[WikiEN-l] new CheckUser proposal up

Thu Oct 13 15:17:25 UTC 2005

We need more people with access to CheckUser, because I don't scale,
and we're under a nasty vandalbot attack. Proposal at:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quick_and_dirty_Checkuser_policy_proposal

Discussion at

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Quick_and_dirty_Checkuser_policy_proposal

Also, it's really slow, and I've had it time out for five hour
stretches before when the DB's been under heavy load. So if anyone
with a good grasp of the MediaWiki data structures wants to rewrite it
to be faster/less load, please do!

My comments at the above:

As the guy who uses it now on en: (mostly so Tim Starling can get on
with development and sysadmin matters), a few notes:

    * _You have to pick people you can trust, and then trust them all
the way._ Various people are going to ask to have this logged seven
ways to Sunday to protect against possible abuses - but adding red
tape is just going to be a massive PITA and not actually affect
whether the CheckUser checker can be trusted to act with confidence.
Basically, we have to pick people we trust not to use the power for
evil. Like we do admins and bureaucrats, but more so.
    * Access by all bureaucrats is good IMO. They're highly trusted
people. If people aren't sure about this one, we can reconfirm all
current bureaucrats one by one.
    * Remember that a small number of the developers (those who have
access to the database) already have this power and use it. They
control the horizontal, they control the vertical, they see all and
know all — because they have to have complete control in order to
administer a top-50 website. But they respect the privacy policy,
because that's what you do as a sysadmin. The proposal is to extend
access to just one power, so as to avoid a bottleneck of too few
people for the job.
    * It helps if the person understands various network foo. If not I
am most happy to help and show how to interpret stuff. It's an art,
not a science.
    * I really need to write up a Help: page for CheckUser checkers.
    * taw on pl: has CheckUser for pl:, I think — worth asking for ideas?

- d.