Cross-wiki arbitration committee (2007 proposal)

This proposal has been superceded by the global arbitration committee.

Cross-wiki arbitration committee

This is a proposed process to resolve disputes such as the Yiddish Wikipedia case. It is not currently active.

Arbitration is the last resort for dispute resolution. Users unable to reach agreement through other steps of the dispute resolution process may present their case to the cross-wiki arbitration committee. The committee will judge the request and decide a solution to the dispute, which may include an imposed remedy or removal of access.

This is an elective process; all users involved must agree to submit to the authority of the committee. All decisions thereafter are binding, and will be implemented by stewards, bureaucrats, and administrators as necessary.

Arbitration process

Before requesting, ensure that all the following statements are true.

1. There is no arbitration committee on the affected projects.
2. You have attempted all applicable steps of the dispute resolution process. In particular, you should attempt discussion, disengagement, and inviting neutral third parties.
3. All involved users agree to arbitration.

If the above statements are true:

1. Click here to add a new request using a template. Do not remove the instructions or change the format.
2. Add your request to the table below.
3. Notify all users involved in the dispute about the request for arbitration. They must agree to arbitration on the request page after reading the information on this page.

Current requests

Date opened	Title	Summary
Phase one: presentation
2024-04-01	Example	(This is an example format; it's not actually a request.)
22 April 2007	Yiddish Wikipedia	Yidel alleges that Schmaltz has abused his administrator access on the Yiddish Wikipedia. Schmaltz alleges that Yidel is disruptive.

About the committee

Membership

Members of the cross-wiki arbitration committee are called arbitrators. These are appointed from elected stewards, who have the trust of the Foundation community. This is a voluntary position, and they have no obligation to participate in every case. Arbitrators may retain their membership at their discretion so long as they retain elected steward access.

Current members:

• Drini
• Pathoschild
• Shanel
• Yann

Arbitration policies

This section outlines the policies governing members of the committee.

Hearing cases

Arbitrators may choose whether to hear a particular case at their discretion. This is a voluntary process, and they are not obliged to provide reasons for that decision. If there is community consensus that the committee should or should accept a case, this may be taken into account.

The committee will not accept any case if:

• there is neither request nor the agreement of all parties involved;
• the request is from a wiki where an approved local arbitration committee exists;
• less than four arbitrators have accepted to consider the case.

Arbitration

Arbitrators may not arbitrate a case in which they are involved. Stewards who participate in an arbitration case must not use their steward access in relation to the case (see the steward policies).

Evidence must be reliable and verifiable, preferably in the form of diff links, log entries, posts to official mailing lists, or other Wikimedia sources. Unverifiable evidence or arguments may be ignored.

Decisions

The committee may issue binding decisions at any time after accepting a request. A decision requires the approval of at least four participating arbitrators. Decisions are only binding on users who have agreed to submit to the committee; the committee cannot make a binding decision regarding any other user, policy, or project without the consent of the users thus affected.

Although discussion may be private, detailed rationale will be provided for all decisions.

See also

forthcoming.