Wikipedia talk:Revision hiding

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Do not post oversight requests on this page, instead, please visit Wikipedia:Requests for oversight.

Contents

[edit] Suggestions

I have a couple of suggestions for this page:

  • I believe we should list all users with the permission here. Naturally, the full list can be seen on Special:Listusers/oversight, but so can those of the Bureaucrats and the Admins, but they are still listed in their respective project pages, not to mention that, for less experienced users, this page will come to be far better known than the special page. If we do this, I suggest we use the {{user|username}} template.
  • Regarding the procedure: considering the events here in Wikipedia and those over in the Meta-Wiki, I believe we can say safely that those requesting the tool must obtain consent from the ArbCom here on Wikipedia, and not post on Meta, which is done by a member of the ArbCom iff the request is approved. What we don't have is a formal format for requesting the status, given the lack of a separate forum (such as RfA exists for requesting Adminship) or a specific boilerplate, although it could be said that the talk page of the ArbCom project page would be a good place to request that the ArbCom consider a user for the status.

Thoughts? Redux 04:42, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Point one: Good idea, I'll implement it. :)
Point two: Hmm, true. I'll tack in a "suggested method" perhaps.
Thanks for the suggestions. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 04:29, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I've made a few changes in the list: a) I replaced the template {{admin|username}} with {{user4|username}}, mainly because the key links a visitor to this page wants to find are those to the users' talk pages and Wikipedia email, so that they can contact a user with Oversight access. I figured the links provided by the previous template were not necessary here — equally, I removed the designation for Bureaucrats and Stewards, since I figured it would also be unnecessary here; b) I changed the title of the header; I thought that the term "overseers" is not really in use, since we usually refer to the access as "Oversight rights/permissions"; in addition, the term "active" seemed (to me) best left off the level 1 header: if it happens that users with Oversight go inactive or semi-active, we can do as it is done in the forums for the Bureaucrats and Admins and start level 2 headers to separete them; c) I also provided a link to the automatic list at the special page.
Hopefully all of this helped improve the section. Redux 22:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
"Overseers", to be painfully honest, was a bit of whimsy on my part, not to be taken seriously. :D I'd just been playing Diablo2, and ask anyone with the expansion pack who Shenk is and you'll understand. Good idea with user4, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was using admin more as a lack-of-better-option-at-the-time. The only point of concern I have (and it's very terribly minor and may be ignored safely) is that now we've got the link to Special:listusers/oversight on there twice. Think we should remove one? Congrats on your own be-flagging, by the way. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 06:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. About the two links: you are referring to the external-link-formatted one in the "References" section, right? Well, I see no big deal about having the two, but if we had to chose, I'd say we keep the one in the "Users.." section. Mainly because the more concise we can make the information, the easier it will be for the average user to find what s/he may be looking for. We provide a list of users with Oversight and useful links to contact them, so it seems more efficient to have the link to the automatic list nearby, so that the visitor will see them both (and either choose one or check both). If they are "too far" apart, I believe some people might miss the link to the automatic list, and take notice only of the in-place list (which – knock on wood – could happen to be outdated somehow at the time). Redux 14:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oversight log

Could anyone please explain why it was necessary to remove the public oversight log? Brion has been asked to comment on this, but I couldn't find his response anywhere. Thanks. --Zoz (t) 13:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

First, let me say that what I'm about to state is just my opinion, and not an official position of any kind. The log was public only for a short while, immediately after Oversight was instated. The decision to make it a restricted page certainly has to do with the fact that the very purpose of this tool is to safeguard the privacy of users. With a public log, it was possible to know where information had been removed from, which could work against the initiative. Of course, we still need a log in order to keep minimal tabs on what is being done, but by restricting it only to users with Oversight permission, the potential problem I just noted is virtually neutralized. Redux 14:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
On m:Hiding revisions it states "There is no longer any public logging, to minimize the leaking of private personal information." You may also want to check on m:talk:Hiding revisions as there is a small amount of talk there regarding the topic. I'm afraid the comment from Meta is the closest I have to an answer. :| ~Kylu (u|t) 17:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies, but to quote AmiDaniel, 'I personally don't see what harm the public log was doing, as it essentially just stated "Foo removed an edit from Bar (PI)"'. I don't see how it could anyone work against the initiative if they only knew where information had been removed from, but not what information. And if they know what confidential information was removed, they could just repost the same information anywhere. In sort - to quote Simetrical - 'I also can't see what exactly is gained by making the oversight log private'. --Zoz (t) 17:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The decision appears to be in favor of caution over accountability: In this case, we do happen to know that the developers are watching oversight to make sure it's not abused, so for now we're limited to trusting the developers to keep our best interests at heart. Remember that the current oversight system is a temporary "hack" and once the new deletion system is in place, the logging may well be different. Fortunately, most of the information on the page seems like it will stay current. ~Kylu (u|t) 19:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The decision was not just precationary; there was a reason. People could check the page/date from the log and then download the Wikipedia dumps and get the information. An anti-Wikipedia site already managed to pull 10 or so "uncensored" version of pages.Voice-of-All 18:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation! --Zoz (t) 19:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meta:Requests for permissions

I'm curious as to if anyone else thinks this page is ready enough yet for the Meta: page to link here? It's not quite a FA-class page, but hopefully it's accurate enough now that it can be used as a reference? ~Kylu (u|t) 19:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why not. There may be some work to be done yet, but I believe that the bulk of it is in place. I was also considering suggesting to developers to turn the "oversight" word in the Special:Userlist results into a link to this page, just like "Bureaucrat" and "Sysop" link to their respective project pages. Redux 01:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I heartily approve! My little baby's growing up. :D ~Kylu (u|t) 01:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Psst. Get an administrator to insert Wikipedia:Oversight as the content of MediaWiki:Grouppage-oversight to fulfill Redux's suggestion above. 86.134.116.228 15:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and to make the reference in the list capitalised, plonk Oversight into MediaWiki:Group-oversight. 86.134.116.228 15:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, done. ~Kylu (u|t) 05:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New tool: Requests for oversight

Please see WP:RFO/Wikipedia:Requests for oversight on how to request that a specific page revision be hidden. Brand spanking new page. Yay. ~Kylu (u|t) 06:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Checkuser procedures

What procedures should I follow to request a Checkuser?

User Lochdale has been banned indefinitely on suspicion of being a sockpuppet of Ted Wilkes. He has contacted the Unblocking list claiming vehemently that he isn't. The banning admin Jtdirl states that the ban was based on editing patterns. Is there any way of using Checkuser or another mechanism to shed light on this matter? Capitalistroadster 23:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Checkuser requests should be brought to Requests for checkuser. Please see RFCU policy at the top of that page before placing your checkuser request, however. Thanks! ~Kylu (u|t) 17:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] requesting oversight with web form

I believe it would be helpful to have a web form for users to request oversight if they are unable or unwilling to use email. I saw some vandalism on recent changes which contained a sexual suggestion and a victim's phone number, but I don't feel like using my email for Wikipedia stuff, so I didn't report it for oversight (although someone reverted it). But if there had been a web form I would happily have pasted in the relevant diff URL. — Alan✉ 23:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. I came here hoping there would be a brief explanation on why the only way to request oversight is by email, which was much longer and involved (and required me to sort out some software, which I couldn't have done on a public computer) than most vandal-related things. My concern is that as soon as it is quicker to vandalise in a certain way than it is to report/deal with that vandalism, it spreads. Also, I like to keep my email private, while being quite reachable on my talkpage. Having to include an email address made me seriously consider whether or not to report something. Is that the aim? Skittle 20:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Although I was very impressed with the quick response. Skittle 20:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
We're not using mail to slow things down, promise! Originally, I wanted a user account, "User:Oversight" or something similar and a page with its Special:Emailuser enabled, that way you could perform the request from there without forcing the devs to hack together a web request page and captcha and the like. Turns out this way is faster to set up and simpler to keep track of.
Worst case scenario, you can visit #wikipedia-en and ask in-channel. PLEASE NOTE that you do not want to give information to the first person who replies! Make sure the person is on the oversight users list on the project page here and that they have an appropriate hostcloak (someuser@wikimedia/someuser or someuser@wikipedia/someuser) that matches them.
If none of that makes sense, don't use irc. Just use the email. People do watch it, I promise. ~Kylu (u|t) 00:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What happens?

