Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:
The discussion is taking place at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_info_policy and I invite every interested person (with a special invitation to people holding advanced user rights on any Wikimedia wiki) to take an active part in it.
This discussion... isn't going great. There's now a talk page section devoted to users signing a pledge that should the policy, as written, be enacted by the Board, they'll resign their advanced privileges (steward access, CheckUser access, etc.). It's up to eight signatories.
Reading through some of the discussion, I have two questions for the Wikimedia Foundation Board (copied on this e-mail):
* Is the Board interested in updating its 2007 access to nonpublic data policy?
* Has there been any consideration of removing volunteers from these types of roles and relying solely on staff?
On a typical site, paid staff would deal with problematic users. There's a lot of hoopla being put in place ("confidentiality pledges," etc.) that would be much easier to implement if everyone with this type of access were simply paid staff members or contractors. (Though contractors can still leak, heh.) But this seems like a legitimate enough question in the context of the current discussion: should volunteers be filling these roles or should they be focused more purely on education content creation?
MZMcBride