Hi Pine,
I know we’ve touched on this in past discussions related to this list. Staff frequently need on wiki user rights to do their work, which can range all over the map from Meta admin/translate admin to central notice admin or Checkuser/Oversight and everything in between. Many of these rights are sensitive in their nature (for example I could make an argument that central notice admin and its raw crosswiki javascript capabilities are on par with Checkuser in some cases), and we work to ensure that users only have rights they need for the time they need it.
Given that these tools are being used on the public wikis, it is natural (and expected) that the community keeps an eye out and alerts us to issues, but in the end the staff needs and requirements for those rights are different and separate from the community ones and they have to be overseen by staff. As part of that we ensure they go through a multistep (and multi-person) process involving reaching out to SuSa with a use case, seeking written approval from their manager, and then getting approval from a SuSa Manager (and the Director for especially sensitive user rights). Given the natural oversight and review we have before hiring staff, along with the ongoing oversight from both their managers and SuSa, we believe this strikes the right balance.
James
*James Alexander* Manager, Trust & Safety Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 1:48 PM Adrian Raddatz ajraddatz@gmail.com wrote:
Not for any wiki; only Meta had wmf staff with admin rights, and only for use within their specific work-related areas.
I am totally unconcerned with WMF staff having the necessary permissions to do their job. They can easily be held accountable as paid employees.
On Feb 14, 2017 11:53 AM, "Fæ" faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Usecases are appearing, thanks to whomever is intervening, though in a narrow column so hard to read.
Now I can read it, I see that it is out of date. As a test sample, I JethroBT (WMF) was granted m:admin rights in June, these expired by August 2016 and were eventually removed by a volunteer steward in October 2016. Though I JethroBT is an admin on meta right now, this was via a separate use case dated "42676", which I presume is November. Could the spreadsheet be properly reviewed and updated please, including reformatting the date field so it's easy to understand?
Pine - yes this process of "WMF Advanced Permissions" includes admin rights for any WMF website and so by-passes the community procedures.
Fae
On 14 February 2017 at 17:48, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm curious about what is meant by "advanced permissions" here. If that refers to translation administrator permissions, I have fewer concerns about that than I would about admin or CU/OS permissions.
In general, I'm wary of WMF encroachment on Meta. Placing resources on
Meta
that the community will use is fine and good, but WMF taking unilateral actions that circumvent community processes may be inappropriate. For
that
reason, I would like to see most requests for WMF accounts to get permissions of admin or higher for community wikis go through the same community vetting process as community members do.
Pine
On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 5:11 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
The WMF grants special rights to employees on a case-by-case basis, by-passing the normal community driven process to grant admin, developer and other rights. A few years ago the WMF officially committed to making this process transparent, and maintains a public Google Spreadsheet [1] so that anyone can check exactly when rights are granted, why they are given and when they are withdrawn. Previously these were mirrored on-wiki but this process broke due to Google changing its proprietary spreadsheet code.
Checking the latest version of the Google spreadsheet, the use cases have been hidden, so non-employees no longer can read the reasons why special rights have been granted. Can a WMF representative please explain why, or restore the use cases to public view?
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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