The Signpost


Arbitration report

Doncram case closes; arbitrator resigns

There has been little to report from the Arbitration Committee since the December elections, but the case schedule is now starting to pick up speed. There are three open cases. A final decision has been given in the Doncram case.

Hersfold's resignation

Shortly before the Signpost was published, arbitrator Hersfold published his resignation on the Arbitrator's noticeboard, saying in part:


Hersfold elaborated on his reasons for resigning on his talk page, stating that the recent outings of several editors led him to believe that there was an "increased risk of being harassed and outed [for administrators, and] it seems likely that that net will expand to include one or more arbitrators before too much longer, if action is not taken to stop it. I value my privacy and personal safety, and have an obligation to protect my family as well." This is Hersfold's second resignation from the committee, as he also resigned in May 2010.

Closed cases

This case, brought by SarekOfVulcan, involved a user-created script for creating new articles from an external database, subsequent interactions over the created article stubs, and challenges to content added from other databases by other users. The script, created for the National Register of Historic Places WikiProject, uses a database of National Register properties from the National Park Service to generate an infobox and categories for the start of an article.

Arbitrators passed three findings of fact regarding Doncram. 1) Doncram has been "uncivil", has "repeatedly made accusations of harassment or misbehavior", and has "continued to make such statements after dispute resolution fora have concluded otherwise". 2) Doncram has a history of repeatedly creating articles with notability issues. 3) Doncram has move-warred regarding titles. Two proposed remedies regarding Doncram were passed: that he be "placed under a general probation" and that he be "restricted from creating new pages" in article space.

The committee passed a proposed finding of fact regarding SarekOfVulcan: that "SarekOfVulcan has admitted to edit warring with Doncram in order to try to have Doncram blocked for an extended period of time." A proposed remedy was also passed regarding SarekOfVulcan: "For edit warring with Doncram, SarekOfVulcan is strongly admonished to behave with the level of professionalism expected of an administrator." Arbitrators voted 9–5 to desysop SarekOfVulcan, but the motion failed by one vote and the admonishment remedy was passed instead.

A proposal for an interaction ban between SarekOfVulcan and Doncram was enacted. "The question of how substantive the content of a stub must be before it can legitimately be introduced to the mainspace" was remanded to the community.

Open cases

This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 21.

This case, brought by Fram, involves allegations of an ongoing pattern of copyright violations in uploaded files, and in links to copyright-violating off-wiki pages. The case is complicated by the fact that a portion of the evidence has been deleted and can only be viewed by administrators. To address this, a select number of files were restored, with the contents visible via a template, for the duration of the case. A decision was scheduled for March 9, 2013.

This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. Evidence for the case is due by March 20, 2013, and a decision is scheduled for April 3, 2013.

Other requests and committee action


















Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-11/Arbitration_report