Wikipedia talk:Oversight/Archive 5

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications (2013)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC"). The Committee is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Avraham, MBisanz, and Ponyo, whose terms were to expire on February 28 but were extended with their agreement until April 30 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access but are expected to not make regular use of them unless needed. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 30 June 2014. The application period will close at 23:59, 1 April 2013 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee, NW ( Talk ) 18:16, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: last call for applications
This is a reminder that the application period for the three non-arbitrator seats on the Audit Subcommittee will close at 23:59, 1 April 2013 (UTC), less than 36 hours from now.

The Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC") is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Avraham, MBisanz, and Ponyo, whose terms were to expire on February 28 but were extended with their agreement until April 30 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access but are expected to not make regular use of them unless needed. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

Please note that due to Wikimedia Foundation rules governing access to deleted material, only applications from administrators will be accepted.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 30 June 2014. Once again, the application period will close at 23:59, 1 April 2013 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee, T. Canens (talk) 14:57, 31 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee appointments (2013): Invitation to comment on candidates
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with any other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 17 April 2013 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 28 April 2013.

For the Arbitration Committee, Risker (talk) 04:42, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

RFC regarding the scope of the Ombudsman Commission
The Ombudsman Commission is currently holding a request for comment. Currently, the Commission only hears complaints regarding the privacy policy. We propose to change the scope of the Commission to also include hearing complaints about the global Checkuser and Oversight policy policies.

For more information please visit the RFC, which can be found at Requests for comment/Scope of Ombudsman Commission. Please direct all questions and comments there.

For the Ombudsman Commission,

--(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 21:24, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Revision required
The following paragraph on this page needs to be edited where indicated: The full URL (web browser address) of the page, edit, log, or log entry containing information you think we need to suppress. If the facts are not obvious, please also supply a brief description of what we need to suppressed and why we need to suppress it. The word in bold should be, "suppress".  Cottonshirt  τ   09:58, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ Fixed on Requests for oversight. Thanks for pointing this out! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:19, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

2013 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: Call for applications
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional users to the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Experienced editors are invited to apply for either or both of the permissions, and current holders of either permission are also invited to apply for the other.

Successful candidates are likely to be regularly available and already familiar with local and global processes, policies, and guidelines especially those concerning CheckUser and Oversight. CheckUser candidates are expected to be technically proficient, and previous experience with OTRS is beneficial for Oversight candidates. Trusted users who frequent IRC are also encouraged to apply for either permission. All candidates must at least 18 years of age; have attained legal majority in their jurisdiction of residence; and be willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation prior to receiving permissions.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the appointments page for further information. The application period is scheduled to close 22 July 2013.

For the Arbitration Committee, — ΛΧΣ  21  22:03, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Discuss this

Help
Have just read this page and have no clue where the requested should be posted to. Is there something I am missing? -- Moxy (talk) 17:39, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The requested...what? If you need to request oversight of an edit, please do not post that request anywhere onwiki. Follow the directions provided at Oversight/FAQ (shortest version of those instructions: email your request, with a link to the edit in question, to ). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:58, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there another way then to send an email - as this is the problem in the first place - I wish to suppress that information from my talk page as I am being harassed off line - I dont want more unnamed people having my info -- Moxy (talk) 18:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand your question, unfortunately, but I'll try answering what I think you're asking: If you want information oversighted on Wikipedia, you will need to tell us (again, privately, via that email address) what info it is that you're talking about. There's not really any way around that, because we can't read minds to figure out what the problem is otherwise. The oversight team is made of highly trusted users, and I assure you that we would very quickly lose our positions as oversighters if we shared the content of edits that we oversight with anyone. If you can't get over the worry of multiple people knowing what you need oversighted, you could try emailing an individual oversighter (via special:emailuser) from the list here to make your request, but that runs the risk of that particular person not noticing your email or not being available to act on it in a timely manner. At the end of the day, though, it's unavoidable that for someone to suppress an edit, someone needs to be told what/where the edit is. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:38, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok will look at those editors - my problem I am having is being emailed in a harassing manner...thus want any record of my email that has been posted a few times on my talk page suppressed. -- Moxy (talk) 18:56, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

2013 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: Invitation to comment on candidates
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional users to the CheckUser and Oversight teams, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with all other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 16 August 2013 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 24 August 2013.

For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:06, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Discuss this announcement

Reasons for oversight
This is mostly idle curiosity: Is there a way of finding out why some revisions were suppressed? I've just discovered my very first edits from my account, to Talk:LiveJournal back in 2005, have been suppressed as part of an apparent mass suppression of edits between May 2005 and September 2006. I've looked through the logs I can find, as well as the talk page archives, but I can't see anything offering an explanation. —me_and 12:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi . The reason you haven't been able to track anything down in the logs is that the suppression log, which is where oversight activity shows up, is visible only to users with the +oversight user right. This is because we handle a lot of privacy-related issues, and often even knowing where, when, or why an edit was suppressed can give away too much information about what was in the edit. Generally, the oversight team is not allowed to discuss the reasons behind their actions publicly. I haven't looked for the edits you're talking about, and if I had I couldn't tell you the specific case involved, but I will tell you that most of the time if an edit of yours was oversighted and you know you didn't do something like post someone's home address or libel someone, chances are the your edit was oversighted only incidentally, in the course of removing some other edit (the way the suppression tool works, if I add something to the page at 10a.m., you edit the page at noon, and at 10p.m. an oversighter removes and suppresses what I said, then the oversighter needs to suppress the addition - though not always the content - of your edit, as well, to make sure all the involved diffs are blanked). If you want to pursue the issue of why your edits in that case in particular were suppressed, you can contact the audit subcommittee, which the group that supervises the oversight and checkuser teams' tool usage. AUSC may or may not be able to give you detail about why the action was taken, but they will be able to verify for you that the action was within current oversight policy. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Rephrasing Fluffernutter's comment: The history interface for suppressed edits in really confusing -- just because your edit summary is gray and struck out does not mean it was suppressed, just that it's not diffable because the diff would show the other guy's removed edit. NE Ent 03:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit request to fix mistake in Requests for oversight
I think there is a mistake in the text of WP:Requests for oversight under the "By direct personal contact" section. There is a missing or extra apostrpphe in the text "If you know an oversighter and can contact one directly, you may do so. Requests do not have to be submitted through any official route, though you should not post it to their talk page. However, if the oversighter is not available then the above methods (especially sending an email request) will ensure an oversighter acts upon your request. Users with oversighter status are listed here.'" Could it be fixed within the next few days or so? Thanks, Epicgenius (give him tirade • check out damage)  02:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thanks for pointing out the typo, ! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 03:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment from oversighters
There is a suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion for a feature would be added that would allow any user to flag a page or revision for oversight, with that flag being visible only to oversighters. Input regarding this idea from members of the oversight team is requested to establish its viability and desirability before a bugzilla ticket is raised. Please comment in the linked discussion rather than here. Thanks, Thryduulf (talk) 12:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Motion proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools
A motion has been proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools. If you wish to comment, please join the discussion at the motion on the motions page. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Jascha Lieberman Trio
I don't think that some revisions (especially last) on this article are serious copyright violation, it wasn't even a mechanic copy-paste and was a little rewritten. --Rezonansowy (talk &bull; contribs) 20:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Just a thought ...
"Oversight on Wikipedia (also known as suppression) is a form of enhanced deletion ..."

After reading #Nomenclature I now know some of the history which led to the current name/term—Oversight—and am able to find it 'understandable'. However, I'm left wondering whether it is 'advisable'? My first impression was of some crass Orwellian euphemism.

Perhaps something more transparently descriptive might suffice? Emergency Suppression, Defensive Purge, Global Redaction ... something ...

For some reason "Oversight on Wikipedia (also known as suppression)" gave me 'the willies' and I imagine that it may come off as a bit startling to others as well.

--Kevjonesin (talk) 00:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Well,, I tend to agree with you about the inherent creepiness of the names given these tools. However, they're drawn from the names of the MediaWiki extensions: the original extension (which went live in 2006) is actually called "Oversight", and when the new "RevisionDeletion" extension was developed and went live in 2009, "suppression" was chosen to differentiate that particular aspect of the tool from both the old Oversight tool and the revision-deletion that any administrator can do. I understand that the word "suppress" is used in the code itself.  MediaWiki developers (and for that matter, Wikimedians) are very supportive of transparency, generally speaking; I suppose that's part of the reason why these particular terms were chosen. Risker (talk) 01:49, 30 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Uh, thanks for reiterating. I think I mentioned that "After reading #Nomenclature I now know some of the history which led to the current name/term—Oversight—and am able to find it 'understandable'." but I suppose it does no harm to have imported the details here.


 * I think what threw me is that to me the term 'oversight' brings to mind somewhat passive monitoring while it's my understanding that in this context (i.e. here, Wikipedia, this committee) "Oversight" is a label for swift judgement and enforcement. I think this dichotomy contributed to my feeling of dissonance. Hence I proposed some alternate titles as an example of the sort of thing which might resonate more clearly. 'Ring true' as it were.


 * Personally, after learning some of the history, I'm left with the impression that current usage of "Oversight" has not been actively 'chosen' so much as 'arose over time out of association with a now defunct software tool'.


 * Perhaps with a bit of collaborative brainstorming we might arrive at something more attuned and considerate of first impressions. I've suggested "Emergency Suppression", "Defensive Purge", and "Global Redaction". What else springs to mind?


 * It's my intent to address presentation and perception. For example, though I feel the term 'suppression' naked on its own carries harsh connotations—in this context—I think perhaps with the right modifier its corners may be rounded off. Any ideas?


