Wikipedia:Contentious topics/2021-22 review/Consultation

2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review

Status as of 11:47 (UTC), Sunday, 22 December 2024 ()

• The final decision has been posted and announced.
• The initial implementation period has concluded and the updated procedure has come into effect.
• Any editors interested in the ongoing implementation process are invited to assist at the implementation talk page.
• To be notified about updates, subscribe to the update list.

Timeline

The revision process will be conducted in four phases: Phase I community consultation (March – April 2021) (closed) Closing statement posted (May 2021) (closed) Discretionary sanctions topic amendments (February 2022) (closed) Phase II community consultation (September – October 2022) (closed) Proposed decision (November – December 2022) Public review (November 13 – 18, 2022) Final decision (December 2022) Implementation: The drafting arbitrators will implement the Committee's decision in conjunction with the Committee's clerks and interested volunteers designated by the Committee. The revision process was managed by drafting arbitrators designated by the Arbitration Committee (CaptainEek, L235, Wugapodes).

All community members are encouraged to participate in this consultation, which is the first step of the Arbitration Committee's 2021 discretionary sanctions revision process. The first section of this consultation asks general questions about discretionary sanctions and editors' experiences with them, and the second section asks for feedback on more specific elements of the discretionary sanctions system. Please participate in either or both of the sections, but do not duplicate your comments in multiple sections; the Committee will fully consider feedback whether it occurs in the open-ended section or the specific feedback section. Comments may be moved between sections by a clerk or arbitrator when appropriate.

Open-ended feedback

Purpose

What do you see as the purpose of discretionary sanctions? What do you view as the problems that discretionary sanctions were designed to solve?

Comments by community members (Purpose)

• If you ask me, Discretionary sanctions provide two pretty important purposes: structure and expediency. There's a lot that can be said for both, but I honestly think that the expediency part is the aspect the current regime find itself lacking of. I think that's what I want to talk about the most during this consultation, so expect to hear more from me on that topic. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Discretionary sanctions have a misleading name which took me some time to puzzle out. All admins have discretion which they use when applying any routine sanctions such as blocking an editor for vandalism. These special sanctions might be better described as unilateral sanctions as their key feature is that they may not be lightly reverted or changed by another admin. They were designed to make arbcom rulings effective by giving the advantage to the first-mover in the case of a controversial sanction. Previously, there was a second-mover advantage due to the way that edit wars between admins have traditionally been ruled per WP:WHEEL and this tended to make rulings such as civility paroles ineffective. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• It's pretty common that when there is a multi-party ArbCom case, the disruption in the topic area does not end after the case is closed. To be blunt, ArbCom actually has a pretty bad track record in that regard. There are almost always users who should be removed from a topic area, who are not removed as the result of a case remedy. On the other hand, it need not be ArbCom's fault. And that's where DS can genuinely do some good. Problems can be dealt with as they arise, and that's a lot better than having multiple repetitive ArbCom cases over the same topic. (We have had Am Pol 1 and 2, but just imagine Am Pol 26.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• There is no valid purpose, except to deal with admins protecting each other. At the time DS were adopted, the way some admins approached their responsibilities dic make them justified, as there were indeed cases of unblockables. I do not think the arb com of the period made an error is using them. The error was in continuing to use them, for everything else can be dealt with by the ordinary sanctions on disruptive editing. The immediately above argument is invalid for this reason. AP was not preceded by conflicts between admins, but rather by ordinary sanctions not dealing adequately, and some sort of special intervention was needed. if it was needed against individuals, arb com needed to take the reponsibility itself, not delegate it to any admin who cared to express themselves particularly strongly. It can, for example, be appropriate to set 1RR on an area, but the resulting blocks don't need DS. DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I want to clarify that my references to Am Pol were not really about anything specific to those cases, but rather, about how, once ArbCom deals with a particular troubled topic area, it's best not to have repeated cases over the same topic area. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:35, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with DGG's opinion above. I see the main purpose of DS in helping the community to deal with the areas of entrenched intractable POV disputes. AP2 is a prime example here, but other examples include various areas of nationalistic POV editing, see WP:PLAGUE. Other existing venues (ANI, AN, General Sanctions) proved to be much less effective in dealing with conduct violations in those settings. ANI and AN threads on these kinds of topics quickly degenerate into train wrecks because they get poisoned by the participation of involved disputants from both sides and because it is hard to conduct a careful discussion of the evidence in those venues, particularly for editors unfamiliar with the subject matter at hand. By comparison, AE provides a much more structured venue for considering such reports, with a more careful and saner process for reaching the decisions. It is entirely unreasonable and inrealistic to expect that ArbCom itself will be able to handle all the workload related to the affected areas directly. There are too many pages and too many editors who are involved here and too many cases. The only reasonable option is to delegate. Prior to the introduction of DS the community has been notoriously bad at handling entrenched POV disputes. The community remains notoriously and ruefully bad at doing that outside of DS. The DS process is far, far from perfect but it provides an invaluable tool that should be retained and improved. Nsk92 (talk) 08:18, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• The purpose of DS is to provide a way to keep a topic from spinning out of control after a case closes and to provide a way to sanction editors who flew under the radar during the initial. Without DS, we would have yearly cases about Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Poland, the Balkans, American Politics, Gender, BLPs, etc. The idea that the drama boards can solve these problems is laughable. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:29, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think that the purpose of Discretionary Sanctions is to restore order in topic areas where our normal rules lead to chaos.—S Marshall T/C 09:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• Discretionary sanctions allow admins to act quickly in areas where disruption is rampant, and to use sanctions other than blocks. This is useful in cases where a complete block from editing would be excessive, yet blocks from editing particular articles would be insufficient to curb the disruption. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:53, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• The intended purpose may indeed have been created with noble intentions, but it has failed. Even more convincing is the argument that DS doesn't allow for anything more than what normal admin actions can resolve, with the exception of making it more difficult to overturn, so I align with DGG in that regard. Atsme 💬 📧 20:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• I have had the term often invoked, but I still don't understand it well. While I am open to consideration that DS serve some purpose, from the perspective of non-admin who occasionally reads some AN(I)/AE discussions, it is a wiki-bureaucratize involved to 'scare' some people and creates a chilling effect ("you'd better stay away from this topic, there are scary arcane rules here so you may get easily blocked for something that would be ok in other topic areas"). I fail to see why normal rules are insufficient for some topic areas. Sure, they may be prone to much more disruption, but so what? What kind of behavior would be tolerated in an article about let's say some obscure, uncontroversial toy but not in the article about Israel-Palestine or whatever topics DS have crept in? Good and bad behavior are topic-irrelevant, and all DS seems to be doing IMHO is create areas where more and more editors, old and new, are scared to edit as they are afraid a slight misstep might have dire consequences, with DS throwing AGF and like to the wind. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Effectiveness

What problems have discretionary sanctions been used to address? What uses have been more or less effective? What problems do you wish discretionary sanctions would better address, but are not currently suited to addressing?

Comments by community members (Effectiveness)

• In my opinion, the best feature of discretionary sanctions is the arbitration enforcement (AE) noticeboard. The sectioned format of AE is significantly more effective than the incidents noticeboard (ANI) for resolving complex disputes involving many editors, as it requires editors to supply evidence in the form of explained diffs, is resistant to disruptive editing (such as bludgeoning), and encourages involved editors to direct comments to uninvolved reviewers instead of arguing against each other. If discretionary sanctions were to be significantly overhauled, there should still be some dispute resolution venue that allows editors to opt in to using a sectioned format like AE. — Newslinger talk 00:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  I second this. The structured format of AE is probably the greatest thing to come from the DS system. Thryduulf (talk) 01:14, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Thirding this. AE is so much better than ANI, which is often a mess and often creates endless bickering. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Like. Been saying this for years, but thought it best if someone else were to raise the matter here. El_C 11:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Why not move the DS usage of AE into a new community venue? AE is managed mostly/entirely by admins, not ArbCom, right? So why not make a community version of AE and have all DS (ArbCom or community authorised 'GS', and also other contentious disputes that turn into a mess at ANI and appear intractable) go there? It links back into Rosguill's idea at AN a few months ago. Whilst there was opposition to adding structure to ANI, there didn't seem to be much opposition to creating a new venue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I personally would support creating a community-based (rather than arbcom-based) AE-type venue, but I am not at all sure that such a proposal would garner enough support to be approved. In any case a large-scale RfC would be required. I anticipate the same kind of objections being raised there as were raised to making AN or ANI more structured, namely that it would make the process more bureaucratic and difficult to use, particularly for less experienced users. Also, many people would object on the grounds that the process gives admins too much power. There actually are people who think that ANI works just fine, or at least that it provides a better venue than AE. Nsk92 (talk) 12:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• I do not particularly like AE, since it suffers from the same problems as arbitration cases, namely if a bunch of people have issues with a user they can uncover so many diffs in no time, that the user has no chance to respond in a comprehensive way; it is also very different to get anybody sanctioned for long-term continuous violations just below the bright line. However, there is one feature of AE which makes it much better than AN/ANI: every case there have to be concluded somehow, it can not go archived without being closed. (Technically, it can and sometimes does, but in practice cases always get closed, even if they need to be returned from the archive).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I mean, nobody likes WP:AE, but what's the alternative? I'm open to ideas. El_C 12:43, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• There is no alternative as such. However, the question is (this is still being discussed at the proposed decision page of the arb case about to be closed) whether the system is good. For example, instead of merely evaluating presented diffs, admins could go and search for their own diffs. I am not necessarily saying that this would be a better system (and certainly it would be more time consuming), but this is clearly something different. I mean, users (I guess) go to AE with two ideas: (i) I will explain my business, and wise admins would figure out what to do; (ii) I will get as many diffs so that the accused party will not have a chance. (ii) is more or less how the US legal system works; (i) is not how we operate but ideally - well, AE admins are supposed to be users with more experience and better ability to figure out what to do.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Sackerson loose at the beargarden

• Discretionary sanctions cover most of the English-speaking world, including America, the British Isles and SE Asia. By being extended to the pandemic and topics like the Holocaust, they now cover most of the globe and modern history too. It's not clear to me that they have had any effect in dealing with controversial topics which seem as intractable and as fraught as ever. We'd need to see some detailed statistics and analysis to establish whether they make any real improvement or whether they are just another layer of complexity per WP:CREEP. My personal experience is that they tend to chill topics when applied so that prudent editors will walk away rather than risk rough justice. For example, I mostly stopped working on pandemic topics when it became clear that RexxS was using such sanctions to police them in a draconian way.

RexxS' style of vigorous patrolling seemed to be the original intent of such sanctions – giving an admin the power to clean up a trouble-spot in the style of a Federal marshal. The AE noticeboard seems to have subverted this as it's a beargarden like ANI in which partisans feud and wikilawyer to try to influence the result. The admins act collectively at AE rather than individually and so it's a political process which returns to the original problem – some admins won't uphold arbcom rulings that they don't agree with. For example, I wrote an article about a BLM activist – Erica Garner. An AP partisan took exception to this and tried to delete it. I noticed that they seemed to be violating a topic ban and reported them at the AE noticeboard. This seemed to be a straightforward matter but there was much noise and confusion and the outcome seemed weak. I'm not an AP regular as I'm British and again the experience seemed chilling – such topics are best avoided and so will be left to the extremists.

