Requests for Comment/Changes to CVT group

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I made my view clear below and struck them following changes - therefore I am now considered neutral.

The outcome of the RfC is as follows:

• Proposal 1 passes.
• Proposal 1.5 (aptly now named the half-CVT clause) passes.
• Proposal 2 passes.

John (talk) 12:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

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This proposal is intended to add additional rights to the CVT group so that they may better deal with global threats.

Proposal 1

The rights (centralauth-lock) and (globalblock) are added to the CVT group. This can either be assigned to a local group on meta, or to the global group, however the creation of a local group would be best suited.

The reason I'm making this request is due to the fact that recently, I have followed two vandalism only accounts across over a dozen wikis each, where I blocked and reverted the mess that they were creating. In each case, my ability to respond was really limited to whenever a steward became available. Having these rights would have much sooner prevented further abuse.

Policy wise

These two rights are rather powerful. As such, they should only be used in cases where the user is:

1. Clearly a spambot/vandalism-only-account of some sort
2. Clearly a sockpuppet with intentions of disrupting multiple wikis
3. Has currently disrupted more than one or two wikis

Further applications of use may be decided in this RfC.

Support

•  Support as creator. -- Void ^Whispers 01:02, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I believe that following the recent cross-wiki abuse dealt with by Void are a clear indication of why this can really help, as I was unable to load the website on my phone and lock the account, so Void had to wait around repeatedly cleaning up more abuse before the account was locked. I think as long as CVT members (at least those in the local group that should be created, since all locks/blocks should be done on meta) -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 01:20, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support The purpose of the CVT group is to deal with cross-wiki vandalism. Currently, this is difficult as if a user/IP spams on more wikis, they need to be blocked individually on each wiki. As NDKilla said above, stewards are not always available when issues like this happen and just yesterday a sysadmin has had to emergency grant themselves steward to clean up the mess. Therefore, I really think that the CVT group should be granted the rights in question to better, and more effectively stop cross-wiki vandalism/spam. Reception123 (talk) (contribs) 04:57, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support CVT should be able to block globally vandals, spambots, etc... Zabshk (talk) 15:10, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support happy to see cross wiki vandals dealt with quickly and easily.- Bertie (talk) 01:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Proposal 2 addresses my concerns. I have no reason to abstain or be against it. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 00:17, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Abstain

•  Abstain This idea seems to me quite good and would certainly facilitate the work of this group (given that there are also few stewards, as indicate Reception123), however, I think that you have to be cautious in the sense that to begin with, I do not see any community process where these users are chosen (not described as they are Chosen on the group's information page). The ability to disable and block accounts globally requires the community to know and trust that user. For now I refrain, since I'm not against, but I can not be in support for now. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 21:33, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

•  Weak oppose I would oppose either of these two rights being added globally, as even the global steward group doesn't have them, and usually global locks and blocks are only done by stewards. I would, however, support the creation of a local group on Meta that contains centralauth-lock. I would oppose global blocking regardless, because in order to block an IP range you would need CheckUser (for logged in accounts) and I would strongly oppose granting CVT global or local checkuser access. -- Amanda (talk) 11:32, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

There are also IP spambots/vandals, not only global ranges to be blocked. No one is talking about granting CU to CVT. Reception123 (talk) (contribs) 11:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

•  Oppose procedurally until the group is established through an RfC. Locking accounts is a fairly dangerous tool which isn't one I'm happy giving to a group made without community consensus with no policies and no accountability on appointment. The group has (and still does) serve positively but I'm against expansion until a policy is in place with evidence of community suppport. John (talk) 11:43, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this is a serious concern that should be addressed before this RfC comes to a close. This may be achieved by an additional proposal, or a new RfC altogether. -- Void ^Whispers 20:27, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Agree with John - It would be better to decide exactly what the CVT should and shouldn't be expected to do and then give them the powers they need to do that job, than to give them powers before we know what their remit is. Not that I think the team shouldn't have these powers, just that the suggestion is premature. --Robkelk (talk) 23:28, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@John: I have proposed a draft for the "appointment" section. Feel free to read and possibly edit it. Reception123 (talk) (contribs) 05:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to add this as a proposal to this RfC. (I'd do it myself when there is time). -- Void ^Whispers 20:58, 9 May 2017 (UTC)Added below. -- Void ^Whispers 01:45, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

•  Oppose for now.

Opening or attention getter - To everyone here:

State your concern - My growing concern is that the adequacy of this decision-making process for all three measures crucially depends on having more time to discuss the three measures.

State the problem as you see it - "[measure one] A proposal for a Code of Conduct has been made. [measure two] There is also currently an open Request for Stewardship and [measure three] proposal for changes to the Counter Vandalism Team's global permissions." Each of these three measures are quite something to research and discuss, and measure two suggests that these three measures and other measures could be overworking the community, especially the Stewards, which apparently could be attempting to handle the increased workload by making sure that there are more Stewards. Having additional Stewards is one thing, but more power is quite another, and does not follow from any wisdom that the proposed increase of the number of Stewards may or may not have.

State a solution - My opinion is that the promotion and the changes to the Counter Vandalism Team's global permissions must be delayed until the entire community has enough time to discuss all three measures fully. My opinion is also that such discussions about measures two and three can only begin to happen after measure one has been discussed and decided.

Obtain agreement (or buy-in) - How does that sound to the community?