 * --Kevjonesin (talk) 03:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * All edits hidden with the Oversight tool are shortly due to be converted to suppressed edits of the type set by RevDel. (See and User:Risker/Conversion of Oversighted edits to Suppressed edits - thanks .) I would imagine then at that point that all documentation relating to suppression, such as this page, will need to be rewritten appropriately. Moving this page to Suppression (currently a redirect to this one) would be a start. However, it's going to be slightly tricky due to the historical confusion involving use of the term "oversight[ed/ing]" after the demise of the Oversight tool itself. I would imagine that there are lots of incoming links to Oversight by people who were actually talking about suppression; so having that title be exclusively used for a page about the former tool would muddy discussion history. So it may well be necessary to move the content about the old Oversight tool itself to somewhere like Oversight tool, have Oversight still redirect here, and add a hatnote. Various related pages will need redirect swaps as well - Requests for oversight → Requests for suppression and so on. I'd also hope that changes would be made along the lines of "although the term 'oversighting' is no longer used, the user group able to suppress and view suppressed revisions has the legacy name of 'oversighters'" - unless there are moves afoot to rename the user group as well. I haven't seen any sign of that yet, though.
 * Hopefully this will put to rest (some of?) your concerns over the current use of the "Oversight" term. Note, I'm not an "Oversighter" myself, so none of this is authoritative! —  Scott  •  talk  14:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Why hide who performed the suppression?
Given that with the RevDel extension we can see that an edit has been suppressed (at least in many cases, I'm not sure if it's all cases), and the editor and edit summary can be left visible, why can we not see who did the suppression and why (at least as far as I can see)? This doesn't seem allow accountability and I can see no good reason for it. I also see no reason why the suppression summary (assuming there is one similar to when doing a normal revdel) should not be available for us mere mortals, although this may require Oversighters to be a bit more careful with what they put into the logs, but I don't see how a general statement along the lines of "personal information", "legal action" etc could be a problem. In my opinion this leads to confusing logs where it could appear that an editor who deleted a revision is also responsible for repression. I realise that this is a technical issue and so not easy to change but I was wondering if there was a good reason for it before seeing if it can be changed. If we're going to allow people to see that an edit was suppessed then we should also now who did it. Dpmuk (talk) 14:59, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as hiding the name of the oversighter who performed the action, I don't know that there is or isn't a strong reason; more "it's always been that way". Most likely, it came about as an artifact of the way the tool is implemented. The name of the oversighter is an entry in the suppression log, and the entire suppression log is hidden to non-oversighters, part and parcel. When it comes to the social aspect of "we don't name the oversighter publicly," it may be that since oversight actions aren't discussed onwiki, it was felt that there was no need for people to know "Fluffernutter suppressed edit X", because if they disagree with X, whether I did it or not, the route of appeal is to WP:AUSC, not to "shouting at Fluffernutter". As far as not leaving explanation of what the content was viewable, I'm going to be somewhat cryptic here and say there exist WP:BEANSy ways to hunt down content that has been suppressed, and we prefer to make it as difficult as possible for people to to use suppression logs as guides for where to look for what. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:58, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply, got distracted by other things. You raise some interesting points.  I still think that now that suppressed edits are visible in the history something needs to be done to make it clearer that suppression has occurred rather than a revdel, which might have been done by a quite different person, even if no other details are given.
 * On your more general point I don't see any reason why oversight actions can't be discussed on-wiki. Other the details can't but if someone queries why something was oversighted surely replies like "personal information", "legal reasons" or even more specific such as "it included a user's phone number" are fine as long as the details aren't given?  Yes the route of appeal is to WP:AUSC but having to jump straight there just to query a suppression seems extreme and not very transparent.  A simple query/answer may mean they don't wish to appeal.  If this information was include in a visible log there wouldn't even be a need for a query.
 * Having never seen a suppression log I have no idea what you put in them, but again I see no reason why a general statement as to why it was suppressed can't be visible to all. Obviously if past logs include more than this they can't be visible, but as a general idea I can't think of any reason why logs shouldn't be viewable.  Personally I think much more transparency in suppression actions is far more important than any slight chance of letting someone find the suppressed material.  I think WP:BEANS is used for too regularly for functionaries to hide behind (come on you don't have to be that tech savvy to work out what CU use to link users) but accept I may be in the minority on that.
 * Ping A fluffernutter is a sandwich! given how late this reply is. Dpmuk (talk) 18:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Maybe "supressors" could be identified as co-labourers in other (non-wikipedia) networks, thus possibly in violation of Wikipedia rules. Forgive the legalspeak.

Conversion of Oversighted edits to Suppressed edits
At some point in February 2014, a script is scheduled to be run that will convert edits that were oversighted using the now-deprecated Oversight extension into suppressed edits using the Revision/Deletion extension.

Background
The original Oversight extension was first created and used in 2006; its purpose was to allow carefully selected community members to "remove" specific edits (those that met very stringent criteria) from the publicly viewable database. While the edits were no longer visible to anyone other than someone with oversight permission, they remained in the database; theoretically, they could be restored by those with root admin permission, but there is no indication that this was ever done. At the time the extension was initiated, there were known weaknesses in it (for example, it incorrectly attributes certain edits in a page's history), and it was understood that work would continue on a better tool. The Oversight extension was in use from May 2006 until early 2009, with only a few oversighted edits after that time.

In 2009, the revision/deletion extension was deployed, and with it the ability to suppress individual edits and log entries without adversely affecting page histories. This extension had other very useful features: suppressed or deleted edits could be unsuppressed/undeleted simply, it clearly identified in the page history what edits had been suppressed or deleted, and the suppression or deletion could be selective to the content of the edit, the username of the editor, and/or the edit summary. The revision/deletion extension has been stable for several years and has been shown to work effectively in all circumstances in which it has been tested.

There was some discussion at the time the revision/deletion extension was first deployed that the old oversighted edits should be converted to suppressed edits. The script being deployed over the next few months will finally accomplish this task.

How many oversighted edits are we talking about?
Throughout the WMF family of wikis, there are about 12,200 oversighted edits on about 70 projects; it was never used on most WMF wikis. On the English Wikipedia, there are about 9900 oversighted edits over about 2200 pages.

What will the converted edits look like?
The content of converted edits will be visible only to Oversighters. When looking at the page history, the converted edits will look like any other fully suppressed edit. The username and edit summary will all be greyed out for all users except oversighters, and the date/time, username and edit summary will be struck through. The date and time of the edit, and the size of the edit, will be visible. This is what the page history will look like:



Will Oversighters be able to change the level of suppression?
Yes, Oversighters may unsuppress any of the suppressed fields, they may unsuppress the edit entirely, or they can change the edit from a suppressed edit to a revision-deleted edit — just as they can with any other suppressed edit. Nobody other than an Oversighter will be able to modify the level of suppression.

But I thought oversight was permanent and that nobody was able to reverse it!
Oversighters have always been able to view the content of oversighted edits, and those few developers with shell admin access had the technical ability to reverse oversighting. However, in order to eliminate any user expectation that oversighting was reversible on request, it was emphasized that users should consider any oversights to be permanent in the absence of a legal reason to reverse. Thus, while it was technically possible to reverse an oversight, in reality no requests to reverse were entertained from within the community.

What about oversighted edits on now-deleted pages?
These edits will be reinserted into the deleted history archive for the page. Should the page subsequently be undeleted, those edits will remain suppressed.

Does this fix the glitch in attributing edits?
Yes it does, because it reinstates the correct history of the pages, including correct attribution of edits.

How will the Oversight and Suppression logs be affected?
The suppression logs will be updated to include the name of the oversighter, the date the edit was originally oversighted, and the log summary of the original oversighter. At some point the Oversight log will no longer be accessible, once the Oversight extension is removed from service.

This summary, reviewed by the applicable developers, is posted for community information. Risker (talk) 18:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

