Wikipedia talk:CheckUser/Archive 6

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Rangeblocking

I quote from WP:RANGE —

If you propose to block a significant range, or for a significant time, consider asking a user with checkuser access to check for collateral damage – that is, for the presence of other users who may be unintentionally affected by the range block. Alternately, if you are unsure whether or not disruptive edits from a specific range can be matched to a single user, you can post a request at sock puppet investigations where an administrator or a checkuser will attempt to match users with IP addresses.

Is all of this accurate? I seem to remember reading that the collateral damage check is fine, because the only answers are "go ahead, since you won't affect any registered users" and "don't do it, since you'll hurt some registered users"; nothing is said about any specific editors. On the other hand, is anyone really going to "attempt to match users with IP addresses"? Nyttend (talk) 03:07, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, it's badly worded, for certain; however, that's pretty much what checkusers do, with a little extra twist of reviewing user agents and other information as well. Having said that, yes, there are real benefits in having significant rangeblocks discussed with at CU before application, and there are some ranges that should probably never be blocked, even if there's significant disruption from them. (Examples: certain countries with small ranges can be shut out almost completely, certain ISPs - particularly mobile ranges - with extremely dynamic IPs often result in significant collateral damage.) The type of range block is also a factor. A "soft" block that only prevents logged-out editing won't affect accounts, but a "hard" block will block everyone who is not an administrator. Hard blocks of ranges of any size should be run by a checkuser, should never be indefinite, and even hard blocks of individual IPs should be time-limited. Risker (talk) 03:50, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee review of procedures (CU & OS)

By resolution of the committee, our rules and internal procedures are currently being reviewed with the community. You are very welcome to participate at WT:AC/PRR. Information on the review is at WP:AC/PRR. The current phase of the review is examining the committee's procedures concerning advanced permissions (and the appointment and regulation of permissions holders). AGK [•] 11:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Participate in this review

Possible loophole - - Who has CheckUser rights, really?

I added this to the page, as an option for Contacting a CheckUser, with the edit summary that follows

A regular administrator on meta; meta administrators regularly self-grant CheckUser access only for the time needed to perform a CheckUser.

Contacting a CheckUser: Of last 50 edits, about 13 show CheckUser access self-granted, only for a brief time. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=rights&user=&page=&year=2014&month=5)

Legoktm reverted with the summary

those are stewards who can't check on enwp by policy

I tried to verify that this is true. The closest I got was finding "Stewards generally do not perform actions on wikis where local users are available to perform them, except in emergency or cross-wiki cases.", at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards. However, that page isn't policy. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Global_rights_policy#Stewards states that https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards_policy says that the global stewards policy says that stewards should not use their global rights to perform tasks that could be performed by local users. But I think it's just the non-policy page I linked to that says that; the actual global stewards policy page does not. Thoughts on how should this be addressed? Move content from the non-policy page to a policy page?

Also, I wonder why these stewards are just transiently giving themselves this right. Does that help or hurt the ability of the https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission to perform oversight? Avraham, you're a member of the commission; can you comment, please?--{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 20:21, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Speaking as a steward, I can tell you that among the active stewards, outside of certain clear-cut cases (an Arbcom requesting removal of rights, a self-req rights removal, active prevention of ongoing wide-spread cross-wiki vandalism) it is strongly discouraged for people who without local flags to use their steward flag on projects, outside of emergencies (which are usually time-sensitive OS issues). In these situations, it is incumbent on the steward to then immediately notify the local users (OS or CU) for them to review the stewards' actions. The stewards are all actively very careful of this; while I cannot say that it is policy, it is certainly treated as a very strong guideline. The reason why we give ourselves local rights instead of just assigning global rights to the steward group (which is permitted under the definition of stewards) is that we stewards voluntarily want to ensure that a check and balance exists on us and that we can be audited. While I believe (but have not checked) that even were we to run a global check on a project, the check itself appears in the local log, by requiring local rights, we ensure there is a log anyone can see on meta where we have granted ourselves said right. The only exception are members of the OC, which are assigned global CU rights for their use in following up on complaints. For steward/OC members, when we are acting as stewards, we assign ourselves local rights for the reasons listed above. -- Avi (talk) 14:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Considering nothing can be done about this from enwiki, meta would be the better place to discuss it. Stewards grant and revoke local checkuser access to their own accounts in accordance with two policies: the checkuser policy and the steward policy. The former specifies that stewards can use checkuser by granting and revoking local access. The latter specifies that stewards can perform the role of any user group when one does not exist locally. So, on projects with no local checkusers, we act as checkusers (or rarely we act on projects with checkusers when there is xwiki abuse or in an emergency). The fact that we add and remove ourselves to the local checkuser group from meta maximizes transparency - if this were not done, it would be nearly impossible for the OC and other stewards to review our actions. Ajraddatz (Talk) 20:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Something can be done fron enwiki. Enwiki could be more self-reliant / not make (?what have become?) untrue assertions about or rely on policies/pages out of its control. So is ":those are stewards who can't check on enwp by policy" verifiable or not? I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not.

I submit that checkuser policy should not say "Stewards - upon request" unless they only have that right upon request, which does not seem to be the case. Rather, it should say "Stewards" or better yet "Stewards" plus something that's accurate - e.g. that stewards self-grant local checkuser access on meta only for a brief time, because that maximizes transparency, but I can raise that there.--{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 21:18, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

To directly answer your question, stewards cannot check on enwiki by policy (specifically the steward policy which states that stewards replace local users when they are not available, such as when a wiki has no local CUs). The rest would be best brought up on meta. Ajraddatz (Talk) 21:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Link (to the steward policy which states that) please? I'm aware of the meta non-policy that says, "Stewards generally do not perform actions on wikis where local users are available to perform them, except in emergency or cross-wiki cases.", which I quoted in my original post.--{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 21:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

m:s - the stewards page on meta is a policy, or rather reflects what is done. Specifically "Stewards are empowered to act as members of any permissions group on any project with no active member of that permissions group" and, as you have mentioned, "Stewards generally do not perform actions on wikis where local users are available to perform them". Ajraddatz (Talk) 22:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

En:WP can do something, the AUSC can record and publish the number of Steward and other non-local CU/OS actiosn, and ensure that they are properly accounted for. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 31 May 2014 (UTC).

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications (2014)

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC"). The Committee is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Guerillero, MBisanz, and Richwales, whose terms were to expire on June 30 2014 but were extended until August 27 2014 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email arbcom-en-clists.wikimedia.org to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 31 August 2015. The application period will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Worm^TT(talk) 09:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: last call for applications

This is a reminder that the application period for the three non-arbitrator seats on the Audit Subcommittee will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC).

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC"). The Committee is comprised of six members and is tasked with investigations concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia. The AUSC also monitors CheckUser and Oversight activity and use of the applicable tools. The current non-arbitrator members are Guerillero, MBisanz, and Richwales, whose terms were to expire on June 30 2014 but were extended until August 27 2014 by the Committee.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are given both CheckUser and Oversight access. They are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

Please note that due to Wikimedia Foundation rules governing access to deleted material, only applications from administrators will be accepted.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please email arbcom-en-clists.wikimedia.org with your nomination statement to start the application procedure for an appointment ending 31 August 2015. The application period will close at 23:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC). Further information is also available here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Worm^TT(talk) 10:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee appointments (2014): Invitation to comment on candidates

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to arbcom-en-clists.wikimedia.org.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with any other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 27 August 2014.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Worm^TT(talk) 08:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

where to ask re true/claimed identity of a user

If not here, as this seems to be about checking on multiple accounts/sockpuppetry, where is there the appropriate forum to look into a very POV editor's actual identity? their username resembles that of a major PAC of some note, the views of which are mirrored in the discussion I've encountered them in, and their talkpage and contributions history, including not a small amount of misleading edit comments and mis-sourcing/conflating indicate something other than what is claimed on their userpage.Skookum1 (talk) 04:51, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

IP block exemption

I have some concerns and questions on the IP block exemption usergroup, specifically its abuse potential and possible split. I would appreciate some input here. Cenarium (talk) 22:54, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Questions embedded in text

I've removed these questions by KDS4444 embedded as comments:

<!-- What, exactly, is supposed to constitute an "emergency"??-->, you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation<!--And how should a person do that? If this is serious, then "contact the Wikimedia Foundation" should be a wikilink to such information. If it is not serious, then it should not be mentioned at all. Again, what the heck is an emergency? Can anyone give an example of one? Without an example, this piece of instruction is not very useful. --> NE Ent 12:02, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Checkuser and Oversight appointments 2015: Voting on the candidates

Following community consultation, the Arbitration Committee is now voting on appointments to the Checkuser and Oversight roles at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions. Comments are welcomed at that page.

For the Arbitration Committee;

Courcelles (talk) 19:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

2015 Checkuser and Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed

Following community consultation and voting. the Arbitration Committee is pleased to appoint the following users to the Functionary team.

• Callanecc (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is appointed as Checkuser and Oversighter to continue after his term on the Audit Subcommittee expires

• Mike V (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is appointed as Checkuser and Oversighter.

• Bbb23 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is appointed as a Checkuser.

• The following users are appointed as Oversighters:

• GB fan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Keilana (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Kelapstick (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Lankiveil (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Ronhjones (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

• The Committee thanks J.delanoy (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) for his years of service as a Checkuser, who has recently resigned from the role.

The Committee would like to thank the community and all the candidates for bringing this process to a successful conclusion.

