Board member likely to receive editing restriction

Arbitration report

Board member likely to receive editing restriction

**Cases by lifecycle phase (since last report)**
Requested	→	Accepted	Remained open	Closed	Amendments
none		none	Medicine	Jytdog	AP2
	→	Declined
		Carmaker1

Declined cases

Carmaker1 case was requested 17 April 2020; declined on 2 May.

Ongoing cases

Medicine

Medicine case

Workshop closed 12 May 2020
Proposed decision posted 26 May 2020

Last month, The Signpost stated "many of the workshop proposals appear to favor letting the editors solve the content dispute on their own." An unprecedented "topic moratorium" was proposed by active Arbcom member David Fuchs.

One quarter of the twelve active arbitrators recused themselves: Casliber, DGG, and Newyorkbrad. Recusal is usually done when an arbitrator considers him- or herself unable to make an impartial decision, often due to closeness to the subject in either a positive or negative way, but there is no requirement to give a reason for recusal. The Signpost notes without comment that one of the involved parties, Doc James, was appointed as a community-selected Wikimedia Foundation trustee in August 2017.^[1]

Remedies proposed as of publication deadline include (reminders/admonishments have been omitted; a Y means the remedy has passed as of publication deadline):

New discretionary sanctions topic: pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing broadly construed Y
Topic moratorium (applied to community): to include prices only after development of local consensus
Editing restriction (applied to Doc James): to not include prices in articles Y
Topic ban (applied to QuackGuru): to not edit medicine articles Y

Closed cases

Jytdog

Jytdog case

Closed 13 April 2020

Jytdog is indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. 11 yea, 0 nay (DGG recused). Issues identified in the findings include Jytdog's history of oversight blocks, Jytdog's other sanctions (two voluntary interaction restrictions/bans with another, and an indefinite topic ban), a history of edit warring and incivility, and uninvited off-wiki contact with another editor.

Amendment requests

Due to the inclusion of the Op-Ed "Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?" by Atsme, we are taking the unusual step of reviewing an amendment request from several months ago. American politics 2 (AP2) discretionary sanctions were taken up by Arbitration Committee in a December 2019 amendment request. It was the twelfth request for amendment or clarification and perhaps is of special importance during this U.S. election year. In the December request, Atsme objected to unilateral actions based on [a specific administrator's] customized DS which has lead to POV creep and specific DS for specific editors as he sees fit. He is micromanaging AP2 and controlling the narrative.

Atsme said this month (May) to the administrator who had applied the discretionary sanctions to her under the aegis of AP2 (which were lifted in March), your response is why I have made it my mission to draw attention to the problems you and a few other admins have created with DS and AE, specifically unilateral actions, and the POV creep associated with sole discretion. Your response solidifies my position, and I will use it in my arguments until the community is aware of why this is an extremely important issue to the future of the project as it relates to maintaining NPOV, and the ability for editors to engage in discussions where the exchange of free thought and ideas is paramount. Other respondents at the December amendment request made observations about the expansion of DS to become "boutique" or "tailored" sanctions at the unreviewed discretion of a single administrator. Comments by two arbitrators either noted their own concerns or the concerns of others: DGG said Delegating [DS] to whatever one of the several hundred individual admins may choose to exercise their imagination is another matter entirely ... no one admin should repeatedly engage in arb enforcement on the same individual or take a disproportionate share for any large area, and GorillaWarfare said [T]his does not seem to be a great place to also address whether admins should be creating their own sets of custom sanctions for use in areas where discretionary sanctions have been authorized. However it does seem like it would be worth visiting that issue somewhere, since there seem to be many people who share concerns about them.

Extended detail

Terminlogy used in American politics 2 December 2019 amendment request

"boutique", "specialized", "customized", or "custom" discretionary sanctions

Quotes used in the amendment request:

Arbs

Delegating [DS] to whatever one of the several hundred individual admins may choose to exercise their imagination is another matter entirely ... no one admin should repeatedly engage in arb enforcement on the same individual or take a disproportionate share for any large area - DGG
[T]his does not seem to be a great place to also address whether admins should be creating their own sets of custom sanctions for use in areas where discretionary sanctions have been authorized. However it does seem like it would be worth visiting that issue somewhere, since there seem to be many people who share concerns about them. - GorillaWarfare

Others

If the committee wants to consider [respondent]'s specialized DS, that should probably be a separate clarification request- Floqenbeam
[Complainant] may wish to consider posting another, separate, ARCA request about the special sanctions - Bishonen
ArbCom should look into how DS are being used - SashiRolls

Correction: The original headline made it appear that the Medicine case decision was closed. Currently the votes for an editing restriction on Doc James stand at 7-0, with 5 votes needed to pass, and the votes for closing the case at 2-0, with a net +4 needed to close. We regret the error.

Notes

^ "Press Release Wikimedia Foundation, August 2017". Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2017.

