Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy

This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. More so than other policies it should not be edited without considerable forethought and consensus among Committee members.

WP:AP redirects here. For article probation, see Wikipedia:Article probation.

The Arbitration policy acts as a guideline for the workings of the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). These policies are now fully adopted, but subject to amendment. See the Arbitration policy comments, the Arbitration policy ratification vote, and the Arbitration rationale.

It has been indicated elsewhere (see e.g. the Arbitration policy ratification vote) that the "Arbitration Policy may be tweaked as the Committee gains experience and learns better ways of doing things". Jimbo Wales has also suggested that the policy is not subject to amendment by the community.

Several landmark decisions have been made in previous cases that may have an impact on current cases; see /Past decisions.

Scope

The Committee reserve the right to hear or not hear any dispute, at their discretion. The following are general guidelines which will apply to most cases, but the Committee may make exceptions.

1. The Committee will hear disputes that have been referred to arbitration by the Mediation Committee.
2. Where a dispute has not gone through Mediation, or the earlier steps in the dispute resolution process, the Arbitrators may refer the dispute to the Mediation Committee if it believes mediation is likely to help.
3. The Committee will occasionally request advice from Jimbo Wales on whether to hear a particular dispute.
4. The Committee will primarily investigate interpersonal disputes.
5. The Committee will hear or not hear disputes according to the wishes of the community, where there is a consensus.
6. The Committee will not hear disputes where they have not been requested to arbitrate.
7. As a body reporting to the Wikimedia Foundation Board, which has the ability to direct the Committee to reach a verdict or otherwise act in a particular way, the Committee has no jurisdiction over the members of the Board.

Rules

The Committee will decide cases according to the following guidelines, which they will apply with common sense and discretion, and an eye to the expectations of the community:

1. Established Wikipedia customs and common practices.
2. Wikipedia's "laws": terms of use, submission standards, bylaws, general disclaimer, and copyright license.
3. Sensible "real world" laws.

Former decisions will not be binding on the Committee - rather, they intend to learn from experience.

Transparency

• Arbitrators with multiple accounts on Wikipedia will disclose the usernames of those accounts to the rest of the Committee, and to Jimbo Wales, but are not required to disclose them publicly.
• Each arbitrator will make their own decision about how much personal information about themselves they are willing to share, both publicly, and with the rest of the Committee.
• Arbitrators take evidence in public, but reserve the right to take some evidence in private in exceptional circumstances.
• Deliberations are often held privately, but Committee will make detailed rationale for all their decisions related to cases public.

Requests

The Arbitration Committee accepts requests for arbitration from anyone, and will decide whether to accept cases based on its Jurisdiction as described previously.

The Committee will accept a case if a net total of four or more arbitrators have voted to hear it ("net" meaning that each "reject" or "decline" vote subtracts an "accept"). Unless otherwise specified by the arbitrators' votes, a minimum twenty-four hour grace period will be granted between the fourth vote to open the case and the actual opening of the case. The Committee will reject a case if four or more arbitrators have already voted not to hear it, or if a reasonable period has passed without overall acceptance and it is unlikely to be accepted. Individual arbitrators will provide a rationale for their vote if so moved.

In the case of users whose editing privileges on Wikipedia have been revoked, they can request arbitration by e-mailing a member of the Arbitration Committee.

Who takes part?

All arbitrators will hear all cases, barring any personal leaves or recusals. If an arbitrator believes they have a conflict of interest in a case, they shall recuse themselves immediately from participation in the case. Users who believe an arbitrator has a conflict of interest should post an appropriate statement during the arbitration process. The arbitrator in question will seriously consider it and make a response. Arbitrators will not be required to recuse themselves for trivial reasons – merely reverting an edit of a user involved in a case undergoing arbitration, for example, will likely not be seen as a serious enough conflict of interest to require recusal.

Hearing

Participants involved in cases heard by the Arbitration Committee will present their cases and evidence as directed on a sub-page of the case page, itself a sub-page of requests for arbitration, titled as "[Username]" or "[UsernameA]–[UsernameB]" or the like, at the discretion of the arbitrator or clerk responsible for opening the case. Disputants shall be defined as the user or users named in the case or any advocates they identify.

Evidence and brief arguments may be added to the case pages by disputants, interested third parties, and the arbitrators themselves. Such evidence is usually only heard by the Committee if it has come from easily verifiable sources - primarily in the form of Wikipedia edits ("diffs"), log entries for MediaWiki actions or web server access, posts to the official mailing lists, or other Wikimedia sources. The Committee reserves the right to disregard certain items of evidence or certain lines of argument, most notably if they are unverifiable.

There is usually a grace period of one week between the opening of the case and the beginning of deliberations by the Committee. If the deliberations are made public, then outside commentary on the deliberations is discouraged until such time after the hearing has ceased that the Committee defines as the period for public commentary on the deliberations.

Injunctions

At any time between the opening of a case and its closure, arbitrators may propose Temporary Injunctions, which are binding decisions that shall be in effect until a case closes. Such Injunctions take the form of Remedies outlined below and are enforceable by twenty four hour blocks per violation of the Injunction by those that are affected by it.

An Injunction is considered to have passed when four or more arbitrators have voted in favour of it, where a vote in opposition negates a vote in support. A grace period of twenty four hours is usually observed between the fourth Aye vote and the enactment of the Injunction; however, arbitrators may, in exceptional circumstances, vote to implement an injunction immediately if four or more arbitrators express a desire to do so in their votes, or if a majority of arbitrators active on the case have already voted to support the Injunction.

Final decision

During deliberations, the Committee will construct a consensus opinion made out of Principles (general statements about policy), Findings of Fact (findings specific to the case), Remedies (binding Decrees on what should be done), and Enforcements (conditional Decrees on what can further be done if the terms are met). Each part will be subject to a simple-majority vote amongst active non-recused arbitrators - the list of active members being that listed on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee. Dissenting votes for and opinions on parts that pass will be noted. Arbitrators who abstain from a particular part will be treated as having recused from that part of the decision, which may lower the majority needed to pass that part. In the event of no options for action gaining majority support, no decision will be made, and no action will be taken.

Principles are general statements of policy on Wikipedia, and there is no strict form they take; they will, however, reference appropriate Wikipedia policy pages where applicable.

Findings of fact will be of a form similar to:

• XXX has/has not engaged in YYY behavior [in violation of ZZZ rule]. (diff of Incident 1) (diff of Incident 2) (further diffs)

Remedies will be of a form similar to:

• "User X is cautioned against making personal attacks even under severe provocation."
• "User X is limited to one revert per twenty four hour period on article A."
• "User X is placed on personal attack parole for a period of Y; if User X engages in edits which an administrator believes to be personal attacks, they may be banned for a short period of time of up to Z."
• "User X is prohibited from editing group Y of articles for a period of Z."
• "User X is banned from editing Wikipedia for a period of Y."

Enforcements will be of a form similar to:

• "If User X edits group Y of articles, they may be banned for a short period of time of up to one week."

Remedies and Enforcements, once the case has closed as described below, may be enforced by intervention by administrators, usually in the form of blocks on accounts and IP addresses.

Once a decision has been compiled, and a sufficient number of arbitrators have reviewed the case and cast their votes, a non-recused arbitrator may initiate a Motion to Close the case. A Motion to Close shall be considered to have passed once four arbitrators have voted in favour of closing the case; each opposing vote shall negate one supporting vote. A grace period of a minimum of twenty-four hours shall be observed between the fourth net vote to close the case and the going into effect of those Remedies passed in the case, unless four or more arbitrators vote to close the case immediately, or if a majority of arbitrators active on the case have voted to close the case.

In due course, the Committee will review the possibility of additional software-based security measures, but will not request such features at the present time, relying instead on Decrees.

Remedies and enforcement actions may be appealed to, and are subject to veto by, Jimbo Wales.

Unresolved issues

Deliberately left unspecified at this time. See the sub-pages for discussion:

• Election of arbitrators
• Procedure for changing this policy

See also

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration
• Meta:Arbitration Committee