[Wikipedia-l] Re: CheckUser policy (was Status of Wikimedia)

David Gerard wrote: At that point, I must add a couple of information for my fellow wikipedians. Currently, only two projects have been granted checkuser status for at least one editor. The polish wikipedia has Taw with checkuser status. The english wikipedia has David. How did that happen ? (correct me I am wrong on a detail) Initially, the developers were doing that job upon request (I myself asked twice for information in three years if I remember, to Tim or to Brion). When the requests started being too numerous, Tim made the checkUser tool, in order to hand out to the community the role of doing checks, rather than to let it to the developers. Two people were given access. David, probably per agreement with Tim and support from Jimbo. Taw, because he had developer access, but his only activity (if I understood well) was to check on users. Then, requests went on pouring on the developers, who answered there was a tool now to do this. So, editors asked to have access or asked for other people to do the job for them. This is when the policy started to be discussed. Recently, the english arbcom has complained that David was no more sufficient to do the job himself and more people should have access; that the policy making was too slow being made, and that the fact it was not established yet on all projects should not slow down access for the english wikipedia. There were two main outcome * first, I tried to speed up the policy making process * second, Jimbo, made the decision of who should have check user access on the english wikipedia about a week ago. So, to answer David question, I think there are roughly three main options First option : people get checkuser access on an automatic basis, through another status (for example, all bureaucrats automatically get the tool). Second option : people get checkuser access through an approval system (with a community vote or an arbitrator vote) Third option : the monarchy system. Tim (as suggested by David) or Jimbo (as recently done for the english wikipedia) decide who has check user access. My feelings The first option is out of question (it was discussed in length in talk pages) The third option requires either that Tim accepts the job (and I somehow doubt he will) and/or that Jimbo acts like a monarch on all projects. The Foundation frankly needs Jimbo for certain things for which he is much more necessary than nominating checkuser for all projects as he is currently doing for the english wikipedia. Besides, the non-english projects are generally not used to Jimbo acting like a monarch on such decisions and I doubt they would really feel happy with him taking such decisions. That lets the second option... I think any large community can be fully trusted to give that status to good people who will not abuse it.