Oversight policy: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 22:42, 30 November 2009

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.)

Policy

Use

This feature is approved for use in four cases:

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.
Removal of potentially libellous information either: a) on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or b) when the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
Removal of copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel.
Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs, where this does not disrupt edit histories. A blatant attack is one obviously intended to denigrate, threaten, libel, insult, or harass someone.

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).

Logging

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

(details) (diff) 02:59, 26 April 2024 Oversighter removed an edit from Example page (removing personal info, etc)
02:59, 26 April 2024 Oversighter (Talk | contribs | block) changed event visibility of (Global account log) ‎ (hid content (applied restrictions to administrators) for 1 event: hiding attack)

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.

IRC channel

There is a private IRC channel (#wikimedia-oversights) to which all stewards and oversighters who use IRC should have access. Contact any channel member to gain access; a channel manager will grant permanent access. Ask a steward if you need help gaining access.

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.

Users with oversight rights

All Wikimedia projects

Stewards can have oversight access on all wikis by granting themselves temporary local oversight access.
Please do not put your request on the wiki or broadcast it on the public IRC channel. All requests should be made privately.
Please check if the wiki has their own local oversighters before approaching a steward; the list is below.

IRC: Editors can contact stewards in the IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards^connect. Please ask for a steward in the channel, then make your request in a private message to that steward. Do not broadcast the request in the public channel.
Email: Send an email to the steward mailing list at stewards-llistswikimediaorg.

Please do not post your request publicly.

All Wikimedia wikis

Stewards can grant themselves temporary oversight access on individual wikis when needed.
Please check if the wiki has their own local oversighters before approaching a steward; the list is below.
Please do not put your request on the wiki or broadcast it on the public IRC channel. All requests should be made privately.
Ombuds have the technical ability to view suppressed revisions.

IRC

Users can contact stewards in the IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards^connect. Please ask for a steward in the channel, then make your request in a private message to that steward. Do not broadcast the request in the public channel. In emergencies type !steward, to get the attention of a steward. For normal requests type instead @steward. Then, in any case, write directly to the steward; usually just clicking on their name.

Email

Send an email to the stewards' VRT private queue at stewards-oversightwikimediaorg (direct wiki interface), or
send an email to any steward privately using Special:EmailUser.

Stewards are explicitly allowed to act in non-emergencies and the requests can go to them too

Wikimedia Commons

Local information page
Automatically generated oversighters' list
Mailing list: oversight-commonslists.wikimedia.org

Meta-Wiki

Local information page
Automatically generated oversighters' list
Mailing list: oversight-metawikimedia.org
Email directly: m:Special:EmailUser/Meta-Wiki oversighters

Wikidata

Local information page
Automatically generated oversighters' list
Mailing list: oversightwikidata.org

Wikitech

Local information page
Automatically generated oversighters' list
No mailing list

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This feature is approved for use in four cases:
 # '''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.
-# '''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.
+# '''Removal of potentially libellous information''' either: a) on the advice of [[Wikimedia Foundation]] counsel or b) when the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
 # '''Removal of copyright violations''' on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel.
 # '''Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs, where this does not disrupt edit histories.''' A blatant attack is one obviously intended to denigrate, threaten, libel, insult, or harass someone.

Revision as of 22:42, 30 November 2009

Policy

Use

Logging

Access

IRC channel

Removal of access

Users with oversight rights

All Wikimedia projects

All Wikimedia wikis

IRC

Email

Belarusian Wikipedia

Chinese Wikipedia

English Wikipedia

Finnish Wikipedia

French Wikipedia

German Wikipedia

Indonesian Wikipedia

Japanese Wikipedia

Korean Wikipedia

Persian Wikipedia

Polish Wikipedia

Portuguese Wikipedia

Russian Wikipedia

Simple English Wikipedia

Spanish Wikipedia

Turkish Wikipedia

Ukrainian Wikipedia

Wikimedia Commons

Meta-Wiki

Wikidata

Wikitech

See also