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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Venezuelan politics	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	20 Apr 2024	04 May 2024

[edit]

Recently closed cases (Past cases)

Case name	Closed
Conflict of interest management	13 Apr 2024
Mzajac	7 May 2024

Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: World War II\|Request for clarification: World War II]]	none	none	25 June 2011
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive92#Russavia\|Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive92#Russavia]]	none	none	25 June 2011
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: 195.82.106.244\|Request for clarification: 195.82.106.244]]	none	none	23 June 2011
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Request for clarification: Thekohser\|Request for clarification: Thekohser]]	none	none	21 June 2011

Arbitrator motions

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Requests for clarification

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification/Header

Request for clarification: World War II

Initiated by Communikat (talk) at Communikat (talk) 17:08, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Confirmations of notices sent:

Statement by Communikat

I am topic-banned from editing or discussing articles about Aftermath of World War II To avoid conceptual confusion, potential disputes, complaints, or edit-warring, I request in good faith that Arbcom provides semantic clarification as to the practical, contextual meaning of "Aftermath of World War II" as referred to in the topic-ban decision.

I propose the word "aftermath" be agreed upon as meaning the immediate aftermath of World War II, and the end of 1948 be accepted as the World War II "aftermath" cut-off date. I propose this for the following reasons:

There exist two distinctly separate Wikipedia articles. One is titled Aftermath of World War II the other is titled Effects of World War II.
The aftermath of World War II has long been defined here by one (then) active editor as meaning "(T)he state of the world immediately after World War II", whereas the "Effects of World War II cover the long lasting effects of the war." (My emphasis added). I concur with this definition, which has never been disputed.
Another (then) active editor has pointed out here that content going beyond the immediate aftermath period would amount absurdly to an "Aftermath of the Aftermath". Nor was that ever contradicted or disputed.
1948 is the most frequently cited date in the text of the [[Aftermath of World War II] article, and for practical purposes this should be the end of the Aftermath of World War II, to which part of my topic-ban applies.

Response to Sir Fozzie comment: Kindly note: I've not asked for topic ban to be lifted. I've asked specifically for clarification. Kindly comply. Your pertinent input would be appreciated. Thank you. Communikat (talk) 18:53, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Hohum

I feel certain that Communi[ck]at will find himself in conflict again if he edits about the military/political situation surrounding the Cold War as well. However, I don't know if the arbitrators intended to be that wide in their definition. (Hohum ^@) 18:23, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by BorisG

@SirFozzie, Communikat is not aksing to lift the topic ban. He is asking for clarification of its scope. I have no opinion on the extent of the ban. In my view, the boundaries of the sanction are unclear, and clarification is in order. - BorisG (talk) 18:59, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nick-D

Communicat/Communikat has only returned to editing in the last few weeks, but has already been blocked twice for violating both editing restrictions by continuing to carry on the disputes which were discussed in the arbitration case concerning Wikipedia's coverage of World War II and making personal attacks on other editors: [1], [2]. This conduct and now this request seem to imply an intention to carry on the dispute, and relaxing the restriction as proposed seems unwise. As David Fuchs (talk · contribs) notes, there's no magic date in relation to World War II and its aftermath and specifying one would quickly become unworkable. The current wording seems to be to be perfectly clear, and quite straightforward to observe. It's worth noting that Communikat has been misrepresenting the editing restrictions placed on him by claiming that they include a ban on disclosing the articles he's banned from editing here, which combined with the above violations of these conditions hardly inspires confidence. Nick-D (talk) 23:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

Considering the topic ban was just placed in January, I see no compelling reason to lift it at this time. SirFozzie (talk) 18:14, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If Com.'s editing problems persist, than explaining a distinction does nothing to address the fact that the problems will creep in. There's really no magic date that can address behavioral issues. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:45, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The scope of the topic-ban should be interpreted broadly but reasonably; I agree that what we have here is a question of line-drawing. It was by a narrow margin, as the author of the decision, that I decided to propose a topic-ban rather than a full site-ban for Communicat. I am concerned that if he returns to editing topics closely related to on which he edited problematically in the past, he will continue to do so. Communicat, do you have any thoughts on what you might do going forward that would minimize the risk of such problems? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive92#Russavia

Initiated by Martin (talk) at 14:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Tammsalu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
AGK (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Notified

Statement by Tammsalu

I am not happy with the way the AGK has handled the above mentioned AE case, where I reported Russavia for breaching his interaction ban, and seek clarification of some issues that have arisen in wake of this.

