[Foundation-l] Update on ombudsman issue

Fri Jul 21 17:27:50 UTC 2006

Anthere wrote:

>>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. 
>
I apologize on this issue.  I tried to look in the e-mail stack (there 
has been a bunch of stuff here on this topic) and I thought it was 
Angela who proposed this based on some earlier comments.  I should have 
dug a little deeper here on this issue before I named names.

>If you come to Wikimania (I hope you do), 
>
I would love to come, but time and money are going to make it difficult 
for me this year.  Perhaps next year?  Being in North America helps for 
me, but it is in the wrong end of North America for me to make it 
easily.  Like the distance from Siberia to Paris if you want to compare 
to Europe.

Please note that I was trying to explain what an ombudsman was, and 
perhaps what a board-appointed one would be like, although admittedly in 
a very different area from the proposal related to check user status.

>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 :-)
>
>I really think we need this to be "independant" party.
>
I think in this situation, if you want to encourage independence, you 
need to change it to a broader issue than just checkuser issues.  The 
whole reason for the parnoia over being really stingy regarding 
checkuser issues is mainly dealing with the Wikimedia Foundation privacy 
policy and potential violations of that policy.  It is indeed in these 
violations, and other privacy issues unrelated to checkuser scans, that 
is the main concern about why such an ombudsman would be necessary.  And 
this should be something board appointed if we are talking somebody who 
understands throughally both the meaning and intent of the privacy 
policy, as well as the legal implications if  people with access to 
private information violate this policy.

The Privacy Policy Ombudsman would also be a good point of contact if 
there is a legal issue that comes up that requires disclosure of private 
user information, covered in the privacy policy.  This would be like in 
a libel lawsuit involving a Wikimedia user where there is a court order 
to disclose the IP address and other information about a user who made 
an edit.  Also, if some user thinks information about themselves is 
improperly being disclosed, either through a check user scan or like has 
been done on Wikibooks for publishing author information, that user can 
seek an independent and authoritative legal opinion about the issue and 
even recommend to project admins or stewards to take action correcting 
the problem.

Because this is a legal position, there are obviously specific 
requirements that somebody must meet before they can be in this 
position.  For that reason alone, I think it would be better to be an 
appointed position through the Wikimedia Foundation.  The fact that the 
privacy policy is also a Wikimedia Foundation policy rather than an 
individual project policy also reinforces this aspect of being an 
appointed position.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning