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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Requests for amendment

Use this section: To request changes to remedies or enforcement provisions, for example to make them stronger or deal with unforeseen problems. To request lifting of an existing Arbitration sanction that is no longer needed (banned users may email the Ban Appeals Subcommittee directly) How to file a request (please use this format!): Go to this request template, and copy the text in the box at the bottom of the page. Click here to edit the amendment subpage, and paste the template immediately below this box and above any other outstanding requests. Using the format provided by the template, try to show exactly what you want amended and state your reasoning for the change in 1000 words or fewer, citing supporting diffs where necessary. Although it should be kept short, you may add to your statement in future if needed as the word limit is not rigidly enforced. List any other users affected or involved. Sign your statement with ~~~~. If your request will affect or involve other users, you must notify each involved person on their user talk page. Return to your request and provide diffs showing that other involved users have been notified in the section provided for notification. This is not a page for discussion. It may be to your advantage to paste the template into your user space or use an off-line text editor to compose your request before posting it here. The main Requests for arbitration page is not the place to work on rough drafts. Arbitrators or Clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Requests that do not clearly state the following will be removed by Arbitrators or Clerks without comment: The name of the case to be amended (which should be linked in the request header), The clause(s) to be modified, referenced by number or section title as presented in the Final Decision, The desired modifications to the aforementioned clause(s), and A rationale for the change(s) of no more than 1000 words. Requests from banned users should be made by e-mail directly to the Committee. Only Arbitrators and Clerks may remove requests from this page. Do not remove a request unless you are one of those individuals.

Request to amend prior case: Race and intelligence

Initiated by Mathsci (talk) at 05:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Case affected

WP:ARBR&I

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

• Remedy 4, Captain Occam topic-banned

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

Amendment 1

• Captain Occam is site-banned from wikipedia for a period to be determined by ArbCom. The topic ban imposed on Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin could be extended to the two users privately mentioned in evidence to ArbCom.

Statement by Mathsci

Members of ArbCom have been aware for some time of ongoing issues of meatpuppetry following the topic ban imposed on Captain Occam and later on Ferhago the Assassin, per WP:SHARE. Evidence has been provided privately to ArbCom about two users associated off-wiki with both Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin.

At the end of January, unprompted, Captain Occam's editing on wikipedia entered a new stage of disruption. Members of ArbCom are already aware of the public letter written under his real name to the Economist. He has used this letter on wikipedia as a springboard to reopen the closed case WP:ARBR&I and renew allegations on wikipedia that have not been accepted by ArbCom. Captain Occam appears to be fanning the flames in several venues, entirely against the spirit of his topic ban. His edits at the moment suggest that, not only is he still in conflict with users previously involved in WP:ARBR&I but no longer active on the articles, but that he is in conflict with ArbCom itself. He has not moved on from the ArbCom case, nor does he seem to take any responsibility for his own actions.

Previous procedural disruption occurred in December when ArbCom had already voted to lift my topic ban on their own initiative. In these circumstances, and in view of his lack of openness in addressing the outstanding issues of meatpuppetry, even when questioned by arbitrators, some form of site-ban unfortunately now seems necessary. Diffs can be provided on request, but almost all recent non-article space postings are relevant. Mathsci (talk) 05:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Captain Occam

I need to make it clear what’s happened here. I wrote a letter to The Economist which did not mention any specific editor or arbitration case by name, and suggesting some possible reforms in Misplaced Pages’s dispute resolution process. Since the reforms I had in mind could only be implemented by the board of trustees, I brought up my letter in Jimbo Wales’ user talk to make sure he was aware of it. My initial post in Jimbo Wales’ user talk also did not mention the R&I case by name, although it referred to one editor (Varoon Arya) who had been involved in it. Jimbo Wales made it clear that he thought this was an issue worth discussing (, ) and Cool Hand Luke appeared to think so also. ( ). I think it’s fairly clear that none of this, at this stage, was a violation of my topic ban.

After I had started this thread, several other past participants in the R&I case noticed either my letter or the thread in Jimbo’s user talk, and figured out that the R&I case was what I was referring to. It’s not hard to figure out, since that’s the only arbitration case I’ve been directly involved in. Two of them (Mathsci and Muntuwandi) showed up in the thread in Jimbo’s user talk challenging me about specifics, and a third (Slrubenstein) made a pair of personal attacks against me in someone else’s user talk. (The attacks have now been deleted using RevDel, so I can’t link to the diffs.) Before these editors began challenging me, I’d had no prior contact with any of them in the past month.

The real mistake I made here was a lack of foresight. Even though my initial statement in Jimbo Wales’ user talk did not violate my topic ban or refer directly to any of these editors, I should have predicted that they would view it as an invitation to engage me in further discussion about the R&I case. That said, I need to emphasize that my intention was not to continue this conflict, and I had no involvement with Mathsci, Muntuwandi or Slrubenstein over this issue until they chose to become involved in it themselves.

