On 3/30/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
What I want to know is why they don't just open up checkuser to more admins? Anybody who is trusted with tools that allow him to make pages go away (including the main page) and keep anybody they want from editing would not be trusted with checkuser. Or is it a matter of the technical knowledge needed to properly interpret checkuser results?
CheckUser involves access to sensitive, confidential information, and involves a drastically higher level of trust than is required of an admin. Page protection and deletion are reversible actions, the release of private information is not.
Note that appointment by the ArbCom is the proper method for granting CheckUser access on a project with an ArbCom:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_policy