Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/Reports

This summary is prepared in anticipation of future elections/appointments to the AUSC, currently scheduled for October 2010.

• Total requests = 20

Resolution of requests

• 3 requests were publicly reported on this page (see below), with one resulting in a reminder to the functionary involved
  

Of the requests that were not publicly reported:

• 1 request resulted in an Arbitration Committee statement on administrators being expected to review checkuser blocks with a checkuser before unblocking
• 3 requests resulted in an AUSC statement to the Functionaries mailing list defining best practices for checkusers and oversighters
• 1 request was referred to another, more appropriate venue
• 2 requests resulted in reminders to the functionary involved
• 10 requests were resolved informally, with a determination that either (a) actions were acceptable or (b) no action on the part of the AUSC was required

Risker (talk) 06:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some further information on the distribution of the requests, with approximate time to completion:

• 2 requests carried in to November 2009, average completion 15 days
• 3 requests in November 2009, average completion 100 days
• 7 requests in December 2009, average completion 66 days
• 1 request in January 2010, completion 10 days
• 2 requests in March 2010, no action taken on either request
• 1 request in April 2010, completion 74 days
• 3 requests in June 2010, average completion 10 days (including one referred to Arbitration Committee)
• 1 request in August 2010, completion 1 day

Risker (talk) 00:33, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From late October, 2010, through June, 2011, the Audit Subcommittee reviewed a total of eleven cases:

• Three cases were not within the scope of the AUSC.
• Two cases did not involved the use of CheckUser or suppression by a user with advanced permissions.
• Two requests were denied.
• Two requests alleging abuse resulted in endorsement of CheckUser and/or Oversight.
• One case was overturned, and a best practices notice sent to the oversight mailing list and to the oversighter in question.
• One case was closed and sent with a recommendation to the Arbitration Committee.

For the subcommittee, Keegan (talk) 18:50, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From July 2011 to February 2012, the Audit Subcommittee reviewed a total of eight cases:

• One case did not involve the use of CheckUser or suppression by a user with advanced permissions.
• In two cases, the use of advanced permissions was endorsed.
• In one case, the decision to decline a request for suppression was endorsed.
• In one case, the request to disclose why an edit was suppressed was declined.
• In one case, the request was outside of the scope of the subcommittee, and was referred to the proper channels.
• One case resulted in a caution to the functionary and development of a best practice guideline, which was shared with all functionaries.

• One case was closed and sent with a recommendation to the Arbitration Committee.

Of these eight cases, one review was requested by another functionary, one review was initiated by a member of the subcommittee, and six were requests by non-functionaries.

For the Audit Subcommittee,

The audit subcommittee has investigated a complaint dealing with the suppression of four edits on User:Law and 2 edits on User talk:Law. (Issue 09-014)

On August 16, an IP vandal identified Law as The_undertow both on

The audit subcommittee has determined that the edits do not qualify for suppression; as Law was not an "approved" alternate account, identification of Law's prior account is not "outing." The suppression has been reversed, although the revisions remain deleted, as it is any user's prerogative to remove vulgar vandalism from their user and user talk pages.

The oversighter has confirmed that Law contacted him/her privately and that he/she knew that Law and The_undertow were the same person, but states that he/she either did not know or forgot that The_undertow had been under a block, and "interpreted his most recent departure (and return under a new name) as a RTV thing." Since the edits were deleted and there was no urgency, consultation on the oversight list or with another oversighter privately would have been best practice. If a stranger contacts oversight asking for allegations of sockpuppetry to be suppressed, this should normally provoke questions. Here, the circumstances (including Law resigning his sysop status immediately after deleting the edits) should have raised questions. Instead, the oversighter did not take steps to confirm Law's status, and essentially gave him the benefit of the doubt. The audit subcommittee finds this to be an error in judgement, but not one so serious as to provoke further inquiry or action. We are unable to independently determine whether the oversighter knew more about Law than he/she has said.

The audit subcommittee has adopted a policy of not disclosing the names of oversighters or checkusers involved in complaints where there is no finding of wrongdoing, although the individual is free to identify themself and post their own explanation.

This report was approved 5-0 with John Vandenberg recusing.

