Arbitration report

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

The Arbitration Committee opened one case and closed one case this week, leaving three open. The Committee also passed a series of high-profile motions in response to an unblocking of Giano II by SlimVirgin, including the temporary desysopping of SlimVirgin, and a restriction on administrators' ability to enforce Giano's civility parole.

Notably, the Committee did not close any cases in November, the first month since the committee's inception in February 2004 that no cases were closed. This is partially due to decreased caseload; through the first eleven months of 2008, the Committee closed just thirty-five cases, compared to ninety-one in 2007 and one-hundred-and-sixteen cases in 2006.

Motions

On February 9, 2008, the Committee placed editor Giano under a civility parole through the "IRC" request for arbitration case. The civility parole terms allowed Giano to continue participating in Wikipedia, but conditioned that participation on Giano not making "uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith" edits. The Committee made the civility parole enforcible on-the-spot through blocking by any administrator. After 5 blocks, the enforcement guideline provide by the Committee increase the authorized block length from a maximum of one week to a maximum of one month.

On November 23, 2008, FT2 became the seventh administrator to block Giano since the civility parole was set in place nine months prior. FT2 set the November 23rd block to expire after 55 hours, but the block was lifted seven hours later by administrator SlimVirgin, who reasoned in her edit summary that "all this block achieves is an increase in drama; blocks should be prevent, not punish". Approximately thirty minutes after the block was lifted, FT2 made a formal proposal for actions to the Committee regarding the unblock by SlimVirgin. The Committee passed several motions one a week later on November 27th, including:

Closed case

New case

Evidence phase

Voting phase




Also this week:
  • ArbCom elections
  • In the news
  • WikiProject report
  • Features and admins
  • Arbitration report

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