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Wikimedia's volunteer response team (VRT) handles copyright permissions, email inquiries from the public, reuse inquiries, article errors, and a wide range of non-public inquiries. The email service is operated and managed by a cross-project team of volunteers at the Meta-Wiki level and not by the English Wikipedia community. Actions by VRT members on English Wikipedia are ultimately subject to review by the Arbitration Committee. Please be aware that there is sometimes a backlog in processing tickets sent to the permissions-en queue. This backlog is currently 0 days. This noticeboard is primarily for Permissions verification and inquiries for text and files (hosted on the English Wikipedia) said to have been granted permission via VRTS. Requests for VRT member review of matters that have been described as VRT comments or actions. Other inquiries to VRT members that do not involve, disclose or reference private material. Do not post Private information or links to private information (including but not limited to emails, phone numbers, physical addresses). Fishing requests (asking for all details of a ticket or generally probing ticket information). You should make a specific request and clearly state the reason for your request. Additional questions on a point, once a VRT member has indicated they cannot answer due to privacy issues. (Further inquiries and any complaints should be made via email.) Requests for VRTS access (use meta:VRT/Volunteering instead). Questions regarding media hosted on Wikimedia Commons (use Commons:Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard instead). Media questions unrelated to VRT (use Wikipedia:Media copyright questions instead). Disputes For disputes over VRT actions on English Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team § Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution § Sensitive issues and functionary actions. Useful VRT email addresses Removal of private or defamatory information Requests for oversight or oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org Submission of photos to be used in a Wikipedia article photosubmissionwikimedia.org Follow the instructions here Confirmation of copyright permission permissions-enwikimedia.org Follow the format given here Reports of threatened harm to self or others emergencywikimedia.org Guidance: Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm Reports of child pornography legal-reportswikimedia.org See Wikimedia Legal Policies Issues with an article about you or your organization info-en-qwikimedia.org Guidance: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Help Any other inquiries involving private information info-enwikimedia.org

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Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Is_a_year_too_long_to_wait_for_an_explanation.3F

Could an editor with access to OTRS please comment on the discussion linked in the title? Yoenit (talk) 22:30, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a tough one, since the admin who left the note on Wiki is not the admin who handled the ticket. Because OTRS sometimes puts people in delicate positions, it's not common protocol to "out" the person who handled a ticket if they do not "out" themselves. Using some examples from my own work, I've dealt with people with a history of stalking via OTRS. At that point, they could not easily have tracked me by my name, which is not exactly rare, but if they had known my username they could do things to make life very painful for me. :) I'm not saying that this is such a situation; I'm just trying to explain why (I believe) this protocol exists.

I will approach the person who handled the ticket off Wiki to give the agent the opportunity to provide feedback here publicly or in private communication with Geo Swan.

But if the agent does not choose to respond, it's important to remember that there are options. OTRS actions are not "office" actions; they are not unchallengeable. At that point, I would probably consider proceeding to step 2 of Wikipedia:OTRS#Disagreeing with a_team-related edit. I have not read the OTRS correspondence in question because I did not wish to prejudice myself before replying, but looking at the article, I myself question whether the material removed was WP:UNDUE. A clumsy word count (I'm not bothering to remove the reference numbers :)) shows that the article before removal of that content was 857 words. The section removed was 398; almost half of the article was given to this incident. Is this what this woman is notable for? In addition, I'm not sure that WP:NPF wouldn't apply...she does seem notable enough for an entry, but she still seems to be "not generally well known." If I were to take this to step 2, I would raise these issues and try to work out what, if any, coverage should be given to this incident in the BLP. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

The OTRS team member who originally processed the ticket has finally sent me an email. They closed with a wish that they hoped the email answered all my questions. I am sorry to say it did not answer all my questions, far from it. Rather, the email opened additional questions for me.

First let me say that I am sure the OTRS team is generally composed of well intentioned individuals who are working hard to do an important task. Having said that I think this incident illustrates that there is great room for improvement in how team members carry out their duties.

One of the additional questions the email raised for me is which passages in the email that original OTRS team member thought couldn't be left on the article's talk page. I didn't recognize in the email any secrets, anything that couldn't have been left on the article's talk page, except, perhaps, the identity of that original OTRS team member.

I still have not had a meaningful explanation why the original OTRS team member didn't respond when the second OTRS team member drew my questions to their attention on October 26, 2010.

As I noted on Talk:Kyndra Rotunda and when I raised this on the village pump, the warning in this edit summary says "before modifying the prior edit, please see ticket:2010093010005573".