For the Arbitration Committee;

Courcelles (talk) 03:07, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Discuss this

Arbitration proposed regarding giving Philippe CheckUser and Oversight tools

A motion has been proposed by the Arbitration Committee to give Philippe (talk · contribs) CheckUser and Oversight tools. Community comments are welcome on the motions page. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Checkuser privileges

It doesn't seem like this talk page gets much traffic but I wanted to raise the question about former arbitrators retaining the checkuser right (see Wikipedia:CheckUser#Users with CheckUser permissions). I think that if they are not actively using this ability to assist with sockpuppet investigations or other investigations, former arbitrators shouldn't have this permission indefinitely. Perhaps for a year after they aren't on the Arbitration Committee but I think that since it involves access to private information, if it's not being used for the betterment of Wikipedia, it should removed on the same basis that admin status is removed due to inactivity.
If these former arbitrators are helping out at WP:SPI or are involved in doing some editor investigation (which I believe is true with Risker), then there is no reason to remove the privilege. But otherwise, it seems like it is a right that should be relinquished if it is not needed. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:23, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Liz, anyone with CheckUser or Oversight permissions are subject to the activity requirements (5 logged actions in 3 months, including one community requested) unless they are a current arb, community auditor or on the Ombudsman Commission. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:24, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding this policy

This policy is up for discussion at the policy village pump. Anyone is encouraged to contribute. 50.153.133.28 (talk) 01:19, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

What constitutes a need for CheckUser?

I'm aware that a CU needs quite a bit of evidence in an SPI to use the tool, but what constitutes enough evidence for a CU and what constitutes too much evidence (if there is such a thing)? I've searched several CU Wikipedia policies, but I have yet to find an answer.

Side note: If there is a good answer for this question, it might help to add that answer to a page about CUs somewhere on Wikipedia (if it hasn't already been done) so others know what exactly they need in order for a CU to look at the case.

-- Gestrid (talk) 16:33, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Question

Hi, I have a question as I am curious to know more about how a CheckUser investigation works. Can a CheckUser see if somebody is using the same device or using the same WiFi to edit (for example; just making a scenario up—if somebody got blocked, switched their router off and on again to change their IP address, created a sockpuppet account to get around the block—can a CheckUser check if a person was using the same device—such as a phone, laptop, or desktop computer etc., or using the same WiFi connection to edit)? Plankton55 (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Draft looking for feedback

I've started a preliminary draft about outing and COI procedures at User:Tryptofish/Drafts/COI List Draft. Feedback about it is welcome at User talk:Tryptofish/Drafts/COI List Draft. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:46, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

There is now a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal for a confidential COI mailing list. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Is "sock puppetry" hyphenated or not?

I know it doesn't really matter, but for the purpose of internal consistency of spelling, should this page use the same unhyphenated form as the title of Wikipedia Sock puppetry? Right now there are six instances of "sock-puppetry", one of "sock puppetry" and two of "sockpuppetry". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:36, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

"...it doesn't really matter". Correct. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 01:44, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess （笑） Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:08, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Self-requests

In this edit, User:AGK boldly changed the policy from "Such requests are typically declined on the English Wikipedia" to "Such requests are not accepted on the English Wikipedia". The edit also removed the reason: "note, however, that requesting a checkuser in these circumstances is sometimes part of the attempt to disrupt".

I didn't see any discussions in the archive about this, and I wonder whether that's the ideal form. I've got nothing in particular against a self-requested check, so long as the significant limitations are known (i.e., "can't prove a negative"). But I'm thinking that the practical difference is relatively low – depending upon how you read the sentence. Saying that self-requests are "not accepted, unless someone decides to IAR in extraordinary cases" works for me; "not accepted, meaning absolutely never, and we'll punish any CU who dares to make an exception to the rare case" would not work so well for me. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Active/Inactive status

It was suggested off-wiki, and I thought it was a good suggestion, that there be an alternate listing of checkuser by status, whether they are active, temporarily inactive or just plain inactive. It is actually the normal behavior for arbitrators, arbitration clerks and SPI clerks to declare their status and I don't see why it wouldn't be a good idea for checkusers, too.
The rationale for adopting this standard was an observation that there are checkusers who regularly take time off and don't post a notice about it on their talk page. So, editors or admins who were seeking information about a block they had imposed or investigation they worked on would have no idea of whether they are around, if they are away for months and when they might be returning. If there was a list stating which checkuser were inactive, the editor/admin would know that they should consult an active CUer for clarification or considering an unblock request.
I have the suspicion that, as on the arbitration lists, that CUers might post a notice about their unavailability on the functionaries email list. I think sharing this information (just a CUers current status, not when they might go active or inactive and when they might return) would be immensely helpful for editors and admins and I don't see a downside to incorporating this suggestion. Your thoughts? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:11, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I approve. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 18:30, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Request to explain types of CheckUser privileges

This post is to seek knowledge on how CheckUser privileges work.

As a former webmaster, I can only assume that CheckUser Sysops can query variables such as client IP address, HTTP user agent (e.g. OS, browser version, device make/model), cookies, and session variables that are readily available and transmitted over the web, when certain user click actions occur:

• login/logout
• account creation
• article creation
• article update
• article delete

What I want to know is whether CheckUsers can view browsing history of a given IP address. In other words, I want to know:

• if CheckUsers can view what pages a given IP has read or navigated to?
• and similarly, if CheckUsers can view what IPs have read or navigated to a given page?

Thank you for your help. --216.133.125.107 (talk) 01:52, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

You don't need to post a request across multiple noticeboards, so please just pick one and delete the others. And the answer is no. Checkusers can only view hidden metadata related to logged user actions, so they cannot see what pages an IP has browsed, or what IPs have browsed a given page. They cannot tell how an editor reached a page either. The Wikimedia foundation does collect limited amounts of information about this, but it is only kept in the minimal fashion required to observe the geographic distribution of readership, mitigate dDoS attacks, block TOS violating web crawlers, or whatever other analytics the foundation feels like doing in house. That data is not available to the checkusers. I'll crosspost this, so you can just send followup questions however you feel like, if you feel like, or just ask me at my talk page. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:58, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:CU reads like software documentation

I believe this page is neither concise nor thorough enough for the everyday user, a point that has occurred to me at times in many of the numerous SPI investigations I've worked with. WP:UAL explains the function much better. Should I be WP:BOLD and suggest some improvements? Mark Schierbecker (talk) 18:30, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

done. I'll continue tweaking later. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 22:52, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

CU on undisclosed paid editors

Back in 2015, there was a strong consensus at User:Doc_James/Paid_editing#9._Lower_the_bar_for_sockpuppetry_investigations_of_spammers that standards for CU be lowered when investigating undisclosed paid editors and User:Risker recently pointed out on Jimbo's talk page that little had been done to take any of the proposals forward. In my opinion there is too much ambiguity in the current policy as to whether CU can or cannot be used to check suspected undisclosed paid editors and I would appreciate more clarity. I would only suggest that CU is used when it is evident that a user is creating suspect content, and it is highly likely that they are not a new user, or when editors established users are busted as UPEs. i.e. this wouldn't apply to newbies writing about themselves/the company they work for. To me, this falls under the points 3 or 4 of the current grounds for checking but it would help if this was written explicity into policy, either here or at WP:PAID. I guess SPI would still be the best venue, but it would differ from the current position where there needs to be evidence linking accounts, which there often is not if throwaways are used. A contemporary example of a throwaway where this would apply is Wikiwookie11 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and an example of an established user is FoCuSandLeArN (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). (Note that I will post on Jimbo's TP about this discussion.) SmartSE (talk) 11:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

First, I'll get a few administrative factors out of the way. First, my view on the legitimacy of the paid editing policy. Second, the "strong consensus" was very limited. Third, we are not able to expand the checkuser policy, we can only limit it's use further. (see the notice at the top of the page that says it's a global policy coming down from the Wikimedia Foundation.

On to the actual issue at hand. While we refuse to do checks solely on the basis of paid editing, there are definitely instances where we check accounts that are likely to be socking and paid editing. Looking into Wikiwookie11, I have to challenge your assertion you know this user is not "writing about themselves or the company they work for", how do you know that? I would decline to run a check on this as there is no indication that this account has spread within the article or to other articles. Now if they had recreated a similar page with a new user account after deletion, that would be grounds to run a check. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 13:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Well no one opposed it, unlike other proposals that were made and as you point out, this is pretty much the way things are handled at the moment, it's just not written down anywhere. That's fine for those of us who know that CUs will handle it, but not for anyone else who comes across these suspicious accounts. Did you check the deleted contribs? They wrote about several different companies. SmartSE (talk) 13:31, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi all. This page got flagged to me, and I wanted to offer some clarification around the checkuser policy (policies, actually) that might be helpful. First, to the extent I understand the policy structure, I think Amanda is correct that the English language checkuser policy has to match with the global checkuser policy on Meta. Second, WMF legal recently discussed the global checkuser policy in a response to a request from the ombudsman commission where we explained that the global policy was drafted by community members and can be edited by community members (including expanded) if desired. There are limits to any expansion, due to the access to non-public information policy, which limits anyone with the checkuser right and is a WMF-drafted policy that can't be changed. But, within those limits, it's possible for the community to make alterations to the global checkuser policy and potentially then expand the English one to match. That doesn't address the substantive issue here, but I hope that helps with the discussion. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 02:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• I think that ArbCom should approve any such investigation, possibly provately, to cover the CheckUsers against allegations of fishing expeditions, but yes, this seems like a good idea. Guy (Help!) 21:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Arbcom doesn't have anything to do with this, and I'm flabbergasted that anyone would think so. Arbcom can't protect CUs from anything. Someone can take a CU to the Ombuds, and they'll make their ruling based on the interpretations they're used to on their projects (many of which are much, much stricter than Enwiki), and Arbcom doesn't have any say in the matter. Now...having personally led an extremely ambitious "paid editing" related CU review, I can tell you that we *will* do such checks when there's an indication of socking in promotional articles. But also keep in mind, these tend to be very involved and labour-intensive checks, and we don't have great tools to track these things when we're in the middle of a major investigation. Checkuser Wiki isn't flexible enough, and we had to resort to spreadsheets to track our findings. I strongly suspect that only Enwiki CUs do this at all. I'm very certain that English Wikipedia has the lowest bar of all Wikimedia projects when it comes to the use of the CheckUser tool. Risker (talk) 23:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, stamp me "clueless" and s/ArbCom/$HIGHERAUTHORITY/ of some kind. Point stands: in order for a CU to conduct a check on a possible paid editor, some reasonably transparent and accountable process ought to be in place, while not tipping our hand in advance. I don't think my worst enemy would accuse me of being a supporter or enabler of paid editing, this is all about making sure the CUs have proper air cover in an excrement / air movement system colocation situation. Guy (Help!) 00:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, JzG. There was a point at which I was concerned that I was digging too deep with Orangemoody and could potentially get blasted if someone complained to the Ombuds. The WMF and the Board weren't my worry - they'd actually been read into the situation very early in the investigation and were very supportive. It was the broader Wikimedia community that I was concerned about, and I've had some pretty respected Wikimedians tell me in person that they didn't consider it "best practice". English Wikipedia, for better or worse, is part of that broader community. That we would have even allowed 2/3 of the deleted articles to have been posted to our project instead of speedily deleted counts against getting much sympathy from other projects for our socking problems. Hmmm...some of those articles have been recreated... Risker (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Allows All Users Limited Checkuser

