Notice of obsolescence:
Community sanctions in this area of conflict have been revoked or have expired. As a result, this community sanctions-related page is now obsolete, is retained only for historical reference, and should not be modified. For the specific community decision that rescinded or modified these community sanctions, see this discussion at the administrators' noticeboard.

A community discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents [1] (confirmed here) has placed Barack Obama-related pages on article probation – effective as of 16:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC). Please direct all discussions of this remedy to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Pages related to Barack Obama (broadly construed) are subject to the following terms of article probation:

• Any editor may be sanctioned by an uninvolved administrator for disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith.
  • Sanctions imposed may include restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors, bans from editing the Obama pages and/or closely related topics, blocks of up to 1 year in length, or any other measures the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project.
  • For the purpose of imposing sanctions under this provision, an administrator will be considered "uninvolved" if he or she is not engaged in a current, direct, personal conflict on the topic with the user receiving sanctions (note: enforcing this provision will not be considered to be participation in a dispute).
• Sanctions imposed under this provision may be appealed to the imposing administrator, the appropriate administrators' noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee.
• Administrators are not to reverse such sanctions without either (1) approval by the imposing administrator, or without (2) community consensus or Committee approval to do so.
• All sanctions imposed are to be logged at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Log of sanctions.

How to avoid being subject to remedies

• Do not edit-war;
• Interact civilly with other editors;
• Avoid making repeated comments unrelated to bettering the article;
• Avoid making repeated comments about the subject of the article;
• Avoid repeatedly discussing other editors, discuss the article instead;
• Not much leeway in pages under probation, so basically be a model Wikipedian;
• We actually know when we cross the line; we are all intelligent people;
• Don't get worked up when you get subjected to remedies such as a temporary block or ban. Take a break and come back refreshed.

• Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Obama article probation – this page's talk page, for a discussion of article probation
• Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Requests for enforcement – to file reports and requests for enforcement of article probation
• Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Log of sanctions – for a list of sanctions, notifications, and articles tagged as being on probation
• Barack Obama – main Obama page
• Talk:Barack Obama to discuss improving the article.

Posting here from the RfAr case so as notify to the editors/admins involving with the current article probation, allowing for the review to begin :

The probation on articles relating to Barack Obama will be reviewed by a group of involved and non-involved editors and administrators to see how effective it has been. The process will last two weeks. After the two weeks elapse, the working group will provide their findings to us and the community, and will outline how the article probation will run in the future (i.e. what are the terms of article probation, what constitutes being involved and therefore required to be under it, etc.)- Mailer Diablo 16:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]