As the topic says, ArbCom are looking for new checkusers and are petitioning the community for input.

One of the problems stated in the past was that ArbCom just popped up and appoint checkusers out of the blue (including me, I must admit) with no input from the community, so this should go some of the way towards addressing that.

It depends on how you define "community".

Right now, the "community" is a group of about 40 extremely pushy people who post on ANI, EN-L and other such forums. This is hardly what I would call a "community", especially when you consider that the number of editors is supposedly in the "thousands".

No one should be appointed CU without over 50% of WP editors voting "yes". If this means that you have to drum up the vote (ie "you can't edit until you've voted for CU") then so be it.

I think that this term "community" needs to be redefined, for the benefit of all...

Sounds like a job for bots, applied universally to everyone who edits a page.

I hate having to do all their thinking for them, but somebody's gotta do it.

Jon

I nominate Poetlister. Not many people know more about how Checkuser gets misused.

Yeah, first order of bizness would be deleting all of Dat Udder Guy's posts.

Jon

Kidding aside, I would like finalists to be checkusered themselves. While there's nothing wrong with using Tor, users who exclusively use it should not be in charge of discovering socks. I would oppose anyone that had a reasonable chance of being a sock in the past. For example, making Mantanmoreland a checkuser would be a very Bad Thing.

They are only petitioning the community for input once they vet candidates, no? So announcing this here now is just to wet our appetites? Or are you suggesting some Wikipedia Review regulars should apply for the job?

Well, they're asking anybody to pop their names into the hat by mailing Deskana (who has posted here before, BTW). Then ArbCom gets to shortlist from that. They then publish the shortlist, as chosen by themselves, and people basically vote for candidates from there on in. At least that's the way I read it.

Um, "50% of WP editors" would be tens of thousands of people.

Actually about ½ (8 million) socks …

Jon

Yes, and this stops the US from giving everybody a vote in elections?

If the "community" is going to stop meaning "those who yell louder than others", then it has to be redefined. More people voting would be one way of doing this, especially if they were those who don't "yell". What did Nixon call it? The Silent Majority?

The US doesn't have compulsory voting.

Well, Belgium does.

News Flash — you have to register to vote.

You know what registering is? It's kinda like being CheckUsered.

Try registering under the name Hanging Chad — oh wait, maybe in Florida …

Nevermind …

Jon

People tend to disappear when asked to identify themselves.

Sometime between April 1986 and April 1987 in the US, 7 million kids simply disappeared, never to be heard of, again. That was the first year that children's social security numbers were required, in order to be able to claim the children as deductions on income taxes. Gosh, we found out the next year that we had 7 million fewer children in the US than the year formerly. The rest of them, we might as well call "socks." A Freakonomics lesson entirely lost on Wikipedia.

The annual Arbitration Committee elections get about 1000 to 1500 voters (I don't have time to look up the exact number). This is after a full month of publicity and questions-and-answers and is followed by an extensively promoted two-week voting period. It is fanciful to think that any voting process short of that will draw many hundreds of voters. By contrast, a typical RfB draws perhaps 200 editors to comment.

You might as well nominate me, with my knowledge of networking, IPs, and the web. I'm as likely to get in...



I think it would be hilarious if you just added a 10x increase to any discussion or decision. The first cat to say "Voting is evil!" would get laughed off the page.

I have this feeling that Ryan Postlethwaite and MZMcBride are the top contenders. Just a guess given their high activity and that they are very much Cabalists.

I guess we'll see, won't we

I would like Neil, and Lessie. Because I like more mature men But probably they wouldn't want to do it. Alison is ace as a checkuser IMHO, I can't think of any ladies who could replace her if she had to go. Unless maybe ElinorD comes back to full strength.

Master Sockpuppets would make very efficient checkusers indeed, they'd know all the different approaches to the fine art of socking. As Jon says, that would include most of the Wikipedia community.
Actually, the checkuser system is indicative of the problems at Wikipedia. The whole affair of CU is one big joke to keep the masses and barnbots entertained. Like any mediocre play, the whole thingy gets quite boring and dull after a while. Who would be a "good checkuser" is a classic example of an oxymoron. Like "who would be a good sniper", perhaps.

Yes, I agree the voters are not representative and this is a problem. However, it takes an awful lot of time to evaluate a candidate and many editors would rather spend their time writing articles. In the real world this problem is solved through political parties. Many people vote for parties and often don't know anything about the candidate. If say we had a "cabal party" and an "anti-cabal party" this would make selection easier and increase the number of voters.

