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Arbitration report

Third Palestine–Israel case closes; Voting begins

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By GamerPro64

For this week's Arbitration Report: another long-running case has been closed, while the voting process for this year's Arbitration Committee Elections has begun.

Palestine–Israel articles 3

On 22 November, a little under three months since it opened in late August, the Palestine–Israel articles 3 case has been closed. The case stemmed from a dispute in the topic-area of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; allegations of copyright violation were the proximate cause, along with sockpuppetry investigations, various ethnicity-related personal attacks, and the resultant noticeboard threads. Peace in the Middle East has been a long-standing problem in the real world, where tensions run especially high, even in comparison to the normally higher tensions that accompany discussion of political and religious views. Wikipedia is not immune to outside tensions being imported into on-wiki disputes, unfortunately. The strength of the Five Pillars is often tested in this particular topic-area, especially neutrality and civility, as the prior two ArbCom cases indicate.

The specifics of the initiation of this ArbCom case, ARBPIA3, were related to the use of administrative tools while blocked. There was a Level 1 emergency desysop, which one sitting arbitrator noted was an "extremely rare" procedure, on that specific basis. Although administrators are held to a higher standard with regard to civility and other behavioral criteria, the stated cause of the emergency desysop on 18 August was the tool use. The full ArbCom case, which was accepted, was explicitly of a scope not specific to the particulars of the events involving the small number of named parties, but rather "with the aim of reviewing... existing sanction provisions in the prior Palestine–Israel articles case" of 2009; later amended in 2011 (as well as here), and related motions were also passed in 2012.

...the "area of conflict" shall be defined as it was defined in the (2008) Palestine–Israel articles case, encompassing the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted... throughout the project.     —WP:ARBPIA2, in 2009

The following remedies were the result of the ARBPIA3 case:

All anonymous IP editors and accounts with less than 500 edits and 30 days tenure are prohibited from editing any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This prohibition may be enforced by reverts, page protections, blocks, the use of Pending Changes, and appropriate edit filters.

Uninvolved administrators are encouraged to monitor the articles covered by discretionary sanctions in the original Palestine–Israel case to ensure compliance. To assist in this, administrators are reminded that:

    —WP:ARBPIA3, in 2015

The specific portion of the remedy which permits discretionary-sanctions reverts of new editors and new usernames (those who have been editing for less than one month and/or have fewer than 500 edits) was first utilized in summer 2015 during the GamerGate case, another topic-area which also involves high tensions and sockpuppetry. The handling of both these cases have been mentioned during the ongoing ArbCom election process.

Arbitration Committee Elections 2015 Voting

Table of the unofficial advertised voter-guides[a] by individual wikipedians.