I think it would help prevent sockpuppets a lot more if all users had a limited check-user-like ability. Now, clearly not all users should have access to the actual content of the check user information (they shouldn't have access to the underlying technical data including client IP address, HTTP user agent, cookies, etc.). Instead, what if all users had the ability to see if any two accounts had ever shared the same client IP address? All you would get are "plausible" (they shared the same IP at least once), or "impossible" (they never shared the same IP). It wouldn't prove that the two accounts are actually the same person (more detailed look at the technical data by an actual check user would be needed for that along with their behavior), but it would be enough to at least start an SPI and examine it closer. Also it couldn't be used when one of the accounts is an IP account (as that would reveal the underlying technical data about the non-IP user). Can anyone identify any potential privacy problems with this? -Obsidi (talk) 18:18, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@Obsidi: Think about this: User A publishes their location as Amsterdam. User B is highly private and doesn't want their location to be known more accurately than Planet Earth. If both editors went to the same cafe/library/whatever and edited, your tool out out User B as probably being in Amsterdam. User B's wishes for privacy have just been lost. [stwalkerster|talk] 17:41, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

The Wikimedia has stringent privacy policies in place for good reason. This proposal/musing violates them and would never be accepted by the community.--Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 18:20, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Sock puppetry, only one account identified

I have conclusive evidence of sock puppetry and bad faith editing in violation of both WP:SPAM and WP:PAID, but I have identified only one of the involved accounts. How can I request a CheckUser investigation in this case? It falls under points 2, 3 and 4 of the policy, so a CU intervention should be possible, but it seems that the WP:SPI process is used only for confirming connections between identified suspected accounts. Rentier (talk) 08:12, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

How can you have "conclusive evidence of sock puppetry" when you have only one account?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:34, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Off-wiki evidence in addition to a demonstrably bad faith edit by an editor. Rentier (talk) 15:54, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I think this is an important discussion. When one has (1) an obviously not new account which is also (2) obviously involved in promotional paid editing, how do you connect their other potential accounts?

We see lots of cases of paid editors that use one account per job. A bunch more here were recently picked up Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Highstakes00/Archive

Per legal's comment here it appears we could adjust CU policy by adjusting the global policy via a meta RfC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:50, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Meta discussion on CheckUser policy

An RfC has been raised for the CU policy, which would affect the en.wp policy. Meta:Meta:Requests for comment/Clarification to CU policy Worm^TT(talk) 11:06, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Japan Network Information Center

There is some 220.214.84.74 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) who is reverting the scandal reported on the Japanese wiki page on Junichi Fukuda (New York Times etc. [1]).

The Who is Japan Network Information Center but this isn't a provider is it? The user is using his work network? --Kiyoweap (talk) 15:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

CU/OS activity standards motion proposed: Community comments invited

The Arbitration Committee is currently considering a motion to amend the standing procedure on functionary permissions and inactivity. The proposed change is given below:

Original: Accordingly, the minimum activity level for each tool (based on the preceding three months' activity) shall be five logged actions, including at least one community-requested logged action. Examples of community-requested actions include suppression requests via the oversight-en-wp OTRS queue; CheckUser requests through Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations, those stemming from account creation requests, those made in response to threads at an administrative noticeboard, or posted on a CheckUser's personal user talk page. These activity requirements do not apply to: sitting members of the Arbitration Committee; or holders who have temporarily relinquished access, including CheckUsers or Oversighters who accept appointment to the Ombudsman Commission.

and:

Holders of the permissions are also expected to:

• Remain active on the English Wikipedia unless they have previously notified the Arbitration Committee of a significant expected absence and its likely duration.
• Consider temporarily relinquishing their permission(s) for planned prolonged periods of inactivity.
• Reply within seven days to email communications from either the Audit Subcommittee or the Arbitration Committee about their use of the permissions.

Replaced with:

Accordingly, the minimum activity level for each tool (based on the preceding three months' activity) shall be five logged actions. Consideration will be given for activity and actions not publicly logged, such as responding to requests on the Checkuser or Oversight OTRS queues; participation on list discussions; activity at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations; responding to account creation requests; and responding to Checkuser or Oversight requests on administrative noticeboards, UTRS queue, and user talk pages. These activity requirements do not apply to: (a) sitting members of the Arbitration Committee; (b) holders using the permissions for audit purposes; or (c) holders who have temporarily relinquished access, including CheckUsers or Oversighters who accept appointment to the Ombudsman Commission.

and:

Holders of the permissions are also expected to:

• Remain active on the English Wikipedia unless they have previously notified the Arbitration Committee of a significant expected absence and its likely duration.
• Consider temporarily relinquishing their permission(s) for planned prolonged periods of inactivity.
• Reply within seven days to email communications from the Arbitration Committee about their use of the permissions.

Community comments on the change are welcome at the motion page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:15, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions#Motion: CU/OS activity standards

Motion: CU/OS activity standards

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

The standing procedure on functionary permissions and inactivity is amended as follows:

Original: Accordingly, the minimum activity level for each tool (based on the preceding three months' activity) shall be five logged actions, including at least one community-requested logged action. Examples of community-requested actions include suppression requests via the oversight-en-wp OTRS queue; CheckUser requests through Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations, those stemming from account creation requests, those made in response to threads at an administrative noticeboard, or posted on a CheckUser's personal user talk page. These activity requirements do not apply to: sitting members of the Arbitration Committee; or holders who have temporarily relinquished access, including CheckUsers or Oversighters who accept appointment to the Ombudsman Commission.

and:

Holders of the permissions are also expected to:

• Remain active on the English Wikipedia unless they have previously notified the Arbitration Committee of a significant expected absence and its likely duration.
• Consider temporarily relinquishing their permission(s) for planned prolonged periods of inactivity.
• Reply within seven days to email communications from either the Audit Subcommittee or the Arbitration Committee about their use of the permissions.

Replaced with:

Accordingly, the minimum activity level for each tool (based on the preceding three months' activity) shall be five logged actions. Consideration will be given for activity and actions not publicly logged, such as responding to requests on the Checkuser or Oversight OTRS queues; participation on list discussions; activity at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations; responding to account creation requests; and responding to Checkuser or Oversight requests on administrative noticeboards, UTRS queue, and user talk pages. These activity requirements do not apply to: (a) sitting members of the Arbitration Committee; (b) holders using the permissions for audit purposes; or (c) holders who have temporarily relinquished access, including CheckUsers or Oversighters who accept appointment to the Ombudsman Commission.

and:

Holders of the permissions are also expected to:

• Remain active on the English Wikipedia unless they have previously notified the Arbitration Committee of a significant expected absence and its likely duration.
• Consider temporarily relinquishing their permission(s) for planned prolonged periods of inactivity.
• Reply within seven days to email communications from the Arbitration Committee about their use of the permissions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Motion: CU/OS activity standards

2018 CheckUser/Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to appoint the following users to the functionary team:

• Amorymeltzer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.
• Ivanvector (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
• Oshwah (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.
• Stwalkerster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
• TonyBallioni (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
• Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.

The Committee thanks the community and all of the candidates for helping bring this process to a successful conclusion.

The Committee also welcomes back the following users to the functionary team:

• AGK (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who voluntarily relinquished his CheckUser and Oversight permissions in December 2015, is reappointed as a CheckUser following a request to the Committee for return of the permission.

For the Arbitration Committee,

Katie^talk 14:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#2018 Checkuser and Oversight appointments: Candidates appointed

MediaWiki:Group-checkuser.css

Hi. I figured that, given that this is directly applicable to check users, and I couldn't find a better place to put this notice, I should post here: I have requested that MediaWiki:Group-checkuser.css be created. See the full explanation and rational at MediaWiki talk:Group-checkuser.css. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 05:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Switching across multiple IPs

I seek a quick Yes/No answer, please:

If an already investigated and blocked sock user now resorts to switching between multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (using each IP for just three or four abusive/threatening edits before each address is individually blocked and revdel-ed), is there anything that an SPI/CU investigation can uncover which can actually lead to substantive action being taken to prevent that person from ever accessing Wikipedia in this way again?

I ask simply so that I know whether it's worth me collating a dozen or so IP addresses and all the relevant diffs to reopen an archived investigation.

