Commons:Oversighters

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This page explains the role of oversighter on Wikimedia Commons.

  • If you need oversighter assistance on Commons, please email oversight-commons@lists.wikimedia.org with the diff links or page history link that should be suppressed and a clear explanation for such action. In an emergency, and if no Commons oversighter is immediately available, please contact a steward. Stewards should also be able to help if you need assistance with a cross-wiki problem.

There are currently 3 oversighters on Commons.

Oversighters as of November 2024 [+/−]
Number of oversighters: 3
  • Minorax, en, zh, ko-1, ms-1, fr-1, nan-2, yue-1
  • odder, pl, en-4, de-2 (bureaucrat)
  • Raymond, de, en-3, nl-1

What is an oversighter?

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Oversighters are administrators with the technical ability on Wikimedia Commons to hide (suppress) data so that it can no longer be seen by normal editors. They are able to suppress revisions from a page or media file history, user names in edit histories and logs, and portions of individual log entries.

Suppressed data remain permanently inaccessible through the wiki. Therefore, it cannot be accidentally restored when a page is deleted and undeleted. Suppressed data can only be viewed and restored by oversighters.

According to the global policy, suppression is approved in four cases:

  1. 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.
  2. Removal of potentially libelous information either:
    a) on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation Legal Counsel or;
    b) when the case is clear and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
  3. Removal of copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel.
  4. 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.

Local oversighters will generally handle local oversighting, when they're available. Stewards may perform local oversighting in emergencies, during crosswiki issues, or if there are no local oversighters available (see contact details).

Meta policy on oversighters

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Oversighters on Commons are bound by the meta oversight policy, the meta privacy policy and the WMF access to nonpublic data policy.

How do I become an oversighter?

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First, read Commons:Oversighters/Howto.

When you are ready, make your request using the box below, replacing Username with your own user name.



For greater visibility, all requests made here are transcluded onto the central Commons:Requests and votes page.

Voting

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Please note any registered user may vote here although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted. It is preferable if you give reasons both for  Support votes or  Oppose ones as this will help the closing bureaucrat in their decision. Greater weight is given to argument, with supporting evidence if needed, than to a simple vote.

Purge the cache Use the edit link below to edit the transcluded page.

Requests for Oversight rights

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watch

When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Oversighters/Archive.

  • Please read Commons:Oversighters before voting here. Any logged in user may vote, although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.

Kadı

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Related requests:

Vote

Kadı (talk · contributions · deleted user contributions · recent activity · logs · block log · global contribs · CentralAuth)

Scheduled to end: 00:00, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello I am Kadı. I am an administrator in Commons. Also, I serve as a VRT personnel and global renamer. Sometimes users request oversight actions from me. 3 days ago, I changed visibility of edits on a file because of the uploader's request and I forwarded it to the oversighters but there is no action. I request to be an oversighter, to handle this requests and suppress the edits. Kind regards, --Kadı Message 18:52, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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Comments

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  • There definitely is a need for another oversighter. I'm not sure if unwanted location data (which is still present in the metadata, file should be overwritten with changed EXIF to purge the unwanted data) merits oversighting rather than hiding it from non-sysops but maybe others can convince me that it's appropriate. Abzeronow (talk) 19:18, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like in your last request, I think the community would like to hear how many requests for OS you made in the last 12 months, and how many of them lead to actual oversight. Feel free to add how long it took to have the OS requests processed. (The last 2 or 3 requests I made were processed within few hours, so I don't actually see any problem.) --Krd 07:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Krd, hello. Thanks for your question. Oversight actions are very important which includes users' privacy, and personal datas. I do not remember the number of my requests but 4 days ago I evaluated a request then forwarded to OS mails. 4 days passed, no answer. The request is so basic, it may take approximately 5 minutes. In addition, I do not indicate directly here the requested files for protecting the user's privacy.
    All of us are volunteers here, I do not blame anyone. Commons is a very large project, for example in trwiki we have 4 oversighters, Commons is a very enormous project than trwiki definitely, but in Commons we have only 3. This is definitely not adequate for Commons. I am volunteering here to handle oversight requests faster. In my previous request, you can see this link A steward self assigned OS access to themself in order to handle and emergency action. Kind regards, Kadı Message 09:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    An emergency is no relevant example. Also, two Commons OS have edited today. Can we rule out that there is just some communication problem? Krd 13:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Krd, I disagree with you. It is a relevant example. Large wikis should use local OS' We are not a small wiki. Kadı Message 15:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Even with more local OS, let it be 10, you will have situations where no one is present for an emergency situation. Volunteers are generally not required to meet emergency situation standard, so and emergency example IMHO is moot. Krd 17:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Minorax, Odder, and Raymond: Can you comment if you received the request, and if there is any relevant backlog? --Krd 13:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Krd: I can confirm we did receive the request. There is no backlog, but we place lower priority on requests where content has already been revision deleted by an administrator as opposed to content that's visible on the wiki. I had limited access to e-mail throughout last week but I will action the request shortly. I do have to say that this whole discussion is striking me as quite strange where a user is requesting advanced permissions because one (one!) request they filed hasn't been answered to their satisfaction. As demonstrated in our activity statistics, we get a fairly steady number of requests every month and nearly all of them are answered a in a prompt manner as a few of our more active contributors can attest to. odder (talk) 16:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Odder, as I said before I do not blame anyone. I am a very active user among the Wikimedia projects. My aim is to help oversighters. Best wishes, Kadı Message 16:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As someone who has sent a fair deal of oversight requests, I can confirm that 95% of the time, I get a 0-2 hr Response. I don't see any downsides with another oversighter. Normally the overnighters are very active, but I have had reports that took more than 24 hrs (IMHO the max time an oversight request can take), and another OS would be helpful, especially with @Kadı's timezone and editing patterns. As to @GPSLeo's concerns, WMF Legal will make the call as to if being in turkey is a problem, that's not our job. All the Best -- Chuck Talk 16:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On my concerns: I just think we need to be more careful with such problems. For the other topic: For real emergencies there is the WMF T&S team and emergency cases do not have to be handled by volunteers. And it is always possible to contact a regular admin in parallel to perform a regular deletion before the suppression by an oversighter. GPSLeo (talk) 18:17, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • You live in country that blocked Wikipedia in the past and the situation regarding democracy did not become better since then. I have the fear that giving you access to such sensitive information you bring you and the project into danger as authorities could try to force you to give information to them. GPSLeo (talk) 16:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @GPSLeo, In trwiki we have OS user group. All of the trwiki oversighters do not gave information to anyone. Your fear is irrelevant. Kadı Message 16:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There were multiple of such cases in other countries where the WMF had to ban the users to protect them. GPSLeo (talk) 16:51, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @GPSLeo, I am also in VRT. I guarantee that I would never do that. Kadı Message 16:57, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Current oversighters

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See also

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