Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/2014 appointments/Fluffernutter

Nomination statement (250 words max.)
Hello, I'm Fluffernutter. I've been an admin and an oversighter since 2011, and I'm applying for a slot on AUSC this year. I'm very active in functionary discussions about the finer points of how we do - and how we should - use our tools, and I'd like to take this a step further by helping supervise tool (mis)use. I haven't previously applied for AUSC because Arbcom prohibited AUSC members from using their bits in response to community requests for oversight/checkuser; now that Arbcom has lifted that rule and I can still do useful everyday work as well, I'm willing and able to do both my usual oversight work and help on AUSC's cases.

Standard questions for all candidates
Please describe any relevant on-Wiki experience you have for this role.
 * A: I have been an oversighter for three years (nearly), so I'm familiar with both the workflow of suppression and what is and isn't contentious about using oversight tools. With my oversight bits came access to privacy- and functionary-oriented mailing list and IRC channels; I am regularly active in those venues discussing oversight actions with other users, and I have had a chance to observe checkusers discussing some of their general challenges as well.

Please outline, without breaching your personal privacy, what off-Wiki experience or technical expertise you have for this role.


 * A: I have no particular real-life expertise that lends itself to either the checkuser or oversight tools, or to auditing; my experience inside the Wikimedia community is what leads me to believe that I could be useful here.

Do you hold advanced permissions (checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward) on this or other WMF projects? If so, please list them. Also, do you have OTRS permissions? If so, to which queues?
 * A: I currently have info-en-full access on OTRS and oversight rights on enwp. I do not work on other wikis except incidentally, and have no advanced permissions on any of them.

Questions for this candidate

 * What are your views on whether evidence against a contributor subject to an Arbcom case ought to be shared with the contributor, so that they have the opportunity to add or refute the evidence? In particular I am concerned with check user details which may be both conducted in secret, and the results and deductions from it, withheld from the contributor. Fæ (talk) 12:32, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure this issue falls under AUSC's purview. The question of whether arbcom should share privately-submitted or privately-found evidence with the user it is about is, obviously, not governed by AUSC; Arbcom and the community are in charge of what procedures Arbcom follows in their cases. As far as checkuser data, specifically, in Arbcom cases...that's tougher. I see the role of AUSC members as primarly preventing over-disclosure of private information (for instance, Arbcom giving CU evidence to an admin clerk to action) rather than under-disclosure. Generally speaking, however, the subjects of CU checks are not entitled to their own CU data, essentially because if everyone was entitled to their own CU data, it would be easier for them to evade CU in the future. Neither the privacy policy nor our local CU policy makes any specific mention of a "give me my data" sort of right, but the CU policy does specify that "CheckUser data cannot be correctly interpreted without technical knowledge and experience with the tool." Speaking from a position of not being experienced with CU data, then, I would say that my opinion is that while "a CU check connects you to user:blah; do you have an explanation or refutation for this" would certainly be fair during an Arbcom case, "You and user:blah share the same useragent and OS, and your IPs are on the same range" or "Is there a reason you're both on IP xx.xxx.xx.x?" should not be required or expected, both because of "beans" and because if the users aren't actually related, then each of their privacy was just violated to the other. At the end of the day, however, I remain unconvinced that someone not sharing private information is a problem that falls under AUSC's scope, as it is not a misuse of the CU tool or abuse of a user's privacy. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 13:24, 1 August 2014 (UTC)


 * With the ideal of WP:INVOLVED in mind why do you feel that the community representatives on AUSC should be able to perform CU/OS? Furthermore, in cases where your judgement in using the tools is being called into question why do you think it would be appropriate for you to be part of the appeal committee? Finally if you were to recuse in cases where your judgement was being questioned, why do you feel that the quoroum size should be diminished for your involvement? Hasteur (talk) 12:39, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Hasteur. My feeling that AUSC members should be able to work with the CU and OS tools comes from two places. First, a more pragmatic one: CU and OS requests pour in and often backlog (I handled 46 suppressions in June 2014 alone, for instance, and a number of other OSers each handled just as many that month), while the most recent public AUSC statistics (at Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/Reports) show that AUSC might handle a dozen cases over the course of a year. If AUSC members can't do regular CU/OS tasks, then, we have a committee of dedicated, trusted volunteers that the community and arbcom believe have good judgment...who most of the time are sitting on their hands unable to do anything useful, while backlogs spin up around them. Second, being able to judge use of the tools means you need to understand the tools and how people use them. The best way to get to that point is to have experience using the tools. Previously, new AUSC members could, at best, play with a sandboxed version of their tools; this meant that when the time came to judge someone else's use, their knowledge was mostly conceptual, with little sense of the pitfalls or procedures involved in actual use. With Arbcom having lifted that prohibition, AUSC members can now experience actually using their tools in the real world, and I think that equips them to better understand their cases. In any case where my judgment using the tools were to be called into question, under no circumstances would I want to be, or be allowed to be, part of the group that evaluated that case. That's simply good sense. As far as why I feel quorum should be decreased if I were to recuse in a case that involved me, well...the answer to that is that that's how recusal works. I know that sounds glib, but recusal is something that's pretty standard on Wikipedia; it's used everywhere from Arbcom to admin actions (WP:INVOLVED). We're pretty used, as a community, to working around being down one or two arbs/admins/AUSCers in any given decision process. I happen to think that's a good thing, because I believe that the value we get from having someone doing the work 99% of the time more than counterbalances the 1% of the time we have to route around them. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 13:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)


