Wikidata

Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Oversight/Ajraddatz

< Wikidata:Requests for permissions‎ | Oversight

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

 Approved I hereby confirm community approval of this request. Awaiting closure by stewards. Vogone talk 03:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
 Flagged by Teles. Congrats! Vogone talk 04:26, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ajraddatz

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Vote
RfP scheduled to end at 16 September 2013 03:44 (UTC)

Hello. Wikidata established a policy for local oversighters in May of this year, and the first candidates ran around that time as well. Only one was successful, so there have been no local oversighters here. I'd like to volunteer for the role, thus giving us local oversighers in the event that this request passes.

Dealing with private information is a sensitive situation, but I believe that I am up to that challenge. I've volunteered on the OTRS team since 2012, as well as on the account creation team on the English Wikipedia, both of which deal with sensitive information, so I do have some experience with that sort of thing on Wikimedia. My real life job has also provided me with relevant experience, as I regularly deal with classified and designated material (and hold the appropriate security clearance).

Since Wikidata is a multilingual project, oversighters must be able to deal with multiple languages, and my experience as a global sysop for the past two and a half years should help me in that regard, since I deal more with languages other than English in that role.

The inevitable question of whether or not local oversighters are needed will come up on this request, and of course it is up to you to decide. I put through this request for three reasons. First, there is some local need. There certainly haven't been 40+ coming through each week, but there are enough in my mind that some local users can deal with it. Secondly, there generally isn't a pressing need for local oversighters anywhere. Almost all wikis could survive without them, with stewards filling the role. But, I think that this community has enough trustable users that can fill the role to not need stewards to do it. Thirdly, this isn't restricting stewards from oversighting here in their crosswiki work or in emergencies thanks to our local policy, otherwise I wouldn't be putting through this request.

That's all I wanted to say, feel free to ask questions below if I've missed anything. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:44, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a point on the need for local oversighters (other than what I've covered already), see this toolserver for successful requests for oversighting. To provide my personal interpretation of the statistics, the number of os requests has been increasing recently, with four requests last month. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:26, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support everyone! Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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  1.  Support I fully trust the candidate for the role. Even if we aren't receiving many OS requests at this time, it would be really helpful if we already had them when requests rise, and I fully agree that it does not have to be a pressing need for oversighters to be elected. My only concern here is that this is not likely to receive the requisite 25 supporting votes.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:33, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2.  Support I have worked with the candidate in the English Wikipedias account creation system, in the time since they joined I have had no doubts over their handling of private data there which is going to be more or less the same they will be handling with oversighting under private information. While we may not be in urgent need of oversighters, having them now would be a help for when requests come in. John F. Lewis (talk) 06:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3.  Support I've done a bit of research (what I can see of ACC, OTRS, past permission requests I know of) and I don't see anything of concern. I'll admit that we don't always see eye to eye on things, but then again we don't want the OS team to be a huge echo chamber, and we've generally been able to work something out. :) I also suspect that more people would request suppression of their IP addresses when they accidentally log out if they knew that we had local oversighters (I know that was the case for one revdel request that I fielded). --Rschen7754 07:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4.  Support Sensible and trusted user. --Stryn (talk) 08:03, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5.  Support Per above--DangSunM (talk) 08:26, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6.  Support no cause for concern. Danrok (talk) 09:55, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7.  Support I support, and would like some local OS, as I needed an accidental IP edit oversighted once. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:09, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Did it happen? --MF-W 23:20, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8.  SupportPer above. by ReviDiscussSUL Info at 15:29, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9.  Support We could really use local Oversighters and Ajraddatz seems like a well qualified candidate. TCN7JM 15:31, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10.  Support Since the candidate has been trusted with many other rights across wikis and not misused them, I believe that Ajraddatz will not misuse oversight either. The Anonymouse (talk) 17:58, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11.  Support — ΛΧΣ21 21:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12.  Support I trust the candidate to do a great job, but may not be active enough to vote. πr2 (t • c) 21:26, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Any registered user in good standing can vote, even if not too active.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:09, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. {{Neutral}} There are only a tiny number of people that I would consider supporting for OS, and while I'd have to do some digging before casting a formal vote, I'm pretty sure that Ajraddatz would make that list. At this time however, I'm not willing to elect a second OS, because whether we want it to happen or not, the moment we have active local OSes, a lot of Stewards are going to shy away from performing OS functions on this project. I will have to give this some serious thought over the next few days. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't really think so. The local OS policy says "Stewards can perform local oversighting in emergencies, during crosswiki oversighting, or if there are no local oversighters available."; this is almost completely analogous to Commons' policy, which was invoked here by MF-Warburg.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd do it here too, given this policy. I can't speak for other stewards of course. --MF-W 00:35, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    As I indicated in my nomination statement, that's a concern I had as well. What I was planning to do in the case of this request passing is send a message to stewards-l clarifying the Wikidata OS policy. Not all of them would read it, of course, but the active ones who perform the oversights would. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:34, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I would be happy to support you if either a) we got a slightly larger pool of OSes, b) if we got the stewards to be able to step in at any time (a slight tweak to the existing policy), or c) (ideally) both of those things. MF-W's comment is reassuring, but I am uncomfortable with the idea of being in a situation where there are no OSes and stewards feel uncomfortable enough acting as that they delay stepping in. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:39, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
     Support I spent some time chatting with the Stewards, getting a better understanding of both why they're reluctant to step in and when they'd consider stepping in, and at this point am sufficiently comfortable with what I heard. As such, I am now willing to support this candidacy. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:00, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14.  Support --Paperoastro (talk) 07:51, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  15.  Support, Conny (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  16.  Support IW 18:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  17.  Support--Vyom25 (talk) 12:43, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  18.  Support.  Hazard SJ  01:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  19.  Support Wiki13 talk 19:20, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  20.  Support --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:25, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  21.  Support --LadyInGrey (talk) 21:55, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  22.  Support Armbrust (Local talk - en.WP talk) 01:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  23.  Support LlamaAl (talk) 17:12, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  24.  Support. --Ecce Ralgis (háblame) 21:15, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  25.  Support --Sannita - not just another it.wiki sysop 23:21, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  26.  Support ·addshore· talk to me! 08:58, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  27.  Support --Rippitippi (talk) 16:40, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Questions openly plagiarized from Sven Manguard by Rschen7754
  1. Do you have OTRS access? If so, for how long and what queues?
    A. Yes, since November 2012 and with access to info-en(l) and sister projects. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:17, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. What advanced permissions (admin, 'crat, CU, OS, or any group such as ArbCom that would grant you CU or OS) do you have on this and all other Wikimedia projects? For how long have you had these rights?
    A. I've been a temporary and then permenant local admin here since November 2012 and February 2013 respectively. Globally I volunteer as a global rollbacker and global sysop, the latter since May 2011. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:17, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Questions from Rschen7754 for all candidates
  1. Oversighters from a few of the larger WMF projects have faced an increased risk of harassment on and off wiki, and increased pressure to disclose more information regarding a suppressed edit, i.e. who suppressed it, what the logged reason was, etc. Is this a possibility that you have considered? In the second scenario, what would your response be?
    A. To answer the scenario first, I would only be comfortable with disclosing whether or not I had suppressed an edit or log summary, and with giving one of the four criteria for oversight provided by the policy. Going into too much detail about what the log summary was could reveal information which was hid in the suppression, which is obviously not something to be desired. If the request for more information was about an action taken by another oversighter, I would direct the query to the mailing list so as to let the actioning oversighter know about it. If it was about me, I would answer as I felt comfortable doing (ensuring to not reveal the information which was hidden) but also email the mailing list so that my actions could be evaluated by the other oversighters. With regards to harassment, the ideal oversight should not be a controversial situation, and I never intend to use tools - oversight or otherwise - to perform actions which others would take issue with. If harassment did occur, it would not impede my ability to use the tools according to policy, and would certainly not result in me divulging sensitive information. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:17, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment from Trijnstel

