Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Clerks/Noticeboard/Archive3
New clerking system - proposed change
The new system at WP:RFCU/C does have a note to discourage 'status seekers', but I think that this will still become a problem. Just an idea, but would anyone support the page functioning more like Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies/verified users? (i.e, it is a protected page, and any sysop on the list can add new users) This seems like a logical halfway point between 'approval by a checkuser' and 'approval by self'. --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 00:52, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
- The idea was to remove barriers to participation. I think it's a little early to start rebuilding them in anticipation of a problem. I suggest instead that the clerks be forward in bringing concerns to the attention of other clerks who may be making acting inppropriately, then discussing concerns here to gauge the opinion of the group, and then if necessary asking the checkusers to step in. Thatcher131 14:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
- I think this is a great idea. With this there are still no big barriers, as any admin can add, and it also prevents some random user who does not read the manual and is obviously causing trouble to add themselves. GeorgeMoney (talk) 07:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- No matter how we handle the clerking process, it's still going to attract status-seekers. A protected page would temporarily stifle the status-seekers, I suppose. There isn't a whole lot we can do about that. Maybe, before they are added to the approved list, aspiring clerks could do a little "trial period" where they do their duties while supervised by somebody else, so that they at least know what they are doing. PTO 12:47, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- Hi, I'm one of the "new" clerks. I just wanted to comment on the admin adding. Personally it wouldn't occur to me to ask for an admin that is not in the checkuser system to add me. I mean that would look like (to me anyway) as if I was asking for a favor from him. I'd prefer the old system with a list than this one. I quite agree with the trial period though (let's call it "training period" maybe since clerks can be revoked at any time?), I think we all need a bit of help at first. Reading the procedure page is obviously a must-do, but nobody is perfect at first try. -- lucasbfr talk 13:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- Some things are common sense, others are tricky. The parameters on {{rfcu box}} are more important than you might think -- in particular, the box doesn't work without (1) a case name, and (2) the right case name (needs to match the subpage name, can't be a variable) (it's complicated; if you're curious, let me know and I can go more in-depth). We can also re-work the clerk guide as needed (especially those of you who are coming aboard, you'll spot the problems and fuzzy spots more than I will). And, of course, we can watch and help each other; case in point, Mike caught me moving some cases into the wrong section of the frontpage, just the other day. :p – Luna Santin (talk) 18:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- Hi, I'm one of the "new" clerks. I just wanted to comment on the admin adding. Personally it wouldn't occur to me to ask for an admin that is not in the checkuser system to add me. I mean that would look like (to me anyway) as if I was asking for a favor from him. I'd prefer the old system with a list than this one. I quite agree with the trial period though (let's call it "training period" maybe since clerks can be revoked at any time?), I think we all need a bit of help at first. Reading the procedure page is obviously a must-do, but nobody is perfect at first try. -- lucasbfr talk 13:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- No matter how we handle the clerking process, it's still going to attract status-seekers. A protected page would temporarily stifle the status-seekers, I suppose. There isn't a whole lot we can do about that. Maybe, before they are added to the approved list, aspiring clerks could do a little "trial period" where they do their duties while supervised by somebody else, so that they at least know what they are doing. PTO 12:47, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm fairly new at clerking here, and I would greatly appreciate a more experienced clerk look at the case mentioned above. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about this one. Cheers, PTO 19:01, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- My, that is sticky. Looks like it got out of hand pretty quick, heh. First: added {{rfcu box}} with params. Second: moved the bulk of their discussion/argument to talk (left their early posts in, I figure let people get a few punches in, but move the brawl to talk, although I may have trimmed a bit much; we'll see). Whenever moving comments, like that, be sure to make a note of it. Hope that helps. :) – Luna Santin (talk) 19:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks! PTO 21:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Just wanted some feedback :)
Hi, I'll try to catch you on IRC tonight (CET), but just in case... I edited Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Glen SUx! and after pressing save page, I wondered if my edit was out of line, or even useful? I have an other question, which is regarding case letter A. Is it for all cases of attack? Or IP checking only? The header on the CU page makes me think it is only about IPs but it seems it is used much more broadly. Am I wrong? (I hate not being a native English speaker, grrrr). Regards, -- lucasbfr talk 14:09, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
- I haven't checked your edit, but as a pre-response (I can't think of the word
:-P): Code Letter A's are for resolving a username to an IP address. Don't hesitate to drop by IRC sometime, the channel's never empty: (link). Leave me a message (/msg Deon hi), and I'll invite-exempt you. Slater, — Deon555talkdesksign here! 01:21, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Code letter F?