Andrew🐉(talk) 12:51, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Extended discussion of a related example

For a fresh example of the ineffectiveness of DS, see ANI where an unblockable has just had a DS block lifted by a mob of supporters. It's the usual highly-politicised drama and nobody seems to come well out of it. It's a storm-in-a-teacup but is now being fed into the partisan press by people with axes to grind. Respectable and sensible editors are likely to regard the proceedings with horror and walk rapidly away from them and the related issues. So, once again, all you're left with are the extremists and fanatics. The main procedural question to be asked here is why was this not taken to AE instead of ANI? Andrew🐉(talk) 11:13, 27 March 2021 (UTC) Since I'm here termed unblockable, I'll just quote from one of our esteemed fellow editors in that discussion: In some cases "unblockable" has meant "behaves inappropriately but has too many supporters to keep blocked". But in some cases it may mean "repeatedly triggers others to behave with inappropriate authoritarianism and is unblocked when it becomes apparent that the authoritarianism was inappropriate". EEng 01:33, 30 March 2021 (UTC) Andrew, that block was not logged at WP:AEL#BLP, so probably was a normal admin enforcement of WP:BLP rather than an WP:ARBBLP action...(?) But then the (text-only) block notice was immediately followed by an ARBBLP DS alert. Confusing, I know. El_C 12:18, 27 March 2021 (UTC) The idea was to give out an AE block, but the problem was that EEng did not have a Ds alert for more than a yer (or may be even never), and in the end it was an ordinary block, which was overturned, well, by a mob of supporters.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC) Ymblanter, I submit that calling myself and others a "mob" isn't to your credit and actually diminishes your underlying point. El_C 12:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC) Yes, you are right, and I have striken this out, though my underlying point has been already flushed down the toilet in that discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:39, 27 March 2021 (UTC) EEng's talk page is on my watchlist and so I noticed the DS warning and block. If I didn't correctly understand the technical niceties then this demonstrates the complexity of the process. Until this discussion, I wasn't aware that such warnings expire after a year and I still have no idea how people keep track of this. El C may recall another recent incident in which I pointed out potential violation of a DS topic ban and the resulting confusion about whether it had expired or not. My general point is to illustrate, by example, how these things work, or don't work in practice. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:00, 27 March 2021 (UTC) Andrew, I often can't even tell what day it is, not to mention month! Will just keep going forward through time, I guess, at least until the backwards time machine arrives — hopefully, minus a blood-thirsty shrimp (afraid). El_C 13:12, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• I have no objections to editors being allowed to opt-in to the structured form, but I actually prefer ANI as I find things like AE force me to bounce up and down and disrupts my understanding of the case. Requirement for diffs etc is of course a clear positive, but I'd say that either is/functionally is/should be the case on any conduct board. With regard to opting-in @Newslinger: this would seem to further enhance the first-mover advantage in multi-disputant (I was amazed to find out that was a word) cases. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Yeah, you said that before, but what's the actual basis in fact for that assertion? My experience, and I think it is shared by many others, is that outside of the really simple AE-at-ANI threads, the tendency is toward a dead-end downward spiral that only topic area regulars are able to follow. Then, there's the extra chaos brought by a no word/diff limit freeflow threaded discussion... No, structure (including word/diff limit) is better for AE matters that aren't immediately digestible. El_C 14:28, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• @El C: I mean of course I've said it before, but logically I'd say it again at the DS review page? In terms of having to bounce up and down - that seems to be a fairly obvious conclusion - if individuals only make a single statement it's fine, but where they're replying to comments made below them, obviously it has that effect. In terms of disruption, it's actually an opinion, "my understanding", but a look through the last 6 months of WT:ACN and Case Request (talk) and Evidence (talk) pages at ArbCom see similar views being raised. I couldn't answer as to what the majority view of the Community is on that particular facet - maybe I am in the minority, maybe I'm in the majority, hence why I was fine with editors requesting it. If you meant the last part of my comment, apologies for dragging you through all of the above! But if the first individual to post gets to set it as "AE-style" or "ANI style", while the other parties to a dispute would disagree, and feel it places them at a disadvantage, that seems to me to be inherently a first-mover case. I didn't mention the (no) word/diff limits, as my comment was primarily meant to be an ANI style with relevance to the facets discussed. I'd be open to further discussion on those particular areas. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Right, but I meant that I had challenged your position (substantively, I felt) when you did assert this before, but you never responded. Sorry, I'm still not seeing how ANI is anything but a recipe for disaster for most AE disputes that aren't of the simple (immediately parsable) variety — and even then, it often still turns quite chaotic by virtue of the format alone + an un/healthy dose of partisanship. El_C 14:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I may have missed that, but to answer yours, I'm not blind to the negatives of ANI and how separating aggressively disputing parties can ease the process. I would also say that AE is not immune to partisanship, but avoids some of that not merely by form but just by lesser numbers participating. That is partly because of its status as not the primary conduct dispute board and partly because of the complex difficulty of AE. Those are not the only factors, I'm well aware. There are likely areas where even I would say that the benefits of the AE split outweigh the negatives of it being harder to read through the whole case and understand how comments, rebuttals, and diffs apply to each other. I'd also say some of the benefits don't belong to the non-threaded style but just due to the other factors that are at ANI but not AE. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: I'm not sure how having the option to start a sectioned discussion about a conduct dispute (whether in AE or another venue) would increase the first-mover advantage for an involved editor. It's true that the first editor to start a noticeboard discussion about any type of dispute gets to select the venue and write the initial comment, which influences the direction of the conversation. However, this advantage is not exclusive to sectioned venues like AE. The notice at the top of AE states, "If you make an enforcement request or comment on a request, your own conduct may be examined as well, and you may be sanctioned for it", which limits the advantage. — Newslinger talk 23:43, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Coming at this from a non-admin angle, I think there is a huge disparity between the tools an admin has available to them under DS versus regular users. For example, let's say hypothetically there was an arbitration remedy that said something weirdly specific like An uninvolved admin may remove any comments in violation of this remedy, and may enforce it with blocks if necessary. Okay, so that's pretty nice for admins and all, but how can a regular user get that enforced? Well, they have to go to WP:AE. That's a ton of drama for really no reason if we are going to be honest with ourselves. Yes, I am referring to a specific incident.
Then you got some stupidly simple matters that need to be taken care of. You have here like BorchePetkovski not following to their topic ban. Honestly, I didn't file that because I figured it would be a waste of time more than anything. At that point, I would've loved for some sort of arbitration-equivalent to WP:AIV that I can just report BorchePetkovski to without needing that much discussion (since it was just so obvious to everyone involved this user was violating their topic ban). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'm going to comment about stuff other than AE. Sometimes, authorizing admins to do things that they could not do without DS works well, and sometimes it doesn't, and that should get a close look. I think one lesson from experience has been that when individual admins fashion complex restrictions on specific users, it frequently does not work very well. Simple TBANS and IBANS that reflect accumulated community experience about what works or doesn't work, are fine, but it gets kludgy when an admin says you can come to me about this but not about that. On the other hand, the availability of DS has made possible some really important good results when admins feel empowered to do things that are not otherwise available to them under the admin policy. I strongly urge ArbCom to examine the background that led to the opening of WP:GMORFC, some time after the GMO case at ArbCom was closed. At the end of the ArbCom case, the GMO topic area remained a nightmare. It took nearly a year for AE to clear out all the remaining disruptive editors, and there were a lot of AE cases, again and again. But I was able to convince an admin (The Wordsmith) to do something that was out-of-the-box, but which did a world of good. Authorized only by DS, we created a community RfC about content (about the safety of eating foods made from GM crops, which was an intense and intractable content dispute even after the ArbCom case), whose consensus would be enforceable as a DS. And the community reached a clear consensus that could be made to stick. And that consensus has actually stood until the present day, and ever since the GMO topic area has been mostly conflict-free! (The source material hasn't changed, so the text has held up, and the only change to the agreed-upon language has been an easy fix of some linter errors in the text.) This was an extreme case of using DS in an unconventional way, but I mean it very seriously when I say that it is one of the most successful examples in en-wiki history, of taking a nasty topic area and making it peaceful. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think AE is great and I would have no problem with also handing community-based GSs. The only problem with AE is that about 10 admins do most of the work. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• My experience of this was in electronic cigarettes; I haven't extensively edited in other topic areas subject to DS. In that topic area, the discretionary sanctions were almost totally ineffective, but all the problems were completely resolved by topic banning one editor.—S Marshall T/C 09:58, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• Discretionary sanctions do work, when applied properly, and AE provides a more structured format to help that happen. They are certainly not a perfect system, but I think they certainly are an improvement over taking a difficult dispute to ANI. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• I have two specific suggestions.
  1. If there is a complaint on WP:AE, and it is sitting without closing for a prolonged period of time (let's say for a week), just close it automatically without action. If admins are not immediately certain what to do with a request, it means the request is too complex for WP:AE, a content dispute or generally something to be resolved by other means. That would also reduce the workload for admins.
  2. I do agree the project needs WP:AE noticeboard. There are also many situations when an admin would issue a block or a ban as a "normal administrative action", i.e. regardless to DS. This is fine. What may be questionable is this. Consider several users who have a heated dispute and discussion about something in a DS area. None of them officially complain about anything on WP:AE or ANI. Perhaps they will be able to resolve their differences. But an admin suddenly appears to topic ban one or several of them for something that would not be sanctioned in other areas. For example, someone made a clearly unfriendly comment and behave in a passive aggressive manner, someone contacted his friends on another wiki, someone arguably followed edits by another contributor to discuss and correct his edits which arguably needed to be discussed and corrected, someone made a couple of reverts, but did not violate 3RR, etc. I think the individual and unsolicited admin actions in DS areas should be limited to only obvious and repeated violations, for example of 3RR or 1RR. Speaking on "solicitation", it does happen that a participant of such disputes approaches a carefully selected admin (who would be presumably friendly to their cause!) with complaints about other users. If that happens, such things should be ignored and the user be directed to a WP:Dispute resolution (rather than to AE or ANI), unless the admin can see a compelling a reason for an immediate block or the reported behavior is indeed so bad it justifies posting on AE or ANI.My very best wishes (talk) 14:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  Administrators taking actions for obvious and repeated violations of policy and other restrictions authorized by the community or the arbitration committee already fall within normal administrative actions. With your suggestion, can you clarify if there is anything additional that an administrator can do for a topic for which discretionary sanctions has been authorized? isaacl (talk) 14:50, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  Sure, there is. For example, someone can be blocked for 3RR violations in any subject area. If that happens several times in a DS area, then issuing a topic ban (which is a remedy specific for DS) would be a proper action. And so on. I just do not think that individual admins should aggressively and proactively patrol the area and users looking for minor violations. My very best wishes (talk) 15:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  OK, so you're suggesting admins should still have the ability to apply remedies that aren't ordinarily available to them, but only in scenarios where they are already empowered to block as a normal admin action? isaacl (talk) 20:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  With this approach, I'm not sure there's a path to apply page-specific restrictions, since those by their nature apply to everyone, even those who did not violate any policies or other restrictions. This would of course simplify the whole framework, and thus awareness would no longer be an issue, without page-specific restrictions and with special remedies only available when a block can normally be done, which typically comes after warnings. isaacl (talk) 20:25, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Speaking rather facetiously, the effectiveness of DS is 100% but only because it is an open door to WP:POV creep, and that in itself is a huge problem. Perhaps one of the contributing issues that tend to magnify the problem is that not all editors/admins admit to or perceive themselves as having a strong POV. In fact, if one truly believes in a cause or has an agenda, call it what you will, they cannot see their own biases, and there are few exceptions, short of focused career training to control it, or simply not caring enough about the topic to give a poop. Some believe their respective POV is the correct one, and that it is supported by facts, which brings up our sourcing issues in today's media environment - another issue that I see problematic relative to admin involvement because sources are a content issue. Journalistic and academic opinions that are laced with bias and presented to us in published sources disguised as or conflated with facts only add to the problems. When an admin considers their POV to be the only correct one, they can't help but see the opposition as being in the wrong and the reason for the disruption; therefore, it becomes validation for taking an AE action at their sole discretion. The topic itself really doesn't matter because it is widespread over many controversial topics, and it threatens NPOV.

  DS inadvertently creates a micromanaged editing environment at controversial articles, which actually allows for POV creep; it's just that simple. Add to that, a combination of other issues, and a DS/AE action performed by a popular admin is highly unlikely to be challenged. Editors sometimes find themselves dealing with close-knit alliances, especially in topic areas that most admins tend to avoid, especially if they don't align with WP's systemic bias.

  For example (and please keep in mind that my examples are focused on the action not whether it was right or wrong), the most recent case involving the recent block of EEng, which another editor mentioned above. It was overturned by Bishonen which could not have happened as easily if it was subject to DS/AE; some see that as a good thing, whereas others do not. In similar fashion, she could not have indef t-banned me at a newly opened ARCA case. She noted in her edit summary that she was "stepping into the firing line", which I think also speaks loudly to this issue. I grabbed those 2 diffs because I'm familiar with those 2 cases, and they were handy, but they also demonstrate two completely different incidents that need careful consideration by ArbCom. Atsme 💬 📧 22:36, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• There is very little evidence that the sanctions work; we need a study carried out in an academic fashion. I posit the following hypothesis, based on my observations: sanctions work according to admins who see them as lessening their burden and are criticized by content creators who feel it places an undue burden on them, and all of this happens through the chilling effects that make those topic areas less attractive to edit; the end result is while there might be less disruption, there is also less content creation/improvement in affected areas. It's like a curfew - it works for reducing crime, but hardly improves the affected society's happiness/economic outlook/etc. We need to try to quantify this, which can be done through both quantitative study (number of edits / articles created / nominated to DYK / improved to GA+ in those topic areas) as well as qualitative (interviews with editors active in this topic area, and dividing their opinions based on their primary role - admin, content creator, discussion participant, etc.). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:58, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Confusion

Have you had confusing experiences with discretionary sanctions, or with editors or templates referencing discretionary sanctions? What were those experiences? What problems have resulted from DS confusion – either your own confusion or someone else's?

