Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2014-03

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in March 2014, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

Omdo

I'm not really sure where else to put this report, so please excuse me if I'm doing this wrong and move this to the appropriate page however you decide to organize it. So here goes:

Omdo (talk · contribs) seems to be a user who has engaged in widespread copyright violations, and was blocked on both English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons for repeatedly committing them (the block on Wikimedia Commons was how I got wind of this). I looked through his history on the English Wikipedia and it seems that most of the attempts at communicating with him regarding his copyright violations were ignored, probably because he does not speak English very well. His block history on English Wikipedia also had an entry "abusing multiple accounts" and his block on the Russian Wikipedia also accused him of sockpuppetry, so I consulted a Russian Wikipedia CheckUser on the matter and he pointed me to Chipmunkes (talk · contribs). That account was allegedly a sock of LTA Her631, according to English Wikipedia's sockpuppet case report.

Looking through some of his contributions, his main focus currently seems to be United Nations reports (judging by his contributions to enwikisource and zhwikisource) and Sarawak (judging by his contributions to enwikinews). I've yet to check whether they could be copyright violations, and unfortunately it seems like he's copy-pasted the pages across several wikis (with some minimal translation efforts). It might be the case that this user still has some positive efforts to idwikipedia, but considering the bulk majority of his contributions have been copyright violations so far, I am doubtful of their value to any of the Wikimedia projects in general. And copyright violations are more notorious and more subtle a kind of violation of our Terms of Use than regular vandalism or spam, as it's much harder to detect, not only for small wikis but also for larger ones.

I'm thinking perhaps a global lock might not be warranted at this moment, but it'd be best to keep an eye out for and monitor his contributions to any of the Wikimedia projects. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:20, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Official UN documents are in public domain. Ruslik (talk) 19:12, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I did say above that the possibility of a few good, and maybe even excellent, contributions here and there from this user may prove to outweigh the potential harm and counterproductiveness a global lock might be in the current situation. But he definitely needs some monitoring and a closer look to gain a holistic evaluation and examination of the scope of the potential copyright violations. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Needs to be managed by local communities, they have the skills to manage copyright issues. Global lock is specific in its scope and what you are suggesting is outside of the boundary cases of malevolence and maliciousness. Copyright is a training issue, and requires input from someone. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:49, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Well, I meant to say I'm against a global lock in this case, just that we need more monitoring of this user, especially in regards to small wikis where the copyright violations are more likely to go unnoticed with no community reviewing and vetting processes in place. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:28, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Completed evidence gathering on alleged irregularities on Croatian Wikipedia

Hello all. FYI, evidence gathering on alleged irregularities on Croatian Wikipedia is finished. There'll probably be some new information trickling in over time, but the process is effectively over and whatever info is there is ready to be evaluated. SN seems to be the appropriate forum to inform, and I've also left a note to Jimbo. Please forward the info wherever else you deem appropriate, or leave a note at the talk page if you have any questions or suggestions. Thank you! Miranche (talk) 08:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

It is very worrying that users saved on Meta links to Facebook pages where was published some personal informations, some addresses, photos and where Facebook users call for violence towards me (and also other Wikipedians from hr:wiki) and issue death threats. People from those Facebook page are associated with the media, and on basis of vandalism or disruption of user relationships they create sensational newspaper articles and so encourage each other. Having links on Meta towards the Facebook group, Meta advertises them and bypasses privacy (security) of Wikipedians, because no one can guarantee that personal data will be removed or that the extreme threats will immediately be deleted, but on the contrary, circle of people who are brave on hate speech is expanding.

Yesterday on hr:wiki someone left a message where among other again threatens revealing personal information about users of wikipedia: "Also, please tell me if I should disclose the name and address and certain other contributors of Wikipedia, for example, of someone who was born 12.12., And the like." Can you remove all links towards the hatespeech Facebook group? --Roberta F. (talk) 21:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Roberta F., this strikes me as a question related to editing the Evidence pages, and perhaps for Meta administrators, rather than for stewards. I've copied your question over to the talk page and replied to it there. Miranche (talk) 22:47, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Problem of users safety and their privacy being threatened cross-wiki and cross-internet (Meta-hr:wiki-Facebook) is quite serious, so stewards should be aware and respond. --Roberta F. (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

If people want specific comments oversighted, they should email the Meta oversight list, rather than drawing more attention to the private information on a very public noticeboard. See Meta:Oversighters. --Rs chen 7754 19:06, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Rschen7754, what needs to be done is to remove all external links to Facebook hategroup, please. And to clearly state that encouraging hatespeech on Wikimedia by encouraging hatespeech outside Wikimedia is not acceptable. --Roberta F. (talk) 19:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

