Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement

Note about these archives

In 2008 the committee amalgamated all talk pages of the various arbitration requests subpages, and from then AE-related discussion took place at WT:AC. In 2015 this decision was overturned and AE regained a stand-alone talk page (with the committee ruling that it should have one solely for procedural and meta-discussion, with it not being used to rehash enforcement requests themselves). There are therefore two distinct archives for this page. Archive 3 and onwards are from after the restoration of the talk page. Archive 1 and 2 above are the archives from before the amalgamation.

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be auto-archived by if there are more than 4.

One comment per day

I've asked this at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 84#One comment per day but thought the regulars here might be more likely to know: Is there a standardized sanction (i.e., written down on a page somewhere) that restricts a disruptive individual to one or two comments per day/per talk page? I'm sure I've seen this in practice in the past, but I can't find it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A group of admins at AE can impose editing restrictions beyond the standard set. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:26, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe User:Awilley/Discretionary sanctions#Anti-filibuster sanction? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:10, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That might be what I remember. Awilley retired that one in 2019. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More features for Template:Contentious topics/talk notice

Hello again! We have some more updates to Template:Contentious topics/talk notice. Most are under-the-hood changes to make the code more efficient and easier to maintain in the future. There are some updates to what non–EC editors see when looking at topics covered by ECR. (Note that admins are not technically members of the extended confirmed group, so you will see the notice. You should ignore it, and if you wish, you can follow the instructions to hide it.)

The big change with effects how you do your jobs: ArbCom (or in some cases the community through GS) has occasionally authorized additional restrictions within a subtopic of a CT designation. For example, South Asian social groups and Indian military history (subtopics of South Asia) are subject to ECR; antisemitism in Poland (a subtopic of Eastern Europe) is subject to ECR and WP:RSCR. To make this much easier to capture in the banner and so editors can easily see exactly what restrictions are applicable to them, contentious topic codes have been created for "super contentious subtopics" (this is a HouseBlasterism, not official ArbCom terminology). You specify these in the same way as regular CT restrictions (e.g. {{contentious topics/talk notice|apl}}). The super contentious subtopics have been documented at the various CT subpages (see WP:CT/A-A, WP:CT/EE, and WP:CT/SA), and are listed at Template:Contentious topics/table § Subtopics.

Because they are not CTs in their own right: alerts, sanctions, awareness, AELOGging, etc. behave exactly like they did previously. For now, editnotices also do not support super contentious subtopics, but I hope to change that soonish (and bring multiple CTs in one banner to editnotices). If you use a subtopic code for any other CT templates (e.g. {{subst:alert}}), it automatically uses the parent topic designation.

Finally, as a bonus, WP:CT now targets WP:Contentious topics, so you can now save the two characters from WP:CTOP.

Happy to address any questions, comments, or concerns—whether related to this update or ideas for additional ways the clerk team can make your lives easier :) House Blaster (talk • he/they) 01:10, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lowercase sigmabot III archiving unclosed requests (moved per Anomie’s advice)

Hello. As I was reading the archives of arbcom, I saw a few discussions without a closure template, archived and forgotten. I saw this at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive357. So I raised some questions in the talk page. But after stumbling to the same issue at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive355, I decided this may be a better forum. Diffs show that these were archived by the titular sigmabot. I hope this didn’t hurt any editors and justice, as I saw that one of the editors, whose case was subject to this bug? never edit again. Why did such issues occur? 85.98.23.90 (talk) 18:33, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that the bot is instructed to archive threads that have had no comments for at least 14 days. Are you suggesting that number should change? Are threads with no action for 14 days likely to see future actions if they are left on the page for a longer time? The "Information for administrators processing requests" says that a bot will archive closed requests in 7 days, but I don't see that configured anywhere; that may be old information. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:51, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wondered if some cases went unclosed because of it. I am not experienced in AE whatsoever so I don’t also want to propose useless/nonsensical changes. I think threads without an action for 14 days can see further actions. More evidence could come into light, ArbCom might request some more time to review the case, I think 30 days would be better? If the page gets too clustered we can collapse these pages with an explanation (suspended until off-wiki investigation concludes etc.) I have also seen a few people (whom I will not name) taking advantage of this short archiving period.85.98.23.90 (talk) 15:38, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly don't see why this page needs automatic archiving, at least of the standard variety. Threads should be archived, I dunno, 3 to 7 days after they're closed. We can probably rely just fine on humans to do that with one-click archiver, as already happens quite often. Or we could get some custom archival bot logic. But I don't see any benefit in archiving open threads. Even if there's just no appetite to do anything at all with some thread, it would be better to have an admin come along and say "No admin has replied to this thread in a month, so I'm closing it on the assumption no one thinks there's anything actionable here," rather than let it fall into the archives unacknowledged. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 15:54, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you suggesting that number should change? Are threads with no action for 14 days likely to see future actions if they are left on the page for a longer time? I think the idea would be to turn archiving off completely, and then manually archive any section that has been formally closed. I think the benefit would be that no sections could be forgotten to be formally closed, which happens sometimes. This is actually how I thought AE worked when I was a newer editor since most sections do get closed, but I later found out that some sections do get archived without closure. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:28, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If no one objects in the next day or two, I'm going to just turn off automatic archiving on this board. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 18:17, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seems reasonable. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:41, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's been 10 days, so I'll do it (per consensus here, noting that "the management and maintenance of order at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement has traditionally been left to the administrators active there", so not a clerk action). ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 07:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AE protection no longer needs to be logged

Per a recent ArbCom motion, a bot will automatically log protections attributed to a contentious topic in the protection summary (e.g. [[WP:CT/BLP]]). You can view the list at WP:AELOGP, and the bot will bug you on your talk page if you say something like "AE" but forget to actually include the CT. Hopefully this will save you all some paperwork :) House Blaster (talk • he/they) 21:40, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change in AE commenting

There are three proposed remedies in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Transgender healthcare and people/Proposed decision that would limit AE participation by third parties either within WP:GENSEX (3.1), all topics (3.2), or particular threads (3.3). Comments can be left on its talk page in a new section. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 17:32, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]