The biggest problem with the English arbitrators is that due to the press of arbitration business they have little time to do justice to checkuser requests from other users. Access is vital to carrying out arbitration duties in some cases, however. One side effect is that some arbitrators have been drawn away from arbitration duties, perhaps for the good of the project as a whole, but drawn away nevertheless.
I think the technical expertise problem is exaggerated, so long as the investigator relies on investigations of editing patterns also.
Fred
On Apr 22, 2006, at 7:03 AM, James D. Forrester wrote:
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Anthere wrote:
[Snip "CheckUser is a bit of a mess"]
I plead guilty for part of this.
I don't think that it's fair to blame anyone in particular for a possibly non-optimal situation; certainly, what with your sterling work getting an agreeable, if not perfect, policy in place, we would have been in a much worse position without you. :-)
I also think the arbcom of last summer has a responsability in this, since it was asking for the arbcom to have access, regardless of technical ability of its members.
I disagree with this; we said that we had one or two members who were (far) more than sufficiently expert to be able to carry out the analysis, and that it would be more sensible to have them carry it out directly, rather than via the developers in the scant few moments they weren't busy doing their fantastic work running the sites.
And for what is worth, I think Jimbo also has a responsability in this, since he himself decided all english arbcom members would have access.
Except, err, we don't all have access; we chose who on our project has both a sufficient (very great) level of trust, and also sufficient technical expertise (or the willingness and aptitude to improve their skills in this area a little). For example, I have elected not to have access to the tool (though more for reasons of time).
Then, there was a third mistake I think (it is not an accusation, just an analysis). It was to make a tool dividing projects and languages. Originally, we had a common set of volunteers to help us all. And this was good. I am pretty sure some people did not know Brion intimately enough to *trust* him, but they were told he was fine by people they trusted, and they went to ask him with no fear. And Jimbo had no fear either.
Now, people have checkuser status only on one project/one language. Just as if Brion had help ip checking on the french wiktionary, whilst Tim was dedicated to the english wikipedia and Taw to the polish wikibooks. It makes NO sense whatsoever. The *only* unigue advantage of the current system is to understand the language of the project the checkuser make the job.
I agree, this is indeed a problem.
[Snip]
What that suggest me is this
We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
I think that this solution has some merit, but there exists the tricky problem of language - if one does not read Russian, then no matter how accurate and wide one's technical knowledge is, there is no point being asked to carry out CheckUser checks on people. It isn't merely about technical proficiency, but about judgement of editing patterns, of style, and of content. This is something that is definitely language-specific.
Yours sincerely,
James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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