[Foundation-l] Organization of News Ombudsmen

[Oldak Quill]

On 21/07/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Whereas the board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation regularly receives
> some complaints related to abuse of its privacy policy, associated to
> checkuser activity or not.
>
> It is hereby resolved that:
>
> The board creates an "ombudsman commission".
>
> The ombudsman commission will offer a sympathetic ear to those reporting
> an abuse of the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy on any of Wikimedia
> project.
>
> The ombudsman will take charge of investigating cases of privacy policy
> breach or checkuser abuse for the board in an official manner. He will
> mediate between the complainant and the respondant (checkuser, arbcom
> member, bureaucrat or sysop). When legally necessary, the ombudsman will
> assist the legal commmittee or the legal officer or the executive
> director to handle the case.
>
> When the case is litigious, the ombudsman will be in charge to educate
> checkusers or others about the Foundation privacy policy.
> When the privacy policy has been breached, the commission should report
> to the Executive Director and recommand a course of action (such as
> removal of checkuser status).
>
> Additionnaly, the commission might have a sort of "overview" over the
> way the checkuser system works and should offer suggestions of suitable
> modifications of policies or recommandations of software changes.
> An Ombudsman's Investigation shall be conducted in a manner determined
> by the Ombudsman and which will be fair and impartial .

Having read this description of the role, I would say the name
"Ombudsman" is wildly inaccurate. How about something approximating
"User Advocate"?

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)