Just curious. I'm about to submit a request for oversight and I want to submit the correct diffs. Should I submit the diff at which the first inclusion of the information occurred? Then what happens? Are all of the edits after that diff erased? Or just the information added in that one diff. Sancho (talk) 02:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Just that diff. --TeckWiz ParlateContribs@ 02:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
If the information is in multiple versions, they would all need to be removed to get rid of the data. In addition to submitting the difs that contain it be sure to specify what the actual information you want removed is. If other good faith edits end up getting removed they may need to be copy-and-paste restored. — xaosflux Talk 03:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed security policy

Please see Wikipedia:Security for a proposed policy that may have ramifications for oversighters discovered to have weak passwords. --Tony Sidaway 15:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

If you don't mind me tailing along, here is another proposal for a guideline on Wikipedia:Personal security practices that I was working on independently of these incidents, mainly out of the discussion on this thread at Wikipedia_talk:No_personal_attacks#Part_two. Any comments or concerns would be appreciated. Thanks, —ACADEMY LEADER FOCUS! 00:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Excess secrecy and incomplete expungement

I do not have Wikipedia Email so I will use this to communicate a concern. [1] is an AFP story about a certain long hexadecimal number involved in the security of DVDs. There was a Wikipedia story about thet number and the security issue, and an AFD to delete the article. The article and the AFD were removed apparently by an oversight action. Unfortunately there were comments about the disappearance between editors who were puzzled about it, since there was no notation on the discussion page for the AFDs of that day to simply say that an AFD had been removed as required by Foundation policy or by legal requirements or whatever, and those comments included diffs which preserved the secret number which, like Voldemort's name, must never be uttered. It is still there in a diff visible at [2], so the expungement was incomplete. There was a deletion review initiated which was closed after only a few hours. My request is that when something with as wide a participation as an AFD is abruptly obliterated by oversight action, that there be a simple nonspecific statement in the related AFD discussion page that it was an office or oversight action and not a computer glitch or vandalism that resulted in the disappearance. Failure to do this in this case generated further inadvertent promulgation of the banned number, both on the talk pages of several editors and in the deletion review. Too much secrecy about oversight actions has a reverse effect. Edison 16:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few days, it's pretty obvious that the disappearances weren't accidental, the result of crackers, or a computer glitch. --Tony Sidaway 17:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't that obvious at the time when the AFD was removed while I was about to add a delete comment to it. My request is that when possible such actions should be explained as official actions, to avoid confusion. As is, the unexplained blanking or removal of a talk page, an article, or an AFD is itself a cause for comment, which may result in inadvertent perpetuation of the name, number, or whatever is supposed to be completely expunged.Adding an "Oversight" marker in the edit history would also help to avoid the creation of unnecessary confusion on the part of editors who are posting to AFDs or to the talkpage of an article. Usually the simple notation that Oversight editing was done would not tell what text was removed. Failure to make such a notation in the edit history or discussion page can in fact lead to the inadvertent promulgation of the evil info. A dummy edit could be used to just add an "oversight" notation in the edit history. Is this ever done? Is any real purpose served by stealthy oversight? Edison 17:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
They're not really "official" actions, just actions taken for obvious commonsense reasons. --Tony Sidaway 17:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Tony ( or other ) , would you address Edison's actual question? Would it be beneficial to add at least some form of marker to avoid the unnecessary(?) secrecy? etc.. ∴ here…♠ 19:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what the oversighters think, but to me it's obvious that oversight's very purpose is to hide information. Publicly noting the fact that it's been hidden is exactly what we don't want to do. --Tony Sidaway 19:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
And my point is that the "stealthy" and secretive oversight did not work, since the actual hex number is preserved and bandied about unnecessarily in diffs on the talk pages of editors who discussed the disappearance of text. I hardly think this is the first time this has happened, when a little more courtesy on the part of the editor who removed the material would have prevented it. It seems unnecessary and counterproductive to act like the authorities in Nineteen Eighty-Four and just disappear stuff and pretend it was never there and that nothing was removed. No one is fooled. A notation on the discussion page or a dummy comment should be done in most cases, just to note that text was removed as an official action, because otherwise it looks like a computer glitch or vandalism to editors who are posting to the affected page. Thanks. Edison 04:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Leaving a marker saying "information has been removed" is counterproductive to the concept of Oversight. For more explanation, please see Wikipedia talk:Oversight#Oversight log above, as to why the public log of oversight activities has been removed. In addition, oversighters (overseers?) can all see the private oversight log and keep tabs on each others activities. ~Kylu (u|t) 00:16, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Summary 2007-05-30

