Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests

Filing as a third-party

There's currently a series of disputes that the community has repeatedly failed to resolve. These disputes are all over Wikipedia, from WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:BLPN, WP:RSN to WP:3RRN and are a huge drain on the community's resources. However, no involved editor has of yet filed a request for an ArbCom case. What's ArbCom's feeling about third-parties filing requests for arbitration? My understanding is that this is frowned upon, but the community has clearly failed to resolved the disputes despite numerous attempts, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Thoughts? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:10, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this myself. I know of one dispute in particular that was the subject of a past ArbCom case but the behavior of many of the parties is just as nasty now as it was then. I think none of the involved parties wants to request a case because they are scared of the scrutiny that would result. In this case, is it ok for a third party or marginally involved party to request a case? Cla68 (talk) 02:27, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I've filed third party requests successfully. The pattern to use is, "I noticed this conflict. It's disrupting my ability to improve these articles (list them). Efforts have been made to resolve it through Dispute Resolution (list discussions), but that hasn't work. Can you help put an end to this nonsense?" You don't have to be involved as a disputant in the conflict. If you tried to mediate it, or if the conflict is impacting you in any way, I think the Committee would seriously consider the request. Jehochman ^Talk 03:37, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

It is certainly possible to file the case as a third party. However, the challenge is presenting the dispute in a clear way, since you aren't involved in the dispute and may not be the most familiar with it. --Rschen7754 03:39, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Involved editors have often lost perspective, or else they would have resolved the dispute themselves. It can be very useful for somebody uninvolved to present a neutral summary of the problem. Jehochman ^Talk 03:47, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a clarification of what is meant by "involved" and "uninvolved" editors is in order. Editors who are parties to a dispute, as Jehochman says, are likely to have lost perspective, in that they do not see the case objectively or neutrally. In many cases, an editor who is not a direct party to the dispute but has observed the dispute, and possibly attempted to resolve it until they concluded that conduct issues prevented the content issue from being resolved, can best explain what is wrong. Many ArbCom cases involve a combination of a content dispute, which ArbCom does not resolve, and conduct issues that prevent resolution of the content dispute. I agree that third-party filing may sometimes be useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:37, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Combine the fact that WP:DRN is often the first step in resolving a dispute (and DRN only deals with content, not conduct) and the fact that arbcom is the final step in resolving a dispute (and arbcom only deals with conduct, not content), it should always be true that before a combined content/conduct case gets to arbcom, there should be some sort of a failed attempt to resolve the content dispute (often this is DRN or an RFC). At DRN, solving the content dispute often solves the behavioral problem. Misbehaving editors usually misbehave for a reason; they exhibit behavior X in order to win content dispute Y. Take away the reason for the behavior and the behavior stops. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:54, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

For the record, AQFK and Cla68, what are the disputes in question?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:09, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes. What are the particular issues being referred to? Are they disputes that combine a content dispute and conduct issues? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:37, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

AE history / charter

The context of my question is the ongoing DS review; what policy / precedent / RFC / what have you lead to the creation of WP:AE and the protocols under which it operates? I only found a reference on the procedures section. NE Ent 23:47, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

AE began as a sub-page of the administrators' noticeboard. Its protocols exist mainly as a result of convention, which is why even today the use of the prescribed template is not mandatory. AGK [•] 13:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

No semicolon to bold, please

Throughout this page, semicolons are used in the code to bold headers. This is not a good idea in terms of accessibility for screen readers, see To boldly bold? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Message for the Arbitrators

This is a message for the Arbitrators. If you are not one of them, please refrain from saying anything.

More than six months ago I requested an arbitration for a case that became known as "Argentine History". For the ones who are not familiar with the topic, it was about the outrageous use of Fascist sources across several articles related to Latin American history. In the end the Arbitrators agreed with me.

Well, six months ago that case is still not dead. For some reason that I really cannot understand the Arbitrators have refused to do something about it. When I made a comment sometime ago which began with "I asked for an interaction ban regarding Marshal and Cambalachero, but since this has direct relation to the ArbCom which we were part of I believe I'm allowed to comment. If not, let me know I was blocked. Instead of someone explaining me that I was not allowed to make any comment even in the ArbCom case which I was part of and that I shouldn't do that I was blocked for a month by Sandstein. An entire month.

No one among the Arbitrators did anything to oppose the arbitrary use of powers by Sandstein. A one month-block for a good faith comment by an experienced user who made invaluable contributions for this encyclopaedia is "okay". I saw vandals, disruptive editors and other people get countless warnings or at most a 24h block. I was blocked for a month. But that had nothing to with the source of problems related to the Argentine History case.

Still, the Argentine History case still lives. Month after month it's still giving headaches to people around. The case was settled. The Arbitrators supposedly gave their final saying and punishments. But the case is still around. Why? Will there be a moment when anyone among the arbitrators will wake up and do something? Will someone tell that the case is done and that the result has to be accepted once for and for all? Or are you just going to sit idle and pretend that nothing is going on? --Lecen (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)