Arbitration Committee (Wikimedia)
Wikimedia committee mainly responsible for implementing binding dispute resolution
On Wikimedia Foundation projects, an arbitration committee (ArbCom) is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors. All Wikimedia projects are editorially autonomous and independent, and some of them have established their own arbitration committees that work according to rules developed by the project's editors and are usually annually elected by their communities. The arbitration committees generally address misconduct by administrators and editors with access to advanced tools, and a range of "real-world" issues related to harmful conduct that can arise in the context of Wikimedia projects. Rulings, policies and procedures differ between projects depending on local and cultural contexts. According to the Wikimedia Terms of Use, users are not obliged to have a dispute solved by an arbitration committee.
The first Wikimedia project to use an arbitration committee was the Swedish Wikipedia with Tinget, instigated by its co-founder Dan Koehl. This wiki "thing" of 24 November, 2002 became the first body akin to an arbitration committee on any Wikipedia language version, effectively making the Swedish Wikipedia the first decentralised project while the rest of Wikipedia was still under Jimmy Wales' direct personal supervision.
This initiative soon inspired the widely covered English Wikipedia Committee. Over time, other Wikimedia projects have established arbitration committees as well.
The English Wikipedia ArbCom was created by Jimmy Wales on December 4, 2003, as an extension of the decision-making power he formerly held as CEO of site-owner Bomis.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Arbitration Committee (Wikimedia)” is wikimedia committee mainly responsible for implementing binding dispute resolution. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Arbitration, Committee and Wikimedia, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16861792. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arbitration Committee (Wikimedia)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.