Unfortunately this was too long for the summary box:

Without prior knowledge of "Oversight", the first sentence confused me for a good 30 seconds. I've tried to recast it more clearly, but I couldn't find a good place to reinstert the idea of the action being performed by a steward. I don't think this is a big deal - how the permission is obtained is probably superfluous detail for an introductory sentence anyway. PeteVerdon 22:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo Wales

I really don't know where's the right place to ask this. Jimbo Wales said that he is very involved with day to day matters of Wikipedia, and told people to ask the oversight group about this. If no-one responds here, I guess I should ask on their talk pages. A.Z. 03:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are asking for, but I had a conversation just a couple of days ago about an article subject that had conteacted him; he needed potentially libelous material oversighted. Is his commitment to the project seriously in doubt? Dmcdevit·t 08:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for response

After three subsequent messages, and for ten days now, I have received no further response on my oversight request. I do not know if my subsequent requests for clarification were received, considered, or denied. Specifically:

  • Jul 7, 2007 9:38 PM: initial request for oversight sent to oversight-l
  • Jul 8, 2007 2:30 AM: acknowledgment of request from Fred Bauder, request partially completed
  • Jul 8, 2007 5:30 AM: request for follow-up sent directly to Fred Bauder
  • Jul 10, 2007 6:07 AM: further request for follow-up sent to oversight-l
  • Jul 14, 2007 10:36 AM: further request for follow-up sent to oversight-l

I also left a message on the talk page for Fred Bauder on July 11, also without response.

I can potentially sympathize with the lack of transparency in the oversight process, for the purpose of privacy. But with that lack of transparency comes, perhaps, a greater need to ensure that requests are properly tracked, responded to, followed-up on (if necessary), and resolved. As best as I can tell, those processes are either non-existent or not functioning. As always, I would appreciate some any response.   j    talk   19:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyone?   j    talk   16:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
As you can see here, oversight is typically only assigned to users with other permissions, and is currently only assigned to administrators. Why do you feel you need oversight access? I can't see you using it, really. --Deskana (talk) 21:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I guess I didn't read this the same way, but it sounded to me more like J was simply requesting some edits be oversighted, rather than requesting the oversight permission. In the past, I've usually gotten responses fairly quickly, I think (some oversighters reply by email, others just make the edits go away), but occasionally that's not the case. I would recommend checking if the edits in question have already been oversighted. Beyond that, not sure what to say. If this becomes a common problem, then the tracking of requests does seem to be a concern. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry if I misread that. --Deskana (talk) 21:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid you did read a bit more than was there.  ;)   j    talk   22:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that I did not do all of them. Only the two which contained personal information, in my opinion. Others' opinion might differ. Fred Bauder 21:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The original issue is, yes, that only two of the four revisions in question were deleted. Unfortunately, the overarching problem (and the reason I posted this message here) is the lack of response after over two weeks and several emails.   j    talk   22:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Fred that only the first two contained content that can be removed with oversight. His message explained this to you. We take care of oversight requests quickly as a general rule. Communication with people requesting may not be perfect as this is not the main priority...it is removing content that falls under the oversight policy. I'm sorry if we did not communicate well in this instance. We generally do not take much time to do long explanations, rather we fix what needs fixing and move on to the next request. If someone else has already taken care of it, I generally do not look at it again. Hope this helps explain the circumstances around your request. Take care, FloNight 13:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
The entirety of Fred's message was: "I removed the first two. I'm not sure the last two amount to much as far as disclosure of personal information." I believe saying his message "explained" the situation is inaccurate. A message need not be "long" to be complete. His message said he was "not sure" about removal of the other two under one of the three criteria. Removal of personal information is not the only rationale for oversight. "Removal of potentially libellous information" is also listed in the policy (British spelling and all). I can't imagine that anyone would agree that the there was any "editorial reason to keep the [remaining two vandalism] revision[s]." In any event, recognizing that this process probably would not progress any further, all page revisions were just deleted through {{db-userreq}}. It's not unlike throwing the baby out with the bathwater: deleting every revision of the page because of two vandalism edits that should and could have been removed otherwise.
Finally, I don't believe anybody would demand that "communication with people requesting" oversight "be perfect," but I believe the community would expect that legitimate, good faith emails not go unresponded to for weeks.   j    talk   19:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
If the edits (obviously we can't discuss the specific edits!) were simply vandalism, they stay in the article history for various reasons. As per oversight policy, any admin who abuses (read: oversights a revision which does not deserve such protection) will have oversight stripped from them. Oversight is used when there is material so privacy-breaching that it should not ever be seen again, even by admins who can normally see deleted revisions. Any other use, even to "clean up" vandalism, is verboten.
As far as the replies to oversight requests go, it's up for discussion, but at the moment is not required. This may change. ~Kylu (u|t) 02:28, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Would it be possible for an admin to purge the history of my userpage and the corrospinding edits in My contributions? I have alot of entries I wish to remove, it would be alot easier for the admin just to purge it. This isn't a request, but please tell me who I can talk to. Stormtalon 06:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't require oversight, simply deletion. Just put {{db-user}} on your userpage and an admin working CAT:CSD will come by and delete the whole page (you will have to start it over again then). The information would still be viewable/recoverable by admins. — xaosflux Talk 15:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to delete it so that no one can see it? Stormtalon 09:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

