right thing" here. I could happily carry on and ignore... CommunityNotesContributor ( talk) 18:45, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Where did you get the phrase "For topics with restrictions, the correct page restriction editnotice must be applied for alerts to become enforceable." from? Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 16:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not supposed to use tq for that am I? My bad. It was my own suggestion, have corrected. CommunityNotesContributor ( talk) 16:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Got it. An editor who places a user talk page alert does not need to immediately know about the editnotice procedure, since editors can not create editnotices. We want editors who work in a contentious topic area to be aware of the heightened need for adherence to policies and guidelines. Once alerted, they can be sanctioned for all sorts of things that don't require an editnotice. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 18:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Editors creating editnotices? I thought they are just applied to the page by a user, not created, using the template. Can you elaborate please? It's misleading to alert a user that a restriction applies if it effectively doesn't, even if policy on contentious topics still does. Of course users could be sanctioned regardless, but not because of the alerts. You can't be sanctioned for breaching non-existent restrictions when an editnotice isn't in place, as I already referenced. I don't follow the mental gymnastics to ignore that an editnotice should always be used for WP:ECR. It sounds like the theory that the alerts are still useful, even if unrelated to a non-existent restriction? CommunityNotesContributor ( talk) 18:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Happy to elaborate. You might want to read WP:EDITNOTICE on your own, but the most relevant part says "All users can create editnotices for their user space, but in all other namespaces only administrators, page movers, and template editors can create editnotices."

"You can't be sanctioned for breaching non-existent restrictions": we agree on this, of course. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 18:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Here, I believe. I would suggest wikilinking "certain topic areas" to that link. It is annoyingly difficult to find given that it's something that is absolutely central to so many things; generally speaking WP:CTOP should lead editors fairly directly to that list. For editors who don't carry around a list of contentious topics in their head, knowing whether a particular topic is contentious or not is vital to understanding whether the rest of the page is of any relevance to a particular situation or not. -- Aquillion ( talk) 07:50, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

This is a good idea. It might need to be cleared by ArbCom, as that entire page was voted in by ArbCom. @ Aquillion: If you had to choose, would you rather use Wikipedia:General_sanctions#Active_sanctions, or Template:Contentious topics/table? KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 07:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Hrm. I can see advantages to each. The general sanctions lists has some things in it that aren't contentious topics, and the template is cleaner. OTOH the list at Wikipedia:General_sanctions#Active_sanctions does have a bit more information in it. It also has the list of community-authorized discretionary sanctions directly below it, which are not contentious topics but have enough similarity that someone who is looking to see if an article they are editing is in a contentious topic or not would probably benefit from being able to scroll down to see them... but I suppose that's debatable. And the list of templates has a few duplicated entries due to multiple templates for the same thing. -- Aquillion ( talk) 08:03, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I am fully in favour, having done something similar the other day and floundering for a while before finding a good link. Primefac ( talk) 08:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if the extended-confirmed restriction as part of AA3 includes cultural topics. Or is it just anything pertaining to the “countries” of Azerbaijan and Armenia and not necessarily the ethnic populations and their culture? Aintabli ( talk) 16:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@ Aintabli: Just wanted to note that you're asking about WP:GS/AA, which is a community-imposed restriction and not established by ArbCom. I haven't looked into the actual scoping question you've posed for the ArbCom interpretation, but if it ends up being a substantive disagreement of opinion (on the scope of WP:CT/A-A) it might be best at WP:ARCA. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 16:57, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Seconding what KevinL says. For the community-imposed restriction, a cultural topic that is about just one of the countries would likely not be in scope. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 17:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@ Firefangledfeathers Thank you for the quick response. I vaguely remember that some edits by others were reverted on relevant articles on the basis that they were not extended-confirmed. But I wasn’t so sure. This answers my question. Aintabli ( talk) 17:30, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome. Mistakes with the restriction are likely to be common, and some grey areas will remain unclear. If you'd like to point me toward any particular topics or edits for review, I'd be happy to take a look. My talk page would be a good spot, since this isn't really an ArbCom matter. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 17:33, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it's very likely that at one point Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory fell under the Gamergate discretionary sanctions; the topic was a major focus of Gamergate (you can see a section on it in the current article) and there was a large amount of Gamergate-related disruption and canvassing related to it in 2014. Complicating things, the main article at the time was deleted, and only ended up recreated in its current form by a split from Frankfurt School in 2017, hence the lack of history. The motion that replaced the Gamergate DS with more general gender and sexuality ones didn't really mention it; and the conspiracy theory was one of the things that was related to Gamergate but which has no direct connection to gender and sexuality. Does it still fall under that CTOP or not? Does the ArbCom statement that Gamergate was considered a gender-and-sexuality-related-topic mean that connected articles like this are still covered? Has it fallen through the cracks? I'm asking in particular because there's been a fair amount of recent disruption on that page from editors who indicated, directly or indirectly, a connection to Gamergate (eg. by referencing it as an area of interest.) I recognize that answering this might require a more formal request to ArbCom but I figured I'd ask here just in case anyone had an easy answer that I'm overlooking; most editors on that page seem to have assumed "of course it falls under DS / CTOP" and it was only during a recent AE request that I noticed that the change from Gamergate to gender-and-sexuality meant that it probably doesn't have a clearly applicable one. -- Aquillion ( talk) 21:21, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I would say that if there is a clear connection to GamerGate then the disruption would fall under the gender and sexuality CTOP, but if the specific disruption and/or disruptive editor doesn't have that then it probably doesn't. Thryduulf ( talk) 21:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

The AE case (at least the one I'm aware of, because there was uncertainty about whether Cultural Marxism could be placed under any of the CTOP) was Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive325#ජපස and Bon courage. Courtesy ping to Galobtter. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:20, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's covered by any current CTOP. The Gamergate/Manning/GGTF authorization was reduced to covering gender-related controversies only (the title said gender and sexuality but the text of the motion only mentions gender), and FRINGE is about fringe science and pseudoscience (Cultural Marxism has nothing to do with science). American Politics might be the closest, but I know there are people from other countries that promote this conspiracy theory as well. I wonder if we need a CTOP for conspiracy theories in general, which would also cover other globalist conspiracy theories like the Great Reset and the Great Replacement. – bradv 00:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

It'd also be nice to have a CTOP that covers WP:FRINGE in general (beyond science). Galobtter ( talk) 02:15, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I definitely think it would be useful to have a CTOP for all conspiracy theories that are in current or recent practice, regardless of what the given conspiracy theory is about. After all, that's just about the definition of what CTOPs are for. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:22, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

@ bradv: That isn't exactly right about what happened to the GENSEX scope. Per the 2021 shell motion, For the avoidance of doubt, GamerGate is considered a gender-related dispute or controversy for the purposes of this remedy. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 20:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I understand that GamerGate itself is still covered by the motion, but it's a stretch to say that this extends to conspiracy theories in general, or even to other controversies about sexuality. Fundamentally GamerGate was a gender-based harassment campaign, which manifested itself onwiki in much the same way (see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate#History of the dispute). Interpreting this to include articles such as CMCT would put an awful lot of pressure on the standard words "broadly construed" (which, incidentally, also aren't present in the text of this motion). – bradv 21:25, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! I'm annoying, and I gnome in citation template error repair. I'm wondering if four archived arbitration pages can be edited without altering the rendered output in a way that will remove them from subcategories of Category:CS1 errors.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kurds and Kurdistan/Workshop (not protected) is in Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored. Under " § Proposals by User:GPinkerton", at the anchor Hassanpour, the citation template parameters can be changed from |title=Kurds |work=Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity to |entry=Kurds |title=Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, resolving the error.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gun control/Evidence (protected) is in Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored and Category:CS1 errors: missing title. Under " § Source Review" at source McGuire 2011, |work=Courts, Law, and Justice can be changed to |title=Courts, Law, and Justice, resolving both errors. Just noticed under Bryant 2012 in the same section, |title=Germany, Gun Laws... |work=Guns in American society should also be changed to |chapter=Germany, Gun Laws... |title=Guns in American society. Apologies for the oversight. 16:57, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Preliminary statements (protected) is in Category:CS1 errors: missing periodical. Under " § Statement by Aquillion", the third reference, beginning {{cite journal|title=The neutral point of view and the black hole of Auschwitz, {{ cite journal}} can be changed to {{ cite web}}, resolving the error. (Properly it should be {{ cite conference}}, and attribute its authors, per source, but this alters the rendered page).

