In what way is it an ethical violation to reveal the reason for a check?
On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Thatcher131 Wikipedia < thatcher131@gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/19/08, David Katz dkatz2001@gmail.com wrote:
It certainly doesn't appear that SV was given this information so that
she
could block or report the person on whom the CheckUser was run.
Instead, it
appears that she was told so she could tip off the person.
You've misunderstood what happened. I was told -- told, not "tipped off" -- about the checkuser because I was one of the people Lar checked. That is allowed under the policy.
There are two issues here that I would like to comment on.
First, on the issue of notification. My personal approach is that if someone asks me, "Have I been checkusered," I will answer yes or no. I will not identify the checkuser, because I can not speak for why that checkuser ran the check, but I will offer to notify the checkuser that the editor in question would like to discuss the matter. Then it is up to the checkuser who ran the check to decide whether or not to respond. I think it would be pretty discourteous to the other checkuser to say directly, "Yes, you were checked by Smith" because that gets the editor angry at Smith without giving Smith a chance to explain the reason or context.
Second, with respect to SlimVirgin and Lar. Lar pretty much has his hands tied. It would certainly be a breach of the privacy policy to discuss the results of the check, and it would be an ethical violation (if not a privacy violation) to discuss the reason for the check. So his hands are tied; SlimVirgin can slag off on him publicly and he can't defend himself. That's pretty low, and this is maybe the third time it has happened. (Once before on checkuser-L and once at [[Wikipedia talk:Checkuser]].) So I think it would be best for all concerned, if Slim believes that Lar is not trustworthy, that she make a formal request to Arbcom to consider the matter, and then keep it off the wiki.
Thatcher
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