Comments by community members (Confusion)

• Every time I think DS is the right tool, I re-read the instructions. I typically get a bunch into it when my eyes glaze over and I realize I don't understand how it works well enough to try using it. So I back away and either use some other tool or just leave the mess for another admin with stronger DS-fu than I possess. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• Finding any manuals is a nightmare. I still do not know which template I must put on the talk page of the editor I sanction. Many administrators are unaware that all admin actions related to DS must be logged at WP:ACDSLOG, this includes a few arbitrators from the committee which made this mandatory. I can imagine that for an ordinary user using DS (for example, to report another user) seems similar to, I do not know, operating a submarine.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:04, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Essentially, there's the stuff at T:DSA, and there's {{AE sanction}} and {{uw-aeblock}}. Just have these links prominently displayed at the top of key AE pages (or in some FAQ), and I think we're good, no? El_C 12:39, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, it would be a good starting point (though I remember I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what goes to the article talk pages, and what goes to the user talk pages), but a comprehensive FAQ would be much better. The problem is usually nobody is willing to invest time to document such stuff (in particular, writing a FAQ).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Ymblanter, this is explained at the bottom of T:DSA — maybe also refactor it to the top...? El_C 12:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Even this would help (I guess many users do not make it to the bottom), but a visible link in all templates would be even better.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Like. El_C 13:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I avoid using DS or handling DS for the reasons stated above. We have so many layers of sanction, if I can't just use standard admin discretion, I tend to let someone else handle it. We desperately need some simplification, not just for admin who are supposed to know all this, but for the editors on both sides of DS. I think the main issue is we have expanded "sanction" in so many areas over the years, it's hard to keep up unless you devote a lot of time to it. Not everyone wants to do that, which is why only a small subset of admin want to mess with it. No one's fault, it's just time to reorganize how we do special sanctions on the whole. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:46, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

My only time were there was some serious confusion with DS should no longer be an issue. That time I am referring to was my filing against CatCafe. However, with the recent Gender and sexuality motion, this concern has already been addressed. Therefore, I just want to take the time to say thank you to Barkeep49 (for bringing it up), KevinL (for drafting the motion), and the rest of arbcom for getting that done! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:14, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not an admin, but as an editor, DS is extremely confusing. Maybe it's the newness on my part, but any written guidelines and policies we have on how DS works for an editor takes a while to comprehend; it's only clicking today for me after 3 days of thinking about it. I doubt I'm the only one who's confused. A lot of newer editors start because they are passionate about various topics; frequently said topics end up being sanctioned. Just throwing a sanctions notice or warning on their talk doesn't really ease the confusion due to how the resources on what DS/GS is being confusing in itself. I agree with @Dennis Brown: that a simplification needs to take place not just for admins but also for editors. Sennecaster (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• I find DS quite seriously confusing and use it more as a sign that a given editing area is likely full of too much drama to involve myself with than anything. None of it has made particular sense to me -- I have a DS alert notice for an area I can't recall ever editing and take no interest in. Even as the sort of weirdo who reads the DS pages for fun, they're more inscrutable than edifying. Vaticidalprophet 00:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Implementing bans isn't generally a difficult call, I have no problem assessing diffs and following what applies where, but the amount of logging makes my head spin. It's why I'll comment but almost never close an AE anymore, I don't have the inclination to murder however many electrons would be necessary to figure out where the hell to log what. I don't know if there's a good solution to it, or I'd suggest it, but if anyone comes up with one I'll happily help to implement it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:47, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• I've never found discretionary sanctions confusing.—S Marshall T/C 10:22, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• I find the process pretty straightforward. I have seen some editors confused by what topic and interaction bans mean, but generally some discussion with the admin who has imposed them can clear that up. In the remaining cases, I think the "confusion" is a result of willful ignorance rather than a genuine inability to understand. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:58, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Confusion? Let me count the ways. There is far too much confusion relative to how far DS/AE reaches into content issues rather than behavior. And then we have the confusion created by some of the good faith attempts to zero-in on problem areas. Unfortunately, those attempts have resulted in micromanagement of DS in highly controversial topic areas, creating even more confusion as evidenced in the deprecation of a few DS that Awilley personally crafted. See User:Awilley/Discretionary_sanctions. As expected, the winning side of those arguments will approve those measures despite the issues they create because POV creep rids a topic area of opposing views but don't take my word for it, read what two American academics had to say. ^{Adding a few more diffs:} Also see Wired, this Stanford article, and Investor's Business Daily. An editor started keeping a record of admin actions that provide some insight, although after he left the project, the updates eventually stopped. Additionally, DS/AE POV creep issues are sometimes manifested as oblique admin involvement. We already know that admin involvement needs to be more clearly defined, completely eliminating the gray areas of admin action vs action based on prejudice against an editor, inadvertent or otherwise, especially in cases where we see the same 2 or 3 admins HOUNDING an editor or policing the same controversial topic areas over time. The problems tend to ebb and flow with the changing tide, particularly in the political arena, but somebody's gotta do it. We can't place all the blame on "unblockables" because there is so much more involved. And here is another example: User_talk:Awilley/Discretionary_sanctions#WP:INVOLVED. Atsme 💬 📧 23:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC) ^{Added a few more diffs in the body text 01:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)}

  I'm amused to see The Critic completely misunderstand my comment at the WMF statement. Since apparently an answer key is required, I noted that said statement made me think of a song called The Color Of Right; anyone who actually listened to that song would immediately recognize it was obviously not in support of the WMF saying anything and, instead, would much rather they let the community's editing speak for itself, i.e. Show Don't Tell. I mean come on, a Canadian trio that now has to be written about in past tense didn't tip people off? Don't people listen to good music anymore? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:44, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Agree that it was not the best example, so I struck it. Atsme 💬 📧 05:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Pain points

Have there been any other pain points in your experience with discretionary sanctions? What, and where, were they?

Comments by community members (Pain points)

• For some really hot topics, or for some high-profile editors, AE really turns into a bloodbath with hundreds of diffs, some relevant, some not, which no admin is willing to wade through.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Sorry, what is a "pain point"? I don't think I've ever seen that word combination. Anyway, wrt to Ymblanter's point above: a more proactive enforcement of the word/diff limit is what's required here (and doing away with the practice of adding these through the back door via collapsed comments). El_C 12:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

    El C, it's a buzzword, refers to a recurring problem that impacts your business and/or drives away customers, my understanding is usually that it's a process issue. For example, if your ecommerce website were set up such that an employee had to manually update the in-stock counts after a customer made a purchase, that would be a pain point for everybody - employees are spending time on an easily automated task, the in-stock counts might be wrong since an employee forgot to update them...that kind of thing. In this context, it's basically asking "what parts of DS are unnecessarily complicated?" ^{SubjectiveNotability} _{a GN franchise} (talk to the boss) 13:46, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

    Ah, I learned something new. Thanks! El_C 14:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC) And now I encounter it in passing — that is quite the happenstance! El_C 07:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• I find that the burden of evidence on trying to appeal AE sanctions is insane. It's functionally "clear and present error by the sanctioning admin" - I find this unacceptably high. Particularly non-experienced editors have to clear a very tough hill to reduce sanctions. The methodology also has the perverse incentive of making an editor have to concede fault if they want to request an easing six months down the line, even if that requires them to lie. That's not just AE, but for other things (like, say, siteblocks applied under normal sanctions) getting there required a better burden of evidence. Here, if a sanction was questionable but not clearly overturned, the odds of an editor having to fake guilt are significantly higher. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • As you yourself note, this may be more of a WP:GAB spillover than an AE-specific matter (but with AE's extra complexity attached). El_C 14:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    • On the latter point, that may well be the case. It is an issue, but I would say it is secondary to the first point (and if that was addressed, as a side effect, I'd mind less about it). It's not relevant here, but a discussion on how to handle Sock cases where someone is blocked on a "probable" and this exact issue is another minor bug bear of mine. One injustice at a time, though ;) Nosebagbear (talk) 14:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Indef blocked as a regular admin action kills me every time I see it at WP:AE. To me, that means there is a significant gap with how DS works that needs to be addressed. If admins can't indef block (without banning) a user under the DS regime, we got some serious problems in my opinion. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:48, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators can issue an indefinite block as a discretionary sanction. They can still, however, issue blocks that fall under the normal operating procedure for any page. So if someone persistently vandalizes a page for which discretionary sanctions has been authorized, an administrator can issue an indefinite block without it being a discretionary sanction. Noting that it was done as a regular admin action clarifies that the block can be reversed following normal procedures, and doesn't require following the discretionary sanctions rules to be undone. isaacl (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

WP:ACDS § Sanctions allows for "blocks of up to one year in duration". Blocks exceeding one year can be issued as standard administrative actions. The strongest available sanction in the current version of this system is an indefinite block, in which the first year is an arbitration enforcement action and the remaining duration is a standard administrative action. — Newslinger talk 02:25, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

My apologies; I clearly blanked on this limit. It's basically a sunset clause to allow for review after a year. Though perhaps the normal discretionary sanctions appeal route should be sufficient. isaacl (talk) 04:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• The DS awareness requirements are arcane, as ARBCOM members themselves have noted. As a general principle, it's perfectly reasonable to say that an editor should not be sanctioned under a set of rules they are genuinely unaware of. As regular participants at AE know, though, this idea has been codified in ways that have been gamed. The awareness requirements have also made it particularly challenging to deal with sporadic editors; see for instance this request, which was unactionable because 15 months had elapsed since the last notification, but where it was quite implausible that the editor was unaware of the DS regime. Furthermore, since DS notifications themselves may be perceived as threatening, we're advised to not use them more than once a year: but they expire after a year, which makes it very difficult for a sporadic editor to be made continuously "aware" of the DS regimes. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:16, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• 1RR. A separate comment, since this is a separate point; endless wikilawyering around 1RR, and to a lesser extent around the consensus required/enforced BRD sanctions is a serious problem particularly in ARBAP2 and ARBPIA. I don't think I need to elaborate further; there's reams of evidence in the archives. With this endless wikilawyering comes confusion for enforcing admins, because of the need for consistency with one's colleagues. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:19, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'll just note that the CR/EBRD enhancements are almost entirely confined to AP2. I've added one to ARBPIA, ever I think (to Palestinian enclaves a month or so ago). And I'm pretty sure that's it. All the rest were AP2 — which makes sense, due to the much greater traffic attributed to Americans making up the majority of our editorial pool (as well as overall readership). El_C 21:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Oh, and of course, also CR for the MEK, one of the most intractable pages on the project for some reason, and probably the main reason WP:GS/IRANPOL exists. Though, there I did so with the expressed consensus of both sides, after I had proposed (rather than having unilaterally imposed) it. Weird, though, how I would forget about it after responding to Vanamonde — seeing as him and myself have been responsible for 90 percent of all admin work for that page in the last few years (and both also having had enough of it). Sorry for the digression! El_C 04:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• In electronic cigarettes the problem that I experienced was a lack of enforcement. I found the discretionary sanctions toothless and impotent because nobody was implementing them---and I suspect that this is because it would have been a colossal time-sink, working with a very active, very verbose, very dysfunctional long-term editor with entrenched behaviours and his own vocal group of supporters.—S Marshall T/C 10:27, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with enforcement issues. Perhaps not in American politics, but in other topic areas it is variant, and in some nearly non-existent. Good time to plug in this comment from Levivich: [1] ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• Given that some AE threads become very complicated and very difficult to parse, I'll shamelessly promote WP:2WRONGS – not that it's a cure-all, but it can help in some cases. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• DS templates on talk pages - I don't know if this has been mentioned anywhere, but there is a sub-set of editors who simply spam DS-templates onto people's talk pages whenever those people are engaged in an editing dispute with them. This is very WP:BITE-y behaviour and makes Wiki seem like a very unfriendly place. To those unfamiliar with Wiki, it gives the (wrong) impression that those editors are empowered to sanction people directly without any further process. 1RR particularly causes this. FOARP (talk) 09:09, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with Ymblanter about the diffs. If our Arbs are not already quite familiar with WP:POV railroad, I hope they will take the time to do so. When we're dealing with POV issues in highly controversial topic areas, editors wanting to rid themselves of productive opposition will resort to rather extreme measures. There have been instances when 50+/- diffs were presented and not one was a smoking gun. Inundating a noticeboard, AE, ARCA and ArbCom with lots of diffs is a strategy that works, even when most, if not all, are innocuous. Diffs taken out of context are a big problem, and so are diffs prepended with or followed by aspersions. There should be a limit on the number of diffs. One other point, admins who have repeatedly demonstrated their bias about a particular topic should not police that topic area, and if an admin has demonstrated prejudice against an editor, they should be considered involved. Atsme 💬 📧 01:03, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Section-by-section feedback on current procedure

In this section, please provide thoughts on individual sections and aspects of the discretionary sanctions procedure. Comments can include, but are not limited to: (a) support for the current section, (b) problems arising from the current section, (c) suggestions for improvements to the section, specific or general, and (d) provisions that should be addressed in the section, but are not currently included.

The fact that a section is included below does not mean that the Committee expects feedback on it; some sections that are likely to be uncontroversial are included for completeness.

Definitions and terminology

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Definitions as well as any other terminology-related feedback.

Comments by community members (Definitions and terminology)

• I suggested unilateral as a better word than discretionary. Another alternative is irrevocable. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• Like many things in Wikipedia land, the name is sticky but the definition has drifted. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that the term "discretionary" doesn't elucidate things. I suggest they be renamed "General Sanctions"; we will have "General Sanctions imposed by ARBCOM" and "General Sanctions imposed by the community". User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:25, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators (Definitions and terminology)

• @Andrew Davidson: (and others): this comment isn't the first time I've seen confusion about the name expressed. Do you have any suggestions on an alternative? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Authorisation

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Authorisation.

