Arbitration Committee/Cross-wiki arbitration committee

This page documents the thoughts, ideas, and feedback related to the formation of a crosswiki arbitration committee (xwikiarb) throughout the history of the Wikimedia movement.

2007: Pathoschild

Cross-wiki arbitration committee proposal made by Pathoschild in April 2008. Superceded by the new proposal to form a global arbitration committee on April 2008.

2019: Ajraddatz & DerHexer

Do we need a global dispute resolution committee? submission presented by Ajraddatz and DerHexer at Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden.

2021: Ramzy Muliawan

The case for multi-project ArbComs in language and cultural groups submission by Ramzy Muliawan for Arctic Knot Conference 2021 (.pdf presentation on Commons; lightning talk video on YouTube).

This proposal was discussed in the three UCoC Roundtable discussions throughout May and June 2021. See the discussion summaries here and comments from Taylor49.

2021: Barkeep49

UCoC Enforcement document by Barkeep49, a member of UCoC Phase 2 Drafting Committee, contains some ideas pertaining the use of an arbcom as enforcer of the UCoC at project level. Relevant discussions could be found in the talkpage.

2021: Croatia disinfo report

In June 2021, the WMF released a report on disinformation at the Croatian Wikipedia (hrwiki). One of the three recommendations from this report was "encouraging the affected communities to discuss unifying community elections for admin and functionary roles across the involved wikis (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian)".

2023: UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Revised_enforcement_guidelines#3.1.1_Providing_resources_for_processing_cases:

Enforcement of the UCoC by local governance structures will be supported in multiple ways. Communities will be able to choose from different mechanisms or approaches based on several factors such as: the capacity of their enforcement structures, approach to governance, and community preferences. Some of these approaches can include:

• An Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) for a specific Wikimedia project
• An ArbCom shared amongst multiple Wikimedia projects
• Advanced rights holders enforcing local policies consistent with the UCoC in a decentralized manner
• Panels of local administrators enforcing policies
• Local contributors enforcing local policies through community discussion and agreement

Communities should continue to handle enforcement through existing means where they do not conflict with the UCoC.