After looking at some of the recent cases that have a code letter of F, I noticed that F requires that the person have diffs regarding the block of the user. I find this to be unproductive, because a reason for blocking should be documented in the user's block log. I see how this would be needed for bans, but I think that the diffs for blocking requirement be removed. Comments? Cheers, PTO 01:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
- Usually a block requires a discussion, am I right? A vandal usually has a block request on WP:AIV or WP:AN. Any code F case usually has an associated discussion, from what I've observed.--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 01:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
- I suppose the exact description reads, "Evasion of community-based bans or blocks," which doesn't explicitly include or exclude blocks made unilaterally. I've noticed the emphasis seems to be on bans, specifically -- that might be an issue to clear up, either including blocks or removing them from the description, along with deciding whether a block set without discussion (or significant discussion) would "count" for letter F. Unless the CUs would prefer to continue deciding that case-by-case? – Luna Santin (talk) 18:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Request on my talk page
I don't know what to reply to this user [1] that asks me to push a case to a CU, the deadline approaching soon, and ask me what he can do against a bogus (in his opinion) case against him? -- lucasbfr talk 10:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
- If the checkuser case has no merit, then the guy should have nothing to hide. Now, the FMNF checkuser isn't exactly urgent; in fact, FMNF alerted Jimbo to a fairly bad WP:BLP violation which was taken down by him quickly. However, FMNF's alleged sockmaster's arbcom ruling banned him from that article. Nobody's in a hurry. I think that he'll just have to wait. PTO 11:57, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Feedback?
Good evening (GMT time) all; I'd like to request the feedback of my fellow Wikipedians with regards to RFCU clerking. Feedback that would be especially useful is where I could target my activities more, in order to make the system more efficient with my available time, as well as any corrections I could make to general clerking. Naturally, however, general feedback would also be useful.
Any advice is received with great gratitude; feel free to post it here, via email or simply drop me a message at my talk page.
Kind regards,
anthonycfc [talk] 22:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Additional assistance from clerks
Unless there are objections from other CUs, I would like to encourage the clerks to become more active in the maintenance for the page:
- Please feel free to assist users who are struggling with the process or have questions about mechanics or basic policy. While I appreciate that you are all supposed to be deferring any judgment calls to the CUs, there is no need for you to be circumspect if you are reasonably sure what we are going to say.
- Please be aggressive in moving out noncompliant requests to the new page for them. It's not too much to ask to have people fill out the form properly, and it isn't possible for the CUs to handle the cases quickly if there are missing links or diffs.
- Please help us drive home the message that community bans must have discussion and consensus for us to recognize them.
- You may remove IP addresses from the list of things to check where a request already specifies two or more user names. In general, we can't disclose an IP except for the purpose of targeting an IP block (or rarely, complaining to an ISP), and such disclosure is generally no longer necessary because of the change in the way the blocking software works. Please feel free to educate visitors to the page about the new blocking features and in particular the ability of any admin to block not only the user name but the most recently used IP address for that user.
- You may remove as noncompliant requests to check throwaway accounts (fewer than ten edits) if you wish unless they are in the IP Check section or there is some other specific rationale for checking them.
- If you are truly motivated to make the most of the job you can leave helpful messages on people's talk pages when we have acted on their requests, particularly if it seems likely that they will have questions or will want to fix their request and resubmit it.
