Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

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EncycloDeterminate unblocked

Original announcement

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 5 closed

Original announcement

• Broadly agree with all of the topic bans + suspended site ban, though would’ve liked to see more meat and potatoes in terms of remedies to ensure future TBANs aren’t necessary (ex. the article titles remedy or even something wholly experimental like the Levant Subcommittee, though I understand why they didn’t pass). The balanced editing restriction is a good start.

Overall, while I’m not confident this will fully solve the area’s many issues, I do think this is overall a good moment for the topic area in terms of lowering temperatures/ensuring adherence to WP:CIVIL, and I sincerely hope it does that; I’m also encouraged by the de facto further endorsement to WP:BRIE. Thanks to the arbs for taking on this absolute juggernaut of a case. The Kip ^(contribs) 00:01, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

• I thank the Committee for coming to what I think is the right decision. It felt like pulling teeth, with the incredibly lengthy period before the case was accepted, and the further time before the parties list was finalized, and finally with the PD votes that went through second-guessing, but I believe that it came out correctly in the end. I imagine it's always difficult for Arbs to balance, on the one hand, wanting to be responsive to community input, even when there are competing and opposite views being expressed, and on the other hand, wanting to make an independent and objective conclusion, without bowing to undue pressure. So this was a hard case. But I hope that, going forward, "being right isn't enough" will be an accepted part of Wikipedia editing culture. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I hope it's OK for me to ask this here. Nishidani has been keeping a running commentary on the topic and on the case on his user talk page, and it includes some pot shots at me. Given the TBAN as well as WP:NOTWEBHOST, could all of that be removed? It wouldn't feel right for me to do it myself, but maybe an Arb, Clerk, or uninvolved admin, could do it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

• I wonder how much impact the new balanced editing restriction will have. BEANS 'n' all, but to me it seems rather easy to make a large volume of gnomish or minor edits to defeat the 'balanced editing' clause. Granted, there are still other tools to restrict editors. It's perhaps the messiest topic area on Wikipedia. I'm happy about the first bullet though (All articles whose topic is strictly within the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area shall be extended confirmed protected by default, without requiring prior disruption on the article., though the proposal a while ago for pending ECP would be ideal. JayCubby 00:42, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  What I'm curious about is why the committee invented a new restriction but did not use it themselves. To me that suggests they're not very confident about its usefulness. Loki (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I'm hopeful about the restriction, and I hope to see confident application in the future. I think it's a good idea that might be used to encourage highly-motivated editors to take a crack at the backlog and thus better integrate into the Wiki community. Scharb (talk) 01:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Some of the most effective strategies for POV pushing in the PIA topic area can be found by examining the behavior of highly-motivated partisan ban evading actors. They make on average about 20% of their revisions in the topic area. So, they have already discovered that a self-imposed balanced editing restriction can help them fly under the radar, at least for a while, delay detection, reduce the likelihood of being reported at AE and facing sanctions etc. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:45, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  @LokiTheLiar: They did the same thing in APL^{(expand the collapsible)}, and the reason for this is because these restrictions are intended to be used as discretionary sanctions; i.e. something admins can use in contentious topic areas. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 06:53, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I have spent time doing small fixes across many articles in the ARBPIA world. For example, the split of Al-Aqsa and Al-Aqsa Mosque a couple of years ago, which cleaned up confusion between these two terms across hundreds of articles. Very small tidy-up edits, but a large volume.

This new restriction - which measures number of edits not volume of text - means I won’t do work like this again, for fear of being suggested to be unbalanced in my editing emphasis. I suspect other editors will have the same concern, so improvements like this will not happen in future.