Comments by community members (Authorisation)

• All authorisations should be reviewed periodically to see if they are still required. Reviews should have a lightweight first step that can produce one of three outcomes relatively quickly without the need for much Committee effort - obviously still required (→ no further action), obviously no longer required (→ authorisation withdrawn), (lack of) need is not obvious (→ more detailed review). The more detailed review would lead to possible outcomes of keeping, withdrawing or modifying. Thryduulf (talk) 01:11, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I'd agree with this. Timeline for an initial review should perhaps be custom in the originating motion/case, with a standard timeline after then (some DS has specific reasons that trigger it that may indicate a logical review period). We'd need an initial run-through over a period of a few months, so as to avoid killing off the arbs, but that would also mean they were spaced out in the future, which would be good. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:46, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• There is never any justification for them. They do nothing ordinary sanctions cannot do, and the stickiness is an invitation to prejudice, either with respect to the topic or the editor. Iif special sanctions are needed, they can be only fairly placed by consensus's of a group of experienced editors after open discussion--that is, by arb com itself. This doesn't eliminate the possibility o prejudice, but it greatly reduces it. If we make the error of continuing them at all, I agree with the above comments for how to deal with them , as I detail below with respect to some existing topics. DGG ( talk ) 01:47, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• I would oppose an automatic sunset --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:42, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• The Arbitration Committee retains ownership of the sanctions, so it's up to the AC either to review them as and when necessary, or else (preferably) to establish an advisory body whose role is to review discretionary sanctions and offer draft decisions about them for the AC to endorse or reject.—S Marshall T/C 10:31, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Any editor can ask that the ArbCom review an area of discretionary sanctions if they feel they're no longer necessary. I in fact did that on one occasion, and found the Committee to be very reasonable in reviewing it and ultimately deciding that DS was no longer necessary there. Unfortunately, many areas where DS are currently imposed are likely to require them for a long time to come, so I would oppose any automatic "sunset". If someone thinks they're no longer necessary in some area, go to ARCA and make your case. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• The only reason I don't support automatic sunset provisions for authorization is because Arbcom has historically done reviews like this to achieve the same effect. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 07:08, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Guidance for editors

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Guidance for editors.

Comments by community members (Guidance for editors)

• I do not understand why AN is a permitted venue for DS requests/appeals. AE is so much superior in all respects.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The ability to appeal sanctions (except those made directly by ArbCom) directly to the community is important. The level of review by ArbCom I presume varies depending on the ArbCom of the year–the current one appears to hold the view that their job is assessing whether the admin acted within discretionary bounds rather than assessing whether the sanction is good or appropriate. And there's also the fact that some (many?) appeals at AE have low admin participation. Given also the widespread nature of DS, and how easy it is for it to be used, it's rather vital imho that the process not entirely be disconnected from community consensus. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:14, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• The problem I see with going directly to the community are the pile-ons by the opposition and lack of decorum. I agree with Ymblanter that AE is much more efficient, as is ARCA, provided we can prevent prejudiced/biased/involved admins and editors from hi-jacking the discussion and poisoning the well. That's when we tend to find ourselves facing the hegemony of the asshole consensus.

  Another point: The availability of discretionary sanctions is not intended to prevent free and candid discussion, but sanctions may be imposed if an editor severely or persistently disrupts discussion. It's too vague, especially when dealing with DS involving 1RR/consensus required. If only 1 editor sees that there's an issue and 5 don't, then that single editor has to present their argument to 5 different editors who are making comments and asking questions. Of course that single editor will appear to be bludgeoning when in fact they are not - they are simply responding and presenting their argument. Each of the 5 editors will have made fewer comments than the single editor - it's a numbers game. There should not be any time or length restrictions when debating an issue in an effort to reach consensus or achieve NPOV. "Severely" or "persistently" can mean any number of things to an admin who is prejudiced and similar applies to POV warriors who may be dominating a discussion, and that's when a single editor is likely to be hearing a train whistle on the POV railroad. Atsme 💬 📧 01:42, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• I too, feel that ability to appeal directly to community is important - for two main reasons. One is that WP:AN uses a more rational burden of evidence for overturning than AN:AE does, and the other is that AN:AE using the consensus amongst admins, rather than of editors, when that isn't strictly necessary, is anathema to many. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:58, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Awareness

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Awareness.

Comments by community members (Awareness)

• The principal problem with WP:AWARE is all the wikilawyering over DS alert updates, with these often involving a loophole for topic area regulars, who, ironically, themselves may be more familiar with the respective arcane rules of this or that arbitration case than even yours truly (which says a lot!). Note, for example, my March 2021 ARCA, which involved an AE decision on my part being questioned because the annual DS alert update was 10 days overdue! El_C 03:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• "In the last twelve months, the editor has successfully appealed all their own sanctions relating to the area of conflict." - sanctions already expired can not be appealed, but #2 still includes them.--GZWDer (talk) 03:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• The intent of the awareness system is good, but it has become overly burocratic and isn't achieving it's goals - I think reform rather than abandonment is the ideal here. It should be extremely hard to wikilawyer out of awareness, so go with approximates, examples and ranges rather than absolute limits. If you were alerted three years ago and haven't had a break from the topic area then you are still aware, even without a formal reminder but if you made a handful of edits 8 months ago and haven't been back you might not still be - attempting to wikilawyer about awareness should be regarded as evidence of awareness. Thryduulf (talk) 04:42, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Like. El_C 10:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  "attempting to wikilawyer about awareness should be regarded as evidence of awareness" Amen to that. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• The awareness system is broken. Discretionary sanctions are more frequent/regular currently than when implemented, I'd guess. It should change to an editnotice based system. The Committee should use its leverage, along with Jimbo's endorsement, to get the WMF to fix the editnotice issues in User:Suffusion of Yellow/Mobile communication bugs (in particular the fact that mobile editors can't see them). Then move to a system where DS is announced in page editnotices instead. Most people see editnotices, some might naturally skip over them due to banner blindness perhaps, but DS awareness isn't really (anymore) the kinda thing that absolutely needs user talk page acknowledgement via alerts. Some technical quirks of making sure they display would have to be worked out, but relatively minor detail. For example, for BLPs you'd probably want to add a sentence into Template:BLP editintro rather than add a new notice. Admins should still generally give warnings for conduct regardless, as they (probably) do now, as rectification is always better than sanctions, but it would cut through this bureaucracy. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:54, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Don't disagree with much of this proposed expansion, except its key assertion: not sure getting rid of user talk page DS alerts is the way to go here, actually. El_C 12:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    • I don't feel user talk page alerts can be reformed. People can genuinely forget about DS authorisations in topic areas so reminders are appropriate. To fix the "10 days overdue" issue you'd have to add more exceptions/awareness criteria that includes topic regulars but somehow excludes irregular editors, and that would add even more 'awareness law' and complexity. In contrast, editnotices are always on pages so it's impossible to say you can't see them (unless using mobile atm, or using some kinda script to hide them). I dislike the ideology behind ds/alert in general; most times I see editors seeing them for the first time they're either confused or offended. I think informational non-fault alerts is an unintuitive concept. And given many DS sanctions would probably be made as normal actions if DS didn't exist (compared to just allowing the conduct to persist) I also don't think it's entirely necessary. But just my views on it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:18, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
      • Sure, but it doesn't seem that practical to me, to start picking and choosing which user requires a DS alert for extra emphasis. And needing to customize these here and there, if the entire set up were to be removed, is likely to prove to be a lot of work — maybe not for you so much, but for me, certainly. El_C 12:30, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
        • To clarify: in my suggestion above no editor would need a DS alert for extra emphasis. But the idea has a gap in cases where DS sanctions extend to 'edits relating to' (for example, WP:GENSEX could presumably apply all the way to userspace, which wouldn't have relevant page notices). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:43, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
          • I dunno, I think there's many users, new or just new to DS, that would benefit from a user talk page DS alert, which would also give them a chance to query about this or that DS-related matter (i.e. prompted by the "extra-emphasis," which may lead to quicker resolutions). El_C 12:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Agreed with those above that the issue is that wikilawyering is easy. I would simply extend the period for which the awareness lasts from one year to three or five years. If someone is genuinely not aware of something because they received a template four years ago and forgot then discretionary sanctions against them don't have to be used, and already shouldn't be unless there's a threat of them repeating the behaviour (sanctions are preventative, not punitive). This does give admins additional discretionary power, but not power in a different direction/scope to the power they already have, and I would deem it worth it for the reduction in bureacuracy and book-keeping needed. — Bilorv (talk) 12:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• My separate concern is how exactly does awareness help? In theory, if you're doing nothing wrong (as the alert would lead you to believe), what are you meant to do now that you've gotten the alert? Stop editing in the topic area entirely to avoid sanctions? If, instead, you are doing something wrong, surely it would be better to be told exactly what you're doing wrong so you can improve (rather than being told there's no issue with your editing)? In some ways discovering a lack of alert is a 'second chance' if you weren't aware when an admin wanted to sanction, but this seems arbitrary (as, perhaps, you might have a random alert from 9 months ago so now you're sanctionable?) And how is any of this distinct to normal policies enacted by the community, or even essays/info pages at times, which you're not expected to be 'aware' of before editing but are blockable? The logic/purpose of awareness has never quite made sense to me. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:19, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• Per my comment above, awareness requirements are a disaster; we need a way to protect editors genuinely unaware of sanctions regimes, but prevent any other wikilawyering. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• The awareness system is a disaster --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:17, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Just ditch it. We assume that the enforcers have good judgment (because that's inherent in the idea that sanctions are discretionary), so in cases where there's genuine doubt about awareness, they can decide whether to inform on first contact with a problem editor. Community members shouldn't be templating each other about this: the level of confrontation and automation involved is inimical to a productive editing environment.—S Marshall T/C 10:38, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Just ditch it. We wouldn't need this at all if every admin always warned editors prior to blocking or otherwise sanctioning them (excepting obvious emergency cases, such as runaway vandals). If admins warned before sanctioning, then we wouldn't need any other alertness requirement. Perhaps replace the awareness requirement with a first-time-must-warn requirement (except for obvious emergency cases... but in those cases, DS isn't needed anyway, as regular blocks, etc., will do). The warning should be explicit ("If you do X again, you will be blocked/banned"). Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:12, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• The newer awareness system is poor. As it currently stands, an editor is "aware" if given a notice 364 days before sanctions are requested against them, but becomes "unaware" if that notice was instead issued 366 days ago. I am not certain of the magic properties which cause editors to lose such awareness on the 365th day. Once aware, it is the responsibility of the editor who edits in the area in question to keep that in mind, and they should thereafter be considered to be "aware" after in any way showing themselves to be. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:17, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• I support the removal of the unnecessarily bureaucratic awareness system. At a minimum, awareness should not be a requirement for editors to be summoned to the arbitration enforcement (AE) noticeboard. The expectations for editors in areas covered by DS are exactly the same as in other areas, but with the addition of page restrictions. If a warning template were created for page restriction violations, there would be a full set of warning templates to cover all of the common conduct issues under DS. WP:ACDS § Sanctions and WP:ACDS § Role of administrators require AE sanctions to be "proportionate", which precludes administrators from issuing sanctions before editors are properly warned in all but the most egregious incidents (and even then, the most egregious incidents can simply be addressed with a standard indefinite block). — Newslinger talk 16:11, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• I don't know if I would go as far as everyone else in this discussion and support removing the awareness system altogether. However, I do think reforms are needed, and the bare minimum should be the removal of sanction-specific awareness rules. If an editor knows (or is told) about discretionary sanctions in general, then they can take the time to annually check what topics are currently sanctioned. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• I support the elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy that results in further complications. Editors who misbehave, edit war, etc. need only an editor's warning to stop followed by an admin warning, and ultimately an admin action, in that order, if they persist. It doesn't require DS/AE to stop disruption. DS/AE has become a tool to eliminate editors and IDONTLIKEIT content stemming from POV, not behavioral disruption which can be eliminated without DS/AE as I've already evidenced in an earlier comment. Also of note, I personally have a custom DS aware notice at the top of my UTP, which I struggled to achieve at ARCA because of all the bureaucracy as evidenced here, but I persisted and it was finally approved User_talk:Atsme/Archive_32#Your request at ARCA. Such persistence would probably have resulted in a t-ban at a controversial article. Also keep in mind that whenever DS are active at an article, there is (or should be) an explanatory notice of that sanction when in edit view, so if an editor actually edits that article, they are aware it is under DS. There is also a notice at the top of the article TP. Perhaps it's time to stop coddling editors, and in particular IPs (who may be socks of blocked or t-banned editors). Is there a way to prevent IPs from editing in controversial topic areas until they have achieved at least a 1,000 edits and minimum of 6 mos. under their belt (which will help eliminate the bulk of dynamic IP socks, would it not)? Or perhaps create a welcome template that lists the controversial topic areas with a friendly caution to new editors making them aware from the moment their UTP is created? Atsme 💬 📧 12:10, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• I agree awareness is broken, and suggest throwing the whole concept out. Editors should already be aware that disruptive behavior is not allowed on the project; whether they know the arcana of enforcement isn't relevant. A note that appeals from individuals new to the topic area will be more likely to be granted may or may not be necessary. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators (Awareness)

• The sentiment here is noble, to avoid "gotcha" moments and make sure good-faith mistakes aren't met with disproportionate punishment. I'd like to be able to preserve that without being too gameable or requiring a wiki-JD to comprehend. --BDD (talk) 18:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Alerts

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Alerts and related templates.

