Ombuds commission

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	About the commission — Make a report — Email the commission — Discuss the commission
	Activity reports: 2025 • 2024 • 2023 • Earlier Published decisions

De ombuds commission, for behalf of de Board of Trustees , dey investigate complaints about infringements of de Privacy Policy, de Access to nonpublic personal data policy, de CheckUser policy den de Oversight policy, for any Wikimedia project top. Dem sanso dey investigate give de Board de compliance of local CheckUser anaa Oversight policies anaa guidelines plus de global CheckUser den Oversight policies.

As a global community body, they will not investigate compliance with a requirement imposed by local community policies additionally to the requirements of global policy. They can investigate whether the terms of local CheckUser or Oversight policies or guidelines comply with the global CheckUser and Oversight policies. Local policies are permitted to go further than global policy in protecting user privacy, but not to opt out of global policy in any way.

The Commission are not an appeal body for local or global administrative actions, such as blocks, locks, and bans. Where those have been based on checkuser or oversight information, the initial checkuser or oversight action can be investigated, but the subsequent block or other result should be referred to other global or local bodies.

Tasks

In addition plus official investigation, dem go mediate between de complainant den de respondent (usually CheckUser , oversighter, bureaucrat , administrator , anaa arbitration committee member). Wen legally necessary, de ombuds go assist de General Counsel, de Executive Director anaa de board make dem handle de case.

When de case be litigious, de ombuds go be in charge make dem dey educate CheckUsers anaa odas about de Foundation ein privacy policy. Wen dem breach de Privacy Policy, Access to Nonpublic Information Policy, CheckUser Policy, anaa Oversight policy, de ombuds commission for report to de Executive Director anaa designated staff wey dem go recommend course of action (such as removal of access to tools). Additionally, de commission go fi suggest suitable changes to policies anaa software.

Neutrality

Dem for conduct ombuds' investigation for manner wey go determine by de ombuds make dem ensure fairness den impartiality. As general guideline, ebe best say ombuds avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible, particularly make dem dey avoid routine use of CheckUser anaa oversight access wey dem no dey process complaints for de projects top for wich dem be very active editors. Howeva, matters wey dey komot before de commission no be clear-cut, den de language den culture of various projects fi pose barriers to outsiders. As such, dem dey lef how de commission dey investigate complaints to de discretion of ein appointed members.

Membership

Members of the ombuds commission are selected from the Wikimedia community by Wikimedia Foundation officials. A call for volunteers is issued each year in early October on the Wikimedia-L mailing list and on the talk page of this policy, as well as other project forums as appropriate. They are appointed (assuming they agree) for a period of approximately two years (one year, prior to the 2023–25 Commission). One or more non-voting alternate member(s) may also be appointed. A Steward-Observer may be appointed to serve alongside the Ombudspeople.

Current members

User	Communities where active	Language spoken	IRC nick	Term expires
Ameisenigel (CA) *	dewiki, wikidatawiki	de, en-4, nds-2, fr-1, tlh-1	`Ameisenigel`	2028
Arcticocean (CA)	metawiki, enwiki	en, sco-3, gd-1		2028
Chinmayee Mishra (CA)				2028
Faendalimas (CA)	wikispecies	en, pt-3, it-2, fr-1	`faendalimas`	2028
Jnanaranjan sahu (CA)	orwiki		`gyan`	2028
Mehman (CA)	kawiki	tr-N, en-3, ka-N, az-N, ru-N		2028
MrJaroslavik (CA)	cswiki	cs-N, en-3, sk-3		2028
Mykola7 (CA) ‡	ukwiki	uk-N, en-2, de-1, pl-1, ru-4		2027
Nehaoua (CA)	arwiki, frwiki	ar-n, fr-4, en-2		2028
Revi C. (CA)	kowiki, commonswiki, metawiki	ko, en-3	`revi`	2027
RoySmith (CA)	enwiki	en	`roy649`	2028
Teles (CA) †	ptwiki	pt, en-3, es-2	`Teles`	2027
Zafer (CA)	trwiki	tr, en-3, az-2, ru-1, kk-1		2027

† Advisory member; ‡ Steward-Observer; * Chair, terms expire in February of listed year

For de prior membership, spy hie.

