[Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

[Essjay]

On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
>
> Ant
>   
I agree with this; making checkuser a global permission would be 
absolutely fine with me.


Jesse Martin wrote:
> I agree with this proposal.
>
> The smaller wikis cannot benefit from checks because there are far too few
> users with global CheckUser access; on the other hand, they cannot have
> local checks because their candidates are unknown to and not trusted by the
> wider community. Local CheckUser access furthermore causes previously
> discussed confidentiality problems, since the number of users required would
> be disproportionately high in order to serve every project in need.
>
> Having a relatively small number of users with global CheckUser access,
> perhaps combined with the proposed 'Guest' CheckUser process, will much
> better serve a middle ground between access and confidentiality. These users
> would probably be most active on projects they participate most in, serving
> as the de facto local CheckUser agents. Projects without such local agents
> would likely still be forced to wait, but the larger number of CheckUser
> agents may help alleviate waiting times on the Meta request page.
>
>   
I can't speak for other checkers, I can only speak for myself, but I 
guarantee that I will not make any project wait an undue amount of time 
(I don't consider 24 hours or so to be undue, unless it is an absolute 
emergency [e.g., a mass vandal attack that needs checkuser to pull the 
IP and rangeblock]; even checkusers have to venture into the offline 
world once in a while :-D ).

However, I can say that the amount of time you wait will be dramatically 
reduced by pointing out your request somewhere I look frequently, i.e., 
my en.wiki talk page, email, or on IRC. I check my meta watchlist once, 
maybe twice a day, because there just isn't enough activity on Meta to 
require checking it every fifteen minutes. I check my en.wiki talk page 
whenever the little bar pops up on my page; I never ignore it (as it 
drives me crazy until I do check it. I get an alert whenever I get a new 
email, and a new private message forces itself to the front of my 
screen. My point: Mediums that notify me of new activity immediately get 
checked more frequently.

 As I understand it, requests are made and will continue to be made on a 
page on Meta; rather than expecting stewards or checkusers to put the 
page on autorefresh and check it every ten seconds, it would be helpful 
for users who want a check done right away to call our attention to it. 
I think others can testify that whenever they point a request out to me 
directly, rather than just waiting for the next time someone checks the 
page, I get it taken care of right away; I think this is a pretty 
standard practice, really: pointing a developer to the bugzilla report 
you filed gets it noticed more quickly, pointing a steward to your 
permissions request gets it done right away, etc.

Essjay

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