Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/Arbitration report

Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis: This Signpost Arbitration report covers material promoted from 19 February to 27 March.

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From March: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis

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1. Keysanger (talk · contribs) and MarshalN20 (talk · contribs) are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with, or commenting on, each other anywhere on Wikipedia (subject to the ordinary exceptions).
2. Keysanger (talk · contribs) is warned not to cast aspersions on other editors, or to unnecessarily perpetuate on-wiki battles.
3. Where the dispute relates specifically to the interpretation of individual military history sources, the Committee recommends that these disputes in this topic area be formally raised at the Military History Wikiproject talkpage to ensure a wider audience and further expert input. Evident manipulation of sources, or disregard of a MILHIST consensus, should be considered disruptive editing and addressed via regular administrative action where appropriate.
4. Where any content dispute involves both Keysanger (talk · contribs) and MarshalN20 (talk · contribs), those editors must seek wider input by raising the matter at any one of: the Military History Wikiproject talkpage, WP:3O, or WP:RFC. Both editors must abide by any subsequent consensus that arises from this process. Disregard of consensus should be considered disruptive editing and addressed via regular administrative action where appropriate. Nothing in this remedy restricts the editing of the disputed topic area by other editors.

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. The community is encouraged to carefully review the lists of items in AWB's "general fixes" and the Checkwiki project's list of errors to determine whether these items are truly uncontroversial maintenance changes. A suggested approach would be classifying existing fixes as cosmetic or non-cosmetic and thereby identifying fixes that should be ineligible to be applied alone. The groups who currently invest their efforts in maintaining these lists are encouraged to improve their change management practices by soliciting broader community input into the value of adding proposed new items to the lists, and specifically to make their proposals accessible to members of the community who are not bot operators or whose interests are non-technical.
2. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to clarify the nature of "cosmetic" edits and to reevaluate community consensus about the utility and scope of restrictions on such edits. The committee notes that an RfC on this topic is currently under development.
3. While the Arbitration Committee has no direct authority over the volunteer developers of open-source tools, we encourage the AWB developers to carefully consider feedback gathered in this case in order to use technical means to avoid problematic edits more effectively.
4. The Bot Approvals Group is encouraged to carefully review the proposed scope of any new bot request for approval to ensure that the scope and tasks are clearly defined and will resist scope creep.
5. Magioladitis is restricted from making any semi-automated edits which do not affect the rendered visual output of a page. This restriction does not apply to edits which address issues related to accessibility guidelines. Further, Magioladitis may seek consensus to perform a specific type of semi-automated edit that would normally fall under this restriction at the administrators' noticeboard. Any uninvolved administrator may close such a discussion with consensus to perform a specific type of semi-automated edit. All discussions should be logged on the case page, regardless of outcome.
6. Magioladitis is reminded that performing the same or similar series of edits in an automated fashion using a bot and in a semi-automated fashion on his main account is acceptable only as long as the edits are not contentious. Should Yobot be stopped or blocked for a series of edits, Magioladitis may not perform the same pattern of edits via semi-automated tools from his main account where this might reasonably be perceived as evading the block. In this circumstance, Magioladitis (like any other editor) should await discussion and consensus as to whether or not the edits are permissible and useful, and resume making such edits through any account only if and when the consensus is favorable.
7. Magioladitis is restricted from unblocking their own bot when it has been blocked by another administrator. After discussion with the blocking administrator and/or on the bot owners' noticeboard, the blocking administrator or an uninvolved administrator may unblock the bot.

In this issue

9 June 2017 (all comments)

From the editors

News and notes

• While the Magioladitis case was handled well by the committee, on the whole, the last ruling (7 above) was a reversion to the "good old bad old days" in two respects: Firstly it made a rule out of something that had been agreed voluntarily, and secondly it was proposed on 22 February 2017, over two weeks after the nominal closure date for the case. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:10, 10 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]
  
• "seek consensus to perform a specific type of semi-automated edit that would normally fall under this restriction at the administrators' noticeboard." Bad move. The admin dramah noticeboard is not the right forum for making content-related decisions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:14, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  

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