Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Procedural reform enacted, Rich Farmbrough blocked, three open cases

Motions for procedural reform

Standardised enforcement

ArbCom resolved by motion to standardise the enforcement of "editing restrictions imposed by the committee, and to reduce the amount of boilerplate text in decisions." The following standard enforcement provision will be incorporated into all cases with an enforceable remedy that avoids case-specific enforcement provisions:

“

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.

”

Motion on procedural motions

ArbCom resolved to ensure that the community has adequate notice of proposed changes to the committee's processes and procedures, and opportunity to comment on proposed changes. The motion requires clerks to notify the community of all proposals for significant changes on the committee's formal motions page, and that they be advertised on the committee's noticeboard and administrators' noticeboard. Motions will be subject to standard voting procedure and will remain open for 24 hours before enactment.

Other motions

Rich Farmbrough blocked

Following his use of automated programs in contravention of sanctions, Rich Farmbrough has been blocked for 30 days from 6 June. The committee has resolved that to avoid future violations of any nature, Farmbrough is to:

clear all userspace .js pages associated with his accounts;
avoid pasting offline automated edits into an article;
make only manual edits; and
refrain from edits adjusting the capitalisation of templates (where current capitalisation is functional) and similar edits, as "these can create the appearance of automation".

The prohibition on his use of automation will remain unchanged until it is modified or removed by the Committee. The earliest date which he may appeal the automation prohibition is 15 January 2013. Checkuser will be used to verify his compliance with the prohibition, and if future breaches of the automation prohibition occur, "notwithstanding the standard enforcement provisions, he will likely be site-banned indefinitely with at least twelve months elapsing from the date of the site-ban before he may request the Committee reconsider."

Lyncs topic-ban lifted

The committee has lifted the indefinite ban of Lyncs from the Scientology topic. The ban was imposed after his successful siteban appeal last year. His appeal to have his interaction ban from Cirt and single-account restriction removed was unsuccessful in view of the limited number of edits the committee could review.

Open cases

Fæ (Week 3)

The case concerns alleged misconduct by Fæ. MBisanz claims that "Fæ has rendered himself unquestionable and unaccountable regarding his conduct because he responds in an extremely rude manner that personally attacks those who question him." MBisanz alleges that Fæ mischaracterises commentary about his on-wiki conduct as harassment and while Fæ has been mistreated off-wiki and possibly on, his violent responses to on-wiki commentary "has become the issue itself."

Evidence submissions close tomorrow, with proposed decisions due by 26 June. Due to the contentious nature of the case, arbitrator SirFozzie added a notice on the evidence subpage reminding users that he and other arbitrators and clerks will monitor the case. Clerks have been authorised to remove uncivil comments and accusations where there are no diffs to support them; the users responsible will receive a single warning. If further incidents occur, clerks may block the user for a period of time at their discretion. Users are reminded that no speculation is allowed, and submissions must be factual and to the point; where submissions contradict those of other editors, sufficient diffs must be provided.

GoodDay (Week 2)

The case concerns disruptive editing by

Steven Zhang, the filing party. GoodDay believes that diacritics should not be used in articles as they are not part of English. Zhang notes

that GoodDay can be uncivil and often removes comments by other editors from his talk page, citing harassment.

Evidence submissions closed on 5 June; most submissions concerned GoodDay's battleground behaviour and disruptive editing.

AGK

, reminding users seeking to make submissions that the purpose of the case is to examine GoodDay's conduct. Submissions must relate to whether or not his behaviour is contentious. AGK reminded users that "no examination will be made of the wider topic areas to which GoodDay makes contributions, except where necessary to establish if GoodDay's behaviour has been disruptive." The proposed decision of the case "will take into account GoodDay's treatment of his mentors' advice" and evidence unrelated to GoodDay's conduct will not be accepted.

Falun Gong 2 (Week 2)

The case was referred to the committee by

Shrigley. The accused editors have denied his claims and decried TheSoundAndTheFury for his alleged "POV-pushing". According to

TheSoundAndTheFury, the problem lies not with "these editors' points of view per se "; rather, it is "fundamentally about behavior".

Evidence submissions for the case will be accepted until 16 June, with a proposed decision to be made on 30 June.

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What's most upsetting to me about the Farmbrough case is that it resulted in Helpful Pixie Bot being shut down, which was very helpful in my edits. I guess that means coding my bot is higher on my priority list now. --Nathan2055 ^talk 01:53, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This brings up an excellent point: Why are bot authors permitted to contribute their bots' edits, without contributing their bots' code? What is the possible downside to requiring that source code of bots given the privilege of the bot flag be released under an appropriate and compatible license, just like the rest of Wikipedia content? Jclemens (talk) 04:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever the institution that okays bot use should simply require that. I'm a little stunned that that isn't the case already. If one is going to use a bot on Wikipedia, it should be a Wikipedia bot. Carrite (talk) 17:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This has been the problem for years, ditto for toolserver scripts - there are nice scripts that became inusable after their authors left (or were banned); as they were never public they had to be redone from scratch (or usually, were never redone...). This is a major annoyance - and something that could make a good article for Signpost. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:06, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am in agreement with you all. If you have suggestions for a new piece, you can start a discussion at the

bots talk page. James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 4:55pm • 06:55, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply

]

Forget that RFC's often end in stagnating inaction. Make a proposal and then get a vote on it. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 17:09, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes there are aspects of bots which can't be open sourced. For instance, I might have an opportunity to at one point do a one-shot editing bot to integrate a whole bunch of data into Wikipedia. It might be that the source code is extremely impractical to open source and would probably be of no further use. In general, bot source could ought to be open source, and it should probably be the default option, but I can think of times when it would be extremely practical to allow for closed source bots. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:05, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. We shouldn't put a few people's ideological dedication to a specific cause above practicality. Yes, urge people to publish their code, but don't force them to do it. Nyttend (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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