Beeblebrox
Beeblebrox ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
Well, where to begin? I made my first edit as a registered user in July 2007, and passed my second attempt at RFA in August of last year. My editing is spread out fairly evenly throughout the week, I usually at least check in and make at least a few edits every day. I also recently started uploading images to Commons under this same name, and I have an account at Meta. As part of the purpose of this election is to find oversighters in under-represented time zones, I should mention that I live on the Kenai Peninsula of Southcentral Alaska, which is considered UTC-9 in winter, UTC-8 during daylight savings time. (which is an absurd concept in a part of the world that at this moment is getting fifteen and a half hours of daylight each day) In my time as a vandal fighter and subsequent step up to admin status, I have many times seen personal information posted to Wikipedia. Sometimes it is done maliciously, and sometimes out of doe-eyed ignorance of the ways of the larger world and the fact that there are some very bad people out there. I have always endeavored to remove such information as quickly as possible by editing the page or deleting and restoring it without the information, and have requested and received help from the oversight team on a few occasions.
In my real life I have some very similar duties. As the owner of a small business, I have personal information regarding my coworkers (I've never liked to think of myself as the boss, we work as a team) including their criminal and driving records. I am also privy to sensitive information regarding our clients, up to and including their home addresses, medical and mental health conditions, medications they take, when they come and go and who they are with when they do so, and sometimes other details that I don't need or want to know. I have to keep all this information to myself, and make sure my coworkers do the same, and have been pretty successful at doing so for the past nine years. In 2000, I also worked for the United States Census Bureau as an enumerator, a person who goes door-to-door finding people who did not fill out a census form and convincing them to fill one out right there on the spot with me. Obviously, this entailed a lot of sensitive information about my neighbors, which I had to listen to, record for posterity, and then forget all about it and never mention it anyone lest I be fined thousands of dollars and thrown in jail. So I'm pretty darn comfortable with keeping other people's personal information to myself. I'm glad we are not in competition with one another in this process because there are only six candidates and oversight can use all the help it can get. Best of luck to my fellow candidates. Beeblebrox ( talk) 19:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Comments and questions for Beeblebrox
- Questions from HJ Mitchell
- If you are granted Oversight access, how do you think that will affect you as an editor and an administrator and do you think that will (or should) affect the way that other editors interact with you?
- When I became an admin it was a huge change for me. It altered the way I spent my time on Wikipedia more dramatically than I'd ever anticipated. However, oversight is basically just a more powerful admin tool that has to be used more cautiously than the others. Other than taking up a bit of the time I currently spend on dealing with other admin matters, I don't think it will change my actual editing all that much. It shouldn't effect my interactions with other users at all, except that I will probably use email more often in order to minimize the exposure of confidential information.
- Do you feel it's important for oversighters to reply to email requests to inform the requester of the action you've taken or not taken?
- In most cases the person requesting the action should be able to tell what action has been taken, but it only takes a moment to shoot off an email to let them know what happened. I have gotten such emails when I have requested oversight in the past and it was good to know for sure that my concerns had been addressed by someone, so I think I would do the same in most cases.
- Question from Keegan
I know it is asked in the questionnaire:
- Q. How will you be willing to respond to saying no to a request, and will you actively do it?
- last answer first: I would actively do it. Sometimes admins get requests that they don't really want to deal with, and they don't respond, figuring the user will find some other admin to do it. I admit I have done this myself on occasion, but the whole point of this process is that there isn't necessarily someone else around who can handle it, so a clear yes or no response is always warranted. As for saying no, I have plenty of experience both here and in the real world doing that. I get some very odd requests sometimes at my job from people who want me to stretch the definition of what I do to fit what they want me to do. The important thing is to make sure the person understands why their request is being denied, as opposed to just saying "no" and not even commenting on it, and not to be insulting or dismissive, to let them you did review the matter before coming to your decision..
- Question from User:zzuuzz
- Other than attempts at outing, what types of revisions should be hidden from administrators?
- Well, some people "out" themselves without even realizing it. Often these are young children who don't realize that there is no such thing as "setting your profile to private" over here, and that they really shouldn't be posting their phone number, what school they go to, etc on here. With all the furor right now over "thinking of the children" oversight is one area that does just that, they just do it quickly and quietly. Other things to look for are libelous material or usernames, and certain types of extreme vandalism or copyright violations. Apparently there are also occasional requests from users who accidently edited while logged out in such a manner that their ip address could be linked back to them, and requests from the "front office" to remove material that could cause legal problems for the Foundation. While admins in general are considered a trusted group of users and can probably handle seeing such things and not blabbing about it, we have seen more than once that there are some who don't show their true colors until after they've gotten the bit, and there is a real potential for real life harm caused by such a person if they had access to sensitive confidential information.
- Question from Happy-melon
- All CheckUsers and Oversighters are members of the functionaries-en mailing list, a forum for discussion and co-ordination of privacy-related issues which affect any and all areas of Wikipedia. What qualities and perspectives would you bring to such discussions?
- Since I deal with privacy issues in my real job as well, I think I would bring a pragmatic, real world approach and perspective to such conversations. Since those discussions are closed I don't know that such a perspective is currently missing from them, but more of the same couldn't hurt. We need to be cognizant of the fact that Wikipedia is not Las Vegas, what happens here does not necessarily stay here. Indeed there are entire websites devoted solely to discussing what goes on here, and there have been instances where users attempted to use information they got from Wikipedia to threaten or harass people in the real world. Although powerful tools such as are granted to oversighters should not be used lightly, they also should not be used timidly if there is a need for them.
Beeblebrox
Beeblebrox ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
Well, where to begin? I made my first edit as a registered user in July 2007, and passed my second attempt at RFA in August of last year. My editing is spread out fairly evenly throughout the week, I usually at least check in and make at least a few edits every day. I also recently started uploading images to Commons under this same name, and I have an account at Meta. As part of the purpose of this election is to find oversighters in under-represented time zones, I should mention that I live on the Kenai Peninsula of Southcentral Alaska, which is considered UTC-9 in winter, UTC-8 during daylight savings time. (which is an absurd concept in a part of the world that at this moment is getting fifteen and a half hours of daylight each day) In my time as a vandal fighter and subsequent step up to admin status, I have many times seen personal information posted to Wikipedia. Sometimes it is done maliciously, and sometimes out of doe-eyed ignorance of the ways of the larger world and the fact that there are some very bad people out there. I have always endeavored to remove such information as quickly as possible by editing the page or deleting and restoring it without the information, and have requested and received help from the oversight team on a few occasions.
In my real life I have some very similar duties. As the owner of a small business, I have personal information regarding my coworkers (I've never liked to think of myself as the boss, we work as a team) including their criminal and driving records. I am also privy to sensitive information regarding our clients, up to and including their home addresses, medical and mental health conditions, medications they take, when they come and go and who they are with when they do so, and sometimes other details that I don't need or want to know. I have to keep all this information to myself, and make sure my coworkers do the same, and have been pretty successful at doing so for the past nine years. In 2000, I also worked for the United States Census Bureau as an enumerator, a person who goes door-to-door finding people who did not fill out a census form and convincing them to fill one out right there on the spot with me. Obviously, this entailed a lot of sensitive information about my neighbors, which I had to listen to, record for posterity, and then forget all about it and never mention it anyone lest I be fined thousands of dollars and thrown in jail. So I'm pretty darn comfortable with keeping other people's personal information to myself. I'm glad we are not in competition with one another in this process because there are only six candidates and oversight can use all the help it can get. Best of luck to my fellow candidates. Beeblebrox ( talk) 19:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Comments and questions for Beeblebrox
- Questions from HJ Mitchell
- If you are granted Oversight access, how do you think that will affect you as an editor and an administrator and do you think that will (or should) affect the way that other editors interact with you?
- When I became an admin it was a huge change for me. It altered the way I spent my time on Wikipedia more dramatically than I'd ever anticipated. However, oversight is basically just a more powerful admin tool that has to be used more cautiously than the others. Other than taking up a bit of the time I currently spend on dealing with other admin matters, I don't think it will change my actual editing all that much. It shouldn't effect my interactions with other users at all, except that I will probably use email more often in order to minimize the exposure of confidential information.
- Do you feel it's important for oversighters to reply to email requests to inform the requester of the action you've taken or not taken?
- In most cases the person requesting the action should be able to tell what action has been taken, but it only takes a moment to shoot off an email to let them know what happened. I have gotten such emails when I have requested oversight in the past and it was good to know for sure that my concerns had been addressed by someone, so I think I would do the same in most cases.
- Question from Keegan
I know it is asked in the questionnaire:
- Q. How will you be willing to respond to saying no to a request, and will you actively do it?
- last answer first: I would actively do it. Sometimes admins get requests that they don't really want to deal with, and they don't respond, figuring the user will find some other admin to do it. I admit I have done this myself on occasion, but the whole point of this process is that there isn't necessarily someone else around who can handle it, so a clear yes or no response is always warranted. As for saying no, I have plenty of experience both here and in the real world doing that. I get some very odd requests sometimes at my job from people who want me to stretch the definition of what I do to fit what they want me to do. The important thing is to make sure the person understands why their request is being denied, as opposed to just saying "no" and not even commenting on it, and not to be insulting or dismissive, to let them you did review the matter before coming to your decision..
- Question from User:zzuuzz
- Other than attempts at outing, what types of revisions should be hidden from administrators?
- Well, some people "out" themselves without even realizing it. Often these are young children who don't realize that there is no such thing as "setting your profile to private" over here, and that they really shouldn't be posting their phone number, what school they go to, etc on here. With all the furor right now over "thinking of the children" oversight is one area that does just that, they just do it quickly and quietly. Other things to look for are libelous material or usernames, and certain types of extreme vandalism or copyright violations. Apparently there are also occasional requests from users who accidently edited while logged out in such a manner that their ip address could be linked back to them, and requests from the "front office" to remove material that could cause legal problems for the Foundation. While admins in general are considered a trusted group of users and can probably handle seeing such things and not blabbing about it, we have seen more than once that there are some who don't show their true colors until after they've gotten the bit, and there is a real potential for real life harm caused by such a person if they had access to sensitive confidential information.
- Question from Happy-melon
- All CheckUsers and Oversighters are members of the functionaries-en mailing list, a forum for discussion and co-ordination of privacy-related issues which affect any and all areas of Wikipedia. What qualities and perspectives would you bring to such discussions?
- Since I deal with privacy issues in my real job as well, I think I would bring a pragmatic, real world approach and perspective to such conversations. Since those discussions are closed I don't know that such a perspective is currently missing from them, but more of the same couldn't hurt. We need to be cognizant of the fact that Wikipedia is not Las Vegas, what happens here does not necessarily stay here. Indeed there are entire websites devoted solely to discussing what goes on here, and there have been instances where users attempted to use information they got from Wikipedia to threaten or harass people in the real world. Although powerful tools such as are granted to oversighters should not be used lightly, they also should not be used timidly if there is a need for them.