For the Audit Subcommittee, Thatcher 16:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Background

For many years, Oversight has been used to remove edits that include privacy violations and a limited number of other material. Removal of these edits was irreversible without intervention from a developer, and had other adverse effects on the database. Therefore the use of this tool was tightly limited and only those edits that were clearly problematic were oversighted. In February 2009, an improved tool, known as "suppression", was made available to oversighters. Suppression is fully reversible, and is now the standard tool for removing privacy violations and other material meeting the suppression criteria. Oversighters are now able to remove potentially problematic edits from public and administrator view at an earlier stage, and review the use of the tool after the fact. This feature is particularly valuable where there is an alleged breach of privacy on a heavily watched, rapidly edited page.

History of the event

On 12 November 2009, during a discussion on

The Audit Subcommittee finds that all parties acted in accordance with policy during the course of this event, but that several misunderstandings and gaps in practice complicated the situation.

Recommendations

• The Arbitration Committee, which is ultimately responsible for suppression usage on English Wikipedia, should contact the Stewards group and request that if a steward carries out emergency oversight/suppression on this project, the steward notify the Oversight-L list so that the suppression can be reviewed to ensure it is within project norms. Stewards should also be invited to submit their email addresses so they can be given write-only access to Oversight-L to facilitate this communication. The approach to the stewards should include recognition that stewards may take action in emergency or serious situations before all of the relevant information is known, and that reversal of a steward's decision under such circumstances is not a reflection on the action or the steward, but is based on additional information that the steward may not have at the time of the suppression.
• The Oversight team is urged to review suppressions performed in unusually time-sensitive situations, regardless of who carries out the suppression, and to reverse suppressions subsequently determined to be outside of scope, as such suppressions are more likely to be made before full information is received.
• The Oversight team is strongly urged to develop and communicate the situations in which suppression may be used to redact personal information of a user when that user has voluntarily revealed personal information in the past. Factors to consider include whether or not the editor is a minor, how long the information has been present on Wikipedia, the location of the information requested to be suppressed, how extensive the suppression would need to be in order to redact all references to the personal information, community standards (including those articulated by prior Arbitration Committee decisions) and whether other processes (e.g., revision deletion, reversion of edits) will provide a satisfactory resolution. Suppressions should be able to be justified within the WMF privacy policy.

For the Audit Subcommittee, Risker (talk) 05:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this

This report is solely concerned with the use of CheckUser by Versageek; the involvement of Lar and the administrative actions by Versageek are outside of the scope of the investigation. There is no evidence of improper use of CheckUser by Versageek. The check was reasonable and within CheckUser discretion.

History:

• At 22:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC), User:MZMcBride began an Articles for Deletion debate on User:David Shankbone. Between 4:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC) and 19:49, 25 October 2009, JohnWBarber commented 12 times. About a day after the close of debate, at, 23:59, 26 October 2009 (UTC) JohnWBarber opened a deletion review, on which he commented, sometimes at great length a total of 25 times. The deletion review debate reached over 38000 words, JohnWBarber's contributions numbering at about 3300 words, not including several discussions that were on the adjoining talk page. During the course the debate, Lar (who was also involved in the debate) shared with Versageek a suspicion that the JohnWBarber was "an alternate account purely to participate in contentious discussions, and do so aggressively and disruptively." Versageek made several checks. As a result, the JohnWBarber, Reconsideration, and CountryDoctor accounts were blocked as sockpuppets, and the Noroton account was blocked for 1 week for abusing multiple accounts, and later JohnWBarber requested Arbitration, and the matter was given to AUSC for review.[reply]

Analysis:

• The JohnWBarber account edited the David Shankbone AfD 12 times, and the DRV 22 times, showing high interest in a high profile debate that had already included accusations of sockpuppetry. His comments were frequently rude, tendentious, confrontational, and passive aggressive.
• It was reasonable to suspect the JohnWBarber account as an account intended to avoid scrutiny.
• The JohnWBarber, Noroton, Reconsideration, and CountryDoctor accounts all edited in overlapping periods in the month of October.
• There was no clear indication or communication that JohnWBarber/Noroton/Reconsideration/CountryDoctor was attempting to make a clean start.
• The Noroton account has had poor interactions with User:David Shankbone, the subject of the David Shankbone article.
• There is no indication, or reason to suspect ulterior motives by Versageek.

Recommendations:

• Closure of this matter

Passed 3-0 with Risker , Rlevse and Kirill Lokshin recusing.

For the Audit Subcommittee,

--Tznkai (talk) 01:26, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]