On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 at 10:01, Tomasz Ganicz <polime...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess - Andy's main concern is about permission queues on Commons, as the > trigger for his question was a case on Commons. I have already stated that this assumption is false, when someone else made it in this very thread. > In fact - OTRS agents answering questions for general info queues have no > special power - I mean they do not make any "secretive" decisions But they do; and we know that they do. The specific case to which you refer above occurred when an OS agen declined to accept multiple in-scope photographs, from multiple correspondents, sent at the request of Wikidata editors, to OTRS by non-Wikimdians. This only came to light because the person who had organised the campaign noticed, and brought it to the attention of Wikidata editors, on Wikidata. Nonetheless, that specific case led to general questions. about how ORS operates across our movement. And note that not one of the ten questions I referred to at the top of this thread mentones any specific case. > Add to this that > there is a constant shortage of the active OTRS agents Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the lack of transparency about how OTRS operates? > If you want to be > an OTRS agent - just put your name on OTRS page on meta - ask some of your > friends on your local wiki to endorse you and one of the OTRS admins simply > checks if your edit history is OK (not too short and with no signs that you > have a tendency to be in constant conflict with your fellow Wikipedians) > and that's it... It really does not need any extra regulations, as it > works as it is now. You say "one of the OTRS admins simply checks if your edit history is OK...", but nowhere is that documented publicly as the process that is followed. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence also suggests that that is not all that there is to the process. One of the other questions that remains unanswered is how the people who conduct this process are themselves appointed and overseen. > How it is practically screened has been already answered > several times, but it is true that the process is not written down clearly If it is not written down "clearly", show us what is written down in outline. Why is this so difficult? > So, maybe - I say maybe - this system needs some sort of reform to make it > more transparent and public - but do not expect that anyone can write rules > that may cover every possible case This is a straw man; no-one is asking for "rules that may cover every possible case"; and no one is asking for any new rules to be written; we are asking to see the rules and policies *that already exist*. > And the system will never be 100% transparent - as > its idea is to answers E-mails under general WMF privacy policy umbrella. ...and no-one is asking to see anything that falls under the general WMF privacy policy umbrella; indeed, I have explicitly excluded such material when describing what I want to see. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
