Wikiversity talk:CheckUser policy

Please see /Archive 1 for prior discussions. See also CheckUser policy/Archived proposal for an old policy proposal that never gained enough support.

Nominations for CheckUser
At Candidates_for_Custodianship it states "Candidates must have 70-80% agreed consensus or more and a minimum of 25-30 votes in support by local community members." (bold in original) That minimum seems like an unrealistically high bar. I don't recall any recent nominations for any position that had that many participants. The last nomination for full custodian has only 11 contributors. --mikeu talk 16:42, 18 October 2019 (UTC) See below. --mikeu talk 19:22, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposal review
Please comment on the current text and suggest any potential changes. Please also see the text in the collapse box at Requests for CheckUser. --mikeu talk 17:02, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Couple of points
 * I read through the previous discussion and had a look at your policy. The discussion there is from 2007 things have changed somewhat. However I will address some issues.
 * 1) Any wiki that does not have a local checkuser policy that has been fully accepted must follow the one at Meta. So that yours is not in full agreement with the one at Meta is a bit problematic.
 * 2) The logs of the checkuser actions cannot be seen by anyone outside of the checkuser groups. Basically this is Checkusers, those with Checkuser-log access and Stewards. The reason for this is that the information obtained is covered by the Mediawiki Privacy Policy and is not public access.
 * 3) Checkusers cannot do a CU on anyone at a whim. There must be a process defined in policy on each Wiki that identifies the requirements for assessment to determine if it will be done. You cannot ask to have yourself checked either as a side note.
 * 4) referring to the point above by the rules for nominating checkusers is determined by the policy at Meta and overseen by the stewards. To the best of my knowledge and a Steward may comment here that cannot be overridden. However I believe you can extend the duration of the vote, and you can draw attention to the fact that there is a vote in process (not to be done by a nominee). So although it may look a little tough its what we have to do.
 * 5) the local policy in the drop down box pointed to is quite out of date and needs to be redone. My suggestion here is to look at the accepted policy on other wikis and adopt from that.
 * 6) the checkuser tool set is a last resort in many ways for a specific set of circumstances. The policy needs to acknowledge this. Remember that the information obtained from a CU is private information, hence all CU's must sign the Privacy Policy. Although it is true that most socks are using this for vandalism there are other uses for socks too, such as block avoidance, stacking votes in consensus discussions etc. So although vandalism is a part of all this in many cases the purpose of the tool is to deal with people creating socks, whatever their purpose is.
 * 7) if you are wanting to get this rolling and from what I understand it stalled in 2007 or so, your first step is to update the policies. Then work on getting checkusers. Be sure you want to do it and need them.
 * Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 18:19, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Very good points. I think we should proceed with a split short term / long term approach on this. Given the age of both the current proposal and comments/concerns it might be best to start from scratch. Participants in the 2007 discussion have mostly left or are very inactive. The opinions of current contributors should take precedence over ancient history. We currently have no local policy which defaults to the meta policy being "official" here. I suggest replacing the current page with a softredirect to meta. Having these proposal pages and procedures gives a misleading impression that we have a locally developed process for this. Personally, I prefer that we just use the meta policy (regardless if there are local CU or not.) While I don't see a pressing need for having local CU I do like the idea that someone familiar with our community and the activity on our site is running the checks. My first impression is that I am generally supportive of the idea. --mikeu talk 18:46, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Redirecting to meta may be the easiest solution. I just noticed that we would need 25-30 votes to get a local Checkuser. I don't know that we can get 25-30 votes on anything at the moment, unless there would be support and participation from the Wikijournal sub-community. If so, I'd be fine with adding two existing Checkusers to start with: (User:Faendalimas and User:Koavf) -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:07, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Just remember be sure you need a local checkuser before going through all this. Anyway if you want this I would be happy to help with it. But we do need to hear from as well, you need two checkusers at all times. I am happy to assist with sorting out all your pages for this, it requires policy pages and a bunch of templates etc to be created. To run the nominations it will need to be done by your Bureaucrats, they run the process, nominations, monitor the votes, outreach to the community close the votes and report the result. Then a Bureaucrat must be the one who reports the result to the Stewards for the request to grant permissions of CheckUser. If we go the path you mention  both myself and Justin will have to link our verifications of our privacy policy signings I believe. Not sure on that since we would not be Checkusers elsewhere if we did not do it, so maybe that can be assumed. Cheers  Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 19:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I'm happy to take the responsibility alongside Scott and watch a local CheckUser requests board. I also agree that we probably wouldn't have too many events requiring it here locally and probably won't have a need for any policy that is very different from Meta anyway. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:24, 19 October 2019 (UTC)