Assuming that a connection is definitely proven, can we actually take real measures against them so as to prevent this happening in the future? If they're using an open proxy or VPN to switch addresses and location every time they edit, I presume the answer will be 'No' and we'll just have to live with their disruption and abuse, and deal with each bad action once it has happened? Many thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 01:14, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

What you suggest is against CU policy.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:47, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Individual admins can calculate a range block if the IP hoping is public and block it if it is bad enough and it outweighs the collateral. As Bbb23 says CUs would not, however, publicly connect IPs to accounts. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:16, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

OK, thanks for that response. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Birth date question

Are users who want to become checkusers or oversighters required to disclose their birth dates? —Jencie Nasino (talk) 11:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

No, but they are required to answer if they are the age of majority in their jurisdiction. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:36, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

CheckUser and Oversight appointments 2019

The Arbitration Committee is accepting applications for appointments as CheckUser and Oversight team members. GorillaWarfare and KrakatoaKatie are the arbitrators overseeing this process. The names of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, who will be asked for assistance with vetting candidates.

• Applications: 23 September to 29 September
• Review period: 30 September to 2 October – the committee will review applications and ask the functionary team for their feedback
• Notification of candidates: 2 October to 3 October – notification of candidates
• Community consultation: 4 October to 23:59 UTC, 10 October – candidates' statements published, community is invited to comment
• Appointments: by 14 October

For the Arbitration Committee,

Katie^talk 17:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Information available to CUs?

Is there a list anywhere of sort of information beyond IP addrs is available to CUs and how long that information is retained? I've picked up bits and pieces of this from e.g. CUs saying that an SPI is against accounts that are stale, but I was wondering if there's actual specifications somewhere (so that, for example, I can know whether it's worth requesting a CU when filing an SPA). Of course, if this is a WP:BEANS sort of situation, I'm fine with "can't tell you, sorry" as an answer. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 15:12, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

We have access to IP and user agent data for 90 days to the second. We have indefinite access to the any check ever performed on a range and the rationale via the CU log, and can search the CU log by time stamp using a user script. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:19, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, perfect, exactly what I was wondering. Thank you! ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 15:20, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Connecting multiple IP addresses?

If there's multiple IPs suspected of being the same sock, is it within CU policy to see if they're the same device, without being tied to any specific account? For example, in WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Martinvito/Archive#24 December 2018, could a CU have said, "based on technical evidence, these two IP addresses came from the same device". Presumably, user agent strings could be used to make that connection. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

In general, yes it's within policy if there's a good reason to look it up. There are limitations to relying on user agent strings, there are limitations to what a CU can disclose in terms of IP addresses, plus in the case you link I think most people would probably just say DUCK. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:04, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposed change to checkuser policy

I've opened an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump regarding a proposed small but important wording change in this policy. If editors watching this page are interested, please contribute to the discussion. Cheers. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Align_checkuser/oversight_block_policies_with_established_practice. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 20:59, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposed: a massive automated invasion of privacy for the greater good

This is going to be a very controversial proposal, so here is my framing device.

Imagine that you managed a department store where shoplifting was rampant. There are cameras set up all over the store, recording everything that happens, so every act of shoplifting could theoretically be caught. However, you have a strict rule (in order to protect shopper privacy) that no security person will look at any of these cameras or any of their recorded footage unless a customer comes to complain of some observed or suspected instance of shoplifting. What if, however, instead of having a security person look at the cameras, you trained a bot to view the footage and flag actions that were likely instances of shoplifting, which the security people could then review?

I propose to apply a model like that to the problem of sockpuppetry. All the data needed to be reviewed to determine who is in fact engaged in sock puppetry is already stored in our servers, so why don't we set a bot to a task of reviewing all the edits that have been made over some reasonable period (perhaps some number of weeks), and then flag to the attention of the Checkusers a list all of the instances of probable sock puppetry in that period? To be clear, this proposed review would be carried out by a bot rather than a human, and would be done indiscriminately. The only information being reported for human eyes would be actual instances of likely sockpuppetry violations, and that information would only be reported to the Checkusers. BD2412 T 15:40, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

• No. This is not even good as satire. 50.74.165.202 (talk) 15:50, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  It is interesting, however, that the first opposition comes from an IP with a grand total of 14 edits. BD2412 T 16:21, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  While this reply is a month old it's still a very clear personal attack. You're clearly insulting this person because they're using an IP and have a low edit count; possibly implying the reason they don't like your proposal is because they themselves are a sock? This is rude and uncalled for and I would remove your comment but for the fact other editors seem intent on keeping it. Implying that someone's opinion is worth less because they edit from an IP is wrong and should be banned by policy. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 21:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• Let's say someone volunteered to run machine learning for sockpuppetry and it worked - what do you think it would tell us? SportingFlyer T·C 16:28, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I expect that it would tell us, for example, when one conflicted individual is trying to fool us into thinking that multiple editors independently support a position in a discussion. BD2412 T 17:10, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• I guess the question I have is "why", really. Why do we need such a thing? I can see that it's something that's possible, but I'm not clear on what the advantage would be, apart from sockpuppeters being "more effectively punished", even if they aren't actually doing any harm. I know there's the argument that they're doing harm just by sockpuppeting, and I have a great deal of sympathy for that, but I don't think a punitive effect alone, rather than actually helping the encyclopedia in any way, would justify measures like this. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:37, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm actually not particularly concerned with "punishing" sockpuppetry, but we all know that there are plenty of instances where deletion discussions or content discussions for articles on companies, commercial products, celebrities, and the like are influenced by sockpuppet accounts appearing as independent editors. That sort of conduct should be stopped, even where the sockpuppeteers are successful in hiding their misconduct. BD2412 T 17:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
    • To my mind, the far more obvious problem to address there in which case is the situations in which you feel !votes are being treated as votes for the purposes of establishing consensus. I can see it might lead to issues of false consensus, but I suspect those sorts of problems would reveal themselves fairly quickly, in the same way in which we deal with meatpuppetry. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:51, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
      • There are discussions where reasonable arguments are being made on both sides, but where one side has strong numerical support. That is to say, there are instances where sockpuppetry, while not obvious or mindless, can turn the outcome of a discussion. BD2412 T 18:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• I would suspect a bot like this would be incapable of telling an illegitimate sockpuppet from a valid one. Not to mention that if we are relying on data which is shielded per the priv-pol there's a not-inconsiderable risk of false positives from public terminals (not as much of an issue now but will become one once shelter-in-place and similar orders are lifted). —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Onward to 2020} 17:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • There are activities that a valid sockpuppet should never be engaging in, like voting multiple times in an XfD process under different usernames, or having a back-and-forth with itself made to appear as if two unconnected editors were having that discussion. The parameters of a bot review can be tweaked to focus on instances of conduct like that. BD2412 T 17:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:CheckUser and Wikipedia talk:Sock puppetry. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:20, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Theres been talk by global CUs of using machine learning on a limited basis to look at the behaviour between accounts (not technical). I think this is fine and wouldn’t be a privacy violation anymore than the editor interaction utility. If we’re looking at publicly available data, academics are already using it in studies of abuse on Wikipedia. Not a big deal there. I’m not really sure a bot running on every account makes sense, though.
  I would not support a bot or machine learning on CU data as that’s vague enough where anything the machine learning produces would likely be overwhelming and not useful. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• This is a completely bizarre idea. And I don't know why a transclusion is necessary, Pppery a simple link on those other pages surely would have sufficed. But the IP^^^ makes a good point about satire. serial^# 17:32, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• BD2412, you seem to be assuming that one IP address equals one user. That's not always the case. Everyone in my house uses same router, so we share an IP address, but we each have our own accounts. If I attend an edit-a-thon, I share the same IP with all the other attendees. I don't think I should be investigated based on that "evidence". Vexations (talk) 17:36, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I have not doubt that there are instances that may look like sockpuppetry but have an innocent explanation. However, there are also instances that will look like sockpuppetry because they are in fact sockpuppetry, which would otherwise go unnoticed and allow Wikipedia to be spammed with commercial content or the like. BD2412 T 17:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Where does the "invasion of privacy" come in? If the proposal is to have a bot analyze edits to look for patterns, have at it, that involves no private data. If the proposal is to have the bot look at everyone's user agent and/or IP addresses and flag the overlaps, thats basically an automated checkuser-everyone, which will probably be a useless invasion of privacy, as it will just tell us, for example, which users are from the same university. I think some behavior probable cause should continue to be required, as it is now, for a CU to be run. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I had rather assumed that people would automatically consider this an invasion of some kind of privacy. What I am really interested in is finding instances where different registered accounts from the same IP address are participating in discussions or appearing to talk to each other, which is where suspicious should arise. BD2412 T 17:47, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
    • @BD2412: I don’t mind sharing that some smaller version of the behavioural analysis that Levivich mentioned is being worked on by a CU on another project as a tool. People on non-English wikis (read: authoritarian regimes) were more concerned with the privacy aspect for understandable reasons. My argument is something along the lines of We literally already have researchers doing this. There’s absolutely nothing private here. It’s a decision aid to help focus resources, and would likely be likely to decrease use of CU and protect against false positives. I don’t see this as a privacy policy issue because as part of the nature of an open wiki, literally everything is public and people already have AI being run on their edits (see ORES). ST47 might have more to add. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
    • @BD2412 and ST47: fix ping. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
      • I would agree that if something along these lines is already being done, then there's no need for a proposal for it to be done. However, I had not previously heard of such an effort. BD2412 T 18:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
        • Yeah, it’s very early stages but wouldn’t impact the privacy policy and would be focused on behaviour, not IPs. I don’t think it would be run automatically either. Basically the idea that’s been floated is to use a tool that looks at certain similarities to be a behavioural analysis tool that humans can then look at as a decision aid. Like I said, early stage, but the idea of using additional tools has been discussed. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:14, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• I think this is a great idea. However, who is going to run the bot? We would also need to see the source code.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 18:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  SharabSalam, if we're using publicly available data only (which may be the case), I don't think either question matters. Source code doesn't help because it's never possible to prove that's the source running on the bot. And neither point matters because publicly scraping Wikipedia can be done by anyone.