You've got mail
Leaky Caldron  11:32, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Er... I think you may have pressed the wrong button somewhere. —  Scott  •  talk  15:07, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * A matter needed to be oversighted. I sent an email to the os team and, per instructions, left a YGM here. Salvio dealt with it. Leaky  Caldron  15:16, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I see. Well, there are people watching this page who aren't on that team; a generic "You've got mail" is non-obvious. Now that the issue's resolved, you might as well blank this section. —  Scott  •  talk  15:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * If you are watching this page as a non-oversight member it is self evident that the YGM has nothing to do with you. If, on the other hand, you are member of the OS team and you see the alert then you know there is a mail to deal with, as happened here. I followed the procedure in WP:OV as I understood it. Leaky  Caldron  16:07, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the fact that this conversation is happening demonstrates that it wasn't "self-evident" at all, y'know? —  Scott  •  talk  17:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There's really no need for a YGM - most of the members of the oversight team automatically receive an email notification whenever a new request arrives. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:18, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Jez man, WTF?! There was a matter of vital urgency that required WMF involvement and urgent oversight. After contacting WMF I sent an email per requirements. It was not appropriate to splash it here, at ANI, I have no idea of OS availability and I am right out of carrier pigeons. I received no immediate response after a while so I put YGM here (as suggested in the email interface). The matter was then dealt with promptly. Would you mind, please, removing yourself from my back, or would you just prefer that I leave time-critical matters involving individuals to "experts"? Leaky  Caldron  16:28, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hold on, now - my comment was meant as information, not as a brush-off. I appreciate that the situation was urgent, but I'm just letting you know that those who are subscribed all receive notifications, and that it is highly unlikely that a notice on this page will provide any quicker response. Unlike the WMF emergency contact folks, we don't carry around pagers to alert us 24/7, so some delay is to be expected. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:42, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I used the Wiki Quick form as recommended in WP:RFO. That turns out to be a pre-populated version of some generic email interface. On sending, the message "You can notify users that you have e-mailed them by leaving them a talk page message. The You've got mail template is available for this purpose." is displayed. There are no instructions anywhere saying that such is not required for OS requests so yes, I take exception to being curtly advised by Scott (not an OS member) that I "have pressed the wrong button somewhere". I pressed all the right buttons in the right order and if the OS instructions need to be clarified to state that YGM is not necessary, here is the example to justify that change. Leaky  Caldron  17:13, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There's nothing *wrong* in putting a note here, Leaky. I think DoRD's point (which which I agree) is that this page, though we watch it, is not a primary communication venue, so you're unlikely to garner any oversighter eyes here that didn't already get the notice through their email. If you skim back up this talk page, you'll see that comments here routinely go days or even weeks before getting a reply; it's just not a high-traffic place. Putting a YGM on an individual oversighter's talk page can be useful, but putting it here - while again, not "wrong" or "bad" or anything terrible like that - won't be as useful (and, since it doesn't happen much, will get "Did you mean this for another page?" comments from people who think you just made a mistake). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:30, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * [Edit conflict...] Thanks, Fluffernutter, that's a good explanation.
 * Leaky, I'm sorry that you took my reply to you as being "curt", but you misread it in that case.
 * For your reference, the instruction you quote comes from MediaWiki:Emailpagetext. Quite why you understood you can notify users (my bolding) as meaning you must notify users (because you weren't instructed not to), I'm not sure.
 * And as to my being "not an OS member"... well, that should be a hint that other people monitor pages like this, no? So please consider that when using templates like YGM. That's all; thanks. —  Scott  •  talk  17:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * If it helps, this exchange has exposed an assumption on my part that I will work to correct. In future, I will be more explicit when querying posts that expose a difference between another user and myself in our understandings of the nature of a feature. —  Scott  •  talk  17:46, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Quit nit-picking, ok. I followed instructions to the letter. I do not scour WP looking for kooks and kranks who's actions need to be immediately reported to WMF and oversighted. Hopefully I'll never find another one as long as I'm here (although there are plenty of non-reportable kooks and kranks elsewhere). WP:RFO instructions are not clear, I would not dream of mail bombing 18 over-sighters, I had no idea you had some nifty set-up for dealing with mail and I did what instructions implied was the correct think. For which I'm told that I pressed a wrong button and i'M given a history lesson about WT:Oversight. Please, do everyone a favour, especially me, and close this thread. You can do it! Leaky  Caldron  17:48, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * @Scott. Do me favour. Go polish something that doesn't concern me. This is boring. Leaky  Caldron  17:50, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, cheer up. —  Scott  •  talk  00:42, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Concerns About Responsiveness
As another user has mentioned, it's been some time and I've yet to hear any response from an oversighter regarding a request that I emailed following the instructions and links provided. Matters posted to the administrator's noticeboard are often responded to and resolved in 1 or 2 days. I don't know why it would take nearly a week or more for a response to an instance of attempted outing requiring oversight. I personally think that an attempt at outing is more serious than most issues on the WP:ANB and should require a faster resolution. So let this serve as both, a notice that I've sent an email as per the guidelines and a possible discussion on how to make matters of oversight more approachable and efficient.Scoobydunk (talk) 15:53, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As regards the specific email from you,, it looks like you got a reply today (probably because of this post), so check your email. As regards oversighter responsiveness in general: in my view, you are absolutely right that the team's responsiveness has dropped dramatically. I know a number of oversighters, including me, have had real-life stuff come up in the past few months that interfered with the amount of time that goes into wiki-related stuff, but that's frankly no consolation at all to people who need us to do our jobs (or to each other - even internal discussions among the team are suffering from serious lack of response). If the current number of oversighters isn't able to handle the workload, and it seems like we're not, it's time to add some new manpower. That's a job that falls to Arbcom; only they can appoint oversighters. Contacting them specifically, either by emailing the Arbcom mailing list or by posting on an Arbcom-specific talk page, is probably the way to go there. I'm also going to drop an email to the internal oversight mailing list pointing oversighters/arbcom to this discussion. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * can a non-admin be appointed to oversight? NE Ent 20:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That question comes up every cycle, but I can't find the last discussion to refer back to at the moment. I believe the answer from WMF Legal last time was along the lines of "no, because they're appointed by arbcom, not elected by the community". Philippe would know for sure, if you want to check with him. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, they definitely cannot. AGK  [•] 21:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for responding. I also have concerns about the method of contact and having to associate an email with a username. Would it be impossible to develop some sort of messaging system inside of WP? I'm not even sure if such a system currently exists, but if it does, then why can't we just use that when submitting an inquiry? Having someone associate their personal email with their account kinda defeats some the purpose of privacy that WP:outing tries to protect and requiring a user to create an entirely new email and check it while they wait for a response seems like an unnecessary barrier that could deter some people from reporting confidential instances.Scoobydunk (talk) 21:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * No, there is no messaging system built into mediawiki in the sense you mean. The only onwiki communication method we have is talk pages/noticeboards, and we explicitly ask that oversight issues not be posted on those, since they're viewable by anyone. Your options for requesting oversight currently are basically three: email the oversight email address, email an individual oversighter, or find an oversighter on IRC. For the first two, yeah, we will see your email address. A lot of people work around having their personal email associated with their wikipedia identity by creating a new email address on gmail, yahoo, etc that they then use just for wikipedia stuff. For the third option, IRC, it has the benefit of not needing an email address, but connecting to the Freenode IRC network means that your IP will be exposed in whatever channels you join, at least in most cases. So that's also not ideal from a privacy standpoint, obviously. If you're concerned about keeping your contact details/identity private from oversighters, exposing your IP is potentially even worse than exposing your email, so your best bet is probably to create something like "ScoobydunkWikipedia(at)gmail.com" and make that the email address associated with your Wikipedia account so that if you use Wikipedia to email again, that's what the recipient will see. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:04, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I understand about protecting privacy and making another email address, but this is an obvious deterrent that could stop people from reporting instances. A person can already have 2-4 email addresses for a variety of things, should they really have to make another to report an issue on WP? In many cases you'll have someone who really just wants to help secure WP and protect the privacy of others and I feel we should have a system that easily, quickly, and readily encourages contributors to maintain the integrity of the community. Having them jump through hoops just to ensure the protection of others' privacy seems counter intuitive. I think developing a private messaging system is a easy way to solve this issue and encourage members to get more involved. I also think that messaging system should be private, but still available to oversighters to investigate issues of harassment. I'm just posting an opinion, something that should possibly be discussed by the arbcom, no need for a debate here and thanks again for your quick replies.Scoobydunk (talk) 22:21, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know how exactly it would work without a communication process that takes the oversighter directly back to the requestor. To be honest, I can't remember ever there being a problem with "leaking" email addresses from this queue. I'd just like to point out that oversighters really don't do a lot of "investigat[ing] issues of harassment", which generally requires a lot more in-depth research than straightforward suppression requests. As a rule of thumb, the more complex the suppression request, the longer it will take to get done, and the more likely there will have to be a group consultation.  Complex requests make up probably 2% of our total, but take up 10-20% of the time.  Risker (talk) 22:59, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 17 May 2014
Correct overnighter to oversighter in the template, at the top of the page.

Acalycine ( talk / contribs ) 02:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Well spotted! — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 02:43, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I really need to turn off Mac's auto-correct function… Thanks for spotting and fixing! AGK  [•] 11:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee review of procedures (CU & OS)
By resolution of the committee, our rules and internal procedures are currently being reviewed with the community. You are very welcome to participate at WT:AC/PRR. Information on the review is at WP:AC/PRR. The current phase of the review is examining the committee's procedures concerning advanced permissions (and the appointment and regulation of permissions holders). AGK [•] 11:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Participate in this review

Question
I accidentally gave out my IP address once. Does this count?  User  J   Dalek  04:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Depending on the circumstances, it most likely would fall under the "Removal of non-public personal information" part of the policy. I would recommend that you submit a request to the oversight team via email with the necessary links. They'll look over your request and advise you on the best course of action. Mike V  •  Talk  21:00, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But I don't have an email address. -- User  J   Dalek  02:30, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * If you use IRC, you can contact an oversighter privately. A list of the individuals with oversight access can be found here. Currently we do not have alternative ways to submit an oversight request. However, creating an email account through a site such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. takes only a minute. Mike V  •  Talk  18:06, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications (2014)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC"). The Committee is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Guerillero, MBisanz, and Richwales, whose terms were to expire on June 30 2014 but were extended until August 27 2014 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 31 August 2015. The application period will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Worm TT( talk ) 09:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: last call for applications
This is a reminder that the application period for the three non-arbitrator seats on the Audit Subcommittee will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC).

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC"). The Committee is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Guerillero, MBisanz, and Richwales, whose terms were to expire on June 30 2014 but were extended until August 27 2014 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

Please note that due to Wikimedia Foundation rules governing access to deleted material, only applications from administrators will be accepted.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email with your nomination statement to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 31 August 2015. The application period will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Worm TT( talk ) 10:22, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee appointments (2014): Invitation to comment on candidates
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with any other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 27 August 2014.

