On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 4:07 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
I am not asking for full disclosure, what I am asking is that established user have the right to be notified when and why they are being checkusered. The evidence checkusers get do not need to be disclosed, Its as simple as:
X performed a checkuser on you because Y at Z UTC
that provides clarity and openness while keeping the information checkusers use confidential. A note like that would provide vandals with very little information. And the second step of defining a threshold would eliminate most of the vandal checks.
To me this screams of lets keep oversight of checkuser to a minimum. Right now there is the ombudsman committee globally (to ask for review from them we need evidence, realistically only other checkusers can provide that) and on enwp there is the Audit Subcommittee, which 75% of are either arbcom members (be defacto are granted CU ), former arbcom, or former CU. To me that really reeks of lack of independent oversight. Notifying an established user that they are subject to a CU doesnt harm the CU's ability to do their job unless they themselves have something to hide. Its not like I am asking for CU's to release IP addresses/user-agents or anything else that could assist me in avoiding scrutiny.
John, I strongly disagree with your comment.
"Notifying an established user that they are subject to a CU doesn't harm the CU's ability to do their job unless they themselves have something to hide. Its not like I am asking for CU's to release IP addresses/user-agents or anything else that could assist me in avoiding scrutiny."
The requirement that the checkuser inform community members that their private data has been viewed would be a large task that could only be done effectively by using a bot. But the questions would need to be responded to by checkusers and would needlessly tie up volunteer time for no real reason. People who share a range with vandals or prolific sockmasters could get inundated with notifications because they show up on those ranges.
Additionally, it is common for checkusers to watch an account's editing pattern in addition to looking at checkuser data in order to determine if the user is a sock. Telling the user that they have been subject to a checkuser would take away this very useful practice, unnecessarily alarm members of the community when they show up in checks while alerting problematic users that we are focusing on them or their ip range.
When users edit WMF sites they must agree that their data will be captured and used in limited ways. See the Terms of use and the privacy policy.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use#2._Privacy_Policy
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy#Purpose_of_the_collection...
I don't see any reason to alter a system that seems to be working well now.
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Member Ombudsmen Commission but speaking only for myself.
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 3:48 AM, Stephanie Daugherty sdaugherty@gmail.comwrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 3:36 AM, David Richfield davidrichfield@gmail.comwrote:
So User:mfgaowener should get an automated mail saying "because you did a pagemove with edit summary "Haggggers!" you were checkusered. Please be more subtle in your vandalism next time."
I trust the current checks and balances, and I don't think the system is getting significant levels of abuse.
+1 on this. The methods that checkusers have are heavily constrained as
it is by privacy concerns, and they are very fragile. They only work effectively within the tight privacy restrictions with a certain amount
of
security through obscurity. For one, a checkuser needs to be able to monitor a situation sometimes to be sure that they are casting a wide enough net for a block to be effective. For another, the standard of reasonable suspicion placed on the checkuser tool is high enough that
with
enough practice, vandals would learn to be careful to never justify a checkuser request within the privacy guidelines.
We're between a rock and a hard place, because to give the transparency being asked for, we'd enter an arms race where we'd quickly have to relax the checkuser standards to the point where it becomes "anything goes so long as you don't disclose it".
-Stephanie _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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