Ombudsman commission
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• The ombudsman commission investigates complaints about violations of the privacy policy (in particular concerning the use of CheckUser tools) on any Wikimedia project for the board of trustees. To file a complaint, please contact an Ombudsman privately.
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About [edit]
Tasks [edit]
In addition to official investigation, they will mediate between the complainant and the respondent (usually a CheckUser, bureaucrat, administrator, or arbitration committee member). When legally necessary, the ombudsman will assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the board in handling the case.
When the case is litigious, the ombudsman will be in charge of educating CheckUsers or others about the Foundation's privacy policy. When the privacy policy has been breached, the commission should report to the Executive Director or to the Board and recommend a course of action (such as removal of CheckUser access). Additionally, the commission might suggest suitable changes to policies or software.
Neutrality [edit]
An ombudsman's investigation should be conducted in a manner determined by the ombudsman to ensure fairness and impartiality. As a general guideline, it is best that ombudsmen avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible, particularly by avoiding routine use of CheckUser access and not processing complaints on the projects on which they are very active editors. However, matters that come before the commission are not clearcut, and the language and culture of various projects may pose barriers to outsiders. As such, how the commission investigates complaints is left to the discretion of its appointed members.
Contact [edit]
Ombudsman requests may be made to the following email address (in any language spoken by one of the members):
- cu-ombuds-l
lists.wikimedia.org
Membership [edit]
Members of the ombudsman commission are selected by Wikimedia Foundation officials from the Wikimedia community (volunteers are welcome to propose themselves to the Foundation by writing to liaison
wikimedia.org). They are appointed (assuming they agree) for a period of approximately one year. An ombudsman's real identity must be disclosed to the Foundation legal counsel. A non-voting alternate member may be appointed to serve for one year, with an expectation for a seat as a full member the following year.
Assigned rights [edit]
Ombudsmen have the following rights globally:
- Search deleted pages (browsearchive)
- Check user's IP addresses and other information (checkuser)
- View the checkuser log (checkuser-log)
- View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
- View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions (deletedtext)
- View private logs (suppressionlog)
Current ombudsman users [edit]
See also automatically generated list (terms expire February 2014):
- Deskana from enwiki
- Erzbischof from dewiki
- FloNight from enwiki
- Huji from fawiki
- Levg from ruwiki
- Sir48 from dawiki
- Thogo from dewiki
Previous ombudsmen [edit]
February 2011 — February 2013:
February 2011 — February 2012:
- Herbythyme from commonswiki (February 2011 — April 2011)
- Pundit from plwiki (April 2011 — February 2012)
February 2010 — February 2011:
- Carkuni from jawiki
- DR from ruwiki
- Elian from dewiki
- Lar from enwiki, commonswiki
- Palnatoke from dawiki
January 2009 — February 2010:
- PatríciaR from commonswiki
- Sam Korn from enwiki
- Schiste from frwiki
- Shizhao from zhwiki
- Tinz from dewiki
December 2007 — January 2009:
July 2006 — December 2007:
- Cartman02au (Nathan Carter) from enwikinews
- UninvitedCompany (Steve Dunlop) from enwiki
- Wegge (Anders Wegge Jakobsen) from dawiki
Chart [edit]
Processing/Reporting [edit]
Cases brought to our attention will be processed the following way:
- Confirmation of the request: we will send a notice of confirmation to the requester, and if necessary ask for further information.
- Scope: if the request is within the scope of the ombudsman commission, we will do the investigation, if not we will decline the request and try to direct the complainor to a better place to get help for his/her individual problem.
- Investigation: We do whatever is necessary to find out whether or not there was a breach of the privacy policy.
- Result: We give the result of our investigation to the requester, and if there was indeed a breach of the privacy policy, we will inform the user who was investigated and if necessary inform the Board of Trustees and if necessary recommend removing CU or steward rights from the user breaking the policy.
See also [edit]
- Ombudsmen: global permission • global groups (toolserver) • member list • group changelog
- Special global permissions
- Resolution ombudsperson checkuser (2006-7)
- foundation-l: "Ombuds-wo-men commission" 2007-11-24
- wmf:Minutes/January_9-11,_2009#Ombudsman
- foundation-l: "Checkuser ombudsmen" 2009-01-21
- Resolution Wikimedia Committees (2009-1)
- foundation-l: "Ombudsman Commission" 2011-01-28
- wikimedia-l: "2013 Ombudsmen Commission" 2013-02-02
| User groups | |
|---|---|
| Local: | blocked user – unregistered user – newly-registered user – registered user – bot – administrator – bureaucrat – oversight – checkuser – IP block exempt – importer – centralnotice admin |
| Global: | locked account – unified account – bot – rollbacker – abuse filter editor – interface editor – IP block exemption – new wiki importers – sysop – ombudsman – founder – staff – system administrator – steward |
