Wikinews:Requests for permissions/Oversight/Skenmy 2

(Oversight)
As one of your Bureaucrats, Checkusers, and long-term sysop, I feel that I would be suitable to hold the position of Oversight. Some people may call in to question the amount of inactivity I have had over the past few months, and I am not going to try and make excuses - my life has been getting in the way. However, I have stayed abreast of the community, I feel I am up to date with policy and current issues. Even during my apparent inactivity - I am pretty much always pingable on IRC for sysop, bureaucrat, and checkuser tasks.

Having more than 2 users with a priv is always a good idea to prevent corruption and misuse. I would not be particularly comfortable if our number of checkusers dropped below what we currently have, and I would not be comfortable with 2 (and slightly uneasy with 3) Oversighters. Therefore I believe it is in the best interests of the community that I offer my assistance and stand for the position of Oversighter.

I believe I am level headed enough to deal with the tool appropriately, I am not one prone to see red or get involved in slanging matches - I am honest, open, and I hope that I still have enough trust in this community to continue to hold tools bestowed upon me, as well as serve in new ways with new tools. As a CU, I am already identified to the Foundation. -- Sken   my talk 17:27, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments

 * IIRC, you are actually part of your local constabulary. I am very wary of someone in such a position being given such a responsibility. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Without making comment on the accuracy of the statement, why would you be wary? -- Sken   my talk 15:52, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The risk of outside pressure to inappropriately use the tool. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not even going to dignify that outrageous comment with a response. -- Sken   my talk 09:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * So, on the assumption that you're a special constable - or otherwise involved with the police (which you have neither confirmed nor denied), you would resign from that position if a similar situation to the Virgin Killer one came up and you were ordered to remove content from the project by superiors. Really, I do not consider this an unreasonable comment or query. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Such a situation could not arise - paranoia aside, that sort of "ordering" simply doesn't exist outside of a court. -- Sken   my talk 12:25, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not paranoia, and you are quite correct such should happen through a court. My concern is based on many years experience with authorities such as the police. The previous Virgin Killer 'incident' was hideously mismanaged, and the mass blocking of people's editing access to Wikimedia projects went ahead without any reference to a court. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That didn't have anything to do with the police though. That happened because the government in the UK handed off the job of watching the internet to a privately run special interest group manned by religious fanatics. You can't blame the police for that. Gopher65talk 22:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Not quite exactly why I was raising the concern; Skenmy's almost-always done really good stuff for the project, But, could possibly face a difficult situation if something really bad about law enforcement was published here – especially if it featured OR, and, say, unnamed sources. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:16, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a big issue TBH. While I don't know what policy for this sort of thing is on the other side of the pond, seems like it would have to go through a court before any action could be forced, and even if it were, the WMF, not us, would probably be obliged to do it, as an office action. In any case, I trust Skenmy not to succumb to any external influence to use his tools inappropriately. Tempodivalse [talk]  13:05, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see this as being any different than anyone else here who is employed by a large organization. Are we going to ban Google employees on the off-chance that we might some day publish something damaging to Google? Are we going to ban all government employees? Are we going to ban employees of the various Red Cross organizations, just in case we ever (re)publish a corruption story about them? If we're going to do that, then we're going to *really* limit our userbase. At that point the only people who can be admins are the self-employed, the chronically unemployed, and people who work for family owned businesses. Everyone else has potential conflicts of interest... if you're paranoid enough. I'm not saying that such conflicts couldn't happen, I'm saying we can't punish people based on long-shot hypothetical situations. What are we, the goons in Minority Report? Gopher65talk 14:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Without meaning to address at all the merits of the particular case, I do think there is very good reason to consider this case in a different light than, say, employment by Google. The more powerful the organization involved, the greater the difficulty of stabilizing society against fluctuations in the organization's smoothly beneficial behavior.  When some part of a corporation (or the whole thing) goes off the deep end, we hope to get government to help rein them in.  When some part of a government (...) goes off the deep end, it's the whole of society that one hopes to see deal with it, and an important component in the machinery for that is a free press.  There's no stable state of this system; it takes perpetual rebalancing to keep it going.  The system is especially vulnerable to instabilities in the smoothly beneficial functioning of government, and therefore the free press (that's us), being part of the backup system for that, needs to keep a careful eye on its contingency plans for those sorts of situations.  --Pi zero (talk) 17:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This nomination has run it's course. Now that we have 3 OSes I'm happier to step down from my nomination rather than let it sit here - it's clear that I will not muster enough votes, what with the group of abstentions. -- Sken   my talk 09:15, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) --    Tris   18:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Definitely. Level-headed, perfect oversighter material. Tempodivalse  [talk]  19:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * --Pi zero (talk) 20:14, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) &mdash; Gopher65talk 03:46, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 11:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Sure. Pmlineditor discuss 12:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Δεν δοδγε  τ\c 16:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 3)  — fetch · comms   17:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) --KTo288 (talk) 18:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * , Blurpeace  02:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) --Diego Grez return fire 14:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Loves huge tools Killing Vector (talk) 18:14, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 18:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 4)  I trust  with this job. Cary Bass (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) You can't argue with that last name. Calebrw (talk) 20:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) --Cspurrier (talk) 00:35, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Essentially per Tempo. C628 (talk)
 * 8) Support -  Amgine | t 21:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) Benny the mascot (talk) 14:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 10)   — Jeff G. ツ 03:37, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

