Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/Noticeboard

Procedures

A procedural reference for clerks (and Arbitrators) is here.

Archives

Most comments here are not archived as they concern simple daily case administration and maintenance issues. Some interesting discussions are archived at Archive 1.

Conflict of interest

If a particular clerk has a serious conflict of interest regarding the subject-matter of a case or one or more of the parties to it, that clerk should recuse himself or herself from the case in favor of some other clerk. In any event, no clerk should have anything to do with a case in which he or she is a participant, except to the extent that he or she participates as a participant. A clerk who wishes to make a statement in a case or to provide evidence, must refrain from acting as a clerk with respect to that case. This does not prejudice his or her right to perform cosmetic refactoring of evidence and workshop pages, as is the right of any editor. In unclear situations, the Arbitration Committee should be consulted.

Calculation of majority

In opening a case we have to determine the majority for the case. This number goes in a statement at the head of Proposed decision.

Check for recent updates to the active list at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee, and check for arbitrators recused from the case. A majority is half the number of active arbitrators, rounded up to the nearest whole number, or plus one if the number of active arbs is an even number. For example, if there are 8 or 9 active arbitrators, the majority will be 5.

Updating the majority The majority should be calculated when the case is opened, and updated when the case is listed for voting. After a case is opened for voting, do not update the number of active arbitrators if an arbitrator becomes active, as that arbitrator may not feel capable of casting an informed vote. However, if the arbitrator does cast a vote, then consider him or her active on the case and update the majority if necessary. If an arbitrator goes on the inactive list during voting, recalculate the majority unless the arbitrator has already voted. The same procedures are followed when new arbitrators are appointed to the Arbitration Committee.

Arbitrators who vote "abstain" on a given proposal are deducted from the number of available arbitrators on that issue (i.e., the same as if they were recused on that issue). Thus, the majority with respect to such a proposal may be different from the remaining proposals in the same case.

As of March 26, there are 12 active arbitrators (less any recusals) and the majority is 7 for new cases

Click here to update

Statement and Evidence Length

Requests at WP:RFAR should be kept to around 500 words. Evidence submissions should be kept to around 1000 words and 100 diffs. The arbitrators have asked us to remove excessively long evidence presentations and ask the parties to reduce their size.

• Template:ArbComSize may be used for this purpose.

Usage: {{subst:ArbComSize}} --~~~~

• The generic {{notice}} template is also useful.

Usage {{notice|The arbitration committee has asked that evidence presentations be kept to around 1000 words and 100 diffs. Your presentation is over xxxx words. Please edit your section to focus on the most relevant evidence. For the arbitration committee, ~~~~}}

Adding motions and injunctions to a case

The following codes should be used to indicate when a case in Evidence has either a motion or injunction opened for voting.

{{Evidence|Case name|Date|m}} For a proposed motion, adds Motion to the template with a link to the proposed decision page. Use mm for a passed motion.

{{Evidence|Case name|Date|i}} For proposed injunction, adds Inj. to the template with a link to the proposed decision page. Use ii for a passed injunction.

These codes also apply to {{ACVoting}} and {{Motion to close}}.

Applying article bans

The following templates may be applied to article talk pages to inform editors of user article bans.

{{User article ban arb|User name|expiry date|Case name|Your name}}, which makes

Notes

• Subst'ing the templates creates an automatic signature.
• Using i as the expiry changes the language of the notice to read "this user has been banned indefinitely."
• To ban several users with the same expiry date, you may wish to subst the template and customize it, rather than posting several templates.
• An alternative template {{User article ban|User name|expiry date|Your name}} may also be used

Article probation

There are several forms of article probation. The generic template refers to the strictest form, in which editors who edit the article disruptively may be banned from the article. The arbitrators frequently use milder forms of article probation. Carefully read the decision and subst: and customize the notice as appropriate.

{{Article probation}}

The Arbitration Committee has placed this article on probation. If any editor makes disruptive edits, they may be banned by an administrator from this and related articles, or other reasonably related pages.