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion/Evidence (unprotected) is in Category:CS1 errors: generic name. Under " § Evidence presented by ArtifexMayhem", inside the {{ quotation}} template, |first3=Walter (ed.) can be changed to |first3=((Walter (ed.))), resolving the error (see Help:Citation style 1 § Accept-this-as-written markup).

Thanks and sorry, Folly Mox ( talk) 16:47, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

You're not annoying, you're correct.

 Done, thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 17:08, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, ToBeFree! prefix:"Wikipedia:Arbitration" deepcat:"CS1 errors" now returns zero results. Glad I voted for you 😉 Folly Mox ( talk) 17:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

if only we had more than zero results for the election already! ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 17:20, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

What do we need to add to pages, e.g. newly created pages about Israel and Palestine? Irtapil ( talk) 01:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi Irtapil, the extended-confirmed restriction applies automatically. If a page was created in violation of it, you can request deletion by placing {{ db-gs|a-i}} at its top. Else, requesting protection at WP:RFPP is probably the easiest approach. Theoretically, requesting page protection at WP:AE would probably also be possible, but I haven't seen that happen yet; WP:RFPP works well. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 01:49, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm very confused. How is it automated? How does the automated system "know" it is part of the topic? Irtapil ( talk) 13:33, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Irtapil, the extended-confirmed restriction is not a technical thing. It is just a definition. It applies to all edits related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, for example. It does so even if no technical protection has been set on an article yet.

If, for example, a user is "topic banned from pages related to weather", then this restriction applies to newly created pages about weather too. Of course it does. There's nothing an administrator has to do: If a new page about a storm is created and someone topic-banned from editing weather-related pages edits that page, they're violating their topic ban. There is no technical measure preventing them from doing so, but their edit can be reverted and the user can be blocked in response.

It's thus unclear where you'd like to "add pages to lists for topics". There is no comprehensive list of pages at WP:A/I/PIA, for example. Which "lists for topics" are you talking about? ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 14:07, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, this only appeared after I saved that reply. Irtapil ( talk) 14:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess my question is about how pages get labeled as such?

There does seem to be a warning notice that comes up when I edit some pages. That says "this page applies to the Arab Israeli conflict and additional rules apply" etc.

So the simplest part of what I'm asking is the technical aspect, how do I make that label show up on pages if it should be there but isn't appearing?

Irtapil ( talk) 14:52, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

These are edit notices. I'd say they are the least important thing to be requested, after evaluating if a page creation was a restriction violation, and after considering page protection. Edit notices can be requested using the process described at Wikipedia:Editnotice § How to request an editnotice. In your request, all you need to say is that the page currently lacks a Template:Contentious topics/editnotice for the Arab-Israeli conflict. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 16:45, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Does it apply automatically based on what pages the thing is linked to?

Does that mean someone can get around the contentious topic designation by removing those links?

But new pages about the Israel Hamas war seem to stay without an edit protection for several days after creation. So it seemed like them being in the category much be requiring some kind of human intervention?

And just adding the edit protection thing alone doesn't seem to do quite the same thing? That's often used on individual pages?

Sorry, I think I'm at the level of confused where I'm not even sure what the right question is.

Irtapil ( talk) 14:35, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

(answered above, edit conflict) ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 16:40, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a clerk, and not an Arb, but I want to add that Template:Contentious topics/talk notice, properly formatted, can be placed on the talk pages of new articles like those described above, and any editor can do that without needing to ask permission. Just be sure that the tagged page really does fall within the indicated topic area, or it might be reverted. I'd suggest doing that as a first step, and subsequently requesting page protection, the edit notice, and so on. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:59, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard § Turn off "give the user a warning" for this filter?. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 12:52, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Original discussion

Former administrator and former bureaucrat Andrevan was blocked on 24 January by Moneytrees, labeled simply "ArbComBlock" with simultaneous "email disabled, cannot edit own talk page" [2] [3] [4]. Editors on his talkpage requesting an explanation have been given none [5]. -- Softlavender ( talk) 05:09, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

And will be given none. I hate seeing a long-time editor blocked but this was a decision voted on by the entire committee, not one made by Moneytrees on a whim, and it's these sorts of decisions (the reasons for which can't be made public) that ArbCom was elected to make. I completely understand why it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth but that's as much as we can say. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Well then why can't he access his own talk page to appeal or ask for elaboration? If the response given by a former arb [6] on his talk page is correct, then it seems that he should at least have a chance to access the talk page to seek clarification, if I understand the situation correctly. It seems very odd that a former long-term user just plops off the face of the earth. Coretheapple ( talk) 15:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

" Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"  ;) ——Serial 15:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@ Coretheapple If Andrevan wants to appeal or seek clarification he can and should do so by email to Arbcom. I explained why there is benefit in not allowing such on the talk page. There is no benefit to doing so publicly as the only people who can hear an appeal or give clarification are the exact same people who will see the email communication.

Yes it sucks for curious members of the community, but given that the information the block was based on cannot be shared publicly it is exceedingly unlikely that any meaningful clarification could be done in public, nor could any appeal be conducted in public. Thryduulf ( talk) 16:08, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:JoaquimCebuano/sandbox, it looks very much like ArbCom, or it’s servants, overreach the authority of ArbCom in undermining the authority of WP:CSD. In this case, the deletion does not even meet the wording of G5, but the deleting admin believes it is OK per derived authority from ArbCom. ArbCom has no business in authorising new avenues for arbitrary deletion not coded into WP:CSD. If someone is breaking their partial topic ban, then the proper avenue is warnings through to blocking, after which G5 can then be applied. If a new page needs deletion, use AfD. If such AfDs result in SNOW deletion, then they may make a case for expanding CSD, noting WP:NEWCSD. SmokeyJoe ( talk) 22:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that using G5 for these deletions is pretty common, as it captures the spirit of the deletion. Someone wasn't allowed to create the page, but they did create the page. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 22:21, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

You are fully aware of this recently-closed discussion which did not align with the views you are espousing. ArbCom is not another parent. Izno ( talk) 22:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

You will also note the follow-up discussion at WT:CSD#Post RfC discussion where nobody has done the work to actually intregrate such deletions into the speedy deletion policy, so despite the outcome of that discussion being (very wrongly imo) that such deletions should be allowed they are still contrary to the speedy deletion policy and they will remain so until someone actually manages to come up with a wording that meets the WP:NEWCSD requirements and gains consensus to amend the policy. As I do not believe such a wording is possible, I will not be doing this myself. Thryduulf ( talk) 23:07, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Puzzlingly, your particular NEWCSD requirement also was absent from the summary. Wonder why. :)

As for consensus, the consensus is already established in that discussion, and whether it's option 2 or 3 is a separate consensus that can be arrived at (that indeed, no-one has worked to add). Izno ( talk) 00:44, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Whether option 2 or option 3 is the one arrived it, it needs to be compatible with NEWCSD - because every new or changed criterion needs to be compatible with NEWCSD (unless you get consensus to change NEWCSD of course, which nobody has attempted). I can't explain why it wasn't explicitly mentioned in the closing summary, but then neither can I explain why the consensus wasn't that such deletions should not be allowed. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I think I don't understand something: if a whole topic area is covered by ECR, are these things really prohibited? - a new user drafting a change to an article in their sandbox, a new user experimenting with wikimarkup using sentences related to the ECR topic area, drafting articles related to the topic in their userspace, etc.? I certainly hope not. We should want people to do their experimenting with difficult subjects in their userspace. My hope is that "talk is the only namespace excluded" is one of those "letter of the rule but not the spirit" interpretations we can resolve without too much difficulty. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The problem isn't that they did it in their sandbox. The problem is that they did it in article space, before they acquired EC. They then gamed the system for about 6 hours to acquire the number of edits they needed to gain EC. I then removed their EC. The article is in their sandbox only because it was emailed to them after their WP:RFU request was denied. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:12, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

So someone did something in the wrong place, got told where the right place is, and is now doing it in the right place. Why do we now want to stop them doing it in the right place now they know where that is? Not that I can see any justification for refusing the REFUND request in the first place. Thryduulf ( talk) 23:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I was probably wrong to deny the refund. But the article's initial deletion is I think what's at issue here. I was just attempting to correct Rhododendrites' facts. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Because developing an article on user space is prohibited by ECR. It also opens the question of "can an editor who has only edited ECR material in their userspace start editing the articles at 500 edits?" ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 23:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Because developing an article on user space is prohibited by ECR Why? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Are you asking the reason, or are you asking for the arb ruling? ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 23:31, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

ScottishFinnishRadish per WP:ECR a new user is explicitly allowed to suggest edits on the talk page of an article. So how I understand what Rhododendrites means is: it is very reasonable to also allow per WP:ECR to prepare such suggestions in a user space sandbox.

I believe that if it is not obvious that this is implicitly allowed, then it should be made explicit by amending WP:ECR. —⁠ andrybak ( talk) 12:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It is explicit. There is a single exemption for use of the talk space for edit requests. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 13:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It should be made explicit that editors are allowed to prepare edit requests. If the request is to fix a typo, you can't can just post on the talk page straight away. In more complicated cases you may need to spend a few edits getting the markup correct (especially as visual editor is not available on a talk page), or even just testing to make sure your idea will actually be an improvement before requesting it. All of this is clearly within the spirit of ECR and so should be within the letter too. Any editor gaming this should be dealt with as a behavioural problem as we would deal with an editor gaming edit requests, or anything else. Thryduulf ( talk) 13:48, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Thinko corrected, cheers for the headsup andrybak. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:32, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed that's an excellent question. The 6 months plus 500 edits requirement is a low bar and doesn't have anything along the lines of understanding what EC is granting the user. I don't know if it is something that could be coded, but I'd support a strengthening the requirement along the lines of "6 months after making 500 unreverted article space edits". (Note this changes both what kind of edits, where the edits are made, and starts a timer at the point the 500th edit is made, instead of starting the timer at account creation.) - UtherSRG (talk) 23:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a ridiculously high bar. ECR is already a long way from the "anyone can edit" philosophy that has made Wikipedia the success it is, we shouldn't be making it more onerous for good faith users. There are already sufficient methods in place to deal with the clueless and those editing in bad faith. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:59, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant 30 days, not 6 months; I'd forgotten to double check WP:XC and only meant to change when the timer starts, not extend the timer. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Non-extended confirmed editors are explicitly allowed to make constructive suggestions for the improvement of the article. As part of that it is incumbent on us to allow such editors to workshop their proposals and/or provide a space for them to illustrate a possibly complicated change and userspace is the perfect location for this. Thryduulf ( talk) 23:12, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Explicitly speaking, they are allowed to make constructive edit requests, not suggestions. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 23:19, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

What is an edit request if not a suggestion? Thryduulf ( talk) 00:56, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It is a request for a specific edit, whereas a suggestion can be something like "I think there should be more coverage of X," or "There's not enough coverage of Y's warcrimes." Those suggestions would violate ECR. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 21:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

A request such as "Please remove the section about X's criminal conviction" would be a violation (not a good faith contribution) but "I think [source 1] and [source 2] could be used to verify the bit about Y being on the rugby team at university." and "please fix the typo in the link to the 2023 in Israel article." would be perfectly fine even though they're not explicitly prhased as requests. What matters is not how it's phrased, but whether it is good faith and actionable. Thryduulf ( talk) 22:07, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Would appreciate the opinion of an arb on this (the 22:59, 10 February 2024 question). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Extended confirmed restriction ( permanent link) hasn't been formally closed yet, but does it really leave this question open? My personal opinion is that yes, these things are prohibited by the current ARBECR wording with little room for interpretation. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 21:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I've added a request there. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

This is my proposed solution to everything: edit to BANPOL.— Alalch E. 00:58, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

And I've undone that edit, because while you may like to think of ECR as a topic ban describing it as such is far from uncontentious. You need to get consensus for major changes to policies like that. Thryduulf ( talk) 01:01, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll let someone else propose it if they agree. Based on what I've read, I don't agree with you that it's "far from uncontentious". I've simply seen no evidence for that.— Alalch E. 01:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

While there is some consensus (that I disagree with) that ECR may be enforced in the same way topic bans are enforced, I've never seen any consensus that ECR is a topic ban. Topic bans are imposed on specific editors for explicit wrong-doing after discussion with the editor has failed to resolve the situation (and so the editor is very clearly aware there is a topic ban and why), have a defined time limit or need to be explicitly appealed (with an appeal that shows it is no longer needed). ECR restrictions are placed on all editors, regardless of whether they are aware of them or not and regardless of whether they are here in good or bad faith, expire automatically (whether or not the editor was ever aware of them) after 30 days and 500 edits. They are very different. Thryduulf ( talk) 12:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Bans are enforced by blocks. Bans enforce. They are a technique of enforcement. ECR is a technique of enforcement. That which is enforced is absence of disruption. Topic bans and ECR enforce a desirable state of things, with the same purpose, using the same mechanisms, with the exception of edit requests being allowed for ECR. How a method of enforcement is put into operation and conditions for its lifting is not what defines it, what defines it are the techiques that comprise it. Like all things, topic bans and ECR have their beginning and their end. It's what they are while they last that defines them. ECR is an automatically applied topic ban on all registered users. When you register, you are free to edit this free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but you are not free to edit the whole of it; you are a priori banned from editing certain portions of it. When it can be assumed with a marginal degree of certainty that you are able to edit non-disruptively by accumulating 500 edits over a certain number of days, you are automatically unbanned from areas from which you were restricted, and you can freely edit the whole of the encyclopedia. They are the same. — Alalch E. 17:12, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

They have similarities, but they are not the same. A community ban, an arbcom ban, a topic ban, an ECR, etc. all have similarities but that doesn't make them the same thing. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:30, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

General sanctions ... apply to all editors working in a particular topic area. These contrast with editing restrictions, also called "personal sanctions", which apply only to individual editors. A page restriction is a type of general sanction. A restriction that editors for a given topic area must be extended-confirmed is a page restriction and thus a general sanction, not an editor-specific restriction (and thus not within the scope of the banning policy, which covers personal editing restrictions). isaacl ( talk) 19:31, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Could y'all make a statement once the RfA ends (in like an hour) as to whether you have received any evidence from Homeostasis07 by that time? — ♠ Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. ♠ 17:07, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Currently this notice contains the following text: You must be logged-in, have 500 edits and an account age of 30 days. Can we clarify that this refers only to the English Wikipedia? That no matter how many edits you have in another project, they don't count? The subject comes up now and then. Coretheapple ( talk) 23:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Template {{ Is contentious}} detects if a given article is tagged as contentious, and is now available for use:

• {{Is contentious|Transphobia}} → yes
• {{Is contentious|Giraffe}} →

Please report any issues below, or at the Template Talk page.
P.S. This template has nothing to do with the one in the preceding section; the timing is coincidental. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 20:31, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The redirect Wikipedia:COURT has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 19 § Wikipedia:COURT until a consensus is reached. —  JJMC89 ( T· C) 09:54, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Please see WP:VPP#Petition to amend ARBPOL making it clear they have jurisdiction over crats RoySmith (talk) 17:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

In the currently open "Conflict of interest management" case request, Galobtter wrote: I think ArbCom should look into creating a standardized way of handling this in a way that makes it clear to the community that this is in fact being investigated but without people feeling the need to make onwiki comments. This seems like something that is both a good idea and wider than just COI - whenever there is something that the committee is handling privately but which has a public element (it's been posted about on wiki) there would be benefit in there being a standard, bold template that ArbCom could place on the discussion. The template would:

• Alert the community that arbcom is aware of and discussing the matter, including examining the evidence it is aware of (including any comments posted in this thread) and will consider what (if any) sanctions are required.
• Make it clear that non-public information or other matters unsuitable for public discussion are relevant
• Inform/remind editors that:
  • They need to be careful about what they post publicly
  • (Potentially) non-public information may be removed and oversighted
  • They may be blocked or banned if they post non-public information, especially if this is reposting information that has previously been removed or it is intentional or reckless.
  • Accusing someone of violating policies or best practice (including regarding COI and paid editing) does not prevent it being outing, even if they are an admin or other advanced permission holder
  • Reposting, linking to or signposting outing on external websites is still outing
• Instruct editors with information relevant information to email it to the committee (stating that it is better information is received multiple times than not at all) and which address to send it to.