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In this issue

31 May 2020 (all comments)

Discuss this story

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"Board member receives editing restriction" What's with the title? This hasn't happened yet. Natureium (talk) 19:29, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the case is still open but this sanction has been voted on 7-0, and For this case there are 9 active arbitrators, not counting 2 who are inactive and 3 who have abstained or recused, so 5 support or oppose votes are a majority. Therefore, unless ~~someone~~ three or more arbs reverse their vote, that's that. @Smallbones: do you want to change anything here? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:44, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking about this. Technically @Natureium: is correct, but how do we correct it now? Put a new headline of "Board member to receive editing restriction" up for 2 or 3 days? If an arb or @Doc James: wants a retraction or apology, please contact me by email. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:06, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You could do the honourable thing and correct the title to something that reflects the current situation, then correct it when it changes. You don’t have a crystal ball, and your comments in this magazine should reflect reality, not what you predict it to be. - SchroCat (talk) 22:07, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the title should read "to receive", but the potential for real-life harm caused by this inaccuracy seems limited, in particular since the main text appears to state the situation correctly.

As for the idea to update it again in a few days: I'm a big fan of {{when}} in the mainspace, but Signpost articles carry a publication date; they do not need to be constantly updated to reflect future developments. Regard, HaeB (talk) 23:56, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the only change needed would be to change "receives" to "receiving" or "likely to receive" in the header. (Note: I'm recused in the case and have not looked at the merits of the decision; just offering a semantic suggestion.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:21, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ditto, as NYB suggests. just think of it as fixing a grammar error. DGG ( talk ) 05:40, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Signpost words all of the arbcom decisions wrongly.

The DS are not "pharmaceutical drugs broadly construed" but "pharmaceutical drug prices". This is a crucial difference: only the topic of drug prices is felt toxic enough to warrant DS, not the general area of medicines.
The topic moratorium wasn't on "to include prices" but any non-trivial edit "on content related to pharmaceutical drug pricing". This would include removing, updating or rewording.
James's topic ban is wider than is stated here. It isn't "to not include prices in articles" but "prohibited from making any edits relating to pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing in the article namespace". You could shorten this to "to not edit prices or pricing statements in articles". This includes not just dollar-cent prices, but also statements like "low cost" or "generally affordable" and also prevents James from editing, updating and removing anything related to drug prices.
Quackguru's topic ban is "indefinitely topic-banned from articles relating to medicine, broadly construed" is more than "to not edit medicine articles". He isn't allowed to discuss them on talk pages either.

I think it important that Signpost correct these mistakes so that its readers understand the correct extent of any sanctions or bans, and can adjust their editing or report violations appropriately. -- Colin°^Talk 07:43, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones: I recently re-read coverage around the time that the Guardian misreported on a still open ARBCOM case as confirmed (though obviously their inaccuracy was in a scale of its own). The Community was rightly livid, especially since many of them didn't pass. To give a perhaps more useful, example - one PD that had received enough votes to pass in this medicine case last week has now had a number of strikes and is beneath the passing requirement. I do not believe any controversial PD should be given as a headline, let alone as a confirmed statement, until case closed. A Signpost edition is by far most read in the first couple of days. While I think it unlikely, were Doc James' sanction to be withdrawn, how would the Signpost be able to confirm that everyone who had seen it had also seen the retraction? Nosebagbear (talk) 11:05, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have corrected the headline to read "Board member likely to receive editing restriction"

and posted the correction The original headline made it appear that the Medicine case decision was closed. Currently the votes for an editing restriction on Doc James stand at 7-0, with 5 votes needed to pass, and the votes for closing the case at 2-0, with a net +4 needed to close. We regret the error.

Thanks to everybody who commented here for their input. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 11:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that one editor is about to be "indefinitely topic-banned from articles relating to medicine, broadly construed"[1] with no real clarity over whether "medicine" means Medication (the topic of most of the Arbcom case) or Medicine. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- "relating to medicine" is singular and therefore clearly refers to "the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease". If was "relating to medicines", plural, it would refer to "drugs or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease". If you have a problem with the signpost wording, then this is the correct talk page. If you have a problem with the Arbcom wording, then Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine/Proposed decision is still open for comment. -- Colin°^Talk 19:45, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone please explain this to me. What is problematic in mentioning the cost of medicines given that it is universally known the extreme prices are imposed, prices that only have to do with profit not cost. How are Wikipedia standards benefiting? Why at all this discussion and who brought this and what is his/her intrest in all of this? GerardM (talk) 05:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- It's a very good question, but I think almost all editors involved agreed that some prices could be included in medicine articles. The main question was how would it work. There is a rule about not including prices as part of WP:NOTCATALOG. The idea there is that price lists are usually time sensitive and used for advertising purposes. The prices of medicines has a much broader interest than that, but finding sources, time sensitivity, differences across countries - all can make reporting them difficult. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that The Signpost is letting its readers down here.

Arbcom debates are not intended as public entertainment, and are certainly not accessible as such. It can be hard for an ordinary editor to figure out what the debate is about, let alone what the arguments on each side are. So it is the duty of those who report on Arbcom decisions to comment on the decision process, and to state the justification given (whether or not they accept it) for the verdict. That has not happened here. No justification for the rather surprising outcome "we should suppress this information" is mentioned in this Signpost article. Maproom (talk) 22:31, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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