Sanso spy automatically generated list. This list is generated from the global ombudsman user group. This grants commission members the following rights on all Wikimedia wikis:

List of global user rights (click to expand or collapse)

**User rights currently assigned to the ombuds global group**
	Right	Description	Notes
1	abusefilter-log	View the abuse log	Normally part of the autoconfirmed user group or granted to all users
2	abusefilter-view	View abuse filters
3	abusefilter-access-protected-vars	View and create filters that use protected variables	Governed by local policies where they exist, otherwise part of the sysop user group
4	abusefilter-log-detail	View detailed abuse log entries
5	checkuser-temporary-account	View IP addresses used by temporary accounts
6	ipinfo	Retrieve information about IP addresses attached to revisions or log entries
7	abusefilter-log-private	View log entries of abuse filters marked as private	Normally part of the sysop user group
8	abusefilter-view-private	View abuse filters marked as private
9	browsearchive	Search deleted pages
10	checkuser-temporary-account-auto-reveal	Automatically reveal IP addresses used by temporary accounts
11	deletedhistory	View deleted history entries, without their associated text
12	deletedtext	View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions
13	ipinfo-view-full	Access a full view of the IP information attached to revisions or log entries
14	abusefilter-hidden-log	View hidden abuse log entries	Part of the oversight user group
15	suppressionlog	View private logs
16	viewsuppressed	View revisions hidden from any user
17	abusefilter-privatedetails	View private data in the abuse log	Part of the checkuser user group
18	abusefilter-privatedetails-log	View the AbuseFilter private details access log
19	abusefilter-protected-vars-log	View logs related to accessing protected variable values
20	checkuser	Check users' IP addresses and other information
21	checkuser-log	View the checkuser log
22	checkuser-suggested-investigations	Process checkuser suggested investigations
23	checkuser-temporary-account-log	View the log of access to temporary account IP addresses
24	ipinfo-view-log	View a log of who has accessed IP information
25	checkuser-temporary-account-no-preference	View IP addresses used by temporary accounts without needing to turn on the preference	Part of the checkuser and oversight user groups

Submission

Dem fi make omplaints to de ombuds commission thru de ways wey dey follow (preferably insyd language one of de members dey speak):

To use de form, make you access dis link: Special:Contact/ombudscommission
To write email, make you access dis link: Special:EmailUser/Ombuds commission

Both ways go send message directly go OC mailing list.

Please make you follow dese guidelines wen you dey submit inquiry go de commission:

Be concise: Lengthy emails with unnecessary information make it harder for the commission to process the case in a timely manner.
Be objective: Avoid making inquiries based on speculations or subjective judgements.
Provide evidence: Please provide us with diff links and/or permanent links when possible.
Be specific: Specify what part of which policy has been violated.
Please inform us if your wiki has an Arbitration Committee (or a similar committee) and if you have reached them (or used other dispute resolution procedure customary to your community) before reaching the ombuds commission. Provide a link to the relevant case page if appropriate.

Processing/Reporting

Cases dem bring to wona attention go be process de way wey dey follow:

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 ombuds commission, we will do the investigation, if not we will decline the request and try to direct the complainant to a better place to get help for their individual problem.
Investigation: We do whatever is necessary to find out whether or not there was a breach of the policies or a non-compliance or conflict of local policies with the global ones.
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 OS, CU or steward rights from the user breaking the policy.

Past decisions

Where the Commission has reached a decision which has significance for the wider community, it may publish it publicly. The decisions currently published are:

IP block exemptions (2016/42).
Disclosure of information (2019/125) (2019/122) (2019/121) (2019/138) – this decision outlined the circumstances where a checkuser may disclose information they have obtained through their privileged access.
Functionaries banned on other projects (2024/230) – dealing with a scenario where a volunteer banned from one wiki (or otherwise becoming untrusted) continues to have access rights on another wiki.
French Wikipedia Nominations Committee (2019/129) (2020/160) (2021/173).
Temporary Accounts
Advice to Checkusers
Disclosure of CU data (2026/256).

Reference numbers (in brackets) are given for the convenience of commissioners – they are the internal reference numbers of the case which led to the decision. Some published decisions will resolve several cases.