I would never have imagined MZMcBride as a contender for this sort of thing, myself.

I vaguely recall Swatjester applied a while back but didn't get the tool, same with Kingturtle, so I'm thinking they migiht give it another shot.

Woo! Deskana Speak of the devil an' all that

(nice to see you back on here)


*coffs* Wow - I've gone red to the tips of my earzes. Thank you!

I'm just glad they are letting the community have at least some involvement.

I should apply, just for the halibut. Ooh, I could do with some nice broiled halibut about now.

All Checkusers, in my opinion, fall into one of two categories:

1) has a POV and a grudge, and uses checkuser to implement such -- Jayjg being the prime example;

2) is a "Good German" and takes orders to implement actions that "protect the encyclopedia".

Never have I seen a checkuser try to do what is right, rather than what is convenient. It is only to her minor credit that Alison falls into the second category.

What would you have me do? I recall one case where I ended up bailing Piperdown out by running checkuser and posting the results publicly ("not Wordbomb!")

Either way, I'm inclined to agree with your categorization and yeah, I guess I'm in that second category though my take on it would be different

BTW: Anybody else notice that Dmcdevit has been missing for almost three months now?

Apparently he unblocked someone named "User:Dominique_Blanc" on August 4, after having done absolutely nothing for two months (last edit was June 3). My guess would be that he's working on a new account that has nothing to do with his real name and takes up less of his free time, now that he's probably old enough to date girls and drive a car... You know, the standard Wiki_Mule procedure.

Refuse outright to run checkuser on users who lack a clear and unmistakable history of vandalism, or, more likely, refuse to validate POV-pushing checkusers like Jayjg when they ban returning users who are not disrupting the encyclopedia. Use of checkuser as the implementation of the Wikipedia death penalty for those not actually vandalizing the encyclopedia is reprehensible.

Well, it's not quite that simple, really. Is socking to votestack on an AfD 'vandalising'? No, it's not, but it's neither fair, honest, nor beneficial to the encyclopedia. We've seen votestacking on the Brandt articles in the past, amongst others. Do you condone this?

My point is that it's not all that simple. (Cue comment on authenticated login, which I indeed support. It would put me out of a job, but that would be a Good Thingâ„¢)

What about the ones who went out on a limb to support Poetlister? As well as the usual suspects, I'd like to mention steward Jusjih.

Couldn't they just wire up a bot and make it go around to all talkpages and say "Hey you! Yeah, you! Come vote for CUsers or forego your right to complain!"

(...of course, all of this supposes that there are indeed tens of thousands of actual people who have accounts on WP, rather than a group of >100 who simply all have a thousand sockpuppets each....)

Oooh, just to say thanks for that link. I didn't realise uncyclopedia also contains some stuff which is good, along with the gibberish

The unbanning of PL would also seem to have been convenient, as it took over a year, was the inevitable result of an ongoing campaign, and had the side benefit of deleterious effects on Wikipedia Review. Whether it also happened to be "right" is still an open question.

Well that's the reason why individual editors are picked for the purpose checkuser. It's not because they are impartial and have a sense of justice. It's because they will honour Wikipedia first and above almost all else. And that is what makes a "good" checkuser in the eyes of the Foundation. This ain't rocket science, or the stuff of PhDs!

It was not inevitable. Had NYB gone a couple of weeks earlier, it probably wouldn't have happened. Had Lar not done a volte face and supported Poetlister's RfB on WQ, it probably wouldn't have happened. There was no way that any Cabal members could have predicted deleterious effects on Wikipedia Review unless they have agents provocateurs in our midst.

And what in blazes do you mean by "Whether it also happened to be "right" is still an open question"?

Er, those users who have a clear and unmistakable history of vandalism don't need to be CU'd - unless there is a pretty big suspicion of Good Hand/Band Hand scenarios - as they get blocked by the sysops, but it is those whose accumulative socking disrupts WP by stealth that needs it. A discussion by three or four accounts that ends up with a "middle way" consensus is very serious when it can be found that all are the one account working to get that end result.



Per above - don't CU JoeyNice just because JosieBad has irregularly indulged in personal attacks on those whose views do not coincide with with Pal Joey.

Basically, what you are saying is limit the use of CU to areas where CU is not required... Yeah?

Why would a sense of justice have anything to do with being a checkuser? It's an encylopedia, not a tool for delivering justice. The problem comes from people thinking Wikipedia and its users are supposed to be something they're not.