Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Mandated external review

Mandated external review (MER) was a form of discretionary sanction imposed by administrators acting on the authority of the Arbitration Committee. Its deprecation was ordered on 3 May 2014.

The process is summarised as follows:

1. Mandated external review is a form of discretionary sanctions, intended to restrict an editor's ability to make controversial edits without discussion or consensus.
2. As with other discretionary sanctions, an editor may be placed under mandated external review by any uninvolved administrator after giving due warning.
3. Warnings should be clear and unambiguous, link to the decision authorising discretionary sanctions, identify misconduct, and advise how the editor may mend their ways.
4. Notices of application of mandated external review should specify the misconduct for which the sanction has been applied, as well as the appeal process.
5. Application of mandated external review and/or other discretionary sanctions has an established and clearly defined appeal process, which must be adhered to.
6. Overturning arbitration enforcement actions out of process is strictly prohibited per longstanding principle.
7. Mandated external review should be applied with caution where the community is already dealing with the specific issue through dispute resolution processes.

Description

Editors who are subject to mandated external review in an area of conflict are restricted from editing articles within the area of conflict, as defined by the motion or remedy authorizing mandated external review. Except for minor, uncontroversial corrections to spelling, grammar, and/or style, editors subject to mandated external review must follow this procedure in order to edit articles within the area of conflict:

1. The restricted editor must describe, in detail, the edit(s) they wish to make to the article on the article's talk page.
2. Interested editors must discuss the proposed edit(s), making changes to the proposal as necessary to attain a consensus in favor of the proposed edits.
3. An uninvolved editor must review the proposed edit(s) to ensure that a consensus has been reached, and the proposed edit(s) are reliably referenced and comply with the neutral point of view policy.

Once the uninvolved editor confirms that the proposed edit(s) are supported by consensus and policy, the restricted editor may make the edit(s). The proposed edit(s) should be made by the restricted editor, and not the uninvolved editor or any other editor, in order to ensure that the restricted editor is properly credited for their contributions.

Violations of these restrictions may be reported to Arbitration Enforcement, and may result in blocks up to one year in duration or topic bans from the area of conflict, at the reviewing administrator's discretion.

Guidance

For administrators

In determining whether to apply mandated external review to a given user, administrators should use their judgment and balance the need to assume good faith and avoid biting genuinely inexperienced editors, and the desire to allow responsible contributors maximum freedom to edit, with the need to reduce edit-warring and misuse of Wikipedia as a battleground, so as to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment even on our most contentious articles. Depending on the situation, it may be worthwhile to consider issuing other discretionary sanctions first in an attempt to remedy misconduct before mandated external review is applied; mandated external review should be considered as a step between short blocks and topic bans.

For editors

Editors wishing to edit in these areas are advised to edit carefully, to adopt Wikipedia’s communal approaches (including appropriate conduct, dispute resolution, neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability) in their editing, and to amend behaviors that are deemed to be of concern by administrators. An editor unable or unwilling to do so may wish to restrict their editing to other topics, in order to avoid sanctions.

For sanctioned editors

When considering if an edit you wish to make would be considered to be (a) "minor, uncontroversial correction(s) to spelling, grammar, and/or style", err on the side of caution and follow the proposal procedure if it is possible that a reasonable editor would consider it to go beyond such minor changes. This also applies to reverting apparent vandalism within the area of conflict.

See also

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions
• Full list of general sanctions