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Motions

Shortcuts WP:ARM WP:ARBM This page can be used by arbitrators to propose motions not related to any existing case or request. Motions are archived at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Motions. Only arbitrators may propose or vote on motions on this page. You may visit WP:ARC or WP:ARCA for potential alternatives. Make a motion (Arbitrators only) You can make comments in the sections called "community discussion" or in some cases only in your own section. Arbitrators or clerks may summarily remove or refactor any comment.

• WP:A/R/M

Motion to consolidate evidence submission procedures

The Arbitration Committee's existing procedures governing the submission of evidence, as enacted on 17 April 2011 and 24 May 2012, are replaced with the following consolidated and restated procedure:

Submission of evidence

Submissions of evidence are expected to be succinct and to the point. By default, submissions are limited to about 1000 words and about 100 difference links for named parties, and to about 500 words and about 50 difference links for all other editors. Editors wishing to submit evidence longer than the default limits are expected to obtain the approval of the drafting arbitrator(s) via a request on the /Evidence talk page prior to posting it.

Submissions must be posted on the case /Evidence pages; submission of evidence via sub-pages in userspace is prohibited. Unapproved over-length submissions, and submissions of inappropriate material and/or links, may be removed, refactored, or redacted at the discretion of the clerks and/or the Committee.

Enacted - Seddon 18:25, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Votes

Support

1. Proposed. Our recent change has introduced two different variants of the procedures; there's no reason why we can't consolidate them into a single, coherent version. Kirill  21:34, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
2. Works for me. Risker (talk) 21:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC) Noting that I approve of Roger's addition. Risker (talk) 23:01, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
3. This is just a merge of the two wordings in order to avoid confusion. PhilKnight (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
4. Added "via a request on the /Evidence talk page" to avoid uncertainity over the proper place to make requests. It also enables other parties/onlookers to weigh in with their comments. Revert if you hate this.  Roger Davies 22:57, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
5. Housekeeping. Jclemens (talk) 23:50, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
6. Streamlining - many referrals have elements of both anyway. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:26, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
7. Just good housekeeping given what has gone before. Courcelles 03:31, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
8. This seems to be a motion to implement our earlier motion, but I recognise that we must be completely agreed on the wording to adopt moving forward. There can be no room for ambiguity about evidence limits. AGK 12:05, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
9. SilkTork 15:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
10. Streamlining is good. SirFozzie (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

General discussion

Motions on procedural motions

Motion #1

In order to ensure that the wider community is given adequate notice of and opportunity to comment on proposed changes to the Arbitration Committee's processes and procedures, the following procedure is adopted:

Modification of procedures

All significant changes to the Arbitration Committee's procedures shall be made by way of formal motions on the Committee's public motions page, and shall be advertised on the Committee's noticeboard, the administrators' noticeboard, and the Village Pump when first proposed. The motions shall remain open for a period of no less than one week, and shall otherwise be subject to the standard voting procedures enacted by the Committee for other motions.

Votes

Support

1. Proposed, based on recent concerns that we're not providing sufficient opportunity to comment on proposed changes before they're enacted. Kirill  21:43, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
2. I request you change "all changes" to "all significant changes", to exclude unimportant fixes and changes from the transparency requirement this motion creates. AGK 12:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   Changed as requested. Kirill  12:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Having slept on this, I cannot support this in its present form. It is a sweeping measure, with very broad unintended consequences. As drafted, this requires a formal motion, advertised in three locations, and up for a week, to make a non-controversial copy edit to a procedural template, to make a non-controversial redirect to a better location, or to modify the precise sequence or number of procedural steps clerks take in opening cases etc etc. This runs directly counter to WP:BURO.  Roger Davies 09:34, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   Is the change to "significant changes" requested by AGK sufficient to allay your concern regarding the sweeping nature of the motion? Kirill  12:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   No, because the unqualified expression "processes" is also overbroad. Pre-announcing everything in three locations is also OTT. To put this into perspective, the evidence length proposals were up for seven weeks and reported in Signpost on 9, 16, 23 and 30 April, and in Open Tasks for the duration. Which does not seem to me to be hiding anything away.  Roger Davies 12:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   Interesting; I wasn't considering the preliminary recitations to be material. Generally speaking, do you think that they should be interpreted that way? Kirill  12:31, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   It's probably responsible to assume that people will interpret this in the light most favourable to whatever their position happens to be as that's normally how people operate. Best therefore to pin it down.  Roger Davies 12:45, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Abstain

General discussion

Moved Nobody Ent's comment from the oppose section of the voting area to this discussion section. Carcharoth (talk) 00:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose Per not bureaucracy. We're getting in a tizzy because clarifications and amendments get merged? Whether a Hey ArbCom, you didn't quite get it right, please fix this process is called amendment / clarifications / have a Salmonidae is just so not important. Nobody Ent 00:13, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

While I happen to agree that the particular change that spurred this discussion was a fairly trivial one, I think the request that we be more consistent in soliciting community input is a reasonable one in and of itself, regardless of which specific change we neglected it for.

