geni wrote:
2008/6/18 Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>om>:
Translation, please. What exactly has changed?
What is "it" here?
Can't be that BLP policy enforcement is a novelty. "It" seems to be the
parameters of enforcement. But I suppose most of those with the best
interests of the mission at heart and involved in enforcement of BLP
have figured this out a while ago. I'm sure OTRS volunteers have.
Against those determined to use our pages to smear people, it happens
that tough measures may be required.
BLP is 36K of messed up text. I doubt many people with the interests
of the project at heart have actually read it.
As written it is broadly equivalent to our copyright policy reading as
a long version of "we must keep in mind and respect people's
intellectual property rights" which would result in either wikipedia
being overrun by copyvios or the deletion of about 90% of wikimedia
commons.
Worse than that it can't even be fixed because people don't seem to be
sure what it is actually meant to be doing. About the only thing it's
clear on is that it doesn't apply to dead people. Heck we haven't even
settled the status of legal persons yet and you want to make this
enforceable beyond our normal methods?
The basic point of any serious, official, central point fits into much
less than 1K. And, yes, we want those key aspects to be enforceable;
and in the case of BLP we want enforcement to keep Wikipedia out of
aspects of the lives of people that are nothing like encyclopedic, and
can cause potential defamation issues. The bloat that goes on has never
been an argument for not respecting and being tough about the central
planks of policy.
I'll repeat here my basic credo on admin powers: admins should be given
discretion to do the job. The very small proportion who abuse that
discretion can expect to lose the powers. I think this is a very
positive view of admins, and (in fact) if they as individuals don't live
up to it, they can be replaced (per "no big deal", quaint though that
now sounds).
The whole draft of the remedy at issue could probably be replaced by a
one-liner, to do with the discretionary powers used for BLP enforcement,
and the respect accorded to those admins in the front line. Trouble is,
there are so many wannabe constitutional lawyers out there now on the
wiki, we'd never get away with the supposed vagueness.
Charles