Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee

Use this page to discuss information on the page (and subpages) attached to this one. This includes limited discussion of the Arbitration Committee itself, as a body. Some things belong on other pages: requesting arbitration: WP:A/R discussing finalised decisions of the committee: WT:ACN discussing pending decisions: find the proceedings page at Template:Casenav discussing the process of arbitration: WT:A/R

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This Arbitration Committee has been mentioned by a media organization: Ramey, Corinne (May 7, 2018). "The 15 People Who Keep Wikipedia's Editors From Killing Each Other". Wall Street Journal.

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The Parsoid parser doesn't like gluing together headings like is done on Wikipedia:Contentious topics:

The issue is that this parses as two separate tokens in parsoid, and the tokens are not glued together. Can we change this markup to:

so that each sequence of ==== is an uninterrupted token? Note also that the order should be <includeonly> then <noinclude> both before and after the heading -- not sure why, but it seems to matter. (Another more robust alternative is to duplicate the entire heading inside <noinclude> and <includeonly> blocks.) You can test this fix by adding ?useparsoid=1 after the title to view the rendering with Parsoid. Thanks. C. Scott Ananian (he/him) (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

<includeonly>===== Restriction notices =====</includeonly><noinclude>=== Restriction notices ===</noinclude> would be the alternative Scott referenced there. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2026 (UTC)[reply] Apologies for the delay; should be  Done. Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 17:46, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would like some clarification about Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy with regards to "Arbitrators are expected to: Respond promptly and appropriately to questions from other arbitrators, or from the community, about conduct which appears to conflict with their trusted roles".

At what point does an arbitrator refusing to respond to the community and to other arbitrators become misconduct? Is this policy meaningless or is it ever enforced? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:10, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration policy is enforced in three ways:

• By arbitrators themselves
• By arbitration clerks as directed by the Committee
• By votes in the annual arbitration elections

In terms of the expectations of arbitrators regarding responses, enforcement is outside the remit of the clerks for pretty much all purposes. If the arbitrators feel that one of their number are not responding appropriately this will primarily be dealt with internally at first (because that's more efficient, more friendly and causes hugely significantly less drama). If informal methods don't resolve matters to their satisfaction they can move to formally remove that person from the Committee, but that is massive step and even if that is being contemplated by members of the committee now there is no way there has been anywhere near enough time for anything to be visible publicly. If community members do not feel that an arbitrator is meeting their expectations then they can submit evidence backing that up to other arbitrators and/or vote them out at the next election. However it is important to note that arbitrators are not required to WP:SATISFY everybody, sometimes the appropriate response is no response, and that arbitrators have lives outside Wikipedia and may not be available to response to everybody as quickly as some may wish - this is especially true if there is a lot of reading of comments and other material required before they are sufficiently informed about the situation to appropriately respond. Please remember that AGF applies with respect to arbitrators too. Thryduulf (talk) 19:39, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please remove the link to WP:BRD from "Enhanced BRD" in Wikipedia:Contentious topics#Standard set. Sending someone to a page whose opening lines are:

The BOLD, revert, discuss cycle (BRD) is one of many optional strategies that editors may use to seek consensus. This process is not mandated by Wikipedia policy...

(emphasis in the original) is asking for trouble. I'd love for it to have a completely different name, but as a minimum, let's not point people at a page that describes an optional approach (and one isn't Wikipedia:What editors mean when they say you have to follow BRD). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]