I would still like to be able to work towards improving Misplaced Pages’s dispute resolution system, if there’s a way for me to do that without it being interpreted as continuing the R&I conflict. I am open to advice from arbitrators about whether that’s possible or not, and if ArbCom decides that it isn’t, I’ll stay out of discussions about this from now on. Maunus has offered to become my mentor, which is something else I’m willing to accept if ArbCom decides it’s appropriate. However, I think a site-ban is obviously excessive here. I’m currently in the middle of a major expansion of the William Beebe article, Ferahgo (who would presumably also be covered by a site-ban, due to WP:SHARE) is midway through writing an article about Gerhard Heilmann’s book The Origin of Birds, and we are essentially the only editors working on these articles. If we get site-banned, both of these articles would have to remain indefinitely in their current half-finished state. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement by other editor

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

• comment I don't think that topic bans imposed at wikipedia extend to other public news media - I think that censoring someone because of participating in the public debate about wikipedia would be a bad move, and promote a kind of wikipedia community we don't want. People should be allowed to discuss their wiki experiences, also the bad ones, in other venues without that having any bearings on their editing. However, the appeal to Jimbo was clearly a bad move on the part of Captain Occam and does suggest that he is having more than a little trouble dropping the issue here on wikipedia. I think Mathsci is als inflaming the issue and that a more becoming mode of action for him would have been to simply leave it alone, since Occam's communication with Jimbo is not really harming anyone and is unlikely to have any effect on the particular issues covered by the R&I topic ban. I think an indef ban is excessive if Captain Occam recognizes having been in error and shows a will to proceed to become a valuable editor in other venues as he is currently showing good progress towards (e.g. at William Beebee). ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Comment This accusation must be supported by diffs. Mathsci levels several serious charges - meatpuppetry, disruption, reopening a closed case, renew allegations, several venues, violation of topic ban, irresponsibility. The sanctions called for are equally serious - site banning. It really seems inadequate to airily allude to "almost all recent non-article postings" to support multiple highly serious allegations - serious accusations require serious evidence to be taken seriously. Zarboublian (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Here Captain Occam says, "I wrote a letter to The Economist which did not mention any specific editor or arbitration case by name." On Jimbo's talk page he wrote, "The Economist edited my letter... also left out where I mentioned who was the user whose reason for leaving I described in detail." Professor marginalia (talk) 21:39, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• From my perspective this appears to be more of an arbitration enforcement report than a request for amendment. Captain Occam is already restricted by an arbitration enforcement decision, and his recent comments are arguably in breach of this restriction. PhilKnight (talk) 16:04, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with Phil here. Comments made off of Misplaced Pages are definitely outside our remit as far as restrictions in almost any case, but there are comments onwiki that may be considered breach of prior restriction. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 17:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• It does appear to me that Captain Occam is doing his best to re-fight old battles, and this needs to stop. SirFozzie (talk) 20:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Request to amend prior case: Date delinking (Ohconfucius)

Initiated by Ohconfucius (talk) at 09:35, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Case affected

Date delinking arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

Remedies

• 18): "Ohconfucius is limited to using only the account "Ohconfucius" to edit"

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Ohconfucius (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

• n/a

Amendment 1

• Suggested motion: "Remedy #18 ("Ohconfucius accounts") of the Date delinking case is terminated, effective immediately, and Ohconfucius (talk · contribs) is permitted to use alternate accounts subject to normal community guidelines.

Statement by Ohconfucius

It has been three months since the previous amendment concerning me on the date-delinking case was passed. During this time, in addition to my content work, I have made edits to a large number of articles using scripts in furtherance to my stated objective to ensure date formats of articles are uniform, in compliance with WP:MOSNUM.

Since my last amendment, I have continued to perform valuable work in good faith for Misplaced Pages. 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has been declared a Good Article mainly through my efforts; I have also made significant improvements to the coverage of Paul Chater and Robert Hotung, Ho Tung Gardens, amongst others, in addition to a large number of minor, “gnoming” edits.

I hope to write a bot largely based on my WP:MOSNUMscript to reduce the manual gnoming effort, thus freeing more time for content-related work, which I love the most. I believe that the thousands of edits made using this script in article space in the last three months have proved to be highly successful, with almost no false positives and to my knowledge no objections by editors. To execute same by bot, I hope to submit the proposal, under an alternative account, for approval of BAG in due course once this restriction is lifted.