Can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Onceinawhile, the balanced editing restriction is a sanction, not a global prohibition. In order for you to need to worry about it, someone would need to report your edits to AE and have an administrator determine that your edits were unhelpful and/or you were spending too much time in the topic area. Since your description sounds both helpful and not disruptive, I doubt you would even get to AE let alone get sanctioned. Primefac (talk) 18:13, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks to the arbs for taking on this case - I've already started watching some PIA-related pages that I had stopped due to the toxicity, and I'm hopeful that I won't have to un-watch them again. I still am, bluntly, shocked that only two arbitrators noticed the fact that the BM FoF as passed contains blatantly false accusations (misrepresentation of sources) and voted against it - but I don't necessarily disagree with the final outcome of that FoF. I would encourage arbitrators to ensure they review evidence entirely and ensure that accusations labeled as "facts" about parties are actually supported by the evidence. It shouldn't be necessary for someone to defend themselves on the evidence/workshop page if the evidence itself is blatantly inaccurate to begin with - we should be able to trust that arbitrators reviewed the evidence so we don't have to. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 02:05, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  It's possible that some editors are more sensitive than others, perhaps due to specific interactions. I don't think people should be afraid of toxicity in the topic area. People can be afraid of doxing, being attacked in the media/social media if they want, but I would encourage people not to be afraid or influenced by the many external mostly misinformation-based campaigns to exert influence. A broader view shows that rather than being toxic, the topic area appears to be more attractive to editors than Wikipedia in general, evidence presented in the 'Preliminary statements' for this case, 'Meme check #1'. And if you assume the topic area is toxic, the observation that 67 out the 303 accounts (~22%) that received a new extendedconfirmed grant in 2025 for English Wikipedia have decided to make edits in the topic area would mean toxicity attracts new EC editors. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:41, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Is there any part of the internet that, when covering or discussing Israel-Palestine, is better than Wikipedia? It my experience Wikipedia is, by far, the least toxic place on the internet for this topic. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:03, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  I agree. The rest of the internet is wild, anything goes. On the other hand, it is also probably the least fun place for young advocates who have grown up on a web diet. Coming in hot and hitting the brick wall of content policy is probably not fun. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:27, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  I want to be clear that I don't see your comment as negative - but I would find myself as one of the "more sensitive" editors. I don't want my identity exposed, and ultimately I don't enjoy conflict. I had tried editing in the area, and I left because I didn't like having to even see the toxicity of many of the editors sanctioned in the area. Were these editors the only ones? No. But the mere fact that new editors try to contribute in the topic area in the past 3-4 weeks doesn't matter, given that it's partially because of this case that they won't have to deal with toxicity. Attracting new editors does nothing if those new editors, whether newly EC or established editors, don't bother sticking around because of the behavior they see, even if it doesn't happen to them. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 07:15, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• How is this going to improve the topic area? I agree that some behavior wasn't great, but also banning some of the most knowledgeable and productive editors is not how we improve the encyclopedia for our readers, which needs to be the #1 priority. I'm disappointed that Arbcom could not find a less disruptive way to deal with the situation. (t · c) buidhe 06:46, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I mean, ultimately, ArbCom has a limited toolkit, whose most most impactful elements mostly consist of different varieties of banhammers - it's inevitable that a case like this will largely result in topic-bans and that other aspects of it would be harder to address. I think that one thing to do might be to go over some of the ideas that ArbCom wasn't able to follow up on due to coming too close to dictating content, and put them in front of the community; at the very least we can do something about the WP:POVFORK / WP:POVTITLE issues. (One thing I regret not following up on in the evidence phase is looking at who's creating all these forks - since I didn't do so I'm not sure what I'd find, but I suspect that there are problematic editors there who avoided scrutiny because they rarely stayed and got into visible fights over the forks they created. It might be worth investigating and taking that to WP:AE, since this case clearly identified it as a problem to be solved.) As far as WP:SOCK / WP:MEAT issues and the need for experienced editors goes, though, the only real solution is to urge the community to put more eyes on the topic. I wouldn't have supported every single topic-ban myself, but ArbCom (and many of the comments) are right in that we can't really use "we need this person tho" as an excuse for actual misconduct - if a few experienced editors were carrying all the weight then we need more people there, and that'd be true whether they got topic-banned or not. --Aquillion (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  The POVFORK/POVTITLE issue should definitely be looked at by the community. I think the biggest fix we need unrelated to the socking and coordination is a better enforcement mechanism for multi party edit wars, but there's not a lot of good ideas left. I saw that last night and wondered if maybe just blocking everyone involved from the article or full protecting for a month would get the point across. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:13, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think we need new enforcement mechanisms for this, we should just use the ones we have. My usual approach is to full protect for a few days to give everyone a chance to start talking, and if anyone reverts after that protection expires then I answer with blocks. I also rely pretty heavily on Arbcom's direction to treat users behaving similarly as the same user for dispute resolution purposes, so tag-teaming editors are meatpuppets by directive, and if they're teaming up to avoid xRR then all of them are in violation and can be blocked. Maybe the current committee should comment on that, I'm sure I'm deviating from the intended scope of that case and it's a 20-year-old directive now anyway. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:49, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not so sure ArbCom has a limited toolkit. They can change rules that impact all editors, all articles and all discussions for the topic area. If there is a limit, it may be a self-imposed artifact by assigning too much weight to the impact of individual editors. Once you adopt the premise that the state of a giant multi-agent system like the topic area with tens of thousands of individual editors making hundreds of thousands of edits can be regulated using a handful of editors as dials you can turn or switch off for a while, you probably limit yourself to a solution space that doesn't contain any useful general solutions. Thinking in terms of 'problematic editors' might be part of the problem. The traditional individual problematic actor-focused model that many people seem to like has not produced solutions that worked for the topic area as far as I can tell, probably because there is an endless supply of new editors with different biases, backgrounds, preferred sources etc. that naturally form autocatalytic sets. For interest, I think there have been 303 new extendedconfirmed grants since the start of the year. 67 of those accounts have edited in the topic area, 3 blocks so far. It's popular. The things that seem to have helped a bit are changes to the rules and enforcement of those rules. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:41, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  The limit is they have no authority when it comes to the actual editorial decisions - and the editorial decisions are ultimately the main problem here, as with all intractible ethnopolitical hellhole topic areas. Bear in mind a remedy concerning article titles got more-or-less unanimously voted down as out of their remit. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 18:37, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think if the community held an RfC and couldn't reach a clear consensus it might be within ArbCom's authority to impose a restriction like that. But better to see if the community can handle it first. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:31, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Is it too much to ask for solutions that are more out of the box than just throwing down ban hammers? It seems like that is Arbcom's main tool and yes I'm starting to think that is a real problem. Ultimately the only purpose of Wikipedia is to have quality content for our readers — almost nobody outside the website cares about this Arbcom drama. So in my opinion readers should not lose out in any decision that Arbcom makes. (t · c) buidhe 22:45, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Do you have suggestions for workable alternate solutions? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:56, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Where should we start discussion about what to do about the title and POV fork issues, assuming the ultimate goal is likely to be an RFC to impose some topic-area-wide changes? The village pump? We probably need a bit of thinking and workshopping, although obviously my own initial proposal would be something akin to what I proposed during the case. Community decisions that affect an entire topic area are not common (with good reason) so I'm not sure what the best way to approach it is. --Aquillion (talk) 23:16, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  And this removes a few editors who had been useful in identifying and bringing up reports about sock puppetry. I presume the terms of broadly construed TBANs would mean that they can no longer file SPIs using evidence from the topic area. I can't see this as anything other than a win for sockpuppets. TarnishedPath^talk 11:07, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Everyday is a win for sockpuppets. I think outcomes like this are a bigger win for socks than less SPI reports. We reward ban evasion by retaining their content, in this case in a non-partisan way as there were multiple socks of opposite valence. The content is still around 3/4 the work of ban evading actors which seems unfortunate regardless of the merits of having an article about the subject. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:47, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Sean.hoyland given the outcome of the AFD should a merge be proposed? TarnishedPath^talk 14:16, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry to say, but I have a near-zero interest in content related decisions and discussions nowadays. Much more interested in failure modes, trying to measure things and understand the difference between how we think about the topic area and its actual state. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• Disclaimer: I have not followed the case. Nor have I now read the case. So forgive me if the answer to my question is apparent to someone less lazy than I: what does the SPI remedy have to do with P-I? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:11, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I proposed it because we had a finding that third-party participation in PIA SPIs was not helpful and made cases harder to manage. It's a compromise measure that's meant to codify existing authorities, rather than creating something new, because it didn't seem like that would get enough support. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:16, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Why wasn't it restricted to P-I cases/reports?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:18, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  The remedy is encouragement and not an actual restriction (clerks already have the power to effectively topic-ban people from SPI), so I think that if the remedy was limited to just Palestine–Israel, it might have been misinterpreted as saying that clerks don't have that power elsewhere or that the Committee doesn't have their back elsewhere. There are also issues with defining what a PIA SPI is, though there are (of course) quite a few socks that operate primarily in the area. It's a bit difficult to cordon off the area in terms of SPI. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:32, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Buidhe: Kudos for mentioning the readers. You are a voice in the wilderness. I've long thought that the Five Pillars should be six and the first or second one should be "Wikipedia exists for its readers, not for its editors". Zero^talk 07:15, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• I am happy to see that All articles whose topic is strictly within the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area shall be extended confirmed protected by default, without requiring prior disruption on the article, which I feel should have been the case for a while now. This will be something to keep in mind during new page patrol, etc. Reconrabbit 16:34, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
