Ombuds commission

For legal and security reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to require two-factor authentication for this role.

Ombuds Commission
About the commission Discuss the ombuds Send a complaint Email the commission
Activity reports
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees committees Governance Committee Audit Committee Talent & Culture Committee Product & Technology Committee Community Affairs Committee Staff committees Communications committee Community-wide committees Affiliations Committee Language committee Wikimania Committee Movement governance committees Elections Committee Ombuds commission Case Review Committee UCoC Coordinating Committee Movement-wide preparation committees Movement Charter Drafting Committee Charter Electoral Commission U4C Building Committee UCoC drafting committees Resources allocation committees Conference Support Committee Regional Fund Committees All Wikimedia committees Committee Support team (WMF)

The ombuds commission, on behalf of the Board of Trustees , investigates complaints about infringements of the Privacy Policy, the Access to nonpublic personal data policy, the CheckUser policy and the Oversight policy, on any Wikimedia project. They also investigate for the Board the compliance of local CheckUser or Oversight policies or guidelines with the global CheckUser and Oversight policies.

In addition to official investigation, they will mediate between the complainant and the respondent (usually a CheckUser , oversighter, Bureaucrat , Administrator , or arbitration committee member). When legally necessary, the ombuds will assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the board in handling the case.

When the case is litigious, the ombuds will be in charge of educating CheckUsers or others about the Foundation's privacy policy. When the Privacy Policy, Access to Nonpublic Information Policy, CheckUser Policy, or Oversight policy have been breached, the ombuds commission should report to the Executive Director or designated staff and recommend a course of action (such as removal of access to tools). Additionally, the commission might suggest suitable changes to policies or software.

An ombuds' investigation should be conducted in a manner determined by the ombuds to ensure fairness and impartiality. As a general guideline, it is best that ombuds avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible, particularly by avoiding routine use of CheckUser or oversight access and not processing complaints on the projects on which they are very active editors. However, matters that come before the commission are not clear-cut, and the language and culture of various projects may pose barriers to outsiders. As such, how the commission investigates complaints is left to the discretion of its appointed members.

Members of the ombuds commission are selected from the Wikimedia community by Wikimedia Foundation officials. A call for volunteers is issued each year in early October on the Wikimedia-L mailing list and on the talk page of this policy, as well as other project forums as appropriate. They are appointed (assuming they agree) for a period of approximately two years (one year, prior to the 2023–25 Commission). One or more non-voting alternate member(s) may also be appointed. A Steward-Observer may be appointed to serve alongside the Ombudspeople.

Ombuds have the following rights globally:

• View hidden abuse log entries (abusefilter-hidden-log)
• View the abuse log (abusefilter-log)
• View detailed abuse log entries (abusefilter-log-detail)
• View log entries of abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-log-private)
• View private data in the abuse log (abusefilter-privatedetails))
• View the AbuseFilter private details access log (abusefilter-privatedetails-log)
• View logs related to accessing protected variable values (abusefilter-protected-vars-log)
• View abuse filters (abusefilter-view)
• View abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-view-private)
• Search deleted pages (browsearchive)
• Check users' IP addresses and other information (checkuser)
• View the checkuser log (checkuser-log)
• View the log of access to temporary account IP addresses (checkuser-temporary-account-log)
• View IP addresses used by temporary accounts without needing to check the preference (checkuser-temporary-account-no-preference)
• View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
• View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions (deletedtext)
• View a log of who has accessed IP information (ipinfo-view-log)
• Enable two-factor authentication (oathauth-enable)
• View private logs (suppressionlog)
• View revisions hidden from any user (viewsuppressed)

† Advisory member; ‡ Steward-Observer, terms expire in February of listed year

See also automatically generated list.

For the prior membership, see here.

Complaints may be made to the ombuds commission through the following ways (preferably in a language spoken by one of the members):

• To use the form, access this link: Special:Contact/ombudscommission
• To write an email, access this link: Special:EmailUser/Ombuds commission

Both ways will send message directly to OC mailing list.

Please follow these guidelines when submitting an inquiry to the commission:

1. Be concise: Lengthy emails with unnecessary information make it harder for the commission to process the case in a timely manner.
2. Be objective: Avoid making inquiries based on speculations or subjective judgements.
3. Provide evidence: Please provide us with diff links and/or permanent links when possible.
4. Be specific: Specify what part of which policy has been violated.
5. Please inform us if your wiki has an Arbitration Committee (or a similar committee) and if you have reached them (or used other dispute resolution procedure customary to your community) before reaching the ombuds commission. Provide a link to the relevant case page if appropriate.

Cases brought to our attention will be processed the following way:

1. Confirmation of the request: We will send a notice of confirmation to the requester, and if necessary ask for further information.
2. Scope: If the request is within the scope of the ombuds commission, we will do the investigation, if not we will decline the request and try to direct the complainant to a better place to get help for their individual problem.
3. Investigation: We do whatever is necessary to find out whether or not there was a breach of the policies or a non-compliance or conflict of local policies with the global ones.
4. Result: We give the result of our investigation to the requester, and if there was indeed a breach of the privacy policy, we will inform the user who was investigated and if necessary inform the Board of Trustees and if necessary recommend removing OS, CU or steward rights from the user breaking the policy.

Where the Commission has reached a decision which has significance for the wider community, it may publish it publicly. The decisions currently published are:

• Disclosure of information (2019/125) (2019/122) (2019/121) (2019/138) – this decision outlined the circumstances where a checkuser may disclose information they have obtained through their privileged access.
• Functionaries banned on other projects (2024/230) – dealing with a scenario where a volunteer banned from one wiki (or otherwise becoming untrusted) continues to have access rights on another wiki.

Reference numbers (in brackets) are given for the convenience of commissioners – they are the internal reference numbers of the case which led to the decision. Some published decisions will resolve several cases.

Activities:

• in 2013: February–June, July–December.
• in 2014: January–June, July–December.
• in 2015: January–June, July–December.
• in 2016: January–June, July–December.
• in 2017: January–June, July–December.
• in 2018: January–June, July–December.
• in 2019: January–June, July–September, October–December.
• 2020 Commission: January-March, April-January 2021.
• 2021 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2022.
• 2022 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2023.
• 2023 Commission: February-April, May-July, August-October, November-January 2024.
• 2024 Commission: February-April, May-July.

• Board resolutions: Ombudsperson Checkuser (July 2006) — Wikimedia Committees (minutes of presentation on Ombudsman Commission; January 2009) — Amending the Scope of the Ombudsman Commission (November 2015)
• Requests for comment: Scope of Ombudsman Commission (May—December 2013)
• Announcement Ombudsman commission wider scope (January 2016)
• New commission announcements: 2007 — 2009 — 2011 — 2012 — 2013 — 2014 — 2015 — 2016 — 2017 — 2018 — 2019 — 2020 — 2021 — 2022 — 2023 — 2024
• Information on the ombuds global user group:

• 2021 workflow updates
• What do you know about the Ombuds Commission? (December 2023) by Faendalimas (the Chair of the Ombuds Commission)