1. This really gives zero information as to what was a problem with the excised material.
2. This really gives zero information as to whether a good faith contributor could work on a different version of the excised section without risking administrator action. and, if that good faith contributor were open to doing so, how they would go about it.
3. Messages should be left on the article's talk page -- not buried in an edit summary only visible if one takes a look at the article's contribution history. Trying to discuss anything complex in an edit summary is a trigger for edit warring, as the most natural way to reply is with an "undo" so one can leave one's own reply in another edit summary -- an instant edit war. I urge all OTRS team members to never convey their warnings solely in their edit summaries.
4. Since only OTRS team members can read the OTRS ticket it is maddening to be told to read the ticket.
5. I still have not had a an explanation as to the boundaries of what the warning in this edit summary was warning what warning
6. Is it the usual procedure for one OTRS team member to leave warnings related to an OTRS ticket when another OTRS team member hasn't finished dealing with the ticket?
7. Is it the usual procedure for a second OTRS team member to start to followup on another OTRS team member's discussion, only to say they are not in a position to explain the decision?

I accept, at face value, that the original OTRS team member genuinely thinks that their email contains information that can't be discussed on wiki, while still complying with all our policies. Out of respect for their opinion that the email has to be kept secret I will not quote the letter. This means I will have to hold some of the additional questions their email opened for me.

I think I can say that their basic concern was that the excised section was too long. I have a problem with this, as it really seems to me that this concern would be an ordinary editorial concern -- one that should have been discussed on Talk:Kyndra Rotunda. I am fighting from saying something like "I don't think this is what OTRS team member should be exercising their authority." I went looking for the guide for OTRS team members. I couldn't find one. So I can't cite what the OTRS is intended for, in sufficient detail.

I will paraphrase that the letter complained most of the references were to local papers and law journals -- as if law journals somehow weren't reliable sources. I am skeptical that this negative opinion about the reliability of law journals could be defended at WP:RSN. The letter went on to say there was little to distinguish Rotunda's sexual harrassment lawsuit from any mundane sexual harrassment lawsuit. I have no experience with mundane sexual harrassment lawsuits, but let me ask if there isn't one important difference? Isn't it pretty rare to be able to find coverage of sexual harrassment lawsuits that spans eight months as we see in this table of selected references:

date	reference
2009-10-05	Ex-Clinic Director Kyndra Rotunda Sues George Mason for Sexual Harassment
2009-10-05	Ex-Professor Sues George Mason Law School for Harassment
2009-10-19	George Mason School of Law Sued for Sexual Harassment
2010-04-27	Trial Looms in Hard-Fought Law Prof Sexual Harassment Case at GMU
2010-04-28	GMU law professor faces harassment suit
2010-04-28	GMU professor seeks dismissal of woman’s suit
2010-05-18	Sex Harassment and the Truth
2010-05-24	George Mason, Law Dean Win Bench Dismissal of Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit
2010-05-24	Covington Secures Victory for George Mason University in Sexual Harassment Case
2010-05-25	(Dismissed) Lawsuit of the Day: Rotunda v. Zengerle
2010-05-25	Judge Dismisses Most of Sex Harassment Case Against George Mason Law
2010-05-25	Rotunda lawsuit dismissed, almost
2010-05-26	GMU prevails in sexual harassment case
2010-05-26	GMU sex harassment suit dismissed
2010-06-08	Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit Against George Mason Legal Clinic Exec Is Settled
2010-06-08	Update: Rotunda v. Zengerle Has Settled
2010-06-09	Settlement Reached in Suit against George Mason Law Prof
2010-06-10	George Mason Reportedly Settles Rotunda Harassment Lawsuit With No Payment of Damages

Candidly Geo Swan (talk) 08:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, let's see. I'll try to organize this.

• "One of the additional questions the email raised for me is which passages in the email that original OTRS team member thought couldn't be left on the article's talk page"; "I still have not had a meaningful explanation why the original OTRS team member didn't respond when the second OTRS team member drew my questions to their attention on October 26, 2010."

Those would be a questions for the original OTRS team member. :) Nobody else can answer them. If you're in communication with that OTRS member now, I would recommend asking if you wish to know.

• Issues with the language of the warning, the placement of the warning, and "an explanation as to the boundaries of what the warning in this edit summary was warning what warning"

Those would be issues/questions for the second OTRS team member. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the last, but in any case his intentions are best described by him.

• Re: usual procedure:

OTRS correspondents do not own tickets any more than editors own articles. They change hands frequently enough for this to be considered a normal procedure. In this case, it seems that OTRS agent 2 was essentially functioning as a clerk rather than taking over the ticket, which was complete, simply notifying the community that the ticket existed and should be consulted before reverting the edit. This would probably be why, in this case, OTRS agent 2 did not feel that he could speak for the other agent. The good news here is that, now that we have an OTRS noticeboard, these issues can be more easily researched these days.