• I give Arbitrators credit for actually acting on the "Enough is enough" principle. It might take some further adjustments to get it right, but if arbcom has decided enough is enough a bunch of topic bans (even some heavy handed ones as in this case) doesn't seem sufficient. And this arbcom acted like that which I know isnt easy. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:42, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
• Could one of the ArbCom members summarize roughly what each of the indef topic bans were judged to be for, for each of the affected editors individually? I have tried to follow the long discussions, but it is difficult to find a clear explanation, and certainly there is nothing succinct in one place, as you might see for a topic ban handed out at AE. Such a summary would allow the rest of us to learn lessons from this. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:07, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  You can read the votes and the relevant FoF at the proposed decision, which will explain why people voted the way they did. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:27, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  (Not said to be dismissive, it's just that not everyone agreed on the same reason for implementing the bans, so I don't think it would be accurate to say "this is the reason") CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:35, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I will note that the implementation notes is a good place to start if you want to just see what passed and what did not pass. Primefac (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks both. I had read through the (very clear) summary outcome tables, the FoF and the votes. They don’t help pinpoint the core of the ArbCom judgement because the FoFs were very short and simply referred to two or three pieces of evidence, evidence which in most cases was provided by editors who have for many years opposed those who they were making claims about. I am looking for a summary of the part of the case where this evidence was evaluated for bias, and the specific edits detailed in the evidence section were analyzed to check their significance within the editors’ overall contributions and behavior in the topic area. The FoFs read as if the submitted evidence was all taken at face value, which I am sure was not the case. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:02, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  If you look towards the bottom of the Workshop page, there is a section with lengthy analyses of evidence. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hmm. Take for example the "FOARP evidence", cited as core evidence in the FoF against four of the banned editors. Yet the active debate on this evidence in the workshop has an empty section of "Comment by Arbitrators”. Where is the Arbitrators' judgement on this set out? Onceinawhile (talk) 19:56, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Most likely on the arbwiki, a private workplace for the arbitrators to keep track of private matters and drafts of proposed decisions. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 20:14, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  NightWolf is correct that as drafters, we wrote up summaries of the evidence and workshop, which were available privately to the other arbitrators. As drafters we also had video calls and extensive email discussions on various issues, and then a video call with a quorum of the Committee to further refine the draft. But I think Barkeep captures the gist of it: if we cited it, it was seen as relevant and appropriate. And if someone voted to topic ban, then they found that evidence sufficient. The Committee doesn't work by consensus on cases, it works by vote; one of the few places where NOTVOTE is contravened. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks @CaptainEek: now that the case is closed, please could the Committee drafters post those summaries that you refer to onto an archive page for posterity? It would allow the PIA editing community to learn from this, and would have a side benefit of strengthening confidence in the process. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:33, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  No. Those are our working drafts, which are not in a polished or redacted state. The PD is the public suitable version. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 22:01, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  The PD's reliance on workshop-disputed editor input means ArbCom's decision-making is opaque to the community. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:24, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  Probably not even on arbwiki in my experience. Perhaps it's somewhere in drafter discussions. But in general, if they're citing the evidence it likely means they felt it relevant and appropriate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:16, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you. Since they represent the fulcrum of the outcome here, please could the Arbitrators' consensus judgements on the validity of each of the evidence claims referred to in the FoFs be summarized for the rest of us at some point? Onceinawhile (talk) 20:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  From what I've seen over many cases over a long time, that's unlikely to happen. It sounds like you are asking for the Arbs to do more in the way of "showing their work", which is a potentially interesting topic to discuss in a broader context. But for this case, you should, as Barkeep49 and CaptainEek said, look to where "so-and-so's evidence" was cited for a given Finding of Fact. That means that every Arb who supported that FoF concluded that the cited evidence substantiated what the FoF says. If you feel that the evidence didn't support that, the time to say so was during the case, and there was a lot of time to do that, but that's now over. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Most of the comments in the evidence sections were disputing the evidence, in various ways. There was more than enough challenge. For those evidence pieces that were referred to in the FoFs, the comments above say we should assume the Arbitrators privately assessed and discussed the arguments and came down on the side of the evidence as presented. But we are not shown on what basis they reached these judgements.

