Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight/2015 CUOS appointments

Application question

The nomination statement is made after the applicant receives the first questionnaire; is that right? Thus, the first e-mail is nothing more than asking for the questionnaire.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

• Correct. The first email is to ask for the questionnaire. (We keep a list of those who has asked for one, in order to contact applicants and make sure things don't get lost in the ether if we never get it back; asking for one carries absolutely no obligation to complete it.) The application statement is made with the questionnaire. The statement is the only part of the application that will be shared outside the Arbitration Committee. Application statements may be revised after vetting is complete, for publication on wiki, if candidates desire. Candidates may also edit their application statement after it is published. (The supervising arbitrators will create a page for each candidate, and publish the application statement on it.) Courcelles 02:22, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Just pointing out that according to WP:CU Checkusers are not required to be administrators. If this has changed that (and other pages) need to be updated. If not, I'm wondering why the announcement is worded to imply they must be administrators. 165.91.13.84 (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Checkusers don't technically have to be administrators (I think French Wikipedia has one), but for them to be selected, they must be elected through an RFA-like process. Since here, the ArbCom appoints functionaries, the WMF restricts us from appointing anyone who has not passed such a process. Courcelles 23:19, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Is there a link to that? Understanding is that that only applied to "access to deleted revisions", which CU doesn't provide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.91.13.25 (talk) 12:33, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Philippe (WMF), the WMF's Director of Community Advocacy, said it on WT:ACN in 2013. Also note that, per Special:ListGroupRights, the CU flag does provide access to deleted revisions on this project. Courcelles 17:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Agreed although one could argue that there are other roles where the WMF has already provided this clearance. For example, a Steward has rights to see deleted revisions on all projects, including en.wiki, and therefore could conceivably be appointed a CU or OS here without being an administrator here. I'm not suggesting this is a good idea by the way, just noting it is hypothetically possible! QuiteUnusual (talk) 08:41, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Do we really need more editors with CU access? A Listusers inquiry turn up about 30-40 editors with access to the tool. Also, on other Wikipedias the access is rotated from year to year. VegasCasinoKid (talk) 09:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/Statistics for a much more accurate indication of how many people are actually doing the work. In December 2014, 21 flagged CU's did not run a single check. 21 (yes, I counted the right list) flagged OSers did not do a single suppression. All Arbitrators and Auditors are included in that total, but many do not use the tools operationally, holding them only for review of other's actions. The work is currently concentrated into some by moderately-active functionaries, and most in a few highly active hands. It is my hope, that appointing new hands will solve the issues, especially with the time-sensitivity of Oversight. Courcelles 17:06, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist notice

Was going to advertise this on MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, but wanted to check with the coordinators first if there was any objection or special verbiage. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:47, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, no objection. If we need to modify the wording, I think we can do that live. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 18:39, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done - amend as needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)