[Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

[Kelly Martin]

On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And the checkusers with the technical ability... pretty much offer to
> help anyone who needs help.

I can't speak for all 59 people who have CheckUser access, but I must
state that I don't "help any one who needs help".  The culture on
enwiki regarding CheckUser is to be pretty stingy about its use, and
we don't use it without demonstrated good cause.  I think we reject
about 90% of requests.

I am much more likely to accept a request if it comes from someone I
know to be reliable.  Note that this does not mean all admins, as I
don't know all admins to be reliable.  Anybody else has to convince me
that there is a basis for suspicion.

> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.

I think this is fundamentally a good idea, although I also think that
the appointment of CheckUsers should come down from the Foundation,
not up from member wikis; at the very least, every appointment should
must also be approved by the Foundation or by some body set up by the
Foundation for that purpose.  And the Foundation absolutely must be in
possession of identifying information for each and every CheckUser:
real name, location, email address, preferably other means of contact.

Kelly