Comments by community members (Alerts)

• If the alerting system is to remain in place, the {{Ds/alert}} template should have a note indicating that editors can opt out of receiving alerts by placing the {{Ds/aware}} template on their user talk page. — Newslinger talk 00:34, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Like. El_C 03:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this, I sometimes mention it when renewing one. —PaleoNeonate – 03:42, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Aware.alert wrongly says that an alert template "is purely informational and neither implies nor expresses a finding of fault". It implies and expresses a finding of fault because of the way it is used in practice. Someone wants to report you but you're not DS/aware so they can't, and instead they give the template. Someone you're arguing with gets angry and gives you an alert template mostly to be rude and off-putting (... but you're the troublemaker if you tell someone else that they're doing that as the template ostensibly does not imply fault). The template needs to be redesigned in visual style, prose content and usage so that it is genuinely not a warning/threat. I think of this 2018 proposal regularly, as it hit the nail on the head, but as far as I am aware no substantive change came from it. Bot delivery would be just one solution, but it's not healthy to continue a system where your "enemy" will tell you "better watch out, you can be sanctioned if you do any amorphously-defined 'disruption'". To pre-empt the reply "it already says in the template it doesn't imply bad behaviour, it's worded fine already", in almost every case I have seen a user receiving an alert with no further context does not sit down and read every word in detail emotionlessly, but sees the big scary template and reads "past disruption" and "sanctions" and goes "this user is threatening me".
  Rewording is needed to make the tone actively positive (as the 2018 proposal gives good suggestions for). For instance, rather than "Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.", say "Discussions in this topic area often become heated, so to keep people on-topic and maintain a positive atmosphere, users who violate Wikipedia's policies can be given discretionary sanctions by an administrator. Page-specific restrictions put limits on the number or type of changes that can be made without discussion" (just there to get the gist of tone across, not suggesting literally this wording). — Bilorv (talk) 12:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  This. My experience is frequently an increase in tensions after an alert has been placed. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:28, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  I'm not sure how measurable of a thing that is. Sometime, no alert can lead to even greater tension in the long run. But, at its heart, this may be simply counter-factual in nature. El_C 21:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Agree with mentioning {{Ds/aware}} opt out in alert banners, proposed by Newslinger above. If my talk page were to be dominated by annual alert banners for every topic it would make me look like a perennial problem editor. The banner should contain instructions on opting-out. -- M.boli (talk) 13:24, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• As I mentioned in the "Other" section, the {{Ds/alert}} template should handle multiple topic areas in a single banner, and display them as a bulleted list (like {{Ds/aware}}). There are many articles that are covered by multiple topic areas under discretionary sanctions, and sending two or more alerts at the same time generates a lot of redundant text on the alerted editor's user talk page. It would also be helpful to fold general sanctions topic areas into the {{Ds/alert}} template, instead of requiring a separate {{Gs/alert}} template. — Newslinger talk 00:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Regarding alerting editors that discretionary sanctions has been authorized for a given page: the audience for which this is useful is those who know the usual bounds on sanctions an administrator can impose, and who are choosing to act uncollaboratively in some way, while feeling justified in doing so (for example, an editor might feel justified in edit warring to counteract a certain type of edit being made repeatedly). The first condition excludes most newcomers, including single purpose accounts, and the second excludes the collaborative editors involved.
• Given that this audience already has a certain familiarity with the procedures of English Wikipedia, perhaps it is sufficient to post a one-time, single alert message on their talk page, telling them about how the authorization for discretionary sanctions works in general, and that they should check the associated talk page for pages they edit for any appropriate notice regarding any area under discretionary sanctions. If they edit a page within an affected area for which there is a corresponding talk page notice, they will be deemed to be aware of the authorization for that area, even when editing other related pages that don't have an explicit talk page notice. Admins can continue to use their own discretion to evaluate the editor's awareness of the authorization when deciding on whether or not to impose sanctions. isaacl (talk) 16:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• I'm well aware of discretionary sanctions and I don't require to be told about them.—S Marshall T/C 10:33, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Awareness should be handled by common sense and the current system is overly bureaucratic. For example, as often as I handle AE requests, it would be ludicrous for me to claim lack of "awareness" of them in really any area. Yet under the current system, I actually could claim that. If it's clear an editor is genuinely unaware but has been behaving badly in a DS area, it's easy enough to close an AE request with a notice to them that DS covers the area, what that means, and what the possible consequences of further violations are. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:22, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• See my comment in DS aware re: permanent notice at the top of my UTP. I have it linked so that it triggers a long list of sanctions and it updates with the sanction page. Atsme 💬 📧 12:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• In practice, I use the American Politics ds-alert as an equivalent of uw-vandalism1 for disruptive edits in that topic area. I think having a templated warning that describes the discretionary sanctions area to new users is useful. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:30, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Role of administrators

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Role of administrators.

Comments by community members (Role of administrators)

• This may just belong in another section, but I think is the most logical section. I would say that at a minimum we should discuss whether appeals should be purely judged by a consensus (the issues with a "clear and substantial" consensus I raise elsewhere) of the administrators at AE. That's very rare on Wikipedia. It makes sense for the original sanction, but I'm unsure how firm the benefits are of making the appeal process use that, rather than "uninvolved editors", as is the case at ANI. While AE specialists are mostly admins, it's certainly not ubiquitous. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

AE sanctions don't require a consensus, any admin can act unilaterally. As for appeals, I think the reason for appeals being heard by admin only has to do with the expertise needed to wade through the diffs. Most admin don't even try to participate because they feel they don't fully understand the underlying Arb case that the sanction is based upon. Trying to read consensus of random editors would be tricky, as even fewer would understand the original Arb case the sanction is applied under. Trying to copy ANI would be a mistake, where it is often more of a popularity contest than a system for finding the Truth®. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Does the original arb case have much to do with enforcing DS? I mean, surely the specific issues of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2 are irrelevant to what problematic conduct in the American politics topic area looks like? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

If we are talking about AE, then you should be at least familiar with the final outcome of the case, yes. How can you be enforcing (the E in AE) an Arbcom ruling if you aren't at least somewhat familiar with it? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

As I understood it, it's only "arbitration enforcement" because it's enforcement of a remedy (DS) by ArbCom in a case. But I feel like the specific issues of the case have little to do with how the DS of that case is used. For example, I'm guessing the protection of Jill Biden (under AP2 DS) is probably unrelated to the dispute or issues between MrX et al and Collect back in the AP2 case, similar for gender and sexuality DS usage (pre-shell-case) having little to do with Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate#Locus_of_the_dispute and the disputes in that case, and most WP:ARBKURDS enforcement will probably have little to do with the Syrian Kurdistan dispute and the particular parties/incidents of that case. I may be wrong, though, as I admit I haven't read any of those cases closely. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

The merits may not be related, but the restriction and authority granted by Arb matters. Never will the merits be the same what was in the original case, but admin still need to be aware of the original case when they are enforcing a restriction that was granted under it. That is the sole authority for the sanction. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, I protected Jill Biden preemptively upon Joe Biden assuming the presidency. El_C 21:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown:, much (as you say) only a small proportion of admins participate in AE (and thus those that do generally have knowledge of the field), why would the same not apply to, say, EC users (EC would make sense to avoid those who might not be aware of how much there is to know). There are hyper-experienced users who are not admins, and would definitely have something to add to the actual decision-making of appeals beyond a pure-admin process. Nosebagbear (talk) 00:30, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you are going with this, this isn't an RFC on who gets to !vote in AE appeals. Because it is enforcing, on behalf of Arbcom, it was set up with admin hearing the appeals. Do you have any examples of this not working properly? If not, this is academic, and out of scope for this section on "Alerts". Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:55, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: - it would indeed be out of scope for "alerts", but it's in a "Role of administrators" section, afaict? I'm not sure why it enforcing on behalf of arbcom inherently means it has to be admins (obviously the actual emplacing of DS sanctions is individual admins, but that doesn't logically obligate that the appeal process must be). The project should, and usually does, auto-default to Community decision, assessed by consensus unless there are very firm reasons why not. The burden of evidence is to show that allowing experienced non-admins to not just comment but have their comments considered as part of the closing assessment would be a negative, not the other way around. In terms of "this isn't an RFC on who gets to !vote in AE appeals", it's a discussion to review all the facets of DS, of which AE appeals are a significant component. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:00, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

My 2c: Unlike AN, which has a diverse range of participation from editors, I don't think AE is such a venue and I dunno if there's non-admin AE regulars (if there are, I have a feeling they'd tend to not be neutral/unbiased on the issues). If one wants the community to assess their appeal, there is always the option of appealing to AN rather than AE (which is probably the route I would want to use, personally). IMO: It's not a good thing to dress up AE as a community consensus venue when, by design really, it isn't. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Well said. AE isn't "above" or "below" AN/ANI, it just has a different purpose; a limited scope, but admin have a lot of leeway in acting, so it is somewhat more efficient. As far as I know, any sanction can be appealed at AN, or ANI, although AN tends to be a better venue due to the lower signal to noise ratio. Often, editors appeal at AE because they don't want a lot of other voices to pipe in, they feel the matter is straight forward and can be handled better and faster at AE. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• The bulk of substantive DS enforcement (imposition of topic bans and sanctions for violating them) happens at AE, so the role of AE is certainly relevant here. In fact, almost all cases that come to AE now concern DS, and very few concern individual sanctions imposed directly in arbitration decisions. A crucial advantage (but also a potential weakness) of AE is that the decisions there are made only by uninvolved admins. That brings a much greater degree of sanity to the process since the dispitants themselves, whose participation usually quickly poisons relevant AN/ANI threads, are consigned to the shouting gallery. At the same time, the process gives the admins, specifically the AE admins, much greater power and influence over DS related areas. AE needs sufficiently active and broad admin participation in order to be effective and to be seen as legitimate, and that's where the greatest weakness of the process currently rests. Relatively few admins participate in AE on a regular basis, and there is insufficient admin rotation there. Both of these issues need to be addressed. AE work is difficult and labor intensive, and admins who choose to invest their time and efforts their deserve a great deal of credit. But rotation and greater admin participation are still needed. An admin who spends a lot of time at AE probably has (much) greater influence in arbitration areas than arbcom members themselves. The arbcom only hears a small number of cases per year, while AE deals with a great many of them, on a continuous basis. While arbcom members are elected, AE admins are not (beyond passing the RfA). I think ArbCom needs to institute some kind of a system which will ensure regular rotation at AE. For example, create a subpage, where an admin could specify their status as "AE active" for particular periods, and set a rule that an admin cannot be AE active for more than X months per calendar year (where X is, say, equal to 3 or 4). If admins are currently listed as "AE active", the clerks should be allowed to ping them in cases of AE backlog. Incidentally, AE needs a much better organized system of clerking too. Perhaps the arbcom clerks can be officially deputized to help out there. Nsk92 (talk) 02:15, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Appeals have got to be reviewed by a consensus of uninvolved admins, because DS are used where the normal community consensus method has broken down. This is one of the very few areas where adminship does need to be a big deal.—S Marshall T/C 10:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @S Marshall: A lot of the time though the reasoning is more that the Community is acting too slowly on the sanctioning side of things. DS doesn't get bought in because the normal community consensus method has broken down on the appeal side of things. With regard to @Nsk92:'s comment , one potential issue for this is that this could reduce the number of admins in AE without encouraging more in, and pinging them is likely to drive people out of the list. For this method to work, it needs to be paired with methods that will, effectively, triple the active AE group. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Let's not forget ARCA. Please forgive the length of my comment, but much is needed to be said. We already know a problem exists when one group of editors has first advantage over another, and when absolute power has been granted to individual admins in the form of unilateral actions that cannot be overturned by another admin, but above all, when the remedies create more problems than the disputes they're intended to remedy. If all we can say is DS eliminated a single editor, well, that doesn't say much. My concern is that DS/AE is more focused on eliminating opposition which is not disruption. We need different perspectives from our polar opposites in order to achieve NPOV. Yet, DS has lowered the bar so much that it allows a targeted editor to be eliminated for violating the WP:Thicker skin sanction. Yep, that's what we've been reduced to thanks to DS/AE. In a nutshell, we are basically allowing single admins to do the job of an entire committee that was entrusted to do that job - at least, that's how I see it.