 * For your info examples of pages needed for a full local policy:
 * -- Policy
 * -- Discussion on CU Policy includes Steward comments.
 * -- Request for CU
 * -- Archived Case
 * There are several in between pages in this particularly forms etc as well. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 19:56, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems like discussion of a local CU is de facto on hold. Let's see if a dozen or so contributors comment in this discussion. If we can't get that level of participation in a policy debate we're unlikely to get the minimum for any nomination. I generally like the idea of local CU and along with Dave I specifically support the two potential candidates. However, I also took a look at the CU request revision history at meta and I'm seeing such a low level of activity from us that it might not be worth the effort at this time. Having said that I would be willing to open up a nomination discussion with the understanding that it might need to be left open for a long time. ie. there is no point in developing the local policy if we don't have interested candidates who understand that they are agreeing to assume a role at an undetermined future date, if ever. --mikeu talk 21:39, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes there needs to be an interest and wish for this to be fleshed out. In the meantime I am playing around with a copy of your policy here underlines is text I add, strike is to be deleted, also I will link terms that need to be defined. Just first paragraph for now and a work in progress. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 22:04, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank you for taking the initiative on this. At least we'll have the foundation in place if there is consensus to pursue this. One suggestion that I would make is to include some explicit conditional language: if we have 2 or more local CUs then go to some local page for requests, but if no local CUs go to meta. I'd like to take into account the possibility that an unexpected retirement will leave us in an inconsistent state of affairs. Question: if we have local CU does that preclude making requests at meta? I'm thinking of inactivity or wikibreak of locals. Also, roughly how many checks are run per year on a smallish wiki like species? --mikeu talk 23:31, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I was chatting to Dave earlier and pointed out that my preference on a small wiki is to have 3 CUs the minimum is 2 of course, 3 gives us more chance that at least two will be around. However that's not necessary. Yes you can of course go to meta if no local CUs are available for some reason. For example a wikibreak. CUs do have a responsibility to announce if they are going to be unavailable for an extended period of time. On Wikispecies the CUs do have each others email addresses and we have an admins group email we can also use to get the attention of each other. The latter all admins can see so we cannot discuss the case but we can at least email them to get their attention. We also utilise IRC. If for some reason, through retirement for example, you go down to 1 CU then that CU cannot function and the one gone must be immediately replaced, through the usual means. In the meantime any requests have to go straight to the Stewards.
 * On wikispecies we had a major issue a couple of years back where we had a rather active sockpuppeteer. However, we do seem to have finally got the better of that individual and as such we do not get many, about 2-3 a year. We get some suspects also that do not go anywhere. Sometimes what looks like a sock actually is not, in which case the case is dropped.
 * There are advantages and disadvantages to having local CUs. For one we are all in contact with each other and tend to warn each other. As a CU we can request global bans and locks of the stewards and its usually just done, immediately. Of course the stewards do their job and double check, but its taken up very quickly. We also bring you information, we cannot cannot give out private data, but I am often taking information from CUs results done on other wikis and we can check if there may be a problem on our own wiki. Not by doing a CU just by looking at the edit history of known socks on our own wiki. We can then act appropriately. For example I was informed of a user and half a dozen of his socks, I found that all of these had now appeared on wikispecies. But the user had done no harm on wikispecies. I did not block the main account but I can block the known socks, thereby permitting the user to use their main account, since they had done nothing wrong with it, but preventing the socks.
 * In part, although it was not a sockpuppetry issue, this is why I posted a heads up of one user recently here as I am just used to dealing with things at a cross-wiki level. Dave blocked that user based on what he had done here and the information I provided from other wikis. Prevention in other words.
 * Another advantage is that you are dealing with your own problems on site. You do not have to run to the stewards all the time. Do not get me wrong the CUs are watched by the stewards, everything we do is logged. We cannot do anything without the stewards knowing so it has to be justified. This means that if it is a false positive, ie looks like a sock but is not, it is dealt with and dropped without wasting the stewards time.
 * Sorry for the long answer but CU is a complicated issue, I think its best when people understand it. The disadvantages are mostly the requirements for voting, setting it all up etc. But once done I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Be warned the voting for CU's is high stakes, votes for admin can be harsh, for bureaucrats can be brutal, for CU's its up there with Oversighters and Stewards. You need a thick skin to submit to it. People will say what they think with no holds barred. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 00:21, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with the policy so far. Though, I'd like to propose a change to a certain sentence in the policy, which is "It is the abuse of sockpuppets (and in particular voting twice under two different names) which is severely frowned upon". I feel that this wording may give off a lenient view rather than a strict view on sockpuppetry, which, IMO, the strict view is the correct view. I suggest that this sentence be altered to say (bolded words are the proposed changes): "It is the abuse of sockpuppets (and in particular voting twice under two different names) which is strictly forbidden and will lead to an indefinite block on the sockpuppet accounts used". It gives off the impression that abusive sockpuppetry will not be tolerated.