There should probably be two versions, one for where no public discussion is possible and one for where there are multiple things being discussed, only some of which relate to private information so discussion of the public matters can continue as long as editors are careful. Maybe versions for:

• The arbcom discussions are still open
• The arbcom discussions have concluded and the matter is closed (link to formal announcements)
• The arbcom discussions have concluded but the matter is not closed, i.e. it has been determined that it can appropriately be dealt with by the community in public (link to formal announcements).

Or maybe the latter two would be better as separate templates posted later in the thread than the first one? This is an idea, not formal proposal (yet?), so if something like this is determined to be a good idea (and it might not be) the wording, design, etc will all need to be discussed. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:01, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm conceptually in favor of this. The actual wording/implementation will be important of course. Barkeep49 ( talk) 19:07, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

• I think that there also needs to be more standardized indications of what information does get released. Currently when someone is investigated or blocked by ArbCom based on non-public information, say, we usually receive no information at all beyond "we're doing nothing" or "X is being obliterated from orbit; do not speculate as to why." Were they found to be a sock? Did they harass someone? Is the block a technical preventative measure of some sort? Are they a serial killer? Whoooo knows. Privacy is important but transparency is also important, especially given that ArbCom is an elected body (meaning that the community, as a whole, has a responsibility to determine if they've been doing a good job, and that ArbCom has an obligation to be transparent enough to enable that when it can do so without violating necessary confidentiality.) In particular, information related to ArbCom's activities and decision-making shouldn't be kept private just to "avoid drama" or to protect someone's on-wiki reputation - those aren't sufficiently good reasons to keep something under wraps; and this is important to underline because it's the natural inclination of even the most well-intentioned people making that sort of decision to avoid potential drama and furor. Very few people want to proactively release partial information knowing that their decision-making might get racked over the coals by people who are missing key parts of it. But closed courts are used to avoid WP:OUTING, to adhere to necessary requirements for handling personally-identifiable information, and other such things of sufficient importance to sometimes outweigh the need for transparency; it's important that it not creep to the point of remaining silent on even tangentially-related details of what's going on or why purely because doing so is convenient. Having a standard bare-minimum "just the most dry facts" report that ArbCom publishes when handling closed cases - eg. "we're doing X to handle Y and we can't say more because this falls under category Z" - could help with this and avoid the natural inclination to creep towards releasing as little information as possible. -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:55, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Ban appeals needs to be updated for the recently passed motion. Only the note at ARBPOL was updated but I think that note should just link to the procedure section so we don't have to update the same text in two places. Galobtter ( talk) 01:46, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I updated the procedures text, in the same style it was previously, to cover the obvious omission for the time being. I'm in favour of having the ARBPOL note link to the procedures, but am curious to see first if we get any comments on that. Maxim ( talk) 16:04, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Changes to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Ratification and amendment. House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 03:46, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to add a contentious topic designation for Talk:Turkey, similar to Talk:Climate change. My understanding is that Turkey may involve several contentious topics: 1) the Balkans or Eastern Europe, 2) the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed, and 3) Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts. Is that correct? Should I add one or all 3 to the talk page? Thanks! Bogazicili ( talk) 17:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

You could add all three. You should use the "section=yes" parameter of the template to indicate that only parts of the article are covered. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 17:43, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

@ Firefangledfeathers: thanks! I added 1 long and 2 short notices. There doesn't seem to be an option to include multiple topics within one template. Bogazicili ( talk) 18:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

There isn't. It's on my wishlist for sure. Firefangledfeathers ( talk / contribs) 18:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I have lately seen a number of AfDs being ECPed with summaries relating to arbitration enforcement, especially WP:RUSUKR and WP:ARBPIA4. I am wondering why such discussions get protected, unlike most talk pages of contentious topics? Toadette ^{( Let's discuss together!)} 17:20, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@ ToadetteEdit. WP:ARBECR gives the answer, I think. When an EC restriction is in place in a topic area, it applies to the whole topic area with the exception that editors who are not extended confirmed may use the "Talk" namespace to make edit requests. Malcolmxl5 ( talk) 20:09, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Please see WP:Village pump (policy)#Petition to amend ARBPOL to add options for U4C. Thank you. _signed, SpringProof ^talk 04:52, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Both contain inaccurate information and poor sources. I am banned from ediiing which is clearly an attempt to silence me. Spinning history or distorting it should not be allowed. Habesha212 ( talk) 17:02, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The guidance you are looking for is here. Amortias ( T)( C) 17:11, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

In the future, when arbcom receives a request from someone who is not an editor to hear a case in an WP:ECR topic area, I think the best way to handle it would be:

1. Have the person draft an WP:RFAR in a format suitable to be posted on-wiki (meeting the word limit and other requirements), and then email it to the committee
2. The committee reads the request and makes some initial determination about whether it's "frivolous" ("has no chance of being accepted") or not (or whatever standard arbcom wants to use)
3. If it's frivolous (or below whatever standard), arbcom tells the person they're declining it, and then makes some kind of record somewhere on wiki that they declined the case request from a non-editor
4. If it's not frivolous, arbcom can post the request on-wiki (or direct the person to post it), and arbcom can grant the person an exception to WP:ECR for the purpose of participating in the case request and any subsequent arbitration proceeding. (Which doesn't require actually giving them WP:XC, just an exception to WP:ECR.)

Levivich ( talk) 19:06, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

"In the future" assumes that we have not already done something similar in the past. Primefac ( talk) 19:21, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

You did something different this time. Levivich ( talk) 19:30, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

True, we did not receive a fully-formed wikitext-formatted case request. Primefac ( talk) 19:35, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be wikitext-formatted. The key difference is that arbcom's decision to allow the case request to proceed would be based on the case request itself (and not on some digest, preview, or other statement by the requestor), and the announcement of arbcom's decision to allow the case request to proceed would happen at the same time as the case request is posted publicly (and not beforehand). (The other key difference is making a policy exception to WP:ECR rather than actually putting the requestor's account in the WP:XC user group.) This is not meant as a criticism of what arbcom did, but a suggestion for how to do it better. Better for arbcom and better for the community. Levivich ( talk) 20:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

That is fair, and I do agree that some procedural changes should be considered to deal with this kind of situation. Primefac ( talk) 20:18, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I ec'd and was about to add: this way, arbcom is looking at one document (the case request itself) when it makes its decision, that same exact document is shared with the community, and it's shared at the same time as the community learns of arbcom's decision to allow the case request to be posted. So when the community wonders why arbcom made the decision it did, it can just read the very same document that arbcom read when it made its decision. This method answers questions without those questions having to be asked, it doesn't leave a gap between announcement and case request posting during which time people will wonder and speculate, and it eliminates the possibility of any surprises for arbs if the case request happens to be different than the request-for-permission-to-post-a-case-request that they reviewed privately. So that's what I meant when I said better both for arbcom and for the community. Levivich ( talk) 20:25, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. My personal preference would have been to either grant ExCon after the case request was filed or only give the rationale in the log entry, but such is life; it certainly would have cut down on the amount of hand-wringing going on at the ACN post. Primefac ( talk) 20:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@ Levivich see what you're suggesting is, for me, prejudging the case. The only decision I had to make at the time I made it is: "should this be public or private or not at all". It was not frivolous so I took not at all off the table and it involved no private evidence so I thought it should be public. Beyond that I judged no facts. Because I philosophically agree with that concept which you have so passionately inveighed upon elsewhere. Barkeep49 ( talk) 20:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

It's not pre-judging a case because it's judging a request-for- standing. In other words, you're not judging the ultimate issue (should XYZ be sanctioned or whatever), you're judging a threshold issue: should this person who doesn't have standing be granted standing so they can make this case request. An arb can decide that narrow, preliminary, threshold issue, without pre-judging the next threshold issue (should the case request be accepted) or the ultimate issue (should XYZ be sanctioned or whatever). For exactly the same reason, deciding to accept a case request -- any case request -- is not pre-judging the case but just judging the case request, and arbs can and in every case do judge the case request without pre-judging the ultimate issue (as evidenced by the many arbs over the years who vote to accept a case but then vote against some or sometimes even all sanctions). Levivich ( talk) 20:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

