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 4 oversighters on Commons.

Oversighters as of December 2023 [+/−]

Number of oversighters: 4

Minorax, en, zh, ko-1, ms-1, fr-1, nan-2, yue-1 odder, pl, en-4, de-2 (bureaucrat) Rama, fr, en-4, de-2, la-2, ja-1, es-1, it-1 Raymond, de, en-3, nl-1

What is an oversighter?

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

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?

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

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

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.

No current requests.

Current oversighters

• For an automated list of current oversighters, see Special:Listusers/suppress.
• To edit the annotated list of oversighters, click here.

See also

• Commons:Oversight
• Suppression statistics
• Oversighter's Handbook