Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment

Requests for clarification and amendment

Initiated by The Bushranger at 01:31, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected

Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• The Bushranger (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)

So I have a conundrum regarding the requirement to log arbitration enformcement actions, with regard to unregistered IP addresses now that temporary accounts are a thing. Per Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log, All sanctions and page restrictions, except page protections, must be logged by the administrator who applied the sanction or page restriction at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log. Now that we have temporary accounts, WP:TAIV notes Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed. I performed a rangeblock of an IPv6 /64 for GENSEX-related disruption; therefore, I need to log this. However that - necessarily - discloses the TAIV-access-provided IP address on this page. How does this circle get squared? (Note, I also blocked the most recent TA used by that range and logged it, for now, to deal with the reporting requirement until the above question is answered). - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:31, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ToBeFree: Ahh. Well, I did mark it as 'Arbitration enforcement', before going "and to log - hmmmm", but I'll keep that in mind in the future. The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:47, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ToBeFree: Appreciated. So, note it in the log, but without a link to the IP/range's Special:Contributions page then, I presume. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:03, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note, after the discussion below, I've logged it per [1]. Thank you. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:30, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are exceptions built into the policy for this kind of case. The issue does come to something like the revision deletion clause, which is clearly prohibitive. I suspect the people who wrote that into the TAIV policy actually just simply don't understand how revision deletion works (and that we'd have to revision delete... a lot... rather than I suspect the imagined "single revision" where the item was introduced). I put something in the ear of the WMF a couple weeks ago about that provision being dumb and needing rethinking, but this would be a good on-wiki use case specifically to reference. I agree that this all is also relevant beyond the "I need to block someone in the area" suggested above as enforcement also needs to consider "I need specifically to block someone using the powers prescribed in an arbitration case or in the contentious topic procedure" (consider as an example the old ban on Scientology IPs). Izno (talk) 20:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ToBeFree: I think your analysis is the best way of looking at this. I'll note that I reached out to WMF Legal a few weeks ago about expanding the consecutive-block rule to all admin actions (after finding myself in a gray area on disclosure by unblocking an IP on request from a TA on that IP). Last I heard from Madi Moss (WMF), the plan was to change it to "blocks, unblocks, or performs other administrative actions", although I don't know where that plan stands as of now. Of course it's the current policy that's binding, but even by the current wording I agree there's no issue with consecutive logging at AELOG (and Madi did not seem inclined to de-TAIV me for my consecutive-unblock :P).