... then you should email the Meta oversight list, rather than drawing more attention to the private information on a very public noticeboard. See Meta:Oversighters. --Rs chen 7754 03:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

If necessary, please refer to here for a full talk page discussion of Roberta F.'s request. Miranche (talk) 20:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello Miranche, It is good to see this update. It isn't clear to me whether the specific proposals made in the RfC have also been discussed on hr:wp. These ideas should all be in the air and discussed there, if there is any chance that there might be some global action. Will you also be updating hr:wp with your summary? That way the local community can discuss the results of the RfC. If local discussions are already taking place, please add links to them below.

The major proposals I see include:

A request for outside CUs to carry out CU duties. Is this still a concern?
Have hr:wp editors been working with local CUs over the past months? Who is still active among the CU community there?

Are there specific CU requests? I see a number of claims of sockpuppets by active editors and voters in related votes.

Have you communicated with the Ombudsmen, or with any stewards, specifically about acting on these CU issues?

Has this been discussed on hr:wp?

A request to hold confirmation votes (requiring 2/3 support) for all hr:wp admins.
Has this been discussed on hr:wp?

Neutral third parties could help set up confirmation votes. Has anyone who is not from hr:wp been specifically approached about organizing such a confirmation vote? (This wouldn't necessarily require steward action; on the other hand, stewards can be effective as neutral third parties.)

Proposals that seem to be less clearly defined, or harder to implement in any unbiased way:

A request to hold confirmation votes for a specific set of hr:wp admins.
This seems similar to the desysop vote that was held on hr:wp last year, but with a different threshhold (2/3 support rather than 1/2 support).

Has this been discussed on hr:wp since that vote?

A request to unblock a set of editors who had been blocked.
Has this been developed in more detail - who would be unblocked?

Has this been discussed on hr:wp?

A request to change the content of various pages.
Has this been developed in more detail -- what pages would be involved, and how each would change?

Has this been discussed on hr:wp?

Thank you again for your work to organize this RfC. –SJ talk 10:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Sj, thank you for the response, I just saw this now. Here are my opinions, and please note that I can only speak for myself:

The first two steps, an external CU and a confirmation vote for all admins (21 active, 8 inactive), are likely to be controversial but would run the least risk of being perceived as unduly biased. As far as I know, these suggestions haven't been discussed at hr.wiki, which should be done, although I doubt that the community would come to an agreement. I'd support both these steps.
Holding a vote only for some admins is a possibility too, although this is messier because of the necessity to determine which admins should be the ones to stand for confirmation. I don't see a realistic way how such a list could be produced at hr.wiki, and doing so externally would be labor intensive, intrinsically more controversial, and possibly risk setting more precedents than just asking to confirm all the admins.
As far as blocked users go, my personal opinion is that hr.wiki blocking policy has been so arbitrary (search for "Comparison") that all blocks other than those for outright vandalism should be rescinded as soon as possible. AFAIK, however, other users, even ones who agree with me on other hr.wiki issues, may not consider this much of a priority. One user has started a page listing long-term blocks which hasn't gone anywhere. Practically speaking, the issue would probably come up naturally after the admin confirmation vote. In the long term hr.wiki needs a transparent, restrained blocking policy, and any recommendations that could lead in this direction would be very useful.
Finally, a group of dedicated users has started a Croatian Wikiproject Neutrality to address the questionable article content. As I've explained in this discussion, the content evidence page IMO has primarily served to document & uncover any systematically skewed practices in editing & administration that have led to biased content, and as circumstantial evidence that such systematic skew exists. Its goal was, at least in my mind, not to request outside intervention in article content.

Again, thank you for your interest in this issue, and please let me know if I can be of more help. Miranche (talk) 00:43, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Miranche. Could you start a discussion about the first two on hr.wiki so that everyone is clear that they are being discussed here on Meta as potential outcomes of the RfC?

Are there specific CU requests that have been made but not filled? If an external CU was found, what would they be asked to do?

I think that to properly close the RfC you should describe the results of the votes on those specific steps, and the state of related discussion on hr:wp, and summarize what has been proposed. –SJ talk 22:27, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

2014 Steward elections results

The 2014 Steward elections have ended at 18:00 UTC.

The Election committee, after verifying the votes' conformity to the voting guidelines, is now ready to announce the new stewards:

The Election committee wishes to thank all of the candidates for their time and interest and the voters for the time spent reviewing the candidates and taking part in this important global process.

