[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser information?

Fri Apr 14 16:56:19 UTC 2006

Anthere wrote:

>The reason for the 25 votes limit comes from two reasons
>* A community with less than 25 users is unlikely to really need 
>frequent checkusers, because it is a project with reduced activity. So, 
>it can not be a heavy load for stewards.
>* A community with less than 25 users has a rather serious risk to have 
>a rather little known editor become a checkuser, rather than a trusted 
>oldbie. If we start handing out status just as we do for sysop status on 
>small projects, I think there will be abuse. I say this from my 
>experience, as I had to unsysop several sysops on small projects (the 
>guys did not know our basic rules, behaved like dictators with the 
>handful of editors, put advertisements on the main page, controlled povs 
>etc...).
>
>I am perplex that the en.wikibooks does not have a big enough base of 
>editors to vote on a check user...
>I am quite lazy, so I will not go to the stats page to check. But can 
>you roughly say how many active editors per month the project currently 
>has ? How many very active editors per month ?
>
>ant
>  
>
Since the stats page hasn't been updated since November of last year, it 
is completely useless to even gague what the current activity is on any 
Wikimedia project.  I can only use the current activity on the Wikibooks 
staff lounge to even remotely gague what the current user activity level 
is, but I would guess it is pretty close to about 20 user at the 
absolute top.  Really stretching it perhaps we can get to 25 total at 
the most.

And as for advertising this, I guess we could put it in bold 40 point 
type on the project main page with a link to a special page only for 
this kind of request.  I think that is way over the top and something 
that is not needed in this situation.  The advertising was more than 
adequate, it is just that this is a very unreasonable request.

As for a "community with less than 25 users unlikely needing frequent 
checkuser scans", I think this is mistaken totally what is going on. 
 en.wikibooks has numerous links from within Wikipedia, and is being 
hammered by vandals that have moved on from Wikipedia, indeed with 
excellent training on how to be a vandal on Wikipedia, and taking on 
other projects as well that don't have quite the same pool of 
administrators.

As for handing out checkuser status to people who are not trusted 
oldies, that is totally rediculous as well.  There are admins and 
bureaucrats on en.wikibooks who are also admins on other projects, 
including meta, wikinews, and even en.wikipedia.  Active ones at that. 
 I see absolutely no reason why the standards for giving somebody 
bureaucrat status when you can't also give them checkuser status.

Furthermore, what abuse could possibly happen with somebody having 
checkuser scans?  Really, at the most extreme?  With bureacrat status I 
could give admin status to a whole team of 'bots that would then in 
tandem go through and systematically delete every page on a project and 
block every user.  Talk about damage to a project.  With checkuser 
privileges, all you have access to is just the IP address of each user. 
 So the absolute worst damage is that they publish on an external 
website (making it harder for the board to go after that user) all of 
the IP addresses of every user.  Which is worse?  Really, think about it.

More to the point, show me a single user that has been given checkuser 
rights on any local project besides a Wikipedia and meta.  This would be 
a contrary example to prove me wrong.  If not, why not?  Because 
checkuser rights are not needed except on Wikipedia?

-- 
Robert Scott Horning