Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight/May 2010 election/Oversight/Valley2city

Valley2city
Hi, I’m Matt (aka Valley2city) and I’m running for Oversight. I'm 26 and will be 27 by the end of the election. I have been a registered user on Wikipedia for four and a half years and an admin for fourteen months after a nearly unanimous RfA. After dabbling in many aspects of adminship I have found my niche working primarily with speedy deletions, and particularly with those that fall under criterion G10, aka Attack pages. While performing these duties I often come across information that needs oversight, such as phone numbers and social security numbers, and proceed to e-mail the OS list and then track down oversighters on IRC. Sometimes I get a relatively quick responses, and sometimes not, but there are not enough oversighters to guarantee that there will be an OSer online (hence my using IRC after e-mailing to see if any OSers are active). I have also worked with difficult cases, such as discovering that a terrorist had an active Wikipedia account immediately after he shot up a federal building in a deadly attack, as well as taking a leadership role in dealing with hard-to-keep-up-with high levels of vandalism due to talk show hosts recruiting their users to vandalize and disrupt Wikipedia. There are things that need oversight, and there are things which need revision deletion and there are things that just need to be reverted and I think I have the discretion to determine which needs which.

As I mentioned I am active on IRC and do a lot of coordination through there. I am also a volunteer of the OTRS response team in the English and Hebrew queues.

Off-wiki, as I have mentioned on my user page, I perform a sort of oversight in my daily life, as a mashgiach (a kosher supervisor) and as a rabbinical student. Whether checking if the contents of a box are kosher, if there is a mistake in a Torah reading or marriage document, or eliminating bread crumbs (with a flamethrower!), I am constantly scrutinizing things and thinking on my feet. I think that I can serve as extra set of eyes to give close scrutiny to things that need oversighting, not rash but still efficient. I might not be the most active administrator but this is definitely the department in which I focus my time both IRL and on-wiki.


 * NEW! Please note that as a religious Jew I do not use a computer during the Jewish Festival of Shavuot and therefore will not be online from Tuesday Evening Pacific Daylight Saving Time (Wednesday 2 AM-ish UTC) to 9 PM Thursday PDT (Friday 4 AM UTC). Additionally I will be celebrating my birthday with friends following the holiday and will probably be limited in my editing that night.  I hope that you will understand if I don’t answer questions posed during this time until I emerge from the holiday and birthday celebrations Thanks,   Valley  2 city ‽ 00:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Shavuot Festival and Shabbat over. I'm now in it until the end.  Valley  2 city ‽ 04:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments and questions for Valley2city
I know it is asked in the questionnaire:
 * Questions from HJ Mitchell
 * 1) If you are granted Oversight access, how do you think that will affect you as an editor and an administrator and do you think that will (or should) affect the way that other editors interact with you?
 * Thanks for the questions. I don't think this will considerably affect what I do besides that it gives me the ability to act on the occasions that I find information that needs oversight. As I mentioned in my statement, I mainly deal with Speedy Deletions and so such information is something that I frequently come across and this will give me the technical ability to deal with it. As for the way others interact with me, I don't think that it will change much either. The much bigger change comes with becoming an administrator. Oversight happens to be a bit that is given to a select few administrators, people who already have earned the community's trust, and happen to have a legal requirement to identify themselves to the foundation. I think the only real difference is that when someone pings !OS on IRC, I'll get paged and I'll be getting a couple more e-mails.  Valley  2 city ‽ 04:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Do you feel it's important for oversighters to reply to email requests to inform the requester of the action you've taken or not taken?
 * Definitely. If someone took the time to e-mail OS then a simple "thank you for your vigilance" would be well-merited. As an OTRSer and as a human being I understand the importance of responding to e-mails to know that you are being heard. It doesn't have to be more than a sentence or two, but the thank you and perhaps a brief descriptor of how you've handled it or why you are not handling it might just brighten that person's day. Well, maybe not, but it probably couldn't hurt!  Valley  2 city ‽ 04:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Do you feel that your religious observances (and please don't take offence at my asking) might negatively affect your availability and ability to act as an oversighter?
 * I don't take offense and thank you for the question, for it was also raised at my RfA. My religious observances would necessitate that I be offline for the duration of the Sabbath once a week as well as the restrictive days of the Jewish Festivals (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot). Though this does mean I am gone one day a week (or on the rare occasion of Festivals two or three days total), I find that, if anything, my batteries are recharged to face the coming week. I think it's great to have one day off to avoid burn-out both in real life and on-wiki. Speaking of which, I'm feeling very refreshed right now coming out of Shabbat.  Valley  2 city ‽ 04:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Question from Keegan
 * 1) Q. How well will you do saying no to a request, and will you actively do it?
 * Hey Keegan, I was about to go to sleep and did one last check of the questions and I noticed this question creeping up on other candidates' sections so I figured it was only a matter of time before I got asked. I have to say "no" to requests on a regular basis. When users make requests for rollback or other permissions, sometimes I grant it, but sometimes I can't grant it, whether I've determined they are not ready or have shown themselves to be untrustworthy. But when I do have to say no, I try to be as cordial as possible. Relevant diffs include   .   Valley  2 city ‽ 08:09, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Question from User:zzuuzz
 * Other than attempts at outing, what types of revisions should be hidden from administrators?
 * Sometimes outing is unintentional, such as when it is self inflicted ie, when an established user accidentially edits while logged out and the edit is personally identifiable. There is also situations where a revision should not exist even in the deleted-but-undeletable form, or mandated by the Office (in cases of libel and copyvio). Rather then leaving the risk of legal action or other issues in these situations, it's policy that these things be obliterated instead of undeletable or viewable by admins. I want to add that there is a reason that OSers and CheckUsers have to identify themselves to the WMF whereas admins don't. It goes beyond trust, something which we hopefully have for all our admins, and into legal responsibility.  Valley  2 city ‽ 19:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Question from Happy-melon
 * 1) All CheckUsers and Oversighters are members of the functionaries-en mailing list, a forum for discussion and co-ordination of privacy-related issues which affect any and all areas of Wikipedia. What qualities and perspectives would you bring to such discussions?
 * Coordinated responses are very useful on matters in which you shouldn’t run in, guns blazing. I know all about dealing with privileged information and how to coordinate a response. As someone who is going to be clergy this is something I take very seriously. In order to be able to cope with the information that is thrown at you, you need a few allies, such as other colleagues, members of the clergy whom you can trust and with whom you can talk about cases you don’t know how to deal with. We need to protect privacy as much as possible but also be able to discuss how to handle it. I also think I will learn a lot watching the more complicated cases unfold and be able to put in my own two cents as I originally did on the admin channel on IRC. By taking it all in I quickly learned the ropes. My thoughts collected, I think I have a lot I can contribute.  Valley  2 city ‽ 17:11, 13 May 2010 (UTC)