[Foundation-l] Update on ombudsman issue

Fri Jul 21 12:35:26 UTC 2006

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> 
> 
>>>PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
>>>   
>>>
>>
>>I don't think the name "User:Ombudsman" instantly strikes someone as
>>an official position. In Britain, the position "Ombudsman" tends to be
>>reserved as a governmental complaints mechanism and watchdog on
>>trading standards and banking.
>>
>> 
>>
> 
> An alternative usage for this term that I've seen is for somebody who 
> offers legal advise, often free or pro-bono, to members of a community 
> or organization.  Usually this is something that is often 
> topic-specific, for example this use here:
> 
> http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/
> 
> where the U.S. Dept. of Education has a legal team to help cut through 
> the red tape on student loan and aid programs for U.S. citizens.

Nod. And my question to Andrew (who implied an ombudsman would be a good 
thing for the Foundation) still is "what would be the role of that 
ombudsman".

> I think something like this would be useful to help cut through the red 
> tape of copyright and trademark issues that keep coming up for Wikimedia 
> projects.  The problem here would be who would be willing to serve in 
> this capacity.  And this is also something that simply should not be 
> elected, as you would have specific legal qualification that would be 
> necessary to do something like this effectively.
> 
> This, I admit, is also a completely different kind of a position than 
> the one originally suggested by Angela and worthy of a seperate thread, 
> having nothing to do with the checkuser issue.

Anthere. Not Angela.
We are two different people. If you come to Wikimania (I hope you do), 
you'll see we are two different bodies, with different opinions and 
different focus. After two years, I am still not used to see my job 
being gathered under "what Jimbo is doing" or under "Angela has 
said/Angela has done/Angela has suggested". I know it is not meant to 
belittle me, but still, I would prefer that you give to Cesar, Cesar's 
pants and to Cleopatre, Cleopatre's dress.

I have had the checkuser status since its beginning. I received several 
complaints for abuse (generally not justified). I studied these 
complaints, as confronted to the Foundation privacy policy. I am today 
trying to delegate this to others (thus proposing the creation of an 
ombudsman commission).

The benefits would be
1) complaints explored by neutral people (rather than a party)
2) complaints hopefully handled in a more timely fashion
3) more free time for me :-)

Angela has never been involved in checkuser issues.

I really think we need this to be "independant" party.

Some might argue that a party can not be fully independant if appointed 
by the board, which is kinda correct. But I believe the people chosen 
for now are rather uncontroversial people. IF this resolution ever pass 
and IF the community has a complain with the people chosen, I'll be fine 
with you guys voting/nominating new names. I mostly want for now the 
concept to be validated by the board and the thing to get running.

ant