  If we're using private data, I think ultimately this would have to be added as a core part of the software, or a bot ran by the WMF. Maybe I'd support the CheckUsers, collectively, authorising the usage of a bot hosted by one of them -- maybe. But no private user, or administrator in this case, however, should be using non-public data in their individual capacity. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• @BD2412: What about the prosecutor's fallacy and the birthday paradox? There will be thousands of editors every day who by chance alone will have an IP+Useragent match with a completely unrelated user. And some of those, will, by chance, be participating in the same discussions. That's why  CheckUser is not for fishing. How would the bot distinguish socks from unlucky matches? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • @Suffusion of Yellow: [...]thousands of editors every day who by chance alone will have an IP+Useragent match this is actually much less common than it used to be, but sure, it happens. Usually exact IP+UA at the same time is the same person. It requires human judgement and we tend to be fairly conservative in blocking. The bigger issue would be on ranges, where you’d be overwhelmed easily and the data would be fairly useless unless you knew what you’re looking for. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:19, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
    • @TonyBallioni: To be fair, whilst it might be less common than it used to be for now, I strongly suspect it'll increase rapidly over the next few years as IPv4 address exhaustion forces more ISPs to implement carrier-grade NAT. It remains to be seen whether IPv6 adoption will continue at the same rate - I hope it does, but at least over here in the UK, very few ISPs currently support v6, and even fewer have it as a default. At the point at which CGNAT is the norm for residential networks, like how it presently is for many mobile data networks, that issue of multi-user IPs is going to become bigger. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:23, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
      • Well, yeah, the UK is second only to Nepal in being the exception to my above statement :) TonyBallioni (talk) 22:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • The Checkusers would be the ones to make that distinction. Actual suspect cases (matches of identity occurring on the same article or discussion) will likely be a small number—unless the problem itself is much bigger than anyone realizes. BD2412 T 22:22, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  Suffusion of Yellow, we can use fingerprints too. There are various ways to get very unique identifiers out of people. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• I will never support a proposal with a section title like that. Merits aside (this is an area I have no interest or knowledge in), you've poisoned the well for me, and I suspect I'm not alone. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 22:35, 07 May 2020 (UTC)
  • As it turns out, the point is rather moot. BD2412 T 16:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
    • What? —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 00:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
• It might be easier to start with a narrower approach that could serve as a proof of concept. Maybe a bot that searches for the known characteristics of specific LTAs, if that doesn't already exist. Otherwise, maybe a bot that specifically checks XfDs, or even just XfDs in specific categories where sockpuppetry is likely to be common. Sunrise (talk) 15:57, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
• Would this be permissible under the various privacy regulations that the WMF may be subject to? If so, would the WMF need to re-write its privacy policy to reflect this additional processing of personal information? Also, I share the sentiments of User:KarasuGamma. Privacy is important, and I cannot support "a massive automated invasion of privacy." Thanks, Tony Tan · talk 04:24, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

  Tony Tan, it would be permissible, and no change is required. Per the GDPR and CCPA, the two major pieces of privacy legislation, data can be used for this purpose but must be appropriately disclosed in a privacy policy. On Wikimedia's privacy policy the use guidelines already state that personal information collected may be used "To fight spam, identity theft, malware and other kinds of abuse." ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

  @ProcrastinatingReader: I hope you don't aspire to be a lawyer. The relevant line is "As a result, some volunteers have access to certain Personal Information, and use of that Personal Information may not be governed by this Privacy Policy. Volunteers that have such access include: Administrative volunteers, such as CheckUsers or Stewards" which doesn't cover bots. I severely doubt the line you quoted would allow for dynamite fishing, which is basically what this is. - Alexis Jazz 11:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

  Alexis Jazz, I do quite a lot of work in my field with the GDPR. Wikipedia is a special case as a volunteer-style structure, and obviously statements made here don't mean anything compared to the WMF's advice, but the line in the terms I quoted is indeed relevant. The point of this proposal is automation to detect sockpuppeting, the bot part is merely an implementation detail. I don't think anyone would disagree if the WMF added this to the core software it would be covered under the existing policy.

This isn't dynamite fishing, proposals that are made here are done openly by other companies for the protection against abuse, and have been done for over a decade, and recent privacy legislation isn't meant to stop that. This project is just incredibly conservative against any form of privacy invasion, even IPs, but these examples are not top secret forms of personal information per privacy legislation.

The relevant question is then, can a bot hosted not by WMF also comply with the existing privacy policy? You've selectively quoted the line, it ends with saying When these administrators access Personal Information that is nonpublic, they are required to comply with our Access to Nonpublic Information Policy, as well as other, tool-specific policies. If, per your interpretation the privacy policy doesn't cover volunteers, it would obviously follow that usage of bots cannot violate said privacy policy. But this interpretation isn't correct. The WMF is the data controller for personal information such as IP addresses. The fact that they choose to make CheckUsers sign a separate agreement (which is between the WMF and CUs, not between the data subjects and CUs) doesn't change that fact. Them being volunteers doesn't suddenly give IP addresses a special status in privacy law where no entity is the controller of that information. WMF remains the controller, CUs are somewhere between agents and processors. The data is obviously governed by the privacy policy, since WMF is the data controller. Indeed, the sharing of data under the policy with community-elected individuals, including functionaries, is covered earlier in the policy.

This doesn't automatically mean that the bots are permissable, of course, just that they're not violations of the WMF privacy policy. They are probably violations of the CU access to non-public information agreement, which is between CUs and the WMF, so that may need amending to allow this change. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:10, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: If the WMF implemented this in the core software there would still be a good number of questions depending on details, however, the proposal is to "set a bot to a task of reviewing", which doesn't suggest WMF. And in the analogy of WP:NOTFISHING, this is dynamite fishing. The privacy policy covers volunteers (checkusers are not paid), but there is a world of difference between the WMF allowing checkusers to query checkuser data of specific targets (which is clearly done in an effort to curb abuse) and dumping that information of everybody in a ZIP and mailing it to a bot operated by a volunteer. - Alexis Jazz 12:32, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Alexis Jazz, well, assuming it is done by a bot, I wouldn't think there would be a big dump of private information given to a CU. I'd expect more along the lines of adding the CU endpoints to the API, for users with both CU and bot flags. To me, this request implies using public information (+ LTA edit filter logs, etc) to flag something as suspicious, and then making a CU check to confirm/deny those suspicions. In terms of WP:NOTFISHING, yes, I agree, this is fishing. But, NOTFISHING is a community policy, which can be amended by the community. It isn't a legal concept. Obviously, IPs can and are used by other companies for what WP would consider 'fishing'.

I'm not saying I agree with this change, elsewhere I stated my opposition to having CUs run this bot (I absolutely don't want some community member being able to make some code that decides in what cases they get to make the checks, especially not without unprecedented transparency), I was just saying that it wouldn't be illegal to use data in this way. Our current CU policy is very strict, and for the most part, I like it that way. I'd be open to more checking, but personally I think it'd have to come from something hosted by the WMF, or possibly by the CUs collectively if we can work out suitable methods to make this system very transparent. I think this proposal will most likely fail, because that's a difficult thing to do, but admittedly we do also face very different threats to what the project faced a decade ago, so contemplating how policies should adapt isn't a bad thing. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: Actually there is a legal aspect to NOTFISHING. (though that is not what the policy is for) If a checkuser would randomly request checkuser data, they would be looking at personal data for a purpose that can't be clearly defended as being just to fight abuse. That is a real problem. The word "bot" implies "not operated by the WMF", so that's pretty much the end of this proposal. If the suggestion would be something operated directly by the WMF, well.. the devil will be in the details. But this proposal isn't that. - Alexis Jazz 13:34, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with Suffusion of Yellow: what happened to WP:NOTFISHING? Double sharp (talk) 13:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
• With the caveat that sockpupetry isn't an area I'm very familiar with,^{that's exactly what a sockpuppet would say...} I'm persuaded by BD2412 and the others arguing that this isn't that different from research. With the data already on our servers, I don't see how hiding it from ourselves by disallowing a bot to run in this way would preserve privacy. If those of you opposed can come up with a realistic example of a way this could go wrong in practice and end up violating someone's privacy in a way that meaningfully harms them, I might be persuaded, but currently I'm drawing a blank on that. There are clearly technical aspects to be worked out, and that could get complicated especially if the privacy policy ends up being involved, but overall, when we're looking at a tool that could deliver probable cases of sockpuppetry to highly trusted editors able to investigate them, WP:NOTFISHING seems like a less relevant piece of guidance than WP:SUICIDEPACT. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:50, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
  • The whole point of WP:NOTFISHING is that CU can run into tons of false positives just by random chance even if the user is doing nothing wrong. It's not about assuming good faith, so WP:SUICIDEPACT makes no sense here. I would, in fact, prefer an absolute right to be free from unjustified search. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• I had a look at a recent suspected sockpuppet, and was able to match him to a blocked user using the type of approach a machine learning program might use. However the blocked user is someone we would really like to come back on a standard offer, and the sock had done no harm, so I did not share my suspicions. "First do no harm." A bot would not have this discretion. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 22:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC).
  