guide Cal. Cas. Drm. Gam. Gor. Haw. Hul. Kei. Kel. Kev. Kir. Kud. Lfa. Mah. Mar. NEE. Opa. Ric. Thr. Tim. Wil.
Tot.[b] Yes
70%
5th 		Yes+
91%
2nd 		Yes+
84%
4th 		No
27%
14th 		Low
46%
9th[c] 		No--
10%
18th 		No
33%
10th 		Yes~
57%
7th 		Yes+
88%
3rd 		No--
13%
17th 		No
30%
11th 		Yes~
54%
8th 		No
28%
13th 		No--
4%
20th 		No--
9%
19th 		Yes~
61%
6th 		Yes+
95%
1st 		No
27%
15th 		No
26%
16th 		Out
71%
5th 		No
30%
12th
AGK Yes ?? Yes No No No No No Yes No Yes mu[d] Yes ?? No No ?? No mu ?? Yes
Beg. No Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes No No No No No No mu Yes mu No mu No
Bis. ?? Yes Yes ?? No No No No Yes No No No No No No No Yes mu No ?? No
Boi. Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes No-- No Yes mu No No Yes Yes No No y No
Carc. Yes~ Yes Yes No Yes No No~ Yes Yes No No No~ Yes No No Yes Yes No No~ n~ No~
Carr. No Yes+ Yes+ No-- No No Yes No Yes No-- No-- No No No No-- Yes Yes+ No No y Yes
Col.[e] No No 'C' No No Yes+ 'C' No No Yes+ Yes+ No n No Yes No 'C' Yes+ 'C' 'C' Yes
Eal. mu Yes+ Yes+ No No No~ mu mu Yes No No No No No~ No Yes Yes No No y mu
Elo. Yes ?? Yes Yes Yes No No Yes~ Yes No~ Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes n No
Fuz. Yes Yes ?? Yes Yes ?? ?? Yes ?? ?? Yes ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? Yes ?? ?? ?? ??
HJM. Yes Yes Yes mu Yes mu No Yes Yes No mu Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes mu No
Cat. [f] No ?? Yes No Yes No No Yes mu Yes Yes No Yes ?? No Yes ?? Yes No ?? No
MON. Yes Yes Yes No No mu mu No Yes No No Yes No No No No Yes Yes No y mu
MZM. Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No mu Yes
Pet. No Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes No-- No-- No No No Yes Yes Yes No No n Yes
Pld. No No Yes No No No mu No Yes+ No No Yes+ No-- No No Yes+ No Yes Yes+ y+ No
Rea. Yes~ Yes+ Yes+ Yes Yes No No Yes+ Yes No-- No-- Yes+ No No-- mu No Yes+ No No y+ No
Reg. mu Yes Yes mu No mu mu Yes Yes No No Yes No No No Yes Yes mu No y mu
SBJ. No Yes No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No n No
Sil.[g] Yes Yes+ Yes+ mu Yes~ No-- No mu Yes No~ No~ Yes~ mu No-- No-- mu Yes+ Yes mu ~y No--
Sja. Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes mu Yes mu mu No Yes No No Yes mu No Yes n mu
Sma. Yes Yes No Yes Yes mu Yes Yes Yes Yes mu No No No mu No Yes No No y No
Own. Yes~ Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes~ No No~ No Yes Yes Yes No y Yes
Try. Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes No No Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes y No
Wor. Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes No-- Yes Yes mu No No Yes mu No mu mu No
Yng. Yes Yes+ Yes+ No No No mu Yes Yes+ No No Yes No No No Yes Yes+ No No y+ mu

As we reported last week, there are 20 candidates in 2015, seeking to fill up to nine open seats on the Committee. The number of candidates is now at 20 after one editor announced their withdrawal from the election on 25 November. As the election must go on, on 23 November at 00:00 UTC, voting for the 2015 election began via Special:SecurePoll. Polls will remain open to eligible voters (currently unblocked usernames registered before 28 October with 150+ edits to mainspace before 1 November) through 6 December at 23:59 UTC.

More than 500 Wikipedians cast votes during the first 24 hours of polling, a figure which was markedly higher than in the previous year, and by 28 November over 2000 votes had been cast. Voter-participation in the 2014 ArbCom election was 593 legitimate non-duplicate ballots, lower than in previous years. After a series of discussions at WP:AN and User talk:Jimbo Wales, among other places, consensus developed that during 2015 elections a WP:MassMessage would be sent out to the roughly one hundred thousand eligible ArbCom voters, via their user talk pages. Election commissioner Mdann52 helped implement the actual message.

To learn more about the candidates, review their campaign-statements, which link to their contributions and other information about them. Questions for candidates are ongoing, and will continue throughout the voting-period. In addition, there are now more voter-guides than there are candidates; written by individual wikipedians, these guides provide arb-candidate criteria, and often specific support/oppose advice (see table at right), for editors unfamiliar with ArbCom, or unfamiliar with specific candidates. At least a dozen other candidate-analysis pieces have been published on-wiki, plus a special report last week in the Signpost.

As there has been one withdrawal since the voting began, and since candidates will continue to answer questions throughout the 6 December close of the SecurePoll, please note that voters "may revisit and change their decisions" by returning to the voting booth and re-entering their revised preferences. Finally, for technical reasons, voters should cast their vote by "an hour before the close of voting" or so, to ensure their vote will be counted.

