Yesterday, in an unprecedented decision, Wikipedia's court-like body ArbCom handed down a project-wide ban of all IP addresses owned by Scientology for disruptive editing and coordinating their edits to maintain their status quo including "persistent point-of-view pushing and extensive feuding over sources on multiple articles"
This is the first time that an entire organization's IP address block has been banned from editing Wikipedia, despite individual IPs being blocked in the past from other organizations, such as the US DoJ in 2008.
Arbitrators voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favour of the ban, however individual editors may request IP block exemption if they wish to contribute from the blocked IP addresses. The case also resulted in the restriction of a further 15 editors from Scientology-related articles or, in some cases, the entire encyclopaedia.
The decision, which comes as a French court starts a trial that could dissolve the French chapter of the organisation, was the result of the longest running arbitration case in Wikipedia's history.
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