Background

I was minding my own business editing Occupation of the Baltic states, where I had corrected some obviously POVed piece of unsorted text that made a misleading assertion [3]. Unfortunately before I could add the appropriate reference to support the change, Russavia reverted the text in the very next edit[4]. Because the revert is not permitted per WP:IBAN, and Russavia is subject to an interaction ban, I asked Administrators to take action in an appropriate forum being WP:AE, as permitted by Wikipedia:IBAN#Exceptions_to_limited_bans. Russavia was subsequently blocked for 48 hours and AGK asked for input from other Administrators if any further action should be taken[5].

However no other Administrator had made any comment despite AGK's request for input while the case remained open during the week, thus most people would construe that no further action was necessary. In fact the case remained open for such a long time that Russavia was able to comment further after his block expired[6], seeking a retaliatory block. AGK duly complies and blocks me, claiming the filing an AE report about Russavia's violation was a breach of my own interaction ban[7].

When I and others subsequently point out that WP:IBAN explicitly permits the reporting of the other party in mutual interaction bans, AGK agrees that my filing of an AE report was not a violation of my interaction ban[8], but then claims this edit[9], made six days after Russavia's ban breaching revert was a violation of my interaction ban.

However it is a general principle that edits made in defiance of a ban should be reverted, Wikipedia:IBAN#Enforcement_by_reverting discusses this. As Wikipedia:BAN#Evasion_and_enforcement states, Wikipedia's approach to enforcing bans balances a number of competing concerns, in this case:

Maximizing the quality of the encyclopaedia and;
Dissuading or preventing banned editors from editing Wikipedia or the relevant area of the ban.

It would just simply be untenable that a breaching edit, such as revert or even a comment on a user talk page cannot ever be undone, not in one week, one month or ever. It would lead to all sorts of kamikaze sanction breaking edits if there was some profit to be derived from that.

I am a long standing editor of Occupation of the Baltic states with 132 edits since March 2007 compared with Russavia's 5 edits since May 2009[10]. My edit of the 17th of June[11], coming six days after Russavia's original breaching edit[12], was not a blind revert but was made in the spirit of Wikipedia:BAN#Evasion_and_enforcement, removing the ban breaching edit and adding the two references I was was going to add before the disruption.

An additional issue is that I asked AGK to amend the result of the AE case to reflect his new reason for the block[13], he has not done so.

Points for clarification

Can the Committee clarify whether:

WP:IBAN permits reporting the other party for breaching a mutual interaction ban, WP:AE being the appropriate forum for such requests for Admin assistance
In the case that an Administrator has determined that a particular edit has breached the interaction ban, that disruptive edit can be undone per Wikipedia:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting

Thanks for your time. --Martin (talk) 14:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Response to EdJohnston

EdJohnston claims there is no wording in WP:BAN that permits reverting of ban breaching edits, yet this clearly states:

"Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. By banning an editor, the community has determined that the broader problems, due to their participation, outweigh the benefits of their editing, and their edits may be reverted without any further reason. This does not mean that obviously helpful edits (such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism) must be reverted just because they were made by a banned editor, but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert."

Of course regular reverts are prohibited by WP:IBAN, but what AGK and EdJohnston are saying is that, for example, if someone should make an edit in defiance of their IBAN by leaving a comment on my talk page, and I would not be allowed to remove that ban breaching edit from my talk page after the matter has been reported and the other party blocked. In other words, AGK and EdJohston are saying that a long standing editor of an article (132 edits since 2007) can never edit that particular section of an article ever again because the other party (5 edits since 2009) has defied their IBAN by disruptively editing that section, even though the matter has been appropriately reported and the other party blocked for defying their IBAN. --Martin (talk) 19:22, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Response to AGK

AGK raises the issue of "unclean hands", however my revert came six days after I reported Russavia's edit and after it was determined that edit was made in defiance of Russavia's IBAN, so AGK's claim that I came to AE with "unclean hands" is some what misleading because my AE request significantly pre-dated the supposed "unclean" edit. --Martin (talk) 19:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by AGK

Russavia reverted Martin, in violation of WP:IBAN and WP:EEML#Interaction ban. I blocked Russavia, which Martin did not contest. Martin then re-reverted Russavia; for this, I therefore also blocked Martin. It is a given at AE that editors with "unclean hands" who request enforcement may also be blocked or sanctioned. I do not see what the issue is here. AGK [•] 16:24, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Martin: I agreed with you that you did not violate the interaction bam by submitting an enforcement request. That is not an issue here. As I have said repeatedly, you were blocked for reverting Russavia. Admittedly, you did not revert until after you filed the enforcement request, but it was a revert nonetheless - and therefore a violation of the interaction ban. Again, I do not see what your complaint is. AGK [•] 21:57, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by EdJohnston

