Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Clerks/Noticeboard

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This page is for checkuser clerks to coordinate their activities and for checkusers to place requests for help or clarification with requests. Requests from checkusers will be noted on the case subpage with {{Clerk Request}}, which produces Clerk assistance required:, with a short summary. The request itself should be listed here. To avoid duplication of clerk effort, any clerk taking on a request should note that they are taking it when they begin it, and if they cannot complete it, note what has been done in the section on this page, so that other clerks will be able to complete it.

Contents 1 Attention Needed 2 Félicitations! 3 Case page 4 New clerk guide - read all about it! 4.1 Thumbs Up/Down 5 Top Gun

Clerks' Noticeboard archives
1	2	3	4

[edit] Attention Needed

RFCU is in need of some attention; I just took care of the /Pending list, but there are old matters to be moved to /Case and some other clerk tasks to pick up. Also, the clerks list is a month out of date; could we get an update on who is active/inactive? The hard work you guys do is appreciated! Essjay (Talk) 02:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• I updated the clerks list - may I suggest we enlist three new clerks, as currently two of the three "active" ones also split their time at RfAr clerking (and the third, myself, have intentions to do so in the new year as well)? I've annotated those who are inactive/semi-active. Personally, I strongly reccomend Nick (from experience) and Michael (who totally reformed WP:RFCU/A in many man-hours), but of course the choice is yours :)
• I'll do some archiving now, and move all the cases to the appropriate location.
• I'm in #-clerks now, so if you want to discuss anything (incl. clerk appointments), I'm waiting. I'll have to go in about 90mins, though. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 03:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I've done the following:

• Cleared the standby list, as it was horribly out of date.
• Invited three new clerks: MichaelBillington (talk • contribs), DarthVader (talk • contribs), and Luna Santin (talk • contribs).
• Appointed Daniel as Head Clerk, to help with training/assisting the new clerks.
• Moved Srikeit and Thatcher131 to a special designation, noting they are still active, but have other duties as Arbitration Clerks.

This should take care of the situation for now. Essjay (Talk) 04:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I was about to suggest the same thing. Sorry about getting behind. I would like to suggest in general that the clerks need to be more proactive {on average) than they have been lately. For example, I used to routinely add every case to my watchlist, which makes my watchlist rather ungainly but also allowed me to spot vandalism by the subject or other kinds of alterations that would sometimes muddy the waters. Also, at least one or two cases a week need to be merged—for example, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Decato should be merged into Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Preform since the puppetmaster is the same—or requests that are really IP checks will be listed as named cases or requests that should be named cases will be listed as IP checks. When in doubt about altering something like that, ask here for a second opinion. I'll be around for sure but not as active here as before. Cheers. Thatcher131 08:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Félicitations!

Firstly congratulations to Luna Santin, MichaelBillington and DarthVader on their appointment. Good to have you on-board and thank you for volunteering for a rather tedious but strangely rewarding job. I hope the enthusiasm you will bring is infectious and will get some of the more sedentary (read Srikeit) guys to work more ;). Also congrats to Daniel for his head clerk promotion. I've seen you do some excellent and very dedicated work as clerk and I'm sure you'll do well in the coordination of the work here. You may not see me lurking around here much, as I clerk for ArbCom too but I'm always available for any requests for advice or any chores you may have for me. (e.g [1] </brag>) Here are some general tips I've picked up in my reasonably long time here:

• Remember you first are an editor and then a clerk. Being a clerk does not give you any special rights at WP:RFCU. Do not consider (or even insinuate) that you have more authority here than the other non-clerks.
• Please don't try to reach over your authority. Refrain from posting notes like "I think this case should be rejected because....." or "The information you have given is not sufficient" or even anything subtler, for the checkusers. We are here mainly for facilitating the smooth passage of checkuser process by performing janitorial tasks. The checkusers will ask us if they need any extra information or other tasks. Leave all the decision making to the checkusers. After spending some time here you might be able to predict the outcome of most cases but try to keep your opinions out of the case pages. Always remember "Clerks do not make decisions on the merits or outcome of a check".
• Remember CU cases are usually a very unpleasant situation for both the requester and the suspect. Try to be polite even if the guy you are dealing with is being a total dick.
• Use common sense. A very important guideline here. Many times following procedure blindly can be detrimental and frankly quite stupid. But then again don't get too carried away.
• Coordinate more using this noticeboard and IRC (if you can). This noticeboard is quite underused as compared to Arbitration Clerks NoticeBoard which is a fine example of how coordination improves efficiency and reduces mistakes. #wikipedia-checkuser-clerks is a nice place to coordinate the activities and discuss clerk stuff. You can catch yours truly there too (poke eww).
• Enjoy yourself! Don't burn yourself out or bite off more than you can chew. Take a break when you are fatigued and relax

- Its only clerking :)