Thanks
The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Rationale behind non-compliant moves
I've seen several cases in the Non-Compliant section, but I can't figure out why they are there. Maybe the moving clerk should provide some sort of rationale behind their move in the form of {{clerknote}}? PTO 17:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
- Sounds good -- if it's an issue that can be resolved, we can be helpful in letting people know how. – Luna Santin (talk) 02:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- Also, I've drafted Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Procedures#Non-compliant requests. Suggest any interested parties have a look and see if this is reasonable. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
IP checks backlogged
Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser#Requests for IP check -- Some requests have been waiting for over two weeks. =\ – Luna Santin (talk) 01:01, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- anything we can do? Beside stalking the CU's talk page until the backlog is sorted of course? :p -- lucasbfr talk 07:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- We could move IP checks to a subpage, and transclude that at the bottom of /Pending? Wouldn't be difficult. Could put it inside noinclude tags, so as to avoid disrupting the current layout. If the CUs only really have to check /Pending for open requests, and leave the rest for clerks to take care of, that might expedite matters. Not sure, but it seems worth exploring? – Luna Santin (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- Set it up as detailed above. IP checks are now on a subpage, which allows us to transclude it both onto the RfCU frontpage and onto /Pending with ease. If anybody has feedback, feel free. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
- We could move IP checks to a subpage, and transclude that at the bottom of /Pending? Wouldn't be difficult. Could put it inside noinclude tags, so as to avoid disrupting the current layout. If the CUs only really have to check /Pending for open requests, and leave the rest for clerks to take care of, that might expedite matters. Not sure, but it seems worth exploring? – Luna Santin (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Could someone deal with this case? It is radioactive for me, since I am involved on a (small :)) dispute with user:Uroddmitri. -- lucasbfr talk 13:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
- Done. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Indicator templates
I know CU keep their comments as short as possible, but it might be useful to explain all these templates a bit more. For example, I see exactly what 
Confirmed and 
Unrelated mean, but I am not sure of the difference between 
Possible and 
Likely. And I fail to see the difference between 
Declined and 
Rejected. I have the feeling that 
CheckUser is not for fishing could be used on a lot of requests, and I don't see at all what 
CheckUser is not a crystal ball is for. Maybe we could compile that at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Procedures#Indicator_templates? -- lucasbfr talk 17:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
- I get confused by that, too. Maybe we shall invite the CUs to share their thoughts. I'm still kinda new here: what are the CU's that work around here?--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 23:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
- If I had to guess, the difference between "possible" and "likely" is something like the difference between 50:50 and 25:75 odds -- I don't know what particular thresholds of likelihood the CUs might apply, but I gather that's the idea. I suppose {{crystalball}} and {{fishing}} do seem pretty similar, as do {{declined}} and {{thrown out}} (I think the latter was initially made to emphasize just how declined some case or other was, but I'm not sure). Not sure how much use they all get, respectively. If we do expand some explanations, we could also add a noincluded extra column at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Indicators, probably looking more at a non-clerk perspective there. – Luna Santin (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
- I use "unrelated" when the IPs are distinct, and I've made a determination it's not really possible, based on the technical evidence alone (not taking into account workarounds), for the two users to be the same. But if, say, the accounts share a dynamic IP range, or geograhical proximity, or somethign along these lines, I can usually only give a "likely" and not "confirmed". "Possible" might mean, for example it's such a huge dynamic ISP I'm not confident enough to say it is likely, but also that, in contrast to "unrelated," there is nothing that suggests they couldn't be the same, IP-wise, either. "Possible" makes more sense when compared to "inconclusive": sometimes the check does yield results that are more useful than nothing, but fail to confirm or deny. "Inconclusive" is when, for a number of reasons, I don't have enough evidence to determine whether certain accounts being the same is possible or not. I don't think I've ever used "crystallball," and "fishing" might be superfluous (but it's cute). Dmcdevit·t 20:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot! -- lucasbfr talk 22:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Besides what dmcdevit has said (who is a checkuser and I am not), the baseline on all the templates was to take them at face value. Possible means possible; the checkuser choose to use that word and words have meanings. Crystal ball and fishing are utilitarian ways to give a simple reason for why the checkuser declines to do the request. Declined is the "standard" way to refuse a request. Rejected I made for mackensen as a way of saying that something was baseless. Rejected is hard to use, because it is {{thrown out}} and not {{rejected}}, which is for the top of proposal pages that were rejected. For that, I wouldn't feel too bad if Rejected got weeded out. I've seen fishing used the most because, honestly, it is a request to fish for matches without much of any evidence that I saw listed most often. Kevin_b_er 05:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Does anyone actually know what the crystal ball template is for? Because I have not seen it in any cases. mrholybrain's talk 10:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Was a reply to "Why is this inconclusive?" I believe. Crystal ball was created as a joke, however. You can see this from this page in Mackensen's talk archives. Kevin_b_er 03:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
- Besides what dmcdevit has said (who is a checkuser and I am not), the baseline on all the templates was to take them at face value. Possible means possible; the checkuser choose to use that word and words have meanings. Crystal ball and fishing are utilitarian ways to give a simple reason for why the checkuser declines to do the request. Declined is the "standard" way to refuse a request. Rejected I made for mackensen as a way of saying that something was baseless. Rejected is hard to use, because it is {{thrown out}} and not {{rejected}}, which is for the top of proposal pages that were rejected. For that, I wouldn't feel too bad if Rejected got weeded out. I've seen fishing used the most because, honestly, it is a request to fish for matches without much of any evidence that I saw listed most often. Kevin_b_er 05:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot! -- lucasbfr talk 22:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- I use "unrelated" when the IPs are distinct, and I've made a determination it's not really possible, based on the technical evidence alone (not taking into account workarounds), for the two users to be the same. But if, say, the accounts share a dynamic IP range, or geograhical proximity, or somethign along these lines, I can usually only give a "likely" and not "confirmed". "Possible" might mean, for example it's such a huge dynamic ISP I'm not confident enough to say it is likely, but also that, in contrast to "unrelated," there is nothing that suggests they couldn't be the same, IP-wise, either. "Possible" makes more sense when compared to "inconclusive": sometimes the check does yield results that are more useful than nothing, but fail to confirm or deny. "Inconclusive" is when, for a number of reasons, I don't have enough evidence to determine whether certain accounts being the same is possible or not. I don't think I've ever used "crystallball," and "fishing" might be superfluous (but it's cute). Dmcdevit·t 20:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- If I had to guess, the difference between "possible" and "likely" is something like the difference between 50:50 and 25:75 odds -- I don't know what particular thresholds of likelihood the CUs might apply, but I gather that's the idea. I suppose {{crystalball}} and {{fishing}} do seem pretty similar, as do {{declined}} and {{thrown out}} (I think the latter was initially made to emphasize just how declined some case or other was, but I'm not sure). Not sure how much use they all get, respectively. If we do expand some explanations, we could also add a noincluded extra column at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Indicators, probably looking more at a non-clerk perspective there. – Luna Santin (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Simplifying
I've had some impressions that the process of submitting a new request is mind-boggling for some users. To that end, I've recently made a number of small changes to simplify the process. Some text from the new case template has been moved to {{new rfcu case}} (which we could even name or redirect from {{please don't edit this line (new rfcu case)}} for further trimming) -- from our perspective, the most obvious change is that the unlisted cases category link has moved closer to the top of a listing. The directions no longer request that users add their case to /Pending, so we'll need to be sure to check Category:Checkuser requests to be listed for new cases. When {{new rfcu case}} substs, it inserts an extra newline -- not sure how we can resolve that. In any case, if people have objections or suggestions, feel free. ;) – Luna Santin (talk) 23:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
- Also, since I haven't been able to figure out a way to add an includeonly'd noinclude'd category link into {{new rfcu case}}, I've gone ahead and used a parser function at {{checkuser requests to be listed}}. Apologies if anybody feels I'm being a bit too bold, here. – Luna Santin (talk) 23:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good job! And it seems to be working smoothly -- lucasbfr talk 08:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Can soneone tell me if my CU is correct.
I have made a new CU for an existing Case but am not sure if I have done it correctly.
I haveput a message to User:Lucasbfr to look into it [2] but I am not sure if he is around or not.
So if anyone else can check if the request is OK I will be grateful.
Thanks.--Deepak D'Souza (talk • contribs) 06:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
OK , I have got a response from User:Lucasbfr . Thanks again!--Deepak D'Souza (talk • contribs) 08:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)