Certainly, this is a minuscule issue... but I'd thought I would bring it up. Thanks. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:48, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with the principal of what you say, however, although I agree that abuse such as vote-stacking as you point out is a very serious issue I do not like to lock policy into black and white decisions. Hence stating the actual punishment does not best serve the use and enactment of the policy. The scenario mentioned could certainly lead to a global block / lock, it could also be dealt with less severely depending on the circumstances and severity of the case at hand. Therefore I am not making that suggested change at this point unless there is a consensus on this point. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 17:16, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Restructuring Policy
As I pointed out above I have been working with a version of the Policy here which could be proposed to get this happening. Now I am going to write it from the point of view that we intend to get local CU's so it will include sections on all this. We cannot do a nomination for CU's until we have a policy in place and this policy must be voted on. All Wikimedia projects are supposed to have a policy on CheckUser, even if it just adopts the one at Meta. I am leaving it to everyone to decide if this will be used. But am preparing it case we can. However I am only going to prepare the policy page itself, like I said it will be written as if we have local checkusers, in place of identifying them I will write to be filled.

This version could be voted on and placed as the local policy since without local CheckUsers we default to the Stewards doing this anyway as per the policy at Meta. Which I will state. I think your current policy had too much in it, was too long, so I intend to simplify it a bit. The important thing is to explain what a CheckUser does and when it can and cannot be used, and how to make a request. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 18:00, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok I have made a draft policy its ready to be presented. It takes out some of the descriptive stuff that will go on the page where people actually apply for a sockpuppet investigation. That page would be something like this one here. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 16:30, 20 October 2019 (UTC)


 * That looks fine to me. If don't intend to make further changes we can open this up for discussion on adopting it. --mikeu talk 18:17, 20 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I made some minor edits. Ready for wider discussion from my perspective. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:07, 21 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Your welcome to move it to an RfC for discussion if you wish. I will answer any questions that come up explaining all the policies and how it works. Thanks for the edits. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 00:28, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposal discussion
Please comment on the recently completed draft of CheckUser policy/Proposal. --mikeu talk 13:42, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

There is clearly a great deal of support for this proposal which has intentionally been left open for a full month given the importance of the topic. Closing as: community support to adopt as official policy. --mikeu talk 00:39, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * this is aligned with WMF policy and looks like a sensible policy to adopt. --mikeu talk 13:52, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * this proposal takes into account at how this is done on other wikis as well as Meta's requirements. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 14:02, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * the policy proposal. Noting that operationally, it will need some modifications, as the Access section is missing, etc. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:47, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I referred to the Access section as Becoming a CheckUser but this can be re-titled to Access if its the preference. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 15:06, 24 October 2019 (UTC)