• Pursuant to the brief discussion below, I have today submitted a bot request, without creating the account MOSNUM bot (talk · contribs). --Ohconfucius 03:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement by other editor

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Statement by your username (2)

{Statement by editor filing request for amendment. Contained herein should be an explanation and evidence detailing why the amendment is necessary.}

Statement by other editor (2)

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• I see two justifications listed--in short "I've been good" and "I want to run a bot on an alternate account", but I don't yet see a proximate lack of potential benefit to the project. Pending more input and simply looking at the request at face value, I'd be inclined to address this by permission to run a single bot account, conditional on BAG approval for the task, and address a wholesale removal of the restriction once that has proven to be successful. Jclemens (talk) 16:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• Awaiting any input, but my initial inclination is per Jclemens. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Also awaiting any input, and also noting that my initial inclination is per Jclemens. Risker (talk) 05:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Pending more input, I also agree with the approach outlined by Jclemens. PhilKnight (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with the approach suggested by Jclemens. Shell 19:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Per Jclemens. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:56, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• That would be my recommendation also. He hasn't made a case for needing multiple alternates, just a bot account. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Motion

Remedy 18 of the Date delinking case, which limits Ohconfucius (talk · contribs) to using a single account, is amended by adding the sentence: "He may also use a separate bot account for any bot task or tasks approved by the bot approvals group."

Since there are 18 arbitrators, a majority is 10.

Support:

1. There appears to be good reason and consensus for this modification. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
2. Have no problem with this. SirFozzie (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
3. Jclemens (talk) 03:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
4. Shell 03:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
5. PhilKnight (talk) 03:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
6. Risker (talk) 04:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
7.  Roger 11:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
8. Concur with the rationale offered. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 17:13, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

Request to amend prior case: Date delinking (Lightmouse)

Initiated by Lightmouse (talk) at 11:00, 29 January 2011 (UTC) ; Case affected : Date delinking arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

• 7.1): "Lightmouse is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Misplaced Pages."

• supplement): "Nonwithstanding remedies #7.1 and #8, Lightmouse (talk · contribs) is permitted to use his Lightbot (talk · contribs) account for a single automation task authorized by the Bot Approvals Group. "Automation" is to be interpreted broadly to refer to any automated or semi-automated tools whatsoever."

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Lightmouse (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Amendment 1

Proposed amendment:

• Lightmouse (talk · contribs) is permitted to use his Lightbot (talk · contribs) account for another single automation task authorised by the Bot Approvals Group.

Statement by Lightmouse

• A single automation task was authorised by the Bot Approvals Group. See: Lightbot approval. The task ran between 18 December and 14 January for about 2500 edits. Lightbot has been dealing with units of measurement since June 2008 and has played a part in significantly improving the accessibility, consistency and smarter linking of units of measurement that we now see on Misplaced Pages. The task recently approved by BAG was confined to adding conversions to feet and miles. I'd like Arbcom to give BAG the scope to permit Lightbot to convert inches in addition to miles and feet.

Question by uninvolved Ncmvocalist

Given that the motion says that the account is authorized for a single automation task authorized by BAG, I think what Jclemens says would still apply. If BAG amended the single automation task (be it in terms of duration or nature), then the motion is still being complied with (making this request for amendment somewhat unnecessary). Is that correct? Or is this a drafting issue where arbitrators meant to write (in that motion) that the account is limited to the single automation task authorized by BAG (as set out at Lightbot 5) and that this task cannot be amended at any time without prior approval from ArbCom? Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Gigs

There were some minor concerns voiced about the most recent run, but nothing too serious. Jclemens wording seems to be the best way to clarify, as it was my understanding all along that the limitation was to one active task, not one task ever. Gigs (talk) 16:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement by yet another editor

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• Awaiting input. Comments by those who have interacted with Lightmouse's recent automated edits, and can comment on their quality and adherence to policy, would be especially helpful. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
• Rather than "one task" and "one additional task" and "one additional task", I would be more inclined to support one floating task at a time, which Lightmouse can negotiate with the BAG. If he's got an ongoing task which really needs doing on an ongoing basis, he should feel free to transition that to a bot operator not currently under a germane sanction. Jclemens (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• I'm inclined to agree with Jclemens, but would also particularly appreciate the comments requested by Newyorkbrad. Risker (talk) 05:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with Jclemens - support a single floating task to be agreed with the Bot Approvals Group. PhilKnight (talk) 15:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Adding inches to the bot would still seem to fall under the same "dealing with measurements" task. Shell 19:44, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Per NYB - some feedback would be nice. Eventually I guess we can take the lack of same to mean a lack of problems, in which case per Jclemens. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Motion

Remedy 7.1 of the Date delinking case, which as originally written prohibited Lightmouse (talk · contribs) from utilizing any automation on Misplaced Pages, is amended by adding the words "except for a bot task or group of related tasks authorized by the bot approvals group." Remedy 8, which limited Lightmouse to using a single account, is amended by adding the sentence: "He may also use a separate bot account for any bot task or group of related tasks approved by the bot approvals group."

Since there are 18 arbitrators, a majority is 10.

Support:

1. There appears to be good reason and consensus for this modification. I am not sure that the limitation to a single task (or group of related tasks) is essential, but I have no problem with moving one step at a time here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:57, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
2. Jclemens (talk) 03:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
3. Don't see any issue with this. Shell 03:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
4. PhilKnight (talk) 03:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
5. SirFozzie (talk) 04:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
6. Risker (talk) 04:45, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
7.  Roger 11:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
8. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 17:14, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain: