Oversight

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

For documentation on the oversight extension, see mw:Extension:Oversight. This page describes Wikimedia Foundation policy.

Oversight or suppression refer to hiding revisions, user names in edit histories and logs, or portions of individual log entries. This access is available to oversighters (those in the 'oversight' or 'stewards' user groups). Oversighted data can only be viewed and restored by oversighters.

('Oversight' and 'suppression' are often used interchangeably; 'oversight' is derived from the older oversight extension, which is being deprecated in favour of the more flexible suppression feature in core MediaWiki.)

Contents 1 Policy 1.1 Use 1.2 Logging 1.3 Access 1.4 Removal of access 2 Users with oversight rights 2.1 All Wikimedia projects 2.2 English Wikipedia 2.2.1 Appointed by Arbcom 2.2.2 Office 2.3 German Wikipedia 2.4 Russian Wikipedia 2.5 Finnish Wikipedia 2.6 French Wikipedia 2.7 Indonesian Wikipedia 2.8 Swedish Wikipedia 2.9 Spanish Wikipedia 2.10 Commons 2.11 Meta 3 See also

[edit] Policy

[edit] Use

This feature is approved for use in three cases:

1. Removal of non-public personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public, or of public individuals who have not made that personal information public.
2. Removal of potentially libellous information either: a) on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or b) when the subject has specifically asked for the information to be removed from the history, the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
3. Removal of copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel.

Local oversighters should generally handle local oversighting, when they're available. Stewards may perform local oversighting in emergencies, during crosswiki oversighting, or if there are no local oversighters available (see contact details).

[edit] Logging

Oversight is logged privately, visible only to oversighters through Special:Oversight (revisions) and Special:Logs/suppress (names & log entries). Respective example log entries:

[edit] Access

Oversight access is granted by stewards, using rules adopted from the CheckUser policy. This section just describes steward practice and the access to nonpublic data resolution.

Oversighters and stewards must be at least 18 years old, of legal age in their place of residence, and willing to provide identification to the Wikimedia Foundation. They must be familiar with the privacy policy.

Stewards have oversight access on all wikis, and a small number of editors listed below have access on individual wikis. On any wiki, there must be at least two local oversighters, or none at all. This is so that they can mutually control and confirm their actions. If only one oversighter is left on a wiki (usually when the other retires or is removed), the community must appoint a new oversighter immediately or remove the remaining oversighter.

On wikis without an arbitration committee, the community must approve oversighters by consensus. The candidates must request it within the local community and advertise this request to the local community properly (community discussion page, mailing list, etc). After gaining consensus (at least 70%-80% in pro/con voting or the highest number of votes in multiple choice elections) in his local community, and with at least 25-30 editors' approval, the user should request access on Steward requests/Permissions with a link to the community's decision.

On wikis with an arbitration committee elected with 25-30 editors' approval, users may also be appointed by the arbitration committee (unless the local community prefers independent elections). After agreement, a member of the arbitration committee should place a request on Steward requests/Permissions.

Local administrators may also delete the specific revision containing the personal information, but it will continue to be visible to administrators until it is oversighted.

[edit] Removal of access

Oversight access is revoked by stewards, using rules adopted from the CheckUser policy. This section just describes steward practice.

Any user account with Oversight status that is inactive for more than a year will have their Oversight access removed.

In case of abusive use of the tool, the Steward or the editor with the Oversight privilege will immediately have their access removed. This will in particular happen if actions are done routinely without a serious motive to do so (links and proofs of bad behavior should be provided).

Suspicion of abuses of Oversight should be discussed by each local wiki. On wikis with an approved ArbCom, the ArbCom can decide on the removal of access. On wikis without an approved ArbCom, the community can vote removal of access. Removal can only be done by Stewards. A Steward may not decide to remove access on their own, but can help provide information necessary to prove the abuse (such as logs). If necessary, and in particular in case of lack of respect towards the privacy policy, the Board of Wikimedia Foundation can be asked to declare removal of access as well.

[edit] Users with oversight rights

[edit] All Wikimedia projects

Stewards have oversight access on all wikis. Editors can contact stewards in the IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards, or send an email to the Steward mailing list at stewards-llists.wikimedia.org. Please do not put your request on the wiki or broadcast it on the public IRC channel.

Edit

[edit] English Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

[edit] Appointed by Arbcom

1. Carcharoth
2. Casliber
3. Cool Hand Luke
4. Coren
5. Daniel Case
6. David Gerard
7. Deskana
8. Dominic
9. EVula
10. FloNight
11. Fred Bauder
12. FT2
13. Jayvdb
14. Jdforrester
15. Jpgordon
16. Kirill Lokshin
17. Luna Santin
18. Mackensen
19. Mailer diablo
20. Neutrality
21. Newyorkbrad
22. Raul654
23. Risker
24. Rlevse
25. Roger Davies
26. Sam Korn
27. SimonP
28. Stephen Bain
29. Taxman
30. Thatcher
31. Tznkai
32. Voice of All
33. Wizardman
34. YellowMonkey

[edit] Office

1. Cary Bass
2. Jimbo Wales
3. Tim Starling

[edit] German Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Tim Starling (only for office actions)
2. Church of emacs
3. Nolispanmo
4. Sargoth
5. Stefan64
6. Superbass

[edit] Russian Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Kv75
2. Александр Сигачёв

[edit] Finnish Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Agony
2. Harriv
3. Jniemenmaa
4. MikkoM

[edit] French Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Cary Bass (only for office actions)

[edit] Indonesian Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Borgx
2. Hayabusa future
3. Meursault2004

[edit] Swedish Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Caesar
2. SweJohan

[edit] Spanish Wikipedia

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Drini
2. Humberto
3. Lucien leGrey

[edit] Commons

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Lar
2. Rama
3. Raymond

[edit] Meta

Automatically generated oversight list

1. Drini
2. Mike.lifeguard
3. Mardetanha

[edit] See also

• Documentation

• Mirrors
  • Wikibooks German
  • Wikipedia English

User groups
Local	blocked user – anonymous user – registered user – bot – administrator – bureaucrat – oversight – checkuser
Global	locked account – unified account – global bots – global rollback – ombudsmen – global sysop - system administrators – staff – steward – founder