Nothing against Ajraddatz (and I won't vote here either btw), but I usually don't support local oversighters for a project. For two reasons:

(1) stewards cannot/won't act on a project with local OS (no matter what you'll say, we do not act unless we have a very strong reason to do so and thus gives us more work -- we now need to look for a local OS rather than suppressing something ourselves and I know that people are lazy and then won't request it unless there is a very easy way to do so);
(2) I fear that stuff will be more easily suppressed now that this project (with less than 50 oversight actions since the beginning of this project last year) will get local OS... since there is not much work to do. I would like to strongly advice you *not* to suppress every little thing you see. I know it might be fun to get new buttons, but only use it when people request it please.

Thanks. Trijnstel (talk) 09:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The policy gives clear criteria for oversighting but also emphasizes that not everything that falls under the criteria should necessarily be hidden - much of it is in accord with the global policy (I don't think we should assume the candidate's judgement is any worse than stewards). We do not plan to oversight anything that does not meet the criteria that stewards have used in the past. It should be noted that steward coverage during the European night is spotty at best and the candidate does help cover this time period.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Trijnstel - Not to be confrontational, but if I thought for a moment that either Rschen or Ajraddatz would have a problem knowing where to draw the line for oversighting, I wouldn't have supported either of them. I know that there have been private conversations among global functionaries where the maturity of the Wikidata admin corps has been called into question (because people in those channels have told us), but we're electing an oversighter here. I might be willing to support people with less than optimal experience or maturity levels for Wikidata adminship because I'm familiar with the role as it functions on this project and don't see a very high potential for abuse or damage, but Oversight is another thing entirely. Oversight - and the very idea that an edit can be made to disappear - are contrary to the basic premise of what a wiki is. It has to be handled with kid gloves, and I believe that both Rschen and Ajraddatz know this. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:08, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think you understood me correctly. :) Sure, I do believe that both Rschen and Ajr know where to draw the line of when they should revdel or oversight. But, I fear that, because of the few amount of work, people tend to oversight sooner then they should. But maybe I just worry for nothing. (Is that correct English?) Trijnstel (talk) 21:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • With me anyway, there is no risk of information being oversighted that shouldn't be. One of the defining features of a wiki is how open it is, and hiding an edit from view by all but a few other people isn't something that should be done often or lightly. This is something that I understand well. I think that both Rschen and I have enough experience to know where the line is, and to not cross it. Ajraddatz (Talk) 19:23, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would concur with the above. As opposed to the CU logs, the OS logs are visible to stewards, and they are welcome to look at the logs and ask questions if they have concerns. --Rschen7754 19:45, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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