WP:CUOS2023

The community consultation phase is closed. The Committee has announced the appointments.

The current time and date is 20:24, Wednesday, December 25, 2024 (UTC) .

The Arbitration Committee is soliciting applications, primarily from those who wish to join the CheckUser team, but also from those who might be particularly beneficial to the Oversight team.

Prospective applicants must be familiar with (i) policies relevant to CU and/or OS and (ii) the global privacy policy and related documents. They must have good communication and team-working skills. CheckUser candidates must be familiar with basic networking topics and with SPI tools and techniques, and preferably are willing to volunteer at ACC and/or UTRS.

Applicants must also be:

an administrator on the English Wikipedia;
available to regularly assist with the workload;
familiar with Wikipedia processes, policies, and guidelines;
at least 18 years of age and have legal majority in their jurisdiction of residence;
willing to disclose all other accounts they have operated to the committee;
willing to agree to the WMF Access to Non-Public Information Policy (L37) and the VRT Users Confidentiality Agreement (L45).

We welcome all applicants with suitable interest to apply, but this year we have particular need of checkuser applicants who are:

Experienced in analyzing behavioral evidence & editing patterns for sockpuppetry investigations.
Familiar with basic IP addressing, CIDR notation, IPv6, dynamic vs static addressing.
Engaged with the IP masking initiative.
Familiar with identification of factors that may affect the interpretation of CU results, such as the IP's ISP (mobile, shared, dynamic, institutional, P2P, proxy, etc), location (countries with atypical ISP setups), activity.
Active users of non-standard venues, such as IRC, the account creation interface, VRT, the Unblock Ticket Request System, Discord.
Interested (or better still, experienced) in handling private evidence related to paid editing, including sockpuppetry investigations and reports submitted to the VRT paid editing queue.
Interested in mentoring editors who wish to become SPI clerks.

We will consider oversight applicants who can strengthen our 24-hour support, notably editors active 0100 to 0600 UTC, likely those resident in Asia and Oceania.

Applicants must be aware that they are likely to receive considerable internal and external scrutiny. External scrutiny may include attempts to investigate on- and off-wiki activities; previous candidates have had personal details revealed and unwanted contact made with employers and family. We are unable to prevent this and such risks will continue if you are successful.

Appointment process

Dates are provisional and subject to change

Applications: 4 September to 16 September: Candidates self-nominate by email to arbcom-en-cwikimedia.org. Each candidate will receive an application questionnaire to be completed and returned to the arbcom-en-c mailing list before the nomination period ends. The questionnaire will include a nomination statement, to a maximum of 250 words, for inclusion on the candidate's public nomination sub-page(s).

Review period: 17 September to 18 September

was 17 September to 21 September

The committee will review applications and ask the functionary team for their feedback.

Notification of candidates: 18 September

was 21 September to 24 September

The committee will notify candidates going forward for community consultation and create the candidate subpages containing the submitted nomination statements.

Community consultation: 19 September to 23 September

was 25 September to 4 October

Nomination statements will be published and candidates invited to answer questions publicly. The community is invited to participate. Please note changes from previous consultation phases:

Editors may ask a maximum of two questions per candidate;
Editors may comment on each candidate with a limit of 500 words, including replies to other editors. Discussion will be sectioned and monitored by the Arbitration Committee and the clerks;
Please refrain from bolded votes, as this is a consultation and not a community consensus.

Comments may be posted on the candidates' subpages or submitted privately by email to arbcom-en-c

wikimedia.org. Editors are encouraged to include a detailed rationale, supported by relevant links where appropriate.

Appointments: by 15 October: The committee will review community comments and other relevant factors, finalize an internal resolution, and publish the resulting appointments. Successful candidates are required to sign the Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information prior to receiving permissions. Oversighters and CheckUsers who intend to work the VRT paid editing queue must sign the VRT Users Confidentiality Agreement.

Candidates

To comment on candidates, please use section edit buttons to edit the appropriate candidate subpage(s).

CheckUser

The community consultation phase has ended. Cabayi (talk) 09:23, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

DatGuy

DatGuy (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Nomination statement: Hello, I'm DatGuy, and I'm applying for the CheckUser team. After my RfA last year, I was going over the administrative backlogs when SPI caught my eye in a way I didn't expect. After reading up on the patrolling administrator instructions, I've gone about handling the cases that are available to me, and helped with emptying the backlog entirely (despite the quick resurgence) earlier as well as contributing some improvements to GeneralNotability's spihelper script. I feel fairly confident in my ability to discern whether two accounts are related through public evidence, or also rather importantly whether they're unrelated. I am also experienced in the AbuseFilter extension and its use to track sockpuppeteers. The CheckUser tool would allow me to reduce the other backlogs, both on-wiki and in various queues, and I believe that especially with the upcoming IP masking changes more CheckUsers will be needed to mitigate bad actors.