For the Arbitration Committee, Worm TT( talk ) 08:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

A change of the oversight logo
The oversight logo today is like Wikipedia's old logo. In 2010, we changed it, however, we haven't changed the oversight logo yet. Shall we change it to match the more modern logos today? DS Crowned (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Nobody has responded in 10 days! Can someone respond? DS Crowned (talk) 11:06, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Generally, the community prefers to compare the proposed logo to the existing one before making a decision. Do you have a mockup of your proposed change? Also, you can set up and advertise a request for comment to help judge consensus amongst the community. Mike V  •  Talk  21:37, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

reverted
oops [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AOversight&diff=635086988&oldid=631958915] -- it seems unnecessary -- no one Wikipedia policy covers all contingencies, and the shorter an individual policy page is the easier it is for the reader to understand. NE Ent 13:13, 23 November 2014 (UTC) corrected diff NE Ent 21:35, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * One sentence isn't really any longer, this is basic stuff, I don't intend to cover all contingencies. I'm not sure why you're linking this diff, but this situation is the reason I'm suggesting this. I think it shows that it is necessary to make clear in policy that things like involved and wheel apply to admin-like and beyond-admin actions too, CU and OS in particular. It's also noted at WP:TED. Admin policy also played a role in situations at Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/Reports. Cenarium (talk) 21:05, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * "One sentence isn't really any longer" -- I don't know how to reply to that. Is too! ??  I don't think it's necessary here or the other places Cenarium has recently inserted it per WP:CREEP and WP:Policy fallacy. NE Ent 21:39, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * But this is a simple addition, and descriptive of current practice. This isn't overly prescriptive, complex instructions or involved examples. So I don't think that the essays you cite apply. It's just a note about a generally accepted community norm that some inexperienced members may not be familiar with. I didn't restate all of the points of admin policy, jut one sentence to point to it. Cenarium (talk) 22:13, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Adding it in reference only should more than satisfy any of those concerns. Cenarium (talk) 15:55, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Unnecessary, and not necessarily true, either, as there are other ways in which non-administrators can gain access to the tool without actually being administrators. The behavioural expectations for oversighters are either on this policy or at the global policy, as well as the privacy policy. They are not the same as that of administrators. In particular, oversighters are not expected to publicly explain their actions in any detail just because someone asks.  Risker (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Take a look at the diff, I explicitly stated that this policy takes precedence in case of conflict, so your point is moot. And this policy is about english wikipedia oversighters, not stewards, so local admin policy applies to them (and they have to be admins). Cenarium (talk) 18:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * They can be arbitrators, the WMF considers appointment to the Arbitration Committee as sufficiently RFA-identical. And no, the global oversight policy applies to 100% of Wikimedia projects; it's not for stewards, it's for all of us, no matter what project we work on. And again...whether or not they have to be admins, the admin policy does not apply to oversight actions. In particular, the level of communication expected of administrators is explicitly not applicable to oversighters, and there are different standards for granting and removal of the applicable permission.  Risker (talk) 18:39, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed, there is a remote possibility of a non-admin being elected arbitrator, the [local oversight] policy page should be corrected on this point, since they're unlikely to become sysops. But the community excepts of all functionaries that they do not wheel war, and that they do not checkuser an editor in which they are involved in a dispute. Of course the global [oversight] policy takes precedence over local [oversight] policy, I only said that this [local oversight] policy takes precedence over admin policy. So insofar as this does not conflict with superior policies (with regard to communication for example, as you mention), the admin policy is applicable. Cenarium (talk) 19:02, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Clarified the policies with [...], also I meant in my 18:29 post that stewards obey the global oversight policy, along with Global rights policy, while the local oversight policy applies to local oversighters (but only as a complement to the global oversight policy which takes precedence). Cenarium (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * AUSC explicitly stated that admin policy applied to checkuser actions, specifically a checkuser block, which is a checkuser action, not a regular admin action as we are emphatically reminded in the blocking policy. See "However, DeltaQuad did not breach his duty under WP:ADMINACCT". It does apply, as far as superior policies allow. I still think that this should be included, at least in a note, but don't feel strongly enough about it to further pursue this. Cenarium (talk) 13:56, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what point you're trying to get at here. This is not the checkuser policy. I can think of only two situations where "oversight" blocks were applied, and they were both very controversial. That the AUSC chose to offer opinions outside of its scope does not in any way reflect a change in policy or even of practice; it simply has no jurisdiction on administrator actions. Risker (talk) 14:06, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * But this was a checkuser action, not a regular administrator action, regular admins can't overturn it, even if technically the action was realized using the admin tool set, so AUSC effectively stated that admin policy partially extended to functionary actions too. It supports my point that functionary actions are also subject to admin policy, in a limited manner. I also added this to the checkuser policy and was reverted, so we were discussing both policies, and this applies to oversight just as well. Cenarium (talk) 14:35, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

shortcut
It's less confusing in the macro sense to have fewer common shortcuts to the same thing; while WP:OVER has been around I don't think it's used that often -- it seems the tool that counted uses has died, unfortunately -- so that's just an opinion. Also while I see WP:OVER I'm thinking the reply should be WP:OUT. NE Ent 22:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, we could even drop another one, per WP:2SHORTCUTS. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:53, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * If that is the case, WP:OVER can be redirected to a disamb. page if it's too confusing. Epic Genius (talk)

Checkuser and Oversight appointments 2015: Voting on the candidates
Following community consultation, the Arbitration Committee is now voting on appointments to the Checkuser and Oversight roles at Arbitration/Requests/Motions. Comments are welcomed at that page.

For the Arbitration Committee;

Courcelles (talk) 19:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

2015 Checkuser and Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed
Following community consultation and voting. the Arbitration Committee is pleased to appoint the following users to the Functionary team.


 * is appointed as Checkuser and Oversighter to continue after his term on the Audit Subcommittee expires


 * is appointed as Checkuser and Oversighter.


 * is appointed as a Checkuser.


 * The following users are appointed as Oversighters:




 * The Committee thanks for his years of service as a Checkuser, who has recently resigned from the role.

The Committee would like to thank the community and all the candidates for bringing this process to a successful conclusion.

For the Arbitration Committee;

Courcelles (talk) 03:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Discuss this

"Redirects here" tags at top of page
I've been trying to combine the two tags into one (since it seems unlikely anyone would type in WP:SIGHT looking for information on suppressing redirects) but I am apparently misunderstanding something about the parsing in the templates used and each time I preview it it looks more screwed u.p than the last. Lil' help? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:56, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Without worrying about templates, what is the actual wording that you are trying to achieve? -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Something like "WP:SUPPRESS redirects here, for suppression of redirects see x for suppression of categories see Y" "SIGHT" doesn't seem to be needed anymore, the only thing it could have been confused with was "sighting flagged revisions" which is a concept enWP gave up on five years ago, so I removed that, but the way it is now doesn't make any sense. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Use dablink and type in whatever you like. Or just use simple markup: hatnotes are only itlalic text indented by one notch. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  18:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Try →


 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That works, thanks all. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:02, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Archive
I noticed this talk page was getting fairly long and had old discussions. I have set it up to archive discussions after 180 days and to keep a minimum of 5 threads. Mkdw talk 04:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for slight expansion of existing suppression criterion
I have initiated a discussion at Village Pump (proposals) to propose a slight expansion of the existing suppresion criterion for suppressing IP addresses when registered users accidentally edit while not logged in. The extension would apply to first-time or not-yet-registered editors who articulate that they did not realize their IP address would be published in place of a username when they made an edit. Please comment at the village pump. Risker (talk) 01:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This proposal has attracted significant support. It remains to establish the wording of the new criterion. As suggested by Risker:


 * My suggestion:


 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:59, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

IRC
Should we link only to ? Although perhaps we really should just have a #wikipedia-en-oversight configured similarly to the revdel channel. L Faraone  19:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think so for either point. I don't think we want to promote the use of IRC for oversight requests, myself. OTRS allows us to track the requests and audit the processes, and should at all times be the preferred process. (Yeah, on the relatively rare occasions when I am on IRC I'll do OS requests, but I'd count that as the "contact an OS directly" option.  I do not think we should have an IRC channel, and I do not think we should promote the revision deletion channel because we know full well that people will post links there. Risker (talk) 20:36, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I just came to the talkpage to suggest something similar. I work the #wikipedia-en-help channel sometimes, plus get my own questions answered there, so it's maximally-speedy for me to request !oversight via IRC.  Oversight is a time-critical WP:TIAD matter, one of the very few where WP:NORUSH does not apply.  At the top of the WP:OVERSIGHT page it says 'click here for fastest response' ... but of course, the click only works if you are currently logged in, and if email-linkage is correctly configured, which is to say if the mediawiki-email-backend actually works.  (See further up talkpage for a case where the click-here-to-email failed, and was reported; an unknown-unknown is how many failures go unreported.)
 * So, I have two suggestions. One is to modify the top-matter so that it offers mailto hyperlinks, as the bog-standard alternative-slash-fallback mechanism to Special:EmailUser/Oversight.  See talkpage section below for that one.  My second suggestion is to add the revdel-IRC-channel-option to the top-matter, for cases where Special:EmailUser/Oversight and mailto- *both* fail to work.  There are several such scenarios:  user has a login, but is at an insecure location using an untrusted kiosk PC (library/inetCafe/school/grammasHouse/etc), and for password-protection-reasons does not wish to enter their webmail password *nor* their wikipedia password into the kiosk-system.  Or, user does not have a login, and does not have an email.  Or, user is on a secure device which only offers internet access via the browser, and does not have a wikipedia username.  And so on.  In all those cases, live-help-chat-IRC-in-a-browser-tab will work, whereas email might fail.
 * p.s. Having a centralized revdel channel, clearly it could also be tracked and audited, it just currently is not being so tracked and so audited.  So I suggest, if tracking-n-auditing is crucial, that #wikipedia-en-revdel be tracked-n-audited.  I'd also support making it the oversighter responsibility, to self-report themselves via email-or-IRC message, when they are contacted "directly" for oversight-help (or when they personally notice a problem and take action independently without anybody asking them), so that even those types of actions would be somewhat-tracked-n-audited.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Suggest changing this:

To this:

I inserted the revdel option into both boxen, plus tweaked the 'SHOULD NOT' phrase a bit. These suggestions above are compatible with, but orthogonal to, the mailto suggestion below. (We can implement one suggestion, the other suggestions, both suggestions, or neither suggestion). As to the inadvertent-and-incorrect-posting-of-links-by-beginners-to-the-revdel-IRC-channel, while I agree that is statistically guaranteed to happen, I'm not sure it's a fatal flaw.

