[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 60, Issue 34

[Thatcher131 Wikipedia]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 2:29 PM,  <wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Charlotte Webb wrote:
>> On 7/19/08, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> No, in fact only privacy policy breaches can be brought to the
>>> Ombudsman committee. There is no process, as I understand it, for
>>> dealing with checkuser misuse...
>>
>> Sucks, doesn't it?
>>
>> ?C.W.

> This is incorrect.  Checkuser misuse can be brought to the ombudsman.
>
> - --
> Best,
> Jon
>
> [User:NonvocalScream]

[Sigh]  Let's try this again.  The privacy policy covers *release* of
non-public information.  Complaints that someone peeped when they
shouldn't have do not involve the privacy policy so long as the
information is never released.  After lengthy discussion on the
checkuser mailing list, the current ombudsman commission came to the
conclusion that they did not have jurisdiction over complaints that
did not involve actual release of information.  In part, this is due
to their inability to properly assess different community standards of
privacy; the privacy expectations on some wikis are much stricter than
others, due to cultural differences.  The ombudsman commission is a
Foundation-level body and deals with the Privacy Policy as it applies
to all wikis.  Since the privacy policy discusses *release* of
information as opposed to just checking, the ombudsman commission have
decided to interpret their mandate in this narrow way.

Certainly, abuse of checkuser is possible; it is possible that
checkuser is abused for political reasons, to gain leverage in content
disputes, or for any other nefarious reason you can think of.  On
enwiki, since arbcom grants checkuser, arbcom has jurisdiction (*and I
think a responsibility) to investigate complaints of misuse.
Certainly Arbcom censured Jayjg for his checkuser-related disclosures
involving CharlotteWeb, even though the case did not involve the
ombudsman (because the disclosure that she used Tor did not disclose
any private information such as her real IP address or location).

The dispute between Lar and SlimVirgin has aspects of both, but as far
as I know, neither the ombudsman commission nor arbcom has actually
received a formal complaint.

Thatcher