 * Per the discussion about Skenmy's police involvement. I trust Skenmy to know better; I don't trust his superiors. I have witnessed police incomeptence, read about police incompetence and been brought up with a man who dealt with police incompetence for seveal years on a professional basis. My concern is not so much that this is a problem; it is that Skenmy refuses to even acknowledge any merit in the question. Had Skenmy said the obvious rebuttal ("Most police aren't like that, I'm certainly not, I would resist such action and point out its illegality") then I would be quite satisfied. Unfortunately, Skenmy has chosen to sweep this aside without directly addressing the question. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 19:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have not addressed the question directly as I am a) not permitted to comment in any official capacity b) because it is offensive to myself. I am now being accused of possible corruption and of law-breaking, which is simply not on. I simply fail to see where the problem lies. -- Sken   my talk 06:57, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You have been accused of nothing. You are being asked to distance yourself from it. I left my vote there quite some time, but not once did you recognise why someone might pop such a question. I did not change easily, or happily. How hard is it to have said "I'm better than that"? Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 07:08, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I would have hoped my years of service here would have proven my loyalty and trustworthyness, not the fact that I did not comment on a matter that I am not permitted to comment on. Clearly not. -- Sken   my talk 07:17, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You didn't even say you weren't allowed to comment. Why is this question any different from the general 'why do you think you are trustworthy?' questions that everyone gets asked, other than that it is tailored to circumstances? Your stance is most unsettling. It is not what I expected from you. Do you honestly expect us to treat you differently than any other CU candidate? We all know who you are, but we still throw these questions past the candidates. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 15:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Having calmed down somewhat since originally reading your opposal, BRS, I see where you are coming from. I simply cannot and do not see a way of me being pressured by my superiors to do anything to the detriment of this site. It is a personal account, with a private password, not a job account. It is not something that I consider tamperable or usable by my employers, whether that be a police force or otherwise. You must realise that I am extremely limited in what I can say - however I hope that now my response settles you somewhat. It has taken some time to craft correctly. I considered the question different to the 'why do you think you are trustworthy?' set and my defence mechanism triggered as I read your comments as an accusation - for which I apologise. --<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif"> Sken   my talk 20:53, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Apology accepted. After some thought, I will strike my oppose. I hope you won't be offended if I abstain from this election now. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As per BRS --RockerballAustralia c 06:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I hesitated a long time over this. I trust the candidate, which was the basis of my original support.
 * Institutions do not have fixed membership, and individuals in them have varying strengths and weaknesses. Trusting an individual is possible; trusting an institution is a type error: "trust" isn't an operation supported on objects of type "institution".  The question that clarified my position on this was not what would happen to Wikinews if the candidate were inappropriately pressured, but what would happen to the candidate.
 * There are peripheral worries surrounding the discussions above, but they're murky. Most currently, if the candidate is not permitted to comment on an issue relevant to the nomination &mdash;which is unclear, to me anyway, from the above&mdash; then the nomination is inappropriate.  --Pi zero (talk) 20:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sufficiently reassured that I'm striking my oppose vote. --Pi zero (talk) 17:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Abstain

 * 1) - I've not been on wikinews too long so I can only vote for members whom I've had experience with and since I have not yet met this candidate, I can neither vote yea or nay - but I did feel I should explain why, hence the abstain. Turtlestack (talk) 06:18, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * per above. --Diego Grez return fire 16:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC) I suppose he isn't going to do anything bad. Striking my vote. --Diego Grez return fire 17:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)