[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser information?

[Anthere]

Birgitte SB wrote:
>>Nod. I understand what you say.
>>Unfortunately, absolutely *any* editor may be
>>attacked anytime and have 
>>his/her reputation attacked. If you doubt that,
>>check out the recent 
>>emails between David Gerard, Aurevilly and myself
>>:-(
>>
>>Now, I must also say that it is quite unconfortable
>>to do checkuser on a 
>>project you absolutely do not know and in a language
>>you do not know either.
>>
> 
> 
> . . . 
>  
> 
>>Requests may be done by *good* editors and by *bad*
>>editors. Stewards 
>>have no way to know. I am not sure it is good.
>>
>>ant (who heard you were a good person :-))
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I realize there is fine line here.  And I am confident
> that no one will take the accusations against me
> seriously.  However I was very cautious about things,
> thinking of how everything would look once all the
> evidence was deleted.  All history of any
> contributions made by the editor at Wikisource have of
> course disappeared.  And especially as the person was
> nuked on another project which destroyed most of the
> history there, which I could have used to back up my
> actions.  I kept records of what I could and trusted
> that people would speak up for me if it came that (as
> Brad has done).  

Hi

> However, in general the people who are trusted from a
> Foundation perspective take little interest in the
> running of the smaller projects.

I would not say this at all. Trust does not come from being a 
participant in a *big* project, or on a major language. Trust comes from 
the frequent interaction we have with some editors and from sharing 
certain tasks, which allow to get to know each other.

How does that happen ?
Well, perhaps you start writing on this mailing list and I'll notice 
what you say sounds wise and interesting and willing to build something. 
And perhaps others will tell me they feel the same. And perhaps we'll 
exchange a couple of emails on minor issues (such as a checkuser) and I 
will find you a cool person. Then, perhaps I will go look at your page 
to see who you are. I will notice something which suggest you could be 
interested in a certain project, then I'll invite you to join for that 
task and you will agree. And we'll have fun doing that and do a good 
work. Repeat that a bunch of times, and that will be it.

It is totally unrelated to the size or the nature of your favorite 
project :-)

Do you have kids ?


   At the same time,
> those that keep these projects running smoothly are
> told they are not trusted enough to have the tools
> they need.  And then people with access, such as
> yourself, feel uncomfortable even using the tools to
> pass info on.  And I understand why you feel that way
> of course.  Because I feel uncomfortable blocking
> someone indefinitely without being 100% sure he was
> the same person who had caused problems before.  It is
> not just that I worry about what others may accuse me
> of, but I take the responsibility seriously.  In the
> end it is my action, whoever else advised me on it. 
> But am convinced the risk of legal exposure is a great
> enough problem that I can overcome the discomfort.

nod.

> This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem. 
> No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
> someone told us that it had been decided here that our
> copyright policy was not restrictive enough.  That is
> when a few of the regular editors signed up.  I
> imagine there are a great number of active projects
> out there running their own little worlds, divested
> from the Foundation in all but name.  

nod.
Recently, some chinese editors also joined.
We need a common ground where to meet each others.

I believe there
> are other problems we haven't yet imagined already out
> there.  Things need to be handled differently. 
> Perhaps new projects are approved to easily. 

Waitaminutehere. The last approved project... was...wikinews. It was 
quite a while ago !

  It might
> be a good idea to assign official liaisons.  Or maybe
> there should be a mentorship program for bureaucrats. 
> Perhaps the Foundation should randomly run a detailed
> assesment of the smaller but active projects.  Or
> maybe there should be a recruitment of the people who
> run these projects to become more active within the
> Foundation.  I do not know the answer, but I can see
> symptoms that this is a larger problem than stewards
> ignoring requests for Checkuser.  
> 

All good ideas.
But but but, we tried the official liaisons (they were called 
ambassadors). It failed.
Recruitement of people : yes indeed. But this can only happen when we 
start knowing each other a little bit more.
I absolutely agree with you we have a major problem of communication.
Actually, this has ALWAYS been the case. Just differently.
When I joined, the english wp was on one version of the software and all 
others on an older version. There was no meta. There was no common 
mailing list (later, non english were parked on one list). Actually, the 
miscommunication was SO bad that a language even forked and is still 
suffering today of that fork.
Last year, I tried to work to create Quarto with others interested in 
communication, such as Sj. It was a place where at least description of 
projects state could be made. By lack of human help, I gave up.
Elian also maintained with Aphaia's help a project-state on meta. I 
think it is dead now.
There are now several wikizines in different languages (plus Walter's 
global one), I hope they communicate a bit between themselves. But each 
essentially give news of a specific project. Not cross project

If you have ideas, please, by all means, provide them. Or better, 
IMPLEMENT them.

