Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee/2011 appointments/Keegan

Keegan

AUSC candidate pages: AGK • Bahamut0013 • Courcelles • HJ Mitchell • Keegan • Ucucha

Comment on the candidate below or by email to the Committee • Community consultation period is now closed.

Keegan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Nomination statement (250 words max.)

I am an experienced contributor with a great interest in the Wikipedia and Wikimedia Privacy Policies. I have served as an oversighter since August of 2009, with a hiatus from August 2010 to January 2011 while I was employed by the Wikimedia Foundation. I am the primary author of the English Wikipedia Oversight manual. As an oversighter and Volunteer response team leader (OTRS admin), most of my work for Wikipedia deals with privacy related issues that occur out of the public eye, or aim to resolve issues that are in the public eye. Either path requires discretion and diligence to protect the privacy rights of all.

On the Audit Subcommittee, I will serve as one of our representatives to uphold regular communication with the community about the use of Checkuser and Oversight. I believe the purpose of the committee is to properly document how the tools are being used and review reports of anomalous activity and maintain scrutiny over the privacy of usage. I believe the AUSC requires non-partisan analysis, and I will render my services to the best of my ability.

Standard questions for all candidates

Please describe any relevant on-Wiki experience you have for this role.

By the nature of a wiki, all editors serve as auditors of the contributions of others. As editors we are constantly reviewing submissions; as administrators we are constantly reviewing the action of other administrators, and as oversighters we are subject to review of the AUSC and the Arbitration Committee. Internal reporting is something that I have embraced in my 5+ years as a community member and I feel qualifies me to review the use of advanced permissions.

Please outline, without breaching your personal privacy, what off-Wiki experience or technical expertise you have for this role.

Auditing the results of business reports in a managerial capacity in my professional career and in other off-wiki voluntary commitments has taught me how to organize the puzzle pieces of scrutinized review. Breaking down the numbers comes easily to me.

Do you hold advanced permissions (checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward) on this or other WMF projects? If so, please list them. Also, do you have OTRS permissions? If so, to which queues?

I am a community elected oversighter on the English Wikipedia and a bureaucrat on Ten Wiki (that wiki is now a tad obsolete). I am an OTRS administrator of nearly a year- thus I have permission to almost all queues- and an OTRS volunteer for two years.

Questions for this candidate

Question from Sven Manguard Wha?

Do you feel that your extensive dealings with WMF staff, including being part of the WMF staff for a time,) and with oversighters makes you too closely aligned either of those two groups?

I do not believe that my experience with the Wikimedia Foundation nor amongst oversighters aligns me in any political way. The WMF staff work to support Wikipedia and Wikimedia; it is us, the community, that builds and shapes the projects. The experience of the WMF is unrelatable to being a community member. I would note that I worked part-time, from home 2,300 miles away from the office. As far as oversighters go, most of our work is solitary. Checkuser requires much more collaborations between users with that permission. So no, I do not believe my ability to be impartial has been compromised by these relationships.

Do you have friends within those groups, and if so, if it came to it, how would you respond to a blatant abuse of CU or OS by one of your friends?

First, we need to differentiate something. The AUSC handles use/misuse of the tools and assures that the system remains impartial and active. Abuse of the tools should be handled by the Ombudsman committee and if I were to discover abuse either as a run-of-the-mill editor or any other hat I would report to them with diligence. Yes, I have friends amongst the staff and oversighters. That does not temper my response to possible misuse of the tools. Friendship does not except responsibility. Keegan (talk) 19:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It is not obvious to me what distinction you are drawing between handling "use/misuse" and handling "abuse." Could you clarify? Dominic·t 21:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I certainly can. Bear in mind, this is an outside prospective from not having experience on the committee.

Use/misuse, as I construe it, means the bounds of what is considered unacceptable use of oversight and checkuser on the English Wikipedia not by privacy policy de facto, but de jure of the community. Requests to investigate use/misuse are processed and the results are submitted to the Arbitration Committee, and it goes on from there. It is a local matter; the same sort of reason functionaries have been removed before not necessarily because of a direct violation of the global policy, but because of our community standards. Abuse, on the other hand, is reported to the AC, who then pass that along to the Ombudsman Commission. So I draw a distinction in what the question was asking as I read it: we have local governance and we have global governance with the monitoring of advanced permissions. Keegan (talk) 06:08, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question from {Example}

Comments

Comments may also be submitted in confidence to the Arbitration Committee privately by emailing arbcom-en-b lists.wikimedia.org

Almost all of Keegan's comments at a discussion enlighten me. He is one of the few Wikipedians I strongly trust and I think his current experience with the OS tools would let him be a valuable member of the AUSC. /ƒETCH COMMS / 01:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keegan is the ideal candidate for this position. -- œ ^™ 14:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not that these supports really count for much, but I'm going to chime in with one anyways. Keegan is the strongest candidate in the field today, and seems like he has all the right stuff for the job. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Timestamp difference is due to me having posting the comment, then removing the comment when I posted the question. I never disagreed with the initial sentiment, but I don't make a practice of casting votes before I read the answers to questions I pose, it isn't good practice. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support because, you guessed it, I like a person who does not hide behind an alias, but also for the indefinable understanding of the power of administrators in Keegan's essay on that topic. I guess that understanding comes from having some liberal arts education. Far too many nerds with the scientists' penchant for absolutism, paternalism and authoritarianism here on Wikipedia (perhaps including me). I've read a few times now that some other contributors don't have any confidence their opinions count for anything in this matter. That would be a shame, and a poignant reminder about the poor perception so many people have of faceless admins who appear to mystify what they do by resort to impenetrable jargon and coldly mathematical reasoning, which is not rational at all when it comes to dealing with people and encyclopaedic topics. I see in Keegan a glimmer of a humanism that would be an invaluable addition to any dispute resolution oversight and process in the encyclopaedic endeavour. Peter S Strempel Page | Talk 11:06, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It could only be a good thing to have someone with such a thorough understanding of what functionaries really do on a day-to-day basis on the subcommittee. Balance that out with some others that have no clue at all about such things and we should be fine. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]