Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-12-12/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Palestine-Israel articles 5

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 5 is running in parallel with Arbcom's private consideration of a case based on a boatload of private evidence (see prior Signpost coverage).

The case's evidence phase is ongoing at our writing deadline. The deadline for community to comment with new evidence is 14 December 2024; the workshop phase closes a week later, followed by a target 11 January 2025 decision date. This report is covering just some of the community comments presented into evidence.

An interesting analysis of 12 tortuous threads at talk:Zionism between June and October was presented into evidence as a "microcosm" of the problems of PIA writ large. It found:
  • Multi-month debates
  • Recurring cast of characters
  • Major problems with sockpuppetry
Another analysis took a comprehensive looked at PIA articles recently involved in requested moves, and found a pattern of factions with support predicated by their POV on the I-P conflict.
A third analysis of frequent multiple-times-a-day incidents over the article Genocide of indigenous peoples found editwarring and repeated RfCs to wear down opposition and to establish LOCALCONSENSUS of the most invested editors.

Just reading through the history of the case and related cases can be wearying. Strange and off-putting is a mild reaction – another community member said that it exhaust[s] the community's will to engage. An effective and properly targeted Arbitration committee decision on these cases is anticipated by many.


An announcement concerning the private case "Off-wiki misconduct in Palestine–Israel topic area" was made at the Arbitration Noticeboard. It came after the Signpost deadline, but we are squeaking this into the issue.

In the private case, the Committee banned one editor and made some other less consequential changes in editor privileges.