UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Arbitration Timelimit

This policy was originally meant to complement Cheese's Arbitration policy, but this is a much needed limitation and works on its own even with Cheese's policy withdrawn.

The Policy

No restriction placed on a person by an arbitration ruling may extend beyond six weeks. For ordinary cases it is recommended that they are shorter than four weeks.

This policy does not affect the parts of rulings which concern the content of pages.

Retrospective Application

This applies retrospectively to all previous rulings, with the six weeks counted from the moment the ruling was originally announced.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, signed, and timestamped. They can take one of two forms: # comments ~~~~ or # ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above will be struck by a sysop.

The only valid voting sections are For and Against. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

For

1. For - Because an arbitrator should not be able to limit a user's behaviour for excessively long periods of time. --Midianian^|T|DS|C:RCS| 10:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

   If there are excessively long rulings being doled out, you can be sure that other aspects of the decisions are similarly unfair. Setting a time limit is a hack job when an arbitration appeal process should be instituted instead. -- Galaxy125 06:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

2. For - Arbitration rulings concerning a user's behaviour shouldn't be hanging over their heads for ever -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 13:08 29 October 2008 (BST)
3. For Because Arbys is broken. --House of Usher 22:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
4. For As boxy --– Nubis ^NWO 02:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
5. For Not broken, but no reason not to put this up.... anything longer than 6 weeks is stupidity.--/~Rakuen~\^Talk I Still Love Grim 04:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
6. --Thari ^{TжFedCom is BFI!} 07:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
7. For - As what Midianian said above.-- Ωmega360 ^T 14:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
8. For - As Boxy... --THE Godfather of Яesensitized, Anime Sucks ^{Yalk | W! U! WMM| CC CPFOAS LOE ZHU | Яezzens} 02:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
9. For Because frankly, if someone hasn't gotten over it in 6 weeks, they never will. (or attempt a coup). --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
10. For - Because one of the Against voters happens to be the worst abuser of this little "hole" and then abuses another privilege by ruling on the resulting cases from minor innocent edits.--Karek^maps?! 02:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
11. For - User:Whitehouse 15:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
12. For - As the others above me, especially Rakuen. Linkthewindow ^Talk 05:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
13. For - I forsee nothing bad to occur if this is passed -Dawgas 14:02, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Against

1. Attempting to fix a problem that does not exist. --HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS 09:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
2. - This is pure stupidity, filtered through unnecessity and topped off with a hint of irrelevance. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 10:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
3. There is so many things wrong with this wiki, but this ain't one of them.--xoxo 10:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
4. Arbitration cannot be limited if it is to be of any use in actually solving problems. Conndraka^{mod TAZM CFT} 17:38, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
5. As above.--ShadowScope^{'the true enemy'} 20:39, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
6. What's the point of making a decision if it's just going to vanish six weeks later? --JaredV 01:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
7. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.--CyberRead240 04:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
8. I think limits are good ideas in certain instances, but should ultimately be determined on a case-by-case basis. --ZsL 06:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
9. Time limit should be the responsibility of the Arbitrator. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 07:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
10. The process to choose an Arbitrator is one which weeds out Arbitrators whose ruling would be unnecessarily long, and it is not the business of a mass vote to cap the upper boundary of time lower than what might be necessary. Galaxy125 18:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

    Six weeks is more than necessary in pretty much all of the cases I've seen. Actually, most of the cases do not make limits longer than one month. Also, an arbitrator has to make an unnecessarily long ruling on someone before others know to avoid choosing them. Do you want to be that someone? I don't. --Midianian^|T|DS|C:RCS| 18:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

11. Fail, because you haven't realised that there are no absolutes. (Except for that one, natch.) --Funt Solo ^QT 00:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC) Also, I should point out, to all voters, that this policy actually nullifies itself, where it says: "This policy does not affect the parts of rulings which concern the content of pages." This is a wiki, and literally everything concerns the "content of pages". If it means to say the content of non-discussion pages, it should say so. Even then, an arbitration ruling could be that User A cannot post on page B, permanently, and this policy would do nothing to stop that. As this policy is designed specifically to stop that, the fact that it doesn't do so is something of a worry - even (especially?) for those voting to pass it. --Funt Solo ^QT 05:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

    "User A cannot post on page B" is obviously a restriction placed on a user, not a ruling about the content of a page. Are you sure you want to vote on this again just to make this wikilawyer-proof? --Midianian^|T|DS|C:RCS| 13:15, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

    I might just as easily say "A ruling about the content of a page is a restriction placed on a user". It's not my fault that the policy provides it's own logic loophole, due to the poorly chosen wording. --Funt Solo ^QT 16:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

12. No. --Sonny Corleone ^{DORIS MSD pr0n} 02:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
13. Rules for the sake of rules only serve to complicate and give more tools to rules lawyers. --Zaruthustra^Mod 01:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)