In a word, no. There's neither good reason nor policy to completely eliminate a user page or talkpage. If you have specific personal information that you've posted there, the individual revisions can be marked by oversight. Please remember that there are very few legitimate instances where even normal deletion should apply to those who wish to leave Wikipedia. See m:RTV for more information. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:53, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Added IP addresses to list

There exists some external criticism regarding an oversight which removed history which included an editor's IP address, after that user probably accidentally forgot to log in. (I feel I can't provide a link at this time due to an ongoing ArbCom case regarding linking to that site). However, while the criticism is somewhat valid given a very literal idea of this policy, the better idea in keeping with the spirit of the policy is, IMHO, to expand the scope here to include permitting over-sighting when there are there exist the sort of WP:STALK related privacy concerns that accidentally exposing an IP address may lead to. -- 67.98.206.2 20:46, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Accidently exposing an IP Address might not qualify for oversight as such, especially when there's a few clues that indicate that you aren't logged in. Using oversight in this method is also risky, as it's a potential GFDL violation (e.g. text entered may be attributed to the wrong person.) Removing content because an IP address was entered maliciously in the main article would be valid, however. --Sigma 7 04:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I would expect such a request to be extremely rare, but as it's been done in the past under certain circumstances, it might as well be mentioned. -- 67.98.206.2 02:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
The oversight policy has been decided on Meta (m:Hiding_revisions#Policy) and cannot be changed here without approval there. Cbrown1023 talk 20:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, my bad. I've tried to make this more clear by replacing Template:Policy with custom template-like code that makes this clear. I suppose I'll try this again over at meta. -- 67.98.206.2 20:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are email addresses "nonpublic personal information"...

...that ought to be removed from an article's edit history? --Rrburke(talk) 19:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

If in doubt, there's no harm in sending the information to WP:RFO and letting them decide. ~Kylu (u|t) 01:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment about wording

I'm quoting the article:

"Revocation

Just as easily as the oversight permission can be granted, it can be revoked."

After the earlier discussion about tight control of the Oversight capability, the first part of this sentence sounds like a joke. I don't know if that was the intent.

Just thought I would mention this. Cheers, Wanderer57 03:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's far easier to remove oversight than it is to grant it:
To grant it here (as an example), you have to have ArbCom decide that the person in question requires it,
you have to have that agreement posted to Requests for Permissions by an ArbCom member,
the person has to personally identify themselves to the Foundation, typically by sending a copy of their ID,
then a Steward has to set the permission for that user.
Now, let's say someone abuses oversight and someone (typically a developer, steward, or another oversighter) sees this:
  1. An emergency request is filed at Requests for Permissions, the stewards check the oversight log, and if obvious and blatant abuse, remove the oversight permission and leave a nasty note, or,
  2. They contact the user and/or ArbCom and mention the abuse, in which either it will be stripped from them immediately (see the steps noted in the above example) or ArbCom opens a case regarding the abuse and then requests the removal or not.
This is, of course, all theoretical at this point, considering it's not yet (to my knowledge, anyway) come up. There are no permissions that you can be granted that can't or won't be stripped at a moment's notice if you patently abuse them.
I suppose the only supporting statement for "as easily as it can be granted, it can be revoked" is that the stewards are fairly responsive to permissions requests. If you're an admin, visit special:userrights and just pretend there's a line for "oversight"... that's all that's involved, really.
Lastly, if you're curious, there are screenshots for various things at commons:MediaWiki bureaucrat (for the Steward screen. I'll take one showing all the current rights on Meta soonish and update things) and commons:MediaWiki oversight for the screens that oversighters themselves use.
I hope that answers some questions for you. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 06:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oversight log request at the VP

I've posted a proposal to partially open up the oversight logs to administrators. Please comment here. Thanks! :) --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 03:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Currently at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 6#Oversight logs.
For those interested, there is no consensus to do this. Firstly, usernames and article titles may be, themselves, removed from the database if need be for oversight concerns. This isn't directly changed by those with the +oversight permission, but they are the ones who request that our developers remove the information.
If making the logs available to admins were good enough, we wouldn't need oversight at all, as the admins could simply delete an individual revision (admins: don't know how? contact me, I'll explain)... quite frankly, oversight is used for those revisions that not even the admins should see and such information can easily be carried in the username or edit summary as it can the actual edit.
We have a very large pool of those with oversight permissions, and they're not all buddies with eachother. If one of them abuses the permission, they'll certainly hear about it from the others. Too much of this, and they're guaranteed to have the permission removed. ~Kylu (u|t) 01:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify article please

Hi - Neither this or WP:RFO mention whether uninvolved 3rd parties can request oversight. I noticed someone had published an email address in WP:RS and raised it on ANI - [3] who asked me to request oversight. Thanks -- John (Daytona2 · talk) 14:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can request an oversight, even non-editing members of the public, but we request that you not send non-oversight-related email to the list. If you're not sure, you can send email to the info-en OTRS queue (info-en@wikipedia.org) and let the OTRS team determine if a normal deletion can handle the situation, or to escalate it to the Oversight list. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - please can you state this in the projects. Cheers -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 20:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
How do you mean "in the projects" exactly? If you check WP:RFO, you'll notice that there are instructions for non-Wikipedia-gurus to submit the requests. ~Kylu (u|t) 06:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Having looked again I just mean WP:RFO. There is nothing that specifically says that anyone (eg uninvolved 3rd parties) can request oversight, leading, in my case to the assumption that I couldn't. -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 11:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Y Done [4] ~Kylu (u|t) 00:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oversighting of User:Defender 911's edits on 11 August

Can anyone give the community a rough count of how many edits of User:Defender 911 were oversighted on or about 11 August? He was indef blocked on 11 August and has come back asking forgiveness, but the argument is being made at WP:AN#User:Defender 911 that no one can judge the extend of his first-offense block as some massive number of edits were removed. Just want to make sure the community isn't being confused here by people who could be misremembering these four month old events. -- Kendrick7talk 11:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello?? Y'all sleeping in today or what? -- Kendrick7talk 19:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I checked the logs for several days before and after that date, and found no edits by this user. If you want a broader search, you'll need to provide the page names; I'm not going to go hunting for a needle in a haystack.
Are you quite certain that something was oversighted, as opposed to merely being deleted or reverted? Kirill 20:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
He has numerous deleted contributions which date on and directly before the 11th; any administrator can view those. Mackensen (talk) 20:19, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. This was in the context of one admin ask for diffs from another admin and being told the incriminating diffs had been eliminated. Although, memory probably played a role here as I suggested. But there's other strangeness about the way this users block became a ban without community input in the first place. I'll continue to try and convince someone to lift this four month old block, but other's are suggesting there may instead be an ArbCom case in your future here. -- Kendrick7talk 17:23, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What about personally identifiable information such as real name, home address and phone number in an article's title?

That'd still inevitably be in the deletion log. Could oversight remove this?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 18:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not handled via the same means, but go ahead and send those requests to the oversight list. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:Oversight for "email this user"

This taken but unused account has now been usurped by the Arbitration Committee so as to allow alerts to be emailed by the "E-mail this user" functionality from inside the wiki. For those who don't have their email set up on the computer they're using, and as another useful alert hotline :-) - David Gerard (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Messages sent via emailuser to User:Oversight bounce

(Well, it's being held for approval, but my understanding is that this does not happen with email sent directly to oversight-l?)

Your mail to 'Oversight-l' with the subject

    Wikipedia e-mail

Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

The reason it is being held:

    Message has implicit destination

Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel
this posting, please visit the following URL:

    https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/confirm/oversight-l/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

—Random832 16:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not a bounce, it's just pending, since oversight-l is a moderated list. When a non-oversighter mails the list, the mod approves it (that way they don't end up with spam). :) ~Kylu (u|t) 00:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Amendment of "Revocation" section and title box text

The old revocation section has turned up to be flawed by ambiguity. This was never spotted, mostly since it has never been needed. So I've redrafted it, and present reasoning here for communal review. Background:

The 'revocation' section was added very early without dissent, but also without discussion. It looks like a section that has been there from the start (July 2006), and never looked at because it's never been needed, in all that time. What is ambiguous is this. The text stated: "If a Wikimedia Steward feels that the editor has abused oversight by hiding revisions which do not qualify under one of the above criteria, they will immediately remove the permission from the editor." This question was raised by a Steward who felt it misleadingly suggested stewards (even if not granted the permission) might be expected to self-authorize for English Wikipedia Oversight.

It is unclear - and has probably never been thought of - was the original edit thinking of stewards in a role of investigator, or decision-maker? That is, does that sentence signify

  1. "Stewards are authorized to randomly check the actions of local oversighters and de-oversight them if they have concerns"? or,
  2. "If a question arises as to whether a matter was proper or not, a steward who feels the user abused oversight may make the decision to remove that right"?
  3. Or was it in fact, a sentence that is unnecessary (but never spotted) since we handle all abuses of rights via arbcom, and stewards have never been asked to do more than enact formal requests to modify permissions?

The latter seems far more likely, since we routinely separate such matters (sysop rights/crat, etc), and there is no precedent of Stewards randomly checking up on other similar rights such as CheckUser, unless they actually have the CU bit. Also the local oversighters routinely check the logs.

The amended text addresses that. Stewards don't act as police or investigators on WMF, as a rule, and apparently seem to actively avoid doing so. WMF policy requires oversighters to patrol each other, as with CheckUser. The current policy and practice is that any question of misuse of a significant right (Sysop, Oversight, CheckUser) is passed to Arbcom who will investigate and request its removal by a steward if there is a problem.

I also clarified two other areas - emergency requests (rare but could happen) and primacy of WMF policy. I note that in reality, none of this has ever come up so it may all be pointless in a way.

Summary of edits:

  1. Title box - corrects the implication that this page mirrors meta and cannot be changed without approval. What cannot be done is to override anything in WMF policy. We can always add more, such as process and other information.
  2. Clarify "patrolling stewards" implication. If there is doubt, refer to Arbcom as with all other elevated permissions.
  3. Add paragraph on emergency requests. Unlikely to be needed, never has been, but one of those things you want for the one time it may happen.

[5] diff

If there is a need to further amend or clarify any of these, or the edit made does not reflect communal best practice, then it will need further discussion and more eyeballs.

FT2 (Talk | email) 18:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


I raised this question and I endorse these edits as moving in the right direction at the very least, if not sorting the issue completely. Thanks for the edits, FT2... ++Lar: t/c 18:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Contact role accounts

Please add User:Oversight to Category:Contact role accounts. It's a protected page so I cannot do that. 213.216.199.6 (talk) 22:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Y Done ~Kylu (u|t) 21:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Out of date list of users w/ oversight

This user list is out of date -- however, I'm not sure about where to put the new oversight users so I'm not adjusting the list. Isaac (talk) 19:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Referring to the list at Wikipedia:Revision hiding#Users with Oversight permissions: are you sure the list is out-of-date? Special:Listusers/oversight does not seem to list any accounts enabled with Oversight, which are not listed on the page's list.
Are there any specific omissions in the automatic list, that aren't included on the on-Wiki list? If so, please do add them :-)
Anthøny 19:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)