Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-11-14/CheckUser

Important thing to note: we went through considerable bureaucratic processes to get as far as nominating those five. Then the stewards decided they wanted to restart the entire bureaucratic discussion from top to bottom yet again. Thankfully, Datrio short-circuited this.

Many people are calling on CheckUser to be voted for. This is a good example of why voting is evil (and avoidably stupid). It gives someone the ability to look at the IP address a user is editing from, which is confidential information under the Wikimedia privacy policy. It's a system administrator (or "developer" in Wikimedia jargon) level function. You don't vote access to the confidential database any more than you'd vote root or lead MediaWiki developer.

I've used CheckUser for the last several months and have a good idea of its powers and limitations. Tim Starling is setting up a closed mailing list for those with CheckUser so we can bounce ideas off each other and teach new users of it how to get the most out of it.

Those interested in what it does can read m:Help:CheckUser, which is the manual page (in development). - David Gerard 09:48, 14 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I am already seeing problems with the use of CheckUser. Where before, you were extremely reluctant to use it for anything other than official ArbComm business, now it seems to be used on any IP that you guys have suspicions on. I can see sooner or later there are going to a number of problems pop up with using the CheckUser capabilities. 1) One of the people with CheckUser capability will issue a false positive report for sockpuppets because they haven't done the proper checks for proxies and open relays. Technical skills are going to become more important as the Wikipedia starts getting more hard-core link spammers who are very adept at hiding their origins. 2) Someone, sooner or later, will accidentally let loose some juicy detail that they have discovered while doing checks (e.g. it looks like User:XYZ works for Microsoft). 3) Doing CheckUser checks will become so routine that you will be using for reasons beyond ArbComm purposes and sockpuppet checks.


 * The big problem that I see is that checks and balances just don't seem to be there. You are basically asking us to trust you with a blank check. Blank Verse 17:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * That's increasingly the direction Wikipedia is going. Users are even being banned from criticising these developments - Xed 17:43, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Definition?
This article doesn't define what CheckUser rights are (and are not).... &mdash; Catherine\talk 01:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a link to m:help:CheckUser - David Gerard 15:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Another important note : imho, fair journalism should use all relevant sources of information, not only partial ones. This article is unfortunately missing a good deal of important discussions to be fair and fully informative. Anthere 10:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)