The Report on Lengthy Litigation

In a private discussion and vote during the past week, the Committee blocked Chergles as a sockpuppet of a banned user. They also announced their current agenda. Major changes from the previous agenda include: integrating several previous points into the overhaul of the Arbitration Policy — the release date for which has been delayed. They also intend to focus on creating a ban appeal process, as reviewing bans is "preventing the Committee from dealing with other matters".

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases and closed one during the past week, leaving seven cases open.

• West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.

• MZMcBride: A case brought after administrator MZMcBride deleted numerous "secret pages". This case is reviewing administrator conduct by MZMcBride only, and is not ruling on the appropriateness of the pages themselves. MZMcBride was admonished for his administrator actions in a previous Request for Arbitration.

• Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.

• Ayn Rand: A case about editorial behavior, such as alleged POV-pushing and bad faith, in relation to the Ayn Rand article. The Arbitration Committee accepted the case as they found that all other avenues of dispute resolution had failed to resolve the dispute.

• Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved.

• Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.

• SemBubenny: A case about the communication behavior of SemBubenny (formerly Mikkalai), and his use of administrator tools in disputed deletions. Arbitrator voting is divided on remedies proposing the desysopping/suspension of SemBubenny.

• Fringe science: A case initially filed about the behavior of ScienceApologist, but opened to look at editing in the entire area of fringe science, and the behavior of editors who are involved in the area of dispute. ScienceApologist was banned from editing articles related to fringe science, Pcarbonn was admonished, and general warnings to behave and seek mediation were issued. Martinphi, who was a party to this case, was community banned while the case was underway.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-02/Humour