> I will say this, projects like Wikisource are very
> different from Wikipedia.  They are also very
> different from Wikipedia was when it as small as
> Wikisource is now.  What worked then and now for WP
> will not work for Wikisource or Wikibooks.  I can see
> this just from that expectations there are of how X
> voters should be gotten from X active editors.  When
> people were active at Wikipedia years ago, they joined
> the community.  Now these editors are either fed up
> with community from WP experiences, or else they
> devote all their "community" time to WP, but they
> still come edit regularly on places like Wikisource. 
> I see many names I recognize from WP community
> discussions in the Recent Changes at Wikisource.  But
> they never join in on any WS general disscussions.  I
> am not saying this is either good or bad; it is just
> makes a different animal entirely.

Which strongly suggest me that we should rather try to have 
inter-projects checkusers.
Let me see... Karynn for example, is apparently a motivated checkuser, 
with the full tech knowledge necessary. She may not be an arbitrator, I 
think she is trusted as a checkuser. Why not having her checkuser on 
several english speaking projects ?

Would not it be wiser than some inactive editors becoming checkuser on 
wikibooks just because *there ought to be* a checkuser ? If the user has 
done less than 50 edits in the past 3 months, it makes no sense that he 
becomes checkuser really.

In any cases, I fully understand the different nature of editorship.

  Also as Robert
> Horning said, we attract vandals of a sophisticaton WP
> never even imagined when there were only 12
> administrators.  I feel that if projects like
> Wikisource and Wikibooks are continually regarded by
> the Foundation the way they are now, they will become
> like difficult step-childrem.

How are they regarded ?

As far as I am concerned, Wikibooks at least has a life on its own. It 
knows very well how to keep joke books, remove Wikiversity or wikimania 
proceedings. And it has a few vocal representatives on its list :-)

Admittedly, I know much less of Wikisource. But you are here now, no ? :-)

   I do not believe anyone
> wants that to happen.  I certainly don't and that is
> why I encouraging for something to change.  There must
> be more intergration and trust on all levels.  And I
> mean trust that our work will be supported as well as
> trust that we act responsibly in the running our
> projects.  

Speaking of trust. One suggestion made last summer was that those given 
checkuser access should provide their real names. What is your opinion 
about this ?
If the Foundation trusts those with checkusers to use it according to 
policy, would checkusers trust the Foundation enough to provide their 
real names ?

> Although this is old news, I will say this also
> because it regards trust running the other way.  It
> was very hard on us to have to delete all the UN
> resolutions and Crown legislation.  We truly believed
> (trusted) our copyright policy was supported.  And
> even now we have never gotten a straight answer on the
> thinking behind the copyrights.  Any disscussion I
> read about it, leaves me newly aware of the lack of
> understanding people have about the basics of
> Wikisource.  Or else I get the impression that
> everyone from the Foundation is being intentionally
> vague. 

No. It is worse than this...
The Foundation board did not discuss this issue, even less took a 
decision about copyrights on wikisource. I presume it came from a 
discussion between Jimbo and legal bodies. I am intentionally vague on 
your UN resolutions and Crown legislation deletions because I am not 
aware of it.
Sorry.

  So we are being very cautious, and I worry
> every day someone will come down and say we have get
> rid of X also. And that is the worst part of being and
> admin, when the rules suddenly change on you and you
> are left to enforce them on very unhappy people.  And
> on top of it all I do not understand why they changed
> or even if my current interpration of the rules is
> correct.

This is a problem. Have you talked to JImbo for clarification ? You are 
lucky, you share a language... Imagine japanese editors...

  Things like this can only happen so many
> times before everyone becomes too gun-shy to keep
> contributing, or else decides to just ignore the rules
> they feel are arbitrary.  Either of those would be a
> bad thing.  Sorry this was so long.

I am a proponent of ignore all rules...

Cheers and thanks for the long email.

ant

PS : do you like mint tea ?

> Birgitte SB
> 
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