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

Fri Apr 14 20:41:32 UTC 2006

> 
> Nod. I understand what you say.
> Unfortunately, absolutely *any* editor may be
> attacked anytime and have 
> his/her reputation attacked. If you doubt that,
> check out the recent 
> emails between David Gerard, Aurevilly and myself
> :-(
> 
> Now, I must also say that it is quite unconfortable
> to do checkuser on a 
> project you absolutely do not know and in a language
> you do not know either.
> 

. . . 

> Requests may be done by *good* editors and by *bad*
> editors. Stewards 
> have no way to know. I am not sure it is good.
> 
> ant (who heard you were a good person :-))

I realize there is fine line here.  And I am confident
that no one will take the accusations against me
seriously.  However I was very cautious about things,
thinking of how everything would look once all the
evidence was deleted.  All history of any
contributions made by the editor at Wikisource have of
course disappeared.  And especially as the person was
nuked on another project which destroyed most of the
history there, which I could have used to back up my
actions.  I kept records of what I could and trusted
that people would speak up for me if it came that (as
Brad has done).  

However, in general the people who are trusted from a
Foundation perspective take little interest in the
running of the smaller projects.  At the same time,
those that keep these projects running smoothly are
told they are not trusted enough to have the tools
they need.  And then people with access, such as
yourself, feel uncomfortable even using the tools to
pass info on.  And I understand why you feel that way
of course.  Because I feel uncomfortable blocking
someone indefinitely without being 100% sure he was
the same person who had caused problems before.  It is
not just that I worry about what others may accuse me
of, but I take the responsibility seriously.  In the
end it is my action, whoever else advised me on it. 
But am convinced the risk of legal exposure is a great
enough problem that I can overcome the discomfort.

This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem. 
No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
someone told us that it had been decided here that our
copyright policy was not restrictive enough.  That is
when a few of the regular editors signed up.  I
imagine there are a great number of active projects
out there running their own little worlds, divested
from the Foundation in all but name.  I believe there
are other problems we haven't yet imagined already out
there.  Things need to be handled differently. 
Perhaps new projects are approved to easily.  It might
be a good idea to assign official liaisons.  Or maybe
there should be a mentorship program for bureaucrats. 
Perhaps the Foundation should randomly run a detailed
assesment of the smaller but active projects.  Or
maybe there should be a recruitment of the people who
run these projects to become more active within the
Foundation.  I do not know the answer, but I can see
symptoms that this is a larger problem than stewards
ignoring requests for Checkuser.  

I will say this, projects like Wikisource are very
different from Wikipedia.  They are also very
different from Wikipedia was when it as small as
Wikisource is now.  What worked then and now for WP
will not work for Wikisource or Wikibooks.  I can see
this just from that expectations there are of how X
voters should be gotten from X active editors.  When
people were active at Wikipedia years ago, they joined
the community.  Now these editors are either fed up
with community from WP experiences, or else they
devote all their "community" time to WP, but they
still come edit regularly on places like Wikisource. 
I see many names I recognize from WP community
discussions in the Recent Changes at Wikisource.  But
they never join in on any WS general disscussions.  I
am not saying this is either good or bad; it is just
makes a different animal entirely.  Also as Robert
Horning said, we attract vandals of a sophisticaton WP
never even imagined when there were only 12
administrators.  I feel that if projects like
Wikisource and Wikibooks are continually regarded by
the Foundation the way they are now, they will become
like difficult step-childrem.  I do not believe anyone
wants that to happen.  I certainly don't and that is
why I encouraging for something to change.  There must
be more intergration and trust on all levels.  And I
mean trust that our work will be supported as well as
trust that we act responsibly in the running our
projects.  

Although this is old news, I will say this also
because it regards trust running the other way.  It
was very hard on us to have to delete all the UN
resolutions and Crown legislation.  We truly believed
(trusted) our copyright policy was supported.  And
even now we have never gotten a straight answer on the
thinking behind the copyrights.  Any disscussion I
read about it, leaves me newly aware of the lack of
understanding people have about the basics of
Wikisource.  Or else I get the impression that
everyone from the Foundation is being intentionally
vague.  So we are being very cautious, and I worry
every day someone will come down and say we have get
rid of X also. And that is the worst part of being and
admin, when the rules suddenly change on you and you
are left to enforce them on very unhappy people.  And
on top of it all I do not understand why they changed
or even if my current interpration of the rules is
correct.  Things like this can only happen so many
times before everyone becomes too gun-shy to keep
contributing, or else decides to just ignore the rules
they feel are arbitrary.  Either of those would be a
bad thing.  Sorry this was so long.

Birgitte SB

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