Standard questions for all candidates (DatGuy)

Please describe any relevant on-Wiki experience you have for this role.
As mentioned in my nomination statement, following my RfA I took an interest to SPI. Starting slowly as a patrolling administrator, I began picking up the ins and outs of SPI, including behavioural ways to conclude whether accounts are sockpuppets, meatpuppets, or totally unrelated, proper proxy detection and handling (with help from MarioGom), and more. I contributed to the case backlog hitting zero (despite the quick rebound) and made a few improvements to GeneralNotability's spihelper script.
Please outline, without breaching your personal privacy, what off-Wiki experience or technical expertise you have for this role.
Keeping it intentionally vague, I go about my workday with a need to look into things deeper than surface level while ensuring I avoid confirmation bias about any preconceived notions, which I believe translates well into SPI. I am also regularly in and around sensitive information.
Do you hold advanced permissions (checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward) on this or other WMF projects? If so, please list them. Also, do you have VRT permissions? If so, to which queues?
I do not hold any advanced permissions on any WMF project. I previously had access to the VRT info- and permissions- queues, but they were removed in October 2020 for inactivity.

Questions for this candidate (DatGuy)

Editors may ask a maximum of two questions per candidate.

The following question intends to test your understanding of the CU policy and the way CU checks are handled on the English Wikipedia. If you were a CheckUser, would it be permissible for you to run a CU check on me right now, based solely on the fact that I am asking you this very question at this venue? 78.28.44.127 (talk) 23:03, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No. CU is used to counter disruptive behaviour (encompassing sockpuppetry, vandalism, UPE, etc.), and asking a question here is no reason to believe you are engaging in it. DatGuy^Talk_Contribs 09:35, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifying my earlier response, this is based on the (possibly overly optimistic) belief you are genuinely an unregistered user who's interested in the CUOS appointments. If I were more cynical, I may believe you are trying to either evade scrutiny (WP:SCRUTINY), intentionally deceive by editing while logged out (WP:LOUTSOCK), or possibly attempting to impact internal discussions that would affect your other account (WP:PROJSOCK and its footnote), and hence run a check on you in spirit of WP:BADSOCK. DatGuy^Talk_Contribs 12:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've blocked the above IP for obvious project socking. We do not have to play "guess the master" for such clear disruption of our processes. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:47, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (DatGuy)

Comments may also be submitted to the Arbitration Committee privately by emailing arbcom-en-cwikimedia.org. Please note that the candidate will be provided the opportunity to respond to a paraphrased version of any emailed comments; the sender's name will not be provided.

As a CU who spends a lot of time at SPI, I've seen DatGuy contributing there and can't think of any problems I've seen. Having CU will make them more effective at combating sockpuppetry so I support their being given the bit. RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Relaying here my comments from the functionary consultation - DatGuy seems competent, and sensible enough to learn the things he does not yet know. He is an occasional (or more?) patrolling admin at SPI and I've never had an issue with his actions. Happy to see him join the CU team. firefly ( t · c ) 15:36, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations on your forthcoming appointment DatGuy.
To expand on my reasoning: They say also rather importantly whether they're unrelated: this is absolutely fundamental, and—in light of it being something that should be nailed above the door to the CU-wiki but probably isn't!—they should be tooled up right now merely on that. It is so easy to go looking for things which make people look like socks that, were one of a gung-ho mindset, that one forgets to look for reasons they might not be. SN54129 16:39, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wholeheartedly endorse DatGuy's request — they're a calm and collected administrator, who is quick to stop, ask for help and listen when unsure. They will make a good addition to the CU corp — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 17:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm familiar with DatGuy's work at SPI and I'm satisfied that he has the judgment and technical knowledge required for the role. Moreover, he's clearly the most qualified of all the candidates. Spicy (talk) 18:48, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Results

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to welcome the following editor to the functionary team:

DatGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.

The committee thanks all members of the community who participated and helped bring this process to a successful conclusion.

For the Arbitration Committee, Cabayi (talk) 20:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 50 § 2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidate appointed

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