  In normal justice systems, the jury or judge explains their rationale with explicit reference to their assessment of the evidence.

  Here the core judgements on the evidence underpinning the outcomes are missing from public view. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:52, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Genuine question because I would like to read more about those systems: in what systems do juries explain their rationale with explicit references to their assessment of the evidence? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:54, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  See Thaman, Stephen C. (2013-10-11). "Should Criminal Juries Give Reasons for Their Verdicts?: The Spanish Experience and the Implications of the European Court of Human Rights Decision in Taxquet v. Belgium". Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks. One key difference between those jury systems and arbcom is that the evidence presented at trial has already been filtered by either the defense or prosecution. No such filtering happens with ArbCom cases. And so the burden on Spanish juries to explain the evidence is quite different than with ArbCom cases. I will note, further, that ArbCom is already giving some reasoning for their verdicts. They lay out the specific pieces of evidence that they find support the specific charges and some arbs may give further explanations of their reasoning, especially those who find that the evidence not sufficient to support the allegations. More broadly, I think it important to remember ArbCom is not intended to be a judicial process and so porting over judicial systems doesn't work as well, in my opinion, as bringing over concepts like Due Process. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:02, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  There's another big difference between arbcom and a justice system similar to what we have in the US. In our justice system, people have rights, and preserving those rights is of paramount importance. On the wiki, the most important thing is what's best for the project. That's not to say that individual editors don't have rights, but the good of the project is more important. RoySmith (talk) 23:11, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, I don't think it is currently possible to validate claims that any decision that impacts the PIA topic area and its editors is what's best for the project. We don't have enough visibility into the workings of the topic area to be able to validate claims like that. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:02, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Nothing on Wikipedia is done in the same manner as a court of law (and I guess it's in the eye of the beholder whether that situates it outside of "normal justice systems"). Here, I feel like part of the question is whether the community would want to add a new phase to the case, where the community could challenge the Committee's reasoning. Otherwise, I'm not sure what use the additional explanation would have. (And there was also a lot of discussion on the Proposed Decision talk page, while the Decision was being voted on.) As someone who said near the top of this discussion that I felt like the case took an awfully long time, I'm definitely coming down on the side of saying I don't want it to be argued any further. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, the case is closed. Time for the community to learn from it. We need to see how the judgements were arrived at in order to learn. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think the editor with the clearest set of facts but without clear judgment would be Levivich, if a community review phase were to be tried out it should start with Levivich, and see where things go. Kenneth Kho (talk) 10:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• From the limited number of Arbcom cases I've seen, the main thing that I have learned is that you should never let things get so bad that they end up there, and if they do end up there with you named as a party, then you really should be prepared to engage with the process, file evidence (actual evidence) and make a commitment to change. Instead, parties very often dig a hole for themselves by insisting 1) that there is no case to answer, 2) that it is only the others who have a case to answer, 3) that all the evidence against them is bad faith, 4) Wikipedia needs them, and 5) the whole thing is a conspiracy against them. Rather than doing anything to change course, this behaviour simply confirms the disruptive nature of the editing of the party concerned. Resigning and not engaging in the process at all is not likely to have a much better outcome either. FOARP (talk) 23:00, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  This is generally what leads to topic- or sitebans. Part of BrownHairedGirl's siteban in SCD was that she kept trying to introduce a word-limit-breaching screed as evidence (which violated even a generous expansion of the word limit ArbCom was intending to extend to her) and when ArbCom noted they would not allow her to post it, she up and ragequit the Arbitration. (I say only "part" because she was was already under sanctions from an earlier case.) And let's not get into the 172 exits that have cost a few administrators their mop over the years. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 16:37, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Damn, 172 was one of Jimbo's... Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/172. FOARP (talk) 22:49, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jéské Couriano that feels like a lot of speculation re:BHG. I seem to be the only arb who mentioned the word limit issue at the PD and it was explaining why I didn't think its introduction would have made a difference in the outcome. Her conduct during the case doesn't seem to have been mentioned in any of the supports for the site ban either. In other words I think even if there hadn't been that evidence contratemps, BHG still ends up site banned after that case. That said I do acknowledge at the PD there was mitigating evidence she never submitted so to your large point, a different approach to the case might have led to a different outcome. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Barkeep49: I was more intending to imply that BrownHairedGirl's refusal to engage on the Committee's/Arbitration's terms led to her effectively refusing to defend herself. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 07:19, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• I'm very pleasantly surprised by this outcome, as I never thought I'd see long-term POV pushing in this topic area (and the kind of double standards FOARP presented in their evidence) dealt with. The balanced editing restriction is also a great idea as it will catch out a number of those remaining who are effectively just on Wikipedia to push their view on the conflict. Number 57 01:14, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  According to BM’s statistics table, about 40% of all PIA edits over the past three years have been made by the 117 editors who make one third or more of their edits in PIA.