You wanted arbcom to decide based on the actual request. I didn't need the actual request to know I felt this user had standing to file. Barkeep49 ( talk) 20:39, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Based on a belief that everyone has standing to file, or based on something else? Levivich ( talk) 20:47, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

At the list of contentious topics, there are multiple entries on the same topic, including:

1. Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts
2. post-1992 politics of the United States
3. the English Wikipedia article titles policy and Manual of Style
4. gender-related disputes
5. post-1978 Iranian politics

Many of the "Decision linked to" and "Topic specific subpage" column links go to the same locations as well. Would it be more appropriate to update the "Use" column with multiple templates (e.g. {Contentious topics|topic=X}, {Contentious topics|topic=xy}, {Contentious topics|topic=xyz})? WMrapids ( talk) 15:39, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

When I looked at this a few months ago, I think it mostly just requires someone adjusting the module to have the idea of synonym keywords. Izno ( talk) 03:46, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

If a certain case had gone ahead, I had proposed "being polite is not enough" as a principle for said case. I still think it should be a principle that can be applied in cases where it is relevant, and have expanded on the subject at the above link. It's in project space, expansion/tweaking is welcome. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

How do we determine if an article falls under ECR restrictions in the I/P area? I have Jonathan Freedland specifically in mind, given recent IP edits. Coretheapple ( talk) 16:23, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm interested in this question too (in addition to the question, what exactly is the "topic area", but that is another story). To me, those particular edits are unambiguously within scope of the ARBPIA restrictions. I routinely revert edits like this with an edit summary along the lines of "This is not an edit request. Editors must be extended-confirmed to edit or discuss this topic except for making edit requests. Edit requests most likely to succeed are those that are 'Specific, Uncontroversial, Necessary, Sensible' per WP:EDITXY." And I do this regardless of whether someone has placed a {{ ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement|relatedcontent=yes}} template on the talk page. Then I add a template if it is absent. It would not make sense that the first non-extendedconfirmed person to add content within scope of ARBPIA is immune from the restrictions if the template is not there. Perhaps this is not the correct approach.

Another interesting question is "how often is the template not there" for things within the topic area, and the answer seems to be quite often. I have been looking at this out of curiosity and adding templates. Right now, I'm looking at protections and templates for everything in Category:Israel–Hamas war and all of its subcategories as a test set. Since it is an ongoing event, it is in relatively good shape, although the protections and templating are patchy. This graph gives you a general idea for everything in Category:Israel–Hamas war. Squares=categories, diamonds=articles, circles=talk pages, red=not EC protected, blue=EC protected, yellow=no ARBPIA template. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 17:05, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

One area that I would like to see clarified is whether ordinary editors like moi can simply add the talk page template noted above. I imagine such templates can be subject to abuse if added inappropriately. Coretheapple ( talk) 16:04, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

You can add, only uninvolved admins can remove apparently.

The current rules

• Primary articles -> Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#Standing_sanctions_upon_primary_articles
• Related content -> Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#General_sanctions_upon_related_content

I haven't looked at this but I'm guessing that there may be a significant mismatch between {{ ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} and {{ ArbCom Arab-Israeli editnotice}} deployment because there are differences in the user permissions requirements. To add an editnotice requires page mover permissions or something like that, I forget.

Sean.hoyland ( talk) 02:46, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Helpful. Thank you. Coretheapple ( talk) 14:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

• Another question (which I'm sure has been answered I guess) is contributions to RSN and user talk pages. I noticed a non-EC user weighing in at RSN but wanted to check first. A centralized FAQ might not be a bad idea. Coretheapple ( talk) 16:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  The only engagement with the topic that is allowed anywhere on en-wiki is edit requests on article talk pages. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 16:21, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  OK, thanks for that clarity on this. Coretheapple ( talk) 16:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Just asking how to appeal a contentious topic, because the restrictions are going too far from "anyone can edit" principle of the pedia. There was once the thread I initiated on why AfDs are ECPed; it got an answer and was archived. I want to request amendment on reducing this restriction, because literally every article gets extended confirmed on sight, even templates, even categories and project pages (!!). This is particular to the Arab Israeli conflict, and even an April Fools Day deletion of Israel was deleted stating that it was part of the restriction. This should be encouraged to be stopped, I do not want to form a democracy, but as I said, restrictions are going beyond the limits. Toadette ^{( Let's talk together!)} 13:36, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Are you active in the ARBPIA topic area? Are you familiar with the history and dynamics of the topic area, the level of deception/sockpuppetry, the culture of biased editing/POV pushing, the canvassing, the infiltration by staff from partisan organizations etc.?

The statement "literally every article gets extended confirmed on sight, even templates, even categories and project pages" is inaccurate.

The topic area is largely unprotected, or rather it is protected by people rather than the database server.

• If you pick a category, any category, in the topic area and traverse the network of connections examining every subcategory, article, template etc. the graphs look something like this, with the majority of articles etc. unprotected (not blue). Squares=categories, diamonds=articles, circles=talk pages, red=not EC protected, blue=EC protected, yellow=no ARBPIA template. That's a graph starting at the category Israeli Settlement limited to just a few steps from the root category.

I would argue that protection in the topic area needs to be enhanced.

• Countermeasures against the extensive use of deception/sockpuppetery need to be strengthened (e.g. more checkusers, lower barriers to SPI reporting).
• More articles need to be protected to move the burden from people to machines.
• Better tools are needed to deal with biased editing/POV pushing/advocacy to enforce the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct's rule against "Systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view".

Opening the topic area up is the wrong way to go in my view. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 15:29, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

And, non-extendedconfirmed users can make edit requests as the {{ ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} talk page template explains. Straightforward, sensible requests are handled. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 15:52, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

The place to request amendments to an Arbitration decision (including the rescinding of a CT designation) is Requests for (Arbitration) clarification and amendment. firefly ( t · c ) 15:49, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

The April fools Israel AfD was unfunny and in poor taste and was created by a globally banned sock, so I think the G5 deletion was proper and is a great example of why these restrictions exist. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 16:38, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Without commenting on this specific example, an April fools (or any) joke being funny or not is irrelevant because humour is subjective. Whether something is or is not "in poor taste" is also something that is often debatable and not generalisable. A page created by a sockpuppet of a banned user being speedily deleted under G5 is not evidence that restrictions on editors who are not sockpuppets are required. Such restrictions may or may not be justified, but you have not presented any evidence that they are. Thryduulf ( talk) 22:45, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@ Thryduulf, respectfully, I can't agree. A joke AfD on Israel for April Fools is unfortunate from at very least an optics perspective. One of the reasons CT exists is to keep socks out of controversial areas-- so a G5 for violating ECR seems like good application to me. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 01:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

If a user is a sock of a blocked user then G5 applies everywhere, regardless of whether the topic is covered by ECR restrictions (i.e. the page would have been speedily deleteable if it had nominated Luxembourg rather than Israel). That means that ECR is irrelevant to this situation.

If the user is not a sock of blocked user then G5 does not apply and is completely irrelevant to the situation. A proposal to expand to incorporate ECR violations into G5 did not result in consensus, a related discussion is ongoing but the option of extending G5 does not currently have a clear consensus (and has received explicit opposition).

Separately, April fools jokes (good and bad) are very poorly generalisable to anything that is not an April fools joke.

There may be good, relevant evidence for the restrictions but this specific argument is neither. Thryduulf ( talk) 02:07, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

• You only have to scroll up two sections to see an extensive discussion (with plenty of evidence) about ongoing canvassing, meatpuppetry, and sockpuppetry in the I/P topic area. The 500/30 restriction hasn't been perfect at keeping things functional (as the issues discussed above show), but it's the only really effective tool we have; the suggestion that we could weaken it now, at a moment when the relevant articles and discussions are faced with unprecedented levels of outside canvassing, isn't something we can seriously consider. If anything, ARBPIA needs stronger restrictions for the duration of the current war; the only issue is that we don't really have any other tools in our toolkit, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if another ArbCom case were to come up with something. -- Aquillion ( talk) 19:54, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Is ARBCOM the appropriate place to report mass canvassing that had been occurring on and off WP, and which the community hasn't been able to resolve? The idea is to describe a problem and request/propose amendments to current WP:ARBPIA guidelines. Makeandtoss ( talk) 16:08, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@ Sean.hoyland: Makeandtoss ( talk) 18:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@ Makeandtoss If this involves significant offwiki/private evidence, it might be a good idea to email us. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 18:09, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@ Moneytrees: @ Firefly: Significant would be an understatement and it is not so private: [7], within hours of the posting of this Reddit thread, the concerned talk page discussion was suddenly flooded with opposing votes [8], including from two zombie accounts.

