[Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission

[Thomas Goldammer]

2012/4/23 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> Transparency and privacy are not mutually exclusive. Obviously, the
> actual content of complaints is usually going to be confidential, but
> that doesn't preclude the process being transparent.

That's why I answered to Lodewijk's questions. I guess the process is
more transparent now.

>
> You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish
> metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just
> guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many
> cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept
> up-to-date.

You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean).
I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for
you to do. Thanks.

>
> The ombudsmen commission has always felt to me to be the most
> cabalistic of all the committees and groups we have. A lot of people
> don't know it even exists or what it really does. All I tend to hear
> about it is when people are complaining that their emails have gone
> into the black box, never to be seen again.

Well, we are not going to advertise our services to everyone in
person. If the people do not know that we exist, that's not our fault
but the fault of the community. What we are doing is already described
on the Meta page. If someone has sent a complaint and never gets any
answer, then this is of course our fault, and it shouldn't happen. A
little reminder usually does the trick, though. As you know, we are
all not 24/7 OC workers doing nothing else in our lives. It can always
happen that some email gets stuck in spam filters or just gets
overlooked especially on days when you receive a hundred or more
wiki-related emails, which is about every day in the year. I think
what could really help is if we could use the OTRS ticket system for
our work (that's an idea that just now came into my mind)... But I
don't know how secure that is and if it is even possible to set it up
so closed that only the OC members can access those tickets. (Any
suggestions from Philippe about that?)

>
> Just because it deals with confidential information doesn't mean that
> it shouldn't be held to the same standards of transparency as every
> other part of our movement.

Well, traditionally the transparency of the OC was very low, that's
true. We just took over these traditions from our predecessors, but
that doesn't mean that we can't break with these traditions and set up
some new standards. It just needs to be done, which means some work.
However, don't ever expect that we will publish anything case-related,
including people or wiki projects involved.

Th.