• @BD2412, Suffusion of Yellow, TonyBallioni, and Pppery: I don't know how many of you are aware but the WMF is currently running research projects to detect sockpuppets without any private information, probably NLP, sentiment analysis and the likes. I came across the project quite accidentally but here's the link: meta:Research:Sockpuppet detection in Wikimedia_projects. I'm quite sure that with a big dataset like the one at SPI, it'll be quite easy to detect sockpuppets of some prolific masters. --qedk (t 愛 c) 12:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, The dataset isn't actually that large. I looked into some of this stuff last winter. I found 22,618 SPI archives, containing a total of 105,426 blocked socks (as of 12 December 2019). As machine learning corpora go, that's not a huge amount of data. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:39, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

• I don't suppose it would be possible to add keylogging to the arsenal of detection tools? The keystrokes that an individual uses to type words are, with enough samples, like a fingerprint. BD2412 T 15:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
  • It is possible for browsers to use JavaScript/jQuery (or even CSS) to log keystrokes but let me begin by telling you abundantly how terrible of an idea it is - and a lot of websites do this to collect data (called session replay) and it's simply unethical, especially in some cases the information you reveal is available in plaintext to third-party analytics providers, there's no reason ever for Wikipedia to do this. Imagine you're editing Wikipedia and have your bank login page open and type your password accidentally without seeing the tab you are on, your personal information would automatically be logged and someone with access to it could be compromised, or let's say if the server gets compromised or an unpatched MITM attack is used, making it a very, very vulnerable attack vector. --qedk (t 愛 c) 16:20, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
    • I find it hard to imagine accidentally typing a bank password into Wikipedia. However, my intent is not to record what people type, but how they type. That is the distinguishable characteristic. BD2412 T 16:24, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Now you're just fucking with us. - Alexis Jazz 11:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Would the source code be public, like most things here, or private, like AbuseFilters? >>BEANS X2t 14:32, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support - but we're liable to lose a whole lot of editors and maybe even a few admins. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:38, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• I'd support this, provided the source code is reviewable by BAG and checkusers and similar. Basically automated detection of suspicious patterns to be flagged for CU review. Would be a great way to get rid of a bunch of PAID editors and similar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Source code makes virtually no difference here. It's like open source for electronic voting machines. They're still shit. They will always be shit. They will never be not shit. - Alexis Jazz 11:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose because now there's talk of running keyloggers, and I don't trust that this will remain a restrained process if implemented. We're here to build an encyclopedia, not a police state. If you want to teach machines to detect sock puppets, use publicly available data like everyone else, but no one, whether personally or by both proxy, should be accessing user's personally identifiable information without cause. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  We have plenty of cause - we have uncovered several large and sophisticated sockpuppet editing operations in the past few years, and there is really no question that there are others going on undetected right now. Also, this "talk of running keyloggers" of which you speak is basically one question that I asked. The proposal is for CU-style checks of relationships between accounts. BD2412 T 21:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  But you understand how starting your proposal with "a massive invasion of privacy" and then later, off-handedly suggesting an even more invasive violation of privacy does not give me confidence that this will be restrained, yes? There's large and sophisticated drug cartels and other criminal enterprises operating undetected right now in many countries, that doesn't mean I want people opening all my mail to stop them. Like I said, use publicly available data if you care so much, but sorry, you've given me no reason to trust that you will respect user privacy. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:24, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wikipedia is a fairly important institution. Its neutrality, as far as I can tell, comes in large part from the fact that editors have been able to expect a great deal of privacy (Wikipedia covers some pretty controversial subjects, as you may have noticed). Setting a precedent that things like editor IP addresses, login times, et cetera are freely used in the vague aim of "preventing abuse" opens up an unfathomably deep can of worms and degrades the trust of people who are, first and foremost, unpaid volunteers. The idea of using sentiment analysis on editors is already kind of creepy, and there's no need to top it off by destroying a very well-established standard of propriety built over the course of decades. I am pretty sure that if I lived under a regime where my Wikipedia editing constituted a criminal offense, I would be heading out the door and not looking back at the first sign of this proposal being enacted. { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 05:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support WMF funding community discussion The Wikimedia community must use automated tools to manage more of Wikimedia projects. This is absolutely necessary and there is no alternative. There are 100 automated tools available all of which can do different things, and this proposal is for one tool doing one of those things. For any given tool, it can operate in 100 different ways, and each of those ways makes the wiki community both more powerful and more vulnerable in different ways. We have to sort this out with conversation.

The Wikimedia movement brings in US$130 million/year growing at 10% a year. There is no shortage of funding, but there is a major shortage of community organization and leadership. Right now the default path is to use this money to fund internal private conversations at the WMF to sort this. They already employ software developers who are making tools like this a reality. Either the wiki community discusses this or otherwise this gets several million / year in WMF private investment until the WMF pops something out in the end. There is no option to not spend millions of dollars on this, or to not eventually implement this technology.

I think the Wikimedia community should advocate for funding to a mix of Wikimedia community organizations, universities, and nonprofit partners to support more community discussion. There are many, many social and technical issues to discuss. This goes far beyond one conversation on the village pump, and into massive global design of culture and society which requires a lot of input. If 10 universities in 10 countries each addressed one social challenge in this for 3 years, and each got US$100,000 from the WMF over that time period (meaning US$3 million for the project) then that would be the approximate scale of the response we need to start the conversation on safely developing automated tools for moderation.

This issue is far, far beyond what volunteers can crowdsource without expert partners and funded support. The money is available and I support anyone who would draft and propose any budget to address this problem anywhere in the US$500,000 - $5,000,000 range over 1-5 years. Also in general, I support more community proposals to speak up about spending more money to address big issues. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

• I support this and any proposal which makes sockpuppetry less feasible and thwarts them sooner. We know that editor retention is an issue, and I know for a fact from various discussions I've been in that the frustration of dealing with sockpuppets plays a role in driving away good editors. The proper analogy for Wikipedia is not that of a society (with rights like being free from 'unjustified search') but that of a private business (as BD2412 built his framing device around). Editing Wikipedia is not a human right but a privilege, and one that comes with limitations that one must follow. As noted above, the Wikimedia Privacy Policy does allow for use of data in this way. Of course, future discussion regarding exact criteria for the bot to flag accounts, and admins' human judgment before blocking, would ensure that legitimate alternate accounts or people sharing a household would not be blocked. But, sockpuppetry is far too common, it can seriously damage the encyclopedia by facilitating the addition of sneaky POV text, and more needs to be done to stop it. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:08, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: Too many chances of false positives. Also, "actual instances of likely sockpuppetry" is a very contradictory and vague statement. I'm of the opinion that this whole anti-sock crusade is a rather uncertain affair. The more controversial the proposal, the better it is to reject it. HalfdanRagnarsson (talk) 16:11, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support This is merely a tool, one of many, that admins can use to determine sock puppetry .. The final sock descision is made by people, not bots. The more tools and data admins have available to make a better decisions, the better. If the admins make a bad call they are personally responsible, not the tool. Next time they might not use the tool again or give it less weight or learn which situations it tends to be right and wrong. It's self-correcting. I get the impression the Opposers believe the bot is a fully automated decision maker?! That would be crazy and is a strawman argument. We have lots of "self driving cars" that are not full autonomous eg. driver has to be watching the road behind the wheel etc. Computer automation is like that, on a spectrum not black and white. -- GreenC 17:33, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support in limited form. It could be something that automatically flagged multiple accounts from the same browser/IP or whatever data is available, and then showed this to admins only.
  • On the detection side, consider current SPIs that turn up master account with two or more socks. This kind of thing could be automatically detected and flagged, removing the current subjective decision-making required when deciding to run a CU. Someone files an SPI, the admin would see it, and then could request CU per "automated detection data" or something like that. There would be a clear reason for a human CU, based on the detection criteria. Think of this like an automated "stage 1" CU that only admins can see.
  • On the account creations side, are there really that many times where a single computer would create and operate more than three accounts in a week or a month? Account creations past a certain number could be flagged.

Automated detection of account similarities/anomalies is a good idea, and it could start out very conservatively: for example detecting multiple !votes from the same computer at AfD, and the creation of two or more accounts within a week from the same IP or computer.

Another idea might be to have the algorithm provide a "likely trouble" percentage. This might actually enhance privacy, as a low percentage would mean the human CU would decide not to run a check that reveals personal data. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 04:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see how this would be an additional invasion of privacy, every instance of an actual action being taken against someone would still be carried out by a human, this would simply sort the data to allow for more effective moderation. The implication you make however, that because it is carried out by a bot, it is impartial, is incorrect. Bots are created by people, it isn't easy to write an impartial algorithm for complex discrimination of data that concerns justice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.158.150.208 (talk • contribs)
• Oppose - all this will lead to is disruption, privacy violations and waste of checkuser time. Detecting a sockpuppet automatically would be very challenging, as there are always so many edge cases automating this process wouldn't be viable IMO. Ed6767 talk! 22:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: I thought a troll had gotten into the village pump when I read the title of the post. It would just waste CheckUsers' time and create piracy concerns, and will be redundant because of WP:SPI. SuperGoose007 ^(Honk!) 00:59, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support, detected/suspected socks would still have an opportunity to respond prior to an any admin action. It seems to me that in my meagre six years here the problem has gotten much worse whilst the number of editors per article has dropped significantly, trying to combat the constant barrage from SPAs and SP IPs is time enough without having to then justify your suspicions of sockpuppetry at SPI. This would be a beneficial tool with realistically little chance of abuse as everything everyone does here is fully visible to someone. Cavalryman (talk) 01:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC).

