User talk:Ben Creasy

Welcome!

Welcome to Wikipedia, Ben Creasy! Thank you for your contributions. I am Checkingfax and I have been editing Wikipedia for some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type {{help me}} at the bottom of this page. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your username and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 10:10, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your informative post on Jimbo's page prompts a query: As I understand it, there are no mandates that require that audit committees of public companies ensure audits of internal control exist that cover not just financials, but that the corp effectively controls itself so that it fulfills its duties to all stakeholders. In other words, SEC/SarbOx/other mandates require audits of internal control exist that cover financials and stockholder interests, but NOT customer interests, such as customer information confidentiality, such as reasonable security to protect customer social security numbers. But your post on Jimbo's page make me think you are knowledgeable and think differently and I'm misinformed. If something DOES mandate this, I'd love to be informed of it.--Elvey^(t•c) 20:04, 13 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Elvey (talk · contribs), I'm not sure what I said that made you think differently. :) I'm mostly self-educated (as you must be when discussing this level of detail), and much of my auditing experience comes from serving on audit committees rather than field work (my field work was a bit different as a regulator), but my understanding is that SOX 404 audits are audits of internal control over financial reporting. See 15 U.S. Code § 7262 and Auditing Standard No. 5. However, IT auditing plays a role in that: see the SOX section of the IT controls article. Regardless of what is mandated by statute explicitly, fiduciary duty includes a duty to protect the corporation from risk and uphold the law, and leaking confidential customer information violates both, so the board has a duty to maintain internal control which ensures that it is protected. The internal auditors would probably monitor that in large corporations. I sometimes hear people say that public company boards are forced to only think about profit, but that's not really true in my experience. Shareholder activism is a really recent thing. In general boards can do almost anything (including nothing) because of the business judgment rule and case law such as Smith_v._Van_Gorkom. You really can't rely on the law to enforce good governance. It has to come from within, and the pressure of the stakeholders who make the organization relevant. I'm not as into the topic as I once was, but it's a fun topic and I'm happy to talk about it, although it might be more interesting to work on Wikipedia articles relevant to the question. ;)Ben Creasy (talk) 03:01, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Agreed. I believe people should be able to choose to do their banking with a bank, brokerage, or credit union that has passed an audit that covered customer information confidentiality. But I can find no evidence that any bank, brokerage, or credit union has auditors whose audits cover that and result in an audit letter that people could find to allow them to make this choice. Maybe the way to make that happen is to petition the boards or board members of some of these institutions to have the institution submit to a public audit that covers customer information confidentiality. --Elvey^(t•c) 19:32, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Elvey (talk · contribs), if you're truly interested in that, credit unions are run by member-elected board members, altho in reality I think the nominations work out so that the boards are mostly self-perpetuating - you often need a bunch of signatures to get on the list of nominees. Mutual insurance companies work the same way; in theory you can run for the board of State Farm and be nominated if you get enough signatures (can't remember exactly - maybe 0.1% of policyholders or something). My dad's colleague in Ketchikan, AK has been a board member of Tongass Federal Credit Union (my dad's lifetime primary banking institution) for a long time, and a major credit union in my last town (Juneau, AK) was run by locals, including a 5th grade schoolteacher. You've just gotta got speak up and show up to the meetings. I have an unpublished rough draft blog post on credit unions here in the Bay Area as I was looking for one which seemed more democratic with regard to its members, but I don't think I found one (looked at Tech CU, First Tech Credit Union, and Patelco). Anyway, if you tell me where you're at I can suggest ways to get involved. You might be able to get on the board of a small one and press for change that way. Also free to email me at ben@bencreasy.com. Ben Creasy (talk) 09:32, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ben. My late Father was a board member of the Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, part of the Consumer's Co-Op (grocery store and more) back in the 60s. Everything about that place was a cooperative. Every time we checked out we have to give our member number and at the end of the year we got a nice profit sharing check based on our purchase percentage. It had a cooperative gas station, a cooperative auto repair shop, a bookstore, a hardware store, a lunch counter, and a "kiddie korral". They also had an S&L called Twin Pines Savings and Loan. My Dad was probably on the BOD for that too. I know the current CEO if you want to interview her. Email me for details. It would be interesting to know how much member input there is now. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 06:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

2017 Art And Feminism Wikipedia Editathon @ CCA

You are invited! - Friday, March 10 - SF CCA ArtAndFeminism 2017			Please join us at the California College of the Arts' Simpson Library on Friday March 10, 2017, for an event aimed at collaboratively expanding Wikipedia articles covering Art and Feminism, and the biographies of women artists! --Jscarboro (talk)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 20:37, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