I believe that WP:IBAN does not allow the action that Tammsalu says is OK. He makes a statement which I can't find support for in policy: "Having found that a particular edit has breached the interaction ban, that disruptive edit can be undone per Wikipedia:BAN#Enforcement by reverting." There is no wording in WP:BAN which supports that either. He might be thinking of the provision of WP:3RR which does not include reverts of a banned editor as counting toward the limit of three reverts. Tammsalu is not allowed to revert *any* edit of someone from whom he is interaction banned, so the fact that such an edit won't count towards 3RR is not of interest. Tammsalu is asking Arbcom to rule on what the policy says, and I think it supports AGK's view of the matter. I would also recommend that Tammsalu change his signature to match his user name, since 'Martin' causes puzzlement. EdJohnston (talk) 17:28, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

My thoughts are that someone may let an admin know that a mutual interaction ban has been breached, but reverting the edits yourself is a step too far. SirFozzie (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for clarification: 195.82.106.244

Initiated by :| TelCo NaSp Ve :| at 15:09, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

TeleComNasSprVen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
195.82.106.244 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · logs · block log · arb · rfc · lta · rfcu · ssp · SPI · cuwiki)
Lucyintheskywithdada (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · logs · block log · arb · rfc · lta · rfcu · SPI · cuwiki)

Statement by TeleComNasSprVen

On 12 January 2007, according to this notice on the IP editor's talkpage, he/she was placed on Probation by the Arbitration Committee for "aggressive biased editing", per the note near the bottom of the section located at Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions#Placed_by_the_Arbitration_Committee. However, considering that the IP has been discontinued from use on 8 January 2007, per the analysis of its contributions, and now that a sockpuppet tag has been placed on the userpage pointing to User:Lucyintheskywithdada, the ban now seems a moot point, and I doubt that it was a productive use of our time. Therefore, I request clarification whether or not this ban should continue to be placed on the IP in question or that it should also extend to the Lucyintheskywithdada account and associated sockpuppets. (On a further note, perhaps the sockmaster account should just be site-banned altogether for misusing community trust, given the extensive sockpuppetry cases page.) :| TelCo NaSp Ve :| 15:09, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

Thank you for raising your concern, but I don't think any clarification or other action by the Committee is needed. A probation on an IP that hasn't edited in four-plus years is pretty much irrelevant now, unless it is affecting a new innocent user of the IP (which isn't happening), or unless it's shown that the IP is now editing under a specific account name and continuing the problematic behavior. To the extent it appears that the IP editor is the same person as Lucyintheskywithdada, as you note, he/she is already blocked indefinitely for socking and I don't know of any proposal to lift the block, so there's not much more we can do about the situation. Unless I am missing something (always a possibility), I'm not sure just what would need to be clarified here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:55, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree; there is no need to clarify whether the probation the IP is under would apply anywhere else, given the alleged sockmaster is blocked on sight. –xeno^talk 14:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agree there is no reason for clarification at this point, unless one of the aforementioned circumstances arises. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:40, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for clarification: Thekohser

Initiated by Will Beback talk at 23:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Will Beback (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
Thekohser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
LessHeard vanU (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) notification

Statement by Will Beback

Thekohser was banned by the community. Subsequently, the ban was suspended provisionally by the ArbCom.[14] One of the provisions to which Thekohser agreed was to use only one account, which he has since violated repeatedly. The account was eventually blocked indefinitely. The block notice specifically said that the conditions of the provisional suspension had been violated.[15] An admin, LessHeard vanU, recently opined that the user is merely blocked and could be unblocked by any admin.[16][17] This current controversy was triggered by recent edits to the user page.[18] Is the ArbCom's provisional suspension of the community ban still in effect or has the ban been reinstated? Will Beback talk 23:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the ban is still marked as suspended in Wikipedia:List of banned users. Will Beback talk 23:50, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Enric Naval

What is all this fuss about removing his list of websites? Replace the whole page with {{banned user|time=indef|by=the community|link=[[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/MyWikiBiz]]}} and {{Sockpuppeteer|proven}} (due to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Thekohser/Archive), similar to his original account User:MyWikiBiz.

Also, having a user page is not an intrinsic editor's right, it's a privilege.

