Ombuds commission/2024/French Wikipedia Nominations Committee

In May 2020, the French Wikipedia voted to amend its method for granting checkuser and oversight permissions to a volunteer. At the vote, community members were presented with three options for the future method of granting advanced permissions:

1. Creating a 'selector' role within the French Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (CAr),
2. Creating a 'nominations committee' (CNom), or
3. Directly approving future nominees through the use of elections.

The community selected the second option and in October 2020, members were elected to the first CNom.

The Ombuds Commission has concluded that this option is not acceptable, for the reasons set out below. We are issuing recommendations in relation to appointments already made by the Nomination Committee and the future function of the Nomination Committee. We are also recommending changes that the French Wikipedia community could make to the terms of reference for the CNom which would allow it to validly appoint advanced permissions holders.

The policy position

The vote on establishing a CNom and giving it responsibility for advanced permissions appointments was strongly attended, by 113 users <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Prise_de_décision/Méthode_de_nomination_des_CU_et_OS#Vote_2>.

After the CNom was established <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Comité_de_nomination>, seven members were elected <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Comité_de_nomination/élection_2020_09> to 3-year terms on the CNom. Their election was attended by more users than the most recent Arbitration Committee election and the CNom members enjoy the legitimate support of the French Wikipedia community.

Appointment of the advanced permissions on any Wikimedia projects are subject to the global Oversight policy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Oversight_policy> and the global CheckUser policy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_policy>. The Oversight policy states:

On wikis with an Arbitration Committee elected with 25–30 members' approval, users may also be appointed by the Arbitration Committee, unless the local community prefers independent elections. After agreement, a member of the local Arbitration Committee should place a request on Steward requests/Permissions.

The CheckUser policy states:

On wikis with an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) whose members have been elected with the support of at least 25–30 members of the local community, CheckUsers may be directly appointed by the Arbitrators. After agreement, a member of the Committee should simply list the candidate on Steward requests/Permissions.

Both policies envisage that appointments on wikis without an Arbitration Committee will be made by direct election of the community.

Nomination Committees which are not part of an Arbitration Committee are not authorised to assign the advanced permissions. As the French Wikipedia has separated the Nomination Committee from the Arbitration Committee, its Nomination Committee does not have authority to assign the advanced permissions.

Under global Wikimedia policy, Arbitration Committees have a special organisational purpose. At least one Meta-wiki page describes the committees as "a small group of trusted users who serve as the last step of dispute resolution" <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_Committee> and that is a fair description of an Arbitration Committee/CAr.

The global CheckUser policy and the global Oversight policy envisage there are only two valid method of appointing the advanced permissions. The first is to subject candidates to the scrutiny of the Arbitration Committee, who may have non-public information about the candidate that has a bearing on their suitability for appointment. The second valid method of appointment is to let every user on the project make the appointments by election.

The French Wikipedia are proposing a third method of appointment: a Nomination Committee that is neither the CAr nor the whole French Wikipedia community. This combines the disadvantages of both methods. Nomination Committee members are not members of the Arbitration Committee, so they have no access to the non-public information which Arbitration Committees are empowered to collect or to the serious disputes which can be expected to end up before an Arbitration Committees. At the same time they are a relatively tiny group of users. Whereas elections can call on a wide pool of experience, memory and resources, Nomination Committees are made up of less than a dozen users, some of whom may be inactive; they are like having an election with a very low turnout. The global policies specifically require that an advanced permissions election be attended by at least 25 users. The only alternative is for a CAr to appoint the advanced permissions. A CNom is not equivalent to a CAr.

Conclusion

Under current global policy, Nomination Committees are not currently a satisfactory method of appointing an advanced permissions user.

Recommendations

The global CheckUser and Oversight policies are revised in such a way that the French Wikipedia's Nominations Committee complies with the revised policies.

Should the global CheckUser and Oversight policies not be modified in such a way, all checkuser and oversight permissions assigned by order of the French Wikipedia's Nominations Committee should be removed, without prejudice to reappointment in a policy-compliant manner, and future requests on behalf of a Nominations Committee not complying with global policy are to be refused by the Stewards.