Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/CharlotteWebb/Workshop: Difference between revisions
Deryck Chan (talk | contribs) →Proposed remedy: reply |
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::::Indeed - look at it this way. The blocking checkuser heard that CW had used Tor nodes for editing, and fairly enough saw this as a violation of policy and went forward with the intention to block more Tor IPs. He ran the checkuser and, in good faith, blocked all of the IPs, expecting them to have been Tor exit nodes. Of course, we can all appreciate that he should have been a '''lot''' more careful, and should have run a check on every IP to determine whether or not it was indeed a Tor node - it is certain that some public IP addresses will have been hardblocked because of this, which will cause untold collateral damage. [[User:Martinp23|Mart]]'''[[User_talk:Martinp23|inp23]]''' 17:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC) |
::::Indeed - look at it this way. The blocking checkuser heard that CW had used Tor nodes for editing, and fairly enough saw this as a violation of policy and went forward with the intention to block more Tor IPs. He ran the checkuser and, in good faith, blocked all of the IPs, expecting them to have been Tor exit nodes. Of course, we can all appreciate that he should have been a '''lot''' more careful, and should have run a check on every IP to determine whether or not it was indeed a Tor node - it is certain that some public IP addresses will have been hardblocked because of this, which will cause untold collateral damage. [[User:Martinp23|Mart]]'''[[User_talk:Martinp23|inp23]]''' 17:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC) |
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::::::"Untold"? Not really. Collateral blocks happen, people complain about the, and they are fixed. Even editors on hardblocked IPs get to edit their own talk pages. I'm not defending the blocker's actions, but re-checking hundreds and hundreds of IP addresses to ferret out the (apparently) small number that were ''not'' Tor nodes strikes me as a massive and unreasonable project; we do almost all of this by hand, and it would have taken days if not weeks to do this. As it turns out, the presence of CW on an IP was pretty strong evidence that the IP was a Tor node (or some other open proxy; I don't know offhand if CW used non-Tor anonymizers.) --[[User:Jpgordon|jpgordon]]<sup><small>[[User talk:Jpgordon|∇∆∇∆]]</small></sup> 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC) |
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Revision as of 18:06, 27 June 2007
Proposed remedy
Greetings. I have an idea for a proposed remedy, but I'm not sure how best to word it. The idea behind it is, we don't want anyone's privacy violated, but on the other hand, it's good for the community to know if an admin candidate is violating policy or not. My idea is that one of the standard questions for admin candidates would be something like "Do you use TORs, and do you give a checkuser permission to state whether or not you use them?", worded generically enough to cover all bases and to avoid WP:BEANS, but specifically enough to avoid confusion. The admin candidate would, of course, not be required to answer this question, or could answer "I value my privacy and decline to authorize a needless checkuser search on me." If (s)he did, however, answer that (s)he did not use TORs and did authorize a checkuser to be performed on h(im|er), then it would be acceptable if someone with checkuser permissions state whether or not (s)he uses TORs.
I'm not writing this on the main page here, for two reasons. One, I'm unclear how best to word it. Two, I'm not sure whether ArbCom will end up stating what is appropriate checkuser conduct or not. (I or anyone else could, right now, ask this question of all admin candidates.) So I guess I'm looking for community input as well. Is there anything wrong with me asking a person with checkuser permissions to check whether I use TORs or not, and to state publicly whether I do or not? (Obviously I don't think anyone should feel pressured to ask for this.) It seems clear it doesn't violate my privacy if I'm the one who asks for this. – Quadell (talk) (random) 00:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not entirely sure, but I think that asking for checkuser to be carried out on yourself is considered an inappropriate use of checkuser. I can't remember the exact argument, but I think that it is essentially that checkuser can only be used to indicate guilt, not prove innocence, if that makes sense. In any case, TOR use can occur before, during and after RfAs, so focusing on that point doesn't really solve anything. Carcharoth 08:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Well, it's inappropriate if the community deems in inappropriate, and it's acceptable if the community deems it acceptable. I also don't see the argument that "the nominee could start using TORs later" as a good reason to discard the idea. I still think it would be useful. – Quadell (talk) (random) 10:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Carcharoth, what you were thinking of is at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser in the "Does your request belong here?" table. (Situation) Checkuser on yourself to "prove your innocence". (Solution) Such requests are not accepted. Please do not ask. Vassyana 11:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Well, it's inappropriate if the community deems in inappropriate, and it's acceptable if the community deems it acceptable. I also don't see the argument that "the nominee could start using TORs later" as a good reason to discard the idea. I still think it would be useful. – Quadell (talk) (random) 10:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Under the new OP policy, this seems unnecessary. One point of argument of this arb case is that Charlotte's tor-using acts was revealed just before the policy was rewritten. Before the rewrite, her acts are illegal, while afterwards they are totally legitimate. --Deryck C. 17:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Blocks of IP's