  Support - ^{ooops - at least I'm consistent. 09:18, 3 July 2020 (UTC)} but here's my question...what if there's a conference and 2 people are sharing a room? What about edit-a-thons? What about a family that edits together, or a couple, or a neighbor decides they want to edit WP and comes over to learn? Does any of that matter? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 01:37, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

  • I am presuming that a likelihood of shenanigans will be gauged based on behavioral cues (such as grouped voting on obscure AfDs, or unusual use of the same phrasing). I myself have edited while at Wikimania, and in a pinch even borrowed another Wikipedian's laptop to make some edits at the Wikimania in Italy. Of course, editors may be asked to explain the circumstances of apparent sockpuppetry, and an editor who is blocked can always appeal the block. BD2412 T 02:30, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Atsme, If I am not mistaken CU info also includes browser type and version number, so that is something to distinguish computers. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 02:46, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support: As someone who has written many sockpuppet investigation reports (the latest on 21 June 2020) I think this is a great idea. It would save good editors a lot of time that is spent on relentlessly writing sockpuppet investigation reports. This saved time would be spent on creating good content. Also, I don't think this supposed "invasion of privacy" would harm any honest editor. Tradedia^talk 07:43, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose All the data needed to be reviewed to determine who is in fact engaged in sock puppetry is already stored in our servers, so why don't we set a bot to a task of reviewing all the edits A bot? Who's gonna run that? You? That'll make for an interesting target for 4chan. Me? Same, also, no fucking way. Any other volunteer? Same. Which is also only one of the reasons why Legal will shoot this attempt at dynamite fishing down before you'll ever get to the pond. So, WMF? That would require some severe changes to the privacy policy, not to mention require substantial developer time. Yeah.. probably not. Summoning Mdennis (WMF), JSutherland (WMF) and Jrogers (WMF). Humour us. - Alexis Jazz 11:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Maybe the CU team could be in charge of it? Also, what specifically in the privacy policy forbids it? Above, editors have been saying that it is allowed by the privacy policy. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:48, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Question on Wikipedia user accounts with same names (sort of)

I would assume that it's not safe to use CheckUser to determine if it's legit or not with a username having the same one.

In this case, I saw accounts that have the names "Malaysia 6" and "Malaysia 2" on this page history. Ominae (talk) 03:10, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Probably best to file at WP:SPI] and let their people look it over.. They are well suited for determining the need for a CU. Looks already sorted. --Deep fried okra User talk:Deepfriedokra 21:17, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

CheckUser works for military or government

Is it legal for a user who takes this tool if he is currently working for the military service or in government sectors? Alphama (talk) 17:00, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but they would not be permitted to share the information with the government. If you have concerns that a CheckUser on any project has abused their access in this way, you should contact legalwikimedia.org and cawikimedia.org. You can also contact m:OC. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:04, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

So it means that we have to wait for the incidents or abuses that will happen before contacting Wikimedia. But it makes some users do not feel safe btw. Thank you! Alphama (talk) 17:08, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

It depends on the circumstances, but typically yes. Some projects have unique precautions. zh.wiki does not have CUs and to my knowledge fa.wiki has a de facto practice that their CUs do not live in Iran itself. I do not think the English Wikipedia has a practice or policy related to this. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:13, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, it would be a violation of their non disclosure agreement. --Deep fried okra User talk:Deepfriedokra 21:21, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, I think the WMF would have question for a candidate if that came up in their application and background check. Might be a good question for the FOundation notice board. --Deep fried okra User talk:Deepfriedokra 21:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Technical aspects

Is there a place one can learn the technical aspects of running a check user? Imean interpreting the resulting information. --Deep fried okra User talk:Deepfriedokra 21:33, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Deepfriedokra, I'm a bit late, but the CheckUser extension is public and you can host your own copy of MediaWiki (the software powering Wikipedia), and install the CU extension, and see how it works there. CU queries are done via the Special:CheckUser page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

CU-only accounts and their inactivity?

I'd like to draw your attention to this question about the global CU policy. TL;DR: Should the CUs be allowed to have the CU rights attached to a separate user account that they would use only for CU checks? (possibly also with sysop rights for blocking if they have been elected as administrators as well) The point would be to give the CU rights a bit better protection. When 2FA is used, this, in theory, should be less of an issue, but it still makes sense to believe that stealing a CU account or otherwise gaining unauthorized access to it might be easier if the account is also actively used for editing and whatnot (e.g. in the mobile WP app). If you have some thoughts on this, please do share them in the discussion on Meta. Thanks!
— Luchesar • T/C 12:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.

The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.

This year's timeline is as follows:

• 7 September to 19 September: Candidates may self-nominate by contacting the Arbitration Committee at arbcom-en-cwikimedia.org.
• 20 September to 23 September: The Arbitration Committee and Functionaries will vet the candidates.
• 24 September to 26 September: The committee will notify candidates going forward for community consultation and create the candidate subpages containing the submitted nomination statements.
• 27 September to 7 October: Nomination statements will be published and the candidates are invited to answer questions publicly. The community is invited and encouraged to participate.
• By 14 October: Appointments will be announced.

For the Arbitration Committee, Katie^talk 23:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Contacting the English Wikipedia CheckUser team

Is there any official account for the English Wikipedia CheckUser team like User:Oversight is for the Oversight team through which I can directly email to the entire CheckUser team at once through Wikipedia itself or will I need to manually write an email to checkuser-en-wp@wikipedia.org? TheGeneralUser (talk) 00:44, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

TheGeneralUser, there is no such role account for the CheckUser team at this time, so you will need to send an email to that address directly, I'm afraid. Mz7 (talk) 00:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thank you Mz7. TheGeneralUser (talk) 00:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Village pump discussion related to "CheckUser blocks" section

There is a village pump discussion on the wording in Wikipedia:Blocking policy § CheckUser blocks (WP:CUBL), which is related to the content in the "CheckUser blocks" section. If you are interested, please participate at WP:VPP § Altering vs. loosening CheckUser and oversight blocks. — Newslinger talk 10:46, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

ISP related discussion at technical village pump

There is a disccusion at WP:VP/T § wikimedia sites not loading with BSNL Broadband which might use technical experince of CUs, and related persons. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

IP Masking Update

Duplicate post from WP:VPWMF

The IP Masking team have provided an update on IP Masking that can be seen here.

Given this will affect many editor's workflows, as well as a fairly significant WP:PERM change, please take the time to look and comment Nosebagbear (talk) 13:12, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv and KrakatoaKatie. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process. This year's timeline is as follows:

• 6 September to 18 September: Candidates may self-nominate by contacting the Arbitration Committee at arbcom-en-c@wikimedia.org.
• 19 September to 23 September: The Arbitration Committee and Functionaries will vet the candidates.
• 24 September to 26 September: The committee will notify candidates going forward for community consultation and create the candidate subpages containing the submitted nomination statements.
• 27 September to 6 October: Nomination statements will be published and the candidates are invited to answer questions publicly. The community is invited and encouraged to participate.
• By 17 October: Appointments will be announced.

For the Arbitration Committee, Katie^talk 11:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Is it "CheckUser", "Checkuser", or "checkuser"?

The tool is called CheckUser. The permission is called checkuser (because all permissions are lowercase). But what do you call a person with checkuser who can use CheckUser to check users? The first sentence of this page says "Checkuser", which is also the name used by the software (e.g. at Special:ListGroupRights and Special:ListUsers, although all groups' first letters are capitalized there), but other parts of the policy call the user group "CheckUser" (CheckUsers must be 18 years of age) and "checkuser" (Guide to checkusers).

This has been nagging at me for a bit, and then 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk · contribs) brought it up independently at Template talk:SPI archive notice, and I said I'd follow up here before changing the capitalization in the template (which is inconsistent, as it is on this page). So, which is it? -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 20:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC), edited 20:41, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I was interested in this as well (and I have recently boldly unified the spelling on the page on Meta). I'm neutral as to whether it should be "CheckUser" or "checkuser", but "Checkuser" looks like an unnecessary capitalisation to me (as would be "Adminstrator"). ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 20:37, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The comment at the top of the page is interesting: Typically, CamelCase is not used for every iteration of the word "checkuser". This page follows the following convention: an editor has access to "CheckUser" or "checkuser" but is themself a "Checkuser". Other iterations may be found elsewhere, and this message is merely advisory - so don't edit war over something silly like this. Not sure why the user role should be capitalised. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 14:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not even consistent within the document, but I think the intent is for CheckUser to be the name of the tool, and the users with access to it are checkusers, and yes, the permission itself is checkuser (rendered with the {{code}} template to indicate that it refers to a software component). It's not a proper name or formal title which would compel mid-sentence capitalization. If you're referring to a particular named checkuser then it might be appropriate to capitalize ("Checkuser Ivanvector") but I'm not sure; it's probably better to just refer to the intended user by their username, not whichever hat they're wearing. All of the permission sets are capitalized in the central listing, but IMO the only permission set that should be capitalized is Founder, because it inherently refers to one person. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:27, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

What about the users who come from here? -- RoySmith (talk) 20:13, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Ooold joke. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:56, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Could have been worse. what if it was an ooid joke? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:42, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Can we stay on topic please? ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 08:24, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

​​Since it's been a month, would anyone object to standardizing this (both in this policy and in relevant templates, e.g. {{checkuserblock-account}}, which uses three capitalizations across four references) as:

• CheckUser is the tool
• checkuser (always all-lowercase) is the permission to use CheckUser
• A checkuser (capitalized according to normal English rules, including in cases where for whatever reason the software has decided all groups should be sentence-case) is someone with checkuser and thus access to CheckUser.
• A Czech user should be welcomed like any other user

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 17:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

That seems about right, and I definitely agree with you about that template. No objections from me. If I can add something as an aside though, checkuser is something rarely seen (only at WP:UAL as far as I remember). It is the name of a permission, but it's also the name of the internal group with access to the set of permissions related to checkuser, such as viewing the CU log. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 18:23, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: As you saw, I went ahead with this, but just wanted to follow up on your last point: My understanding is that the lowercase code-wrapped format is just meant for permissions, not groups. The distinction can be important, since for instance a confirmed account is not autoconfirmed but does have the autoconfirmed permission. (You'd think it'd be the other way around, but no.) I don't think there's any standardized way to refer to a group itself. For my copy-edit of the policy I tried to stick with stuff like "checkuser rights", but it could probably use some touching up. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