The results of the 2014 stewards confirmation will be released in the upcoming days.

For the election committee,

Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:20, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
—DerHexer (Talk) 20:20, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
-Barras talk 20:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
--MF-W 20:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
--თოგო ^(D) 20:24, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations to all new stewards! PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:25, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Congrats, and thank you for taking up this work. –SJ talk 21:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Global Interface editors group policy

This is already followed "de facto" by stewards, and seems reasonable. Does anyone think it should be a policy? PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:30, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Global Bot implementation in Korean Wikiversity

I have posted discussion about Global bot policy weeks ago, and there was no oppose until today. Can any stew can enable global bot (and if possible, automatic approval too)? — Revi_complaint? 04:38, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Kowikiversity added to the wikiset. SPQRobin (talk) 00:10, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Cross-wiki vandal from IP range

Hello, I've noticed a recent trend of crosswiki vandalism coming from a user operating close to the 61.228 range that seems to be affecting some of the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese Wikipedias. I've consulted with User:Mxn from the Vietnamese Wikipedia (apologies to Mxn if this feels like forumshopping or split discussion) since he was local CheckUser there and he said basically that a rangeblock would probably produce too much collateral damage. So a few questions:

Has anyone else encountered this vandal in the 61.228 adversely affecting the other language Wikipedias?
What's their typical M.O. and can we propose alternative solutions to a rangeblock?

Thanks, TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

No problem, TeleComNasSprVen. There does seem to be a pattern of the same IP edit-warring various language versions of this article at around the same time. I just semiprotected the Vietnamese version of the article, but that might just spread the problem elsewhere. These days they do little more than revert to a preferred version of the article, but they resemble a user that used to spam user talk pages in Chinese. I was hesitant to institute a broad rangeblock because we don't have much precedent for rangeblocks at the Vietnamese Wikipedia, other than for known open proxies, and they're also a low-frequency issue for us. But I welcome feedback on this issue. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Granting global sysops global rollback on request

See discussion. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:14, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Request

I hereby request the reinstation of Jusjih's steward rights as they were apparently removed in contradiction to the Stewards policy and as an individual action by a single ElectCom member. This can be seen in this discussion where the closing ElectCom member Matanya admits to have used a reasoning which stands in contradiction to the policy ("no community consensus to keep as billinghurst wrote above", while the Stewards policy requires consensus for removal) but completely refrains from explaining why he thought it was appropriate to act in that way. Even the ElectCom member DerHexer states in that discussion that this decision was not an ElectCom-supported decision ("Not all ElectCom members have been involved in the final IRC discussion and the outcome wasn't clear either") and it was nowhere signed by all ElectCom members like it was required for the appointments so I have to assume that it was indeed rather an individual action by Matanya. From my perspective, this is not in accordance with policy and as long as the ElectCom refrains from explaining why this removal was done despite that (maybe there is a justification, but since no ElectCom member is willing to provide it I am forced to assume there isn't any) I think there is nothing left but treating this removal as a policy violation which has to be reverted. Thank you. Vogone talk 19:31, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Is Jusjih aware of this request? Ruslik (talk) 19:40, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think he is. Since this is rather a genral matter than a personal one, I didn't notify him yet but of course it would be senseful doing so in case this request gets fulfilled. Vogone talk 14:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I would like to have electcom explain to me how, on that confirmation page, specific consensus to desteward Jusjih was developed. That is what is required by policy. Ajraddatz (talk) 22:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

As you can see on stewardwiki, each ElectCom member developed his position separately and decided upon keeping or removing his access. As you could see, the result was 3 to 4. Matanya implemented this result by removing Jusjih's steward rights. As Vogone said, there has been a discussion on IRC (##stew) whether there's a consensus among other stewards to overturn the ElectCom result and some ElectCom members and some stewards didn't see that as just a couple of stewards were unhappy about the result. There has been no official discussion among all ElectCom members how to handle this as not all of them took or were even able to take part in this ad-hoc IRC meeting as it was not announced somewhere. Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 23:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Folks, it's time to move on. Dragging this back up after a few weeks is not a productive use of time, and will be very divisive for both the stewards and the community. Secondly, I feel that reappointing Jusjih now would be just as "out of process" as people are accusing the original removal of the rights of being, if not even more so. Two wrongs do not make a right. Finally, this would result in the precedent being set that any steward can supervote the ElectCom if they don't agree with the results, and use some pretext of "but their votes did not follow the policy and are invalid!". Thus, I strongly object to this. --Rs chen 7754 22:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)