So that it is clear that discussions do not always get buried and forgotten :-)
Some time ago, we discussed the possibility to create an ombudsman commission to deal with complaints related to abuse of the Foundation privacy policy, associated to checkuser activity or not.
A resolution(*) has been written to describe the role of the commission and the extent of its delegation. 3 members have been proposed.
Angela and I approved that resolution early july. The quorum for a resolution to pass is 3 approval. We are waiting for another board member to vote.
Anthere
(*) For those who wonder what this "resolution" stuff is and coming to Wikimania in 2 weeks, I'll try to explain how the Foundation is functionning (or not functionning) on sunday the 6th of august (open and free ad)
On 7/19/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So that it is clear that discussions do not always get buried and forgotten :-)
Some time ago, we discussed the possibility to create an ombudsman commission to deal with complaints related to abuse of the Foundation privacy policy, associated to checkuser activity or not.
A resolution(*) has been written to describe the role of the commission and the extent of its delegation. 3 members have been proposed.
So is it now time to froce a name change on user:ombudsman?
Or we could just use [[WP:NOTTHATUSER]]
=D
On 7/19/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So that it is clear that discussions do not always get buried and forgotten :-)
Some time ago, we discussed the possibility to create an ombudsman commission to deal with complaints related to abuse of the Foundation privacy policy, associated to checkuser activity or not.
A resolution(*) has been written to describe the role of the commission and the extent of its delegation. 3 members have been proposed.
So is it now time to froce a name change on user:ombudsman?
geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
geni wrote:
On 7/19/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So that it is clear that discussions do not always get buried and forgotten :-)
Some time ago, we discussed the possibility to create an ombudsman commission to deal with complaints related to abuse of the Foundation privacy policy, associated to checkuser activity or not.
A resolution(*) has been written to describe the role of the commission and the extent of its delegation. 3 members have been proposed.
So is it now time to froce a name change on user:ombudsman?
Are you aware that I was at some point the owner of this account ? :-)
ant
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So is it now time to force a name change on user:ombudsman?
Are you aware that I was at some point the owner of this account ? :-)
I think you're mistaking it for User:Mediator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ombudsman doesn't seem like you.
-- User:Arbitrator ;)
Angela wrote:
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So is it now time to force a name change on user:ombudsman?
Are you aware that I was at some point the owner of this account ? :-)
I think you're mistaking it for User:Mediator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ombudsman doesn't seem like you.
-- User:Arbitrator ;)
oh, true true true. My mistake.
Ant
PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
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.
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com 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.
Well, when I ran into the name User:Ombudsman recently, I thought the WMF had found someone to fill that role. But alas it was not true.
I think the name should be reclaimed and the individual should choose another.
-Andrew
Andrew Lih wrote:
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com 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.
Well, when I ran into the name User:Ombudsman recently, I thought the WMF had found someone to fill that role. But alas it was not true.
Which role would you think such a person should hold ? Can you give some examples of what he would be supposed to do ?
Ant
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Which role would you think such a person should hold ? Can you give some examples of what he would be supposed to do ?
Ant
At various times various roles have been suggested and given the title Ombudsman. The most recent idea I've run across was for some kind of oversight watch but I tend to feel that should be handled differently.
Would this ombudsman be a role account?
On 7/20/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Which role would you think such a person should hold ? Can you give some examples of what he would be supposed to do ?
Ant
At various times various roles have been suggested and given the title Ombudsman. The most recent idea I've run across was for some kind of oversight watch but I tend to feel that should be handled differently.
-- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/20/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Would this ombudsman be a role account?
Of course not.. which is why this discussion is rather silly.
We've got a user with a name that conflicts with the role you're discussing... so change the name of the role.
None of us should be left to worry that someday a role will be created which might be confused with our names and that we'll be forced to accept a name change.
According to Wikipedia, an ombudsman is a government representative chosen by the people. Perhaps we could name this position "Wikipedia Representative"?
On 7/20/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/20/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Would this ombudsman be a role account?
Of course not.. which is why this discussion is rather silly.
We've got a user with a name that conflicts with the role you're discussing... so change the name of the role.
None of us should be left to worry that someday a role will be created which might be confused with our names and that we'll be forced to accept a name change. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 21/07/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
According to Wikipedia, an ombudsman is a government representative chosen by the people. Perhaps we could name this position "Wikipedia Representative"?
It's sounding more and more like a position I don't think Wikipedia should have.
On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/07/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
According to Wikipedia, an ombudsman is a government representative chosen by the people. Perhaps we could name this position "Wikipedia Representative"?
It's sounding more and more like a position I don't think Wikipedia should have.