The reason that inadvertent attention on IRC is not fatal, to my infosec-eyes anyways, is that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS which inherently draws inadvertent attention. There are already several offsite crawling schemes, which archive large portions of wikipedia on a constant basis, such that one can go off-wiki to locate deleted articles and such. In the typical oversight-scenario, we have an on-wiki-OUTING-type situation, where a person's IP address has been made visible on article-talkpage, for instance. It is best if the please-help-me-oversight-request is made via email or via private IRC conversation, to avoid drawing attention to that exact URL. However, once the oversight has been *done* the edit-history on-wiki will reflect exactly where it was done, and I would guess there is a high probability that a malicious infosec adversary could monitor wikipedia change-feeds for oversight-actions, and then extract the un-oversighted plaintext-data from the offsite wikipedia-crawling-schemes previously alluded unto.

Now, just because inadvertent-IRC-link-posting isn't the ONLY way to skin that cat for a badguy, doesn't mean that we should NOT worry about reducing inadvertent-IRC-link-posting. There is an existing IRC feature which allows 'silencing' channel-spammers, short of kickbanning them, so that they can see what is in the channel, but not post to the channel themselves. Is there some kind of IRC feature that would allow newly-connected users on the #wikipedia-en-revdel channel to be UNABLE to post anything, aka 'silenced' via the "@" channel-op-thing, but to have some kind of bot which automagically posts "!admin" whenever a new user connects? If so, that would solve 99% of the problem, although of course, we cannot use such a bot on the #wikipedia-en-help channel where freeform questions are the norm. But a silent-by-default-until-a-channel-op-unsilences-you, plus a bot-automatically-posts-!helper-for-you, might be a good IRC-policy for the #wikipedia-en-revdel channel, methinks. Just not sure it is technically possible to implement. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

mailto
Instead of *just* linking to Special:EmailUser/Oversight, please change the exclamatory-top-box to also offer the standard-since-the-previous-millenium mailto syntax. Rationale: Special:EmailUser/Oversight has some dependencies, namely, user must be registered, user must be logged in, and mediawiki must be bug-free. Mailto is an older technology, and although it also has dependencies, they are *different* dependencies, so for some slice of the userbase, mailto will Just WorkTM even when Special:EmailUser/Oversight doesn't. (Mailto dependencies:  computer system being used must have a default-email-client configured, and person must know the email-password to that email-client or have configured the computer to save said email-account-password internally.  Mailto won't work at a library-kiosk usually, and not all smartphones and tablets are properly configured, but 99% of home and work PCs will have mailto properly configured.)  Mailto is a good fallback-mechanism, in cases where the person isn't logged into wikipedia, or in cases wiki-routed-email Special:EmailUser is borked. Please change this:

To something like this:

I inserted mailto-links in both boxes. Note that my suggested modifications change the black plaintext oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org so it is converted to be a blue mailto hyperlink mailto:oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org. That existing tidbit of black plaintext is using no_spam right now, so I guess there has to be a balance struck between how much spam the oversight-en-wp SMTP account receives, and how easy it is for logged-out and/or unregistered wikipedians to contact the oversight team. Same goes for my suggested modification to the caution portion, it will make the email-address visible to spam-harvesters.

Mailto is a dual-edged-sword, the downside to mailto is the same as the upside to mailto ... it has been standard for so long, that all internet users know how to use it, but at the same time, all the spam-crawlbots know how to misuse it. I still think offering mailto could be a win overall, but whether that is true, depends on how much spam the email-address in question is already subjected to. If there is *no* spam currently being received, adding mailto-links increases the likelihood that spam will begin to flow inbound. On the other hand, if the target-email-account is *already* getting spammed, then adding a web-visible mailto hyperlink probably won't hurt, and might make emailing the team more convenient for good-samaritan-endusers. Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Data retention policy
Are emails sent to oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org or any of the Oversighters personally retained indefinitely? This would pose a very serious privacy risk if security were to be breached. Alakzi (talk) 16:32, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support an official data-retention-policy, aka data-deletion-after-N-days-policy. The point of oversight, in the usual privacy-related-use-case, is to prevent disclosure of personally identifiable information.  Retaining that personally identifiable user info, aka not having a data-deletion-after-N-days-policy, would be a mistake.  WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY is one of my favorite wiki-policies, but in this case I think an official policy that oversighters should delete copies of the plaintext emails containing personally identifiable information is a no-brainer.  Note that this is not actually easy to do... many email clients actually keep the information, even after the enduser clicks the 'delete message' button.  Secure deletion requires a bit of non-obvious care, to do properly.  Also, extra copies of plaintext emails are potentially being retained on the mailservers, in the OTRS audit-system, and so on.  All of which points to, an official policy, with a policy-page explaining the steps needed for oversighters to *securely* aka actually delete the info, is needed.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Form doesn't work?
The form to send a suppression request doesn't seem to work, or at least not the part that sends a copy to the user. Cheers, The Jolly Bard (talk) 20:23, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The form is just the normal Wikipedia internal email system. If it didn't work there is probably some sort of temporary bug causing it and it is unlikely the oversight team can do anything about it, although WP:VPT may be able to help you with that. . I don't see a ticket from you in our queue so it looks like your request was not received. Did you get any sort of reply? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No, nothing. No indication that anything was processed. I tried twice, at different times today. The Jolly Bard (talk) 21:53, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I have just tested the system - email at User:Oversight using the link at the top of this page, made sure "copy sender" was ticked at the bottom. The email was sent, I received a copy, and the email was received in the Oversight OTRS queue.  If there is an action I did that you missed, please let us know. If you've done all these steps and it's not working for you, perhaps try emailing me directly at my talk page, and we'll see what is happening there.  Risker (talk) 22:05, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I did all the steps without any result. Sent mail to you, and that got confirmed. The Jolly Bard (talk) 22:49, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I also sent an email through the form yesterday, with the 'copy sender' box checked (well... 95% sure?), and have not received a copy or a response. Did you receive anything from me, or should I assume it also went to the bitbucket? (The email address is obvious.) Thanks! Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:02, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything from you. We are expecting a scheduled outage in the OTRS system later today, it's possible they were already mucking around with it and some stuff went missing. may know more about it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't have anything to do with the scheduled outage. Check your spam folders, perhaps? Keegan (talk) 18:46, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing but spam in the spam folder. And if that were the reason we didn't get cc'd, the messages should still have been found in the queue, I imagine. I'll resend later; thanks for checking. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:37, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Please see mailto and/or IRC talkpage subsections below. In cases where Special:Email/Oversight fails to work, for whatever reason (including component-failure between the screen-to-keyboard bio-pathway), having off-wiki-email and/or off-wiki-chat options as a fallback, seems like a good idea.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Pedantry
At Requests for oversight, in the "what information do we need" section, please change discrete to discreet. The latter spelling is the one corresponding to discretion (see Grammarist). Thanks. Sorry to be an annoyance, but this is annoying me. BethNaught (talk) 16:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ (And I don't agree with your section heading above, BethNaught.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 16:11, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration proposed regarding giving Philippe CheckUser and Oversight tools
A motion has been proposed by the Arbitration Committee to give CheckUser and Oversight tools. Community comments are welcome on the motions page. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Lede is wrong
Currently, the lede is wrong: -- zzuuzz (talk) 03:54, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Users are not required to be administrators (see note)
 * Phillipe's "shredding statement" cannot be considered to carry any weight, as he has retired from the role. Indeed the notion of supplying documents or identification is no longer relevant, as I understand it.

Motion to return Oversight privileges to Floquenbeam
A motion has been posted at Arbitration requests/motions that, who resigned from the Arbitration Committee and voluntarily gave up the Oversight permission in July 2014, is re-appointed an Oversighter following a request to the Committee for the permission to be restored.

Comment from the community is encouraged either at the above linked page or via e-mail to the Arbitration Committee if the comment is private or sensitive.

For the Arbitration Committee. Amortias (T)(C) 00:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Reason for naming 'Oversight'
In the article, it has been specified that due to historical reasons, Suppression is also knows as Oversight. Out of general curiosity, I'd like to know about the specified 'historical' reasons. Thank you. Rollingcontributor (talk) 15:26, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The original technical extension for performing these was called mw:Extension:Oversight, prior to being added to mw:Manual:RevisionDelete. — xaosflux  Talk 15:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that helped satiate my curiosity. Rollingcontributor (talk) 15:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Edit to Requests for oversight
On Requests for oversight, which seems to share a talk page with this page, it still says "Appeal of our decisions is only to the Audit Subcommittee." I believe this should be updated to "Appeal of our decisions is only to the Arbitration Committee. meamemg (talk) 15:16, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 15:19, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

In case your ears are burning...
Since editors are supposed to notify other editors when they're the subject of a discussion at WP:AN/I, you may be interested in WP:AN/I. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 05:49, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposal for new mailing list
Hello. Please see Requests for comment/Oversight mailing list for a current request for comment on creating an oversighter mailing list. Ajraddatz (talk) 00:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Policy clarification
Per the policy listed on this page, oversight can be used to remove the IP data of a user with an account that edits accidentally logged out as well as the IP data of editors without an account on request. This seems to be at odds with the OS FAQ which says the exact opposite.

