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

Mon Apr 17 13:37:43 UTC 2006

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>This is IMHO why such a policy needs to be tailor fit for each 
>individual project.  The standards that are applying for zh.wikipedia 
>should not be the same for en.wikibooks, for example.  I agree that a 
>certain level of paranoia exists among Chinese speakers... even when 
>they don't necessarily live in or are even citizens of the People's 
>Republic of China.  They should have a much higher standard for their 
>own local project.  In addition, with over 50,000 registered users on 
>zh.wikipedia, trying to get the minimum number of 30 votes to support 
>checkuser elections isn't going to be a problem.  It still doesn't 
>answer my question over how you could stop a government agent from 
>becoming an administrator or somebody with checkuser privileges, or for 
>that matter the PRC government can simply demand this information 
>directly from the Foundation, and the Foundation would be legally 
>powerless to deny the request.  They (the government) could even demand 
>access logs and other information that is not given to people with 
>checkuser privileges.  Any attempts to deny this information would be 
>just legal roadblocks and just a matter of time before they would get 
>it, and cause further grief for the Foundation board.  Futhermore, such 
>formal requests would be made without the knowledge of any Wikimedia 
>user outside of the Foundation legal circle.  At least checkuser scans 
>are logged for public review
>
As much as I believe that we need a good level of privacy to protect us 
from the nutcases, I also recognize that it takes a high level of 
openness to protect us from the abuses of governments and the powerful.  
The hypothetical PRC government agent is still an individual, and as 
such should have the same right as anyone else to become a Wikipedia 
administrator.  Such a job should be no more of a hurdle to being in 
that position than which mainstream political party an American 
Wikipedian supports.

The breach of trust that you suggest could be demanded by the PRC 
government is already there in the United States under the Patriot Act.  
We have no way of knowing whether the general trust has been betrayed in 
that way.  We have no way of knowing whether our Arabic speaking 
colleagues are being thus monitored, or whether a gog order has been 
issued to keep the rest of us in the dark.

The PRC government may be self-styled communist, but it knows how to 
dangle a capitalist carrot.  Google and the Rolling Stones can attest to 
that.

Ec

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