[Foundation-l] Re: CheckUser questions

Thu Nov 10 00:08:32 UTC 2005

Thanks for your replies with suggestive facts.

On 11/9/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There is no maximal limit.

OK.

> The "two" is a minimal number and is there to ensure that there are at
> least 2 editors who can watch each other activity. This was proposed to
> reduce the impact of lack of public log.

OK at least two - in the other words, it shouln't be monopolized: if
there is only one users who is admitted worthy to hold this right, it
suggests the community is not enough big have a checkuser level user.
If so, It makes a sense in my opinion.

> As a reference, which might be interesting, David makes checks every
> day. Yesterday (a bad day I guess), he made over a hundred checks. At
> this rate, clearly, more than 1 and actually more than 2 must have the
> tool in the hand.

> The numbers were proposed to limit the access for small projects with
> only 2-5 editors. Two reasons for this
> * first, the needs are less important, and can be handled by steward
> ponctually.
> * second, on small wikis, sysophood is just given with no vote right
> now.

So it is stated on the purpose to discourage small wikis to submit
their requests and it is minimum (grin).

> As a second interesting reference, the second biggest project (dewiki)
> has it seems never made a request (even to a steward). The third
> community (frwiki) had two "valid" requests in a month or so. The fourth
> (jawiki) never asked either. Seeing Oscar and Waerth log activity, the
> nlwiki is ready to use the tool as well.

Just for information: precisely "jawiki never asked it publicly.":
Datrio once used it for jawiki per request but request wasn't
submitted on meta. On the other side, there were some requests for "IP
check"  with community supports but not seem not to have reached to
developers, or with not sufficient number of supports. Perhaps you are
aware two of wiki ambassadors on jawiki delisted themselves since this
February, one has been inactive and two are still active on other
projects but have no edit on ja for a year or more: shortly it is far
apart from the global Wikimedia community. So you wouldn't be
surprised only few editors on there knew checkuser right since very
recent. On the other hand, most editors seems not to be interested in
such investigations or argument around blocking. People don't want to
be involved into back kitchin issues.

> Might be interesting from a cultural perspective though...

Indeed.

And we have several times observed that the new sysop aquire a sort
> of special status, with special rights over the others. On some
> projects, the sysops are the only ones authorized to vote over
> decisions... on some projects, sysops are free to block a page on which
> they are in edit war with someone... on some projects, the bureaucrats
> decide who shall be sysops :-)

Well it is a big deal to have people know that sysopship isn't a big
deal ;) But "appointment by bureaucrats" isn't a bad idea for wikis
where most of people avoid to be involved. Like jawiki which have only
around 30 active sysops per hundreds of active editors (and perhaps
anons in the same numbers - almost half of edits are submitted
anonimously).

> Well... on enwiki, the checks are done everyday. It would be unworkable
> to have to restore status everyday...

Agreed. But if requests are so few like frwiki or others, it is still
worthy to consider.

> Now, I suppose that if some requests are done on a temp basis by editors
> we generally trust very much, we could just give them a temp status ?

It depends on what you mean here with "we" perhaps... generally if the
Board decides something, or the member, most editors support the
decision except very few editors with a loud voice (trying to smile
angelicly)

David Gerard 	<dgerard at gmail.com> writes;
Message-ID: <fbad4e140511090238w5ccf2d7euac55b3ffdd2a3e8 at mail.gmail.com>

> We could also do with a closed mailing list for CheckUser users -
>  IP matching is an art, not a science, and needs experienced knowledge
> and peer consultation of what's a match and what's a coincidence.
>  (It'll also help me/us work on [[m:Help:CheckUser]] ;-)

Both grobal mailing lists and local (by language) ones would be helpful.

Also,  [[m:Help:CheckUser]]  seems to be worthy to a subject of
"Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week: Translation". If a project wants
to have checkuser level editors, they are strongly encouraged to have 
[[m:Help:CheckUser]]  and [[m:CheckUser policy]] in their language, or
they couldn't understand what will be going on.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com