Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
PS : is it
a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
I don't think the name "User:Ombudsman" instantly strikes someone as
an official position. In Britain, the position "Ombudsman" tends to be
reserved as a governmental complaints mechanism and watchdog on
trading standards and banking.
An alternative usage for this term that I've seen is for somebody who
offers legal advise, often free or pro-bono, to members of a community
or organization. Usually this is something that is often
topic-specific, for example this use here:
http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/
where the U.S. Dept. of Education has a legal team to help cut through
the red tape on student loan and aid programs for U.S. citizens.
Nod. And my question to Andrew (who implied an ombudsman would be a good
thing for the Foundation) still is "what would be the role of that
ombudsman".
I think something like this would be useful to help
cut through the red
tape of copyright and trademark issues that keep coming up for Wikimedia
projects. The problem here would be who would be willing to serve in
this capacity. And this is also something that simply should not be
elected, as you would have specific legal qualification that would be
necessary to do something like this effectively.
This, I admit, is also a completely different kind of a position than
the one originally suggested by Angela and worthy of a seperate thread,
having nothing to do with the checkuser issue.
Anthere. Not Angela.
We are two different people. If you come to Wikimania (I hope you do),
you'll see we are two different bodies, with different opinions and
different focus. After two years, I am still not used to see my job
being gathered under "what Jimbo is doing" or under "Angela has
said/Angela has done/Angela has suggested". I know it is not meant to
belittle me, but still, I would prefer that you give to Cesar, Cesar's
pants and to Cleopatre, Cleopatre's dress.
I have had the checkuser status since its beginning. I received several
complaints for abuse (generally not justified). I studied these
complaints, as confronted to the Foundation privacy policy. I am today
trying to delegate this to others (thus proposing the creation of an
ombudsman commission).
The benefits would be
1) complaints explored by neutral people (rather than a party)
2) complaints hopefully handled in a more timely fashion
3) more free time for me :-)
Angela has never been involved in checkuser issues.
I really think we need this to be "independant" party.
Some might argue that a party can not be fully independant if appointed
by the board, which is kinda correct. But I believe the people chosen
for now are rather uncontroversial people. IF this resolution ever pass
and IF the community has a complain with the people chosen, I'll be fine
with you guys voting/nominating new names. I mostly want for now the
concept to be validated by the board and the thing to get running.
ant