Ombuds commission
| For legal and security reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to require two-factor authentication for this role. |
De ombuds commission, for behalf of de Board of Trustees, dey investigate complaints about infringements of de Privacy Policy, de Access to nonpublic personal data policy, de CheckUser policy den de Oversight policy, for any Wikimedia project top. Dem sanso dey investigate give de Board de compliance of local CheckUser anaa Oversight policies anaa guidelines plus de global CheckUser den Oversight policies.
| Ombuds Commission |
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| Activity reports |
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Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees committees
Staff committees Community-wide committees Movement governance committees Movement-wide preparation committees Resources allocation committees |
Tasks
In addition plus official investigation, dem go mediate between de complainant den de respondent (usually CheckUser, oversighter, bureaucrat, administrator, anaa arbitration committee member). Wen legally necessary, de ombuds go assist de General Counsel, de Executive Director anaa de board make dem handle de case.
When de case be litigious, de ombuds go be in charge make dem dey educate CheckUsers anaa odas about de Foundation ein privacy policy. Wen dem breach de Privacy Policy, Access to Nonpublic Information Policy, CheckUser Policy, anaa Oversight policy, de ombuds commission for report to de Executive Director anaa designated staff wey dem go recommend course of action (such as removal of access to tools). Additionally, de commission go fi suggest suitable changes to policies anaa software.
Neutrality
Dem for conduct ombuds' investigation for manner wey go determine by de ombuds make dem ensure fairness den impartiality. As general guideline, ebe best say ombuds avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible, particularly make dem dey avoid routine use of CheckUser anaa oversight access wey dem no dey process complaints for de projects top for wich dem be very active editors. Howeva, matters wey dey komot before de commission no be clear-cut, den de language den culture of various projects fi pose barriers to outsiders. As such, dem dey lef how de commission dey investigate complaints to de discretion of ein appointed members.
Membership
Members of the ombuds commission are selected from the Wikimedia community by Wikimedia Foundation officials. A call for volunteers is issued each year in early October on the Wikimedia-L mailing list and on the talk page of this policy, as well as other project forums as appropriate. They are appointed (assuming they agree) for a period of approximately two years (one year, prior to the 2023–25 Commission). One or more non-voting alternate member(s) may also be appointed. A Steward-Observer may be appointed to serve alongside the Ombudspeople.
Assigned rights
Ombuds get de following rights globally, among odas:
- View hidden abuse log entries (abusefilter-hidden-log)
- View the abuse log (abusefilter-log)
- View detailed abuse log entries (abusefilter-log-detail)
- View log entries of abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-log-private)
- View private data in the abuse log (abusefilter-privatedetails))
- View the AbuseFilter private details access log (abusefilter-privatedetails-log)
- View logs related to accessing protected variable values (abusefilter-protected-vars-log)
- View abuse filters (abusefilter-view)
- View abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-view-private)
- Search deleted pages (browsearchive)
- Check users' IP addresses and other information (checkuser)
- View the checkuser log (checkuser-log)
- View the log of access to temporary account IP addresses (checkuser-temporary-account-log)
- View IP addresses used by temporary accounts without needing to check the preference (checkuser-temporary-account-no-preference)
- View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
- View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions (deletedtext)
- View a log of who has accessed IP information (ipinfo-view-log)
- Enable two-factor authentication (oathauth-enable)
- View private logs (suppressionlog)
- View revisions hidden from any user (viewsuppressed)
Current members
| User | Home wiki(s) | Language spoken | IRC nick | Term expires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| だ＊ぜ (CA) | zhwiki | zh, yue, wuu, lzh, en-4, ja-3 | Dasze
|
2026 |
| Ameisenigel (CA) | dewiki, wikidatawiki | de, en-4, nds-2, fr-1, tlh-1 | Ameisenigel
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2026 |
| Arcticocean (CA) | en, sco-3, es-2, gd-1 | 2026 | ||
| Daniuu (CA) | nlwiki | nl, en-4, de-2, fr-2, la-2, vls-2, li-1 | Daniuu
|
2025 |
| Emufarmers (CA) | enwiki | en, la-2 | Emufarmers
|
2026 |
| Faendalimas (CA) | wikispecies | en, pt-3, it-2, fr-1 | faendalimas
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2026 |
| MdsShakil (CA) | bnwiki, bnwikibooks | bn, en-3, as-1 | MdsShakil
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2025 |
| Minorax (CA) | commonswiki, metawiki, simplewiktionary, wikidatawiki | en-5, zh-5, nan-2, fr-1, ko-1, ms-1, yue-1 | Minorax
|
2025 |
| Nehaoua (CA) | arwiki, frwiki | ar-n, fr-4, en-2 | 2026 | |
| Renvoy (CA) | ukwiki | uk, ru-4, en-3, pl-3, lt-1 | 2026 | |
| RoySmith (CA) | enwiki | en | roy649
|
2026 |
| Vermont (CA) ‡ | enwiki, metawiki, simplewiki | en, ru-2, es-1 | Vermont
|
2025 |
† Advisory member; ‡ Steward-Observer, terms expire in February of listed year
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Submission
Dem fi make omplaints to de ombuds commission thru de ways wey dey follow (preferably insyd language one of de members dey speak):
- To use de form, make you access dis link: Special:Contact/ombudscommission
- To write email, make you access dis link: Special:EmailUser/Ombuds commission
Both ways go send message directly go OC mailing list.