 * What are some of the criteria you would use to determine if a CU check was valid? --Rschen7754 03:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Local checkuser policy says that checks must only be made in order to prevent or reduce potential or actual disruption, or to investigate credible, legitimate concerns of bad faith editing. Global checkuser policy says that There must be a valid reason to check a user and It must be used only to prevent damage to any of Wikimedia projects. As with many of our policies, these are written in a manner that leans to the general side; there is expected to be some element of judgment involved in the decision process of when to use the tool and when not to use the tool, and while not all checkusers might take a particular line of action, it should be clear to any reasonable one that that line of action was not blatantly wrong. Correspondingly, an AUSC investigation would have to take into account not only "would I, personally, have done that check?" but also "is it within reason for that check to have been done by someone, given the context of the situation?" What that would mean for my purposes on AUSC is essentially this: taking into account the general policies that cover CU use, for any given check, would a(nother) reasonable checkuser have performed this check and/or reached these conclusions? The "reasonable person" heuristic encompasses a number of things, including whether the checkuser used good judgment in involving themselves in the issue (were they involved? was the check requested as retaliation or intimidation, rather than to prevent damage? was there evidence to indicate a check was even needed?), whether the check was conducted in a reasonable manner (did the checkuser inexplicably go down a rabbit hole of check after check of unrelated users? did they wander around telling people "I'm checking X, X is in trouuuuble"?), and whether any actions taken as a result of the check were reasonable given the previous two questions (was a resulting block unreasonably excessive? did the CU release private check data when it was not necessary? did the CU engage with checked user and/or check requester in a manner consistent with a trusted user?). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * What is your understanding of the need for cross-wiki coordination between local CheckUsers and stewards? --Rschen7754 03:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure exactly what information you're looking for here, so I'll just ramble a little. Stewards have the global ability to add checkuser bits to themselves on any of our projects. They generally use those rights on smaller wikis that lack their own checkuser corps, and they're the "point men/women" when it comes to coordinating investigation of cross-wiki abuse. There have been, and will be again, cases where stewards need to share information about cross-wiki abuse with local checkusers, either for investigation or as an advisory; there have been, and will be again, cases where local checkusers need to share information with stewards about potential cross-wiki abuse, either for investigation or as an advisory. In general, the two groups need to have a working relationship and open communication channels that allow information to be passed when it needs to be passed.A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The global OS policy states that the oversight tool can be used for the "removal of potentially libelous information either: a) on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or b) when the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision." What does this mean to you? --Rschen7754 03:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I should point out before I go into depth about this that this is also in local policy (which also includes a number of other situations in which oversight is used). As far as what it means to me, it means that I'm going to once again break out my "would a reasonable person..." rule from the last question (Yayyyy...) . If you're going to oversight something that's potentially libelous, it needs to be either so clear a case that a reasonable oversighter could look at it and go, "yeah, that was within our discretion given the edit in question and the context," or it needs to be a case in which the oversight action was recommended from on high, aka Legal. To paraphrase what I said in the CU question above, while not all oversighters might perform a particular suppression, if you're abiding by the policy it it should be clear to any reasonable one that your oversight action was not blatantly wrong or to the detriment of the article. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * In February 2013 you were appointed as a SPI trainee clerk, but have been mostly inactive since then at SPI. Do you think that this affects your candidacy? --Rschen7754 03:50, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Whether it affects my candidacy is something for those commenting on me to decide more than it is something for me to. I can, of course, give you my opinion, which is that one has little to do with the other; my toe-dipping into SPI clerking ended up being a wrong-time thing, as the user who was going to train me went semi-inactive shortly after I joined up and between that and distractions on my own end of things, I just never got up to speed. I eventually removed myself from the active clerks list when it became obvious that I wasn't comfortable trying to learn things there on the fly. Wanting to be sure I know what I'm doing before I try is sort of a theme when it comes to me; if I'm appointed to AUSC, it's fairly likely that I won't be touching SPI until I've made sure I'm stuffed to the gills with training, exactly because I don't think it's useful to try to administrate that area unless you know what you're doing. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:04, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments

 * Comments may also be submitted in confidence to the Arbitration Committee privately by emailing 


 * All seven of the candidates this year appear quite qualified and I would be fine with any of them being appointed. With that said, I think Fluffernutter is among the strongest choices. Her comments both onwiki and on functionaries-en about activity and accountability have consistently impressed me, and I believe that she is very well-respected by other functionaries and community members alike. NW ( Talk ) 12:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Basically per NW; you could copy my rationale for DQ and substitute "CU" for "OS". Though I would advise you to tread carefully at SPI and with running CUs in the beginning. --Rschen7754 02:04, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Fluff would be a net positive to the AUSC -- Guerillero &#124;  My Talk  13:18, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure applicants are supposed to comment on each other, but I have to admit I also believe Fluff to be amongst the best candidates for this role. ☺ ·  Salvidrim!   ·  &#9993;  21:38, 11 August 2014 (UTC)