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(a)jdforrester.org
IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com
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