  It is unreasonable to imply that those 117 editors are “effectively just on Wikipedia to push their view on the conflict”.

  The maligning of focused editors is also damaging to WP:Expert retention.

  Onceinawhile (talk) 13:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  The restriction is only going to be applied if an admin finds a specific editor's focus on the subject matter is to the detriment of the subject. It's applied on an individual basis. Firestar464 (talk) 14:18, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, subjectively seeing X being dealt with is not the same as X objectively being dealt with. If it were, we would probably all see approximately the same thing because it would have a strong unambiguous evidentiary basis. Unanimity requirements seem to help to ensure evidence is evaluated more carefully. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:05, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• A number of people have expressed the thoughts that I have, so the only thought that I have that isn't represented as far as I can see was the submission deadline for new parties. Very rough to try to make a section in less than 72 hours during the holidays. Maybe next time that such a situation occurs, that the deadline is 5 to 7 days out instead? --Super Goku V (talk) 06:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
• On the balanced editing restriction, if I am understanding correctly, an editor can be restricted if they edit too much (by edit count) in the topic area, but only if an admin choosing to impose such a restriction. If that happens, the editor is then topic banned from the area in most namespaces... so they then can't participate in DR, make reports / comments at AE, SPI, ANI, etc... they can't contribute to FA discussions or FAR of articles, or DYK or ITN. GA is ok (as it's usually in article talk, I think). It takes them out of participating in a VP thread on article naming, say, when it touches on the topic area. All this based on finding an admin willing to designate them based on edit numbers and irrespective of edit quality or problematic behaviour. Is this really what was intended? I would have asked earlier, but choosing to remain an IP editor means being third class to some... something that ArbCom should step away from, but that's another topic. 1.141.198.161 (talk) 06:50, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Given the EC restrictions on the PI field, it's going to be less relevant to you to begin with IMO. In any case the restriction can be appealed if necessary. Firestar464 (talk) 14:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks to the arbs for their long work over these many cases. The Balanced editing restriction is fascinating, all the more for it being unanimous. I'm trying to work through "Making an edit in excess of this restriction" and how it aligns with "a restricted user effectively cannot violate the terms of this". Is this saying that a violation can only be calculated once the 30 days have passed? What exactly does "In a given 30-day period" mean: is it defined by the imposition of the restriction, or is it a rolling look every 30 UTC-defined-day period (sounds tricky to monitor for both parties)? Is there ongoing discussion somewhere, public or private, about the creation of the mentioned edit filter? CMD (talk) 17:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
• Praise from one of our greatest critics. Shira Klein, whose paper with Jan Grabowski precipitated the Polish-Holocaust arbcom case, had this to say about our PIA coverage:

I think Wikipedia is actually a pretty trustworthy place to get information on Israel/Palestine, and again when I look at the Hebrew Wikipedia its coverage of the war right now versus English Wikipedia and its coverage of the war, where the distortions lie are on Hebrew Wikipedia and that is something that is noticed by a whole lot of Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia editors as well. (starting at 50:05).

Unfortunately, the loss of those best equipped to keep our coverage "pretty trustworthy" raises the strong possibility that Prof Klein will have to revise her opinion before long. People interested in knowing more about what's happening over at he.wiki can look here. Zero^talk 07:00, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

The video is from 8 months ago, so its not exactly a response to us or current conditions. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 07:04, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not a response to this case, but it is a comment on the state of PIA which has not changed materially in the past 8 months. Zero^talk 07:17, 26 January 2025 (UTC)