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

Sat Apr 15 02:54:09 UTC 2006

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Essjay wrote:
>  
>
>>Perhaps this would be an appropriate time to say "Maybe we could use a 
>>couple more stewards?"
>>    
>>
>r perhaps the minimum requirement for the number of votes for users to 
>get checkuser status on smaller projects like en.wikibooks is 
>unreasonable?  We have had a couple of candidates for checkuser status 
>for almost two months now, and we simply can't get the number of votes 
>necessary because of the size of our active user base.  Yet we are the 
>target of repeated vandalism, and even sockpuppet voting from die-hard 
>sock puppets.  If the concern is that checkuser privileges are going to 
>be abused, it is a smaller user base that can be abused.
>
>Should projects be allowed to set their own standards for people with 
>this status, or is it something that is imutable and only set by the 
>Foundation board?  So far, only Wikipedias are seemingly allowed to have 
>somebody with checkuser status at all.  And if stewards are overwhelmed 
>with this task of dealing with checkuser scans, perhaps the policy needs 
>to be reviewed.
>
I don't think that simply adding more stewards is the solution.  Because 
of the legal privacy issues involved the Foundation needs to retain some 
control over the process, but this does not mean that projects cannot 
set application policies within parameters.  This is not the kind of 
tool that is well granted by voting.  The risk there is that the process 
will be taken over by those who are paranoid about sockpuppets, rather 
than those who will review the problem objectively.

Ec