At to the rest, I've already opined elsewhere that this is not the appropriate forum for content concerns, so I'm not going to attempt to weigh in on that here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:21, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

• OTRS team member B's position seems to be that they don't have any obligation to explain what the ticket meant because they were simply implementing a decision made by OTRS team member A. OTRS team member A's position seems to be that they didn't have any obligation to explain what the ticket meant because although they made the decision on the ticket they took no actions to implement that decision on en.wiki.

  I do not consider this acceptable, and I am reluctant to discuss this via email because although both team members have now had ample opportunity to reconsider things and own up to normal human error, neither have done so. If OTRS team members are accountable to the rest of the team, then I think it would be best for the project for this incident to be discussed in the open. To whatever extent OTRS team members are responsible to the rest of the WMF community I prefer to have this discussion in the open, so the wider WMF community can see how well the OTRS procedures work; do OTRS team members who err have other team members help them see where they erred?

  I will repeat that I didn't see anything in the email from team member A that breached the privacy of the complainant and that couldn't be recorded on the article's talk page, or in other on-wiki fora. Although I don't see anything that requires protection I won't quote team member A's email on-wiki.

  I am very sorry to say one interpretation of team member A's decision is that they used their OTRS authority to step in and take sides in a content matter in a non-neutral manner, when their concern could have and should have been discussed on the article's talk page. Geo Swan (talk) 16:25, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that the questions you are asking are questions related to the mindset and the thoughts of the agents involved. Not only do we not know what they were thinking, but we don't have access to your correspondence with them and we don't know what they've said to you or if you are interpreting their positions as they would. Only one person in this world will ever be tell you with any authority "which passages in the email that original OTRS team member thought...." That said, when you write this, it raises some confusion for me:

I am very sorry to say one interpretation of team member A's decision is that they used their OTRS authority to step in and take sides in a content matter in a non-neutral manner, when their concern could have and should have been discussed on the article's talk page.

How can they be perceived as having stepped in to take sides on a content matter in a non-neutral manner when they have never edited or interacted with the content at all? Staying away and saying nothing seems to be the very antithesis of stepping in and taking sides. :/ So far as I know, the first this agent has ever heard that the content removal (done by somebody else) was subsequently disputed is in the email I sent two days ago.

What I know here is that we have one OTRS team member who notified the community of the existence of a ticket and asked that it be checked before content was restored. Since he did not handle the ticket, he deferred question about it to the agent. I do not know if the other OTRS team member ever received his private correspondence; it certainly seems the other OTRS team member followed up with you with all due swiftness after receiving my private correspondence. Emails do get lost. I understand that you have been waiting quite some time, but in the absence of evidence that you have been deliberately ignored, at this point WP:AGF still applies. We do not leap to "one interpretation" that suggests a misuse of authority without more evidence, particularly not when that interpretation is based on somebody stepping in and taking sides on an article they've never edited. :)

If you want to ask if the communication system in this case worked well, I'll say that clearly it did not. And I'll repeat that one of the purposes of this board is to help avoid issues such as this. In other words, we recognize that communication issues happen and have already created a board to address them.

Moving on, now that you are in communication with the OTRS agent, if you disagree with the decision, you are free to follow the processes in policy. This would not, however, be the best place to iron out the content question. You will only confuse matters by bringing it in. This is not a content dispute noticeboard. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

• I've been told this is not the forum for discussing the content issues behind the OTRS request. I have also been asked why I say the OTRS team members who processed this ticket gave the unfortunate appearance that they made a non-neutral decision to take sides in a disagreement over content issues. I explained here. Geo Swan (talk) 17:45, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• One OTRS team member processed this ticket. I'm afraid that your note continues to leave me mystified how a person can give the appearance of making a non-neutral decision to take sides by not making an appearance or taking sides. :/ But good luck with the content discussion. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• Earlier I wrote: "both team members have now had ample opportunity to reconsider things and own up to normal human error". The way I see it the second OTRS team member shouldn't have left the cryptic warning unless he or she too was satisfied with the first OTRS team member's reasoning. The way I see it the seocnd OTRS team member should not have left a warning they could not explain.
• I am going to repeat that I strongly suspect there has been nothing sent to the OTRS team which couldn't have been written on the article's talk page.
• How did the OTRS team members give the appearance of a lapse of neutrality and give the appearance of siding with one side of a disagreement. Well, I explained this in more detail back on the talk page. I think the decision makers had an obligation to look at the article's recent revision history. The version the decision makers locked down was a version the complainant had violated WP:3RR over the course of eleven minutes. Prior to trying to excise the section on the sexual harrassment suit the complainant tried to replace the existing version with a sanitized version, which I think many contributors, or most contributors, would agree did not comply with WP:NPOV. What the contribution history shows is that the complainant was prepared to have the sexual harrassment lawsuit covered, so long as they could control the wording. It was only when they got pushback over the neutrality of their version that they wanted coverage of the lawsuit excised.
• By locking down the prefered version of someone unwilling, unable, or unaware of their obligation to explain themselves the decisionmakers gave the appearance of lapsing from neutrality and picking sides.
• Please see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2011 September 28#Jeffrey H. Norwitz and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffrey H. Norwitz. A recent deletion review and following procedural {{afd}}. I think the discussions there show the wider WMF community does not want notable individuals to try to control how they are covered here, so long as that coverage is neutrally written and is well referenced.
• I am going to be repetetive. I strongly suspect that there is nothing on this ticket which couldn't be written on the talk page. Geo Swan (talk) 19:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Herbert Mataré