All that said, yeah, the "appropriate venues" clause should work here if for some reason consecutive logging isn't enough to get the point across; if someone wants to do that, I'll repeat the suggestion I included in a footnote at TAIVDISCLOSE that they do the disclosure on a transcluded subpage, so that it can later be cleanly revdelled without taking out a bunch of unrelated history. So something like I have also blocked the TA's IP range, {{WP:Arbitration enforcement log/TAIV disclosure/1}} <small>([[WP:TAIVDISCLOSE|intentional disclosure]])</small>, for 180 days. Then at the end of those 180 days (or later if there's continued IP abuse at that point), redact and revdel. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 03:32, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• Hello The Bushranger, the following premise is not factually correct: I performed a rangeblock of an IPv6 /64 for GENSEX-related disruption; therefore, I need to log this. You don't need to. Blocking someone for disruption, no matter in which topic area, is a simple administrative action that doesn't need logging. If you do something you could else not do, or if you don't want the rangeblock to be undoable without an appeal to WP:AN, then you can make it a formal contentious topics action. You can; you are not required to. The simplest practical answer to the question is thus "don't mark it as a GENSEX CTOP action". ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:44, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's all good. To answer the actual question regarding IP addresses and logging, though: To my personal understanding, just as blocking an IP address creates a public log entry, it can't be a problem to log a ban or any kind of sanction on an IP address. Making a connection to specific edits would be a problem, even making a connection to a specific page may be, but simply stating that you are applying sanction X to IP a.b.c.d should be as unproblematic as the existence of a public log entry of a block on a.b.c.d. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:49, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Linking to a page that can only be viewed by people with the needed access should be fine too. I assume this is about Special:IPContributions. Linking to it doesn't provide additional information to the wrong people; try opening that link in a private tab. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That won't work because the contribs are gone in 90 days. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:17, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Now we're mixing whether something is allowed from a privacy perspective and whether something makes sense from our ArbCom logging desires. If the logs are gone after 90 days, the logs are gone after 90 days and reviewing the IP block is tough. This is just one additional reason why applying CTOP sanctions to IP addresses, just as bans, was always an unusual and rarely meaningful thing to do. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:22, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Logging the IP or range allows quicker or escalating sanctions, and that's an issue that comes up with ECR enforcement. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:35, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  ScottishFinnishRadish, there are so many unrealistic assumptions that come with this ... including formal awareness through a CTOP template that had to be sent to the IP address before that IP address can be sanctioned for continuing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The editor has to be aware, not every IP address or temporary amount they use. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:41, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Ah right. So if someone edits disruptively, we perform a checkuser lookup and log a sanction against their IP address range because that helps with escalating sanctions and they're known to be aware through non-public information. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:43, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So yeah, even the concept of awareness is broken with IP addresses since the introduction of temporary accounts. Can we ... perhaps just apply sanctions to accounts only, and avoid placing formal CTOP sanctions on IP addresses? Because that's highly impractical? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:46, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  At a quick glance I see a dozen logged sanctions on IPs and temporary accounts in ARBPIA this year. Seems like it works fine. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:52, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  None of the currently-28 AELOG sanctions placed in November 2025 are against IP addresses. Temporary accounts are treated like accounts, their IP addresses might have been blocked in the background but not as logged formal actions. Which is fine. Beyond bureaucracy, academic privacy discussions and links to information that is now deleted after 90 days, there is no point in formally logging a sanction against an IP address obtained through TAIV, just as noone would have had the idea to do so for IP ranges obtained from checkuser results before. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:07, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To provide a practical example, let's say temporary account ~2025-F has edited an article about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and similar edits came from ~2025-A, ~2025-B, ~2025-C, ~2025-D and ~2025-E. A quick look reveals that all of these accounts were created from the same /48 IPv6 range. All of the edits were in violation of the extended-confirmed restriction in this topic area and not otherwise problematic. The usual response is protecting the affected pages as a CTOP action. No measures against temporary accounts or IPs are needed. However, if an administrator wants to apply a sanction such as a formal CTOP block, they can do so to the latest account (or all of them, as a symbolic measure).
  The administrator can additionally {{rangeblock}} the /48 IPv6 range: admins are allowed to make blocks that, by their timing, imply a connection between an account and an IP.^{[WP:TAIVDISCLOSE]}
  And if all of that is really not enough and a formal sanction has to be applied to the IP address range, well then, that too can still be done and logged as before. Yes, it will create two log entries directly below each other with the temporary account's name and IP address. Just as the blocks did in the block log. It's completely avoidable and rarely helpful but not formally prohibited as far as I understand. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:36, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• While in this case it could have been a standard block it can't be for an ECR block, so this is definitely going to come up and now is a good time to stew our noodles on how to handle it. WP:TAIV says And when "reasonably believed to be necessary", exceptions can be made at appropriate policy-enforcement venues. Then it goes on to say However, the disclosure should be revision-deleted as soon as it ceases to be necessary. It's necessary to maintain a log of submission enforcement actions for a number of reasons so maybe we could sneak it in under that? What a clusterfuck. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:05, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't like using AE sanctions against non-accounts either, but wouldn't forbid it . If the sanction is against an IP, log it with a link to the IP. If it's against a temporary account, log it with a link to the temporary account. That shouldn't result in an "extra" disclosure simply based on the logging action. Let me know if I missed something ... Sdrqaz (talk) 03:29, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Ideally, just log the sanction on the temporary account. It shouldn't normally be necessary to log a block of an underlying IP/range. The only reason I can think of is that you want to mark it as an AE block to avoid it being overturned without proper consideration, in which case I suppose it has to be logged and the exception applies, but I'm sure an informative summary in the block log would be enough to prevent that in most cases. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:46, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• We currently have a policy that might infringe upon a global policy. It might make sense, until we get clarification from Legal, to amend our procedures to explicitly keep IP blocks out of the log (e.g. amend the quoted statement above to "All sanctions and page restrictions, except page protections and IP blocks, must be...". Primefac (talk) 15:15, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Taking a swerve on the AE aspect initially, and unpacking the issue from the other end, what confidentiality do we owe Temporary Accounts? For regular accounts the user is given anonymity which can only be seen through by checkusers (ArbCom appointed, NDA required). Temporary accounts can be seen through by Admins and by viewers, neither group needing to sign the NDA.

For us to protect TAs to the same extent as user accounts, and to allow the two-handed case handling of CU blocks, in which one CU blocks the user account and another CU blocks the IP, we'd need an NDA-controlled forum for admins and TAIVs to discuss the connections openly. That doesn't exist, nor (AFAIK) has the foundation even hinted that they'd like us to go that route.

Until/unless Madi (or someone else in Legal) tells us otherwise, we don't need to escalate the privacy of an artificial account generated by the Wiki software to the same level as the privacy of a human-generated account which may contain PII in the username.

