Talk:OTRS

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Call for future copyright permissions to be made public if the donor allows it

There are many items on Commons and elsewhere that have been donated through the OTRS process. Every now and then people without OTRS permissons want to verify them.

I propose that future donations of material include the question "Can this communication be made public" and if so, that it be made public and linked to from commons:Template:PermissionOTRS and similar templates.

Again, this would not affect existing material, and it would be at the donor's option for future material. Davidwr/talk 17:11, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

OTRS tickets, by their nature, include significant amounts of information covered by the privacy policy and the access to non-public personal data policy. Even when permission is given to discuss specific details of a ticket on-wiki, we are still limited in what can and should be disclosed publicly. From a procedural standpoint, this private information is typically the basis for accepting a permission statement. Without it, any such public statement would only be able to confirm that the ticket discussed a license and a work, and not the identity of the sender or other information to authenticate the ticket. From a technical and privacy protection standpoint, this is also a difficult problem. The private information in OTRS tickets includes metadata about the ticket, freeform information in the ticket, and information in attached files. This information would have to be redacted manually before publication. Manual redaction is dangerous territory, as it relies on humans to not make mistakes with the personal information of others. For attached files, it is even more difficult to implement. From a legal standpoint, text on Wikimedia Commons must be licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license or a compatible license. By default, the emails sent and received from OTRS are not covered by that license, other than the unfilled release form from c:COM:CONSENT. To publish the emails on-wiki, we would have to secure permission to publish them under that license.

In short: This proposal would almost certainly result in the inadvertent release of private information, would require OTRS agents to get copyright permission to release the details of another copyright permission, and doesn't substantially make later confirmations of confirmations easier or more reliable. The proposal is also a solution in search of a problem: there are exactly two sections at c:COM:OTRS/N that have not been responded to by an OTRS volunteer (one due to a technical issue, the other I'll probably handle later today) and only one section at w:en:WP:OTRSN (which isn't actually a question). --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:36, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I know exactly what you mean and yes OTRS permission tickets should by default be public.

Users of this service do not understand, expect, or appreciate privacy by default. When we get media donations from institutional partners, or more commonly corporate or promotional photos, our default is set for privacy for no reason because these organizations expect that we name them as having provided the content. Our privacy practice makes no sense in this context.

The limits in place make little sense for typical use of services here. Yes, very much worth discussing, and yes, our current mode of practice has major flaws which our community has never publicly discussed or sought to address. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:52, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Your logic is flawed. They should not be public just because the customers don't realize that it is private. Even basic perms tickets give away an enormous amount of PII that I would argue most anyone who can read would not want completely public, especially in a place like Wikimedia. Would you want your full name and personal e-mail posted on Wikipedia for anyone to see? I highly doubt you do and I doubt that most high-profile people do that send mail to OTRS. Praxidicae (talk) 18:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Praxidicae: Representatives of organizations who are making media releases on behalf of that organization have no expectation of privacy. They try to communicate the release on behalf of the organization, then on our side, we by default hide the fact that we communicated with the organization's representative. In a roundabout way, we say that we talked with someone, but will not say with whom, or how we judged that the file came to use appropriately. Later, maybe 5-10 years later, if the next communication director of the organization asks us about those past shared photos, we by default protect the privacy of the previously communication manager and will not even disclose to an organization who previously in the organization shared media files.

I agree with you that the individual citizen needs privacy rights, but applying one universal practice results in some strange consequences. What applies to typical people makes less sense in the context of Wikipedia's relationship with institutions. Even in the case of individuals, assuming that by default they do not want CC-By attribution is against the Wikipedia community norm, and yes, I think many photographers would want the benefit of Creative Commons attribution by name instead of our default to assuming they want us to hide their name. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

You're making a lot of incorrect assumptions here but also suggesting giving way too much discretion to OTRS agents and simultaneously making more work for volunteers. Praxidicae (talk) 18:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Praxidicae: OTRS rarely convenes community conversation or develops policy. One path to progress could be regular group video and voice chats. I do not believe that the practices which were set in this process about 10 years ago, and which are still the norm, match changes in technology and practice.

I agree with you - the only way forward is reducing errors, lowering workload, and raising satisfaction. I do not have all the answer and maybe I said many wrong things. However, I still think that conversation is helpful. No one wants to cause trouble and I only mean well. I am ready to apologize and admit errors where I am misinformed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:43, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

We as volunteers aren't able to implement such a policy or practice anyway. OTRS is a Wikimedia Foundation system, so the data on it is protected by the privacy policy and the volunteers who access it are bound by the access to non-public personal information policy. Those policies can only be changed by the WMF, take it up with them. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 18:28, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber: No one at the WMF understands OTRS or knows what is going on. The expertise about this system is in the community. The WMF is not an expert source on Wikipedia editing or the activities of the Wikimedia community. They act at the behest of community consensus and if we as a community have a conversation and agree on a best practice then it is their role to implement it, assuming that we do nothing illegal. We strangely have set a practice for privacy for undocumented reasons. What we do without reason or purpose we can certainly change with reason or purpose. We do not need to pre-emptively shut down this conversation assuming that WMF has a plan here, because we have no reason to believe anyone there has awareness of this issue. Their OTRS management is like 0.1 FTE. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber: I hear what you are saying. Perhaps a parallel non-private email-based process should be created to dedicate items to the public domain, beyond the existing "host it on a site that you control and put a compatible license there" option which is already in the Commons and English Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Davidwr/talk 19:17, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

This is not a good idea; if people want to know if an OTRS ticket has been properly validated they can check with any current OTRS volunteer or at a noticeboard. That system has not been showed to have been an issue, and as such I find this isn't just a solution in search of a problem... it's a solution that would present a whole host of problems. Absolutely, hands down, no. — Coffee // have a cup // 19:09, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Coffee: I sensing a theme here. It looks like the OTRS process needs to stay private. I have seen more than one commentary on Commons about people having to wait for information to come back from OTRS though, so it is a problem. It looks like the solution is to offer a new way to donate materials, NOT to change OTRS. Davidwr/talk 19:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

There is already a solution for that from the beginning: People can put their own work under a free license at the source, at their website, wherever, so no OTRS permission is required at all. (So I agree, this is a solution in search of a problem.) --Krd 20:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

E-mail address for frwikinews

Hello,

I was redirected to this page in order to get an email address for frwikinews. Is this the right page? Because our social network e-mail is on OutLook, a Microsoft product, and we want an address : frwikinews@wikimedia.org. Is possible?

The talk : Tech#E-mail adress for Wikinews.

Thanks, AirSThib (Flight attendant · Flights), the 13:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC).

We can create that address on OTRS, but it then can only be handled within OTRS. What is your exact intention? (Please feel free to contact volunteers-otrs@wikimedia.org if private discussion is preferred.) --Krd 07:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)