Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Proposals/Evidence scope

Please direct preliminary discussion to the talk page.

Summary of proposal

This is a counter-proposal to Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote#Amendment A2.1 which was to allow "IRC evidence and evidence gathered from private e-mails".

The first problem with that amendment was that this evidence information was added to the "Jurisdiction" section, which is a bit out of place. More importantly, though, is the fact that private emails, IRC logs, and the like are too easily forged and are unverifiable by any means.

Wording suggestions or ideas are welcome on the talk page. -- Netoholic @ 02:11, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

Proposed changes

Hearing

Change line 2:

Litigants may add evidence and argument to the case page at any time. Evidence and argument may also be posted by third parties and by the Arbitrators themselves. The Arbitrators reserve the right to disregard certain items of evidence or certain lines of argument.

... to:

Evidence and brief arguments may be added to the case pages by the named participants, interested third parties, and the Arbitrators themselves. Such evidence must come from easily verifiable sources; primarily in the form of Wikipedia edits ("diffs"), log entries for MediaWiki actions or web server access, posts to the official mailing lists, or other Wikimedia sources. The Arbitrators reserve the right to disregard certain items of evidence or certain lines of argument.

Preliminary poll (none yet)

Do not open this vote until at least two weeks of discussion have occurred.

Final vote (none yet)

Do not open this vote until the preliminary poll has passed with at least ~70% support.