Q: I don't have a Wikipedia account. My IP address was published on Wikipedia when I edited. Can you remove it? A: No, by editing Wikipedia as an IP you have agreed that your IP information may be displayed. If you wish to conceal your IP, you'll need to create an account. (Taken from OS FAQ) So which is it? The FAQ or the main policy page? And which one needs to be updated? --Majora (talk) 00:55, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh wow, is that FAQ out of date...and factually inaccurate in some places to boot. I'll put it on my "to be fixed" list.  In answer to your specific question, on discussion amongst oversighters and the community some time ago, it was determined that in at least some cases it is appropriate to suppress the IP address of a new user. The edit notice warning users that they are "logged out" is very small (compared to most edit notices) and poorly worded. Attempts in the past to modify the edit notice were rejected. As well, edit notices are not visible if the user is using VisualEditor, an increasingly likely possibility as VE access is phased in for unregistered users.  Therefore oversighters occasionally receive requests from people who genuinely did not realize that their edit would reveal their IP address. As part of the response to such users, most oversighters will send a return email encouraging the editor to create a Wikipedia account, and to continue to edit. While we may not get a lot of new registered editors this way, it's pretty obvious that we had no chance of persuading someone to register an account and continue editing if we refused to suppress their unintentional revelation of their IP address. There was a discussion on VPP some time ago, I'll see if I can find the link.  Risker (talk) 01:41, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Aha, here is the discussion that expanded the criteria. Risker (talk) 01:53, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you Risker. Makes sense to expand it a little in that regard. Good to know which is correct for future reference. --Majora (talk) 01:57, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not germane to the main point raised, but Visual Editor (on a mobile device at least) displays a big warning that editing without logging in will reveal the IP address and you have to deliberately click again to edit logged out. QuiteUnusual (talk) 08:42, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Query
This has been asked before, but an answer was not given. Are oversight-en-wp@ tickets retained indefinitely? BethNaught (talk) 14:23, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the tickets are archived in the OTRS system. Mike V • Talk 17:57, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. BethNaught (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Do we have enough oversighters?
Yesterday, I submitted a request for oversight of two consecutive edits that I had made. It took until this morning for the request to be acted upon. I then realised that only one of the edits had been supressed, so replied to the e-mail requesting that the task be completed. It took 12 hours 1 minute for me to receive an e-mail saying that this had been done. I am not complaining, and appreciate the efforts of the oversighters, but the incident did make me think whether the process is too slow. If my request had been really important, would it have been dealt with faster, or is this a standard response time? If the latter is the case, do we need more oversighters? Cordless Larry (talk) 22:14, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Not sure what the current response time is usually, but I'm guessing that delays yesterday were caused by Americans with time to spare spending it on cookouts and blowing stuff up instead of on Wikipedia ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have been traveling so I have not been looking at the oversight emails. From my experience this is abnormal. Most requests are responded to very quickly, usually within minutes. It does depend on the request and could be slower but 12 hours does seem excessive. -- GB fan 22:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Not that I've submitted a tremendous number of tickets but I've generally found my emails to be answered within a few hours. Mkdw talk 23:09, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, that has been my experience in the past. I wonder whether, on this occasion, people saw my request and judged it not to be urgent and so didn't act on it immediately and whether if it had been more urgent (many of my previous requests have concerned the disclosure of personal information about minors, for instance), it would have been dealt with more quickly? If that's the case, then fine, but I hope that urgent requests aren't taking this long. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:02, 8 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Note, additional functionaries were brought up to arbcom in May - never really heard back. — xaosflux  Talk 12:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. I'm pinging, who was involved in that discussion. Cordless Larry (talk) 13:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I reported that a minor had revealed their Facebook profile yesterday morning, and received an e-mail back just short of 12 hours later (thanks, ). That still seems a long time to me, given the nature of the incident, and there's not an American holiday to take into account this time. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
 * It is normal practice at Oversight for information about 13 and under to almost automatically oversighted. 14 to 17 is at discretion based on what is there.  Based on everything about this case it was questionable whether it should be oversighted.  It wasn't currently visible on the page. It had been visible on the page for only a short period almost two months ago before the edit was reverted.  This could have led to the delay as oversighters evaluated it.  -- GB fan 11:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
 * A request will normally get eyes very quickly, depending on the time of day, but if it's not an emergency or it's complicated and the first oversighter to see it is busy, they might well leave it for someone with more time. I get email alerts for new requests and if the request is simple, urgent, and the email contains a direct link to the diff that I can just click, I've been known to action it from my phone, whereas complicated or time-consuming or non-clickable requests would have to wait til I was at my computer or for another oversighter. I don't think we need more oversighters—we ostensibly have about 50, which last time I looked was more than all the other projects put together—but I think we need the oversighters we have to set up email alerts and monitor the queue more regularly. I get the impression there are only a handful of us monitoring the queue very closely and that we get delays a certain times when several of us are working or sleeping. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  11:59, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your responses, and . I'm pleased that my request was seen and not acted on immediately rather than not being seen. I think that's reasonable, and I will emphasise again that my concern shouldn't be taken as criticism of you or any of the other oversighters, who do an excellent job. The suggestion about alerts sounds like a good one, though. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:53, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Draft looking for feedback
I've started a preliminary draft about outing and COI procedures at User:Tryptofish/Drafts/COI List Draft. Feedback about it is welcome at User talk:Tryptofish/Drafts/COI List Draft. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

There is now a proposal at Village pump (proposals). --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

RfC of possible interest
Oversighters may perhaps be interested in Wikipedia talk:Harassment. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Should the logo be updated?
I made an attempt to update the logo to use the 2.0 globe; however I did not do a very good job of it, and I think that someone with more artistic/photoshop skills than I should do that. This isn't extremely important to do, but I feel it should still be done, as all the other user right logos use the new logo. MereTechnicality (talk) 21:48, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

View your edits that have been oversighted
Is there a straightforward, fast way to see all the edits you have made that have been oversighted? Now I don't mean for me to view the diffs themselves; I know that I can't because I'm not an oversighter. I just want to know if there's a way I can see the pages I made the edits to, when I made them, etc. Everymorning (talk) 01:47, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I doubt it. As far as I know, the database will only acknowledge that an edit that was oversighted even exists if you're an oversighter. MereTechnicality   ⚙  01:53, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't believe there is a way without having oversight permission. Just some general info, you have five edits that have been oversighted. Three to articles that have since been deleted, one in user space and one in project source. Why are you interested? - GB fan 02:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Just wondering. I remember one of them, which was when I reverted a vandal edit to a page about an obscure painter that was so nasty it was oversighted soon afterward, but I don't remember any specifics. I was kinda interested in looking more into what the user whose suppressed edit I reverted did on some other pages (I kind of remember that too, but again, I don't remember many details, partly b/c this was at least a year ago). I know this user did similar stuff to the oversighted edit I reverted elsewhere that wasn't oversighted (at least not as soon). Everymorning (talk) 02:39, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not one of your oversighted edits. Just from the general description that was more likely revision deleted rather than oversighted.  If it was oversighted the reason it does not show up in your oversighted edits is that you removed the offending information with your edit and only the versions from where it was introduced through the one right before you removed it would need to be oversighted.  Those would be the only versions of the article that had the information in them. - GB fan 12:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Now that I remember I think my revert wasn't oversighted (or revision deleted), but the original edit (which I reverted) was oversighted, so I think that's why it wasn't one of them. Everymorning (talk) 16:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

New RfC
Oversighters may be interested in WT:HA. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 4 June 2017
Please add  to the   span to hide it from non-admins. P p p er y 00:48, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually I think the first half of that should just be removed (it could be in the protection log instead) - the second half is useful to others. What do you think? — xaosflux  Talk 01:27, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I made a mistake in including the second half in the request in the first place, and have no opinion about removing the first half. P p p er y 01:37, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Removed it and other misc cleanup. — xaosflux  Talk 15:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Oversight revealing rev-del'ed material
Should someone with oversight capacity readily supply off-wiki locations to find rev-del'ed material? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:11, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to rev-dels that are oversight supressed (i.e. not just deleted)? — xaosflux  Talk 22:39, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The background is an interaction ban (archive), followed by a 160-KB discussion (archive). TRM has been invited to take any further concerns to ANI but has instead chosen to express dissent on other pages—pages where WP:BOOMERANG may not apply. As an onlooker who happened to notice the events unfold before deletion, it was obvious that the iban was necessary to avoid highly sensitive issues unrelated to the encyclopedia. The underlying issue did not involve a finding of fault, but TRM has a different view. Johnuniq (talk) 02:10, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Oversight policy regarding DOB
I'm starting to be confused. I first heard about oversight when I responded to a Teahouse question from a very young editor who had mentioned their age. That was maybe a year ago.

As I've been doing userspace NPP for a while, I have occasionally found user pages that disclose DOB, phone numbers, etc. Based on advice in WP:DOB, I had been quietly removing the information and reporting to oversight. The first several instances received very nice thank you notes from the oversight team.

But now I'm being told that the oversight team is not interested in DOB information for non-minors and, when directed to this WP:Oversight policy page, I don't even see anything about self-reported personal information for even very young minors.

To clarify, is a change needed at WP:DOB or here?