  Sole discretion eliminates any hope of getting a fair evaluation by a more balanced panel of our peers, which requires at least 5 to 7 different arbs reviewing the case. DS/AE also tends to create an environment of fear and anxiety in controversial topic areas which is neither inviting, especially to female editors, nor conducive to a "friendly working environment" that inspires editors to write engaging prose or present all substantial views without concern of being reverted, or verbally attacked. Some, if not most, of the editors who prevail in DS/AE cases tend to be rather bold, some could even be considered aggressive. Others may be considered POV pushers or "unblockables" which is an advantage that comes when one aligns with the ideological bias on Wikipedia, and that makes achieving NPOV a bit more difficult. Most of us are aware of the double standards and strong partisan influences in certain topic areas. At least at ARCA, the ball bounces back into the court of ArbCom where it belongs, especially in light of the fact that ArbCom created DS/AE for cases that could not be resolved in any other DR venue. Ironic, isn't it? Think about that for a minute while taking into consideration ArbCom's transference of the resolution process to the sole discretion of individual admins who were also granted absolute power. The process eventually takes us back to square one for the appeal; ouroboros comes to mind.

  Why on earth would unresolvable disputes be turned over to the sole discretion of a single admin, possibly even a prejudiced admin who has strong partisan views? I see no justification for creating DS/AE only to throw the ball back into the court of disruption. That's passing the buck without being able to say "the buck stops here", because it doesn't stop. And here we are today with a DS/AE process that is riddled with micromanagement pitfalls. Who validates an AE action or is it simply taken for granted? What about instances when an admin targets an editor or denies their direct appeal to remove their imposed t-ban based on POV reasoning, not to mention that the admin's status could possibly be considered INVOLVED? I'm not saying all admins behave improperly; in fact, I believe quite the opposite is true for the majority of our hard working sysops, many of whom have earned my utmost respect. Unfortunately, it only takes a few RGW advocates/POV warriors to disrupt the balance. When admins are known to aggressively defend their "pocket editors" and/or "admin allies" in topic areas subject to DS/AE, and go so far as to openly exhibit obvious prejudices toward certain editors by HOUNDING and issuing warnings or worse, t-banning or blocking an editor over an innocent tongue-in-cheek comment, or statement of fact about one of their pocket editors/allies that simply didn't like - well, it is undoubtedly a serious problem per HOUNDING, not to mention ToU and WMF's recent attempts to create a more welcoming environment for editors. Sole discretion and absolute power is one of the main reasons I supported the 10 year admin evaluation proposal. Something definitely needs to change. Atsme 💬 📧 18:18, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Note: some of my comments above probably belong in the various sections below, so please feel free to apply them as applicable. I feel that I've covered the main points - but tomorrow is another day, right? Atsme 💬 📧 18:22, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Expectations of administrators

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Expectations of administrators.

Comments by community members (Expectations of administrators)

• Barkeep49 I am not quite sure what you mean. Uninvolved admin, as opposed to what? Involved admin?--Ymblanter (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, I still do not understand. Currently, all threads are closed by an uninvolved admin implementing consensus (if it is possible to determine consensus). The exceptions are threads closed prematurely, and these are closed as a non-AE action (for example, if one of the sides is WP:NOTHERE it usually does not make sense to go through the whole AE circle). If you mean that this is not currently formalized and should be formalized, I agree.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:48, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Barkeep49: In some way, it is a direct application of WP:CONSENSUS, but, yes, we can benefit from writing this down directly.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I do not have issues with the text, but an elephant in the room is of course WP:INVOLVED which currently is not aligned with the text.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:39, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• Perhaps WP:INVOLVED should be improved or supplemented by a "code of conduct". For example, I think an admin should generally avoid sanctioning users in a subject area where she/he has a strong opinion, even if his specific actions could be supported by other admins. They should also avoid making an impression that they single out specific contributors (with whom they philosophically disagree on issues in such subject area) to sanction them. Consider the following hypothetical example. An admin A has a strong personal opinion in DS area X as follows from his comments. He takes a part in RSNB discussion where he happened to strongly disagree with user U on something from this DS-covered area. He then advise another user to submit an AE request about user U, which results in no action. He then warns U about his alleged misbehavior. While every single action by A may be justifiable (and he is probably not "involved"?), this whole story does not look good, and I would argue that A must leave user U alone. There are other admins around who are very much capable. My very best wishes (talk) 15:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators (Expectations of administrators)

• One thing that has been on my mind is what kind of responsibility to admin have around consensus once something has reached AE. There has been a trend towards uninvolved admin finding consensus in more complicated cases. Should this be formalized? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Ymblanter: as opposed to an admin just closing it as an individual. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:43, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Ymblanter: you write Currently, all threads are closed by an uninvolved admin implementing consensus (if it is possible to determine consensus). My point is that is a norm but it isn't actually written in the policy. My question is, should it be? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:54, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Editor restrictions

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Sanctions and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Broadly construed, and related templates.

Comments by community members (Editor restrictions)

• Responding to ping by Barkeep: for what it's worth, I think my list of custom sanctions got a lot of attention due to me actually codifying them in my userspace, but I only ever applied them to a handful of editors (maybe 7). And I haven't applied any since 2019, so there are no editors currently under sanction. (I used a duration of 1 year.) My sanctions weren't exactly original either. Looking through the logs I have found examples of similar sanctions applied by other admins or by the community. That said, I'm fairly happy with how they worked in most of the cases where I applied them. In the majority of cases I saw a noticeable change in behavior without any further admin intervention required. In two cases I didn't notice significant behavior change, but those two editors were soon after topic-banned or site-banned. ~Awilley (talk) 21:54, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I understand this as saying in effect that Awilley intends not to use them again. I'm glad to hear it, but they should still be deprecated because of the possibility of someone else trying them. And without any reflections on anyone in particular, they are making things really susceptible to prejudice or dislike of a particular person by a particular admin. , DGG ( talk ) 01:42, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say that. If I see a need I may use some of them again, probably the "no personal comments" sanction as it was the most successful in helping editors avoid or resolve unnecessary conflict that would otherwise derail talk page discussions and waste time at WP:AE. As for other admins, I trust them to use their own discretion. ~Awilley (talk) 02:20, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• Without commenting on when or whether it is appropriate for an individual admin to issue a bespoke sanction, I like most of the ideas at User:Awilley/Discretionary sanctions as wikilawyer-proof ideas targeted at the root cause of conflict. It is good to hear Awilley give positive description to their consequences, as I have seen sanctions like IBANs fail because both participants are determined to wikilawyer the generality of the wording to get an inch, then two inches, and so on until they reach 63,360 inches. Introducing a too-broad sanction can even worsen an editor's behaviour, because it just gives the bad faith actor more fodder for argument and wikilawyering, and the admin feels somewhat obliged to respond in the name of accountability (even though accountability only means giving an adequate justification, not having to reply every time you are asked something you have already explained). It is better for someone to be sanctioned as specifically as possible, so that everyone is clear on what the exact issue is and knows that it will not be tolerated, as well as to avoid collateral in preventing them from making productive actions where they have been doing. — Bilorv (talk) 21:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators (Editor restrictions)

• This also applies to page restrictions, but something on my mind has been the role bespoke/custom/unusual sanctions play. There has been a lot of discussion at various times about Awilley's list of sanctions. I wanted to note this for possible comment by people who have thoughts on the topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:28, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Page restrictions

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Page restrictions and related templates.

Comments by community members (Page restrictions)

• In many cases a page restriction (or protection) is applied like candy and never revisited again. It might've been appropriate for the time it was applied, but I'm not a fan of indefinite restrictions or protections. They should all be expiring (1 yr max?) and reinstated if there continues to be a need for the action. I suspect many DS protections or 1RRs are currently unnecessary. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The problem is that for many pages, a year will not do it, so unless there is a system that alerts about annual AE protection expiration, the level of disruption (including for BLPs) could prove taxing, at best, and disastrous, at worst. El_C 12:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    • In what way? So on one page perhaps another edit war happens a few months after it's loosened, so the 1RR is reinstated for another year (or up to that). Maybe Donald Trump will, realistically, always need 1RR. But what about Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign, or 2020 United States Senate elections 1RR and consensus required due to edit warring over the order of images in infoboxes. Nov 2020 (unlikely still needed), 2020 United States presidential election in New Hampshire Semi-protected, 1RR, Consensus Required, due to edit warring over early results. Nov 2020 (early results were many months ago, unlikely still needed). Yet they're all indefinite, even though the rationale was time-based. The log is packed with such examples. Antithetical to "Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

      Just noting that as of November 2020, Donald Trump is not under a 1RR restriction [2] ~Awilley (talk) 22:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

      • ProcrastinatingReader, my view is that there's too many perennial examples to even list, for multiple AE topic areas. You cite examples that bolster your proposal, but I don't think they're representative enough for such a drastic change. Certainly, a reminder to be more judicious about setting a realistic expiration, rather than defaulting to setting page-level restrictions not to expire, would be a good thing. But, again, I don't think your universal 1-year limit proposal would be beneficial. Too much hammer in search of a nail. El_C 12:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        I like speaking in terms of concrete examples (in part so everyone's on the same page wrt what's being discussed, but also so vague concerns which may be addressable can be addressed rather than giving up & throwing in the towel). Perhaps an enforced 1 year maximum is too extreme (not imo but your, and the arbs', mileage may vary). But it's a starting point to a solution. There's a real problem with temporary issues being slapped with indefinite restrictions and protections which this review should address. And ideally in a retroactive manner, because there's a lot of pages with these currently. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        It's a problematic approach (to use selective examples that bolster one's proposal), again, because of the sheer number of perennial examples involved. But I feel like I'm repeating myself at this point. Anyway, bottom line: to me, the risks outweigh the benefits. Of course, this does not preclude setting up a review mechanism, if it can be put into practice. El_C 13:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        I think the key thing here is that indefinate != infinite. If you (or anyone) feel there are restrictions that are no longer needed there should be a simple, low-drama way of reviewing their continued applicability. Maybe to make it very light weight, have a place where any page restrictions that have been in place for more than one year since implementation (or >6 months since most recent review) can be listed. After say 7 days the restriction will be lifted unless there is a consensus that it is still required (i.e. no consensus or no comments = no more restriction). There will need to be a way of noting on the talk page that a restriction was reviewed on <date> and determined to still be required but that shouldn't be difficult. Notification of the listing would just be to the admin who placed the restriction and the talk page of the article concerned. Ideally the article alerts bot would highlight the request to other potential interested parties. Any restriction ineligible for this light-weight review would just be appealed with a full AE review. Thryduulf (talk) 18:24, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        @Thryduulf: That approach would work, but I would prefer pages after one year be automatically added (by a bot?) to that noticeboard, pinging the admin and leaving a talk page notice. Requiring people to submit requests themselves will just be as much of a failure as all those unnecessarily full-protected redirects/salted titles that are a lost cause. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        Hmm, that risks wasting time with pages that very clearly still need a restriction and overwhelming the process if there is no phased introduction. I suppose one way for a phased introduction would be for automatic nomination on the anniversary of the restriction being placed rather than just "it's been greater than 12 months". Manual review requests should also be permitted. Thryduulf (talk) 18:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        This would require the date a restriction was placed being bot readable. For a restriction like page protection that's easy (at least mostly - cases of indef semiprotection temporarily upgraded to full and then returned back to semi might be tricky, I'm not sure), but for something like consensus required I don't know. Making the talkpage template indicating a review that determined continued need for restriction machine readable is something that can be designed in from the start so not a big issue. The bot would also need to know the nature of the restriction and who placed it - I honestly don't know if this is going to an issue or not. Thryduulf (talk) 18:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

        The role consensus, or no consensus, plays is something I would love to see more written about. I touched on one piece above in terms of AE but the change Thryduulf presentes would be a shift in how we review consensus as up until now no consensus has defaulted to the initial decision (in this case protection). Barkeep49 (talk) 18:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• There needs to be a more clear and well defined procedure for where and how editors can request that some pages be placed under DS restrictions (or even just to have talk page notices placed of pages being subject to DS). It's unclear at the moment if one needs to file an actual AE report for doing that, or just make a request at WT:AE or do something else. Nsk92 (talk) 13:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think that for simple AE protection requests, WP:RFPP works well enough, but for some more complex ones, it's a bit too fast-pace of a venue. Still, most of the time, RfPP AE requests are of a simple nature (well, to me at least, which may well not be representative for others). Anyway, a new request mechanism for 1RR (etc.) + complex AE protection requests could prove useful. El_C 13:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  I've found RfPP to be useless at downgrading even normal protections, given admins are so scared of the spectre of wheel warring even for uncontroversial requests where the protection is blatantly overreaching and the admin is AWOL, never mind AE ones (which, if I understand correctly require either agreement of the enforcing admin or a consensus at AE). So I'm not sure RfPP actually works here? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:40, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