 * with the stipulation that this is all way over my head. While I am grateful to those dedicated to improving the inetgrity of Wikiversity, I am too busy to learn how these efforts are conducted. In the unlikely event that a cogent opposition to this proposal is presented, I will reexamine my position.  But as been already pointed out in the above discussion, the active Wikiversity community is very small.  The absence of participants in this discussion should in no way be viewed as a sign of indecisiveness or apathy. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:00, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Seems reasonable and useful. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:33, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for surfacing this, Scott. Again, if we decide that we want local CUs, I'll be happy to serve. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:27, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
 * your welcome Justin, this is one of those policies that wikis need to have working, whether we get local CheckUsers or not is for the community to decide, I am also willing if needed, but having the policy in place helps alot even when you go to the Stewards. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 14:00, 28 October 2019 (UTC)


 * the policy proposal. --Bert Niehaus (discuss • contribs) 15:22, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Given the importance of this policy I would suggest leaving this open longer than usual to solicit commentary from the entire community. I see a great deal of support here but would prefer to continue to collect comments to solidify the suport for this endeavor. --mikeu talk 01:19, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 * As I am effectively the proposer of the policy here I will leave it to other sysops to determine how long the proposal should run. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 15:26, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * - I do not find any reason to object. Josephine W. (discuss • contribs) 00:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * the policy proposal. Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 11:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * although proposed changes have not been addressed, I still support the vital points of the policy proposal. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 14:03, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * My apologies had a bsy few days and did not see your point above am anserwing it under your point. Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 17:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I usually do not like pesky vandalism and revert them as soon as I determine them. Soumya-8974 (discuss • contribs) 04:44, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * ., 16:34, 16 November 2019 (UTC).

CU nomination
I have high regard for the fine work that both of you have done here, as do many others participants at en-wv. I am inclined to nominate you for consideration by the community for the newly adopted position of local CU. Given the requirement of a minimum of 25-30 contributors approving (which could take an extended amount of time on our site) I feel the need to verify that both of you are willing to formally accept the responsibility before continuing. Would both of you accept a nomination for CU? Also, do either of you have a strong opinion (based on your enstensive experience) on the question of necessitating the need for a third CU on this site? --mikeu talk 01:42, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the kind words I do consider CheckUser an important function on wikis. Of course it can be readily handled directly by the stewards. If the community would like to take this step I would be happy to accept the nomination. The vote can be carried out on your current page you utilise for Custodian/ Bureaucrat nominations. The major differences are the rules on what is considered a consensus as you point out. As a minimum of two checkusers must be present it is best if both initial checkuser nominations are carried out at the same time. In regards to a third checkuser, I personally favor the idea as it means that in general at least two will hopefully be present at any time it basically gives us a bit of a fallback option in the event someone is away for a week or so. However, it is not necessary. The minimum is two. I would therefore caution that the third may be best looked at from the point of view of can you get three voted on at the same time. You can add a third later if you like this option. In general both Justin and I are available most of the time that I have seen in the 2 odd years we have both been checkusers on Wikispecies. An advantage to you both also is that as both Justin and I are already checkusers, we have already signed the privacy policies, we are already identified to WMF and we already know the checkuser tools and have used them. I do not expect you would get alot of cases here. More likely the benefit will be we will be able to identify and head off cross wiki socks that cause issues if they come this way. I would suggest that to run the vote that one of the bureaucrats here send a message to all active editors here to encourage them to vote. This is best if it did not come from myself or Justin as it should be seen as neutral. However this would help you get to the 25 vote threshold. We certainly did this on Wikispecies also and further had one of our bureaucrats oversee the election process who also examined votes for anything out of the ordinary. Editors here should be encouraged to ask questions also, this is a set of very powerful tools and carry alot of responsibility. Although Justin knows this if anyone else is considering this people should realise this is an election that will attract interest from outside Wikiversity, certainly from Meta and also likely from other wikis that have regular contributors here as well, even if this is not their home wiki. Anyway, if Justin also confirms his nomination I am fine with a nomination being made on the appropriate page and will accept it there as required. Cheers and thanks  Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 02:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * How kind. Yes, I would be happy to have those user rights if the community trusts my judgement, thinks I'm a friend of the project, sees the utility of it (seems like that's a yes), etc. As far as having three, I do think that's handy because I could get hit by a bus or Scott could get busy with the real world and I take CU and RevDel rights seriously: it's good to have the oversite. Thanks again: I hope I can be an asset here whether everyone decides that I should be trusted with the tools or not. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)