Matanya

"Inappropriate personal information"?

Please explain what you mean by "Inappropriate personal information". On what authority did you disrupt Wikiversity by removing talk page discussion content? --JWSchmidt 12:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

the user had posted personal information on a wikimedia public page. I removed it and oversighted the diff. the content had email address, private name of a non-wikimedia user, and so on. Matanya 14:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Please describe the nature of the "personal information" that you are concerned about. What gives you the authority to delete Wikiversity content? --JWSchmidt 14:45, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

do you want me to tell you the personal information? I didn't understand. Matanya 14:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Two names and one e-mail addresses have now been redacted, per the adamant demand of User:SB Johnny —Firelion 15:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Please do not use the revert tool

The revert tool is for reverting obvious repeated vandalism. Please provide informative edit summaries for your edits, particularly when making deletions of talk page discussion comments of Wikiversity community members. --JWSchmidt 14:45, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

O.K. sorry. yet reposting discussions that were removed due to personal information is vandalism. Matanya 14:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Please describe the "personal information" and your authority to delete it. --JWSchmidt 14:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, please be specific. Whose name or email address are you protecting? —Montana Mouse 14:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

As a steward, I got a request from a user here on Wikiversity, that his own email, his wife name and some other data is on your talk page. According to m:Oversight, such information should be removed. thats what I did. Matanya 15:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Two personal names and one e-mail addresses have now been redacted, per the adamant demand of User:SB Johnny —Firelion 15:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Not yours. We protect people who ask us to protect them. Also reverting appears to be ok, since posting personal info without permission is vandalism. -Barras 15:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• The revert tool is for quickly removing obvious vandalism where no edit summary is needed. For other edits, an informative edit summary should be provided. --JWSchmidt 04:12, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Questions

"his own email, his wife name and some other data" <-- Are you saying that an email from a Wikiversity user was posted and then that user asked that the email be removed? So how does this work? If I put "Jane Doe" on a wiki page and someone goes to a Steward and claims that "Jane Doe" want's their name removed from the page then do I get blocked? "other data" <-- What kind of "data"? --JWSchmidt 04:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

User A posted User's B private data. User B asked me to remove the private data since it is a violation of m:Privacy_policy.

Thats all the information needed in the case. Please stop supporting a user that violates the privcy policy. Matanya 08:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• How does the WMF Privacy policy apply to this situation? "private data" <-- Please describe the nature of the "private data". How do you know that what you are calling "private data" is not, in fact, public? --JWSchmidt 11:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

  If you're concerned that information has been suppressed in violation of the oversight policy, you can always ask for a review of the action by an uninvolved party. Many wikis have local oversighters or bodies like the enwiki audit subcommittee for this purpose. Betawikiversity doesn't have such people locally afaik, but you can always ask for a review from any uninvolved steward. I'm not sure if the ombudsman commission inspects oversight use, but that might be one possible way to request review of a suppression. I hope this helps. Jafeluv 12:07, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Transparency is a fundamental principle. Yesterday a swarm of invaders disrupted this wiki by removing content and falsely calling it vandalism, imposing blocks without explaining what they were doing, or why, or on what authority, and so far they still have not explained their actions. If there is no explanation then I will simply undo their disruptive actions. --JWSchmidt 12:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Transparency is important, but requests for oversight are always handled privately because they by definition contain sensitive information not meant for public view. You've been explained that User:Moulton repeatedly posted someone's personal information (real name and email address) which were then suppressed following WMF-wide oversight policy. The person whose information they posted then requested suppression of said information. User:Moulton was blocked because they continued to post the information repeatedly every time it was removed, to prevent them from reposting it. Regarding your question of authority, stewards are allowed by the above-mentioned WMF oversight policy to grant themselves oversight access in wikis with no local oversighters as necessary. Since you value transparency, I can post an explanation of the actions on your centralized discussion page (Wikiversity:Babel, is it?), so that the actions can be reviewed by the wider Wikiversity community. If necessary, the community can also select an uninvolved oversighter or steward to review the suppression action. Jafeluv 13:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I've repeatedly asked how it is known that the "personal information" is private rather than public. Let me ask again: How do you know that the oversighted Wikiversity content was not public information? --JWSchmidt 13:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As I've said, the person involved requested suppression themself, saying that it was private information. Barring evidence to the contrary, I have no reason not to believe them. Jafeluv 13:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Does that mean that all the claims made by Jafeluv, Eptalon, Matanya, Barras, Laaknor, PeterSymonds about "private information" were made without any evidence that the information is private? A Wikiversity community member was blocked without any chance to defend himself against the claims made by an unknown person? It sounds like Jafeluv, Eptalon, Matanya, Barras, Laaknor, PeterSymonds were gamed into taking misguided actions by some unknown individual. "I have no reason not to believe them" <-- Is it Wikimedia policy to block Wikiversity community members without any attempt to find out if it is a fair block? Did you ask User:Moulton for his side of the story? --JWSchmidt 14:13, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Would it not have sufficed to simply redact the names and/or e-mail addresses, if that was the issue? Matanya, why did you find it necessary to balete the entire thread, which presented direct evidence to refute the false and defamatory characterization of an identifiable living person that Firelion requested that you oversight on the English Wikiversity, per the WMF Policy on Biographies of Living People? Note also that the WMF Privacy Policy which you cite has a scope, which covers user data collected by the Foundation. More to the point is the next section of the policy, which states:

The public and collaborative nature of the projects

All Projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by its users using the MediaWiki software. Anyone with Internet access (and not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the publicly editable pages of these sites with or without logging in as a registered user. By doing this, editors create a published document, and a public record of every word added, subtracted, or changed. This is a public act, and editors are identified publicly as the author of such changes. All contributions made to a Project, and all publicly available information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Moreover, there is a Whistleblower Policy which protects those who call fouls on erratic WMF functionaries who exceed their authority and abuse their power. Under that policy, Moulton is protected from reprisals by those erratic or abusive WMF functionaries who inappropriately overstep their otherwise legitimate authority.

Gastrin Bombesin 10:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Smile! You're on Candid Copera!

Here is an excerpt from People of the Tin Badge: The Hope for Educating the Keystone Cops, by M. Snot Dreck:

I told my friend, Moonbeam, that GoatBoy had drunk the toxic Kool Aid and joined forces with the Devilsome Cluster/B/Phreaks. She replied, "What do you care what other people drink?" And so I threw up (my hands) and heaved (him overboard). She rolled her eyes and said, "Great. Now you're both BlockHeads."

Gastrin Bombesin 10:55, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

• Congratulations, Matanya! Your audition was successful. You have landed a role in "Who's Afraid of the Keystone Cops." You have been cast as "Monotony, Deuteronomic BlockHead" in the Four Keystone Cops of the Apocalypse. Nicely done, sir. —Barsoom Tork 13:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

• What Barsoom Tork means, Matanya, is that you rushed in, like a Keystone Cop, to oversight a parody that contained entirely made up content. Did you just take SBJ's word for it? Did you bother to actually read what JWSchmidt posted, to notice that it was a comic sendup, a parody? SBJ comes into #wikimedia-stewards, blows his Keystone Cops whistle, and a bunch of eager characters with their tin badges go racing to the scene to put out a fire that is a cardboard joke, a silly prop with jibberish in it. —Montana Mouse 14:22, 20 March 2011 (UTC)