Also, LessHeard vanU's claim that TheKohser was blocked/banned by Arbcom is plain incorrect. Arbcom only made a temporal suspension, which seems to be over now. Consequently, the user is banned by the community and there is no need to ask Arbcom for permission to blank anything. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by LessHeard vanU

The page was not blanked at the time of the re-instatement of the ban - if it should have, then fine and this clarification will resolve it. I have been keeping the page at the status quo when TheKohser was reblocked (and it notes the editor as indef blocked, and not banned), and protected it after a couple of edit wars regarding blanking or not. I am relieved that this is now being resolved.
As for being careful with (non) statements, I wonder where people got the idea that a suggestion was made that anyone would unilaterally unblock Kohs? I noted that an indefinite block was a defacto ban where no admin was prepared to unblock, and that in this instance this was not the case. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:44, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just tying things up - this is the discussion at User talk:Thekohser, and ANI discussion. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Martinp

The ability of so many people to get hot behind the collar about Thekohser is amazing. He's pinpointed some of areas where the community is quite confused what it wants, and he's provoked overreactions from the best of us from Jimbo on down. He's done himself no favours with his own behaviour - attempts to bring him back have been significantly more disruptive than beneficial. The history shows no reason to believe this would change, and I see no evidence that anyone is really considering giving it another go. I would trust that noone would look at that history and be dumb enough to do so unilaterally.

As to the user page - I would stay away from unnecessary confrontational arguments about entitlement to pages, etc. Pragmatically, user pages need to be maintained by their users. A state of affairs where a user is unable to maintain their user page due to being blocked for a long period of time, and yet cares enough about keeping them updated to request others to do so is clearly suboptimal. That is an argument why long term blocked (whether or not banned) users should have their user pages blanked, though I don't see why in general we can not extend the courtesy of a single and simple link pointing people who might wish to contact them somewhere else, under the proviso that no updating or maintenance of this link will be done going forward. Martinp (talk) 23:33, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Disclaimer: I tried at one point to mend fences between Thekohser and some members of the community, but it was a futile endeavour)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

I see no personal reason why this block should be lifted by any one unilaterally.. either the ArbCom suspension of the Community Ban is over and we need the usual discussion to overturn a community ban, or we have a user who has been indefblocked for violating the terms of his unblock several times over, in which case .. well.. we need the usual discussion. I, personally would consider risker's re-block as an acknowledgement that the provisional suspension of the ban has been lifted and that the Community Ban is in full effect. SirFozzie (talk) 23:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, put simply: the committee suspended a community ban, and the conditions to that were violated. Back to the default community ban (which would require consensus to undo). — Coren ^(talk) 01:30, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As the reblocking administrator/arbitrator, I was reinstating the community ban as the unban conditions had been violated. As such, it would require a broad consensus of the community to unban him, at minimum. Thekohser is also globally banned due to his inappropriate behaviour on other projects, and it is my personal opinion that individual communities should not overturn the effects of a global ban. As to the link to his personal websites, I would be inclined to remove them. Indeed, I'm not entirely clear why his userpage isn't blanked, as is our usual community practice for banned users. Risker (talk) 02:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with all above. Risker's block note says it all: [19]. The provisional suspension of the ban was revoked with the reblock; ergo, the ban was put back in place. –xeno^talk 03:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing why the page isn't blanked as per SOP with banned users, and concur with the above as per regarding the status of the ban. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with the above, current status is community-banned and most practical way to manage the userpage is blanking. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 70: / Line 70: @@
 Considering the topic ban was just placed in January, I see no compelling reason to lift it at this time. [[User:SirFozzie|SirFozzie]] ([[User talk:SirFozzie|talk]]) 18:14, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 *If Com.'s editing problems persist, than explaining a distinction does nothing to address the fact that the problems will creep in. There's really no magic date that can address behavioral issues. <font color="#cc6600">[[User:David Fuchs|Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs]]</font><sup><small>(<font color="#ff6600">[[User talk:David Fuchs|talk]]</font>)</small></sup> 21:45, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
+*The scope of the topic-ban should be interpreted broadly but reasonably; I agree that what we have here is a question of line-drawing. It was by a narrow margin, as the author of the decision, that I decided to propose a topic-ban rather than a full site-ban for Communicat. I am concerned that if he returns to editing topics closely related to on which he edited problematically in the past, he will continue to do so. Communicat, do you have any thoughts on what you might do going forward that would minimize the risk of such problems? [[User:Newyorkbrad|Newyorkbrad]] ([[User talk:Newyorkbrad|talk]]) 23:47, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
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