Just a quick question, how are we going to know who did the blockings of all CharlotteWebb's IP's? It looks like that could be a key issue to the case, but there are serious privacy concerns involved in releasing the actual IP addresses - anyone any thoughts? Ryan Postlethwaite 16:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- All that is necessary is that the Arbitration Committee should know it, and as far as I am aware, they do. They are the ones who will be making a judgment on this case. It is not necessary that the community at large should know it. ElinorD (talk) 17:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- In the history of the Evidence page, there is a deleted edit which contains a link to wikipediareview. For some reason, the content of that link was determined to be an attack, when in fact it provides extremely poignant evidence as to who did the blocking (posted by a user on that site under the name Charlotte Webb - a user who does indeed seem to be the editor at the focus of this dispute). My reading of our badsites policy is that we aviod linking to harrasing/attacking content. We don't remove any and every link to even the "good" content on a site, based on some corners of it (think about it - having such an interpretation, with the general touchiness of some editors, could well lead us to prevent linking to nearly every blog!). Needless to say, I disagree with the deletion of the link, and disagree on a procedural level wrt how it was carried out (no note in the edit summary attributing the original poster when the edit was reinstated, but that's me being pedantic!) - I also feel that the "Delete" button needn't have been used - a simple removal of the link from the active version of the page would have done fine. Martinp23 17:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Elinor here. Also, I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere: it is likely (in my view) that the admin who blocked CW's non-TOR IPs thought he/she was blocking only TORs. It's not obvious what's a TOR and what's not. Yes, he/she should have been more careful, but I doubt it was intentional. – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, a lot more careful... every single IP that she every used? Wouldn't that be a bit of a difficult accident? I also agree, deleting the page was not needed. Majorly (talk) 17:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Elinor here. Also, I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere: it is likely (in my view) that the admin who blocked CW's non-TOR IPs thought he/she was blocking only TORs. It's not obvious what's a TOR and what's not. Yes, he/she should have been more careful, but I doubt it was intentional. – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- In the history of the Evidence page, there is a deleted edit which contains a link to wikipediareview. For some reason, the content of that link was determined to be an attack, when in fact it provides extremely poignant evidence as to who did the blocking (posted by a user on that site under the name Charlotte Webb - a user who does indeed seem to be the editor at the focus of this dispute). My reading of our badsites policy is that we aviod linking to harrasing/attacking content. We don't remove any and every link to even the "good" content on a site, based on some corners of it (think about it - having such an interpretation, with the general touchiness of some editors, could well lead us to prevent linking to nearly every blog!). Needless to say, I disagree with the deletion of the link, and disagree on a procedural level wrt how it was carried out (no note in the edit summary attributing the original poster when the edit was reinstated, but that's me being pedantic!) - I also feel that the "Delete" button needn't have been used - a simple removal of the link from the active version of the page would have done fine. Martinp23 17:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed - look at it this way. The blocking checkuser heard that CW had used Tor nodes for editing, and fairly enough saw this as a violation of policy and went forward with the intention to block more Tor IPs. He ran the checkuser and, in good faith, blocked all of the IPs, expecting them to have been Tor exit nodes. Of course, we can all appreciate that he should have been a lot more careful, and should have run a check on every IP to determine whether or not it was indeed a Tor node - it is certain that some public IP addresses will have been hardblocked because of this, which will cause untold collateral damage. Martinp23 17:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- "Untold"? Not really. Collateral blocks happen, people complain about the, and they are fixed. Even editors on hardblocked IPs get to edit their own talk pages. I'm not defending the blocker's actions, but re-checking hundreds and hundreds of IP addresses to ferret out the (apparently) small number that were not Tor nodes strikes me as a massive and unreasonable project; we do almost all of this by hand, and it would have taken days if not weeks to do this. As it turns out, the presence of CW on an IP was pretty strong evidence that the IP was a Tor node (or some other open proxy; I don't know offhand if CW used non-Tor anonymizers.) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed - look at it this way. The blocking checkuser heard that CW had used Tor nodes for editing, and fairly enough saw this as a violation of policy and went forward with the intention to block more Tor IPs. He ran the checkuser and, in good faith, blocked all of the IPs, expecting them to have been Tor exit nodes. Of course, we can all appreciate that he should have been a lot more careful, and should have run a check on every IP to determine whether or not it was indeed a Tor node - it is certain that some public IP addresses will have been hardblocked because of this, which will cause untold collateral damage. Martinp23 17:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)