Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Procedure for changing this policy

There was at one point a proposal here; it is now at /Old proposal.

Arbitration policy has been the jurisdiction of Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee; see e.g. the arbitration policy ratification vote, which states that the "Arbitration Policy may be tweaked as the Committee gains experience and learns better ways of doing things". In 2005, then then-Committee member Grunt, indicated that "Jimbo Wales has also suggested that Arbitration Policy is not open to amendment by the community." from March 2005

Previous proposed amendments

Several attempts have been made to instigate community interest in amendment of Arbitration policy; see e.g.

• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment and its failed ratification vote
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote which, despite its name, was not entirely the same as the original proposed amendment

A restriction of one hundred community votes was implemented in both votes, but not met by either.

Current amendment process

In 2008, a wide ranging Request for Comments on the Arbitration system was undertaken which resulted in a series of suggested policy changes. Some members of the community were developing a proposal to vote on ratifying these changes during the 2008 Arbitration Committee Elections.

The 2008 process had worked as follows,

• A Request for Comments submitted to Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment, to discuss problems and propose solutions in the standard RfC manner of individuals making statements that others can list their support or opposition to.
• Consensus editing of a summary of the statements that had clear majority support by participants in the RfC, and production of actionable suggested policy changes as appropriate from those statements.
• Discussion of the submission of those policy changes to the community for ratification at the next round of Arbitration Committee Elections and/or other approaches, ongoing at the relevant talk page.
• A request has been posted on RFAR to ask for guidance from the current Arbitration Committee as to how in their opinion the process of changing arbitration policy could develop. There is discussion to what extent the Committee's opinion on this is determinative.

Voting on these changes was postponed at the urging of the Arbitration Committee, in preference of allowing the committee to provide a new arbitration policy they felt would address concerns raised. This process was still on-going in Janurary 2009 after having stalled in October of 2008.