What? We're talking about protection requests. I don't understand what downgrading (rare) has to do with anything. Very confused. El_C 21:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• I would prefer an easier method to have these reviewed, and quite possibly an automatic one. The list of pages it applies to is gigantic, and I think it's (much) more than a few selected examples that shouldn't be under the page limitations anymore. Perhaps one option would be to review instances where the edit count is under a certain number (say, 60 edits a year (5/month avg)). In more active pages, there should be enough editors so that if there is a general thinking that a change would be beneficial, there will be someone around confident enough to ask for it. Likewise, the likelihood of issues is higher on those pages (in absolute terms, if not per edit). Having the default restriction length set to a year might also help without preventing setting indef where needed - nudge theory can work well. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:51, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• There absolutely needs to be some way to set an expiration time on page-level sanctions. And it wouldn't be that difficult to implement. Just add date parameters for expiration in the sanctions templates that go on the talk page and edit notice, and specify that if no expiration is set then any admin can remove the sanction one year after it was placed. Trying to track down the original admin who placed the sanction is too cumbersome, and even when I do, I find that half the time the admin is inactive or too busy to respond to my messages or emails asking them to change something. Just 3 days ago I spent nearly 2 hours reviewing and removing unnecessary 1RR restrictions from 24 articles that had been sanctioned in 2015-2016. And I'm maybe halfway through my list of articles with stale sanctions placed by a former admin that I have the authority to clean up. ~Awilley (talk) 22:18, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• As with individual sanctions, I hold to the basic opinion that the time in WP where DS are needed is over--the original and only real justification was contending admins, resulting in reversal of blocks without consensus. I don't see the current admins as prone to do this. The problem with page sanctions in addition to this is their possibility of use for biasing discussion. Therefore, DS should never be needed, and we should instead be discussing how to do orginary sanctions. (I may expands on this later) DGG ( talk ) 01:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with your line of thinking on this. I think page restrictions might have a place, but only as temporary measures and much more limited in scope, such as when a shooting happens or while a topic is "hot", such as during the past election, or after the storming of the Capital. 30-90 days seems the right range most of the time, IF you are going to use it at all. DS and page restrictions are used all too often and it does seem to choke off healthy debate. My own history at AE shows I'm way more likely to sanction "as a normal admin action" than under DS, which simplifies appealing or modification of the sanction, without losing anything in the effectiveness of the sanction. I think DS is being used as a sledgehammer right now, and this isn't healthy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 12:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  Just wanted to say that 1RR page restrictions on "hot" topics like recent shootings, controversial election results, and the like, are a really bad idea. Topics about recent events tend to attract a large number of new and inexperienced editors with little agendas that are often poorly executed. Basically there's a flood of low quality edits that needs to be curated by more experienced editors. Slapping down a 1RR restriction severely hampers the work of the experienced editors, but has almost zero effect on the new editors who don't notice the talk page template, don't understand that edit warring isn't permitted, and can't be sanctioned unless they breach 3RR or receive the mandatory DS alert, are notified of the 1RR, and then continue edit warring. (Meanwhile they run roughshod over the people who are following 1RR.) Additionally, spotting 1RR violations is really hard when there are hundreds of edits per day. ~Awilley (talk) 14:40, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think page restrictions like 1RR are fine if they are used for a limited period of time (agree with Dennis). However, they must be very simple and understandable for every user. No "consensus required" restrictions, please, and no restrictions on the types of RS to be used on a page. My very best wishes (talk) 16:03, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• There may need to be a new noticeboard separate from RFPP/AE/ARCA for discussion of page sanctions. It's not clear where I would ask for a sanction to be removed. RFPP works decently for ECP requests, but isn't great for the others; AE and ARCA feel too heavyweight and generally discuss other topics. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:34, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Enforcement of discretionary sanctions actions

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Enforcement.

Logging

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Logging.

Comments by community members (Logging)

• Just an observation: If one wants to check if an editor is sanctioned (eg, tbanned somewhere), as far as I can tell they need to check Wikipedia:Editing restrictions for direct ArbCom or community sanctions, then (for DS actions) WP:AELOG and a dozen WP:GS subpages. I'm not entirely sure this is ideal. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:01, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Spamming my proposal at AN#No log to record non-AE restriction violations. A dedicated, overarching search function could prove useful, in any case. El_C 14:15, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• While I didn't like the log at first, it is better than logging at each case. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 04:45, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• Unless someone is going to design a software change that the WMF would then need to implement, I don't see any improvements that can be made to logging. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Dismissing an enforcement request

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Dismissing an enforcement request.

Appeals

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Appeals by sanctioned editors.

Modifications

This includes feedback on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Modifications by administrators.

Comments by community members (Modifications)

• "first-mover advantage" is oftentimes wikispeak for "I can't unblock my friends." I am skeptical that it is really a problem --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 15:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators (Modifications)

• One thing I'd like to see discussed is the "first-mover advantage". Most of Wikipedia has a second-mover advantage for admin actions: if an action is taken and then reversed, it cannot be reinstated without strong consensus. DS (intentionally) shifts this: if an AE action is taken, it cannot be reversed without strong consensus. What are the pros and cons of this system? Is it too strong? Too weak? What is the justification for having this in DS topics but not in other topics? I have my thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see some community comment first. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 21:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Other

This includes feedback on any other sections of the discretionary sanctions procedure, any other Arbitration Committee procedures that impact discretionary sanctions, any other templates and miscellaneous pages related to discretionary sanctions, and any sections that should be added to the discretionary sanctions procedure that do not relate to one of the above sections.

Comments by community members (Other)

• The Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions page (WP:ACDS) is in need of a lead section that summarizes the system without requiring the reader to skim the entire page to understand it. The "nutshell" template at the top tells the reader what DS is, but does not inform the reader about how DS works. Without a lead section, the WP:ACDS page can be intimidating, especially since it starts with a list of definitions and is written in a more formal tone than many policies and guidelines. — Newslinger talk 00:42, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• The templates contain a lot of nonsense words that don't seem relevant or make sense. They should be rewritten from scratch. Additionally, some of them just aren't intuitive imo. The alerts, for example, always seem to catch people off (in particular "It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.") probably because people aren't naturally used to the idea of informational notices to alert people to sanctions whilst (supposedly) no-fault implied. (links back to why {{ds/alert}} should be scrapped) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Also, this or this feels like banner blindness. Could we condense down talk notices where there's an overlap of multiple topic areas? On Bill Gates there's also a community GS (COVID), which leads me to suggesting if it may be a good idea to combine the fragmented {{Gs}} and {{Ds}} template sets? They're near identical at this point, and it would be a convenience improvement in other regards too (eg being able to use {{alert|covid}} rather than remebering to use {{gs/alert}} not {{ds/alert}} because it happens to be community-authorised). There's various other template changes I'd suggest but I don't have a cohesive list (+ if I did start writing it all out this page will have too many words from just me). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Ideally, there would be one article talk notice template that handles both discretionary sanctions ({{Ds/talk notice}}) and general sanctions ({{Gs/talk notice}}), and allows multiple topic areas to be specified and displayed as a bulleted list. {{Ds/aware}} works this way (but does not handle GS topic areas). Template consolidation would benefit the {{Ds/alert}} and {{Gs/alert}} user talk page alerts as well. — Newslinger talk 00:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• A bit OT, but can we please refactor WP:ARCA threads into a dedicated archive? (Sorry for the bold, but I've raised this multiple times, though granted, more as an aside.) El_C 12:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  El C, this has been discussed recently on the list on your suggestion, but no conclusion was reached. I'll post on the list about your suggestion and see if I can get it going again. As there is the PD for RexxS, the open ARCA and this going on it might be a while before a decision is made on what to do. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 13:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Oh, cool, Dreamy Jazz, that's good to know. I'll just stress that sometime I end up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to locate this or that relevant ARCA, so an extra- the sooner the better nudge. El_C 13:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• (Not really sure where to put this comment) There are multiple comments about the overlap with general sanctions, the unfriendliness of templates, confusion among new users about what "discretionary sanctions" means and there being a stigma of getting a template. I'm wondering if as part of the reform a new system with a different name into which both DS and GS could be folded would work with authorisations being able to be made by either Arbcom or the Community. Obviously merging is not something the committee can do on its own, but setting up a structure that the Community could merge/move GS into if it chooses is. The name should not include the word "sanctions" and should not imply any wrongdoing on the part of someone receiving an alert (assuming that alerts will still be a thing). "Additional" is a word I keep coming back to, as that also has the clear meaning that it doesn't replace the normal tools or requirements. "Additional scrutiny areas" is the best I've come up with but I really don't think it's actually very good. "Additional rules for contentious topic areas" is terrible, but sort of gets at what they are. Thryduulf (talk) 02:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  I agree it could do with some kind of a merge with GS, but I also (now) feel like the system benefits better from Committee oversight and control. At least with the Committee there will always be a determination one way or the other as to clarification or changes (like this review), whereas with the community I've often gotten the feel that few editors are interested and it's hard to reach consensus on issues. (if it's helpful at all: I drafted this earlier this year, a possible proposal to keep the two in sync at least, together with changes like a single AE-like venue for both).

  I feel like 'rules' is not quite the right descriptor, as they're mostly tools for admins and a set of procedural mechanisms (even more-so than 'procedural policies' like WP:BOTPOL), rather than restrictions or guidelines for editors. I mean, yes, editors shouldn't engage in conduct problems, but that's true of any editing area. Something like 'heightened scrutiny' is accurate in the same sense I guess, but not very informative imo. But I agree it could do with a rename. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  Strongly agree with ditching the nomenclature. Both words, "discretionary" and "sanctions" are vague and could mean multiple things, and don't really adequately describe what this is. Calling these "discretionary" sanctions implies that other sanctions are not discretionary, but in fact, all sanctions are discretionary: we're all volunteers, nobody is ever required to sanction anyone under any circumstances, which means every time a person presses the block button, they are choosing to do so, and therefore using their discretion. "Sanction" is problematic because it implies a penalty (when we try really hard to say it's not punitive), and also because the word can mean to prohibit or to allow, which is inherently very confusing. ("General" sanctions are also poorly named, because they're not general at all, they're specific to certain enumerated topic areas; it's the opposite of "general". Our editing policy is where the "general" sanctions, like 3RR, are actually laid out.) So what's a better name? I'm not sure either. Maybe something like "special restrictions" or "enhanced restrictions". Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:21, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  I don't have an issue with changing the terminology. To clarify, though, it's not about discretion on the application of sanctions, but the type of sanction. Ordinarily, the only sanction an administrator can apply is a block for immediate disruption. Everything else needs community authorization (either ahead of time or through a new discussion), with arbitration remedies having community authorization through delegation to the arbitration committee.

  Since general sanctions are rules that apply for topic areas, perhaps they can be called "topic-related restrictions". The subcategory "authorization of discretionary sanctions" could be called "authorization to prescribe rules", as in "The community has authorized administrators to prescribe rules to resolve disputes in specific topic areas." isaacl (talk) 18:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• Question. Why doesn't arbspace itself fall under discretionary sanctions in general? You'd think it would be, but it isn't. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:31, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  Can you clarify what pages you are thinking of when you say "arbspace", and why you think it is desirable for discretionary sanctions to be authorized for them? isaacl (talk) 15:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  I would define arbspace as any page that primarily has to do with Wikipedia:Arbitration or the Arbitration Committee.
  As for the benefit, I don't know. I know it's a general rule to be on your best behavoir when dealing with arbitration stuff. I also know that clerks have a lot of authority to sanction users in arbcom proceedings. Maybe this would let admins help, too? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  The arbitration committee is empowered to set up rules and procedures to be followed on arbitration case pages. I don't think it would helpful to allow individual administrators to devise new rules for contributing to arbitration case pages, or other pages such as the arbitration committee noticeboard talk page, the arbitration committee talk page, and the arbitration request talk page (to which various pages such as Wikipedia talk:Arbitration redirect). isaacl (talk) 19:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Currently authorized discretionary sanctions topics

This includes feedback on any specific authorizations of discretionary sanctions, including housekeeping arguments that a particular discretionary sanctions authorization should be rescinded.

Comments by community members (Currently authorized discretionary sanctions topics)

• The Acupuncture DS ("Complementary and Alternative Medicine") doesn't entirely make sense (vs the Psuedoscience DS) and seems to just cause a split log at WP:AEL. Alternative medicine is, by definition, psuedoscience. Reading over Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Acupuncture it feels like the concern was that "psuedoscience" is derogatary. In that case, it may be better to merge the two together and just expand the scope to "pseudoscience, fringe science, or complementary/alternative medicine" and merge the two logs together. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

In my experience, there are few categories DS on the books generally fall into: ethnic disputes, fringe science pushing, new religious movements, Wikipedia-specific disputes, and political/sociological controversies. Some good work has been placed in re-organizing the various ethnic dispute sanctions such as the merging of Balkans with Eastern Europe while separating out Antisemitism in Poland. Speaking generally, the sanctions related to fringe science need pruning, the new religious movement ones need consolidation, and the ethnic disputes need some pruning as well.