Thanks,  &mdash; jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  22:03, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Neither. WP:DOB is clearly about protecting the privacy of article subjects, not about policing what editors put on their userpages. Editors can disclose as much or as little information about themselves as they wish, with the exception of children, who are more vulnerable and less able to asses the risks of posting personal information. HJ Mitchell  &#124; Penny for your thoughts?  22:18, 30 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, I understand that this is the policy "in practice", but this policy page as written says nothing about minors and the WP:DOB page still includes the words "or anywhere on Wikipedia". I don't intend to continue to pester you on this issue, nor file reports on items where there is apparently no need to act, but I still think these issues should be clarified in the written policy documents.  &mdash; jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  22:45, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * In context, the WP:DOB section is clearly not (but admittedly not explicitly) not talking about self-disclosure. It might make sense to add "self-disclose by apparent minors" explicitly to this policy (it's one of the standard reasons we can use when suppressing something), but I've been an oversighter for nearly 3 years and this is the first time anyone has had an issue with this afaik. Risker has been on the team much longer and typically has a very good memory for this sort of thing though so it's worth getting their input to this. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 30 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The tendency of minors to publish their personal information, which with the original oversight tool was almost impossible to oversight, was an important motivation in the development of the suppression and revision-deletion tools. Back in the day, it was not possible to oversight the very first revision of a page, which was usually where that personal information was included. I suspect it was simply well-understood by the communities of the time that the user pages of minors that contained personal information (which I will note frequently includes the personal information of other people, too) was a clear-cut situation that called for suppression-deletion. The WMF's position, when I asked several years ago, was that the Meta oversight policy outlined the minimum situations in which oversight should be offered, and that communities could add other criteria as they saw fit; that position was developed after revision-deletion was installed in early 2009. Avi and I are probably the last active oversighters who used the actual oversight tool; the rules were so stringent then because old-school oversighting actually had an impact on the databases and "corrupted" histories and just plain made a mess of everything. We were also dealing with a culture that, in its idealistic way, believed that Wikipedia should retain a publicly-accessible akashic record of every edit that ever had been made. I think we have gotten over that, and there are not very many people who feel that publicly accessible trolling and BLP violations are required for the "integrity" of the encyclopedia - not to mention phone numbers, home addresses, etc. There are also historical issues that highlighted the need to take special care with the personal information of minors (see Child protection and Guidance for younger editors) - these policies and guidelines were written based on actual experience.  Simply put, Wikipedia cannot be seen as a vector for inappropriate activities related to its younger editors.  Adult editors are a different story, as they're assumed to be informed enough to realize that publishing such personal information has a very big downside. And WP:DOB comes in to play for everyone else in the world who isn't an adult editor who published his or her own personal information.  It's rather shocking how often we will see people publishing the personal information of friends, family, family of article subjects, and so on. I hope this is helpful.  Risker (talk) 03:44, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Wow,, that's a more complicated history than I ever knew before. Even when the written policy may not be entirely clear, I'll try to follow in the spirit of what's been talked about here.  &mdash; jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  04:17, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I've found two things to contribute to this discussion in regards to trying to answer your question:
 * "The BLP policy also applies to user and user talk pages". - WP:BLPTALK
 * "3) Users who appear to be children editing in good faith who disclose identifying personal information may be appropriately counseled. Deletion and oversight may be used in appropriate cases to remove the information." - Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy.
 * WP:CHILD failed to materialize and WP:CHILDPRO eventually formed in 2010. I believe the Arbitration remedy remains in effect. I could not find any documentation indicating that it had been rescinded or replaced. I am fairly leery about how old it is so perhaps others have more recent information. <span style="color:black;text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px white, -4px -4px 15px white">Mkdw  <span style="color: #0B0080;text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px white, -4px -4px 15px white">talk  05:02, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * As I see it, the relevant quote from WP:BLPTALK for this discussion is The single exception is that users may make any claim they wish about themselves in their user space, so long as they are not engaged in impersonation, and subject to what Wikipedia is not, which deals with self-disclosures. It goes on to mention minors, but only with the word discouraged.  &mdash; jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  22:42, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Logging of Revdels
According to the Logging section: Revisions that have been suppressed using Oversight were logged at Special:Oversight; however, this has been superseded with Special:RevisionDelete.

Based on an IRC discussion I think this is incorrect and they are included in the deletion log. If that is correct we ought to fix this sentence.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  16:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * There was some ambiguity to the wording of that sentence. "This" was referring to Special:Oversight rather than RevDel logs, so I reworded it. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:53, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. -- S Philbrick (Talk)  17:05, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Special:Emailuser link inactive
It looks like the top contact method listed - the link to Special:EmailUser/Oversight - is turned off. Is that a temporary thing, or a permanent one?

Either way, there should be a modification/notification to this page's instructions so that people know that they can't contact Oversight through Special:EmailUser. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:40, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This was definitely working a few days back and over the course of the past few months.I have no idea what the issue is but it ought to be fixed ASAP. Winged Blades Godric 17:17, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is phab:T182541/phab:T178842. Since User:Oversight does not have any edits/logged actions, it can only receive emails from crats, stewards, global renamers, and WMF Support and Safety. Someone needs to make a dummy edit with the account. do you have the credentials for this account? —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 17:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I really wish there's a way WMF can inform the community whenever they introduce potentially groundbreaking features, since not everyone keeps Phabricator watchlisted. Alex Shih (talk) 17:54, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Many thanks.Echo Alex in his entirety.Such changes ought not to be only brodcasted in the desolate corners of Phab, rarely visited by an average pedian. Winged Blades Godric 17:57, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * By the way, don't you have the credentials? Winged Blades Godric 17:58, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Logs show it was last made by Risker. — xaosflux  Talk 18:06, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Still not working though. A dummy edit is probably necessary. Alex Shih (talk) 18:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's being worked on. Primefac (talk) 18:19, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I made a dumb edit using the User:Arbitration Committee account. (Oh, wait, you said a dummy edit? Oops... ;) Email appears to be working now. I don't have the password for the oversight account handy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:23, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And here you could have made a sensible edit! Primefac (talk) 18:32, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks all for the pings. Noting that this appears to be resolved for these accounts, although I think it's ridiculous that the "anti-harassment" feature blocked the ability of the user to receive emails without giving the user any choice, instead of blocking certain types of accounts from *sending* emails.  Seems that's pretty much the opposite of what the phab tickets were about. And for the record, account creation is a logged action.  That's why it appears in the logs....   Risker (talk) 04:04, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Handling of IP addresses accidentally revealed
I was looking through our guidance on suppression and saw an entry in Oversight/FAQ, which seems perfectly reasonable to me:

At year-end, the English Wikipedia oversight manual was posted on an email list (I think the functionaries list). If there's an online link I don't know it.

That manual contains this advice (emphasis added):

As a possibly important aside, I do not see a "Handling Responses" section. I do see a section titled "Handling Requests" but it doesn't seem to be a further discussion of this issue, so if there is further discussion I haven't found it.

My main concern is that this advice seems to be at odds with the earlier advice. I am totally on board with removing it for users in good standing who accidentally edit while logged out (this has happened to me), but I am surprised that we would deny such a request from a new user who knew nothing about the fact that their IP address is entered into the more or less permanent history logs.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  15:44, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've noticed this disconnect between policy and practice myself and I've been meaning to raise it on the mailing list. We seem to have got a lot more liberal on the suppression of IPs in recent years, to the point that I think we're being far too liberal. As far as I'm aware, the original point of suppressing IPs was to prevent somebody inferring a connection between an IP address and a named account (for example, if I replied to a comment addressed to me while inadvertently logged out, it's not hard to infer that the IP address that made that edit belongs to me, and from that you could glean certain personal information about me; in my case it's unlikely you'd learn anything you couldn't find publicly, but editors are entitled to withhold whatever information they wish). Without something to connect it to an IP address is a meaningless string of numbers that could belong to anyone, and I don't think we should suppress it (subject to the usual caveat that there's an exception to every rule). <b style="color: teal; font-family: Tahoma">HJ Mitchell</b> &#124; <span style="color: navy; font-family: Times New Roman" title="(Talk page)">Penny for your thoughts? 16:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The "Oversight manual" that got posted to the list is very, very outdated; I think it was written circa 2012. (I participated in writing the first one, someone else should be updating it.) The practice was authorized by the community in July 2015. If someone gets as far as figuring out how to make an oversight request because they logged out, or because they didn't realize their IP was going to be published (a very common "lack of knowledge" for first time users), they can have their IP oversighted.  I'm rather shocked this is not common knowledge amongst oversighters. Risker (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The date on the manual is 2010, so yes, it is dated.