Beyond that, my intent is not only to provide more transparency to the process, but also to create a defined place for decisions on procedure to be made in the first place; at the moment, the Committee can hold such discussions in a variety of places, making it rather difficult to follow them at times. Kirill  01:01, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Nobody Ent, you are right, but it is a slippery slope - where is the limit. I fully endorse this change - it does not necessarily change the basics, but it does somewhat improve the transparency (something I have been asking for a long time). IF something is proposed by the ArbCom that the community would then massively oppose against, then at least that is seen - even the members of the ArbCom are only human. I presume that the motion about merging the Amendments and Clarifications pages would have passed without opposition, only some questions, concerns or suggestions which may have made the actual transition even smoother. --Dirk Beetstra 05:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Motion #2

To provide an opportunity for community comment on proposed changes to the Arbitration Committee's processes and procedures prior to enactment, the following procedure is adopted:

Modification of procedures

Significant or substantive modifications of the Arbitration Committee's procedures shall be made by way of formal motions on the Committee's public motions page, and shall be announced on the Committee's noticeboard by the clerks when first proposed. Such motions shall remain open for at least one week prior to enactment; otherwise, the Committee's standard voting procedures apply.

Votes

Support

1. Alternative to the motion on procedural transparency above, and addressing my objections to that motion.  Roger Davies 09:35, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
2. Works for me. Kirill  12:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

General discussion

• Of the three pages in the initial proposal Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard has far less watchers than the other two. AC/N has 593 to AN's 3482 and VPP's 2513. In a project with less than 10,000 highly active users, you are dealing in huge percentage differences. I'm not sure if your intent is to actually increase transparency or just to make a feint and point to it next time people complain, but with this motion you're doing a much better job of the second than you are the first. Sven Manguard Wha? 14:10, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
• I'm actually mindful of the complaints we've had in the past about focusing on procedure when we've posted this stuff publically. How much transparency does whether Amendments and Clarifications are on one page or two need?  Roger Davies 14:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
  • If the objective is to inform the community, you're going to have to break from Arbspace. The people who are complaining are most likely not watching the AN/C. The people watching AN/C are already involved enough that they'd be in the loop anyways. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Motion on decision elements

To provide greater clarity regarding the purpose of each element of an arbitration decision, the following procedure is adopted:

Elements of arbitration decisions

For standard hearings, decisions will be posted in the form of "Principles", "Findings of Fact", "Remedies" and "Enforcement".

Principles will highlight key provisions of policy, procedure, or community practice which are relevant to the dispute under consideration; and will, where appropriate, include the Committee's interpretation of such provisions in the context of the dispute.

Findings of fact will summarize the key elements of the parties' conduct in the dispute under consideration. Difference links may be incorporated but are purely illustrative in nature unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Remedies will specify the actions ordered by the Committee to resolve the dispute under considerations. Remedies may include both enforceable provisions (such as edit restrictions or bans) and non-enforceable provisions (such as cautions, reminders, or admonishments), and may apply to individual parties, to groups of parties collectively, or to all editors engaged in a specific type of conduct or working in a specific area.

Enforcement will contain instructions to the administrators responsible for arbitration enforcement, describing the procedure to be followed in the event that an editor subject to a remedy violates the terms of that remedy. Enforcement provisions may be omitted in decisions that contain no independently enforceable remedies.

Additionally, the existing procedure for voting on proposed decisions is modified to replace the first sentence ("For standard hearings, proposed decisions will be posted in the form of 'Principles', 'Findings of Fact', 'Remedies' and 'Enforcement', with a separate vote for each provision.") with the following:

Proposed decisions will be posted with a separate vote for each provision.

Votes

Support

1. Proposed. It's been suggested that the existing procedure for voting on proposed decisions is rather vague as to what constitutes each part of the decision; this attempts to remedy that. Kirill  13:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
2. Copyedited. Revert if you disagree.  Roger Davies 13:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

   That looks fine to me. Kirill  13:56, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

3. PhilKnight (talk) 14:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
4. Jclemens (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
5. SirFozzie (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

General discussion

• This starts off by talking about proposed decisions, and then appears to relate to final decisions without making the distinction clear. That an individual member of the Committee has proposed an interpretation of policy doesn't follow that it is a Committee interpretation until there is a consensus in the Committee for the proposed interpretation. If the intention of this motion is to refer to proposed decisions only, then I cannot support; if the intention is to talk about both proposed and final decisions, then that needs to be made clearer before I can support. SilkTork 16:54, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

  The intent was, indeed, to describe the final end product rather than delving into the drafting process; I've copyedited the text to clarify that. Does the change address your concern? Kirill  17:04, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Motion on standardized enforcement

To provide for standardized enforcement of editing restrictions imposed by the Committee, and to reduce the amount of boilerplate text in decisions, the following procedure is adopted, and shall apply to all cases closed after its adoption:

Standard enforcement provision

Unless explicitly stated otherwise in a particular decision, the following standard enforcement provision shall apply for all cases which include an enforceable remedy, and shall be considered incorporated into such decisions by reference:

"Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year. Appeals of blocks may be made to the imposing administrator, and thereafter to arbitration enforcement, or to the Arbitration Committee. All blocks shall be logged in the appropriate section of the main case page."

Votes

Support

1. Proposed. We've discussed having a standard enforcement provision in just about every case over the past few months, since we inevitably just repeat the boilerplate; this wording appears to be the form that we typically use. Kirill  13:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
2. Go for it,  Roger Davies 13:51, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
3. PhilKnight (talk) 14:19, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
4. Since this is update-our-procedures-to-reflect-reality week, this is pretty high on my list. We've had closes delayed for no better reason than a topic ban was added late, and then an enforcement had to be added on later and voted on appropriately. Jclemens (talk) 16:25, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
5. Yes. SilkTork 16:45, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

General discussion