Talk:Ombuds commission

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Awareness of the accused

Moved from Talk:Access to nonpublic personal data policy/Noticeboard

Hi all,

This is not specifically related to the most recent case, it's just one that made me think about asking:

What's the status of notification and evidence sharing with the accused? In ArbCom cases, evidence must be shared with the accused, in WMF bans, the evidence is not shared at all. As a body of community editors, not acting on the legal necessity side, I assume the Ombuds are closer to the former, but wanted to confirm and get the detail. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Pinging every English-speaking member: @Ameisenigel, Infinite0694, Faendalimas, JJMC89, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb, and Zabe: Nosebagbear (talk) 11:32, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  Hi @Kbrown (WMF): (apologies if you are also watchlisting this, for the double-notification), since you said you were open to other questions I'd also ask you.

  1) First is just the question for this section - if the CU/OS/Steward (etc) is accused of something, do they receive the information needed to make a full defence? In the nature of the accusation, they would already have the relevant information and thus should have all detail shared to them to make their defence.

  2) You note that the OC can't give specifics because of the PII, but that only means you can't publicly share evidence (which is of course going to be the case for functionally anything with the Ombuds' remit) - it doesn't mean you, or more accurately, they, can't give far more details as to the accusations.

  For example, let's say that a CU has been looking up my and others' IP data without cause. PII would be giving out my IP address while explaining the case, clearly bad. But they could be de-CUed with the explanation "unwarranted CU checks without cause".

  This will inherently require nuance, and a case by case determination, but that's always the case - transparency is usually inefficient, but the positives outweigh the negatives. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:35, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  @Nosebagbear: Thanks for the questions. I'll take a crack at them.

  1. Do they receive the information needed to make a full defence? This is part of OC's workflow, not the WMF's, but to the best of my understanding, they would get something along the lines of "We have received a report that [this checkuser/oversight/whatever action] was improper, would you please explain your justification for the action?" and then could engage in dialogue with OC about it.
  2. Can OC or the WMF give more details about these actions than they currently give? This is not something I can answer myself; I'd need to discuss it with the Legal team because that type of additional information disclosure would need to get their okay. I can surface it to Legal, if people think it's important to make the change, and see what they say, though my non-lawyer suspicion is that Legal's preference will always be "publicly share as little negative information about people as possible". Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  @Kbrown (WMF) thanks for your quick response! Re point 1, that seems reasonable - given that I'm not aware of the actual functionaries complaining about having evidence withheld from them, it seems a sufficient response for now.

  Re point 2, you're no doubt correct that Legal would always have that preference - as with any compliance activity, their job is to reduce risk in their field. It needs other teams to point out that the reduction of legal risk comes with an increase in other risks. Here, that is a confidence that the conduct authorities of Wikimedia function properly and that the users of the most advanced permissions we have are using them correctly, and when not, that they are being handled correctly.

  In both cases, transparency (as much of it as we can get) is fundamental.

  Between your volunteering and T&S activity, I'm confident that you've read more en-wiki ARBCOM outcomes than I have, and they fairly frequently give fairly negative information about users. Afaik, the WMF isn't needing to spend large amounts of time or money resisting libel cases, and the same would seem to apply here. It's a volunteer body acting - it isn't the Foundation announcing the judgements (even if it may be doing the technical right removal). Nosebagbear (talk) 15:27, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  Just a quick update that I've sent a question to the Legal team about the possibility of releasing more detailed information about rights removals. They may get back to me quickly if it turns out to be a simple answer, or it may take a while if it requires them to do research or debate internally. I'll let y'all know what I hear back. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)