Hello all,
Please accept my apologies if you are receiving this a number of times today. We have sent it out to multiple mailing lists in order to reach as many community members as possible. Please feel free to forward this to any other community mailing lists you believe are relevant.
It's coming close to time for annual appointments of community members to serve on the Ombudsman Commission (OC). This commission works on all Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, and to mediate between the complaining party and the individual whose work is being investigated. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the Board of Trustees in investigations of these issues. For more on their duties and roles, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
This is a call for community members interested in volunteering for appointment to this commission. Volunteers serving in this role should be experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser tool OR who have the technical ability to understand the CheckUser tool and the willingness to learn it. They are expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict.
Commissioners are required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation board policies (such as the access to non-public data policy[1] and the privacy policy[2]). This is a position that requires a high degree of discretion and trust.
If you are interested in serving on this commission, please write me ( kbrown@wikimedia.org) an email off-list to detail your experience on the projects, your thoughts on the commission and what you hope to bring to the role. The commission typically consists of ten members; all applications are appreciated and will be carefully considered. The deadline for applications is the end of day on 31 December, 2019.
Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think may be qualified and interested.
Thank you!
-Karen Brown
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Trust & Safety team
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy 2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
Hello,
Sorry that I'm late replying to this thread. I have been very busy in the past few weeks.
I have a proposal that likely will not affect the current round of appointments because implementation would require some time and careful deliberation. This proposal isn't intended as a personal critique.
I would like to see the selection process for OC be done by the community with WMF consent, similar to how stewards are appointed. I think it's important that community members not be viewed as agents of WMF, and the current system for OC appointments seems to imply that WMF has authority to oversee or to control the use of advanced permissions and the OC as an organization. I think that this should be flipped, with WMF supporting community institutions and not the other way around. I'm okay with WMF being involved in the selection process for OC candidates by conducting background checks on candidates and having some limited veto authority, but WMF's role should primarily be one of providing support to community members and institutions such as the OC.
Thank you for listening.
Just noting in passing that, technically, the Ombudsman Commission formally reports to the WMF Board of Trustees, which has in turn delegated the ongoing management and responsibility for the commission to the WMF Trust & Safety Department. In other words, the OC has always been a "WMF" committee, charged with enforcing WMF board-approved policies, most particularly the privacy policy.
Risker/Anne
On Wed, 9 Oct 2019 at 16:44, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
Sorry that I'm late replying to this thread. I have been very busy in the past few weeks.
I have a proposal that likely will not affect the current round of appointments because implementation would require some time and careful deliberation. This proposal isn't intended as a personal critique.
I would like to see the selection process for OC be done by the community with WMF consent, similar to how stewards are appointed. I think it's important that community members not be viewed as agents of WMF, and the current system for OC appointments seems to imply that WMF has authority to oversee or to control the use of advanced permissions and the OC as an organization. I think that this should be flipped, with WMF supporting community institutions and not the other way around. I'm okay with WMF being involved in the selection process for OC candidates by conducting background checks on candidates and having some limited veto authority, but WMF's role should primarily be one of providing support to community members and institutions such as the OC.
Thank you for listening.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Just noting in passing that, technically, the Ombudsman Commission formally reports to the WMF Board of Trustees, which has in turn delegated the ongoing management and responsibility for the commission to the WMF Trust & Safety Department.
So the Ombudsman Commission is managed by a department that they are likely to want to report on?
Henry
On Fri, 11 Oct 2019 at 08:52, Henry Wood henry.wood.1869@gmail.com wrote:
So the Ombudsman Commission is managed by a department that they are likely to want to report on?
No. The Ombudsman Commission oversees volunteer actions only. Complaints about staff should be sent directly to the Wikimedia Foundation.
I should note that the Ombudsman Commission page on Meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission does not explicitly state what I have said above; I am basing my comment on my past experience when I was on the Ombudsman Commission.
Dan
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org