To return to the AE aspect, we're primarily here to build an encyclopedia, a principle that ArbCom has long upheld, and our social policies are not a suicide pact. If it's necessary to log TAs and their IPs at AElog (e.g. an IP user burning through multiple TAs to a disruptive end), and the logging is well considered, I'm not going to criticise or censure. Cabayi (talk) 11:03, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Initiated by The Bushranger at 00:12, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected

Indian military history arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• The Bushranger (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)

This regards the South Asian social groups portion of the IMH case (aka WP:CT/SA). Specifically it relates to the former WP:GSCASTE, which, absorbed into SASG, explicitly includes "political parties" in the defitintion of social groups that fall under WP:ECR. Recently at RFPP, it was stated that as elections involve political parties, they fall under the GSCASTE/SASG mandatory ECR. I can see the logic (per "broadly construed"), while at the same time seeing it as a variation of WP:NOTINHERITED, so I figured I'd come here and ask: are elections in the CT/SA defined area considered to fall uinder SASG for the purpose of extended confirmed restrictions? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:12, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand the reasoning of why election articles in India are not typically fraught in the same way that caste groups are, but I would urge arbs to consider amending the scope so that it’s actually comprehensible to new editors. It’s honestly a bit ridiculous to expect editors to internalize the meaning of “broadly construed” but then assert that elections are not in the domain of political parties, despite essentially exclusively concerning the activities of parties. My vague recollection is that the inclusion of “political parties” in the definition of GSCASTE was due to repeated disputes over the characterization of RSS (and maybe also Tamil nationalist groups?). I can’t say that I’ve noticed nearly as much disruption recently in that vein, with most SA disruption being instead in the area of caste descriptions, wars, and Kashmir. If it’s true that political party related disruption is no longer a pressing issue, I think it would be much more reasonable for ARBCOM to amend CT/SA language to no longer highlight political parties, or to craft wording that specifies the parts of political parties that tend to be contentious (ie classification of their political orientation, esp the inclusion of nationalist/fascist/etc or not), rather than asserting that political parties are ECR but their primary activity somehow isn’t. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:16, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Along the lines of Primefac’s comment, I would suggest dropping political parties from GCASTE. If there’s ever disruption, they’re still part of SA so protection can be liberally applied, but we don’t need to preemptively declare them to be ECR. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:10, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coming into this as a complete outsider, I wonder if slightly expanding Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Historical elections to cover things other than the results would be a better fit than the South Asian topic? (The answer could well be "no" of course). Thryduulf (talk) 02:24, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I second Rosguill's request to strike the wording about political parties. My understanding is that their inclusion in the original scope of GSCASTE was a consequence of some political parties having an explicit or implicit caste association in the Indian subcontinent. However, the areas in which caste intrudes into politics is already covered by the "broadly construed" language. And although the history and activity of political parties is a matter of considerable contention, they not a frequent subject of non-EC disruption because the set of pages is small, and largely already EC-protected. Conversely, election pages are an area of surprising harmony, possibly because of their purely factual nature, and the frequency of elections in India mean there is a large number of non-EC accounts working on such pages. I don't think we should be prohibiting this activity, and I don't think we should be in the habit of making rules we intend to be enforced selectively. The application of ECR to social groups and military history is sufficient.

Arguably this should be a separate request on my part, but this is a reasonable opportunity for ARBCOM to clarify whether "social groups" covers religion. My understanding is that the "social groups" wording is used to encompass the many uses of the word caste and related concepts, including the Jāti/Varna distinction, and the OBC/SC/ST designations used by the Indian government. I don't believe it was originally intended to cover religious groups, but perhaps I'm wrong. Religious conflict is of course a major flashpoint within CT/SA, and I'm personally genuinely undecided if religious groups also need to be covered by ECR. But the difference in scope would be enormous, and I think it is worth ArbCom making it official one way or another. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:32, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• That's the kind of thing I'd let ride unless it was becoming disruptive. ECR was applied in this topic because of the disruption, so with broadly construed cases it's acceptable to invoke it, but let it slide if there's not disruption. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:36, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with SFR. "Broadly construed" is a useful device for capturing disruption not confined to a small number of articles, but shouldn't be a bureaucratic burden. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree with Harry and SFR. Daniel (talk) 20:37, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Per others; elections shouldn't necessarily be included. I would be fine with rewording the topic area designation to clarify this, but not seeing a pressing need either. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:50, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• My recollection of the GS/CASTE wording is similar to that of Rosguill, in that it was the parties themselves that were the issue (similar to related controversies over the castes); the vandalism at the article in question does not necessarily seem to be about the parties themselves and more about CRYSTAL predictions/complaints about the election results, so protection under CTOP (in my opinion) is not fully valid (though the protection in and of itself is perfectly fine). Could an election article require protection under this CTOP? Very likely, per the arguments already stated here, but I do not think we should make a blanket statement that all election articles are automatically under the "broadly construed" umbrella. I am not sure how best we could clarify that wording without getting too verbose, but potentially something like "political party characterisation" or similar? Primefac (talk) 14:52, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• "Elections"? Election campaigns are political, definitely in scope. Election results are factual and per other comments, it would be officious to apply restrictions. Efforts to contest results (think Jan 6) are once again political and in scope. 2¢. Cabayi (talk) 11:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I also agree with SFR on this, and with Cabayi's description. - Aoidh (talk) 02:45, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]