Ethnic disputes

I have already mentioned the most useless of the DS is probably Liancourt Rocks (detail can be found here). In a similar vein to Liancourt Rocks is Senkaku Islands. While I am a little hesitant to say arbcom should axe Senkaku Islands, it's just too narrow to be significantly helpful. Ethnic dispute sanctions generally work best with a clearly define (albeit broad) scope, and while my guess some part of Southeast Asia will eventually find itself back WP:ARC in the future... I haven't seen the community unable to address it so far.

Fringe science pushing

There is some more room here to prune some rather useless s ds authorizations which are pretty much only used occasionally (if at all). You can generally tell that's the case because their headings don't even consistently really appear in the AE log much anymore. If you were to cut some DS regarding fringe sciences, I would suggest: Shakespeare authorship question – main article isn't even semi-protected. Ancient Egyptian race controversy – major articles like Cleopatra race controversy aren't even tagged with the arbcom notice on their talk. No mention in the log. Longevity – This one is practically done already. Template:Ds/topics lists it as inactive, but no motion has been made to that effect (in fact the opposite). Electronic Cigarettes – this one is a bit of a hot take, and I hope this suggestion doesn't detract from my other suggestions here... However, in the six years this ds has been on the books, it's barely been used. That's pretty sad considering this FoF. Though, to be honest, I am rather a fan of this remedy against SPAs since that is the biggest issue with the topic area. I will be honest by saying I don't know for sure what should happen here, but a conversation should probably be held at some point.

New religious movements

The main issue with these DS are that they need consolidation. First you need a catch-all case, and I think Landmark Worldwide would probably be the perfect one to do that with since it was actually about whether Landmark Worldwide was a New religious movement or not. You can then bring Transcendental Meditation movement, Falun Gong, Prem Rawat, Prem Rawat 2, and maybe Waldorf education (I'm wary about that last one being consolidated since there is some COI stuff there as well). It also naturally expands the scope to include topics like Ahmadiyya which saw a ton of disruption a few months ago.[3][4][5][6] While Scientology could also be covered here, I'd rather see it kept it separated for historical reasons. It's one of the few DS where I think its lack of use is a sign it's working.

I have no idea how to even approach the last category (the Wikipedia/meta ones). The ones in this category include BLP, Medicine, ATC, and Infobox 2. Their sanctions are incredibly unlike the other topics under DS (except maybe Electronic Cigarettes), so I can't really suggest any changes to them (especially because they are the ones I have the least experience in project-side). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• Alternative medicine is not necessarily pseudoscience, though they overlap./ I do not think we are entitled to make the judgment required by calling something pseudoscience except in the most obvious cases,, and even then I'm not sure. I 've generally urged that its sufficient to describe the status in text, without using a judgmental word in at the lead. But the arb com decision here attempted to clarify the use of the terms. It's not for them to do so, but the community. Therefore all DS resulting from any of these cases are invalid, regardess of ones views on DS

In addition, the DS in these cases have sometimes been used to advance the views of the person doing the sanctions, thus making use of the power of arb com to make specific subject decisions (the fact that I almost always agree with the decisions here isn't relevant to my view about how we should decide on these. ). This is Arb com's well-intentioned use of DS resulting in supporting bias.

• • Other fringe science topics--- I agree with MJL. None of the existing ones are actually all that active.
  • The Ancient Egyptian cases fields have become less actitve. DS is not needed.
  • Longevity is I think also settled into a consensus position--there seem to no longer ber the unceasing attacks on the guidelines there were originally. DS even if it was once justified is no longer necessary.
  • New Religious movements tend to have the key controversy time-limited. DS is only justified if there are admins with sharply divergent viewpoints prepared to use sanction to express them. I don't see DS in this area as currently necessary, but it remains possible. Keeping it in the background without an immediate current problem is however not appropriate even if DS were sometimes needed--its much too broad. I think Scientology is dead issue. Landmark mgiht be still live, but DS here amountto making a judgement (a judgment with which I agree quite strongly), but is nonetheless outside the scope of arbcom.
  • Ethnic disputes is where the remaining problems exist. I still don't like DS, but in some of these, there is at least the possibility that it actually still be needed. The limitation here is bias, and the possibility of contending biases from different admins does exist in this area.
  • Electronic cigarettes -- this is a possible use for DS, because the accepted standard consensus viewpoint in the two largest English-speaking counties is opposite, and there are admins in each. I see no indication they are howeverl ikely now to get into situations which would need them.
  • Meta:
    • BLP is not meta in the same sense as the others. Its an area where drastic action is considered justified, and where here will always be new problems that fall within the area. My personal view is that our restrictions can be over-limiting, but I think hte community consensus is otherwise. But I do not see admins reversing each other at BLP to the extentt here used to be. But I can also see theview that its necessary to keep this in reserve.
    • I don't consider medicine as meta. I consider it arb com invovling itself in a valid dispute about hte appropriate contents of a WP article. The result, which I presume unintended, was to bias the decision--which, again, should not be the concern of arb com.
    • ATC and Infoboxes are pretty much the definition of meta, and the type of problems where WP is capable of going in circles. They are fields where sanctions might well be necessary, but I see no evidence that the special provisions of DS are needed. I think existing admins have enoughsense to not require them

so , even if we take the position that the use of DS may sometimes be necessary and appropriate, which I do not agree with, we end up with 3 possible use cases only: Ethnic disputes, NRM, and BLP. DGG ( talk ) 01:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

This comment doesn't address discretionary sanctions in any of the contentious political topic areas – including post-1992 American politics (which was determined to be necessary earlier this year); India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; and Eastern Europe or the Balkans – yet still dismisses them as unnecessary. Having seen the disruption in all three of these topic areas in the past year, I agree with the arbitrators who authorized discretionary sanctions in these areas that they are necessary. — Newslinger talk 02:43, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• • Alternative medicine is not by definition pseudoscience; pseudoscience includes ideas and concepts purportedly based on "science" but aren't. Alternative medicine is medicine not based on science. While usually alternative medicine is backed by pseudoscience in that the practicioners claim their treatments are scientific when they aren't, this is not always the case such as for the many forms of "faith healing" or other supernatural healing methods. Faith healing doesn't claim to be backed by science (and therefore isn't pseudoscience) but is still a form of alternative medicine. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 08:07, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• I think all subject areas under DS which did not receive any new blocks, bans and restrictions (in log) during last one or two years should be automatically void/discontinued. Consider Senakiku islands as an example. My very best wishes (talk) 15:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• The example that comes to mind for me for an area that seems to have grown past the DS need is Waldorf education, which seems to have been placed as a result of a 2007 dispute between a small group of editors. I can't see any logged actions since 2014, although I may be missing something. Vaticidalprophet 00:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Fundamentally Wikipedia has a double standard with respect to "shithole countries" (as DS treats them) compared to nice Western countries. Whenever there is an ethnic, religious, or political conflict in a "shithole country" such as Armenia vs. Azerbaijan or India vs Pakistan or the Horn of Africa, all articles on all the countries involved get discretionary sanctions. It doesn't matter if you are writing about an uncontroversial Bollywood movie; that's subject to discretionary sanctions. Meanwhile, the mostly Western disputes such as those on race/intelligence (because we all know it's about saying Black people are less smart than white people), September 11, post 1992 american politics, the troubles, etc etc get treated with very limited sanctions specific to the area of conflict. If America was a shithole country the second it had a political issue we'd get discretionary sanctions relating to the United States broadly construed.
• You know what I'd love to see? All of these sanctions limited to the ACTUAL conflicts in question and potentially even split up into more granular topic areas. Because right now the system as applied is institutionalized racism and a double standard that sees non-Western countries smacked with broad sanctions at the first sign of trouble while Western countries actually have effort put into crafting limited sanctions tailored to the issues in question. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 07:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  I also feel this sentiment. In particular, everything relating to India and Pakistan is under sanctions, as well as practically the entire Middle East. In comparison, only a few America-focused issues are under separate sanctions rather than the entire country (eg politics, gender, guns, 9/11). Whilst I appreciate the number of articles on the former perhaps, relatively speaking, don't add up to as many, the optics aren't particularly great imo. I do suspect they're used (possibly infrequently?) in the broader authorisation but that's not really an excuse; I suspect if you authorised a DS for everything and everyone America-related that too would end up being used, but that doesn't mean it's necessary. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:32, 28 March 2021 (UTC) e: 16:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @ProcrastinatingReader and Chess: The problem with India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine is that those conflicts leak into the most mundane articles within the topic area. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 16:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Guerillero: Then there's nothing wrong with just applying discretionary sanctions to just the parts of the articles related to that conflict. Again, the same arguments can be made for the USA. I see American politics constantly leak into "mundane" articles especially now that the Trump era has lead to the politicization of almost everything in the US (Home Alone 2 now has discretionary sanctions for instance). I don't see anyone arguing that we need sanctions on America related topics broadly construed though. There's no reason why administrators need broad discretionary sanction powers for all topics related to India or Pakistan (or Afghanistan) to deal with the India-Pakistan conflict; no Western country gets treated this way. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 21:59, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Chess: The sanctions of India-Pakistan are used to cover conflicts within Indian politics, Hinduism/Hindu nationalism, Indian-Pakistani relations, the Kashmir conflict specifically, Muslims in India, Bangladesh-Pakistani relations, Tamil nationalism, and several more subjects. The heart of the dispute is how life is lived in these countries for various groups. Yes, obviously the sanctions as written are broad enough to include every single Bollywood film (like Rampaat), but in practice sanctions really shouldn't ever really be applied there.
  Also, it isn't true that no Western countries get this kind of treatment. Almost a third of Europe is under discretionary sanctions. Contrast that to South America or East Asia where there are few (if any) sanctions in place right now. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  @MJL: How hard is it to create more than one area where discretionary sanctions apply? India along with many other countries has a multitude of topic areas that are controversial and probably need discretionary sanctions. But discretionary sanctions should be LIMITED to the areas in question. If Indian politics are a big enough issue in and of themselves I'd like to see discretionary sanctions (or better yet general sanctions determined by the community) on post-whatever year Indian politics. If Tamil nationalism is an issue I'd like to see separate sanctions limited to that issue. etc etc. We have several different sanctions for primarily US-oriented topics and there's no reason why we can't apply the same standard for other countries.

  I'd disagree with the "third of Europe" example because the area under sanctions is Eastern europe and the balkans; traditionally not considered a past of the west. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 04:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Chess: To answer first question, it's rather difficult. Editors find it rather frustrating to deal with topics where there are overlapping sanctions, and that is a good reason why a lot of the previous sanctions were consolidated.
  To phrase myself in another way, the sanctions effectively are meant to cover Indian/Pakistani/Afghani political, geographical, ethnic, religious, sociological, and cultural disputes. However, that's basically everything, is it not? The process of untangling it all would be incredibly difficult (and itself rife with controversy in determining what is actually in dispute).
  Maybe you're right though, but in that case the best forum to bring this to would be a request for clarification regarding what the sanctions don't cover in these countries (since that might be easier to answer). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

  @MJL: There's a lot of stuff going on in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan unrelated to those disputes. You phrased it pretty well yourself what the sanctions are meant to apply to. Why not just limit the India/Pakistan sanctions to "political, geographic, ethnic, religious, sociological, and cultural disputes broadly construed" involving or within the region of those three countries? That would be a reasonable way of limiting potential sanctions to the actual problem areas. Admittedly there will be disputes over whether something is actually in those conflict areas but that would be far better than the current system of there being unwritten limitations to DS determined by vague notions of "intent" that might differ in interpretation by admins. On asking for clarification from arbcom, I'd have to look into whether this would be better suited as an amendment request and write something up first. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 18:49, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• BLP is the only area that I see that absolutely needs special treatment, but we already give it special treatment outside of DS. Incredible leeway is given to editors who break 3RR to remove contentious, unsourced info for example (which I agree with). Skimming through this page, I find myself agreeing more with DGG than anyone else, although I think I'm more willing to tolerate limited restrictions than he. I think we are better served with General Sanctions, determined by the community, that automatically sunset after a maximum of one year. Or if we are going to have DS, they need to sunset unless upheld by the community to be extended. As an admin, I can see the potential for DS (and to a lesser degree, GS) to be used as a hammer to smash minority opinions, even if unintentional. Regular admin actions can handle anything that DS is currently handling. DS has simply grown too large and too complicated, yet is handled by only a handful of admins. That is reason enough to reform the system. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• The electronic cigarette discretionary sanctions can quite safely be lifted. Disruption there has entirely ceased.—S Marshall T/C 16:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
• Based on the above comments, I agree that "India-Pakistan-Afghanistan" is too broad a topic area; it should probably be divided into several more focused areas. Beyond that, while a few of the obsolete DS can be revoked/merged, I don't see serious problems. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Is the Monty Hall problem still particularly problematic (beyond the usual means, that is)? Nosebagbear (talk) 10:50, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

  Well, we can either keep it under DS or switch to GS. Do you want to switch? EEng 11:23, 31 March 2021 (UTC)