 * Should I have posted this in the mailing list rather than here?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  17:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought about that before responding, but my sense is that it's probably better here; there's nothing confidential about this question, and it is probably a good think for the community to have the opportunity to see that oversighters continue to learn, to question, and to discuss the relevant policies. Back in 2015, we ran into a pile of very legitimate requests from new IP editors to suppress their IPs; we knew that the "warning" interface is pretty much awful, and we already knew that we regularly have longstanding editors who wind up "publishing" through that warning. I'm glad that we took that question to the community at large rather than just the oversight list, because it was pretty quickly apparent that there wasn't much concern about this in the community, and oversighters could feel assured that they were interpreting the policy as the community does. Risker (talk) 17:28, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Oversight of New York Times identification of Wikipedia editor
In a 14 October 2017 article, The New York Times identified the Wikipedia account of Joshua Boyle as User:Sherurcij. I had the misfortune to make that connection on Talk:Kidnapping of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman. I was accused of outing by User:Geo Swan. My comment on the article's talk page and my explanation on my own talk page were oversighted. When I questioned how it could be outing when a reliable source had identified the username, I was told by User:Primefac that the issue was that Boyle had not "voluntarily" told the NYT what his username was. So our internal rule about outing prevented even talk page discussion of a fact sourced to the NYT. This seemed absurd so I started [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Sauce_for_the_goose? a discussion] on Jimbo's page. While that discussion was still active, another newspaper ran a story on Boyle's editing and User:Earl Andrew put a link to on the article's talk page. I alerted them to the situation, but was told by User:Primefac "One source is questionable, two points make a line. Consider it settled". Since sourcing was never mentioned as an issue, I asked of more information and was told "The OS decision was based on the fact that the connection was not specifically listed as "he said he edited as...", but since there is a second source that's confirmation of a sort". It was quite clear in the discussion on my talk page that the reason for oversight was that Boyle himself did not disclose the username. Not a question about the source or the number of sources or any lack of confirmation. This is not an accusation of wrongdoing or deliberate misuse of Oversight tools. I am certain that the decision to oversight was made with the best of intentions. I fully expected that the oversight was going to be reversed even without the second news report, but I feel like the initial decision should never have been made and the rationale for having made it seems to be curiously flexible now that we have another source. This isn't a situation which is likely to come up a lot, but can we agree that reliably sourced identification of a Wikipedia editor who is also the subject of a Wikipedia article is not outing and, as such, not a candidate for oversight? World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 00:07, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you just outed someone because Jimbo/Primefac says it's ok? And done it again knowing that the original was oversighted? That's not the way to change policy. Johnuniq (talk) 02:39, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If you'd read what I posted, you'd know that I have not. And I'm not trying to change policy, just have people apply it sensibly. World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 03:26, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I believe that a bright line -- which was not violated here AFAIK -- is that links to reliable sources such as newspapers should never be subject to censorship by oversight. This is an encyclopedia and the connection to the broader world is its point of origin.  If people accept that, it follows inevitably that because anyone can link to the newspaper source without oversight, there is no point oversighting the data the source gave us.  Which is what was said above.


 * I should note, however, that despite its awful name and frequent misapplication, the WP:OUTING policy should really be taken, above all, as a prohibition on opposition research used to gain advantage in Wikipedia squabbles. There are many things that are not secret but are still off topic and in bad taste to bring up against fellow editors.  In my mind it is unequivocally correct to link Joshua Boyle, as an article subject, to a Wikipedia username as a matter of biography.  It would however be wrong to link the username to him if your point were to argue that you feel he is not a fit person to be editing articles about (whatever) if he were on here editing and you had a dispute.  In that case such a link might well be reverted and the editor admonished for violating WP:OUTING.  However, as it depends on a published source, it still need not actually be oversighted, because any editor capable of tracking back the revision history is capable of typing the username into a search engine.  And if it need not be oversighted then it should not be oversighted. Wnt (talk) 02:46, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

When multiple sources out a Wikipedia editor and that information becomes easily accessible through major search engines, the cat is out of the bag and oversighting the information just because it is outing is inappropriate. In this case, the cat is definitely out of the bag.


 * Mr. Boyle, under the user name “Sherurcij” (which also sometimes included the first name “Josh”) spent a lot of time editing and updating the Wikipedia page"" --New York Times
 * "...62,267 changes and additions Joshua Boyle made to Wikipedia ... he created his first Wikipedia profile under the user name Sherurcij..." --MSN News, Calgary Herald, The World News
 * "We know that Joshua Boyle, prior to his captivity, was a frequent editor of Wikipedia... As Wikipedia User:Sherurcij had made tens of thousands of edits over the years," --Wikipediocracy

That being said, as Wnt correctly points out, there are other good reasons that can support oversighting even if the general outing policy does not. Opposition research is not allowed on any Wikipedia page and should be oversighted. In articles (as opposed to talk pages) WP:V, WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT apply, and in my opinion personal information posted to article space that violates those policies should be subject to oversighting as well as deletion. And of course there are the "Removing prohibited material", Removing harmful posts", and "Removing Off-topic posts" provisions of WP:TPOC. In my opinion personal information posted anywhere that violates those policies should be subject to oversighting as well as deletion. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I didn't say quite what you're suggesting there -- I was agreeing with the reversion or removal of opposition research, but not the oversighting of publicly available information. Actually I remain generally skeptical of whether oversighting is really useful at all, since untoward information can be posted anywhere, and in any case, I see it as a dangerous practice that should be kept rare.  When a neutral editor, reading only a general description that a controversy exists, is able to recreate the information on his own, it should not be oversighted.
 * The Wikipediocracy link demonstrates that there is pretty much a continuum between very public data (New York Times), specialty outlets for people with axes to grind (Daily Dot), self-published sources (Wikipediocracy), and web forums (4chan). This is one reason why I hate the cat-out-of-the-bag notion of "outing", because it seems so utterly subjective when the cat is out of the bag.  If a state arrest record is up and you can make a deduction that this name matches a Wikipedia handle on a dating site ...  I mean, most of the cat-out-of-the-bag notions get to a point where some form or another of deduction is taken to be wrong, and I don't like a ban on thinking.  But a ban on opposition research as off-topic whether the cat is "out" or not (when dealing with editors as editors) and existing restrictions on self-published and unreliable sourcing (when dealing with editors as article subjects) seems more solidly founded. Wnt (talk) 19:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Point well taken. I may be too liberal in what I think should be oversighted. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:06, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

True deletion
We know that there exists XfD, PROD, and CSD. Normal deletion. There also exists Oversight. But is it possible to truly delete something from all records, as in, it no longer exists in any form on the servers? Curiousity question. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 06:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A system administrator could delete any / all data from underlying databases. However, depending on how long the information in question had been in place, the harder / more problematic such a "true deletion" becomes. For example, removal of data from five years ago would require deletion from every intervening revision and every backup. It would still exist on various mirrors. So, while it is theoretically possible to delete something, in practical terms it isn't (in my opinion). It would be easier to logically delete it by hashing / scrubbing the data in question rather than trying to delete it from the databases, but even then it wouldn't be possible to do this across all the backups, etc. QuiteUnusual (talk) 11:27, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * ...And once anything is published on the Internet, "true deletion" would involve somehow making sure that no computer anywhere in the world has stored a copy. Even a supposedly successful attempt to do a "true delete" that only involved servers that Wikipedia controls is not guaranteed to delete the information; modern forensics tools can often recover deleted information from a hard disk.


 * That being said, from a practical standpoint, most of the information that gets oversighted never gets saved elsewhere, and the same people who we trust to oversight the information can be trusted to tell most people who might want to access the oversighted information to pound sand. So if you are, say, someone who accidentally posted an email address, once it is oversighted it is for all practical purposes gone for good. If, on the other hand, you are the newest head of ISIS and there is a court order to try to recover some oversighted information related to a terrorist plot, then you were a fool to put the information on any computer anywhere, and it is likely that the FBI already has the info without Wikipedia ever knowing about it. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:44, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, I just mean off of Wikimedia's servers. Why do we go to the trouble of oversighting when the data still exists? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 22:03, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * See "..even by administrators. It is used within strict limits to protect privacy...". Johnuniq (talk) 01:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know that. It's the principle of the thing though. It still exists somewhere. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 07:12, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is going well beyond the scope of this talk page but some thought shows that a "true delete" button would be a big mistake. People are busy and stuff happens. If a "true delete" button existed, an accidental click could not be corrected. Further, other functionaries would not be able to examine what the person who clicked the button was doing. Suggestions might have been made that the deleter made a mistake or deletes against policy. If the material has permanently gone, such issues could not be investigated. Johnuniq (talk) 08:25, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, fair point. But it seems logical that we would want to eventually perma-delete things that were previously supressed, if it's agreed that there is no reason not to. Yes, I know it's fairly off-topic for this page, but I'm not sure where else to ask. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 23:26, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Procedure
This page apparently does not explain how to proceed. A deletion discussion contains libelous material. What does one do to get it suppressed as described on this page? Michael Hardy (talk) 08:12, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Requests for oversight. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:40, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

CU/OS activity standards motion proposed: Community comments invited
The Arbitration Committee is currently considering a motion to amend the standing procedure on functionary permissions and inactivity. The proposed change is given below:

Community comments on the change are welcome at the motion page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin ( aka L235 ·&#32; t ·&#32; c) 05:15, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Discuss this at: Arbitration/Requests/Motions

Motion: CU/OS activity standards
The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that: The standing procedure on functionary permissions and inactivity is amended as follows:

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin ( aka L235 ·&#32; t ·&#32; c) 05:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

Oversigh ≠ Censorship?
Someone tells me, oversight (suppression) in Wikipedian English is not the same as censorship.

Is this true? I am confused. Hellozeronet (talk) 15:34, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You are correct, they are not the same thing. OS is used to remove information that shouldn't be on Wikipedia full stop. Primefac (talk) 15:37, 30 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes. Oversight is for removing inappropriate comments/threats, personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers ect... Censorship is explained here: WP:NOTCENSORED.  -  FlightTime Phone  ( open channel ) 15:42, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

2018 CheckUser/Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed
The Arbitration Committee is pleased to appoint the following users to the functionary team:


 * is appointed as an Oversighter.
 * is appointed as a CheckUser.
 * is appointed as an Oversighter.
 * is appointed as a CheckUser.
 * is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
 * is appointed as an Oversighter.

The Committee thanks the community and all of the candidates for helping bring this process to a successful conclusion.

The Committee also welcomes back the following users to the functionary team:


 * , who voluntarily relinquished his CheckUser and Oversight permissions in December 2015, is reappointed as a CheckUser following a request to the Committee for return of the permission.

For the Arbitration Committee,

Katietalk 14:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard