Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbcom, confidentiality, and oversight/Straw poll

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This proposal concerns the access and handling of confidential information by arbcom members and oversighters. And also changes policy concerning the granting and retaining of the Oversight user-right.

To discuss this proposal, please see the talk page. To participate in the straw poll, please see the straw poll page. - jc37 12:03, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Support

• Support - as proposer. - jc37 11:10, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

• Strong oppose on several levels. I plan on elaborating shortly. --Rschen7754 11:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

1. On what basis can an oversighter's performance be evaluated? The community has no way of knowing if something has been oversighted, since the logs are not public to non-admins; even admins can't see what content was oversighted, so they are in no position to judge whether the OS action was proper or not. Indefblocked users that are hidden under oversight are invisible to everyone but oversighters.
2. We went to the current appointment process that was through ArbCom because not enough oversighter candidates were passing the 70% mark that is mandated by Meta and the Wikimedia Foundation: m:Oversight. Per that policy, the only two ways of getting oversighters is through ArbCom or through said 70% mark.
3. Moreover, putting this high of a responsibility on an oversighter would put them above ArbCom; considering that ArbCom candidates find it difficult to get 70%, this sure wouldn't help things out.
4. "Confidential information" needs to be defined; not defining it leads us right into the mess a few weeks ago, is too ambiguous, and is a complete run-around of the m:Privacy policy.
5. Oversighters are already short-staffed as it is; this sure won't help make their workload any easier.
6. Regarding "this shall be considered an "emergency" situation, and by default all access to confidential information (including but not limited to oversight, and access to the mail lists and the arb wiki)" - the stewards will not act to remove oversight in said circumstances without a community vote, proof that there is a clear violation of the privacy policy, proof of a clear abuse of the Oversight tool, or without ArbCom's say-so. As we saw a few weeks ago, the WMF does not consider disclosure of the mailing list or arbcom wiki, by itself, to be a violation of the privacy policy unless personally identifying information was disclosed. So this is completely unenforceable.
7. Functionaries (including oversighters and ArbCom members) continue to be parties to ArbCom cases, and moving discussion to the arbwiki means that they have access to that discussion; the advantage of arbcom-en-b and arbcom-en-c is just that; the ability to segregate discussions so that involved parties do not know what is being said and cannot tailor evidence/statements appropriately until after the case has concluded.
8. This is a complete end-run around WP:AUSC (the group that we actually appoint to watch the CUs and OSes), and would have prevented User:Bahamut0013 from taking his seat on AUSC, since he was initially a non-admin when appointed. Yes, the OS tools are broken for non-admins, but you don't need to be able to actually suppress anything to be on AUSC - you just need to see the suppressed diffs.
9. The proposal does not address functionaries-en, oversight-l, checkuser-l, the AUSC list, or the BASC list, all of which handle similar stuff and are all used by ArbCom to some degree.
10. The convenience of email cannot simply be dismissed; with situations such as emergency desysops and other time-sensitive situations, it is easier to get someone's attention with an email than with a post to a wiki somewhere, especially as people will be by their smartphones more often than they will be refreshing the watchlist of a site that is not even enwp, and wikis are generally not editable with mobile devices, such as those that may have to be used because of work or school or vacation etc.
11. Many of our current oversighters seem inactive today, and probably would not pass a 70% confirmation scheme. The community cannot factor in oversight actions, OTRS, or mailing list posts into their vote. A lot of oversighters are ex-arbs, and there will probably be the usual crowd of ax-grinders from those who are unhappy with the way that arb voted, even years later. Finally, the rest of the oversighters are very active admins, and should be free to make the tough admin calls as any other admin would. I suspect ax-grinders would show up there too. We face the real possibility of losing the entirety of our non-arb oversight team should this happen, through resignations (heck, if this came to pass and I was an OS, I'd probably resign too) and oversighters not getting re-elected. That would thus proceed to invalidate the entirety of this proposal, with fewer or no eyes watching the arbs like the OP wants. (possibly more to come)--Rschen7754 11:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• <placeholder> - waiting to respond to the points when "more to come" is done. - jc37 12:22, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Go ahead; I'll wait. --Rschen7754 12:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• I think there are some fundamental questions that need to be answered before we're ready for a proposal, primarily around "What is currently being kept confidential?" Even with the small amount of knowledge I have this doesn't fit with the current checks and balances we have. I should also point out that I would have not signed up to be an oversighter in the role outlined. Worm^TT(talk) 12:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  I would be happy to have that discussion. But after doing a fair amount of reading, I thought this would be a way to at least start to address the situations. Not sure how you don't see this fitting in with current policy. And what about it concerns you? - jc37 13:05, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Well, a number of things, many of which have been already mentioned. For one thing, it completely ignores what Oversight is about (which in my opinion is a slightly harder delete button and an expectation to hang around watching for problems) and tries to make it political (with all the horrible selection stuff that goes with it). It gives a very different type of responsibility to the group, one that we didn't sign up for. It ignores the current system of checks and balances, AUSC for example. It also doesn't necessarily fix the problems with Arbcom - because we haven't looked at what those problems are. I'm very rarely inclined to agree with additional bureaucracy, which this is - unless there is a very good reason and I don't see the logical link between the problem and the solution. Define the problem, then propose the solution, not the other way round. Worm^TT(talk) 13:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose simply on the requirement that all non-confidential work be done on wiki. It's not for convenience sake that most judicial bodies debate in private--it's because those bodies may need to say things that are less civil, more direct, and incompletely formed than can be put within the confines of wiki rules. An Arbcom member should be allowed to email the rest of Arbcom saying "by the way, everything Person X just said is complete bullshit, because of X, Y, and Z." Similarly, holding debates on-wiki may inhibit some members from floating ideas or opinions; requiring people to put those ideas, half-formed, onto Wikipedia may lead to problems in a future election, problems which they should not have. This requirement is actually even stricter than we require of editors or admins, since all of us have access to email functions, and no Wikipedia policy prohibits us from discussing Wikipedia off-site (so long as we don't rise to the level of meat puppetry or canvassing). In any event, the requirement is a waste of time anyway, since all it would do is to have arbcoms just directly CCiing each other via a non-WP run email program. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)