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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cameron11598 (talk | contribs) at 17:49, 10 December 2018 (→‎Additional CheckUser permissions for election scrutineers: Enacted). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Arbitration Committee proceedings

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

[edit]
Open cases
Case name Links Evidence due Prop. Dec. due
Historical elections (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) 20 Aug 2024 03 Sep 2024
[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)

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

Request name Motions  Case Posted
Amendment request: World War II and the history of Jews in Poland Motion (orig. case) 8 August 2024
Amendment request: Definition of the "area of conflict" Clause 4 (b) none none 26 July 2024
Motion name Date posted
Amendment to the standard provision for appeals and modifications 8 December 2018
Additional CheckUser permissions for election scrutineers 10 December 2018

Motions

Amendment to the standard provision for appeals and modifications

The following text is added to the "Modifications by administrators" section of the standard provision on appeals and modifications:

Administrators are free to modify sanctions placed by former administrators – that is, editors who do not have the administrator permission enabled (due to a temporary or permanent relinquishment or desysop) – without regard to the requirements of this section. If an administrator modifies a sanction placed by a former administrator, the administrator who made the modification becomes the "enforcing administrator". If a former administrator regains the tools, the provisions of this section again apply to their unmodified enforcement actions.

For clarity, this change applies to all current uses of standard provision, including in closed cases.

For this motion there are 11 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 6 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Support
  1. Common sense really. RickinBaltimore (talk) 23:12, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  2. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Needed. A good idea to add Lord Roem's suggestion. Note that I don't consider the "enforcing administrator" to have sole responsibility for sanctioning editors, their responsibility is any changes to the sanction itself. Doug Weller talk 16:23, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  4. a rational change DGG ( talk ) 17:52, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Katietalk 19:11, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  6. WormTT(talk) 22:32, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  7. (minor tweak to address Future Perfect at Sunrise's point, feel free to revert) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:51, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  8. As an obvious improvement. ~ Rob13Talk 03:16, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Now that editors have had a chance to comment, I'll add my obvious support since I proposed it. Noting that Lord Roem makes a good point that the 'new' enforcing admin should log it per WP:AC/P#Logging. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:06, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:09, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Abstain/Recuse
Arbitrator comments/discussion
  • This motion will provide a mechanism for other administrators to effectively "take over" the sanctions placed by administrators who no longer have the tools available rather than needing to go through AN or AE. This was really already envisioned in the current language by noting that former admins can't act in enforcement. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 21:35, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thryduulf, with this motion we're choosing not to address the question of inactive admins. It's harder to define exactly what constitutes a reasonable threshold of inactivity for this purpose, so we wanted to start with former admins, which is much more black and white. I'll send you an email about DF24. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:31, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion and comments

  • Makes sense. For clarity, the new 'enforcing admin' should make a note of this circumstance in the log when modifying the sanction. Lord Roem ~ (talk) 03:13, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is sensible for page restrictions. Does it make as much sense for topic bans or blocks imposed under DS, though? I don't think it is too much of a burden for them to be appealed through AE/AN - they usually are appealed there anyways, not directly to the enforcing administrator - and IMO it doesn't make sense to suddenly technically allow unblocking/unTBANing by any admin if the original admin leaves. One could scope this change to policy to only apply to page restrictions, which is the impetus of it anyways; I don't believe there have been too many problems with retired administrators and their TBANs/blocks, only with page restrictions. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:01, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't see any problem with letting this apply to TBANs and blocks, especially the blocks. It's much easier for a blocked user to appeal a block through the standard process on their userpage than trying to get it done at an AE thread where they can't contribute directly. This is how most normal blocks are handled, and I don't expect individual admins to act any less responsibly with an AE block/ban than they do with a normal block. ~Awilley (talk) 19:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is it only me, or is the language in the clause "... that administrator becomes..." structurally ambiguous? I mean, I get it that it must obviously refer to the new admin taking over, but grammatically it could refer to either of the two admins mentioned in the preceding clause, and to my mind it would even refer more naturally to the immediately preceding mention, i.e. the former admin. I admit I had to read the sentence twice to parse it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:08, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Is it worth adding something to say that an enforcing administrator can be changed when the original admin is long-term inactive (even if they are still an admin) or abdicates that responsibility (I attempted to do this regarding Darkfrog24 as my patience was completely exhausted but I was still pinged when it came to AE.)? Thryduulf (talk) 21:11, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Thryduulf: This is an issue we discussed on the list before this was proposed and posted. The issue here is ambiguity. How do we define long-term inactive? We elected to make the one change we could all agree upon first. I think your question is a very good one and one that we should investigate more thoroughly. It's not something I'd want to do without formal community consultation. ~ Rob13Talk 03:18, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind that admins who are inactive for over a year are procedurally desysopped, so that kind of puts an upper limit on how long a stale DS sanction can go before other admins can modify it. ~Awilley (talk) 03:59, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And one of my concerns with making anything more strict than that is ArbCom providing a competing definition of "inactivity" for our purposes. That could be seen as pressuring the community to consider activity more strictly, and while I would personally like to see that happen, I would like to be very careful we're not inadvertently pressuring the community by adopting competing procedures. ~ Rob13Talk 04:03, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Those are good and fair responses to my comments regarding inactivity, but completely ignore the question about abdicating as enforcing admin. Thryduulf (talk) 09:18, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
An enforcing admin can (mostly) already abdicate responsibility for a sanction by noting that any admin is able to change it (effectively granting standing approval) or by stating that a specific admin is able to change it. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:35, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Additional CheckUser permissions for election scrutineers

Temporary local Checkuser rights are granted to Linedwell (talk · contribs) for the purpose of acting as a scrutineer in the 2018 Arbitration Committee election. Any additional reserve stewards appointed to scrutineer the 2018 election may also be granted temporary local CheckUser permissions without a further motion of the Arbitration Committee. This motion may be enacted as soon as it reaches the required majority.

Enacted --Cameron11598 (Talk) 17:49, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support
  1. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:09, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:23, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  3. IIRC, the reserve had not come forward when we posted the last motion, next time we should wait for a reserve too. WormTT(talk) 07:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Or just not name the scrutineers in the motion. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    In which case, why not just have a standing motion that stewards may have temporary local CU rights if acting as scrutineers in an ArbCom Election? WormTT(talk) 09:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I was thinking the same thing. Might wait for more comments on this first before proposing it for the future. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:52, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Katietalk 12:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:10, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  6. RickinBaltimore (talk) 13:24, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  7. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:59, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Abstain/Recuse
  1. Mkdw talk 15:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion and comments (CU for election scrutineers)

  • @Callanecc and Worm That Turned: alternatively, the Checkuser policy could be modified to allow stewards to give themselves CU on en.wp when acting as scrutineers for an en.wp election. That way arbcom doesn't have to get involved and it would apply if we ever have a non-arbcom election that uses secure poll. Thryduulf (talk) 09:50, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I did think that, but was concerned about leaving an open ended route for instant local CU rights. That said, I can't imagine a situation where it would be an issue, since we do implicitly trust the stewards... or rather, they could do a lot more damage with or without the policy change! WormTT(talk) 09:54, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Seems like a good idea to save time; one can imagine a scenario where the minimum number of scrutineers and arbitrators both become unavailable, so policy-wise (i.e., ignoring IAR) we'd be stuck. Should something like this be put it place, it's worth noting that it technically gives the election coordinators the ability to select who gets checkuser. The coordinators have to be elected and they can only choose from stewards who, as WTT points, have immense implicit trust, so it's probably not a huge concern, but worth considering and wording appropriately (per usual). ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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