This is part of an ongoing trend since October 2023, in which at least half a dozen editors with pro-Israel viewpoints were topic banned or banned for mass canvassing through user emails, sockpupptery and/or meatpuppetry (and also part of a wider trend since 2011 that involved hundreds of users who were also banned for similar disruptive behavior). Notably one of the editors mentioned in the motion has contributed in the the talk page discussion without any meaningful argument or policy citing. There is a consistent, systematic and severe disruption of Wikipedia and its processes that is seriously damaging its reliability, and this is a pressing issue that needs to be addressed ASAP; because clearly the traditional solutions are being circumvented. Makeandtoss ( talk) 18:46, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes it's a lot of the same suspects and MO from the PIA Canvassing case.

I also have concerns regarding active sockpuppetry which I've been meaning to go to AE about.

I'm unfamiliar with how ArbCom and ArbCom cases work but perhaps the committee should consider a case reviewing the entire topic area regarding pro-Israel POV pushing, involving canvassing, sockpuppetry and excessive battleground/tendentious editing.

- IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 18:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I'll add that I've had some concerns myself regarding possible canvassing; at this requested move most notably. Not sure what Makeandtoss has in mind but my concerns are regarding canvassing along the lines of (or possibly a continuation of) the recent Arbcom case PIA Canvassing. IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 18:28, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Assuming there is private evidence involved, which I believe there would be given the description of "canvassing [...] occurring on and off WP", please send said evidence to arbcom-enwikipedia.org (or use Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee if you prefer). firefly ( t · c ) 18:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

The only evidence I have for my concerns is public/on-wiki. I can briefly elaborate here on the concerning elements I've indentified if desired/appropriate. IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 18:40, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@ IOHANNVSVERVS if the evidence you have is entirely on-wiki then ANI is the best place for it. firefly ( t · c ) 18:46, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yikes. Apparently, I'm not as observant as Makeandtoss. I hadn't noticed the apparent canvassing. I thought maybe Mila (Mbz1) had come back to visit judging from an uptick in aggressive editing by editors who have recently acquired EC privileges. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 01:33, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@ Sean.hoyland: @ Moneytrees: @ Firefly: Update: the requested move has been stopped with the closing editor not taking into consideration the massive canvassing that took place just after the Reddit thread was opened [9]. The ease in which WP can be disrupted from accurately reflecting RS, and in the process wasting the time and efforts of good faith editors and rewarding editors who flout its internal processes and guidelines, is quite shocking and disappointing to me and I am sure to others as well. What is the way forward here in your opinion, should I request an amendment to the existing ARBPIA motion? Makeandtoss ( talk) 21:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

If there is no off-wiki material, I would have thought AE was the way forward for the sort of "group" behavior being talked about here and it would need careful prep, a single RM would not be enough evidence imo, a pattern over time would have to be established. Selfstudier ( talk) 22:06, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

As you can see here, there were 15 recorded instances of mass canvassing in just a few weeks [10]. And there are at least a dozen other instances were there is suspected mass canvassing taking place. Not to mention the two hundred accounts banned in the past decade for the same sockmaster [11]. The pattern is pretty much established and has been so for a very long time. Makeandtoss ( talk) 08:49, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, aren't we looking backwards though? I would have thought the idea would be to bring things up to date. Is off wiki canvassing the only issue? Selfstudier ( talk) 10:15, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking backwards to establish the pattern and to highlight how WP has been unable to deal with this issue and that new and extremely strict measures are required to prevent disruption. Both off wiki and on wiki canvassing has been taking place, and the current measures haven't been able to deal with either in a timely way. Makeandtoss ( talk) 14:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

What sort of strict measures are you proposing? Outside of trying to identify and topic-ban or block specific editors who are clearly acting as WP:MEATPUPPETs via reddit posts, the 30/500 restriction is already as strict as any existing tool for this AFAIK. One thing I did notice is that there are more editors aggressively seeking to meet the 500-edit-count requirement (someone mentioned elsewhere that people who hit 500 edits are often posting in Wikipedia:Requests for permissions, not knowing that their 501st edit will grant it automatically), but if they're not overtly gaming it I'm unsure what can be done about that. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:27, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Two prominent editors do appear to have engaged in EC gaming. Not sure it I should mention them here but it's something I've been meaning to go to AE about. IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 20:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps ECR should not allow minor edits and/or include a requirement of a minimum number of different pages edited. That would prevent a lot of gaming I believe. Or perhaps ECR should not be granted automatically but one would have to apply for it after meeting the 30/500 requirements, which would allow the applying user's edits to be briefly reviewed for gaming. That would be a little bit inconvenient but would save a lot of time/effort overall if it prevents the disruptions caused by those who game ECR. IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 21:02, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

What sort of pattern are we looking for? What would we use to identify editors who were likely canvassed? My thinking is that it'd probably be editors who contributed to multiple discussions that were posted in the same place, and whose contributions to them are surprising (generally because they either rushed to get 500 edits to participate in those precise discussions, or because they're "zombie" editors who returned for those precise discussions and haven't edited much recently otherwise.) Those are the clear-cut cases. Proving canvassing for established editors who are heavily active in the topic area is difficult because they could have just come across all those discussions naturally - if an editor contributes to every major I/P discussion, we can't conclude much. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:27, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

<- What stands out to me in that RfC is not evidence of the effects of canvassing, it's how poorly the RfC process samples the editor population, making the result highly sensitive to random factors, bias etc. There is presumably very little that can be done about canvassing, but I assume a lot more can be done to encourage editors to participate and make RfCs in the topic area less susceptible to the side-effects of small population sizes. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 13:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Expanding the RFC discussion to dilute the external factors is an interesting idea but it risks overwhelming already complex discussions. I think other things can be explored to prevent such mass canvassing:

• Setting a rule that sanctions editors who are later found out to have been canvassed through exposure of any on/off WP evidence (this would act as a strong deterrent regardless if such evidence is found).
• Setting instructions to closing editors that compel them to take into greater consideration the canvassing effect by examining the circumstances surrounding each case.
• Restrictions on WP email sending for users engaged in PIA articles or at least showing if editors participating in RFCs if they received emails in the past 1-2 weeks (or as long as RfC lasts) and from which users.
• Preventing zombie accounts from participating, i.e. a user cannot participate in a RfC if they haven not been active for at least a week and then suddenly appear somewhere.

I realize these measures may sound strong-handed but this is the least that could be done to prevent the disruption of what is arguably one of the most important sources of information online. I am sure others have more ideas, that's why I opened this discussion, and to see how they can be implemented as soon as possible. Makeandtoss ( talk) 14:12, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I try not to get too involved in these discussions because I don't believe I should have much of a hand in crafting the policy that I enforce with almost no oversight, but while the zombie account thing looks good at first sniff, it could lead to more of the same involved people having the same discussions. I think it's pretty clear that non-arbpia editors just don't want to get involved so adding another fence for them to hop to get involved may backfire. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 17:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Penalising *receiving* emails is not a good idea as it can be easily gamed by sending emails to users one doesn't agree with.

Penalising *sending* emails is pointless as usually throwaway accounts are used for this purpose. Alaexis _¿question? 05:16, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

• Makeandtoss makes some highly original suggestions. I suspect the first two might be hard to either establish or enforce—surely only devs can check the emails that have been sent, and both points seem to rely on a degree of OUTING, or private off-wiki evidence, so arbcom's new waterslide could find itself overwhelmed in the tide of contentious RfCs, no? But the third point... I like it. I like it a lot. It would, at the stroke of a hat and with almost minimal too or technical implementation required, not just make canvassed votes easier to see and dismiss but make canvassing itself pointless from the start. It wouldn't affect any established ethnocentric-politico POV pushers who are already within the article; but then, they are already there, and the current system is incapable of stopping them either. But this new approach (#3 above) would strip all the blatant, last-minute canvassed votes. And make it easier to address, ——Serial Number 54129 15:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding "Restrictions on WP email sending for users engaged in PIA articles", as far as I'm aware, the accounts used to distribute canvassing emails via WP mail in the ArbCom case were not active in PIA articles because they were not EC confirmed. Emails were distributed using disposable sockpuppet accounts by a ban evading user, perhaps not in all cases, but that seemed to be the MO. The recipients were presumably selected on the basis that they are or had been active in topic area at some point. Email restriction based remedies are not technically possible once a communication network has been established with no dependency of WP mail. Sean.hoyland ( talk) 16:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I'll copy this from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel

Start copy

== Wikipedia Command Center ==

On October 2023, דוד שי (David Shay) announced a WhatsApp group to "fight" against anti-Israel bias in English Wikipedia. According to the announcement on Hebrew Wikipedia [12], the group seems to be coordinated by שלומית ליר (Shlomit Lir). It is also advertised on the Hebrew Wikipedia Facebook group, which is often moderated by Shani (WMF). The group publicly self-styles itself as "Wikipedia Command Center", and seems to serve as a private coordination hub for pro-Israel editing, focusing on a list of English Wikipedia articles. Since the group references WikiProject Israel, I bring it up here. How does this group comply with WP:CANVASS, WP:MEATPUPPET, WP:NPOV, etc? MarioGom ( talk) 15:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

End copy. Selfstudier ( talk) 18:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure Wikipedia email is that relevant when there is a coordination group in WhatsApp with +100 members. MarioGom ( talk) 22:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Has anything been done about this? IOHANNVSVERVS ( talk) 03:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Doubt that anything can be done, since its off wiki, something to be aware of tho. If there were members there orchestrating things on wiki that might be different. Selfstudier ( talk) 09:29, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

They will do what they do, and we cannot do anything about it. They are not the only group like this currently active in Israel. MarioGom ( talk) 18:43, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• This discussion is getting a bit far off from ArbCom (since we're no longer really talking about solutions ArbCom can / would apply) and might be better held either on Wikipedia talk:Canvassing or on WP:VPP. But one thing I will point out is that currently, WP:CANVASS does not even require that canvassed editors declare that they were canvassed. I feel that adding that minimal requirement (as a "hard" red-line requirement, albeit with a bit of fuzziness because editors arriving as a result of external discussions may not always understand that they were canvassed) would help a great deal in terms of both making canvassing more obvious and serving as an easier way to catch people who are engaged in illegitimate meatpuppetry. Obviously this would still require that we figure out that they're hiding their meatpuppetry somehow, but that brings me to... -- Aquillion ( talk) 04:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

• One other thing that is worth at least brooching, although I don't know if it's technically feasible or feasible under our privacy policies: It would be immensely useful if CheckUsers could view the referer data for someone's visits to Wikipedia. Obviously that is highly private information and would have to be handled with extreme care, limited to CheckUsers alone; all they would do with it is give the same sort of "confirmed / no evidence / possible" response if someone is accused of being canvassed by examining to see if they have repeatedly visited Wikipedia via links from a site or page indicated as a source of canvassing during the window of a known canvassing incident. A secondary, less invasive tool for CheckUsers that might help would be one that just lists which inbound links have recently directed the most distinct users who have commented on a talkpage to that talkpage or its associated article page, which could be used to confirm canvassing incidents. Although it's possible to hide referers, an extensive effort to flood a page with meatpuppets is likely to result in a bunch of people clicking through to the page and commenting without realizing that they'd need to do that to avoid getting caught, which would produce a clear indicator that a checkuser could be asked to check and confirm (again, with just a simple yes or no) whenever external canvassing is suspected. -- Aquillion ( talk) 22:31, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

  As far as I am aware, checkusers do not have access to refer information (and WP:Checkuser makes no mention of it), so this is almost certainly something that cannot be implemented without action from developers (so don't hold your breath). I'm not even sure whether that data is stored in a way that retains its association with a specific user ( Foundation:Wikimedia Privacy Policy doesn't make it clear whether they can say "Users X, Y and Z arrived from the Wikipedia Editors in Fooland Facebook group", "three unique users arrived via that link (but we can't say which three)", or just "three visits to this page came via that link, we can't say whether it was three different people or the same person three times."). If the user association isn't stored already then starting to do so would require more work by developers and (probably) sign-off from WMF legal that doing so is compatible with the privacy policy, etc (definitely do not hold your breath). Thryduulf ( talk) 00:13, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Great, now we have massive brigading occurring at Intifada because of a tweet. And I am very much starting to suspect the same is occurring at the Israel-Hamas war article over the past 24 hours. Till when will such phenomena continue on Wikipedia? Makeandtoss ( talk) 12:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello arbitrators. We were wondering if you might be willing to mention administrator elections to your WMF T&S contact in your monthly meeting. I've sent them a couple emails now but it is not moving very fast. Basically we can't move forward until they state that they are willing to set up a mw:Extension:SecurePoll election for us and give us a date window in which they're willing to do it. Thoughts? Thank you. More context. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 01:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that there are a lot of global SecurePoll instances that will take priority over anything else. Specifically, the U4C elections have just completed; in June/July, there will be the Movement Charter ratification vote (running both a local instance and a global instance simultaneously); in August/September, there will be the WMF Board of Trustees election. T&S is also currently short-staffed, with their lead SecurePoll person not available at present. I do understand the frustration, but an experiment on English Wikipedia (when we are already carrying out a bunch of other RFA experiments at the same time) probably shouldn't be the priority for their team. I'd suggest holding off until they get through this unusual glut of global SecurePoll instances, perhaps until September, before raising any red flags. That will also give time to see how the other RFA-related experiments work out. Risker ( talk) 05:18, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey Risker. Always good to see you :) If T&S emails me back with an explanation like that, I'd be totally understanding, and would be happy to pick a date in the calendar that is many months from now. I disagree with the idea that we need to intentionally move slowly due to other RFA reform efforts. The T:CENT-advertised RFC passed with a consensus to do one trial, so I no longer see the consensus part as being ambiguous. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 06:01, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I have now added it to the next meeting's agenda, but to my personal understanding, sending e-mails is the right decision and there's no huge urgency. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 06:27, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

We are not EN Wikipedia's Foreign Office. This is a gross misuse of our political capital and time. Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 11:34, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I didn't think much about it and have removed it again. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 12:39, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Guerillero Ironically, a topic of discussion highly related to the question of increased SecurePoll use appeared on the committee agenda while I was on it. As such I don't think calling it a gross misuse of capital and time is whatsoever reasonable. Izno ( talk) 16:06, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how convincing the WMF to set up SecurePoll is in our remit in any reasonable way. Local scrutineering, however, is due to the committee's oversight of the CheckUser team. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 10:33, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello Arbitration Committee. I was advised to write a message here informing you of some cleanup work I started doing for the pre-2009 cases that ... I did not realize generated a lot of IRC messages until it was brought to my attention.

Long story short, after noticing that there were several old cases that were not subpages of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case but rather Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, I found this edit summary that hints in 2009, the case requests page was renamed. To me (and my cleanup-ish, somewhat OCD-mind and one of my goals to make all aspects of Wikipedia simple to find for everyone of any technical level ... with one being making sure parent pages match whenever possible/necessary), as well as noticing that there was not functional change in how the rest of the subpages of the cases were organized after that move (such as "proposed resolution", etc), I started making moves from cases in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration space to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case.

However, after I started making some of these moves, I was almost immediately informed on my talk page that the moves I was making caused IRC notifications, and I was unaware that there was such notification functionality to the arbitrators (or any other interested parties) that when a subpage is created somewhere in the "Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests" space (not sure which page exactly), a bunch of IRC notifications get sent out.

So, here's what I found ... there's about 600-800 subpages of "Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration" (main case pages and the respective subpages) that look to be compatible to be moved to subpages of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case. What this means is ... for all these pages to be moved, from my understanding with how IRC works in these subpages, there is the potential for 600-800 notifications to be produced with these moves. As pointed out to me, this can be annoying since these notifications do not represent cases being created and/or added to.