We already do at board level. At wikipedia it is what arbcom may become if we are not careful
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:
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.
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.
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:
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
Anthere wrote:
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.
I apologize on this issue. I tried to look in the e-mail stack (there has been a bunch of stuff here on this topic) and I thought it was Angela who proposed this based on some earlier comments. I should have dug a little deeper here on this issue before I named names.
If you come to Wikimania (I hope you do),
I would love to come, but time and money are going to make it difficult for me this year. Perhaps next year? Being in North America helps for me, but it is in the wrong end of North America for me to make it easily. Like the distance from Siberia to Paris if you want to compare to Europe.
Please note that I was trying to explain what an ombudsman was, and perhaps what a board-appointed one would be like, although admittedly in a very different area from the proposal related to check user status.
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
- complaints explored by neutral people (rather than a party)
- complaints hopefully handled in a more timely fashion
- more free time for me :-)
I really think we need this to be "independant" party.
I think in this situation, if you want to encourage independence, you need to change it to a broader issue than just checkuser issues. The whole reason for the parnoia over being really stingy regarding checkuser issues is mainly dealing with the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy and potential violations of that policy. It is indeed in these violations, and other privacy issues unrelated to checkuser scans, that is the main concern about why such an ombudsman would be necessary. And this should be something board appointed if we are talking somebody who understands throughally both the meaning and intent of the privacy policy, as well as the legal implications if people with access to private information violate this policy.
The Privacy Policy Ombudsman would also be a good point of contact if there is a legal issue that comes up that requires disclosure of private user information, covered in the privacy policy. This would be like in a libel lawsuit involving a Wikimedia user where there is a court order to disclose the IP address and other information about a user who made an edit. Also, if some user thinks information about themselves is improperly being disclosed, either through a check user scan or like has been done on Wikibooks for publishing author information, that user can seek an independent and authoritative legal opinion about the issue and even recommend to project admins or stewards to take action correcting the problem.
Because this is a legal position, there are obviously specific requirements that somebody must meet before they can be in this position. For that reason alone, I think it would be better to be an appointed position through the Wikimedia Foundation. The fact that the privacy policy is also a Wikimedia Foundation policy rather than an individual project policy also reinforces this aspect of being an appointed position.
Yes... if we're going to have ombudsmen, they should either get individual accounts (Ombudsman01, Ombudsman02, etc) or use their account.
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Angela wrote:
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So is it now time to force a name change on user:ombudsman?
Are you aware that I was at some point the owner of this account ? :-)
I think you're mistaking it for User:Mediator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ombudsman doesn't seem like you.
-- User:Arbitrator ;)
oh, true true true. My mistake.
Ant
PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
The issue has been raised from time to time (I think it got a mention in the user's RFC). Since the user has refused to change there hasn't really been much that can be done.
On 7/20/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/20/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?
The issue has been raised from time to time (I think it got a mention in the user's RFC). Since the user has refused to change there hasn't really been much that can be done.
Wait, a bureaucrat doesn't really need the user's approval to do the name change... On dewp, there is now a policy which allows bureaucrats to do forced name changes for offending usernames ("User:XYZ_is_an_idiot"). I'm not saying that "Ombudsman" is literally offending but it might be considered if the user constantly refuses and if consensus is reached that his username could be misleading. Michael
-- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/20/06, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not saying that "Ombudsman" is literally offending but it might be considered if the user constantly refuses and if consensus is reached that his username could be misleading.
Well (and I don't really care about this subject, and can't really believe I am even involved in the discussion) all I know is that [[Wikipedia:Username]] states that one type of inappropriate user name is "Names that include commonly used Wikipedia software or community terms, or imply an official position on Wikipedia."
When we actually get some type of ombudsman, the name may become "inappropriate". But what do I know, my user name probably violates the "Trademarked names" clause (which must have been added since my start here. Off to check. ;-) --LV
On 7/20/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
But what do I know, my user name probably violates the "Trademarked names" clause (which must have been added since my start here. Off to check. ;-) --LV
A-ha, the take on me is that it was broadened by an anon a couple of weeks ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Username&diff=630716...
Hmmm... Just thought I'd throw that out there. --LV
Did you intend on making such a nice pun? :)
On 7/20/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/20/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
But what do I know, my user name probably violates the "Trademarked names" clause (which must have been added since my start here. Off to check. ;-) --LV
A-ha, the take on me is that it was broadened by an anon a couple of weeks ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Username&diff=630716...
Hmmm... Just thought I'd throw that out there. --LV _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/20/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Did you intend on making such a nice pun? :)
Of course. ;-) It's a gift, what can I say? --LV
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org