Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Arbitration report

Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration

Clausewitz' pithy summary of warfare as "politics by other means" seems to be the motto of some Wikipedia editors. On the English Wikipedia this struggle is seldom fought more fiercely and at greater lengths than in articles about American politics.

In an earlier arbitration case, American politics, which ended in July 2014, the Arbitration Committee of the time noted: "this is at least the fourth arbitration case in the past year related to American political and social issues" and that new disputes seemed to spring up on the heels of the old. One edit warrior, Arzel, was placed on 1RR (one revert per edit per 7-day period) with the possibility of appeal after one year and every six months after. A mechanism was set up for adding problem articles to discretionary sanctions without the necessity of opening a new arbitration case. In February 2015, by an amendment to the case following further edit warring and incivility, Arzel was topic banned from all articles relating to American politics.

The chronic culture of bad faith editing in the topic of American politics continued to present a problem for the community. In March 2015, a case was filed against Collect, who had previously been topic-banned in the Tea Party movement case in 2013. The newly filed arbitration involving Collect finished in May 2015, resulting in Collect receiving a revert restriction and a broad indefinite topic ban from American politics articles.

The Arbitration Committee simultaneously elected to revisit last year's American Politics case, as the lightweight mechanism for creating discretionary sanctions had not been used and no improvement was visible.

In this new American Politics 2 arbitration, which closed on June 19, 2015, the mechanism set up in last year's American Politics case was replaced by discretionary sanctions covering "all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people." The cut-off date was the subject of some debate within the Committee: they also publicly voted on versions of the motion with no cut-off and with a 1980 cut-off, and one Arbitrator alluded to private discussion of the possibility of extending the cut-off date back before the Civil War.

In this case, the conduct of Ubikwit and MONGO was found especially disruptive. Ubikwit was topic-banned, the Committee having noted Ubikwit's previous sanction in the Tea Party movement case in 2013. MONGO was admonished.

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• I find it sad that otherwise helpful editors find themselves mired in controversy especially those that had been previously warned. I can only assume they draw a different manner of satisfaction from editing than the rest of us that eschew such drama. Edit warring takes all the fun out the process, to my mind. As for the political angle, ARBCOM might have done well to set the applicable ban to start with the dawn of progressivism post Civil War as much hay can still be made in articles about early 20th Century events. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:13, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the problem expands, they can always adopt a motion to modify the date. I didn't follow this case closely, but from what I saw, the disputes related primarily to modern politics and much less to earlier years. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:57, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]