Wikipedia:Appeal Committee

The Appeal Committee is a proposed committee of functionaries empowered to appeal sanctions imposed by administrators or by the community. The transfer of this responsibility from the Arbitration Committee to the Appeal Committee should reduce the workload for arbitrators and provide a more efficient, adaptable and far-reaching appeal process. The Appeal Committee would be the last step in the appeal process for community or administrative sanctions, before arbitration. The committee would be formed by users elected by the community for two-year terms, and meeting the requirements for access to nonpublic data. As a policy for this committee and to clarify the appeal process on Wikipedia, it is also proposed that an Appeal Policy be created.

Role

Currently, the Arbitration Committee, with its dedicated ban appeals subcommittee, routinely considers appeals from banned or long-term blocked users. The Appeal Committee would largely supersede and extend this role (for example, it would also consider appeals of topic bans or other restrictions). Appeals could only be considered if there is no existing consensus in the community to retain the sanction as is, and prior steps to appeal the sanction have been made. Appeals can be heard privately (through a private mailing list) or publicly, and the community should be informed when a privately heard appeal is under advanced consideration, asking for input, as well as, privately, individual users when deemed appropriate. The Appeal Committee may decrease the severity of a sanction, or lift it with conditions. If desired by the community, the Appeal Committee could also appeal deletions, when the deletion review step has already been attempted, for example, by restoring the page and (re-)initializing a deletion discussion (see a recent discussion on this). Additional appellate jurisdiction could be granted to the committee if desired by the community, for example on protections. A recusal system similar to that of ArbCom would be used. Decisions would be taken with a majority of active non-recused members. The precise procedures have not yet been established.

Relations with the Arbitration Committee and the Audit Committee

Sanctions imposed directly by the Arbitration Committee may not be overturned by the Appeal Committee; in case of conflict of authority, the Arbitration Committee takes precedence. However, this does not preclude that in the longer term, the community considers the creation of a method to appeal ArbCom decisions involving the Appeal Committee, but only as a part of a process. If desired by the community, the Appeal Committee could also offer advisory recommendations on an ArbCom decision.

If underserved, it is possible that arbitrators be temporarily appointed to the Appeal Committee in rotation, until all seats are taken.

Requests for information or joint discussions between the Arbitration Committee and Appeal Committee would probably be frequent, thus a system for easy and exclusive communication between the two committees through mailing lists should be established.

In the past, the Ban appeals subcommittee has requested verifications of checkuser findings to the Audit Subcommittee, the Appeal Committee could similarly request information or verifications to the audit Committee, thus a similar system for easy and exclusive communication between the committees should be established.

Appeal policy

As of now, methods to appeal sanctions are documented in the policy Wikipedia:Appealing a block and Wikipedia:Banning policy#Appeals process. It is proposed to establish a policy concerned with the appeal process on Wikipedia, in particular with the appeal of user sanctions but not only, and that it covers the Appeal Committee policy.