May WikiSalon

Hey Ben, thanks to you and Wayne for organizing, as always. Just noticed that the last Wednesday will coincide with Memorial Day, and wondered if that means it gets moved up a week to the 24th, or what. Mathglot (talk) 08:15, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. CheckingFax (talk · contribs), what do you think? Ben Creasy (talk) 02:58, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

((( 🔔 ))) Mathglot (talk) 00:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ben Creasy and CheckingFax: Anyone? Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, been pretty busy. I think we'll be doing it the same day. Memorial Day is Monday. CheckingFax already put it up at https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Bay_Area_WikiSalon. Ben Creasy (talk) 02:22, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks. Mathglot (talk) 04:26, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Where to propose a new admin tool

Hi Ben,

Do you know where one would post a request for a new admin tool? I'd like to provide admins with a tool to edit Revision history without having to revdel or oversight it.

The real world case that sparked this query involves a user who was called out on a Template talk page, in a section whose long title contained the User's name in a somewhat uncivil context (invented example: ==User:SomeNameHere keeps doing nasty stuff and should stop it==), which caused subsequent edits to that section to preserve the aspersions in the Rev History over and over again, with the Username repeated each time as part of the section title leading off the edit summary. This contravenes WP:TALKNEW, which calls it "especially egregious" to attack a user by naming them in a section title, for this very reason.

Now that the damage is done, there appears no way to remedy this with current admin tools, because it's not nearly severe enough (not libel, not outing, etc.) for revdel, and there isn't a lighter-weight tool with a lower bar to access, that would allow an admin to excise this user's name from the offending Edit summaries. I've already had a conversation with en-wiki admin(s) about this and learned that this doesn't even come close to being a candidate for revdel, and there seems to be no other option to mitigate the injury, currently. That's why I want to propose a new revedit tool, to deal with stuff like this.

Full details here. Do you know where I could go to make a case for a new admin tool? Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I think about it, probably 90% of the cases could be avoided before they occurred, by adding a regex to the Preview and Save button operations, to block or at least red-alert-box anything that looked like Usernames from being saved as part of an Edit summary, especially in the lead-off part between the slash-star delimiters. Something like the warning you get when you forget the edit summary entirely. Mathglot (talk) 01:40, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mathglot (talk · contribs), I'm not sure how the feature development suggestion world works exactly these days. Last I saw Phabricator tickets didn't really even have a field for votes - it has tokens or something and someone said they don't really get looked at. There's a poll for the Community Tech team on what to work on, and that's probably the best avenue to look at. You could hit up their community liason Johan. And then it would have to cleared by the community, because people would probably be concerned about the potential for abuse with editing history at a "lower bar" I think in the scheme of priotities, this is probably going to end up at the low-end of the scale. You have to scroll back through history to see these harmful edit summaries. Ben Creasy (talk) 04:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Request for unblock if talk edit also blocked?

My interest in this is about an edit that a blocked user made in an article a few years ago, unrelated to the blocking. The edit was unclear and was removed, but it's possible a cleaned up edit could contribute to the article. My reason for posting here is that you posted instructions about second chance unblock request for that user, but is this possible if talk edit privilege is also blocked? If it is possible, then please delete this section, as no action would be required on your part to make the unblock possible. Rcgldr (talk) 02:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a second chance is generally possible! You may have to email the Arbitration committee or something - if you want me to dig deeper into the process let me know. A single unclear edit should not result in a permanent block. And indefinite is a lot different from permanent. Ben Creasy (talk) 03:38, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not the one blocked, it's another user. I'm trying to avoid using his user name here. The reason for that user's blocking was unrelated to his edit made a few years ago and instead related to recent alleged sockpuppeting in another article, perhaps due to using a school's computer / IP which is shared by many students. How does a user email the Arbitration committee (what would be the user name)? Again, this could be posted on that blocked user's talk page so he would know how to proceed. Thanks for the quick response. Rcgldr (talk) 15:21, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rcgldr (talk · contribs), it took many months and direct help on my part, but we got the chap unblocked! Ben Creasy (talk) 05:01, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ben Creasy (talk · contribs) Thanks for the help. Rcgldr (talk) 22:22, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikisalons?

Hey Ben! Hope you're doing well! I was just wondering if there's any status on when the next WikiSalon will be? If you need any help organizing, or if I can be of any assistance with any other snags, let me know! Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 00:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]