<snip> Robert Scott Horning wrote: I fail to see how comparing two different IP addresses from two users is really all that much more difficult of a technical task. </snip>
You've quite obviously never used checkuser; there is much more to it than simply comparing IP addresses. You need to be able to recognize dynamic and/or shared IPs, be able to detect and scan open proxies, determine if and how IP ranges shift, identify and interpret the registration attached to the IP address, and quite a bit more. If detecting sockpuppets only required comparing two lists together, it could be done by a script or a trained monkey. Karynn and I are far more than trained monkeys, thank you.
Essjay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 4/20/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I am not all that pleased with having to deal with "outsiders" in order to obtain this critical information, although having it is better than not having it. I am really curious as to the reasons why Essjay and Karynn are any better candidates for checkuser status on en.wikibooks than the current two candidates on the request for checkuser status, and all I can say is that they enjoy somewhat better relationships with the Foundation board. That seems hardly a reasonable policy.
I don't know the current candidates on en.wikibooks that well, and while I don't have any reason to believe that there's anything wrong with them, I also don't have any reason to believe that they can be trusted at the level that should be expected and required of those with CheckUser privileges. CheckUser is a position that carries very hefty responsibilities; the Foundation has good cause to restrict the number of people with this privilege. Frankly I think *all* CheckUsers need to be approved by the Foundation because it's the Foundation that will be on the hook for a misuse of the information that CheckUsers have access to. So the fact that Essjay and I are well known to the Foundation makes us more appealing to the Foundation, not specifically because we have done most of our work on Wikipedia (although this is true for me and to a lesser extent for Essjay, who has more meta experience than I do) but because we have become known to the Foundation as reliable, trustworthy individuals.
So why doesn't the existing policy simply say this? If the individuals have to be so trusted that they need formal approval of not only the project, but also the Foundation board itself, then it should be stated as such. This is not currently the policy. As far as you not trusting these users, that is because you have not interacted with them and had a chance to see their editing and administrative styles, and more of a matter that they are not as active on en.wikipedia to your tastes. From my perspective, the Wikibooks candidates are as trustworthy as any Wikimedia user can possibly be without getting into cabal accusations or political arguments, and would very likely have recieved the checkuser status a long time ago if they had instead been working on Wikipedia instead of Wikibooks. They are solid and very active Wikimedia users.
Perhaps because this was buried under all of the previous comments, but it really hasn't been answered at least to my satisfaction. Under what reasonable criteria is being applied that would allow somebody to become a bureaucrat on a project that would not also mean they are trusted enough to have checkuser status as well?
There's a big difference between bureaucrat and checkuser. CheckUsers have access to personal, private information about other editors, information which is protected by law in some nations (e.g. the European Union) and the inappropriate disclosure of which could easily cause grave harm to someone. Bureaucrats just get to decide who has access to the special buttons on a given project. The worst damage a bureaucrat can do is mistakenly promote someone who ought not have been promoted, resulting in annoying damage to a particular project and some degree of frustration for its editors and readers. The worst damage a checkuser can do is publicly announce the IP address of a political dissident editing from a country where political dissidence is punishable by death. Misuse of CheckUser power can easily lead to the loss of jobs and potentially even of freedom or of lives. I hope you now understand how the gravity of the responsibility of a CheckUser is that much greater than that of a bureaucrat, and why the screening process for bureaucrats is inadequate for determining who should be trusted with checkuser rights.
On this I guess we have to agree to disagree on this point. I completely disagree that checkuser disclosure of IP addresses is going to cause any real problem at all, and is making a mountain out of a molehill to prevent some very minor and difficult to accomplish abuse at the risk of denying a very powerful tool to local projects... powerful in the sense of identifying blatant abuse and stoping vandals from destroying a project. And pointing out that IP addresses are also used anyway and even publicly disclosed for most Wikimedia users as well (the unregistered users). I won't rehash any of my previous arguments to respond further, but any attempt to not disclose this information if futile anyway for somebody who might lose their job or recieve capital punishment for something they write on a Wikimedia project, and the Foundation would be compelled to disclose that IP address anyway, by the standards of the checkuser policy as written. This policy will never save even a single life, just at most give them a few more months of life at best due to legal manuvering with the Wikimedia Foundation instead being sent through the mud as harboring political dissidants or even people plotting to overthrow governments, such as perhaps some al-Queida operatives planning on blowing up the Empire State Building in New York City. Is that the kind of press that the Foundation wants in terms of who is being protected by this policy?
And getting back to the original point of this thread, the Stewards who supposedly have at least the option of having checkuser status, and are allowed to act in the capacity of performing administrative actions where existing policies on individual projects are lacking these policies due to their size, are ignoring checkuser requests. If Essjay and Karynn have the trust and support for this widespread and cross project assistance, perhaps they should simply be made stewards as well. And to the point at hand, en.wikibooks is in English, which from what I've seen of the list of stewards is one of the languages of every current steward. That these checkuser scans aren't being performed is more of a condemnation of all of the stewards, or a very serious misunderstanding of what their role is as backup administrators to smaller projects.
Relatively few stewards are in a position to perform checkusers; the position requires both technical competency and a high degree of trust and responsibility. That most stewards (who presumably have the trust and responsibility, even if not the technical competency) are unwilling to perform them is likely because they don't know how to or even that they can as much as that they aren't bothering.
Kelly
I guess I'm confused at the duties of stewards then. Most of what they do is "promote" users to become admins or sysops, and now grant checkuser status as well based on a whole variety of standards, many of which even contradict currently the checkuser policy on Meta. This by itself does require a certain level of technical competency, and I fail to see how comparing two different IP addresses from two users is really all that much more difficult of a technical task. This is not operating system assembly-level driver writing we are talking about, just looking up an IP address or two and comparing numbers. As far as letting stewards know they can do this, I hope this is a wake-up call to let them know that this is something that is needed, in terms of being able to help smaller projects on a task they simply can't do for themselves. If the level of trust is so high but the amount of work so great, perhaps a recruiting drive to get more stewards should occur.