Cheers --Srikeit 08:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that Srikeit - some very good suggestions, most of which crept into my new guide (which was just published). I really hope to inspire some more activity both here on this noticeboard, and on the IRC channel. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 02:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I want to echo what has already been said here, and welcome everyone aboard. One thing I want to single out to echo a bit more loudly is avoiding making reccommendations on cases; it's rather natural once you're used to how things work to want to go ahead and say "Oh, this will never happen", but it really does damage the reputation of the clerks as impartial doers of useful things, and maintaining that perception is very important. I think you all will do great, I'm glad to see some old clerks back with us, and I'm excited to see how smoothly RFCU will be running! Essjay (Talk) 02:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Case page

When the Case page was established, we had a conversation about the page getting long and how often to fork it into archives. We pretty much decided on annually; that is, /Case would be moved to /Case/2006 and a new /Case page created for 2007. Of course, our repeat offenders will end up getting listed twice, and users interesteed in old cases will have to search through 2 pages rather than one. Is this still a good idea? I had another thought, of moving cases that have been inactive for 6 months to /Case/Old, as an alternate suggestion to keep the current Case page to a manageable size. Thoughts? Thatcher131 15:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hm. New to this, but another thought is to just list a case in all years under which it saw activity. If there were checkuser requests with the same case name in both 2006 and 2007, it seems easy enough to link it at both archives. Although that might create too much extra overhead and searching -- could probably get by just using /Case/Old until we have a reason to need more archive pages. Luna Santin 20:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be prohibitively difficult to move to /Old (unless a bot is used) because of the need to continually check each subpage. I am inclined to agree with Luna, just list the case in both archives, but that does bring up the question of whether to include the suspected sockpuppets for all years each year, or only ones in cases that year. Looking long term, the second option seems better, but that would make searching more difficult. Prodego ^talk 20:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm the one who originally screamed about searchability, and I still think it's very important. However, as long as the clerks are willing to do a quick check at /2006 to make sure cases don't need to be merged, I think having a /2007, etc. would be fine. We can handle having to click "Find" twice, methinks. Essjay (Talk) 02:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Since a thorough search will require checking two pages, it doesn't matter from a practical standpoint whether a repeat offender is listed on both pages or only the current one. I do think it would be better to list all a repeater's cases together, which would involve a copy-paste from 2006 to the current page, so it would be easy to remove it from the 2006 page at the same time, but there's no particular reason we have to do it. Just so long as we all do it the same way. Thatcher131 02:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, that works but you would wind up with a complete list of cases on the new list, and an incomplete one on the old list. If one is going to be incomplete anyway, I thought that they might as well be split to save time and work. Also over several years you could wind up with hundreds of names on the new list that no longer are relelvent. Prodego ^talk 02:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Huh? My caffeine level must be running low. If you look at the current case page, a fair number of cases, probably at least half, are one-timers, so they would only be listed at Case/2006. The question is what to do with a repeat offender who has a new report in 2007. We can (a) list their 2006 reports at Case/2006 and their 2007 reports at /Case; or (b) we could list both years' reports at /Case and remove them from /Case/2006, or (c) we could list both years' reports at /Case and keep the listing of 2006 reports at /Case/2006. I'm not sure what your opinion is. I guess I don't really care. Option a is the simplest from a maintenance point of view. Thatcher131 02:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I understand, in short, my opinion is (a), maybe my explanation is just confusing. Prodego ^talk 02:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I was confused, but I don't think it's your fault. a it is, then. Thatcher131 03:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I personally like (a). Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 11:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. (a) will eliminate all the dead one-off cases cluttering the current /Case page. --Srikeit 14:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New clerk guide - read all about it!

In case you haven't noticed (or haven't been in the IRC channel, where I've been told by others that it is all I talk about :D), the new clerk guide has been published. This was requested by Essjay, given that our new intake of clerks will benefit greatly from a manual outlining a number of procedures. Now, as noted at the top, it still needs to be run through with a fine-tooth comb by Essjay/Dmcdevit, and I'd appreciate it if Thatcher could as well (Srikeit already has, and gave it the thumbs up, which is good). It basically is a more up-to-date version, listing all the new stuff that's come about since the last one was written (the old can be seen at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Clerks/Guide/Old1).

The new guide can be seen at WP:RFCU/C/G. Cheers, and feedback much appreciated, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 11:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Very nice. I see Daniel's been busy. Life came and hit me with a sledgehammer When I make it back around wikipedia, and I'll likely then be helping out RFCU. Kevin_b_er 18:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thumbs Up/Down

Confirmed. Essjay (Talk) 01:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top Gun

Why is Top Gun listed as an IP check instead of a check against a registered user? IP check is to disclose the IPs behind throwaway vandal accounts so it can be blocked. When a registered user is suspected of using sockpuppets (either additional registered accounts or from IPs by editing while logged out) it should generally be a named Case subpage. Thatcher131 14:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

No idea, I hadn't seen it yet. Moved back. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 22:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

My fault sorry. I was thinking the same thing (that perhaps it didn't belong in IP check), but I am still not sure of the exact criteria of each code. The person had used Code A so I thought that it should probably be moved to IP check. I will think a bit harder next time. DarthVader 03:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)