•  Strong oppose I'm sorry, but after further consideration and review, including looking at how Wikimedia Foundation handles these kind of permissions, I cannot support the addition of steward userrights to an unestablished global group that was created off the cuff in response to vandalism. -- Amanda (talk) 13:03, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 1.5

Sorta just hit me, but I also realized that the ability to edit global filters (abusefilter-modify-global) would also be an improvement, as some of the abuse is quite systematic and easily prevented by simple abuse filter rules. Other possible uses include maintaining the spam filters, which don't stop everything. While it may be fine to put this through stewards, it still does slow down the response time, and requests may go unanswered for some time. Also, it is kinda pointless for CVT to be able to edit filters on all public wikis when the spam/vandalism we are dealing with can occur on many different wikis.

Policy wise

Global filters should only be managed by CVT in cases where:

1. The condition would match a large amount of spam/vandalism recently encountered by the CVT member.
2. The CVT member is responding to a large number of false positive results on the filter.

Further applications of use may be decided in this RfC.

Support

•  Support as proposer. -- Void ^Whispers 01:02, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support per comment on proposal 1. Although this is a [possibly] more serious permission, I think granting them hand in hand is fair. Also, I have made changes to global filters at Void's request without question. Mostly because he created a local abuse filter that I just made global. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 01:20, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Per above, I don't see why not as this should go in CVT's "job description". Reception123 (talk) (contribs) 04:59, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I think that this could be helpful. -- Amanda (talk) 11:33, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Abuse filter can really help fighting vandalism. Zabshk (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support: adds a new layer of defence in case of global vandalism. LulzKiller (talk) 15:25, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support This would facilitate the work of the members of this group. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 21:36, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support An essential fix. Sj (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Sounds like a sound idea. GethN7 (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Abstain

•  Abstain I am not really sure about that... Also, did you mean "defense", LulzKiller? --Brynda1231 (talk) 12:08, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

• • British English spelling has the c, American has the s. Neither are incorrect. LulzKiller (talk) 20:04, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

•  Oppose for now.

Opening or attention getter - To everyone here:

State your concern - My confusion is about the denotation of this and other proposed abilities.

State the problem as you see it - While I am an experienced former Wikimedia Project editor and I founded and edit the Coldwater Project, I still do not yet have any experience nor training with the technical concepts involved here. I'm also concerned that many of the other community members may not yet have specifically and explicitly confirmed nor denied any proficiency in these technical matters.

State a solution -

1. My opinion is that the promotion and the changes to the Counter Vandalism Team's global permissions must be delayed until the entire community has enough time to discuss all three measures fully.
2. My opinion is also that such discussions about the promotion and changes to the permissions can only begin to happen after the matter of the proposed Code of Conduct has been discussed and decided.
3. My opinion is also that someone should make or recommend some sort of training simulator made by using real data to discover what these technical concepts are like in real life instead of saying what they are like, and a passing grade in which demonstrates proficiency in these technical concepts.
4. I suggest an alternative to a simulator, which includes more discussion, but is mostly just more time.

Obtain agreement (or buy-in) - How does that sound to the community? Saline (talk) 11:54, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Disagree that this proposals should be linked to whatever "all three measures" are that you mentioned but didn't define. --Robkelk (talk) 12:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@robkelk he means the CoC, this one, and the Void's Stewardship. LulzKiller (talk) 09:30, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 2 (Appointment)

Sort of squeezing this in here, and as such I request that this RfC be left open at least a full week after this point to allow full discussion of this late proposal. One of the major concerns from current staff members is in accountability and appointment of CVT members, especially when granting them advanced central-auth permissions. As such, there is currently the proposal to allow appointment under the following:

To be appointed CVT a request needs to be made at Stewards' Noticeboard. The community can discuss (support/oppose/abstain/comment) the request. Depending on the results of the request, a Steward may decide to grant, or not to grant CVT to the user in question.

Any issues brought up by the community must be resolved before the request is closed, unless decided to be a non-issue by a steward or community consensus. It is recommended, but not required that a candidate have experience in dealing with cross-wiki vandalism and spam. It is required that a candidate have experience in dealing with cross-wiki vandalism and spam.

This proposed method of appointment will allow anyone in good standing with the global community to request and recieve permissions via a similar method to other advanced permissions.

Support

• -- Void ^Whispers 01:45, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 01:55, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 01:56, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Reception123 (talk) (contribs) 05:05, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
• sure. — revi 12:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

• "It is recommended, but not required that a candidate have experience in dealing with cross-wiki vandalism and spam." We are discussing counter Vandalism Team. No experience here must be a blocker. No until fixed. — revi 11:06, 10 May 2017 (UTC) (Striking as I'm changing the !vote, but leaving the comment as is because there's following comments. — revi 12:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC))

  I suppose I wrote that in there with the thought that a candidate with no experience would not be able to gain enough support. However, I believe that you are correct in saying that members to a specialized group with advanced permissions should be experienced prior to applying. I also think that this condition added to the policy will prevent people from thinking they need to be in the group before they can gain experience. Cheers -- Void ^Whispers 15:14, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Comments

• I believe that before proposing new powers for the members of the CVT as was done in the first proposals, they should have discussed how they are elected. My personal opinion is that if they are going to gain access to tools that are a little tricky like CentralAuth's global account management, they must go through a process where the community can vote and comment on them. If this is approved, we could think of the first proposals. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 02:21, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

•  Comment: IMHO having rollbacker rights here on Meta should be a recommended prerequisite to CVT. Rollbacker is granted to active vandalism patrollers, and that's basically what CVT is for. -- Amanda (talk) 12:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section