Please make you follow dese guidelines wen you dey submit inquiry go de commission:
- Be concise: Lengthy emails with unnecessary information make it harder for the commission to process the case in a timely manner.
- Be objective: Avoid making inquiries based on speculations or subjective judgements.
- Provide evidence: Please provide us with diff links and/or permanent links when possible.
- Be specific: Specify what part of which policy has been violated.
- Please inform us if your wiki has an Arbitration Committee (or a similar committee) and if you have reached them (or used other dispute resolution procedure customary to your community) before reaching the ombuds commission. Provide a link to the relevant case page if appropriate.
Processing/Reporting
Cases dem bring to wona attention go be process de way wey dey follow:
- Confirmation of the request: We will send a notice of confirmation to the requester, and if necessary ask for further information.
- Scope: If the request is within the scope of the ombuds commission, we will do the investigation, if not we will decline the request and try to direct the complainant to a better place to get help for their individual problem.
- Investigation: We do whatever is necessary to find out whether or not there was a breach of the policies or a non-compliance or conflict of local policies with the global ones.
- Result: We give the result of our investigation to the requester, and if there was indeed a breach of the privacy policy, we will inform the user who was investigated and if necessary inform the Board of Trustees and if necessary recommend removing OS, CU or steward rights from the user breaking the policy.
Past decisions
Where the Commission has reached a decision which has significance for the wider community, it may publish it publicly. The decisions currently published are:
- IP block exemptions (2016/42).
- Disclosure of information (2019/125) (2019/122) (2019/121) (2019/138) – this decision outlined the circumstances where a checkuser may disclose information they have obtained through their privileged access.
- Functionaries banned on other projects (2024/230) – dealing with a scenario where a volunteer banned from one wiki (or otherwise becoming untrusted) continues to have access rights on another wiki.
Reference numbers (in brackets) are given for the convenience of commissioners – they are the internal reference numbers of the case which led to the decision. Some published decisions will resolve several cases.
Activity reports
Activities:
- insyd 2013: February–June, July–December.
- insyd 2014: January–June, July–December.
- insyd 2015: January–June, July–December.
- insyd 2016: January–June, July–December.
- insyd 2017: January–June, July–December.
- insyd 2018: January–June, July–December.
- insyd 2019: January–June, July–September, October–December.
- 2020 Commission: January-March, April-January 2021.
- 2021 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2022.
- 2022 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2023.
- 2023 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2024.
- 2024 Commission: February-April.
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- Board resolutions: Ombudsperson Checkuser (July 2006) — Wikimedia Committees (minutes of presentation for Ombudsman Commission top; January 2009) — Amending de Scope of de Ombudsman Commission (November 2015)
- Requests give comment: Scope of Ombudsman Commission (May—December 2013)
- Announcement Ombudsman commission wider scope (January 2016)
- New commission announcements: 2007 — 2009 — 2011 — 2012 — 2013 — 2014 — 2015 — 2016 — 2017 — 2018 — 2019 — 2020 — 2021 — 2022 — 2023 — 2024
- Information for de ombuds global user group:
- 2021 workflow updates
- What do you know about the Ombuds Commission? (December 2023) by Faendalimas (the Chair of the Ombuds Commission)