Arbitration Committee

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For the Wikipedia policy on the Arbitration Committee itself see
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.
This article is about the Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia. For the
general topic of arbitration committees, see arbitration and Arbitral tribunal.
Arbitration Committee
Arbitration Committee.jpg
Screenshot of the Arbitration Committee description page in 2019
Abbreviation Arbcom
Formation December 4, 2003[1]
Region served
Global
Website en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee
An Arbitration Committee is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors, used on
several projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The first project to use an
arbitration committee, and the most widely covered of these, is the English
Wikipedia. Each of Wikimedia's projects are editorially autonomous and independent.
Therefore, over time some other Wikimedia projects have established arbitration
committees, while others have not. Arbitration committees, where they exist, are
established by a project's editors, and are usually elected by their community in
annual elections. As well as serious disputes, they often address misconduct by
administrators, access to various advanced tools, and a range of "real world"
issues related to harmful conduct, when these arise in the context of a Wikipedia
project.

Arbitration committees generally have the authority to impose binding sanctions,

and also to determine which users have access to special permissions.

The first such committee was created by Jimmy Wales on December 4, 2003, as an
extension of the decision-making power he formerly held as owner of the site.[1][2]
The committee acts as a court of last resort for disputes among editors. It has
been described in the media variously as 'quasi-judicial' or a Wikipedian
'High/Supreme Court', though the Committee states that it is not, nor pretends to
be, a court of law in the formal sense. It has decided several hundred cases in its
history.[3] Members of the Committee are appointed by Wales either in person or
email following advisory elections; Wales generally chooses to appoint arbitrators
who were among those who received the most votes.[4]

The Committee has been examined by academics researching dispute resolution, and
also reported in public media in connection with various case decisions and
Wikipedia-related controversies.[2][5][6]

Contents
1 History
2 Attention and controversies
3 Arbitration Committees on sister projects
4 References
History
In October 2003, as part of an etiquette discussion on Wikipedia, Alex T. Roshuk,
then legal adviser to the Wikimedia Foundation, drafted a 1,300 word outline of
mediation and arbitration. This outline evolved into the twin Mediation Committee
and Arbitration Committee, formally announced by Jimmy Wales on December 4, 2003.
[2][7] Over time the concept of an "Arbitration Committee" was adopted by other
communities within the Wikimedia Foundation's hosted projects.

When founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups
of four members each.[1][8] As of 2008, it had decided around 371 conduct cases,
with remedies varying from warnings to bans.[9][10][not in citation given]