Since I am able to move a page and its subpages all at once, I can be able to get this task done rather quickly, making it so this burst of notifications would last for maybe 1-2 hours tops (maybe not even that, maybe even 30-45 minutes). I have been advised as well that maybe it is better to do these moves in small chunks; in my perspective, this means that the streams of potentially false notifications via IRC will happen more than once while these moves are occurring.

In a nutshell, this is what I have been doing, and I know everyone has their lives, and if I continue to do this task, I would, I guess, like to know how quickly I can do this task (provided there is no opposition to me continuing this) as I think that provided I continue with this task, everyone who gets the IRC notifications would prefer this happen as quickly as possible. This will allow true notifications to come in without all the false notifications about the page moves mixed in with them. I'm not trying to cause issues here as I thought I was doing uncontroversial cleanup ... and then was informed it's not as uncontroversial as I thought, primarily due to the notifications.

Provided there are no stopping concerns presented, I'm planning on getting back to this at some point in the next few hours (just got hit with a real life interruption). I'm open to feedback and advice on this. Thank you all for your time and understanding. Steel1943 ( talk) 21:44, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, given the discussion below, I'm holding off performing any additional page moves for the time being. Steel1943 ( talk) 00:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

At this point, I have reverted all of the moves I did and restored any redirects that existed prior to me making the moves which pointed at the original titles. At this point, my interest level in pursuing this cleanup I found is nonexistent, and everything is back the way it was before I started any of these moves. Cheers. Steel1943 ( talk) 01:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

All arbitration cases before 2009 were headed under the old style, until Kirill reorganized arb-space 15 years ago. As you point out, these cases have hundreds of subpages (the Committee used to decide dozens of cases each year). I assume these moves would break thousands of links, although presumably the page-moves would leave redirects. I'll of course defer to the current arbitrators and clerks, but frankly I'm not convinced that this massive set of moves is worth making. The short-term burst of IRC notifications is probably the least of it. Regards, Newyorkbrad ( talk) 00:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@ Newyorkbrad: For what it's worth, the moves would not break links, as long as their former names remain as redirects towards the correct pages. Steel1943 ( talk) 00:45, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

My first thought matches Newyorkbrad's. The archive searches at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases (and possibly elsewhere) have been set-up with two search boxes for pre- and post-July 2009 case naming structure. Assuming the counts at the top of the yearly index pages are correct there were approximately 397 cases before the naming scheme changed, with each having a main page and typically 3 subpages, all of which have a talk page - or just under 3200 pages. All of these will need to be examined for broken links, all the index pages will need to be checked for broken links - even if redirects are left. I'm not convinced that there is benefit to this task, and certainly not without an explicit consensus from the current committee. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@ Thryduulf: What you stated regarding the "old" versus the "new" styles, as I see it, are problematic since they cause a bit of unnecessary effort by the searchers to find what they may be looking for. It also requires any editors, arbitrators, etc. to have a vague understanding of when old cases occurred, especially if they occurred before 2009 ... which, quite frankly, I'm sure there are some arbitrators who were either not actively editing then and/or did not even have their account created yet by 2009. Merging all the archived discussions under one parent page configuration makes it so only one search has to be accomplished to look through the archives that is time-agnostic. Steel1943 ( talk) 00:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

(Individual opinion, not a collective one) I left a comment at Steel1943's talk page saying that I was fine with the moves. My issue with the current split system is that it causes issues finding cases, especially when I'm going to them directly from the URL bar. For example, I always have issues finding the Ryulong case, which is housed at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ryulong and does not have a redirect from where it would be as a modern case. Now, is this convenience and consistency worth making so many moves? I don't know, which is why I didn't propose internally that we (clerks/Committee) did it. But given that Steel is willing to do this tedious work, I currently lean towards carrying this out. Sdrqaz ( talk) 00:56, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like an argument to create a redirect from the modern form. Either on mass or, less disruptively, individually when the need arises. Another alternative would be to create a shortcut (e.g. WP:ARBRYULONG) for cases you refer to frequently. This achieves the same aim with (at most) a tiny fraction of the disruption (and in a lot of cases none at all). Thryduulf ( talk) 01:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The way the wiki software works actually prefers subpages to be married to their parent pages as live pages, not redirects, so that the appropriate subpages can be moved and/or deleted whenever applicable, which is why I did what I did (now reverted, of course). Steel1943 ( talk) 01:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

• Oh please don't do this. There are sufficient mitigations in place that have been successful for 10+ years. This is not solving any problems. This is not improving the encyclopedia, or even the Wikipedia space; there will still be the same number of pages, all of which will require redirects to prevent broken links. In fact, it is making Wikipedia space worse, because of all the redirects cluttering up the place. There is zero benefit to this action. Tens of thousands of accounts are going to be pinged, hundreds of pages are going to consume peoples' watchlists, and for what? There's no good reason to do this, and lots of good reasons to not do it. Risker ( talk) 01:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
• I will note that I've read this and ultimately I don't have an opinion (even after trying to force myself to have one). I can understand both sides and neither one makes me favor it over the other. So whatever consensus that can be worked out among the interested editors here is going to be good with me. Barkeep49 ( talk) 17:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

ARBCOM contentious topic templates (and anything about the talk page subtopics, really) do not show up in mobile web. - Desine ( talk) 02:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Current text: Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.

Suggested text: Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.

I feell like I've seen a number of non-ECP users recently asking for clarification of what this means. To me it seems perfectly clear already but the bolding makes it harder to argue that it says anything other than what it does say. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 16:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I do not see any issue with that emphasis being added. Primefac ( talk) 17:04, 8 June 2024 (UTC) Per Thryduulf. Primefac ( talk) 11:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps reword to "for the sole purpose of making edit requests..." I don't think boldface will add clarity for anyone who sees ambiguity with the current text. isaacl ( talk) 20:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps Non-extended-confirmed editors may only use the "Talk:" namespace, and only to make edit requests would be less ambiguous? - Aoidh ( talk) 23:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Or alternatively Non-extended confirmed may not make any edits with the sole exception of making edit requests in the talk namespace? (I'm also happy with Aoidh's suggestion) The current text can be read as the intended "the only thing non-EC editors are allowed to do is make edit requests, and the only place they are allowed to that is the talk namespace" but it could also be read as "the only thing non-ECR editors are allowed to do in the talk namespace is to make edit requests, there are no restrictions on other namespaces." I agree that adding boldface alone will not resolve this. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Last time we had this discussion people were able to find ways to misread Thryduulf's suggested wording (or something close to it). I'm skeptical that there is any wording here that will be clear for everyone and think there is some cost to changing things for clarity as some will think it's a substantive change. Barkeep49 ( talk) 15:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I honestly can't see how Thryduulf's version could be misread, except deliberately as "Non-extended confirmed may not make any edits (with the sole exception of making edit requests) in the talk namespace." A comma after "edits" would make that interpretation harder. But Aoidh's version is more succinct, clearer, and harder to misinterpret on purpose.

If we must go with something minimally different from the current text, but the bolding isn't clear enough, may I suggest '...may use the "Talk:" namespace, but only to make edit requests...'? — Cryptic 15:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, reading Thryduulf's version had me immediately thinking 'wait, so edit requests are only allowed in the talk namespace?', which obviously is not true( WP:RFED), and isn't an issue I had with the current phrasing. – 2804:F14:80E0:5601:8060:D58C:5EBC:74E2 ( talk) 01:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Part of the issue not discussed here is not with the wording itself but with the perceived definition of "make edit requests". Clarifying somehow whether it means "publish a single comment containing an edit request" or "workshop with others a single edit which you propose" would help. Most of these cases where I've seen disagreement are where non-EC users continue to discuss their own edit request with others, rather than non-EC users using namespaces other than Talk. Tollens ( talk) 22:50, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I suspect some confusion is really about seeking broader exceptions, but the text could be clearer for everyone. Here's a proposal: Non-extended-confirmed editors may submit edit requests within the topic area provided the request is non-disruptive and is confined to a single comment using an edit request template on the article talk page. If the article talk page is protected, the request may be made at WP:RFED. Daniel Quinlan ( talk) 00:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)