Wikibooks:Oversight
 | This page contains useful information about the Wikibooks project. While this is not a listing of rules or policies, it contains information about an important Wikibooks process, custom etc. This page should be helpful to our users; please let us know if it is not. |
 | For legal and security reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation requires two-factor authentication for this role. This is also enforced by the software (users who don't have 2FA enabled will not be able to use their permissions). |
 | Please note that details should not be posted publicly. Instead, please see this page for details about how to contact a steward privately. |
Oversight, also known as suppression, refers to hiding revisions, edit summaries, usernames, or log entries from the public, including administrators. It can only be seen by users in the suppressor (oversighter) user group, stewards, and users in the staff global user group. Suppressed data can only be viewed and restored by users in these groups, with the exception of Ombuds who may view suppressed data (but not restore it).
Access to the oversight tool is governed by the global oversight policy; oversighters must be over 18 years old and have signed the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information before this permission can be granted.
Use cases
[edit | edit source]This feature is approved for use in four cases:
- Removal of non-public personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public, or of public individuals who have not made that personal information public.
- Removal of potentially libelous information either:
- on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or
- when the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
- Removal of copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel.
- Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs, where this does not disrupt edit histories. A blatant attack is one obviously intended to denigrate, threaten, libel, insult, or harass someone.
Access to oversight
[edit | edit source]Process for requesting
[edit | edit source]Administrators can request this permission at Wikibooks:Requests for permissions. The request should remain open for at least 1 week, where the community is invited to support, oppose, comment, and/or to ask questions to the candidate. The following criteria must be met:
- A minimum of 25 supporting votes
- A minimum of 70-80% support
If the criteria is met and there is consensus to grant the suppressor permission, the RFP request will be closed, and a user can post a request to m:Steward requests/Permissions on Meta-Wiki. After verifying that the candidate has signed the confidentiality agreement, a steward will grant the rights.
Process for removal
[edit | edit source]Any user account with oversight status that is inactive for more than one year will have their oversight access removed.
In case of abusive use of the tool, the steward or the editor with the oversight privilege will immediately have their access removed. This will in particular happen if checks are done routinely on editors without a serious motive to do so (links and proofs of bad behavior should be provided).