Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:29, 14 February 2004

For long term use in non-emergency cases, these policies are provisional. As a result of the Arbitration policy ratification vote these policies are in effect on an at-least temporary basis for emergency cases.

Jurisdiction

The arbitrators reserve the right to hear or not hear any dispute, at their discretion. The following are general guidelines which will apply to most cases, but the arbitrators may make exceptions. These guidelines may change over time:

1. The arbitrators will hear disputes that have been referred to it by the mediation committee.
2. Where a dispute has not gone through mediation, the arbitrators may refer the dispute to the mediation committee if it believes mediation is likely to help.
3. The arbitrators will occasionally request advice on whether to hear a particular dispute from Jimbo Wales.
4. The arbitrators will primarily investigate interpersonal disputes
5. The arbitrators will hear or not hear disputes according to the wishes of the community, where there is a consensus.
6. The arbitrators will not hear disputes where they have not been requested to arbitrate.

Rules

The arbitrators will judge cases according to the following guidelines, which they will apply with common sense and discretion, and an eye to the expectations of the community:

1. Established Misplaced Pages customs and common practices
2. Misplaced Pages's "laws": terms of use, submission standards, bylaws, general disclaimer, and copyright license.
3. Sensible "Real world" laws

Former decisions will not be binding on the arbitrators - rather, they intend to learn from experience.

Outcomes

The initial solution to most problems will be to issue an Arbitration Decree. For example:

• "User X, you are making unhelpful edits to article A. Stop it, and take a broader lesson from this as you edit other articles."
• "User X, you are making personal attacks on a wide variety of pages. Don't do that, personal attacks are inappropriate."
• "User X, limit your reverts to article A to one per day."
• "User X. refrain from editing this group of articles."

The second option will be to require that a user does not edit Misplaced Pages for a given time frame: up to thirty days to start with, up to a year in severe cases. These may be enforced by, for example, sysop blocks on IP addresses and usernames. Such bans may be appealed to Jimbo Wales, who retains the right to veto such decisions.

In due course, the arbitrators will review the possibility of additional software-based security measures, but will not request such features at the present time, relying instead on Decrees.

Transparency

1. We plan to take evidence in public, but reserve the right to take some evidence in private in exceptional circumstances.
2. Each arbitrator will make their own decision about how much personal information about themselves they are willing to share, both publically, and with the rest of the committee.
3. Arbitrators with multiple accounts on Misplaced Pages will disclose the usernames of those accounts to the rest of the committee, but are not required to disclose them publically.
4. Initially, we will keep our deliberations private, based on a semi-formal vote amongst arbitrators. However, both Fred Bauder and The Cunctator have expressed strong distaste for this option, so the arbitrators are far from unanimous on this point.
5. We will make the rationale for all our decisions public, based upon our private deliberations.

Requests

to be written

Who takes part?

to be written

Trial

to be written

Judgement

to be written

Emergency Session

The Arbitration committee will continue their deliberations towards a more permanent policy, and when they are finished, there will be an open community vote "yes or no" on he final policy.

In the meantime, the arbitration committee will handle emergency cases that Jimbo Wales refers to them. It is understood by all that they are merely acting in Jimbo's stead now, so as to begin the transfer of power in an orderly and timely fashion.

There being 11 members of the committee currently, the voting procedure for the emergency session is as follows:

1. An appeal to the arbitration committee will be officially heard upon referral by Jimbo and approval by any 4 committee members. That is, 4 votes to hear a case will result in the case being heard.
2. Upon those 4 votes, a final decision will be made within 1 week.
3. A quorum of the committee will consist of a majority of members, i.e. at least 6 members must vote within that week, or no decision is made, and no action is taken.
4. When a quorum has been reached, then after 1 week is up, or after enough members have voted such that the conclusion is inevitable, the majority decision will be the arbitration committee decision.

See also

• wikipedia:arbitrators, wikipedia:requests for arbitration