Hi, I don't get a response on WP:BLPN (see section Herbert Mataré) so I ask here for the OTRS part.

According to User:Wikinaut (talk) Herbert Mataré died on September 2. I did not find any reference yet, but he has send a copy of the death card to OTRS: "Dem Support-Team liegt unter Ticket:2011092210019198 ein Scan der Todesanzeige vor".

• Can you confirm the content?
• Is WP:BLPN the correct noticeboard to check if an OTRS ticket is accepted as reference to change the status of a BLP article to non-living?

Kind Regards, SchreyP ^(messages) 21:36, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't access the ticket, so it's not in info-en. My gueess (from the language) would be that it's in info-de, so you'd need to find someone with access to those queues. If you speak any German, I'd suggest trying the German Wikipedia's admins' npticeboard (or OTRS noticeboard if they have one). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:40, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I can list this for attention on the OTRS wiki. Please let me know if you still require assistance with this. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 14:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes some help is welcome. For my information, is there just one OTRS for all WP wikis or a separate for every language? -- SchreyP ^(messages) 07:06, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

There's one OTRS system, but different agents have access to different queues, so most agents from en WP will have access to info-en (which is for tickets in English, usually relating to the English Wikipedia), but very few will have access to info-de (which is for tickets in German, mostly to do with the German Wikipedia). However, there is an OTRS wiki, which is a private wiki for coordiantion between OTRS agents, to which all agents have access. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:52, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

• I have opened a case on this. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 16:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi thank you both for the information and help. Let's see what the case brings. -- SchreyP ^(messages) 19:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

No one has responded yet. I will try emailing the list when I am on a computer from which I can access my email. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 20:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Thanks KillerChihuahua. I already thought this was "dying silently". -- SchreyP ^(messages) 21:03, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

email sent. I emailed the en list; my German is non-existent, but I am sure there are OTRS personnel who speak German and handle the German tickets who subscribe to the en list. If I'm wrong, then I'll try the de mailing list and hope someone there doesn't circular file my email due to it being in English. Hopefully this will gain a result, though. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 12:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've identified the agent who handled the ticket and asked him to stop by here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:23, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not the agent who handled the case, but I can answer the question nevertheless. Yes, the ticket is in info-de, the german language queue. The PDF we got sent contains the scan of the death notice. It contains the birthdate (22.09.1912), and the day of death (02.09.2011), plus a list of people mourning the deceased. Unfortunately it's not mentioned where this death notice was posted, but it looks credible. --Guandalug (talk) 14:31, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey Moonriddengirl, thanks to be so kind of stepping into; and Guandalug thank you for answering the question :)

In the mean time I have seen that administrator Canadian Paul ^(talk) has changed category "Living people" to "2011 deaths", so I suppose that the OTRS ticket is valid as reference for now. I guess that soon a public obituary article will appear, that can replace this reference.

Case is resolved for me. Thank you all who was involved. -- SchreyP ^(messages) 20:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Text permission for one or two articles

Permission to use text from an online document is posted at Talk:Paul Shoup, ticket 2011100610000127. The document is being used with attribution (and copied verbatim at some points, if I remember rightly) at Paul Shoup House; could someone please check the ticket and then move it over to the house's talk page? I ask because I'd appreciate knowing whether (1) all of the online document is cc-by-sa-3.0, or (2) if only part of the document is cc-by-sa-3.0, and I think it might help if we had a comment about that at the house's talk page. Nyttend (talk) 02:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I copied the tag over to the other page. The content in the application (linked from the template) supplied by Garavaglia Architecture (pretty much the entire application) is covered by the release as a work for hire. – Adrignola talk 03:19, 11 October 2011 (UTC)