Editor's note: In the interest of disclosure, one of the 20 candidates in the election is a co-editor-in-chief of the Signpost. They are temporarily inactive with regard to their election-related editorial duties at the Signpost and will remain so for at least the remaining duration of the election. As of 16 November, Go Phightins! has taken the reins as sole editor-in-chief.
  1. ^ The voter-guides by Ched and Gerda Arendt were not included in this summary-table, since those voter-guide authors purposely give no plain recommendations about supporting or opposing any of the specifically named candidates.
  2. ^ This quasi-predictive information is calculated using the ArbCom election procedures, but applied solely to the unofficial advertised voter-guides listed here, rather than to all the votes cast by the ArbCom electorate. Specifically, the percentages used to rank each candidate are the number of voter-guide supports, divided by the sum of the voter-guide supports plus the voter-guide opposes, eliding neutral and undecided voter-guides on a candidate-by-candidate basis. The percentages shown do have some rough predictive powers (the top three percentages are more likely to win spots out of of the nine seats available, than the bottom three percentages, for instance), but please note that publishing a voter-guide is not restricted in any fashion. Thus, these raw totals are gauged from a self-selected subset of wikipedians who happened to have high interest in the ArbCom elections, and therefore these 'pundits' will have an indeterminate correlation with the demographics of the actual electorate. Take these numbers with a large grain of salt. The Signpost thanks Ealdgyth for their work on an original chart that inspired this one.
  3. ^ Minimum threshold for winning a seat on WP:ARBCOM is 50% thus the 'pundits' predict it is possible the 9th seat will be vacant.
  4. ^ This designation was inspired by a comment made by one of the candidates, about an earlier Signpost piece.
  5. ^ The "recommended" candidates of this user's guide were renderered as Green tickY+, the "B passes" are Green tickY, the "C passes" are uncolored, with the "fails" rendered as Red XN.
  6. ^ There are rumors that this voter-guide may not be entirely serious, but it is listed at the official location, and does specify several specific recommendations about specifically named candidates.
  7. ^ The markings for this user's guide are predictions of the likelihood of successfully being elected, which is very different from personal support/neutral/oppose information that most voter-guides provide.
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Side remark: I have the impression that at least one opinion about one candidate was not correctly transcribed. Main remark: concerning the predictive value of the voter guides, I have the impression that quite all voter guide writers would have voted even without the mass message reminder. Are they predictive about the whole set of voters, or only about a smaller subset? The final result will give some clues about the likeliness of such hypotheses. Pldx1 (talk) 10:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If there are incorrect markings in the table, Pldx1, please feel free to click edit, and fix the problems you see. Or, equivalently, please feel equally free to just leave me a note with the specifics of the error, and I will fix it right up. Some voter-guide authors are still actively making updates, and of course even without that fact, mistakes do happen.
  The predictive value is reasonably strong, in *past* couple arbcom elections at least, for the ordering of the top-dozen-or-so candidates. That said, with the mass-message for the 2015 election, all bets are off.  :-)     But yes, WP:OR strongly suggests that to *closely* match the outcome, it is necessary to use a weighted average of the voter-guides, rather than a raw average, as was used for simplicity/transparency/neutrality in this Signpost article. I too will be curious to see the final outcome, and how well it aligns with the voter-guides. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dear 75.108.94.227. Modifying a simple table is quite easy, indeed. But in fact, this table is a spreadsheet. Modifying one or two input cells will perhaps result into modifying several output cells and perhaps result into an occasion to revisit the editorial comment attached to these output cells. That is the reason why I haven't simply SOFIXIT the problem. Obviously, no objection to tell you where are the input cells I was mentioning. Pldx1 (talk) 11:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed now,[1] perhaps? Thanks for your sharp eye, and thanks for writing a voter-guide, too. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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