You may be right that there is no standard, and context probably matters. I would normally say extended page movers are in the extendedmover group, as this is the parameter used with both the HTTP request Special:ListUsers/extendedmover and $wgGroupPermissions. Edit filter managers are in the abusefilter group which contains the abusefilter-modify permission. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that, similarly, checkusers are not just people with access to checkuser, but people in the checkuser group which contains the checkuser permission (and thus have access to CheckUser) along with some other permissions. Thanks for the copyedit - long overdue and ultimately quite impressive. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 06:44, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Just noting for the record, since it came up when changing {{SPI case status/core}} but hadn't come up when editing this page, that I'm treating "request for CheckUser" as meaning "request for [somebody to use the] CheckUser [tool]", and thus capitalizing it like so. After all, if it meant "request for [something from a] checkuser", it would be a request for checkuser if I asked a CU if they want to get coffee sometime. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:48, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Just want to say that I like this paradigm and will be using it in my future writing. Mz7 (talk) 06:21, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

• I use CheckUser to refer to all uses, but I also don't think it matters. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Technical detail

At an SPI, @DeFacto: and I were talking about false positives and the other technical information that CheckUsers can look at. My understanding (guided by this page) was that it was only IP addresses and edit lists that were visible. However, DeFacto pointed out that this page said 'other technical data stored by the server about a user account or IP address' - and then @Bbb23: found on MediaWiki at mw:Extension:CheckUser that user agent information was also available, which wasn't mentioned at all on this page.

Being WP:BOLD and assuming it was just missing information, I added the information that was on MediaWiki to this page, to quote: "such as the last ten user agents (browser, operating system, system language, and versions) for each user for edits made in the IP or range.". However @Tamzin: (who is also participating in the above investigation) removed it saying "There's a deliberate choice made on this page to not give too much technical detail per WP:BEANS. If you think that this should be mentioned, you should raise it on talk." Hence this post.

I think it's important that this page is factually correct about the information that CheckUsers have available to them, since this directly relates to user privacy. I understand the BEANS argument, but it's still important to include. Likely it's better placed somewhere else in the page rather than the lead, where I put it, and that would be fine. But I think the info should be here somewhere.

Thoughts? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:41, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: Hi Mike, hope you're doing well - I agree that given the privacy concerns, users should be made aware of this. Thankfully, we don't need to worry about that! The WMF has put a link to our privacy policy at the bottom of every page on Wikipedia. This policy explicitly states the data captured (including the aforementioned user agent), so repeating it here would not meaningfully contribute to our user's privacy awareness ~TNT (she/her • talk) 18:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime: Unless I'm missing something, that just says that the information is recorded, not that it is made visible to CheckUsers. It's also not obvious to users who are being CheckUser'd and end up on this page that this information can be accessed as part of the process. So while the link to the privacy policy is good, it's not sufficient to describe the CheckUser process. What we could do is to specifically say that this technical information is summarised in the privacy policy, but the policy also includes things like 'payment account number' - which I really hope checkusers don't have access to! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:02, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: The summary at the top has a section informing users that "certain administrators of the Wikimedia Sites, who are chosen by the community, use tools that grant them limited access to nonpublic information about recent contributions so they may protect the Wikimedia Sites and enforce policies." - would support linking to the this part of the privacy policy if necessary. I am very mindful that we may well shoot ourselves in the foot a tad if we really spell it out. I prefer the EULA approach - hope no one reads the darn thing and take the rights to your soul! /s ~TNT (she/her • talk) 19:09, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

oh and don't worry, we can only see the last four digits of your debit card ~TNT (she/her • talk) 19:10, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime: I'm happy for the information to be buried in section N, if you prefer, I still think it should be mentioned *somewhere* on this page though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:17, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Yup, I'm not impressed at the privacy policy's ability to provide meaningful relevant information about this. However I prefer to send people interested in technical information to the more technical pages, rather than go into the detail on this policy page. I'll note that the information you added is actually a bit misleading, for example, if you use more than ten agents I can probably tell you what the other ones were. There is also a bit of a quirk about "system language", which I really don't want to go into (mainly because it will bore everyone). This is why less detail here is better. However, if you want to add a less-specific something like 'browser information', I think that's well enough known and general enough to mention. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: The info was directly taken from mw:Extension:CheckUser - if that's wrong, please fix it! It doesn't seem to just be 'browser information' if information about the OS is included. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:17, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'll get around to elaborating on the nuances on the mediawiki site one day, but don't hold your breath. We still shouldn't be going into this detail in the local policy. I notice that at both m:Help:CheckUser and m:Help:Special Investigate (which falls under this policy), they use the term user agent for this information. Interested in a link to it? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:37, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: I could live with adding something like "including recent user agent information" to this page. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

That probably works for me. I'm not an arbiter for the page though, so open to other opinions... -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

(Just to ping @Bbb23:, who I mistakenly left out of the above timeline. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:57, 7 October 2021 (UTC))

• I'm probably more in zzuuzz's camp, the less said in the local policy the better. When someone like you has a mistaken notion about what a CU sees on a check, educating them with an appropriate link is good, but, otherwise, I think it unnecessary and sometimes even harmful. For some users too much information causes confusion and misinterpretation rather than a deeper understanding.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:01, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think I feel similarly about this—to me, this sort of detail of what CheckUser shows should be relegated to something like the MediaWiki's extension documentation (which it currently is). I think just the general notion of saying on project-specific policy pages that CheckUser is a tool which uses technical information to connect accounts (or something like that) is all that's needed. Perryprog (talk) 20:17, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Question for functionaries

On tonight's Empty Category list, Category:Wikipedia functionary statistics showed up. Typically, I tag empty categories the next day but it is unusual to see Wikipedia project-related categories on this list, it's almost entirely categories for either main space articles or for other categories so I thought I'd bring it up in case you had an ongoing use for this category.

Yesterday, I noticed in the Deletion log, that quite a lot of templates and template-related pages that contained functionary stats from the past few years were deleted. I'm not sure if this was a decision supported by functionaries themselves or just the result of a discussion among the few number of editors who participate in TFD discussions. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:10, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I cross-posted this message on the Functionaries and Oversight talk pages. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Liz: Neither this category, nor any templates or pages related to functionary statistics have been discussed on the functionaries list. No XfD discussions related to functionary stats have been flagged to functionaries either, so any consensus for deletion was formed only by those who showed up at the given discussion. Please could you give some links to those discussions so we can look at the rationales given, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 01:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
• As far as I'm concerned, the only really useful page on functionary stats would be Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit/Statistics. It doesn't need its own category, I don't think. It's the only page I think we've ever seen that actually provides a rolling statistical assessment of individual functionaries, and it didn't start until 2009. I don't think we ever saw stats before then. Risker (talk) 03:29, 16 November 2021 (UTC) As an aside, there are monthly stats from April 2009 to present in the history. Risker (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
• I think we are talking about {{fst}}, created by AGK in 2018 and deleted by Explicit as a result of this discussion: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_November_8#Template:Fst. – Joe (talk) 06:54, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There were 98 pages related to Template:Fst that were deleted, it looks like functionaries records from 2012-2019. The easiest way I can think of to show you what they were are by looking at Explicit's deletion log for 11-15-2021 and doing a page search from "Template:Fst". It's unusual for a template to have so many component pages so when it showed up in the Deletion log, it was noticeable. But since it had arisen out of a TFD discussion, it didn't raise any red flags at the time when I saw it. I'll postpone the deletion tagging the empty category. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There's a relevant talk page discussion announcement about it's creation at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Audit/Statistics#Fst. It used to be shown on WP:AUDIT/STATS itself, but it was removed for lack of updates. stwalkerster (talk) 22:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Can checkusers see browser or device profile for IP edits?

Does the CheckUser tool return user agent data for anonymous edits? Will it provide identifying information such as browser or operating system? I have concerns regarding misbehaviour and possible harassment from a particular checkuser; thus, I will not reveal my identity for obvious reasons. 2607:F140:6000:17:C4CA:B6B:AEE8:15D3 (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes. GeneralNotability (talk) 01:02, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Can CheckUser be used to confirm that a Wikipedian is deceased?

There is an apparent case of an obituary notice matching the name of a Wikipedian who ceased editing shortly before publication of that notice. I am wondering if it is possible to confirm that the Wikipedian in question lived in the city where the notice was published. BD2412 T 03:45, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

See here. I provided that link because there is a persistent battle (currently at ANI, again) regarding a completely unrelated case. Regarding the question above, revealing an undisclosed location looks like a privacy breach even if well intentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 04:41, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Correct - we could obviously see if any IPs look like they're from the right place (assuming there is data that hasn't aged off yet), but couldn't tell any non-functs. Plus there's just too much of a chance that we get it wrong and give away data on a not-deceased user. GeneralNotability (talk) 17:01, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Multiple devices can connect to a public IP address and will have the same IP address.

There are private and public IP address. Multiple devices can have the same IP address because it's a public IP address. For example, at school everyone has the same IP address (router then gives individual private IP adresses to devices). So, let's say I'm editing at school. You guys can only see the public IP address. And let's just say some troll is also editing on the IP address at school. How will you guys know that it's a different person? You can't, you literally can't know. Then maybe you'll think it's a sockpuppet or something. That's a problem. - Alexysun (talk) 03:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Fun fact: CheckUsers are pretty good at identifying shared IP addresses such as schools and coffee shops. Other fun fact: editing Wikipedia isn't all that popular a hobby amongst 13 year olds and while it is certainly possible for there to be a good editor and an LTA at the same school, usually if there is an LTA targeting well known Wikipedians or targeting the same topics as a good account that is based out of the same school, it is the same person. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:09, 13 October 2022 (UTC)