geni wrote: Are you aware that I was at some point the owner of this account ? :-) ant

Angela wrote: oh, true true true. My mistake. Ant PS : is it a good idea to have a user named ombudsman ?

On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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

On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: 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

On 7/20/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

On 21/07/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's sounding more and more like a position I don't think Wikipedia should have.

Oldak Quill wrote: 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. 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

Anthere wrote: 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. 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 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. -- Robert Scott Horning

On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: 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. -- geni

On 7/20/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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

Did you intend on making such a nice pun? :) On 7/20/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort(a)gmail.com> wrote: