User:Barberio/RFC-sandbox

Introductory statement
Please use this section to make statements on the history and circumstances of this issue.

Statement by Barberio
OTRS is the name used to refer to a group of volunteers who work to assist the foundation, they do so by addressing issues raised from complaints to the foundation over content in the wikipedia projects. In the normal operation of their role, they have access to confidential information in the complaint that should not be disclosed. The majority of their actions are to refuse to act when spurious complaints are made, but they also act as proxies of the foundation to edit the wikipedia projects when there are complaints with merit.

OTRS became a distinct group in 2006, and initialy was instructed that it had no special powers within the individual projects.

OTRS members are not required to identify their membership on the projects they are members of. They are also not required to identify any potential conflicts of interest they may have. They are not elected into their position, and there appears to be no community consultation on selection of OTRS volunteers. It is currently beyond the scope of a project's arbitration committee to remove them from OTRS membership for misconduct on their project.

In 2007 the group became the focus of a news article, after the mishandling of a invalid complaint about a trademark led to the Lava Lamp page being blanked with no obvious reason stated by the OTRS volunteer for his actions. At the time, James Whales stated clearly that OTRS volunteers had no special powers over the projects.

Shortly after that, the page OTRS describing the OTRS, including text granting volunteer actions special protections, was marked as policy. There appears to have been no community discussion on this, and no consensus was sought.

This position has been carried through, until it has been noted and currently disputed that it is a legitimate policy due to lack of consensus to support it.

The current page grants the following special privileges to OTRS members on en.wikipedia,
 * Entitlement to refuse use of the Dispute Resolution process to dispute their edits on grounds of confidentiality.
 * Entitlement to protection from reversion by non OTRS members for any edit made under OTRS auspices.
 * Entitlement to use 'Oversight' powers to edit article history.

OTRS actions may be 'peer reviewed', but there is no clear process for doing so beyond asking another OTRS member to do so. There is no requirement that the results of the 'peer review' be published or acted on.

OTRS actions may be "subject to review by the Arbitration Committee through the normal processes of dispute resolution", however as previous mentioned the OTRS volunteer is entitled to refuse this on grounds of confidentiality, and the Arbitration Committee may not remove OTRS membership.

The status of the page as "policy" is currently actively disputed. --Barberio (talk) 13:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Endorsed By:

Statements by Barberio
The major issue with OTRS as it is currently constitutied, is the poor ability for the community on the individual projects to vet OTRS members and ensure they are acting correctly.

There are several individual problems.

Anonymity
Endorsed By:
 * Anonymity of OTRS membership means there is no way to assess if there are conflicts of interest.

Lack of Recourse
Endorsed By:
 * Inability of individual projects Arbitration committees to remove OTRS members.

Opaque Peer Review
Endorsed By:
 * Inability of individual projects to assess OTRS peer review is satisfactory.

Imposition of Policy
Endorsed By:
 * Imposition of OTRS policy on individual projects without community discussion.

Self Selection
Endorsed By:
 * Lack of community involvement in selection of OTRS membership.

Statements by Barberio
I suggest the following,

Anonymity
Endorsed By:
 * OTRS membership be required to fully identify themselves to the Arbitration Committees on request.

Conflict of Interests
Endorsed By:
 * Failure to disclose a conflict of interest should result in automatic exclusion of OTRS privileges on en.wikipedia

Availability of sanctions to Arbitration Committees
Endorsed By:
 * OTRS membership expected to identify their membership if the are sanctioned or warned by any project's Arbitration Committee. Arbitration Committee is entitled to revoke OTRS privileges on en.wikipedia. Arbitration Committee should be entitled to request an OTRS volunteer be removed from OTRS membership.

Policy refering to OTRS actions on en.wikipedia is to be determined by consensus decision on en.wikipedia
Endorsed By:
 * Policies that grant and govern OTRS actions on en.wikipedia should be approved of by the en.wikipedia community. They should be developed with community support and consensus. It should not be considered 'automatic policy' if an OTRS member feels they should be entitled to do something in order to make the job easier.